"Remnants of Cerberus" - 12/23/2021 (Lucid)

"Remnants of Cerberus"

12/23/2021

(Lucid)

(This dream was pretty fragmented, and I could only remember a few, key moments of it. I had been playing "Devil May Cry 5", before bed, and I'm pretty sure my acquisition and usage of a 3-tier weapon of fire, ice, and electricity - that I got after defeating the boss demon King Cerberus - is what inspired these encounters.)

I was in my old neighborhood, at night, just roaming about the streets. There were a few other people out, but all was relatively quiet. Then, with absolutely no warning, a raging, flaming minotaur rampaged onto the scene. The top half of its body was set ablaze, as if it was sporting a flowing mane of pure fire that covered its head and upper torso. It was doing these rushing berserker-type attacks and mauled at least one person before turning its sights on me. It blitzed me and I had to brace against its charge with my forearms. Each impact felt like I was bracing against the heaviest lineman, running into me at full speed. After reeling from the intensity of each of its charges - surprisingly, never finding myself getting burned from its fiery headbutts - I was able to dodge a few of its attacks before it veered off toward another person. I don't how, exactly, it happened, but when it caught up to the other passerby, it immediately turned the man into ice, as if it had ejected frozen air from its snout, or something. The person literally froze in place, solid, into a strange, organic form like a nautilus shell made of ice.

Using this window of opportunity, I hauled ass and ran out of the entrance of the neighborhood, sprinting down the sidewalk next to the main road. I remember passing two motorcycle cops that were just hanging out on the side of the road, but the thought never occurred to me to stop and tell them what was happening. Instead, I continued running toward the shopping center that sat at the next major intersection. It was here that I notice something bright, filling the night sky, in the distance. As it loomed closer, I could see that it was a fire-tornado, whirling its way toward the shopping center and in my, personal, direction. 

Still not yet lucid, I don't know exactly what prompted me that I could even do this, but I suddenly decided to take flight, and I levitated off of the sidewalk and into the air. Getting a grand view of the town from above, as well as the imposing cyclone of flames that was still stalking up the street toward me, I instinctively decided to fly back to my neighborhood, feeling that I might rather take my chances with the no-less-fiery minotaur. The moment I touched down, though, just next to my home, I briefly contemplated what had been happening. I realized that - of course - this all had to be a dream.

I was no longer afraid of encountering the minotaur, but it was nowhere to be found. Instead, though, as if right on cue, I saw the bright glow of a monstrous fire coming through the dark streets of my neighborhood. The closer it got, the more I could see that it wasn't the minotaur. No. It was a machine. A crane, of sorts. It was as if an oversized backhoe was fitted with a massive, rotating sawblade on its telescopic arm, and that sawblade - itself - was also made of a supernatural hellfire. The tractor portion of the vehicle didn't have wheels. Instead, it was actively laying track, in front of itself, which constructed a system of x/y axes on the ground, for the tractor to shift toward me in an alternation of frontward / sideward movements.

Unafraid, due to my newfound lucidity, I just waited for the giant machine to approach. The flaming, rotated blade swung itself around in my direction, and I took to the air. The blade swiped just beneath me, and I could hear the loud whirring of the machine as its crane arm changed directions and brought the blade back around toward me, again. I was completely comfortable in my flight, though, able to zip through the air in short, lateral bursts, evading each subsequent slash from the crane and watching the flaming blade shred through the trees - and even some houses - in the neighborhood as it continued to try to slice me out of the air.

I don't remember anything after toying with this contraption, though.

"Politic.....tick.....ticks" 03/14/2022

"Politic.....tick.....ticks"

03/14/2022

The first thing I can remember is that I was lying in bed, in my old Lake Mary home. My bedroom light was on, and I couldn't tell whether I was drifting off to sleep or just waking up, but I had that sort of "in between states" feeling that tends to come when right on the cusp of sleep. Suddenly, the bedroom door slammed open, and a group of what I can only describe as "prominent far-right pundits and politicians" came trudging in. Apparently, they were being ushered in by someone who I'd identified as a "rival from work" (though I don't think this person represented anyone in waking life), and they all began ransacking the room, supposedly looking for something of value. By their hurried and almost cartoonishly-sinister demeanor, I could tell that they were right on the verge of some gargantuan plan coming into fruition and, for some reason, they needed something in my room to make it happen.

As they searched, I tried to pull myself out of the bed, in order to confront them. I found, though, that I could not move. I was pinned to the bed by some unseen force and, no matter how I tried, I could not come to move any of my limbs, or even raise my head far from my pillow. (It felt very much like sleep paralysis, though I couldn't make the connection, at the time.) All I could figure, was that these intruders had some apparatus of control over me, that was making me unable to move. I struggled against it, for the entire time they were in the room, and it wasn't until they all filed back out of it - leaving me unsure of whether or not they'd gotten what they were searching for - that I broke free. Now, able to throw myself out of bed, I ran to the door, to go after them. The moment that I opened the door, however, the scene completely changed.

I was, now, in what looked to be a hotel room. My fiancé and I were making the bed, and I was telling her about the events that had happened, as if they'd happened the night before. As I explained the events to her, she seemed to be familiar with the person that I'd supposedly worked with, from the story, and it was then that I realized the events I was describing to her never happened, because she doesn't really know any of my old coworkers. Because of this, I realized I was describing a dream to her, rather than a memory (though it wasn't enough to realize that I was still, in fact, dreaming as I told her this story). We hurriedly tidied the rest of the room, knowing that we were, apparently, running late to get to some important show or function, within the hotel, and that we had to leave as soon as possible.

My recollection of the dream skipped ahead, and we were coming back from whatever gathering had taken place. My daughter was with us (though she was younger than in waking life), this time, as we returned to the hotel room. Before bed, I'd noticed that she was writing something in her binders, quite intently, but I was unsure of whatever it was that had her so wrapped up in it.

Flash-forward, once again, and I was waking up in the hotel bed. (It wasn't  a full-on 'false awakening,' because it was still continuing the narrative of the current dream.) Just as the first time I'd 'awoken,' though, I found myself caught in paralysis and unable to raise myself from the bed. My fiancé and daughter were nowhere to be found. Suddenly, as before, the hotel room door burst open, and in flooded the same group of far-right provocateurs from earlier. The ransacked the room with the same fervor as they had in the first scenario, and one of them went digging ferociously through my daughter's papers. I kept trying to look over this one's shoulder, to see what might have been so important that could be found in a child's notes. However, I was still pinned to the bed, by an unseen force, and couldn't get a good vantage point.

Before long, the intruders gestured that they'd found what they were looking for, and that they were ready to "begin" whatever it was they were looking to set in motion. As if prepping for some sort of cult-like ritual, they all took up various positions, around the room - one of which was right next to the side of my bed - and laid down on the floor. They closed their eyes in unison, as if preparing to fall asleep, and remained completely still. Still pressed to the bed, I had no idea what they were doing, but I could not shake the feeling of dread creeping over me.

Abruptly, I 'woke up' again, still in the hotel bed. Though I was no longer paralyzed, I immediately knew that something was terribly wrong. My fiancé was nowhere to be found, but my daughter was asleep on her own bed. Fearful that something big was going on, I hopped out of bed and woke my daughter, taking her by the hand and rushing out of the bedroom to find my fiancé.

The moment we opened the door, though, everything 'stopped.' Rather, I should say that everything 'slowed to a crawl,' in terms of time, itself. No matter how hard we ran through the hotel hallways, we were objectively moving in slow motion. It wasn't just us, though. Everything in the hotel was happening in slow motion. People were rushing out of their hotel rooms with the same degree of urgency as we were, yet everyone was observably trapped in the same bit of temporal distortion as the two of us. Still able to think in real time, despite my limbs not following suit, I immediately knew that this was a part of whatever political masterplan was being put into effect. I noticed that the hotel architecture was changing, as we rushed through the corridors at a snail's pace. Normal hotel room doors were suddenly transforming into heavy, riveted metal doors with no handles or knobs. It was as if some entity was changing the landscape in order to try to either trap us or funnel our escape in one direction.

Up ahead, I could see the hallway opening that led to the central courtyard of the hotel. We were a few stories up, and I was pushing my legs as hard as I could, fighting through the debilitating sluggishness that we were somehow locked in, preparing to start a painfully-slow descent through the staircase. It was then that I noticed wave after wave of other hotel patrons leaping from their respective balconies within the courtyard - generally plummeting to their deaths as they fell in completely submissive positions as impacted the ground with the full force of gravity, despite their slow motion freefalling. Still in a belabored sprint, panic washed over me. I only had a moment to ponder what was happening, before I reached the threshold of the open staircase. Since I was still able to think in real-time, I felt confident that I had enough control of myself to take a leap of faith and, clutching my daughter's hand tighter, I took one leap, to clear the first section of stairway, landing with one foot on the pivotal railing before launching off of that one and descending the full four or five stories in a single bound. We touched down, softly, in the grass of the open courtyard and continued our slow-mo sprint toward the nearest exit, which would take us back through the corridors but, instead, on the ground level.

It was around this time - running into the closest covered hallway - that I began to notice the music that was permeating the environment, as if it were being pumped directly into my brain. (This dream took place in the middle of a Wake-Back-to-Bed attempt to induce a lucid dream, and I had meditative binaural music playing in my headphones as I slept. I believe that it was the slow, ambient tone of the music in the waking world that prompted the time distortion in the dream. It was very "Inception"-like.) Ahead of us, a young boy was standing outside of what seemed to have been his hotel room. Running in slow motion gave me a moment to take in his expression, and I could see that he was frantically confused, almost to the point of sobbing. In a manner that sounded like an audio tape played at a fraction of normal speed, I could hear the boy talking to himself about how he "had been in one position," and then found himself instantly shifted to "another position," as if he had witnessed a time-jump or teleportation of some kind, and could not figure out what was happening. It was in hearing this boy's bewilderment, that it solidified in my mind that this was some sort of time-loop or time-manipulation plot that was coming to pass. This was not real life. I had to be trapped in sort of "pocket dimension" or something (ala "Dr. Strange").

Continuing passed the boy, my daughter and I ran through subsequent hallways, unsure of exactly where we were going, at this point, but just running and trying to escape this horrible, surreal, situation. The further we ran, and through each subsequent room that we passed, everything seemed to be getting darker and darker, until we finally barged into one room that caused my vision to go completely black. The feeling of being in an enclosed area faded away, and all I could feel was a dark, empty void. I felt disembodied. Then, I remembered being paralyzed on the hotel bed. I remembered the invaders who came in and did their strange ritual of laying down and seeming to lose consciousness. I remembered that one of them had laid down right beside my bed.

With that logic, I had the feeling that this was a dream. However, I thought it was a dream that I was having while rendered unconscious by the political terrorists who might still be asleep, next to me, in the hotel. Still in the black void, I felt that wave of paralysis wash back over me. I could no longer feel my limbs moving, and I was surrounded by darkness. As last-ditch idea came to me: I figured that, if I could just break free of the paralysis, and roll out of bed, I might be able to land on top of one of the sleeping assailants and break whatever ritual they had going on. 

Fighting against the full-body paralysis, I started trying to rock myself over onto my left side, straining against the invisible force pinning me to the bed. Finally, with one desperate push, I jerked myself off of the bed that I could, now, sense beneath me in the void, and I got the brief sensation of falling before bringing an elbow down and feeling it smash down upon the body of the personal lying unconscious on the floor.

Immediately, I awoke from the dream, and back into waking life, still in darkness before removing my sleep mask from my eyes.

(When I awoke, I was somewhat relieved that I didn't actually act out that final gesture, which - even though she sleeps on the other side of me - would have a real problem, if I'd have accidentally rolled over and dropped an elbow on my fiancé, while she slept. LOL.)

"Shark Tank Hotel" - 11/08/2021 (Lucid)

"Shark Tank Hotel"

11/08/2021

(Lucid)

 My earliest memory of this dream was of being in a hotel or condominium hallway. After wandering, aimlessly, for some time, I realized that I was in a dream. There was a short, older cleaning lady making her rounds, through the hallways, and I decided to follow her out of curiosity. She was a pretty mundane, character, though, seeming to really have no sort of direction or purpose, as she stopped at one room or another, then just continuing to walk along without really "doing" anything. I noticed a few, small animal cages that lined some of the hallways, which seemed out of place for a hotel, but mostly uninteresting. The woman finally stopped a small storage room with a single toilet inside of it, and it was then that, feeling that this particular thread wasn't really leading anywhere, I decided to ignore her and wander off on my own.

Heading downstairs, I took a moment to look at my hands and focus on the details of my hands, to ground myself into the dream state. My fingers were a bit warped, as if being viewed below a watery surface, but otherwise unaltered, and the environment around me was brought into greater clarity when I looked away from them. Heading outside, to the parking lot, I saw that a number of people had gathered around, and that there was some sort of altercation going down. I don't really recall the details of the situation I'd stumbled upon, but I soon found myself being accosted by a group of 3 or 4 "bullies," who seemed as if they were just looking to start trouble with any and everyone around them. 

Since I was already lucid, I had no problem taking these guys on. Though I don't remember much of the actual fight, I do remember stopping, for a moment, to run my hands along one of the wooden tables nearby, in order to keep me grounded and prevent the dream from fading during the action. Sometime during this skirmish, the crowd he become aware that some kind of giant housecat had roamed onto the property. The animal - which was about the size of a lion, but undoubtedly an exaggeration of a normal housecat - began stalking in my direction, the moment it saw me, and I wasn't exactly getting a welcome feeling from it. 

Immediately, I shifted my attention from my previous, human attackers, and took a defensive stance against the approaching beast. Feeling a good bit of dream control, after taking on multiple opponents, I attempted a superpowered move against the cat, trying to conjure up a "Hadouken!" and throwing my palms out toward it to produce a fireball. Nothing happened, though, and the cat was still coming. I tried once again, yelling the command out, even louder, to try to really get the feeling of willing it into existence. Still nothing, though, and the cat was just about to encroach upon me, so, I did the very first thing that came to mind, instinctively, as it came within reach: I gave it a sharp slap across the face. Unsurprisingly, this didn't seem to faze the big cat, at all, and it simply chomped its jaws down on my hand, and held on tight. The bite didn't really hurt, at all, and it was more annoying than anything else.

Instead of taking the time to continue trying to fight off the animal, I simply turned around and attempted to ignore it, walking away from the crowded lot and back into the hotel. I could feel that the cat's teeth were still closed around my hand, but I noticed that there was very little resistance while I walked. When I looked back, I could see that the cat - which was still locked onto my hand - had shrunk, slightly. It was still big, for a housecat, but not quite as imposing as it had been, before. I passed a reptile tank, which had an alligator inside, and I placed the cat inside. In no time, the two creatures were battling it out, on their own, within the tank. Noticing that there were more tanks in the hallway, I saw one that contained a shark and - for no other real reason than curiosity - I reached into the gator tank, grabbing the two, quarreling animals, and dumping them into the shark tank. On cue, the shark joined into the fray, and all three animals started fighting in the tank that was far too small to fit them comfortably.

Another glass tank caught my eye, nearby, which held some less-threatening, tropical fish. Also inside was an intriguing miniature of internally-lit castle. The windows glowed brightly, in the dim water surrounding it. Since I had become a little tired of this - fairly mundane - hotel environment, I decided to try a scene change and see if I might be able shrink myself down to explore this underwater castle. I figured that phasing through the glass of the aquarium might be the easiest way to make the transition, so I pressed my palms and face against the glass and tried to 'push' myself forward. I encountered just a little resistance, at first, but then I felt myself pass through the glass like a thick, gelatinous fluid. Pushing myself further into the tank, I could see the castle coming closer, though the water was growing more dark and foreboding, the further I advanced. It still felt like my entire body wasn't 'inside' the tank, and I could still sense the discrepancy in my size to that of the castle. It didn't feel natural, at all.

Then, I started thinking about the animals fighting in the tank with which I'd just interacted. The thought of the carnivorous creatures, in an underwater setting, started making me really uncomfortable, as if they were starting to converge on me, in this enclosure, even though this tank was even smaller than the others. Now, unsettled by the notion of being stuck in the murky depths with predators, I reversed my forward progression and pulled my head back out of the tank, through the glass. Upon emerging from the surface, I could see the large head of a great white shark, filling up most of the inside of the tank, just near what my head had been, as if it was swimming toward me to bite my head off of my neck. Since the tank was so small, it was only big enough for the head of the shark. The length of its body, though, was sticking out of the other side of the tank. The head, it seemed, had phased through the glass wall of the tank, just as mine had done, and the body of the shark was just suspended in the air, horizontally, while its head remained stuck inside - as if a pencil had been stabbed a portion of the way into a plastic container.

I was in awe at this surreal image, and the last thing I remember was reaching out and touching the shark's body - which was leathery, damp and detailed - and remarking, out loud, at how cool it was. Unfortunately, touching the shark (although I was not focusing on grounding to the dream, while doing so) was the last thing I actually remember before waking.

"Journey Into Sound" - 02/15/2022 (Lucid)

"Journey Into Sound"

02/15/2022

(Lucid)

(I had a pretty incredible, long, exploratory lucid dream, this morning, after waking up early to take out the trash. There was another hour and a half left before my phone alarm was set to go off, so I decided to go back to sleep and try for a WBTB lucid. My fiancé was getting set for work and I didn't want the sound keeping me awake, so I decided to put on some meditative binaural music and put my earphones in and sleep mask on - two things I hadn't done together, for years. After a few minutes, I'd drifted back off to sleep...)

The first thing I remember of the dream was being in the bathroom, with my fiancé trying to talk to me through the curtain, as she was taking a shower. (This was obviously inspired by the night before, when she was actually talking to me through the shower curtain, before bed.) In the dream, I had my headphones on, listening to what I would later come to find out was the same audio that I was listening to as I slept. The music was drowning out her voice, so I kept trying to take off my headphones, however, even when I would pull the earpieces out of my ears, I would still hear the audio coming from them. Then, I would reach up and try to pull them out of my ears again, and I would pull duplicate earbuds out, so that I was holding multiple copies of them upon every attempt. Finally, I saw that even the earphone jack was disconnected from my phone, but I was still hearing the audio in my ears.

Knowing that something was off, here, I attempted to move something on the bathroom counter with telekinesis: my go-to reality check, when I suspect I might be dreaming. The dream, though, was already very vivid, and I wasn't able to get the object (which I think was a sponge) to move. Still unsure whether this was a dream, I tried to pull back the shower curtain so that I could better understand what she was saying to me, but the curtain simply remained closed, despite my efforts, and it would not budge. Again, I knew that this wasn't right.

I looked around the bathroom, for some sort of confirmation as to whether this was a dream (still aware of the music playing in my ears). When I glanced at the mirror, I noticed that, instead of staring back at myself, my reflection was still standing where I had been, when I was trying to open the shower curtain, and facing away from me. Immediately, I knew this was a dream! Now, without a doubt, I reached one hand up and touched the mirror, in the space where my reflection should have been, and I pushed forward. My hand sank into the mirrored glass like water, and I stopped when it was about elbow deep, pulling it back out. I thought I might try crawling into the mirror, but when I tried and felt resistance - because of the dream being so vivid - I thought better of the idea, due to the risk of getting stuck and pulling myself out of the dream, completely.

Leaving the bathroom - still hearing the music in my head and recalling that it was the music I'd begun playing in my headset, when I went back to sleep - I made my way to the front door. For a moment, I thought about phasing through the door, but, again, like with the mirror, I anticipated getting stuck and jeopardizing the entire dream. Instead, I wanted to use an exit where I could already see outside, so I walked over to the nearest window. Reaching out and touching the windowsill, I ran my fingers along it, taking in the sensation of the wood frame, and grounding myself into the dream, trying to keep myself from thinking about my waking world body, so as not to get pulled back into wakefulness. Just outside of the window, I noticed something sticking out of the trash bin. It took me a few moments to realize that it was a human head. There was a dead, bald guy stuffed partially into the garbage, but, since he was close enough to touch, I merely reached out and shoved him off to one side, not wanting to fill my head with any thoughts of the dead (or the undead, since I'd been playing 'Dying Light 2', the past few nights). 

I crawled out of the open window and into the back yard, walking, then, around to the front of the house. It was a pleasant, sunny, but slightly cloudy morning (just a bit less overcast as it had been, when I'd been awake and taking the trash out, before going back to bed), and the rising sun and clouds had a very saturated, painterly look to them (much like the picturesque sunrises in the Dying Light games). Suddenly, a red Nissan RX-7 (similar to one that a friend used to have) came skidding to a stop, across my lawn and driveway. An unfamiliar man immediately jumped out of the driver's side, with a shotgun, and took aim at me, from about four yards away. Still completely aware that I was dreaming, though, I was able to raise both my forearms across my torso and brace against the blast, once he pulled the trigger. I could feel a bit of a punch, but it was an otherwise painless impact.

Unfortunately, I don't quite recall how I moved on, from my attacker, but I feel like I just kinda 'force-pushed' him out of the way and walked off, to explore the dreamscape. I remember walking directly across the street from my house, and toward the neighbor's home, just to see what I might find, inside. The front room (I assume, since I've never actually seen the inside of this neighbor's house) was quaint and dimly lit, and the one thing that really stood out to me was that there were cats walking/climbing all around the place. (We have had plenty of experiences with the strays around our neighborhood.)  One of the cats came up to me, bit me on the hand - which didn't really hurt - and decided that it wanted to latch on and not lot go. (There is a hilarious story about something similar happening in a previous lucid dream of mine.) Instead of giving it any of my attention - and possibly making the "attack" worse - I just decided to ignore the cat, which eventually disappeared, and I continued exploring the small house. The back rooms were semi-dark, as well, and fairly unspecific. Things were getting rather mundane, actually, and I started trying to think of something interesting to do.

First thing that came to mind was trying to find the Dream World Academy, and I was wondering how I might get to it, from here. I moved a couple of things around, in one of the rooms, trying to "will" a portal to appear behind random objects, but to no avail. I noticed a piano, in a corner, and thought I might try the old "secret passage" concept from movies. I played a couple of notes on the piano, trying to command a door to open, somewhere. Though I don't remember whether the trick actually worked or not, the next thing I remember is walking out of a stone hallway, and back onto the street in my neighborhood. 

A little frustrated with going in circles, so to speak, my attention was then drawn upward. The cloud-cover was pretty amazing, with a canopy of white rows of clouds now blanketing most of the sky. It looked vast, and awesome, and inviting. For a moment, I thought about flying up, to see if I could find a "heaven," curious as to my mind's rendition of it, but I, again, became weary of the danger of losing the dream, altogether (as it is, sometimes, tough for me to fly "above" certain altitudes, in dreams). Even at the very thought of it, I rubbed my hands together and concentrated on grounding myself even further into the dream, improving the clarity of the scene around me, in the process.

Rather than taking to the sky, I decided to focus, again, on finding the Academy. This time, instead of attempting to create portals, I thought I might try spinning the scene. Setting my intention to manifest the Academy, upon looking behind me, I quickly did a half-spin, in place. Instead of a normal, neighborhood home, I found a small, non-descript office complex. Curious, I walked to one of the window-lined buildings and stepped into an office. Most of the people that I saw, inside, were old, while folks, who all seemed very warm to my arrival. I told one lady that I was looking for the Dream World Academy, and she told me that I'd come to the right place. She said that class was just started, and that I could follow her to it. We stepped through slender, white hallways and, along the way, I passed by a girl in a hoodie, who was leaning up against a wall and reminded me of an old friend, B. It seemed as if she had been waiting for this class to start, with the way she'd removed herself from the wall and began to follow us, once we passed.

Shortly afterward, in a small, rather bland classroom, the old woman began speaking. To be honest, I can only remember that she wasn't necessarily saying anything of interest, and the girl in the hoodie was looking just as detached from the dialogue as I was. Satisfied that I had found the Academy (albeit an unconventional "version" of it), I decided to go explore some more, removing myself from the classroom and wandering the halls again. Stepping out of one glass door, and into an outdoor corridor, I noticed a large hole in the concrete sidewalk. Looking into it, I saw that there was a stone staircase, heading down into the earth, and I made my way down into it. After a short while in this compact stairwell, I found myself coming out of another hallway, right back onto the street of my neighborhood. Again, I was at ground level, after having walked down a staircase, though I had never been higher than ground level, to begin with.

I noticed that I had a piece of paper in my hand, about the size of a business card. Unconcerned with whether anything was written on it, I decided to take the moment to use it to ground myself to the dream once more, taking the paper between my fingers and running them over the surface, feeling the tiniest details of the roughness of the material. As usual, that attention to detail caused the rest of the dream to feel more solid and immersive, when I took another glance at the neighborhood around me.

Once more, the sky above the houses caught my eyes. This time, it was because I could see three or four aircraft in the distance, doing what looked like air show stunts, over the city. Their aerobatics didn't seem to conform to physics, though, as they were just aimlessly tumbling and twisting through the air, completely devoid of any sense of logic. Interested, I began to hover, just a few feet from the ground, and toward the squad of aircraft. Just when I got within about 100 yards from them, the aircraft seem to all notice me, at once, and streaked in my direction. As they came closer, they all spiraled around each other and converged in a sort of cartwheeling transformation in the air (much like Starscream, from the 'Transformers' movies), twisting themselves into a single, Super Fighter Jet, about twice the size that a real one would be.

Now, hovering, just in front of me, like a VTOL-styled jet, the aircraft seemed to be blatantly taking aim at me. Anticipating incoming fire, and still feeling quite a bit of control, I simply stuck out one hand, palm facing the jet just as a stream of heavy machinegun fire sprayed in my direction. Effortlessly, my hand deflected the onslaught without the slightest tinge of pain. Then, I brought both my hands up, swiping my palms toward each other in a 'squeezing' motion, and crushing the entire plane, from a distance, with telekinesis, before flicking the mangled heap, dismissively, down an adjacent street.

Continuing on, in my current direction, I came to the roadway's dead end. The road didn't just stop, though. It disappeared into the rolling waves of the ocean, as if the entire street had been a beach ramp, all along, and half my neighborhood (which is nowhere near the beach) had fallen away into coastal waters. I was, now, on the ocean shore, looking down one side, to see that the water had come all the way up to the buildings - which had become more the mansions and/or hotel-type buildings, that you would normally catch on a touristy beach, rather than the small, suburban homes that were surrounding me, before. The entire rear face of one building had been sheared away by the water, exposing the hollowed, derelict, concrete skeleton within the structure. Still interested in exploring, I made my way over to the building, stopping for a moment to run my hand along a wooden fence, in order to ground myself to the dream, once more. I started to reflect on just how long this dream had been lasting, and remembered to think of key points to recall, upon waking, so I wouldn't lose too many of the earlier events to memory. (The four key points that I specifically recall instilling into my mind were the headphones dream sign; finding the 'Academy;' taking on the fighter jet; and this beach scene.) It was around here, that I noticed that I could still hear the meditative music that was playing through my headphones.

Once inside the hollowed-out building, there really wasn't much to look at. It was not much more than your standard - albeit enormous - abandoned home, with one whole side completely broken away and exposed to the ocean. While on the ground floor, just a few feet away from the lapping waves that intruded well into the structure, I saw a small, wooden platform - which looked motorized - "drive" in, from the open water, do a 90-degree turn, and sort of "park itself," just near me, practically screaming an invitation to get on it. So, I did. The plank steered itself away from the mansion and began to take me up the coastline, like a powered surfboard. In the distance, I could see two nearly-identical islands, with cone-like structures jetting up from the center of each one, as if they held twin volcanoes at their centers.

I was immediately intrigued by the thought of exploring these islands but, as the plank carried me, it began moving in a more lateral motion, as if it were trying to pull me further out to sea than to the islands that hugged the coast. As this was happening, the waves began to get more and more intense, and I could feel myself losing comfort. It wasn't long before these torrential tidal waves were crashing over even the tops of the buildings on the coast, and I was getting swept in and out with the current. This was getting out of hand. I jumped off of the plank and attempted to fly the rest of the way to the islands, but even the wind, it seemed, was creating this same rhythmic swelling and receding as the waves. It, too, was threatening to pull me out toward the horizon, even as I hovered a few dozen feet over the angry sea.

My anxiety was rising, and I was feeling less and less control of the situation. I even began sinking, out of the air, finding it hard to keep my levitation going. Knowing that I didn't want to find myself submerged in this writhing ocean, I waited until the moment my feet touched down on the surface of the water and gave myself one, desperate 'push', back into the air, executing a super-jump that, luckily, carried me over the rest of the water and allowed me to land upon the nearest island. The last thing I remember seeing was the broken barricade of an entrance to an underground mine, as well as the mouth of a separate, nearby cave, which continued straight into the volcanic mountainside, in front of me. As I stared at the two, rather ominous holes to the earth, thinking about which, if either, to explore, I heard the alarm on my phone ringing out - the sound seeping into the dream and replacing the soothing, ambient music that had been playing, throughout. 

I awoke, immediately.

========

(Side-Note:

As a bonus: the very next day, after having had such success with having my headphones on, I decided to try the same setup, waking up early and then putting on my headphones, to the same, meditative music, then attempting another Wake-Back-to-Method. The dream was much less eventful, so I won't write the whole thing out but, just as before, I had my headphones on, while in the dream. When I tried to take them out of my ears, just as before, they were simply multiplying as one earbud would be in my fingers, and its copy would still remain in my ear, and the music would continue playing. I instantly became lucid, in that dream, as well, making it two days in a row. 

I did try, once again, this morning, to make it a third time, but I wasn't able to remember anything but a small dream fragment, upon waking. No lucidity, on the last attempt, but this will definitely be something I attempt again, in the future.)

"Tap Worms" - 09/17/2021

"Tap Worms"

09/17/2021

Some friends and I were hanging out in my old home. We had been casually drinking glasses of tap water from the sink, and really thinking nothing of it, for most of the day. (For context: the water quality where I live, now, isn't great.) At some point, though, we'd begun to notice that there was quite a lot of "trash" floating about in our glasses. Upon closer inspection, we found that there were the tiny, brown worms hanging about, in the water. We immediately dumped whatever we had left in our glasses, disgusted.

Shortly after our discovery, the odd behavior started. First, it was just within my group of friends, with people becoming erratic and frenzied. After dispersing everyone from the home, though, I'd come to find that this had begun affecting other folks in my neighborhood, and beyond. These worms, it was revealed, were part of a hive-mind of parasitic creatures, which bored their way through people's bodies and into their brains, causing them to become infected with treacherous, murderous tendencies. As more of these cases amassed, the worms began growing - and growing - to the point where they were breaking out of the bodies of their hosts and just continuing to expand like pasta noodles from a pressurized grate. Before long, it wasn't safe to be anywhere in town, and those of us who seemed unaffected had resolved to finding a hideaway, far away from town.

We came upon a small church, out in the sticks, and set up a spot to rest and plan our next move. This was a short-lived refuge, though, as more of the worms, already enlarged, began streaming up out of the floor around us. Then, the floor, itself, began cracking open, and what was proven to be an enormous, Lovecraftian mass of tentacles - the apparent base of this superorganism of worms - came breaking its way up from beneath the building. (It reminded me of the monster from Deep Rising.) I had no choice but to jump out of a window, as the creature overwhelmed the church and, soon, began expanding outward until it overtook the entire region, mutilating and consuming everyone caught in its ever-inflating path. Eventually, I, too, was swept up by the creature, and I remember being fed to the toothy, cavernous base within the mass of tendrils. Everything went black.

Suddenly, there was a transition in the dream, and I was back at my old home. Things had, seemingly, returned to normal, though I still had memory of what had happened, before. Immediately after recalling past events, the tentacled monster broke in through the halls of the home, forcing me out of the front door. I ran through the neighborhood, looking back to see the mass of tendrils completely overtaking my house, billowing up through the roof like gigantic strands of hair, undulating in an underwater current.

Panicked, I ran around the corner, passing my older neighbor, F's, home. She saw me passing and came out as if to help me. I gave her the abridged rundown of what was happening, and her face quickly turned stern and serious. She something like: "Run, all you want. You'll never escape. Surrender, now. You'll be dead within 20 minutes, anyway." Her sinister tone was unmistakable, and I could tell that she was possessed. The worms had already begun burrowing through her brain and twisting her thoughts to that of the hivemind. Immediately, I was struck by a sense of hopelessness and defeat. I felt trapped in this, practically circular, series of events. Somewhat apathetically, I submitted to the demand, and said that I was going to go along without a struggle, and my neighbor told me that she was going to take me to meet the source of this monstrous presence, face-to-face. I knew, instinctively, that this was a case of demonic influence, and not something specifically alien. For whatever reason, I agreed to go with her, and got into her car.

Already sitting in her backseat, was another woman - around my age. Apparently, she was another person who had "surrendered," and she was also being taken to the source. We arrived at a towering, high-rise building in the city, and followed F into the elevator. A creeping dread came over me, as we ascended, and I could tell that the other captive was doing the same. We both knew that, no matter what happened during his meeting, we would soon be meeting our demise. Panic, once again, began to take hold.

Shortly after the elevator doors open, the other woman made a break for it, sprinting, full-tilt, toward the large window at the end of the hall, crashing through the glass and plummeting to her death, obviously preferring to face death upon her own terms. Shocked, F turned and looked at me, as if to gauge my reaction. Immediately, I blurted out to her that "That's what I'm going to do, too!" As promised, a dashed down the hallway, sailing through the open window and careening toward the street, far below.

The last thing I remember was a feeling of all-encompassing calm and acceptance, knowing that I was going to die upon smacking into the pavement, but relieved that I would not become a mindless drone of this ravenous demon that we'd just abandoned. Everything went black, during the fall, and I don't remember ever hitting the ground.

"Space Rebels" - 11/30/2021

"Space Rebels"

11/30/2021

I was in a small squad of about three or four rebels from the Star Wars universe, and we were scouring a desert planet, looking for items and supplies. We'd come across a truck-like vehicle, with a large, locked box sitting in the bed area. Upon prying the box open, we found that it was full of some high-value weaponry, which we knew came from the, now, nearly-ancient order of the Jedi. One of the weapons was an actual, bladed sword, but the blade ignited like a lightsaber, once activated, and it stayed red-hot for a few, lingering seconds, after being powered down. It was quite beautiful to look at, and was a pretty bad ass weapon, overall.

Eventually, we wound up getting ambushed by an Imperial officer and his goons. The officer, himself, looked a lot like Hitler - mustache and all - and I made a comment that he looked "familiar," which got a chuckle out of my squad. The officer didn't seem to take too kindly to my remarks (though, I'm not really sure if the Hitler thing was ever actually recognized by him, or if he just disapproved of my tone, in general), as a firefight immediately broke out, and we all had to scramble. During the fray, we were able to pick up some of the heavy weapons from the cache, and took to some intense fighting around this small, clay building close to where the "truck" was sitting. At some point, I remember some of my squad members and I would cross the lasers from our blasters (much like "crossing the streams" in Ghostbusters), and it would produce more powerful beams that would dramatically increase damage. 

In the chaos, I'd wound up getting separated from my team, and had to move cautiously around the building, to try and find them. I began to notice that random women and children were being positioned around individual, Imperial soldiers, to use a shields, and I had to fight around them, careful not to hit any bystanders while taking down the enemy. Rounding back to the front of the building, there was now a massive crowd of women and children, all looking absolutely terrified, yet seemingly unable to bring themselves to leave the area. I knew that they had been rounded up, here, as a distraction and as cover by the Imperials - who knew that our ability to fight them would be diminished by the potential of so much collateral damage. Their level of cowardice infuriated me, and I slowly made my way through the crowd, keeping a careful eye on my surroundings while searching for my team, so as to avoid another ambush by an Imperial hiding amongst the innocent. The closest "hostages," for lack of a better term, would always reach out to me, as I passed them, trying - as if they had been coached to do so - to make it seem like everything was fine with them, and they were simply there to welcome me, as if this had been a friendly gathering. I knew that this wasn't the case.

Eventually, I noticed a figure hiding beneath a shroud or cover. I could tell that the body was tensing up, as I approached, and I prepared to have to fire upon an Imperial waiting for the right time to strike. When I crept silently upon the shroud and yanked it away, raising my blaster, I saw that it was just another small child. He looked up at me in a panic, and when I assured him that I wasn't going to hurt him, he mad the smallest of gestures - almost unperceivable - over to one side. I knew, instantly, that he was showing me where I could find my teammates, and I continued my search in that direction.

That's all I remember.

"Darkseid is Coming" - 11/26/2021

"Darkseid is Coming..."

11/26/2021

I was part of a group of young-adult superheroes, and we were based on an oil rig, out at sea. Apparently, my power was that of super strength, and I'm not sure if all of the others in my group were DC Comics heroes, but I know that we were a world where Superman had been long-since considered dead. We had received word that the supervillain Darkseid was preparing to invade the planet, and we were doing everything we could to prepare for the inevitable attack.

The initial encounter, though, would prove to be a psychological one.

While his ships were approaching the Earth from beyond the stars, Darkseid, himself, was already far ahead, unleashing strong, telepathic attacks on each of us, at random time intervals. Every now and then, we would hear our voice in our heads, or see his visage looming in the shadowy corners of our compound. There was one point, where I was walking through a tight corridor, and when I looked over to one side, I could see a gigantic projection of Darkseid, standing in a far corner with his arms folded behind him. He was so large and imposing that this telepathic manifestation had to hunch over, in order to keep from being stifled by the ceiling. Despite his size, the thing that left the greatest impression was the haunting, crimson glow of his eyes against the darkness within the room.

This psychic torment was running rampant over my team, sending most of us to the borderline of complete breakdown, because there was no way of getting him out of our heads. There was an early, physical attack on the compound, by his underlings (though I don't know if they were his parademons). We made light work of them, but during the skirmish, one of our members went murderously savage and began taking on the rest of the team. Almost simultaneously, we'd gotten the alarm that the full-scale invasion was kicking off, on the other side of the island off of which we were stationed. The leader (and strongest) of our team was a lightning-based character who seemed very Thor-inspired, in terms of physicality. He decided to have us split up, so that a group of us could work on taking down our formidable, brainwashed ally, while he and the others went to engage with the invasion. There were at least a dozen of us, in total, and it took nearly half of us to subdue our teammate and to, then, talk him down from his rampage by appealing to his emotional side and reminding him of the strong bond that we all had within our group. 

After he was free of Darkseid's mental influence, we all dashed off of the rig and to the island, to join the rest of our group in battle.

We made our way over the water, by various means, and approached a large, unfamiliar temple that was settled on the coast. Upon our arrival, and after searching desperately for our team, we began to find the liquified remains of some of them, scattered around the temple grounds - one of them, after I'd tripped down an embankment and landed, on my hands and knees, in what I initially thought was a puddle of mud but turned out to be an ankle-deep pile of entrails and excrement.

After moments of sheer terror, I became completely enraged at this discovery. 

We continued our search for any of the others who were left, and made our way into the temple, which seemed more like the inside of a theme park attraction in its set up. I believe there was, actually, a coaster-type ride that snaked through the halls of the temple, as well, but I don't remember much of it.

Finally, we found Darkseid. He was standing, motionless and unbothered, with his back to us, apparently having just been waiting for us to show up. He began to make it clear that the mental attack on our teammate upon the oil rig was a rouse, in order to split up our forces so that he could more easily have access to our strongest, Thor-like member, who he'd planned to take under his control, as well. We, then, saw a platform being lowered, nearby, showing our leader being bombarded with rays of energy, as he struggled against them, obviously trying his hardest to resist the psychic onslaught from taking him over. 

Initially unsuccessful, though, our leader launched himself off of the platform and brought down a vicious attack on what remained of our team. An absolutely insane battle ensued (of which I can't remember many of the details), and it spilled out of the temple and into the city streets of the developed, modernized island. We were toppling buildings and causing unimaginable damage while fighting the head of our team, with Darksied just tagging along and watching the fray, for the most part. 

Eventually, though, we were able to break the psychic hold, just as we did with our earlier ally, focusing on the bond between us and the damage that Darkseid had already caused to our unit. Through no small feat of willpower, our leader was able to break free of the enhanced brainwashing from the interstellar villain...and he was pissed at having been made a vessel for Darkseid's dark power.

Instantly forgiven - by myself and the rest of our crew - for anything that might have transpired, leading up to this point, our head guy joined forces with us, once again, and we rushed Darkseid with everything we had. Again, the battle was epic. Darkseid was just beastly, in his power and character. Enraged, himself, at our 'daring' to thwart his plan, he fought against us ruthlessly, taking on a sort of 'street slang' in his dialect, as if he had been from New York, or something, instead of from outer space. It was really jarring but, for some reason, just made him all the more scary.

In time, though, we had begun to overpower him. The last part of the battle, that I can remember, was Darkseid having been pinned on his back, in the middle of a destroyed city street. Our leader and I were raining down tandem attacks on the invader. I was standing over top of his downed body, and the other hero would blast him with a maxed-out surge of energy. Then, in the moments between blasts, just as Darkseid finished screaming in electrified agony and began to try to lift himself from the ground, I would drop the hardest punches I could muster down upon his chest and face, smashing him over and over and driving him further into the shattering concrete beneath him, with every blow. The chorus of Darkseid's screams, the repetitive cracks of thunder and the shockwave-inducing booms from each of my ground-and-pound punches were echoing all throughout the city, and it's the last thing I can remember from the fight.

The last thing I remember from the dream, itself, though, was a "stinger-type" of clip - as if it were a post-credit scene, after a movie - of some random, industrial rubble being lifted high into the air. (Maybe the oil rig, from before?) The further it was raised, the more clearly I could see the red and blue figure that was holding it up over his head, proving to us that Superman was, in fact, not dead, and he was back to help us defeat Darkseid, once at for all.

(Just an all-out incredible battle. This dream was both psychologically terrifying, and so satisfyingly action-packed. The kind of dream after-which you wake up and just say...."whoa." I had a blend of mugwart and ginkgo before bed, that night, which I'd been experimenting with, periodically, for the last few weeks, and my dream activity has been pretty much off the charts. Lots more dream entries to come, from over the last couple of months. Just been a little too busy, over the holiday system, to write them all out, in full!)