My mother and I were both pregnant, but I was a seventeen-year-old boy and my mother was my mother, so this could not be. Also I knew that the father of our progeny was one and the same. This was illogical and confusing. I was afraid and I looked to my mother for support.

In the dream, I was sitting at a table in the kitchen when I felt a strange stirring deep in my body. My heart throbbed in my chest, panic gripped me by the throat and I cried out for help. In an instant my mother came down from her bedroom. She was carrying a small towel and she moved quickly, but she seemed calm. I was reassured. My mother took control of the situation.

‘Stand up. Hold your right hand above the sink and make it taut – stretch it as wide as you can.’

I did as I was told. My fingers were splayed, as if straining to play an impossible chord on an invisible piano. I could feel a thrusting movement in my index finger. The movement persisted and then, something appeared from under my fingernail. I could just make out the head of a small creature. It was black and slimy and desperately trying to squeeze itself out. Eventually the creature emerged, a tiny frog, connected to my finger by an umbilical strand, dangling, like the bloody thread of a child’s loose tooth. The process was repeated until, from each of my four fingers, miniature amphibians oozed and wriggled. I fainted. In the depths of my dream I knew that I was dreaming.

Later that day I met my friend Jake for a drink in the local pub. Jake was older than me and a bit of a hippy. He was into the weird, the wonderful and all things spiritual. Perhaps this is why I felt prepared to tell him about the dream that was still so fresh in my mind. Jake seemed impressed by my story.
‘That’s amazing man. What a scary…