Carabas

A classic black and white movie called Death in the Rain, with Ingrid Bergman, and a reference to Rappaccini's Daughter.

Labyrinth's Sarah falls into an oubliette, but it's a fairly large and well-lit spherical room built of pale brown stones, a few fallen leaves drifting around, and with a pale gold stylized metal sculpture in the form of a double helix rising in the center. She's just walked all the way around the circular room with one hand on the wall searching for openings, when Hoggle appears and she asks where he came from.

Playing the role of a man who lives in a major city. Two detectives have just left my home after questioning my family and everyone else on the estate, and stressed out, I go to the park for a run. The tree branches are all bare.

3rd person. Tradition dictates the pharaohs of this dynasty marry on the first day of the new year for symbolic purposes, but his intended bride is tired of waiting. She cuts her leg with a knife and lets the blood run down into the dirt, a ritual attempt to soothe the drought the land is going through with her own life; since she isn't yet royalty, this is all she can do. Her intended husband watches this and decides to break with tradition and hurry the wedding. However, there's an incident where the couple goes on a voyage with their servants and attendants, and a woman is seen waiting outside at night to meet a lover in secret - it may have been one of the servant girls, but a rumor starts that it was the intended queen.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm a student in a small class of maybe 10 undergrads, taught by Mr. G., a favorite IRL high school teacher, in a room based on the chapel building at that high school. We're giving presentations, and as I go back to my seat afterwards, I manage to knock over the display that holds up the TV monitor. I catch it and try to put it back to rights while the next person is talking but fail miserably, I think I broke something. One of the other students comes to help, this short geeky guy who does something very complex with the display, and I just stand back to watch. Turns out he's really, really good with his hands, I'm kind of into it. That was unexpected. I start talking to him and he mentions that he's got some hobby that involves building things, which seems pretty cool to me since I'm pretty much useless at anything practical, but he looks like I'm making him nervous so I back off.

But when the scene changes to show me back at my apartment (doesn't resemble anywhere I've lived IRL - colorful and cluttered, deep blue walls, hanging plants and vines in every corner), he's come along with me and my friends, or roommates, I don't know who these DCs are meant to be but we're close. As we walk in the door, the short/geeky/unexpectedly hot DC is saying to one of them, this blonde girl with all these little braids in her hair, "You're not on the drain, are you?" which is apparently some kind of drug. "I would never," she says, acting all offended - waking me can't tell if she's serious or not, either way dream me thinks it's funny. We came back here to get high anyway.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'd been flying down through the levels of some mansion and heading outside, planning my night, weighing the appeal of being alone vs being seen, but when I fly out the door, True Blood's Ginger is at the gate. She wants to come back to work at the club. She'd taken maternity leave but lost the kid, and tried to come back to the club pretty much immediately afterward, but the boss told her to take the paid time off anyway - I don't know why she's so desperate to come back, she doesn't work for tips so the money's the same. But she convinces me to let her in, and she tells me where to find the key to the gate. I go get it, but it's got some kind of trap - when I uncover the key, a dart shoots out and hits Ginger.

Flashback. First time I'd met Ginger, she'd been hysterical, claiming someone, a priest, had been kidnapped by these two guys I knew well and was being held in their barn. The guys tell me the priest was there, but perfectly fine. Giving a sermon, in fact.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

3rd person, following Julia. She's waiting by a statue at the gate to a city park, sometime around the turn of the 19th/20th century, and she works in a country estate as a maid or a nanny or a governess or something - anyway, she's just come into the city for the day. She's meant to be meeting one of the other servants there, but the woman she's meeting is late. Julia doesn't really mind, it's helped her make a decision actually. She's been thinking about how much fun she had on an earlier outing with me, just watching (??? something involving birds, seemed like a very ordinary everyday event for most people but something she hadn't done before), and thinking about the drab grey dress she's wearing, and always wears, covering her ankles, and generally thinking about taking chances and breaking out of her shell and so on. She stops waiting for her friend and, thinking about how much she's got to do and counting up how much money she has with her, she first goes to buy postage and mail a letter she'd already written but hadn't decided whether or not to send until now.

Her thoughts about money derail the storyline - a guy at the door of a restaurant convinces her to step inside and she finds unexpected fees piling up on her.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Just a fragment of dialogue (phone call woke me up): "-chance to take hold. Valerian root," in a male voice, possibly mine.

3rd person, following a blond guy named Colin. He's frustrated with his relationship, and as he's lying in bed, he decides to invade the dream of an ex-boyfriend. The ex, a kind of hippie-looking guy with curly hair, is in another relationship now and doesn't want to cheat, even in a dream, which Colin thinks of as ridiculous but also part of why he's fond of this guy, so he just transforms himself to look like the ex's current boytoy.

But a stray thought about the failed relationships he's had since this guy causes the dream scene to change to show those relationships. (Meaning my dream, not Colin-and-his-ex's dream.) For a while he'd been hooking up with a demon, who was a real sweetheart but they never managed to turn it into anything more serious than occasional hookups. Then for over a year he'd lived with this guy who works at the expat bar, and Colin can't believe he put up with that guy for so long - great lay but massively uncomfortable with witchcraft. He would never even set foot in the basement where Colin worked, and he'd make these 'in the closet' jokes about 'broom closets' and then explain the joke every time, hahah, closet, broom closet, witches, get it - what a douche. Colin thinks he should've done it the other way around - hookups with the bartender, move in with the demon.

I'm traveling, and attending this formal dinner. I'm seated next to this older guy who occupies some position I'm very respectful of, something to do with myth and ritual, and he asks me about what my legacy would be. I'm not a native speaker of whatever language we're using but I believe the word he used has a connotation to do with children, so I talk about being an uncle to my IRL sister's kids. (She doesn't actually have any yet.) He and the people around us seem disappointed by that answer - as if it's an acceptable answer to the question, but an indication that I'm not the kind of person they hoped I was. Then, unsure if I'm translating this accurately, I change my answer to "if the stories I tell are remembered." Now he seems much more approving.

Fragments from earlier: Taking a bunch of tourists to see a show claiming to represent old Aztec traditions, stepping back from the show while they watch, and standing next to an ancient Aztec dead man, listening to him mock the show. 3rd person, a magician who traveled and was misinterpreted a certain way by the people he met became known as 'king of kings' (my first waking association with that was Ozymandias).

I'm playing the role of Dean, and I'm tired of listening to the way the demon wearing our father's face is talking about Sammy. The Fallen, the man in the white suit - that's really the way you things see him, isn't it. That's not him. That was never him.

Different time, same character, similar rant about morality and our role in the world. Except this time I seem to have worked myself around to the opposite point, that by trying to destroy monsters we've become monstrous ourselves, and I'm tired and bitter and when I'm done talking Cas says with this look of revelation, "damn, we are evil!" He's laughing, and I agree. "Yeah, Cas. You too." And I shoot him. That's been a long time coming. The guy we'd been hunting down escaped during this, but he's arrested by the cops outside. Julia's tied to the chair where he left her, and I look at her and wonder if we can still separate her from the evil thing possessing her - I think of it as a part of her.

Earlier dreams and fragments: attempting to get to a Halloween event and running into one problem after another, with a few IRL people and places appearing; and a protest or strike at a memorial service.

I'm playing the role of a blonde woman with some kind of investigative background, now working with some kind of crime boss. People keep describing this as "a deal with the devil," me as "the devil's instrument," and so on, though I think of him as basically a decent guy. I meet up with him in a storeroom full of stolen goods waiting to be sold - small scale, everyday objects - and he tells me he doesn't mind if folks think of him as the Devil, it works out to his advantage, because after all, this way, "I am not real." I'm aware there's a double meaning there, it's a metaphor meaning I'm the person who deals with the world directly while he gets to stay in the background, like a ghost, never to be caught; but it's also a reminder that none of this scene is real. Since it's not real, I decide to stop wasting my time here and wake up.

Earlier fragments: following a truck transporting exotic animals; working on a farm picking berries, and getting annoyed at a coworker's spiel on northerner-vs-southerner work ethics; googling for references to Janette DuCharme, under that alias specifically; browsing a Halloween forum.

There's this rich and powerful old woman who sends her goons to fetch me and Julie. One of the guys working for her warned me that she's got a thing against shapeshifters like us, and I'm pretty sure we're in danger but Julie's already gone with them. She's not entirely right in the head, off in her own world most of the time, so I don't know if she can read the atmosphere, realize there's a problem here. When we get to the old woman's place, she's lying on a bed with more goons in black suits around her, but she stands up to greet us. There's a line of tiles in the floor inlaid with zodiac designs leading from the door to her bed, and it's important for ceremonial reasons to step only on that path, like the old woman does; but me and Julie just walk naturally, sometimes on and sometimes off the tiles. The old woman makes casual conversation as we approach, pleasantries, and I worry again whether Julie will be able to recognize this as a dangerous situation, but when I look over at her, Julie's got a knife in her hand. She looks happy.

3rd person. Two sisters were raised by their grandmother, and the grandmother favored the younger one over the older one, to a ridiculous degree. The older sister confronts her grandmother on this, which she's done a thousand times before, but this time the grandmother tells her a story about her past. One day the grandmother's wayward daughter, who'd disappeared months before, just turned up on her doorstep with a girl who looked about 4 years old, a creature created by magic. She didn't explain where she'd been or what she'd been doing all this time, she just left the creature and disappeared again. Now the grandmother feels she's done her duty by the little monster just by taking her in and raising her at all, so now that the truth is out, she expects the older sister to understand the favoritism and quit complaining.

3rd person. A wealthy household full of various factions is gathered by a very old tree to discuss their leader's potential divorce, and how they can use it to their advantage. But I wind up focusing on a group that's ignoring the family politics and telling a story about this old tree, something like a fairy tale or a ghost story. Two children were transformed by the ashes of a witch's bones. One transformed into the image of the witch herself, the other transformed into something monstrous and deformed, vaguely donkey-like, and this allowed them to 'walk in strange places.' On certain nights a parade of witches (both men and women) passes by this tree, and disguised with the witch's ashes, those children joined the parade.

1st person. For political reasons, something to do with an organized crime group, I was briefly married to Julia, an extremely influential businesswoman and vampire. Now I've just about gotten things with that crime group settled and there's no real reason for us to keep up the sham marriage, and I'm surprised how conflicted I am about that. I'd gotten used to life as her husband far too easily. I'm thinking about how up until now I've been dealing with a 'tame' vampire, not the real deal. I'm looking over my shares in her businesses and thinking about selling. It'd be enough for me to live on for the rest of my life, if I do leave.

3rd person following a woman, and I'm aware this scene is about to become a nightmare, something involving a husband who came back from outer space wrong, carrying something inside him that will manifest in the house in strange ways, killing him and trapping her here. It's already starting to feel like a nightmare, so I take over and steer her toward the front door to change the scene. It takes two doors to leave the nightmare/house.

Outside, I'm my IRL self, and I'm walking out of the mansion I'm temporarily staying at, walking down to the road to see if my IRL sisters have arrived yet. I follow the road toward town, and I pass Tilda Swinton walking the other way and rubberneck shamelessly, walking backwards until she's out of sight. Eventually I come to a fair, where a few people are in costume, including myself, something patriotic-themed. I spot my sisters in the crowd but don't want them to recognize me while I'm in costume. The crowds push me into one of the tents showing various curiosities, and one of them, something about a man who fell from the skies, switches the scene to something more stable.

3rd person following a man who observed that if you trace every human interaction you've had throughout your life, and all the interactions those people had and so on, it creates a fractal pattern which he used to warp time and space around himself, condensing it all into a single point with himself at the center, the God of this world. The ground loops over his head to meet itself in a single vividly-colored sphere. Although he's the only creature that can exist in this sphere, there's a door through which he can watch or enter the old world at any point in time or space. The world's been completely transformed by his actions, all throughout its timeline. At the moment he's observing the writing systems that are developing. He's been translating the various markings that he's seen through the door, images made by different cultures throughout time and space, but as far as he can tell, none of them are using a written alphabet. All the markings translate into numbers.

He walks through the door into the same point in time/space that he'd originally lived, modern times. The place has been through something like an apocalypse as a result of his actions, but it's mostly recovered now. He seeks out a friend who'd tried to stop him, and they talk about the changes in the world, and about what's happened to his older brother's estate since the funeral. 'For a madman, he was alright,' the other man says.

A setting that looks like it's based on ancient China. I'm about to transport a prisoner, a high-ranking woman, but the focus of the dream is on the people I ran into guarding her cell, two men I'd known during what I think of as 'the bloodstained war.'

The dream moves into a flashback to the war: I was some kind of government official, something to do with money. It kept me out of the fighting at a time when most men my age were soldiers, and I was conflicted about that, especially since my job required me to work closely with the military. Those two men guarding the cell had been soldiers who briefly acted as my guards while I was traveling through a dangerous area. During this flashback, we met a priest who I'd kept in contact with since, and I'm thinking about the major contrast between how earnest and naive he was then and how cynical he grew to be.

(I woke up. I went back to sleep for one more hour.)

Modern western setting, I'm playing the role of some teenage guy. I'd gone back to my hometown by the sea, thought I was just passing through but got into some kind of trouble and wound up stuck working as a camp counselor as some kind of community service. I'd resented it, wanted nothing more than to get out of town, but as I stuck around I've wound up being a lot fonder of the place than I expected, like some kind of cheesy family movie plot. Also my ex-girlfriend is working at the camp and maybe isn't an ex- anymore. And this is the last day of camp. So I'm in a good mood as I'm riding my bike back to camp after running an errand in town, getting stuff for the ice cream party at the cabin tonight, looking around at the streets and remembering dumb kid pranks and rivalries and shortcuts around here, when I happen across an octopus in the middle of the road.

It's still alive, though it doesn't look too good, it's not moving much. We're just above the beach here, so I scoop it up and return it to the water, and it perks right up - and immediately crawls right back out of the water to cling to a rock. But at least it's not in the road anymore, and it can get back to the water if it wants. It left burns on my arm, like a jellyfish, which I think of as the normal result of picking up an octopus. When I get back to camp my maybe-not-an-ex sees the burns and goes "oh, you didn't," and yes, letting myself get burned was dumb, but what else was I supposed to do?