Things to Run Away From Really Fast

★☆☆☆☆

SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO

01/28/11

I'm not wearing my contact lenses, or my glasses, but the world is in focus at the centre of my vision, and blurry at the edges.

Fish-Eye Lenses. Scare Factor: 1.

★★☆☆☆

11/19/10

I'm a lifeguard at an indoor pool. We're doing drills, practicing rescue techniques. I stand at the edge of the pool, deliberately collapse into the water.

Someone from high school. He's another lifeguard. He dives in after me, pulls me up to the surface.

Surprised to be shooting up out of the water, suspended in the air for a moment.

I'm staying in a hostel with two friends. Going to our bunk beds, and I'm looking up at the inside of a dome-like structure, planning my escape. We're in a group, aren't allowed to leave at night. I plan to. Sharing a conspiratorial glance with the other troublemakers.

A school. My brother and I are sneaking in with one of the girls from the hostel trip. She doesn't speak English. I shrug, tell my brother to pin the blame on me if we get in trouble. Nothing they can do to me.

Hostel. Scare Factor: 1/10.

Yeah, I haven't been around much. Between moving to a new city and starting a new job (or two, or three), life's been a little hectic. I'll get caught up on others' journals when I get the chance.

★☆☆☆☆

10/17/10



I'm sitting at a table in the library, across from a stern-looking woman my age.

"So you want to start a writing group? You realize that you'll be in direct competition with our writing group."

"Hey," I say incredulously, "I just sent out an email asking who was doing NaNo this year."

There's a man sitting beside me with his arms crossed. He snorts.

"Well," says the woman, "Be aware that you won't be able to use the library this week. It's full." She points behind me.

I turn around, and see that the walls are covered, floor to ceiling, with boxes of Corona. I turn back to her.

She sighs. "The Kiwanis club is renting the library for a Christian concert."

Scare Factor: 1/10

★☆☆☆☆

09/30/10



I'm sitting at a table in a fancy cafe. The fancy cafe is next to the walkway of a mall. There's a lot of orange in the colour scheme.

My mom is sitting across from me, trying to order drinks from the waiter. He's looking at her skeptically.

"...the water and flour, please." she finishes.

The waiter doesn't write anything down. He's giving me a look, Is she serious?

I put my elbows on the table and rub my temples with two fingers. "We'll get a caramel macchiato and a chai latte."

The waiter nods and flees before my mom can say anything else.

"Why did you do that?" She demands. "Everyone knows the flour is a code for getting all the components of the drink separately. I want to mix it myself."

"Do you want the latte or the macchiato?" I say flatly.

Scare Factor: 1/10

★☆☆☆☆

I'm switching to the five star system for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it allows you, the reader, to know which of my entries are skippable (ie: this one). For another, I'm sure it will aggravate the person who keeps one-starring my entries. You know who you are.

I hate clothes shopping. Also, "blonde" isn't in my browser dictionary. Weird.

09/25/10



I need some new clothes for job hunting. In this frame of mind, I find myself in a moderately high-end clothing store in a mall. I'm looking along the racks on the wall, and I've found what appears to be a genuinely horrifying purple-striped dress shirt. It seems fine within the dream, though. I pick up a pair of pants or two, even though they're brown and probably won't fit properly. I've decided that this store has shirts that fit really well, but I usually buy my pants at another store. I pick up another pair of jeans and head over to the changing rooms.

"Doors are unlocked, right?" I ask the salesperson behind the counter.

"What?" She looks up. She's blonde, early twenties, and has her hair pulled up into a ponytail. She looks me up and down, seemingly confused about something. I've probably switched genders in the last five seconds or something.

Time skip. I've finished trying things on. Now I'm looking at shoes.

Somebody get me out of here.

Scare Factor: Through the roof. (1/10)

Recall's a bit fuzzy. This happened in the middle of the night, and I didn't get up to write it down. In the morning, I originally woke up with the vague impression that I might have had a lucid.

Slept quite well, though. I was in a very good mood for a while.

09/24/10



Staring at a grey carpet floor, I am fully aware that I'm in a dream. I don't bother with a reality check, but I do take a moment to stabilize my surroundings (do nothing). I'm concentrating on the carpet, for some reason. Next time, I should probably focus on the rest of the room.

Nomad's RPG task is to rescue the demon boy. I imagine myself in a forest, an aura of fear tinging the air. I wait for the faint pull that will take me from one dream to the other, and

End recall.

Scare Factor: 1/10
Rating: 4/10

And then, at work, I hit myself with a crowbar in the face. Ow.

09/22/10

One gigantic funeral/conspiracy dream I don't remember. Moving on.



I think I'd been dreaming about dolls. There was, of course, something entirely creepy about them. Also, dog trainers, road trips, and friends of Zoe.

I'm walking down a short flight of carpeted steps, into the entrance hallway of a house somewhere. My foot hits the bottom step, and Oh, I think. I'm dreaming.

Reality check. I need to get back into the habit. Finger count: six.

I'mlucidI'mlucidI'mlucid, I repeat to myself, concentrating. What did I want to do, again?

Oh yeah. "Do nothing."

I sit down on the light grey carpet and place my hands palms up over my knees. I take a deep breath, and close my eyes briefly.

Everything turns a swirly grey. Alarmed, thinking I'm going to lose the dream, I open my eyes and begin touching all the surfaces in the room. Carpet, wooden bench, painted walls.

I feel that the dream is secured, and walk out through a screen door. The screen door pulls around me, warping, and I push through it.

I find myself at the entrance to a meeting place. A gym, or something. Apparently, it's for members of Nomad's shared dreaming class.

I introduce myself as "Sam", and chat with some of the other students. One girl's avatar or userpic was very pink. We ended up making out on a couch.

I'm losing lucidity, and I don't notice. One of the students is an old friend of mine, who died a couple years ago. Elaine sits beside me and whispers something in my ear.

I'm hungry. We're sitting in a cafeteria, and I have to get back to class soon. I want some vegetarian food, but the Thai place is closed, and the sushi place doesn't have anything without fish in it. Someone brings a Saskatoon Berry Pie from the restaurant next door.

Scare Factor: 2/10
Rating: 3/10

09/20/10



We're taking our lunch break. A bottle of Starbucks Frappuccino appears in my hand. It's delicious; the taste is replicated perfectly.

"Are you ready to go?" My dad asks, from the couch. He's asking if I'm ready to go back to work.

"I haven't even eaten yet!" I say, exasperated.

Scare Factor: 1/10
Rating: 1/10

Got most of my stuff packed up today. Just clothes left, mostly.

09/12/10



I'm filming a documentary about the variety of religious beliefs in our culture. My invisible cameraman and I are set up near a bus stop. I interview people and ask them to talk about their beliefs on camera.

One young woman wants me to come to her evangelical, ultra-conservative church to film and meet her minister/pastor/reverend. While this probably is a golden opportunity for me, I really don't want to go. Absolutely nothing in this scenario could possibly end well.

The woman turns into a girl I knew in high school, someone I barely ever talked to. We're going on a road trip through the US, and I'm consulting the GPS on my cell phone.

I'm walking through an airport.

Scare Factor: 2/10
Rating: 1/10

I spent most of the day packing for the move. I don't like packing.

09/11/10



Incandescent light bulbs are hanging from wires, interspersed several meters apart. It's quite dim. The dirt floor is covered in straw, and I kick up pieces of it as I walk.

I'm leaning down over a roughly made cage, which is covered in chicken wire. The top is open, and I see a few rabbits hopping about on the floor. I pick up the one that looks like my childhood pet, all white fur and red eyes. As I pet the rabbit in my arms, the dream fades around me.

Scare Factor: 0/10
Rating: 2/10

Well, that was uncharacteristic.

I wanna go back to bed. Nothing to see here, folks.

09/09/10



Misha Collins conquers the world one random act of kindness at a time.

Labyrinthine underground cities. A bluish tinge to the grand entrance halls and expansive meeting chambers. Everything carved from stone, going on into the earth for miles.

I'm sitting in a movie theatre, third row from the front, staring into space as the rest of the theatre's patrons file out. I see movement out of the corner of my eye, and I glance up at the guy standing next to me. His head is tilted to the side and he's looking at me curiously.

"Enjoy the movie?" he asks.

"It really makes you think." I allow.

He holds out a hand. "Misha."

"Sam." I say, shaking his hand. "You're one of the producers, right?"

We talk about stuff.

I wake up a few times, and I'm third person POV on a new dream. Buffy and Willow are coaching Xander through some kind of school-related interview. He has to keep eating ice from the soft drinks, or something bad will happen.

Someone says "Rosenburg" a lot, and Buffy gets lectured by a teacher for corrupting Xander and/or Willow.

Scare Factor: 1/10
Rating: 2/10

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

Funny thing. A couple days ago, I couldn't find the can opener. Now, I have a swiss army knife with a can opener, so I reached into my pocket to find it. I knew that it wasn't in my pocket, but I figured I could will it there.

Wait.

I reality checked and realized that I was awake.

Boring dreams ahead.

08/06/10

I wake up, hearing the phone ring. I stumble out of bed, cursing because I was planning to sleep in and order room service.

Oh, yeah. I'm staying in a hotel. I've been driving for a really long time, and I'm in a big city in the US, I think.

Where is that damn phone? I run out of the hotel room and into the living room. There are a bunch of blue-uniformed maids in there, standing in a circle and gossiping. I ignore them, vaulting over the couch to get to the cordless phone in the far corner of the room.

I pick it up on the last ring, and the answering machine clicks on. The tone goes off, and my uncle Roy starts to leave a message.

"Hey, there. We thought you'd be in town, so -"

"I'm here, Uncle Roy. What's up?"

Roy tells me that the rest of the family is in town, and they want me to come have dinner with them. I tell him, stiffly, that that would be fine. Really.

"Great. We'll pick you up in a half hour."

I try to protest, but he hangs up before I can. Sighing, I hang up the phone, wondering if I have enough time to order room service before I leave. Chances are, nothing my family is serving will be vegetarian.

I'll have to survive on the side dishes, though. I'd rather have a shower.

The rooms have morphed into a hostel-like configuration, with a shared bathroom and living space. Kitchen, too. I rush into the shower before an older woman can take it, and she stalks away, sulking.

When I get out of the shower, at least four of my relatives, all women from my mother's side of the family, are doing dishes in the kitchen. I tell my grandma to leave them alone, since those aren't my dishes, but whatever.

I'm at the supper when I realize my grandma died a few years ago. I rationalize this by deciding that the woman must be her sister (but I use my great grandmother's name).

***

I'm on a ski hill. My skis keep crossing.

I remember that I wanted to go on a hike. One of the trails leading up the mountain will take me to a part where it's summer.

I go to drop off my skis in a locker, then head over to the chair lift. A preteen girl is nervous about getting on the lift, but her family is coaxing her on.

***

I'm wandering around, taking down my posters. They all have writing on them, which is research for the high school newsletter I apparently publish. I'm worried about finishing it before the summer break next week.

The building is supposed to be high school, but it looks more like my old university campus.

I posted a map of the ski resort from the previous dream, but it's a really bad photocopy. A memory plays through the room. A teacher speculates on the source of the posters.

Potluck. Scare Factor: 1.

07/25/10

Despicable Me is mentioned. I should see that movie one of these days.

I remember talking to a group of DCs, but I see the whole conversation from a far-away 3rd person POV. Part of the conversation:

"Like a riot don't need order!"

"...are you quoting Billy Talent?"

Wake Up Calls. Scare Factor: 1.

07/11/10

I go to Halifax. Nothing happens.

I'm downtown, trying to sell a lamp from my old apartment to a thrift shop. It's not worth ten bucks, but they give me about a hundred and fifty for it. I'm staring at it, wondering if I should buy it back, when an old woman swoops in and grabs it off the shelf.

I wander downtown, looking at other thrift stores for something in particular. I enter one store, and apparently it's a high school reunion (for my graduating class).

I hear that a bunch of illustrators just retired from their company. I see a flash of a marina. Light bounces off the farthest point, where a woman who used to be an illustrator lives. I decide I want her old job.

I talk to River, from Firefly. She tells me she was married at one point.

I'm back in the prairies. The ground is soaked, and some of the fields are flooded. I'm standing on dry ground, behind a dike that's keeping the flood waters out.

Back in Halifax. I'm part of a group that recreates classic photos and paintings in a modern setting. There are five of us arranged in a hallway; all of us are guys. At one point, we have to say our names for the video that's rolling.

"Okay, Anton!"

I take that as my cue, and repeat, "Anton" for the camera.

"Cut!" says our director.

"Anton, Anjon, John..." I mutter to myself, frowning. Odd. I can't remember my name.

Lamps. Scare Factor: 1.