Thread: Do you slide? Have you been hunted?

I've had dreams like this before.... usually they're very scary and I wake up in a cold sweat and have trouble getting back to sleep (without turning a light or two on). Most of the time, in a dream like that, I die. I know I die because I'm being murdered (or the person who's body I'm inhabiting is) and I wake up. I've died hundreds of times this way. It's brutal when you can feel someone stabbing you repeatedly with a knife in the chest or beating you with a baseball bat and you hear and feel your own skull crack. I've tried to pass it off as homework projects incomplete, exams coming up, bills unpaid, family stresses and a host of other things, even hormones, but the truth is there isn't any explanation. I just have bad dreams.

Not all of my dreams are bad ones, just most of them. And, of course, being part of the growing up with Freddie Kruger generation, I've learned that I can take a certain amount of control over my dreams - which is probably when the lucid dreaming began - in my teens. But I also discovered that no matter what I do to try and affect the outcome, if that person (me) is gonna die, they're gonna die one way or another no matter what I do. THey may escape their attacker for a moment or two, only to run into the path of another, or they run into some tragic mishap and still die.

But the dream I had last night was a powerful thing. I dreamt that I had been gathered with a group of other people just. like. me.

And there was another group of 7 or 11 people after us.

Hunting. And sorting.

Look, not all of the details are in chronological order here... because I'm trying to explain as I go... just bear with me.

I was sorted. And they attempted to recruit me... so I could be a dream chaser like them. Everybody who didn't get sorted was killed and made into a zombie. Some of the zombies had higher motor skills and cognitive abilities and they were used to control the others. The girl who was trying to recruit me explained that the zombies were going to be servants and we had all been a part of a massive flock that was getting 'reaped'. Very biblical sounding, but trust me, it didn't feel that 'holy' way in the dream. It was evil. Apparently, there were several groups who performed this 'sorting' and this group was the best at it and they'd never lost one of their prey.

And by prey, I mean that literally. They were hunting us down... the ones to be sorted. Everyone else was just going to get reaped. I ran through woods, hid in cabinets, hid in ditches of running water, climbed up into lofts - which is where they eventually called me down and explained that I wasn't to be 'reaped'. I'd escaped each time by sliding into someone else that was there in this place. I was a young coed, a gypsy jewelry trader, a young man and an obviously butch young woman. I think each time I slid into another person, they more strongly resembled my actual self, and that's how they were finding me.

We were all in some older stone building, and I knew the name of it because it was some college in Germany or something - The woman I was eventually paired up with told me the name, but all I can recall is that is was F-something Valhalla and she said it was the usual place where the sorting happened. There must have been a couple hundred people there altogether. In the beginning, there were a few of us who realized that something was going on and that we were being hunted by these people. They were testing us mentally to see who was to be 'sorted'. There was one older guy who was their leader and gave the final word on who was to be recruited.

The recruitment was this - they paired up with us and gave us a taste of their power.

The girl lead me to a room where there were about 50 people asleep on their beds and she walked past them, touching their arms or their foot and telling them, "Come on get up, you know you're dead." The people rolled out of their covers and clustered around us. I really wanted them to get away from me and yelled at one of them to move off, he didn't understand, but one that was near, laughed and directed them away from us.

She took two pictures in heavy gold frames off the wall and set them on easels and pointed at each picture and the images changed into portals to the two cities she called out. One was Tokyo and the other was Paris. She took my hand and told me to call out the city name and thrust me into the picture. I closed my eyes and wound up in Tokyo. I could taste the city and I transmitted the flavor to her. Tokyo is very bland and salty all at once. She told me not to look down because I would see the flames of hell (and I could see them in the edge of my vision, but mostly it was black because it was night in the city and I wasn't trying to be recruited and kept my eyes shut mostly). She was in Paris transmitting sights and smells/flavors to me and I could still feel her hand on mine (she really likes eclairs and coffee and is a little fashion crazy, which I'm certainly not). She pulled me back through the painting into the huge bedroom where all the zombies were milling around in the corner.

Then she tried to seduce me. I say try because even though I was aroused in the dream, she's blonde and nothing at all physically my type. Perhaps it was my curiosity about her nature that was intrigued/piqued.

I can still remember her taste and smell (intimate tastes and smells)... and she nearly had me, too... but when she asked me my name, I only told her it half-correctly and I left that body and got up. I don't know if they're some kind of spiritual vampires or what, but one thing's for sure... I won't be forgetting this dream for a while. And I hope they don't figure out who I am.