"Big Bad Hellhound"
10/4/2020
(Lucid)
(This dream was obviously brought on by a mish-mash of games that my girlfriend and I had been playing, this weekend, as well as the movie "Shazam," which we'd watched last night.)
I was with my girlfriend, and a few other people, hanging out in someone's home. "A Nightmare on Elm Street" was coming on TV, and my girlfriend said that she had always wanted to see what it was all about, and that she was interested in watching it. Immediately, this struck me as weird, because she is certainly not the "horror movie type," in general. I tried to warn her against it, saying that the movie contained some pretty insanely-disturbing imagery, and that she may not know what she's quite getting herself into. She didn't care and insisted on watching it, so we just let the movie play. The only thing I remember were a couple of brief scenes (that are not actually in the movie). One, where someone - likely Freddy, in disguise - was gorily ripping an entire electric guitar out of someone's body, tearing it out through their chest cavity, and another, where a man, possessed by another entity which had manifested itself as a second head on his neck, was forcefully trying to push the head back down into the skin of his collar. (This was reminiscent of some of the Seven Deadly Sins manifestations, in "Shazam.") Before long, my girlfriend was saying that she had enough, and didn't want to watch anymore.
There was a shift in narrative, here, where the entire scenario became some sort of horror-movie, itself. I was trapped in the house (not sure where my girl and the others had gone), and I was trying to escape some sort of killer stalking around, inside. For some reason (that I can't recall), I couldn't go out the front door, as it was like I wasn't "allowed" to be in the home, or something, and couldn't alert the homeowners that I was there. Anyway, I ended up escaping through a back window, and out into the neighborhood, at night. There was an oversized pick-up truck, basically doing donuts in the street, and a young woman came running up the sidewalk, telling me - as she passed - that she had to sneak back into the house I'd just left, because she'd left some sort of item there. It all felt very much like an MMO game kind of encounter, where players are all just off doing their own thing, and often crossing paths, along the way. Then, when I started thinking about where I was going to go, next, a full-on map HUD display popped up in my field of view, as if I was playing a game. (Specifically, it looked like the map from "Dying Light," which my girl and I had played.) I could see that I was on an island, with no way out, and my mind apparently rationalized that I had completed my objective - escaping the house - and that I had to kind of "exit" the whole setting, as if returning to the lobby, after a game.
Suddenly, I was attacked on the street, by some lumbering person. (I want to say that it was a zombie, but I can't be sure.) While trying to fight off the attack, I could see something like one of the "QuickTime" animation buttons showing up in my field of view, as if I had to repeatedly press a button, in order to escape the attacker's clutches. The more I panicked, the faster this gauge was moving, and I could see little flashes of light forming in my field of view. At this very moment, I knew that my way of "escape" was to "wake up," and that the little flashes of light were my eyes trying to open up into the real world. However, though this was "lucid dreaming" logic, I don't feel that I ever got fully 'lucid,' at all and I was just going through the motions of trying to wake myself up.
Immediately, the entire scenario shifted, again, and this time, I was watching some unknown character wake up, on a television screen. He jolted up out of bed, as if awakening from a nightmare. I was now in a different house, along with some of my closest waking life friends, and we were huddled around the TV, watching whatever movie this was. Sooner or later, we had left the house and were walking around, outside. Again, it was night out, and it was eerily foggy. Judging by the architecture of the streets around us, everything had a sort of an Old Germany / Western Europe feel to it. (We had also been playing "Zombie Army Trilogy.") We'd discovered a pack of "demon-dogs" that were roaming the streets, and we had to sneak, stealthily, around them, to avoid getting spotted. However, when turning onto another, misty back alley, we'd seen a group of the dogs at the far end, and they saw us, as well. What was worse, though, was when we watched what looked like a group of tall trees shift into focus, through the mist, behind the dogs. Though I couldn't see the tops of the "trees," through the fog, I quickly became aware that these weren't trees, at all. They were *legs*. Specifically, they were the legs of another, enormous, demon dog. This one, though, was well over 50-feet tall - like a giant Hell Hound of a gritty anime, brought to life.
The beast belted out a wall-shaking roar and thundered into a sprint toward us. Naturally, we turned and ran the other way, fully aware that we were not going to be able to outrun this thing. Finally, coming to the end of the road - in the form of a high bridge or overpass, we instinctively dove over the railing, turning back while in the air, just in time to see the massive jaws of the gigantic beast snapping shut just, a few feet over our heads. Inevitably, though, we continued to fall away, off of the elevated road, and down toward what would have been a certain death.
But - just like that - I was back with my friends, again, roaming the streets of this foggy, old-world environment, slipping around in the dark, to hide from the demon dogs. Then, just as before, we saw the towering legs of the "alpha," stepping out of the fog. It sprinted at us, once again, but before turning to run, I remembered that this had happened before. Still, instinctively, I ran, bolting down the street, with my friends, away from the towering hound behind us. Glancing at the builds that flanked us, I remembered a conversation my girlfriend and I had been having (the night before), about wall-running in a video game.
Suspecting, now, that I was merely in a dream, I shifted my sprint to the right and took a few, diagonal steps up the wall beside me, twisting into an acrobatic flip and - somehow - dodging the enormous dog that had been chasing us. Afterward the dog was either destroyed by us, or simply disappeared, altogether (though I can't remember which).
Shortly after ridding ourselves of the beast, my friends and I were talking about what had happened. I don't recall much of the dialogue, but I specifically telling them about my having to wake up, so that I could remember everything that went on, in the dream. The last thing I remember of the scenario was one of my friends telling a hilarious joke that had everyone cracking up, just as I was purposefully pulling myself out of the dream and waking myself up.
(I'm not sure, but I believe this one might have resulted in an actual false awakening, because I remember waking up with my laughter actually carrying over from the dream, and into waking life. My girlfriend was lying beside me, as usual, but I didn't get out of bed. I just relaxed, as if to drift back off to sleep. Then, moments later, I was waking up, again. I still don't know if the laughing bit was real or another dream, though, so I'm not counting it as a false awakening in this journal entry.)
