"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!)