So, a long time ago I posted this about a recurring character who appears in my dreams sometimes. https://www.dreaming.life/dreaming/threads/a-recurring-character.3502/#post-14402 Recently he came back. In this dream, I was in a room with some acquaintances of mine, and we were all joking around. There was a woman hanging out in the corner opposite the door. At some point, she pulled out a gun and aimed it at someone. Everyone seemed to think the gun was a joke, even when she shot that person dead. There wasn't even a struggle or any sign of pain, they just died instantly. Everyone else did not seem to take her seriously. The girl herself seemed rather light-hearted about the whole thing, killing people casually. I was the only one who seemed to recognize any kind of danger, and I started inching my way towards the door. Then the girl turned to me and handed me a gun, smiling and saying something about how I had planned this with her and it was my turn to shoot people. But I knew that it was a dangerous situation, so I took the gun and pretended to play along, but then sneaked out of the room without shooting anyone. Outside the room, I found myself in a hallway. There was a window in the hallway that looked into the room I had just left. There were more bodies piling up on the floor. The girl didn't seem to notice that I had left. And that's where the man from my earlier dreams comes in. We start making conversation about what happened in there. I said that I backed out because I simply didn't want to do it. To my surprise, he said that he agreed, but only to go on to say that shooting people is such a boring way of killing them. "You can't appreciate their pain up close with a gun," he said. "We could think of some better ways. What about strangulation? Or poison, perhaps?" He turned to look at me right as he explained, in gruesome detail, more "entertaining" ways to kill, and again I found my own thoughts drifting in that morbid direction, as I began wanting to inflict many new tortures upon those victims... Fortunately - or perhaps frustratingly - I was awoken before I was able to get to the bloodiest bits of the dream. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I had "unfinished business." Sometimes, the thoughts become so intense, so consuming, that I wonder if this pretense of behaving morally is just a lie I tell myself to cover up the monster I am inside. These thoughts... I... I used to be able to say I never wanted to think of these things. Now, I'm not even sure what I stand for.
Have you discussed your fears of this inner monster to a therapist? I sometimes worry about losing control in public--not so much graphic torturous revenge on others, mind you--but these impulses have a couple of times became a self-fulfilling prophesy. I've lost my temper with co-workers and regret it afterwards. I have to mentally tell myself to keep my cool in situations where work pressures mound. This shadowy gunslinger inside you could be anger manifesting itself in dream. You could try asking yourself who you are anger with and why.