"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.)

"Genetically-enhanced Penguin" - 05/29/2007

"Genetically Enhanced Penguin"

5/29/2007

Dream #5

(This one was just weird and random.)

The first thing I remember is being in some type of laboratory. These people had either created or "enhanced" a young penguin that was lying in an incubator. Somehow, I got the job of taking care of this little guy, after he was done...incubating? (for lack of a better word).

Later, I was in an unfamiliar apartment complex. I don't know exactly where the penguin was, during this part but, before I knew it, Ice Cube (the rapper) showed up to hang out and sell me a bag of smoke. He was pitching how good this batch was, to me, and I picked up a bag and smelled it. It smelled really good, however, when I looked inside, I could see that there were little corn kernals mixed in with the buds. He said something about that having to do with the re-plant-ability of the buds and how it would grow into some super-strain or something, with the help of the corn kernals. Haha. Hilarious.

Without warning, some psychopath came barging into the apartment and just immediately opened fire on everyone inside. (There were like 6 of us in the apartment, at the time). He missed me, but I went down on the couch and played possum, until he was done with his rampage. When he was through, I saw him turn the gun on himself and shoot himself in the head. He went down, on the couch, right beside me.

I don't remember too much more about that scene, but I was soon taking the small penguin home, driving around in a convertible with some girl in the passenger seat. Suddenly, the penguin stood up straight - all alert - as if there was some trouble coming. Before we could figure out what it was doing, it immediately took off into the sky like a missle (I think he even had a vapor trail behind him. Haha.) and arced over the rooftops of the apartments that we were driving next to. I pulled the car to a stop and we could see a light show of explosions, behind the buildings. The explosions then detonated in succession, in a straight line, toward the front of the complex to our right, which was a few yards in front of us. When the blasts reached the end of the block, there was another large explosion as the penguin came smashing through one of the buildings like it was paper, and back onto the street we were parked on. The explosions, that we'd seen a few minutes ago, had been shockwaves from the penguin, running so fast that he was destroying the brick buildings as if they were made of glass.

He came running back toward us and passed us, moving toward this huge mound that was coming up out of the ground, behind us. From this concrete mound/mountain, a swarm of giant bugs that looked like the aliens from Starship Troopers came pouring out. Their front arms were equipped with these whip-like tendrils and they were just pretty f***ing nasty creatures. We ended up getting into an insane battle, with these things on this mountain. This penguin was just zipping all around us, and owning these bug-monsters like some sort of superhero.

Sometime during the mayhem, I remember hearing weird, disembodied laughter. I looked up at the sky and the moon was a giant smiley-face that was laughing, and it melted and fallen out of the sky, as soon as I looked up at it. The laughter continued, though, and I was wondering just where in the hell it was coming from, because it sounded so familiar. My perspective then changed, and my view was suddenly scaling the side of a building, getting closer and closer to the origin of the maniacal laughter. When it reached the top, I was staring into the face of the Joker (from Batman: The Animated Series) and he was just cracking up, watching us fight these bugs, from the rooftop.

I don't remember anything else.

"Stealth-tastic Three" - 08/03/2007

”Stealth-tastic Three”

08/03/2007 

Dream One

I wish I could remember more of this one, because it was awesome, and so vivid. It was something of a cross between the movies Stealth and Fantastic Four. I was a part of a team of young, hotshot fighter pilots, which was made up of myself; a white dude….and Jessica Alba. (Obviously replacing Jessica Biel, who wa actually in the Stealth movie.)

We were flying these sleek, little, black, vertical take-off/landing aircraft, equipped with retractable force fields (kinda like pilotable versions of the aircraft from Stealth, though I can’t remember if that one had a force-field or not. I think it did, though). At some point, we had flown out to this restaurant/bar, somewhere in the desert, in what seemed like Nevada - except not quite as barren, and with just the slightest bit of greenery around. Landing outside the bar, we went in and had some food (don’t remember whether we had any drinks or not). While there, another pilot - a black guy, wearing the same flight-suit as we were - walked into the bar. I don’t remember whether or not our meeting was scheduled, or he just showed up, but he sat with us and gave us a warning about the A.I. that was integrated into our aircraft. I can’t remember exactly what he said, though. I don’t think he confirmed that there was any immediate danger, but simply told us to be careful.

We left the restaurant, shaking his hand as we walked outside to our planes. While we were taking off, I remember looking over to the side, from my cockpit, and seeing Jessica standing up in her cockpit, with the canopy flipped up. It was a pretty badass sight to see her standing there, riding this plane that was climbing in a slow, vertical take-off, with the canopy up, and gazing out over the land like she was just the coolest thing since sliced bread. Heh. A few moments later, she just sat down, dropped the canopy, and we all shot off, horizontally, flying off to wherever.

There was a long sequence, that I completely do not remember, where our planes started turning on us. Even, thinking about, I’m not sure how this exactly would have played out, but I just know that that was the inevitable twist in the narrative.

Skipping ahead: we were back in the big city, in what looked like a high-rise apartment building. This game of cat and mouse, between us and the machines that were now trying to kill us, continued. The last scene I really remember was when we were in one of the rooms of this apartment and one of the planes had blown a hole in a wall, big enough for the small, personal aircraft to hover into the building. The room was fairly large, but the plane completely filled up the majority of it, hovering between the floor and ceiling, with precision – merely inches to spare. We were completely cornered, with our backs against one wall, and we saw that the plane was preparing to fire a rocket at us – point blank range. The plane’s force-field went up, shielding itself from the impending blast, and the rocket fired, somehow slipping through the energy field (which I think wasn’t possible with the plane’s force-field, in the movie, if the one in the movie did have a force-field). Prepared to be blown to dust, we all hit the ground in futility….or so I thought. 

There was a massive explosion, fire engulfing everything around us. However, somehow, I was alive. 

I raised my head and looked around me, seeing nothing but flames and debris exploding, completely blotting out the form of the fighter plane. In shock, I slowly turned to my left. Just over my left shoulder, I saw Jessica, standing strong, with both arms held out in front of her. At the last moment, before the rocket exploded, she had created her own force-field (like her character on Fantastic Four) and had shielded us from the rocket. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen.

When the smoke and fire cleared, she dropped the shield. The plane was gone, and we were left in a completely destroyed room. The last thing I remember was stepping out into the - equally-demolished - hallway, and seeing a tenant, further down the corridor, crawling out of some rubble and screaming in agony, because he had about 4 feet of wooden railing driven through his chest, due to the explosion. He staggered, aimlessly, around the hallway, with this beam just sticking out of his body.

"Momoa and the Old Schoolhouse" - 3/20/2019 (Lucid + Chain)

"Momoa and the Old Schoolhouse"

3/20/2019

(Lucid + Dream Chain)

PART ONE

I don't quite remember what was going on, in the very beginning of this dream. My earliest memory of it is being in what I believe was an office setting, and suspecting I was dreaming. Performing my most common reality check, I raised my hand over an object on a desk - something common, like a paperweight or computer mouse - and attempted to draw it to me with telekinesis. The object flew up off of the desk and into my hand, and confirmed to me that this was definitely a dream.

Walking outside of the building, I came to an elevated road, levitating off of my feet and flying up the incline, landing on the hill-top pavement and peering out, over a beautiful, expansive plains area. It was dusk, and the sky was a mixture of bright orange and a light, purple-ish tone. In the very center of this lush, green field, there was a large, old fashioned schoolhouse, set among a small patch of trees. Immediately, this reminded me of my previous intention, upon becoming lucid, which was to continue to search for the Dream World Academy. Not so much thinking that this might have actually been IT, I decided to search within it, to see if I could find my way into something that seemed a little more like what I had pictured. Flying over to the school, I Ianded in the front yard. The place was completely deserted, it seemed, and I stepped inside to have a look around.

The inside of the school seemed more like the interior of a home, and only sometimes matched the outdated look of the outside. I went from room to room, opening doors with the intention of kinda "creating" a D.W.A. environment, upon opening each new section of the schoolhouse. There was very little light in the home, and I had to fight the creepy feeling that was washing over me, as the atmosphere seemed very "Resident Evil," in that everything felt dim and still. Sounds echoed and shadows covered most of the walkways. (I have started playing the Resident Evil 2 remake, lately.) Most of the rooms remained normal, however, aside from one door I opened, where I could only see a large eye, peering out from a black substance that totally encompassed the inner door frame. Immediately, I closed the door and continue exploring, still trying to ignore the idea that my subconscious was inevitably going to mess with me, in this type of environment.

Moving on, through the house, I opened a new door, to a small bedroom. There was just a little sunlight coming in, through the window, and I could see that there were two, twin-sized beds inside. The room was small enough that they took up almost the whole area, and though the beds were made, I could see that there were figures beneath the covers - seemingly human-shaped - and those figures were moving. Reaching out to the covers of one of the beds, I tried to push all thoughts of 'scary things' out of my mind, hoping not to get ambushed with any selection of my worst nightmares. Ripping the covers off of the bed, I was surprised to see absolutely nothing, in what was, clearly, an occupied space, just seconds ago. I walked over to the second bed, watching the covers writhe about, as if a restless person was tossing about, beneath. Still trying not to let myself be intimidated, I yanked the covers of this one back, as well. Relieved, I was greeted by two or three small dogs, who were just playfully rolling around with each other on the bedspread.

After taking a moment to pet the doggos, I walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, which, again, resembled more a home kitchen than that of an old school. Unexpectedly, I was greeted by another dog, this one not quite as friendly as the ones I'd met in the bedroom. It snarled at me and kept trying to bite at me, and I continuously pushed it away. Getting annoyed, I tried to channel my inner Dragon Ball Z, clenched my fists and yelled, "Raaaaaaah!!!" A blast of energy exploded out of my body, pushing outward in all directions, and shaking the objects around me. The dog backed off, for only a moment, though, and the moment my energy dissipated, the dog rushed back in and chomped down on my hand. It didn't really hurt much, but once attached, I simply could not get the dog off of me, no matter how hard I pushed.

Eventually growing tired of the dog, and simply trying to ignore it, I walked out of the kitchen and toward the back of the house, with the dog still latched, tenaciously, onto my hand. I stepped out onto a rear deck, looking out over the plains area, which broke into mountains and valleys in the distance. Still frustrated with this dog, which remained locked onto my hand like a steak suspended above the ground, I thought about slinging my arm as far as I could, and chucking the dog into the deepest end of the valley. I rush of guilt came over me, though, and I decided against it. Instead, I gave one more hard shake, slinging the dog off of me and immediately launching myself into the air, away from it. I flew off, toward the mountains, simply trying to see what else I could explore.

It didn't take too long, though, before I began to see large structures in the sky, coming more into focus and out of the light haze before me. As I flew closer, I could see that these seemed to be gigantic tentacles - or tendrils, of some sort. They covered practically the whole sky, quickly overwhelming my field of view. I could not see from where they were originating, and I was growing more and more sure that I didn't want to know. Given their size, I did not even want to begin to imagine what they belonged to.

I don't remember whether I intentionally pulled myself out of this dream or not, but this dream scene ended shortly afterward.

PART TWO

(Dream Chain)

This dream seemed to already be in progress, upon my earliest memory of it. I was back in my old, Lake Mary home and, for some random reason, I was hanging out with Jason Momoa. (Lol.) We were just shooting the sh*t and hanging around the house. It all had a very chill, weekend sort of vibe. I remember us going to one of the windows and yelling back and forth, playfully, to one of the nearby neighbors as they walked their dog. At some point, I remember telling him about my previous lucid dream, trying to recall all of the details.

He ended up crashing at my place (as if any of this was, at all, just 'normal'), and the dream ended just as I went to sleep.

PART THREE

(Dream Chain)

In what some may consider a "dream within a dream," I suddenly found myself in some unfamiliar building. There were a bunch of DCs around, and the atmosphere was feeling kind of hostile. Feeling uncomfortable, my mind flipped back to what had previously been going on, I remembered that I was just hanging out with Jason Momoa, and that this had to be a dream. I was lucid, again.

Feeling much more relaxed, I was completely unfazed when one of the DCs started trying to antagonize me. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember just laughing him off, and telling him that this was just a dream, and I wasn't worried about him. He asked me to prove it, and I held up my hands, attempting to do the Finger-Through-Palm reality check. The dream was quite vivid, though, and my finger met waking-world resistance, refusing to phase through my other hand. Instead, I jumped into the air and tried to levitate, but I sank back to the ground, only slightly slower than real-time. The belligerent DC, unconvinced, told me that, if I could fly up and touch the high ceiling, he would believe me.

Not one to be shown up, by my own imagination, I jumped into the air and tried to fly to the ceiling. I couldn't quite reach it, though, feeling myself starting to sink back to the ground, after missing my mark by just a couple of feet. On the way do, though, I tried to forget about elevation, though, and simply tried to stop myself from touching down to the ground. Much to the shock of the DC - and those who had began to rally behind him - I found myself hovering in mid-air, about four feet off of the ground. Almost as expected, the DCs all took one look at my ability and ran away in terror. 

Satisfied, I then thought about my dream state, and since this dream had been a bit rowdy, I began to wonder whether I was acting out any of my actions, in the waking world. In an absolutely hilarious lapse of awareness, I remembered that Jason Momoa was still hanging out in my house, as I slept, and I thought about how embarrassing it might have been, if I was flailing around in my sleep, gesturing out my dream actions. With that ironic misconception in mind, I decided to wake myself up.

(I couldn't help but laugh at myself, when I woke up, for real, in my present home, with no one else around. Lol.)

(*Original Artwork based on Dream*)

==========================
Side Notes:

- I've had other "dreams within dreams," before, where I have "gone to sleep" in a dream, had another dream scenario play out, and then "woke back up," into the same scenario that I was having, previously. This is the first one, though, where - during a "second-level" dream, I remembered the previous scenario but mistook it for real life. I can't get over how funny that is.

- I had been watching a lot of movie news, lately, with Avengers Endgame being right around the corner. Even though I haven't yet seen Aquaman, there's been plenty of references to Momoa so, as random as it was, it's not all that surprising that he made a cameo in the dream.

"Hallucinogen" - 08/10/2007

"Hallucinogen"
08/10/2007 

(Holy Shit. ...I just had one of the freakiest experiences ever. Fighting a cold, I had some DayQuil and a multi-vitamin, before bed, and this was probably my clearest experience of waking-world audio slipping into a dream, that I can remember. I have this 2-part ambient breakbeat music set, called Jason Dunne - Mind the Scape, that I had let loop, overnight, because there are some very chilled-out songs on the sets. Now, I have listened to different parts of this set - numerous times - but it seemed, until now, that I've only caught it in various places (usually, either starting it at a certain song I like, near the middle of the set, or waking up later in the night, still somewhere in the middle of the set), and I never actually heard the intro to the 2nd part of the set. Because of what just happened, I will probably never play this set again, when going to sleep! (Well, I don't know about that, really. It's still a dope set... Lol. But, anyway...)

To summarize the beginning of the music set: The music begins really dark and haunting, progressing along with a rolling echo effect, as if everything was sort of 'streaming together'. A man's voice comes on, really low, really slow, and begins to tell a story. As he's telling the story, the DJ is doing all kinds of freaky effects with his voice - bringing it high and low, with each sentence, from a normal man's voice, to a deep, ghostly voice, as he progresses through the story. Very creepy.)

So, in this dream, before I was ever conscious of the audio, I walked into what looked like a standard hotel room. There was a wide palette of blankets, spread on the floor, and my friends, T and J were both there. They said they had brought along a new sort of hallucinogen, and had made the palatte to lay on, while tripping. (By this time, I think the intro had started in the waking world - just the music - and it just hadn't seeped into the dream yet. My mind seemingly knew something was going on, though, because the dream atmosphere was about to change, drastically, in complete relation to the music.) Curious, I told them that I wanted to try it out, and we all took hits of this thick, black smoke. When it went in, I could feel it radiating through my body, on its way down. We all moved over to the palette and T flicked the light out, making the room almost completely dark, except for the light that was coming in through the window.

Laying down, and staring up at the ceiling, I could feel this smoke all through my body. It was cold - not too cold , but definitely enough for me to notice. The music (right on time) from my PC starting slipping into the dream, then, just as I felt myself going under. The world was a deep, rumbling echo, and this man's ghostly voice slowly streamed into me, from all sides. As he tells the story, the 'hallucinogen' fully kicks in and I'm caught looking at a picture on the wall. I can't remember what the original picture was, but from it, a ghostly apparition slowly phased forward, wafting out of the frame. It was the shadowy ghost of a female, the flesh of her features shredded, down to the bone, on at least 1/3 of her face.

She moved steadily toward us, appearing to actually grow larger, the closer she came. Her gaunt, skeletal mouth was moving, eyes gazing aimlessly toward us as she told this story (the audio from my PC), in the man's deep voice. [[Edit: I realized where I think my mind got the image for the ghost/woman. My screensaver is a slideshow of everything in my "Art" folder, which is also made up of a bunch of pics I get off of the Internet, as well as my own. I'd gotten up at about 1AM to use the bathroom and, when I laid(sp?) back down, I caught a glimpse of one of the "Celebrity Cyborg" pics I got off of Worth1000.com, in a contest where people used Photoshop and turned pics of celebs into cyborgs. It was this one, of Denise Richards: I distinctly remember thinking that I was going to have to do something about that image being on the slideshow, because it's not exactly the most pleasant thing to wake up to, in the middle of the night. Lo' and behold, it came back to completely own me, in this dream. Lol.]] 

In all seriousness; it was f*cking horrifying. Strangely enough, though, it was thrilling, at the same time. I was instantly filled with the sense of a virtual omnipresence, in the room. The room was big enough to where I could see nothing, off to my side, but darkness, and not only did I see this ghost in front of me, getting closer, I felt like someone I couldn't see was standing right beside me, in the shadows. We all flattened against the palette, recoiling from the ghost, and I tried to shut my eyes, but it was like everything went white, instead of black, and I could see a dark rendition of the ghost, still, from behind my eyelids, steadily coming forward and telling this chilling-sounding story. The situation grew more and more intense (as did the storytelling, and accompanying music), until, finally, the intro came to something of a climax, after which, my brain simultaneously drew the ghost backward, into the painting. The feeling of the presence left, along with it.

I opened my eyes, and the lights were on, again. T, J, and I had just finished the (short) trip, and we were completely mind-blown. We were staring at each other like "Oh...my....God......WTF.." and breathing hard, with these crazy, almost masochistic grins on our faces. It was like riding-out a bad trip and just....loving every minute of it. ...Very weird feeling. T looked over and, as if giving me a pop-quiz, asked "Greg, what story was that??" smiling as if he already knew the answer, and just wanted to test me. I thought for a while, and answered: "Uh....the Tell-Tale Heart?" They both responded: "Hell yeah! Good call!" all surprised. I was surprised as Hell, too, seeing as how I'd just pulled that answer out of my ass.

At just this time the dream slowly began fading away, and this really lighter/up-tempo sort of song was gradually coming in (the next song in the set, after the intro), filling the hotel room, from all angles. It was perfect. It felt like we'd gone through a haunted ride, or something, at a theme park, and this was the reception music after you've gone through the 7th level of Hell, finally arriving back at the lobby. Lol.

(The music carried over, into the waking world, as I woke up, lying there in my bed, breathing hard, listening to the music and realizing that everything had just been a dream. I still wasn't quite sure if the dream had ended, because the musical transition was seamless - It felt like the two worlds had merged. I checked my clock a few times and made sure I was awake, then got up to my computer. The first thing I did was confirm that what I was hearing was a part of the set I was listening to, by scanning back a bit and playing the intro again. Sure enough, it was the same thing I'd heard in my dream. Listening to it again gave me chills, and I had to stop listening to it, beginning to see thast ghostly image in my head, once more. 

I took the time to remember a sentence of the 'story,' and then I typed it into Google to see if I was right about the title. Turns out that I was wrong, and it wasn't the Tell-Tale Heart, but some spoken (not sung) lyrics to a Duran Duran song - 'Drive-By'. Haha. ...It actually seemed like it lasted a lot longer, when the ghost was telling it to us. Probably because I was scared shitless, and time seemed to stand still. ...Damn, what an experience, though.  I gotta get ready for work in about an hour, so I seriously doubt I'm going back to sleep. Heh. Also, I just realized that today is my (deceased) Dad's birthday. What a ghastly way to start it off.)

"Deadpool Ruins Everything" - 01/24/2019 (Dream Chain)

"Deadpool Ruins Everything"

01/24/2019

(Dream Chain)

Part 1:

I was part of an organization set up in a tall office tower. It was night out, and we'd been tipped off that someone was planning to infiltrate our building and steal some of our weapons technology. We were devising a plan to catch the thieves, setting up a trap, in the CEO's head office, and we brought in Tom Cruise to be a stand-in for the CEO, fitting him with a ridiculous wig and setting him in the boss's chair, his back facing the door. The rest of us hid, out of sight, and waited for the attempted heist that we knew was coming.

Before long, a woman walked into the boss's office. Since my vantage point was mostly at her back, once she came in, I was unable to see her face. From what I could recall, though, she had short, black hair and was wearing what looked like a white lab coat. She walked up to the back-turned boss's chair and issued some kind of threat or demand to him. Then, the chair spun slowly around and Tom Cruise revealed himself as an impostor, and the trap was sprung, thwarting the attempted robbery.

Part 2:

(I don't believe I awoke, between this dream and the previous one, but the scenario was so different that I can only count this as being a completely different dream, and not a continuation of the first.)

I was at a house party, in a suburban area. It was an overcast day, and everyone was still inside when I walked out to the carport. While outside, I was approached by a guy that seemed to have wandered up from off the street. He was a scruffy, leather jacket-wearing white guy, who looked like he could have been part of a biker stereotypical biker gang. He stepped up to me, rather arrogantly, and started spouting off about something. I don't remember whether he was being racist or just had some sort of issue with me and my friends (I distinctly remember him using some kind of "us vs them" rhetoric), but he was certainly challenging me, and I could tell that he was looking for a fight.

After a brief pause, just when it seemed as if he was contemplating swinging the first punch, he suddenly reached into his jacket, drew out a pistol, and just started firing off rounds, at point-blank range, just as I lurched away in shock. At least two of the shots hit me, around my left shoulder. It was a dull feeling of pressure, rather than any sharp pain, but I could immediately tell that I'd shot. I rolled behind something, for cover, and drew my own pistol, popping back out of hiding - just as he was reloading - and pulling the trigger in his direction. I'd forgotten to flick the safety, and the gun didn't fire. Then, I clicked the safety with my thumb and tried again. Nothing. There was no round chambered, which was unusual. While I fumbled with the weapon, trying to chamber a round, the guy finishes reloading and actually starts monologuing, while raising his gun back up at me - talking about how his choice of firearm was superior to mine and that's why he won this gunfight and blah blah. Before he could finish, though, I got the round chamber and started firing away, at him. I could see that I hit him a couple of times before he disappeared around a corner and ran off.

Still injured (which was a general feeling of being drained, rather than - again - any actual pain), but not about to just let this dude get away, I immediately started chasing after him. I saw him jump into an old car and speed off. I jumped into mine, parked nearby and took off after him. Speeding through the neighborhood, we took a turn, at the end of the street, onto a main road. I pulled out my tactical flashlight and attempted to zero-in on his rear-view mirror, to see if I could mess with his vision, while driving, but I don't think it was very effective. (It's something that I've thought about having to use for self-defense, in waking life.) The light was uselessly dim, though, and I remember trying to plug it in to my car charger. Luckily, he was approaching a traffic jam and had to cut off of the road, and through someone's yard, dipping back into the neighborhood on a parallel street to the one that we were recently on.

Cutting the corner and following behind him, I watched him bail out of the car and run between some of the houses, jumping out of my own car and following. A few people poked their heads out of their homes, to see what was going on, and I finally saw him, close to where we started. Another short firefight broke out, and I was able to put maybe five or so shots in him, dropping him down in the grass, dead. Not wanting to just leave the body in the yard, I - rather illogically - decided to drag it over to my car, thinking the trunk would be 'too conspicuous' of a place to leave him and, instead, dumping him into the back seat. Immediately after closing the door, I called the police to report what happened, citing self-defense, and walked back to the party house, nearby.

Back inside, the party was ongoing. I was still feeling weak from the bullets I'd taken, as I was telling my girlfriend, and friends, about what had happened. The front door opened, and a parade of about a dozen cops, in tactical gear, filed into the house. They began to walk right passed me, so I got up and walked over to them, telling them that I was the one who called in, and that I could take them to where the body was. The followed me out the back side of the house, and we walked across the yard toward the house behind us, since my car was still parked on the next street over. It was now night-time, and the yards seemed to stretch out for about half a football field. It seemed strange, to me, and oddly familiar. (What I didn't realize, until later, was that the yard and morphed into the courtyard outside of the tall office building from my previous dream.)

Coming around to the next street, still in the suburban neighborhood, despite the short view of the metropolitan courtyard, I led them toward my car. Walking in that direction, I started to see bright flashes of light, coming from inside my car. It was as if a flare was burning, or someone had turned on a strobe light. All I could see was the light, and it bathed out anything and everything inside. Then, I could just barely make out a figure in the flashes. At first, I thought it was the man whom I'd shot, but when I got closer, I could see that it was Deadpool. He was making these really animated, cartoonish gestures in the back window, at us, between the flashes, and the first thought to enter my mind was that he was going to screw with the evidence and ruin my self-defense case.

Now running, frantically, toward the car, I actually yelled out: "No no no no...WHY IS DEADPOOL HERE?? WHY IS HE HERE??!" I reached out and tried to open the rear, driver's side door, but the door just burst open, throwing me back to the roadway. Deadpool instantly popped out, armed to the teeth. The squad of cops saw him and immediately engaged. An absolutely insane battle broke out, right there on the street, and Deadpool absolutely wrecked these police officers. Gunfire and swords and explosions and body parts were just flying about this tempestuous cloud of white smoke under the streetlights. Within the fray, it seemed like Deadpool actually had help, as there was clearly some other figure in the battle, helping him out. I was thinking it might have been Cable or Domino, but I never actually saw them.

Suddenly, the back of my car just exploded in the battle and was flung across the street, toward me. I was still halfway sitting on the ground, and I was so in shock at everything I was witnessing, that I didn't even bother to move. The whole trunk area of my car was about to slam into me with what could have only been lethal force. Then, just before impact, the hunk of metal stopped as if it had been caught, mid-flight. I'm not sure if it was Deadpool that caught it, or his ally, but Deadpool was soon standing right beside me and leaning down in my face, saying something like: "Hey, next time something like that happens...try moving out of the way," in his trademark, jokester fashion.

The last thing I remember is him walking away, nonchalantly telling me that it was His team that attempted the heist of the office where I had been working (back in the first dream). He said that they already knew about the trap we were springing (which is what made me believe the woman in the lab coat was Domino - though I remained unable to actually see who he was with, presently), and that they were still successful in stealing the company's weaponry, which were the weapons they were just using against the police. 

  (I've had many cases of the narrative of separate dreams weaving themselves in with each other, but this one was probably my favorite. Absolutely nuts. Lol. Also, I've been painting a picture of Domino, lately, as well as looking through some great Deadpool cosplays, which would explain why the characters were on my mind.)

"The Incredible Hero" - 02/19/2007

”The Incredible Hero”

02/19/2007

This dream was centered around the “Heroes” TV show characters: D.L. and his son, Micah. It started off with D.L. having an argument with some woman - who wasn’t Micah’s mom - in a house. If I’m not mistaken, he was looking for Micah and thought the woman had information, about where he was, that she just wasn’t giving up. At the same time, Micah was looking for his dad and came upon the house at just about the same time this was happening. Before seeing Micah, D.L. had had enough of the woman’s holding out on him, and he shoved his hand through her chest (he has the power to phase through solid objects) to stop her heart, like he did to Micah’s mom in one of the episodes. My perspective then switched to Micah’s point of view as he came in through the door and saw his dad killing this woman.

Suddenly, time stopped, and then things began to reverse. Micah had altered time with his mind (a power that one of the other “heroes” has) and everything rewound until before D.L. shoved his arm into the woman. Instead of walking in through the door, this time, Micah just suddenly appeared in between D.L. and the woman, stopping his dad’s arm from reaching her. They were all happy that they’d reunited and the scene switched a little bit, from there.

(Enter: …Jim Carrey?)

So, Jim Carrey comes into this dream. He was driving an old pick-up truck and he had disguised himself as some sort of utilities worker, or something. I (being the disembodied observer) knew that his real reason for pulling up to this house was because he was looking for people with these amazing abilities, in order to study them and perform all kinds of experiments on them. For what purpose, I don’t know. He knocked on the door and everyone inside scattered into hiding places. After no one answered, he just walked in the home.

For a while he started looking around the place, searching for any clues that would help his cause. At some points, around this time, I got the feeling that I was actually another character that was with Jim - not just a disembodied observer. I remember that I’d caught a glimpse of Micah, hiding beneath a counter, and I actually made a conscious decision to duck down and get a better look. When I saw him, Jim automatically knew he was there, and he went to get the kid. My perspective then changed back to, simply, watching. He’d gone to pull young Micah out from his hiding spot, but D.L. came in and told him to leave the kid alone. Jim started talking about how he knew the kid had powers and was doing research on people like them.

Sooner or later - somehow - he’d earned their trust, and they were telling him about some of the stuff that Micah could do. One of the powers they mentioned was how he grew in size and strength, whenever his adrenaline started pumping. They walked outside and were showing Jim that their car had a custom sunroof over the backseat so, if ever Micah got pissed off, while in the car, it could accommodate his size (which I think is hilarious). So, in telling the story of one of the times that had actually happened, little Micah climbed in through the backseat and then climbs up out of the sunroof, now standing on top of the car and telling his story. While he was up there, though, he suddenly slipped and fell, straight to the ground, and face-planted so hard that you’d think it would have killed him. He started groaning and slowly began to stand up. D.L. was running over to him, when the boy started breathing really heavy. He started screaming “It’s happening! No!!” and I could see that the boy's right hand had turned green and about tripled in size.

D.L. started freaking out and grabbed a bunch Micah’s toys, trying to “force” him to play with him. Nervous, Jim said “What are you doing?” D.L. answered “We have to get him to calm down! If he starts having fun, it’ll reverse the transformation!” He threw a ball to Micah, but the boy was already too far gone. The ball just fell as the boy started growing bigger and bigger, green skin covering his body, and the high-pitched yell of a young boy morphing into a low, monstrous roar. The kid had just turned into the Incredible Hulk.

Then, seriously pissed off (as usual), the Hulk took a few quick steps away from Jim and D.L. and then leaped about a hundred feet into the air, arcing over the surrounding houses and disappearing toward the horizon. Jim (and I think D.L., too) got into the pick-up truck and started chasing after the boy/Hulk.

There is a large gap in my recall right here but, somehow, the scenario changed to where the Hulk was now mad at Jim. (I think he figured out that Jim actually had some sinister plan behind his reason for studying people with powers.) Whatever the case, Jim was now driving like a maniac through the streets, in this pick-up, looking over his shoulder with this terrified look on his face. In a pretty impressive display of mental cinematography, my perspective was hovering over the hood of Jim's truck, looking straight at his face as he drove. In the background, after he’d turned onto another street, this tiny speck in the sky came soaring closer. The closer it got, the bigger it got. Finally, just a few feet behind Jim’s truck, the Hulk, which had obviously jumped from a few miles away, smashed down onto the street, running after Jim Carrey’s truck and smashing every damn thing in his path. Just that part alone was the highlight of the dream because it was freaking Awesome. Lol. Other than that, the only thing I really remember is one point where Jim was in the bed of the truck, hanging on for dear life as the truck was being picked up off the ground by the - now even bigger than before - Hulk.

That’s about it.

 (*Photomanipulation Based on Dream*)

"Lakeview Lucidity" - 12/27/2008 (Lucid)

”Lakeview Lucidity”
12/27/2008

(Lucid)

(I really brought lucidity back with a vengeance, after this dry spell! I took some b6 and melatonin before bed, but then I woke up at 6, after ‘dreamless’ sleep, and came to browse DV for a little while. Knowing I had a few more hours to sleep, I turned on the brain-flooder app for a little while, popped another melatonin and went back to bed. I couldn’t resist burning a bowl, though, which may be why my recall is so shoddy - which also might seem a little ironic, considering the size of the post, but I know there is a lot I’m leaving out. The main factor, though, is probably just that this dream was so damn long. It just seemed to go on and on, and I kept losing and re-gaining lucidity, throughout. I tried, numerous times, to stop and run over the events that were happening in the dream, just so I could remember them all when I woke up, and I believe I got most of it. But there were some points where I was just like “There is no way in hell I’m going to remember all this when I wake up,” and I just quit trying. 

Enough of that, though, and on to the dream…)

The first thing I remember is sitting in a boat, talking to someone. It was night time, and we were on a lake right outside of an apartment complex. Looking out over the lake, toward the moon, I could see a bunch of alligators on top of the water. By on top, I mean literally - as in they were walking on top of the water, instead of just breaking the surface. I pointed this out to whoever was in the boat with me, which I think might have been Tony, and instantly realized I was dreaming. Though a little apprehensive about the pitch-black water around us, I stepped out of the boat and started walking across the water. Again, it felt like real water under my shoes, as if I wasn’t standing on it, but more like floating with my feet just barely touching the surface.

While standing on the water, I looked down at my hands to ground myself into the dream. My fingers looked like they were tied in knots, but I didn't take too long to focus on them. From there, I started flying, ascending over the lake and heading toward the apartments beside it. I went phasing through the walls and doors, trying to find something interesting to do. Nothing really seemed to come to mind, immediately, and then I thought of the Dream Views Tasks of the Month. It still took me a moment to remember what the tasks were, but - this being Decembers - I remembered that one of them was to take a ride on Santa’s sleigh.

Heading outside, I flew up to the roof, which was actually quite tough to land on because it had one of those high-angled, church-type rooftops, and my feet kept trying to slide down it. I got to the top, though, and looked out over the lake. It was dark out, but a pretty clear night...and warm. It didn’t seem very Christmas-y, and I really wanted to set the mood, if I was going to try to summon Santa and/or his sleigh. I began to visualize winds coming in from my right, and a blanket of snow streaming down over the grass and dark water of the lake. The winds slowly began to pick up, on command, and I was sort of directing it in as if I was using telekinesis. I would focus on drawing it in from the right, inhaling and tensing a bit as I drew my hands from right to left. Then, relaxing, I sifted my hands back over to the right again, then drew them again to the left while ‘pulling’ the wind across the scene. I could hear waves being born on the lake, growing with intensity, the more I tried to pull the snow and winds in. All I was able to create was wind and a few mere dashes of white on the dark surfaces beneath me. No true snow storm.

Finally, I figured that I was using up too much energy in trying to do this, and I wanted to have some fun with this lucid before it was over. After a few more tries, I gave up and floated back down off of the roof. Wandering aimlessly, trying to think of something epic to do, I began to get a little…uh...'anxious'…and wondered if I had time for a quickie and whether I could pull one off without waking up. I started phasing in and out of the apartments again, looking for a hot DC chick to have sex with. 

Going through one of the hallways, I came across a group of roughneck-looking guys with a basketball. They were coming my way and I just didn’t feel like dealing with them so, when they got within range, I just jumped up and hovered over their heads, touching down lightly, behind them, as they passed. They all turned around and looked at me in shock, and I just kept on going, trying to find a good, lucid lay. I had no luck, though. All of the apartments were more or less abandoned, but I did come across one heavyset man that was cleaning one of the apartments. A bit curious as to how he would answer, I asked him (as if he were a separate entity from myself) to tell me something about the universe. I can’t remember what he answered or what, exactly, I asked him.

Phasing through objects seemed to get harder, the longer the dream went on. I was beginning to get ‘stuck’ in things and would really have to push my way through them. I knew that there had to be a better way of getting around. I didn’t want to try spinning, since that usually makes the whole dream deteriorate and puts me at the risk of waking up, so I wanted to try something else. I remembered the ‘door’ method I used back in my previous “Water Dragon” lucid dream, and decided to give it a shot. As before, I put my hand down on the carpet and visualized a thin plank of wood materializing beneath my palm. A long, translucent strip came into view, beneath my hand. The strip gained solidity, to where it was no longer see-through, and I pulled my hand upward, the strip elongating on the vertical plane and stretching into a brown wooden door. When the door was as tall as I was, I let it go, and it stood there in front of me. Before I really had time to suggest to myself what I wanted to find behind the door, I absently reached out and opened it, already beginning to step through.

I was now in someone else’s house and was surrounded by a Spanish family. It was daytime, and the sun shone in through the windows. I don’t remember exactly when, but it was sometime around here that I first lost lucidity. There was an adorable little baby boy, with a little beanie on, and I picked him up and sat down in a chair with him on my lap. Immediately, it was if I had been a friend of the family for a long time. I started rocking the chair, holding the baby, and he began dozing off. I don’t remember if I met the girl first, or became lucid again first, but – somewhere around here – I realized I was dreaming again. Don’t know if anything triggered it or if it was spontaneous. There was now a girl there who looked just like a young Salma Hayek hanging around, and I immediately gravitated toward her. (I just saw her on Punk’d yesterday. Good gawd, she is perfect!) I just hung out with her for a while, without really turning it into anything overtly sexual. She had to do something for her family involving tending to bees and wasps, and I helped her with that. I wasn’t afraid of the insects because I kept reminding myself it was a dream. Otherwise, I probably would have been terrified. Lol. She was really shy and reserved at first, which actually made me even more attracted to her, but she warmed up to me rather quickly.

Next thing I know, we were waking up together in an elegant, white room with two large beds. In the other bed was some huge dude, passed out. Her roommate or something, in this narrative, I guessed. Don’t know, exactly, and it really didn't matter to me. We were both naked and she carried the white sheet with her as she got up and went over toward the bathroom. I followed her and walked up behind her, sliding my arms around her and kissing her neck while I talked to her. She seemed to forget her original reason for getting up as I guided her over to a short counter-top, somewhat sitting/standing against it, pulling her back against me.(So awesome that I found such an accurate picture. Heh.) I could tell she was getting hot, the way she leaned her head back to me while I kissed her neck. My hands traced down her stomach and played along her pelvis. They started to go lower and she kind of flinched, apprehensively. I backed off just slightly, and kept kissing her neck and shoulder. Obviously feeling the intoxication, she was a little more inviting. My hands continued to play around her body, and she returned the favor, leading us, inevitably, to having sex against the counter. Even while getting it on, I periodically looked over her shoulder, seeing that the other DC - who was supposed to be sleeping - was now just pretending to be asleep, and failing miserably. I could see him watching us through squinted eyes, not sure whether or not she noticed. I didn’t really care, though, knowing this was just a dream. The sex was great, though. Very, very hot.

Around here, the dreaming became really erratic. I kept changing scenes and losing – then regaining - lucidity. Periodically, I would stop and try to remember everything that happened in the dream, starting back from being in the boat. Then, I would find myself somewhere/sometime else, and lose lucidity all over again. At one point, I was back at the lake, in the boat. I was with ‘Salma’, this time, and we were just rowing along, leisurely. We were talking about something and something that was said triggered some awareness in me. It hit me, in the middle of a sentence and – though I forgot how the sentence began – my last few words were “…because this is still just a dream!”  As soon as I said this, I became lucid again. I started to fly like I had in the beginning, since it was just so much damn fun. I went up really high and then free-fell down toward the lake. Just before impact I braced myself and focused on not entering the water. Instead, I hit the water like it was a water bed, sinking just a bit and jiggling around on the surface.

‘Salma’ and I hung out and, sometime after this, she ended up getting kidnapped. I had to fly to some far off place to get the guys that had her, and I remember streaking across a large city at night. Before I knew it, I was ascending some high, rocky tower and flying was getting more and more difficult. I was starting to just hover for a while and descend. So, I stuck to jumping great lengths and climbing the mountainous tower on hand and foot. It was really intense, because large pieces of stone kept crumbling under my weight and dropping down to the earth far below. Lucid or not, I didn’t like how little control I had, and being so high was making me a bit nervous. I made my way into the tower through a tiny opening in its face. Inside, I chased down the guys that had ‘Salma,’ and got her back. One of the men shot at me with a crossbow, and I was able to jump aside just as the arrow went passed me…right into ‘Salma’s’ back, killing her.

Immediately (and involuntarily, actually), I was able to somehow rewind the scene. The villain drew the crossbow again and fired. This time I tried to catch the arrow. I was only able to grab the back end of the shaft, though, and the arrow was deflected slightly; away from ‘Salma’s’ back but stabbing her, instead, in the hand.

After this, I turned the tables on the villains. My dream control increased significantly, just out of annoyance, and I was able to easily fly again. I rose up from the ground with my arms at my sides, pretty pissed off at this confrontation. Slowly, I began flying after them as they ran, stalking them, picking them up with telekinesis and throwing them all over the hallways. I don’t remember exactly what I ended up doing to them in the end, though.

"Imbedded" - 01/18/2007

“Imbedded”
01/18/2007

(Jesus, what a dream. Definitely not one of the cool action scenarios I've come to enjoy. I’d taken a multivitamin before bed, which I’m beginning to figure is a lot less necessary, seeing as how I haven’t been smoking at all, during the week. Usually when I take something before bed (B6 or Multivitamins) my dreams are not only much more vivid, but intense, so I may be giving those a rest, too. We’ll see.)

Anyway, as this dream began, I was journalist in Iraq. The sun was just starting to set and I was working along side CNN’s Soledad O’Brien. She was working a different topic, but we were working very close, often intertwining our stories, I’d suppose. The beginning is more of a blur. I know the topic I was covering had something to do with this underground tunneling system that the Mujahideen were using to tactically move around Iraq. At first, I was under the impression that I was given clearance to cover this story, but at one point, as I was standing along with Soledad and her camera crew, some of the Jihadists singled me out. One, seemingly unarmed, man grabbed me by my arms and began to walk me away from the rest of the crew. Obviously, Soledad was accepted, as they made sure to let her know that it was only me that had done something wrong. I remember her calling after me and trying to tell the hooded men that I was a part of her team. It meant nothing to them.

Being quickly guided toward the corner of a building, away from the cameras, I asked the guy where he was taking me. He said that he had orders to simply take me around the corner and execute me. I don’t even think he gave me a reason. Immediately, I was terrified. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

We got around the corner and into a small alley way. Scared out of my mind, I watched the man reach into the front of his pants and pull out a black pistol that looked a lot like an old Luger. As he was bringing the barrel up in my direction, I desperately lunged for the gun, grabbing it by the barrel and the man’s wrist. He fought back and the two of us struggled to gain control of the weapon. The scuffle lasted a couple of seconds and it ended up with me bending his wrist to a good enough angle to slide my finger into the trigger housing and squeeze, just as the barrel swung around to the guy’s head. The loud crack of gunfire rang out - and then, silence.

My heart sank, even though I’d killed him in self-defense, and I backed away. I didn’t even have time to collect my thoughts before I saw more men coming around the corner, a few-dozen yards away. I broke into a sprint, in the opposite direction, and began running through all the twisting and turning alleyways trying to lose them. The sun was going down and I was looking for any sort of shadowy places to hide. I passed a huge pen with a dog in it that started barking as I approached. I moved around the pen, constantly watching my back.

Coming up to the next corner, I actually began hearing mother calling for me. I looked into a nearby doorway and saw a man aiming a rifle at me, but my mom was next to him, motioning for me to hurry into the doorway. I went inside this building, that was actually a covert bunker for the American forces. Mom was there as an aid, and there were a bunch of people inside listening to surveillance equipment and staring at radar screens. They told me that (somehow) this building was 100% safe. Shaking, I sat down in a chair and began agonizing on how close I’d come to being executed and reflecting, painfully, on the fact that I’d just killed a man. For the last few seconds of the dream, I was a complete mess of emotions.

…I gotta stop watching the news.

"Lost City of Frost" - 11/15/2013

"Lost City of Frost"
11/15/2013

I was a rough-neck female adventurer (like Lara Croft), and I was leading a team of explorers through some snow-covered mountains, trying to discover a lost, mythical city that had been rumored to exist in the area. One of the people in my crew looked so much like Ben Affleck that I think it might have been him 'playing a role', as if we were all characters in a movie.  There seemed to be some sort of animosity between myself and the Affleck-ish character, as if we had some kind of bitter history, but, at first, it didn't seem to get in the way of our work.

We came to a ridge, high on a mountain, looking down into a wide, snowy valley far below us. In the valley, we could see a few small, brown huts, but nothing that seemed to match the description of the sprawling, mystical city that we'd been expecting to find; that is, until one of the members of my crew activated some sort of device which beamed, like a laser, down into the valley. The snow began to waft away like smoke rising from a cauldron, and in its place, we uncovered numerous larger buildings which sort of 'faded into' view, as if it were a mirage in the desert. Two buildings turned into 4; 4 into 8; and so-on.

We had found our Lost City, and it was an amazing sight to see. The kicker, though, was that we knew that this city was rumored to be inhabited by large, serpent-like creatures that burrowed through the mountains as worms do through dirt. What we didn't know was just how enormous these things were supposed to be. We quickly got our answer. The mountains began to shake around us, while we stood an gazed out over the snow-scape; large section of rock and snow breaking off from the higher peaks and  tumbling down into the valley. It seemed like an earthquake...and a powerful one, at that. Just beyond the city, far into the distance, we could see a massive, cylindrical body slinking its way through the snow like the curved spine of some great sea-serpent. Massive, really, is an understatement. The beast's body had to be at least a half-mile wide,  and the portion of its length that we could see covered  well over a mile in distance. Even as far away as we were viewing it, the sight of it was absolutely overwhelming. It was like nothing any of us had ever seen, and it moved through the rocky, snow-covered valley as easily as a sewing-needle through fabric, causing the earth to continue to quake and landslides to continue to fall, as it moved about.

(There's a large section of this dream that I can only remember in fleeting moments: ) We'd made it down into the valley, and had to explore the city without making any noise on the ground (obvious Tremors influence). There were more of these 'worms', but the others were much smaller - about as thick as a bus, and maybe a quarter mile long, each - and they were the main threat, once we were within the city limits. We kept to the rooftops as much as we could, and I believe we were looking for some kind of artifact. Many of the men (I think my character was the only female in the group) died during the expedition, having made too much noise at ground-level and been eaten alive by the carnivorous worms. The Affleck character was one of the first, but I never saw him actually die. I do remember one death, specifically, where a guy fell through a fragile rooftop and into a building. We descended quietly on the outside of the building, knowing that the worms would react to his initial thudding on the floor, inside, and we tried to help pull him out of a nearby window. Halfway out, though, he let out a horrific scream, and we were only able to pull the top half of his body out, as the other half had been eaten by the warm that had broken up through the floor, inside.

Later, I had found whatever it was we were in search of, having barely survived the expedition, myself. It was then that I was confronted by a man who blocked my path of escape from this city. It was 'Affleck'. Apparently, he had faked his death and laid-low, so that we could continue to do all the legwork for him. Now that it was done, he had planned to double-cross me and steal the artifact (or whatever it was) and claim it for himself. We got into a ferocious brawl which, of course, drew the attention of the worms; only the Big One came, this time. We quickly stopped our fighting and began running for our lives. The entire city, and the mountains around us, began crumbling in the wake of the alpha worm as it gave chance. The last thing I remember was trying to scramble up the mountain from which we'd come into the valley, fighting off gigantic rock slides from above, and the absymal jaws of the worm tearing up the mountain face below us.

"Hang Time with Michael Jordan" - 01/06/2010 (Lucid)

"Hang Time with Michael Jordan"
01/06/2010 

Dream #3

(Lucid)

I was on some sort of assassination job. The objective was to kill a High Value Individual, framing one of two factions within a military base. This would effectively cause what one of my commanding officers called a Civil War," within the facility. I don't really remember much about this dream, besides taking the shot, through a set of bars, and hitting the HVI, center-mass.

Later, I was in what was basically a cross between a mall and an airport terminal. I had to pull a "drop" job (literally), which consisted of dropping a bag full of something illegal over the second-floor railing, and down to someone making the pick-up, below. It was ridiculously obvious that we were doing something illegal, but...that was the plan. After the drop, we were making our way out of the building, and security was buzzing all around us. They knew that something had just happened, somewhere in the mall/airport, but they didn't know what, or by whom. We slipped right passed them, and walked out to the parking lot. 

Outside, randomly, I ran into Michael Jordan... He was just on his way home from doing some shopping, and making his way to his car. Almost surprisingly, I became lucid at this encounter. (Considering everything that had just happened, before this, I find it funny that all it took was meeting Michael Jordan, to make me realize I was dreaming. Lol.) I started walking and talking with him, for a while. I told him about the fact that I was just dreaming, and he just quirked a skeptical eyebrow at me. It's hilarious, but he pretty much just looked/acted exactly like Michael Jordan! Lol. He said something laid back, but sarcastic, like "right. Sure you are..." continuing to walk beside me, at a relaxed pace. I said something like, "don't believe me? Watch," and I levitated into the air, moving around in front of him and hovering backward, while he kept walking toward me. I grinned at him and said "See? You're not the only one who can fly, Mike," laughing. He raised both eyebrows a bit, otherwise seemingly stoic. Though I could see that he was impressed, he didn't quite say much about it. He just kept walking, looking up at me.

I turned around and took aim at a car, a few dozen yards in front of us, reaching up toward it with one hand. Focusing my mind on the vehicle, I flipped my palm up, and slung my arm upward, grabbing the car with telekinesis, and hurling it through the air, over us. It soared to a good 30 feet in the air and then nose-dived toward the pavement. The car smashed into the parking lot, head-on, crunching itself nearly flat and toppling over. I couldn't help but note to myself how cool it looked.

Michael and I finally reached his car, and he asked me something about whether I planned to just follow him around, the whole time. I shrugged and simply said "I might as well, I'll probably be waking up soon, anyway." (Dunno why, but I just sort of had that feeling.) What's even funnier is that his car was an old, beat up, paint-stripped Pontiac Firebird, which wouldn't have surprised me, if it didn't even make it out of the parking lot, from the looks of it. We got inside, and it was just filled with all kinds of garbage; empty drive-thru bags; bottles; cans; etc. Settling into the seat, I was just about to look at my hands, to try to stabilize the dream, but I ended up waking up, instead.