When Doves Cry

3:30am - two more gunshots echo. I am lying on the floor of a hotel room, flattening myself against the wall beneath the window in order to offer as small a target as possible to the psychopath shooting at me from a nearby rooftop. There is glass everywhere and I realise distractedly that I have a deep gash on the palm of my left hand. It is the least of my current worries. Where am I and what the hell am I doing here? I have no recollection of the previous five hours. "Shit man, that was too close, let's get the hell outta here!" a voice behind me says, somewhat too excitedly. I am not alone. "Get up bitch! They're coming". The stranger opens the door, motions impatiently for me to follow him. Unable to think clearly, I do so.

5:30am - My right leg seizes up. Every muscle, tendon and joint in my body is aching and my lungs are burning with the very fires of hell itself. We have been running for days, it seems. I pause for breath and lean exhausted against a rusting locomotive engine. I want to scream, to release this rage that is in me, but more than anything I want to cry. "Move it NOW asshole, or you're dead!" the stranger hisses at me as he shoves me to one side before setting off at pace again. I hear the dogs barking in the distance and quickly follow this man I know nothing about.

As we weave a ragged course towards a thick copse beyond the railway yard, I can barely make out the minefield of obstacles waiting to put an abrupt end to the death chase. Rails, sleepers and boulders, I dodge them all panting and sweating like a rabid animal. The dogs are gaining on me, aware that their quarry is tiring and excited that there will be fresh meat for breakfast. A shot rings out. As I turn my head in time to see the stranger felled by a bullet in the back of his neck, my foot catches a root and I fall hard, knocking myself out on a flat rock.

6:30am - I wake up, although not in the local morgue but under a blue polka-dot duvet in my bedroom in Putney, London. Not quite under actually, half of it is on the floor and the pillows are nowhere to be seen. The dogs are not in my room, neither is the dead body of a stranger.

Another night, another crazy dream...

That bright old doyen of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud believed dreams to be a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. Whilst much of his research is rightly revered to this day, I nevertheless have to question the validity of his statement. There are many achievements and wishes I hope to fulfil in this lifetime, but finding myself in a seedy hotel room with a random bloke is not one of them, and neither is running like a rabid lunatic for TWO HOURS with said random bloke before being chased by a pack of bloodthirsty hounds in a disused railway yard.

My curiosity piqued, I decide to trawl the internet for possible interpretations of my dream and stumble upon the inspiration that is Dream Central at www.sleeps.com. Confidence in the website's powers of interpretation courses through me as I spot the advertising on the homepage ('We deliver compatible singles to you!'). A biblical reference confirms my worst fears and my seconds of hard toil are rewarded as I open the magical portal that is the.......... [drum roll].......... Dream Dictionary and its universe of platitudes, banalities and life's-what-you-make-of-itisms.

Example:

Doves: The symbol of peace and love herald the end of disagreements. Dreaming of white doves foretell a happy domestic life filled with peace and tranquility. A flock of doves means that you will soon welcome home an old friend, and if you hear doves cooing, your love will be returned, but, if you hear turtle doves, you will soon hear some disheartening news.

Now I am quite prepared to admit that there is a frustrated ornithologist inside each and every single one of us but '... if you hear doves, you will soon hear some disheartening news'??? If I cannot tell the difference between an American and a Canadian, quite how I am expected to spot the single turtle dove in a line-up of regular doves I do not know. No, the only disheartening news I will hear will be a) the soft rumble of the turtle dove's bowels as it releases breakfast, lunch and dinner onto me from a great height and b) the 'Ker-ching!' of the dry-cleaner's cash register, nothing more, nothing less...

As for the interpretation of my dream? I will stick to my trusted self-analysis: I am just weird...

WARNING: READ ON AT YOUR OWN PERIL

PS How does a dove get into power? Thanks to a military coo...
JMK 2008 (TM)