Recent DJ Posts

I'd led my friends into an abandoned house to hide from the group of rebels. They've found us now, five rebels armed to the teeth against six or seven unarmed civilians.

Well.

And me.

"What's this?" The leader sneers. "Snivelling collaborators, hiding with the trash?" He smiles, and it's an awful little thing. "Get up and fight us!"

"You still outnumber us, after all," says one of the rebel women, a smile in her voice.

That won't do.

The group of civilians are removed with a mental gesture, hustled through the aether. It takes me a moment to think of a place to set them down, where there won't already be a crowd. I settle on the dirt pile next to the Ixburg house.

I blink, coming back to the now-emptier abandoned house. The silence has been drawn like a bow string, the rebels staring at me.

"Seems fairer now," I explain.

The leader swears.

"You don't understand," he says, anger colouring his voice. "When our enemies came in and overthrew the last regime, they turned my country into HELL. They needed diamonds to fulfil the promises they made to their allies; they worked the citizenry like dogs. This is our chance to set things right."

"Of course," I say mildly. "By marching into people's homes and murdering families in cold blood. Setting things right. Definitely not starting on the same track your enemies did."

Face red, the man shouts a war cry and charges at me.

It's about five in the morning. The early morning sun shines onto the gravel of the parking lot, casting long shadows.

My brother and I sitting in a car. I'm in the driver's seat, but the car is parked, and the two of us are just looking at the houses on the street over.

There's some kind of argument, and idly, I imagine a spark near one of the houses.

Suddenly, there's smoke billowing from the windows of the house closest to the spark. Good job, me, bringing innocent bystanders into our argument.

I jump out of the car, shouting "Come on!"

My brother follows me to the house. I ring the doorbell twice -- come on, come on -- and a sleepy-looking woman answers the door.

I point out the billowing smoke, and she thanks me for my concern but tells me that's it's normal.

***

Later, I'm with my mom and brother visiting someone.

"We should get back home," I tell my mom, looking at the approaching storm.

The thunderstorm approaches at the speed of a semi truck, the first pellets of heavy rain hitting the ground in a continuous wave.

"Too late," says my mom, and we duck to the floor of the room (which is on the top of the house) and I'm holding up a floor mat to try to shield us both from the mud splattering into the room.

I'm a vampire that's hunting vampires.

Sam & Dean Winchester are hunting me.

The woman I killed was a vampire preying on the local townspeople, but you can always trust Hunters to not understand nuance.

Later, I'm using telekinesis on small objects around my grandmother's living room. I'm finding that I can easily lift objects that are within about four feet of me, but to move anything further away, I have to move closer. I find this frustrating, because I know I'm dreaming, and this is all about what I believe I can do.

It's a rubber band bracelet thingy, for gods' sake! This shouldn't be that hard!

Prev night: stole a combine with my mom and tried to harvest someone else’s field? Attempted to escape on motorbikes and was cornered in a shop/garage of some kind.

---

My in-laws come to pick up me and my brother at my old apartment building to drive us to school. It’s a five-minute walk, but it’s nice of them to offer. When we get to the school, traffic is being redirected away from the parking lot out into the county. We drive a few minutes before getting to another school where their kids go, and we have to… walk back into town? Maybe there’s a shuttle?

---

I’m at my old apartment building talking to S. She’s apparently using the laundry at this building because it’s a nicer laundry facility than any other place in the city. I’m trying to work the laundry machine, but I’m having trouble sorting out delicates from the other stuff, especially because as I’m sorting them, the basket/machine is filling with water, soaking the clothes. I start finding monopoly money that looks really similar to real money, and I joke with S that it’s just like that fake million dollar bill. Apparently she’s brought a monopoly set so that people can play it while they’re waiting for their laundry.

---

I wake up lying in the street. I’m obviously not in the city I thought I was in. I hear fabric flapping, and I see that I’m in a valley of some kind. Near the top of a nearby mountain, there are a series of flags flapping in the breeze. I remember that I want to attempt to teleport, but I don’t remember where I want to teleport to, so I decide to just go with a previous dream, because it’s fresh in my memory. I aim for the apartment building.

Things are hazy, but I close my eyes and picture it. I open my eyes a couple of times and have wound up in the wrong place, but I try again until I reach the apartment building. Now that I know where I am, I continue with my road trip.

★★★★☆

I've been working a lot. A lot.

12/06/10

I'm standing in my childhood bedroom, surrounded by white walls and pastel shades. None of my rooms have looked like this in years, but that's not something I notice. It seems like I'm awake - already, the fragments of previous dreams are falling away.

I hear a low hiss in the background of my mind, and I smile.

I thought I'd lost you, I admit. I tilt my head, listening to a voice only I can hear, and make a face. "Yeah, I'm not having that argument with you."

A flash of a symbol, the ouroboros, a snake in a circle, eating its own tail. I see green and black stripes, and the dream fades into another one.

"The walls between realities grow thinner by the day," she says, "And people continue to mine them for profit!"

I'm half-listening to the merchant at this point, waiting for her to hand me the items I'm buying from her brightly-coloured wooden stall. I need the monkshood for an attempt on the Guardian up in the mountains.

"One of these days," mutters the woman, "Demons will tear through from the world beyond, and our world will be without hope!"

Snake chuckles darkly, in the quiet of my mind. Too late for that.

I nod absently at the woman. I know how to close the gaps between worlds, but of course, I'm one of the demons that these people fear. "Do you know where I can find any explosives?"

Ouroboros. Scare Factor: 2.

★★★☆☆

Four hours of sleep, and suddenly this monstrosity comes along. It's fairly disjointed; I don't have a whole lot of time to play with it, so without further ado...

10/18/10



Harry Potter tries to mess with the fabric of reality, I have diabolical plans, and Dumbledore disapproves as usual.

"Just think about it," I tell her. "With this kind of breakthrough, we could completely alter the way humans perceive reality!"

Sophie looks up at me, skeptical, one hand keeping her place in the textbook. She's holding a pen in her other hand, and she taps it impatiently against her notebook. She pushes a few strands of short red hair out of her eyes, and says, "I know what happens when you try to play mad scientist, Harry."

We're sitting across from each other at a long wooden table. Sophie's studying - this is a library, after all. The interior is almost entirely decorated with red-stained wood, giving the impression of a highly modern, really big log cabin. With lots and lots of glass (and books). Sunlight streams in from the huge windows, and outside is a view of the forest, and the other school buildings in the clearing.



"Chaos, generally." I say, grinning. Some of the other students notice that I'm grinning, and quietly begin to edge away from us. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

skip

There's this thing I have to do on the computer. It's very important. I'm sitting outside on the green grass, trying to do this very important thing, when - hey, will you look at that? Dumbledore's on Skype!

Albus Dumbledore appears in a new window, looking very grave indeed. This is somewhat offset by all of the spinning and twirling metal gadgetry on his desk.

"Harry," says Dumbledore gravely, "I've received word of the research you've begun."

"Really?" I say, looking up from Minesweeper. "Brilliant, isn't it?"

He sighs. "Harry," he repeats, "This is not a road you cannot walk down unscathed. You'll be returning to Hogwarts."

"Um..." I say slowly, "No."

"By force, if necessary."

My computer pings.

"Did you just -" I say, looking at the screen, "Did you just track my location through my internet connection? You realize I'm on a different PLANET? How the hell does that even -"

But Dumbledore's appearing at the edge of the wards, walking into the school grounds the only way he can. I meet his eyes for just a moment, and I disapparate.

skip

Moving through Ixburg, and I'm running. I'm moving through a jobsite, people from my hometown who were, apparently, in direct competition with my family's business. By some sort of mutual agreement, they all ignore my presence, and I pass through completely unnoticed.

Back doors of the grocery store and I'm having a conversation with someone before I disappear again -

Narcissa Malfoy. We're standing in some anonymous hallway of a starship, looking out into the black.

"I don't disapprove of your cutting his influence out of your life," she's saying, "But I'm not convinced that making an enemy of Dumbledore will be conducive to your goals."

"There are greater forces at work here. He may get in my way," I say coldly, "But he can't stop me."

Narcissa nods once, sharply. "Very well. My family is at your service, as always."

I'm closing my eyes, casting my senses out into the nothing. Golden light is cutting through the darkness, pushing it away, burning.

"You need to leave," I tell my informant, and I'm hurtling out into the void of space, an ethereal being of energy and animal and just a sliver of humanity. And the burning, fierce presence is crying out, raising its wings.

Fawkes.

He's found me through Harry's holly wand, called by the phoenix feather within. I smile and pull another wand from my sleeve, one made of ebony. And as the phoenix is upon me, I call up the Void, and I meet the creature's light with an unfathomable darkness.

Boom.

(O'Neill: What the hell was that?)
(Carter: I don't know, sir, but it almost blew straight through our shields. We're lucky it wasn't closer.)

"Grab my arm." I tell Sophie. We apparate from planet to planet, trying to get Dumbledore off our trail. One, two, three, four, five. Hoth, Antarctica, Europa, Tartarus, Miranda.

I appear in the woodshop of the school in the clearing. There's another person in the room.

"Where is my daughter?" The woman asks.

I look around, but Sophie's nowhere to be seen.

Dumbledore.

skip

"Aurors and their locking spells," I mutter, pointing my ebony wand at the door. The lock clicks, and I open the door to the super-secret impenetrable Unspeakable Library. "Well, come on." I hiss at the nervous man behind me.

The two of us shuffle into the library and quietly barricade ourselves in one of the rooms. We're pretty sure that the information we need is here.

The man is flipping through a card catalogue, mumbling under his breath. I'm scanning the books on the shelf, but something seems out of place. I feel a presence. Thinking it's a guard, I make my way over to one of the closed doors and peer through the keyhole. I'm looking for the beam of a flashlight.

At first, I don't see anything. The hallway is white, and bare, and dark. I look through at a different angle, and

look directly into blood red eyes. There's no pupil, iris, sclera, it's all a murderous shade of red, and for a moment, I'm held captive by the gaze. I notice, peripherally, that she's a ghostly little girl in a tattered white dress and everything is bleeding into itself

She flickers, like a strobe light. In and out of existence, and suddenly, she's in the room with us

Harry is terrified, and I'm calm. The ghost is on us, tearing into our essence, and Harry is terrified but I know that there's no danger but I can feel his fear

Everything's going dark

And I wake up, disoriented, in a pitch black room.

Scare Factor: 4/10

Oh. It was a dream.

It made sense at the time?

Fun dream, but the writing's kind of screwy.

Moving out of Saskatchewan! Maybe I'll stop dreaming about "Ixburg".

09/10/10



I've de-aged again. I have the impression of messy black hair, and apparently I'm Harry Potter. Cool.

I'm also trapped in a cave.

"I can't let ya leave, 'Arry," explains Hagrid, turning to a conveniently placed stove to pull a kettle off the boil, "The Ministry won' allow it."

"I see." I'm standing with my hands at my sides, eerily calm. The lack of expression seems to unnerve him.

I'm unconcerned. Hagrid has already given away the secret, and he has his back turned.

I raise my right hand. "Imperio."

I walk out into blue skies.

time skip

In the time since I've left the cave, I've fought off a few extra-inept stormtroopers, easily taken care of. (I actually wasn't sure about one. Thought he might have been a shadow-trooper, but he died easily enough.)

I had another encounter with Berserker!Hagrid. Apparently three layers of Imperius spells don't do anything positive to your sanity.

Beat him.

Now I'm wandering around Ixburg, heading toward the east end of town for some reason.

I'm trying to fly. Annoyed that it's not working. I can manage some of the jumps, but I can't stay in the air.

Standing in the center of an open road, I concentrate on growing red, hawk-like wings. They extend from my arms, so I don't have to concentrate on a new set of limbs. I flap the wings, and take off.

Passing the warehouses on the edge of town, I notice Imperials swarming the place. Apparently it's their base.

I stand across from Darth Vader.

"I am your father."

I'm unimpressed.

We fight, but he fades into the background.

I remember Capture the Flag, from Jedi Academy. That was fun.

A stormtrooper holds the blue flag, and is standing on top of the empty red base. He's waiting for someone to return the flag so he can score.

I force push him off the building, and he goes crashing into the corrugated siding of another warehouse. Dead already. Hn. Blue flag returned.

The blue team scores, and I grab the red flag. Darth Vader's still lurking around here somewhere. Something's glitching on him, maybe? He can't jump onto the roof.

I fly off toward the hospital on the other side of town, the blue base, after sprouting another set of wings. I wonder how I'm carrying the flag without hands. I try not to think about it. Maybe I'm holding it with my teeth.

In another dream, I'm standing in a hallway, looking at the men's and women's bathrooms, which are side by side. I have no fucking clue which one to use.

Scare Factor: 2/10
Rating: 4/10

I don't think I've been getting email notifications for the past few days. Weird.

09/08/10



Ixburg, SK

2000

He's killed, just like that. His daughter, seven years old, is alone in their apartment across town. I'm the daughter.

I slip from the bed, tiny and blonde and short-haired, and push open the door to the rest of the apartment. Somehow, I'm not surprised to see a man there. The man is stocky and blond, and I can see that he's grinning when the orange light from the window hits his face.

I incline my head. "Sir." I say, my voice neutral.

He grins wider and nods back. I step back into the doorway of my bedroom, and he brushes past me into the bright light of the hallway.

He'll be back, if only to keep an eye on me. I need to leave.

Originally Posted by DreamViews DC

It really doesn't count for the RPG if you make up the stories while you're awake.

Originally Posted by Samael

That's why I'm posting in this thread, isn't it? You know, the planning thread. Plotting thread. Where we plot.

I'm incubating a dream, okay?

Originally Posted by DreamViews DC

You still have to write your character profile, btw.

Originally Posted by Samael

...I'm going to finish the story now.

Unknown, IL

2010

I'm a man in a black suit, sitting in the back of a black car, which is driving to the outskirts of a town in Illinois. And we're in Illinois, of course, because the Organization tracked an Extranormal here. One false move, one positive test, and suddenly Jane Doe (Age 17, Grade 12, parents work from home) is about to be assassinated by a team of armed government goons.

It's funny. Extranormals can't strictly be barred from going to school, or holding regular jobs. Hell, they can even travel. Different countries have different restrictions, of course, but the good ol' US of A is all about liberty. The Organization can track them, though. Legality's a little fuzzy, but some real dangerous ones pop up occasionally. What to do with them?

Here's the thing: Extranormals go crazy all the time. They lose control of their powers and suddenly they're either a human icicle or a pile of ashes. Most of the time they take innocent bystanders with them. It's really no problem at all to fake a meltdown. Kill the EN, murder all the bystanders, blow shit up. It's easy.

This one's powers are a little more subtle, so no flashy special effects. Fortunately, ENs tend to be a little crazy to begin with, so it wouldn't be unheard of for one to suddenly... snap. Possibly kill her entire family with a butcher knife. Double murder-suicide, neat and clean.

The man in the passenger seat has the knife.

We pull up the gravel driveway. The other three men silently open their doors and step out. I hide a grin by turning toward the empty road as I step out of the car. No one's coming.

The plan is to enter the house and kill the parents, then ambush the girl when she comes home from school.

Neat and clean.

Except.

Her father died ten years ago.

Her mother died even before that.

And Jane Doe is a really stupid pseudonym.

The only person in the house is the lodger who rents out the basement. That lodger is an Extranormal himself, a young black man who's trying to lie low. Obviously, that's not working out.

I can sense him in the front entrance of the house, ready to attack the first man who comes in. I give the all-clear to the other men.

The man with the knife kicks open the door and walks into an ambush. I shoot the other two in the back.

Once upon a time, there was a man in a black suit. The man was supposed to sit in the back of a black car, and break into a house, and help murder an entire family. While he was still alive, this man used to really hate shapeshifters.

Scare Factor: 3/10
Rating: 6/10

09/02/10



I pull myself out of bed, even though I really don't want to. I'm tired, and miserable, and everything's just a bit blurry. I drag myself into the kitchen and sit down, staring into space. Really, this whole thing seems a little... off.

I hold up my right hand. "Two, three, four, five, six." Seems normal. My hands are leaving little motion paths behind them, just like they would in a dream. I dismiss the phenomenon, though. The paths aren't distinct enough to really be noticeable.

Never mind that I'm sitting in the back-room kitchen of the motel my grandparents used to own. Never mind the fact that my grandma sold this place years ago.

I feel shadows forming in the corners of my mind, indicating traces of worm-like creatures on the verge of existence in the other room. I go still. If this was a dream, I could deliberately induce a nightmare. That would be fun.

Maybe I am dreaming. I'm standing behind the glass doors to the patio, looking out over the lawn and the pine trees planted around the perimeter. There's a bunch of things I could be doing if this was a dream.

I hold up my left wrist and bite down on the skin there. I catalogue my reactions. No pain, which doesn't strike me as strange, not really, because I can feel my teeth and lips on the skin there.

I'm tired.

End recall.

Scare Factor: 1/10
Rating: 3/10

I'm baaack.

Originally Posted by #1. First Appearances

It's dark, and I'm surrounded by beautiful, frightening living statues made of shadow... twisted, slender, lethal. I want to remember them when I wake up, because they're mine.

08/26/10



The Monster of the Week gets in over its head.

This dream takes place in my old apartment building in Ixburg. The suite is a floor down from where I actually used to live, and it's been refitted with giant windows. It has a balcony with a fire exit, and the place is spacious and airy. Which is fortunate, because I live there with a group of people, and we're all sleeping together.

I'm alone in the bedroom when I see it. A presence has been on the edges of my consciousness for a while now, and it finally coalesces into a physical form. It's a black statue, shiny and carved out of something like obsidian or onyx. It's vaguely humanoid, but it's a simplified form. It has a somewhat bulbous head, but the rest of it is sleek, almost liquid.

Time speeds up, and I watch life continue in fast-forward. The other people in the apartment don't notice the statue at all. I have the feeling that it's been there for some time, and the fact that I can see it now means nothing good.

Ignoring the others going about their day, I stand up from the bed and walk over to the statue. It's immobile, but I can feel a dark presence.

It's moving. The statue bends an arm back, quick as lightening, and stabs forward. My mouth falls open in an involuntary gasp, and I see myself being impaled on the thing's arm, its hand reaching out through my lower back. I come to the sudden, horrible realization that I'm a sacrifice, and the only person who lives here that meets the requirements. Golden white light streams into my vision, claiming everything, and I feel myself fall back, completely detached from my physical form.

It's like being in the blue-white light from previous dreams, but this feels more like home, more a part of myself. I'm searching for something, cataloguing information that my conscious mind can't comprehend. And I feel it.

The "statue" exists before me as an infinitesimal dark speck, a mote of dust. The thing before me, the spirit inside the statue, I reach out - no, I don't even have to reach out. Just by existing in this state, I snuff out its tiny little black soul.

The light falls away, and I'm left standing in the apartment, completely intact. The dark presence is gone, and I allow myself a glimmer of satisfaction.

There's a reason they call me the Lightbringer.

Mugging the Monster. Scare Factor: 2.

07/17/10



The castle is light grey stone, bleached white in the moonlight. Spires reach to the stars. Atop the tallest tower, Debra Morgan stands looking out over endless mountain forests.

This is fucking ridiculous, she thinks. Of all the people to be kidnapped by a mythological creature, she should not be playing the damsel in distress. She's a cop, for Christ's sake.

She takes a breath, straightens her long, flowing (fucking impractical, is what it is) dress. It's silk, flowing patterns of blue and purple, glowing in the moonlight. The harsh notes of an organ drift across the courtyard from another tower. She frowns, humming along with the melody.

She hears her voice being played back to her, a recofded message. She stops humming, startled, and the voice stops. A slow smile forms on her face, and she starts humming the tune that the Beast is playing on his organ. She hums and listens carefully to the instructions her future self is giving her, letting a grin form. This plan just might work.



I'm a reaper, recently deceased. I've always wanted to leave Ixburg, and I was just shy of graduating high school. Now that I'm dead, I basically have sole dominion over the entire area's dead and dying.

My family moved out of our apartment block soon after my death. I get the place for a discount. Nobody wants to live in that particular suite anymore. I'm running the place for the new owners, a profession that gives me the flexibility to gather the few souls that suffer freak accidents occasionally.

For a retirement town, there's not a whole lot of death here.

Rube shows up around the corner of the shop in the back. He asks how I'm doing. I say that all I want is to get the hell out of here.

I'm jumping on fenceposts where the shop should be. I see a ten foot post and I jump up from the ground. I'm suspended in the air for a moment, and I force the dream to let me land on the four-inch circle.



I find myself in the middle of downtown Halifax. Barrington is a pedestrian only street. I feel ridiculously ashamed of my bare feet for some reason.

I take off to the south end at a sprint, enjoying the feel of running barefoot. I take the boardwalk, heading for my apartment.



I'm working at a table at some kind of convention, minding my own business, when a girl suddenly attacks me with a sword. I take a glancing blow to the neck, fall with it to avoid more damage. I pick up the short sword that was sitting beside me on the table as I dive for cover. I bring the sword up over my head as the girl strikes again. We fight.

This is a game. Damage is taken, and I slice open the girl's scalp. She hardly notices. No one loses until they surrender. I switch my sword for an axe on the table. I preferred the sword, so I switched back. The sword is knocked out of my hand and I rush the girl, tackling her and pinning her to the ground. She gets her hands out somehow and tries to struggle away, but another quick move has her immobile.

I fumble for my sword. I hold the blade to her throat, and rasp, "Do you yield?" She grins and concedes victory to me.

I'm outside, by the Halifax clocktower. The grass is green, and I look over the Vancouver harbour.

An orchestra is playing outdoors, under the blue sky. I take a breath, and allow the music to wash over me.

Now, what was I supposed to be doing?



A group of people are camping near a lake. Getting out of a car, they bicker with each other. Ron, Hermione, and Draco Malfoy are all members of the group.

Malfoy is concerned about his haircut (blond and spiky). He thinks it's just great the way it is, but they've been camping for so long that he's starting to need another haircut.

Ron can cut hair, but Malfoy doesn't trust him not to mess it up on purpose.

The Beast. Scare Factor: 4.

07/22/10

I'm travelling all over the continent. I think I'm driving through the US with some family members. We're passing a city on the freeway when I realize that I've been here before. We pull onto an exit and stop for lunch.

I explain to Oma what the buildings around us are, and mention about three restaurants I know by name that I've been to. We go inside one of them. I see a picture of myself on an indoor climbing wall.

I'm in a small town where my grandma used to live. The population is probably under five hundred. I'm moving in to one of the houses there, because I'm good friends with a few of the neighbours, all of whom are under thirty.

Now I'm getting ready to go back to school in Halifax. I'm planning to fly out the next day. I hear a knock at the door. I answer it, and a man hands me a pile of books, that I apparently ordered. I bought one of them, but the other two are from the Chinook (Saskatchewan) library system. I'm disappointed that I won't be able to read them in time.

The dream shifts and I'm in the Ixburg library to return the books.

I'm part of a group now. One of us might be Buffy Summers. A thin man with short dark hair and dark clothing is showing us an Egyptian hieroglyph, holding up a book that it's illustrated in. He explains that the hieroglyph is the symbol of a demon that's plaguing the town, and we have to stop it.

"If you ever encounter this symbol, run away really fast."

Hey, I think dimly, That's the name of my dream journal.

Library Fines. Scare Factor: 2.

07/21/10

I try to figure out this teleporting thing. Hazel helps out.



The scene drifts into focus. I'm sitting on the cool, freshly trimmed grass outside the Ixburg Inn. My surroundings are hazy, and I feel half-asleep.

It's one of those late-morning, about to wake up dreams. I dig my fingers into the soft grass and soil. I'm dreaming, I tell myself. I'm lucid.

I stare at the yellow metal siding of the warehouse beyond the fence, trying to remember my lucid goals. I can't remember the first one, so I go down the list until something pops out at me.

#2. Find Hazel.

I feel for my phone in the front left-hand pocket of my jeans. The colours around me start to grey out, and I slowly lower my hand to the ground. I grab fistfuls of grass and breathe deep, watching the sky get brighter and bluer as I calm down. Sunlight beams down from the sky. I'm facing the other direction, toward the back of the motel rooms. There are apple trees beyond the fence.

I slip my hand into my pocket (left-hand, right-hand, there isn't any difference) and pull out my phone. I think I should try this method one more time before I give up on it.

Leaning against the red fence, I mash seven random digits into the keypad (one of them is an "8") and hold the phone to my ear. It rings twice.

"Hello?" says a female voice on the other end.

"Hazel?" I ask. "Are you asleep?"

"Obviously." She seems amused.

I shake my head. I'm still not sure this is really Hazel. "Want to try to meet up?"

"Can you teleport?"

I hesitate.

An impatient noise from her end of the phone, and Hazel is standing in front of me. The chin-length black hair is her dream-avatar's most distinctive feature, and I doubt it's what her hair looks like in real life.

We're standing on the other side of the fence, drifting slowly westward without my knowing. A DC lurks at the periphery of my awareness, and I think it's a childhood friend.

We discuss the best way to get back to her dream. I explain an idea I've been putting together, that instead of opening a portal or a door, I just need to imagine the new setting and drift slowly into it. The danger is in how easily this could trigger a false awakening.

Hazel says she wants to try something. She touches my forehead with two fingers. I fall back onto the tall grass, frozen in place. I can't move, and the scene is fading into black. I'm not worried, though. She starts talking, describing the setting of her dream.

I pop back into existence between one second and the next. I can still hear the words, but they sound like nonsense. I'm surrounded by orange wooden cabinetry, and I think I'm in a basement. The narration starts to describe the exact kind of cupboard exists across from me, and I snap, "Okay! I get it! I'm here!"

I'm sitting down on a bunk bed when Hazel appears again. The dream destabilizes.

I "wake up".

I'm in the basement of a church, or maybe my late grandma's house (she was a minister). I'm trying to find a bible, because the narrator has apparently been quoting bible verses at me.

I'm flipping through the book, but I don't remember the order. "Where was Ecclesiastes, again?

"Near the end," says Grandma.

I mutter something about having had these memorized at one point.

The dream ends.

I'm the commander of a fleet of ships, taking shelter in an empty harbour. A woman with long, blonde curly hair stands beside me, asking about the clouds on the horizon.

"Those are pure ozone," I tell her. "They're poisonous, but they won't come up onto the coast."

"I wish we could go out to them," she says wistfully.

Looking at the swirling mass of dark clouds, I almost agree with her.

Hazel. Scare Factor: 3.

Haaaazel, you're being all mysterious and otherworldly. Stop it.

Also: Facebook, guys? Really?

07/20/10

I take invulnerability for granted.

I'm chasing after a kid on skis, speeding down a snow covered hill in Ixburg. Since when does Ixburg have hills, anyway?

When I get to the bottom, the kid is jumping onto the nose of a helicopter. The helicopter sways dangerously, the kid's weight moving it off balance. I'm the pilot now, trying to keep the machine on course.

I'm in my high school, in English with my eighth grade class. Our homeroom teacher says we have to get our heads in the game, as we'll be in grade twelve before we know it, and that'll be goddamn hard.

"Grade 12 was easy," I mutter.

A couple classmates look at me incredulously.

"Time travel." I shrug.

I go outside. I'm standing in the courtyard in front of the school when Mal Reynolds swoops in, shouting that we've lost Zoe - she's been kidnapped.

I call Zoe's cell, not really expecting her to pick up. The phone does get picked up, though, and I hear a male voice on the other end. We chat about kidnapping and hypothetical ways that everybody can get what they want, like our first mate back in one piece. We get along very well.

I tell Mal that he can land Serenity (the ship) on the top of the Ixburg apartment block. Wait, do my parents still live there? It's really hard for me to remember where in the timeline we are. I know that I'm dreaming, but it doesn't really register as important.

Walking along the top of the hill, I look at the horizon, and am surprised to realize that it's suddenly a lot lower. I'm walking along the cliff side of the Stawamus Chief, looking out over Squamish.

I happily run through what seems like a set freerunning route, making impossible jumps and pushing myself farther than I ever would in real life. I aim for a two-inch stick jutting up for the ground, try to land on the top -

Later, I poke around outside of a missile launch site. Some kind of shuttle is getting sent up into the air, and I'm informed via comlink that anyone outside is about to die a horrible and painful death. The countdown has already started.

I see two more people snooping around, both guys dressed in black. They seem clumsy and incompetent, and I wave at them when they finally notice me. They stalk towards me threateningly.

...three, two, one, lift off!

The air is filled with swirling shards of glass. White light burns down from above, refracted by the bloody glass and singeing the ground below.

The moment ends. The two thugs are a charred mass of bone, strewn about the untouched grass.

I wander down another hill, into an alley. I'm with a group of boys, and we've all joined up our bicycles into a chain that we've lit up with Christmas lights. Another bike speeds down the alley, lit up with neon, and I take a moment to appreciate how awesome it looks.

The boy at the front of the chain doesn't notice, though. He cuts off the neon-lit bike, and the rider crashes into the second and third bikes in the chain.

The four boys are swearing at each other, and the situation is about to escalate into violence. Calmly, I go over to the broken neon bike, and fix the chain and the broken cables. The owner notices that I'm touching his bike, and it distantly occurs to me that he might try to pick a fight with me next. I'm not worried.

The light sputters back into life.

Hills. Scare Factor: 2.

I wrote a couple interesting dreams in my handwritten journal this weekend. I'll make time to type them up sometime this week. I had a really vague string of lucid FAs, too.

ETA: "rocket launch, people die" was scribbled in the margins of my notebook. I can't believe I missed that. I bet it was exciting.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

I'm attacked by alligators. Then I try to figure out why I'm still in high school.



I have to swim through a swamp. On the edges are various plants and animals, frozen by the cold, black goo that touched them. I stay in the center of the slow-moving creek. Something feels off.

I see an alligator, panic for a moment. I realize that it's frozen, too. I turn away, relieved.

There's another one before me. It's alive. I can't out-swim it. I can't get to shore fast enough.

It charges, and I let it swim straight through my submerged stomach. Teeth tear into my flesh and the water turns red, but I don't feel it. The alligator is distracted now. I latch onto its back and hold on. The alligator thrashes underwater, submerging us both.

I step out of the water some time later. My mom comes rushing over, wanting to know if I'm all right.

I assure her that I am, and lift up the fabric of my shirt to see that the wound has healed over entirely, leaving no scars.

---

A dream takes me from Ixburg to Halifax and back again. I'm in high school and university at the same time, and my kindergarten teacher is very disappointed when I miss my driving lessons.

"What, you want me to fly home for the weekend?" I ask my mom incredulously.

She does.

I hide out in my studio with my brother and Matt, who ask why I wasn't at (high) school today.

"Cough. Cough. I'm sick." I say flatly.

Alligators. Scare Factor: 3.