The book of mars

i am with a group of people. we are connected via friendship, or maybe circumstance, but not necessarily blood.
maybe blood too. i can't tell, or maybe i can't remember. we're not all related though. there's about 6 of us.

this epic i awoke from is fragmented, and i carry over only pieces, like a drunk night's morning. they are probably not in chronological order, but i'll try to make it make sense.

scene one

i am in the woods with the group.
we are together, but spread out over the trail. i can see the last person and the first person.
we are looking for the "bad guy" of the story. he's some king but only the word applies, he's not royalty or at least its never talked about. for some reason we know he is in a "cold room", which is a specific thing.
quite all of a sudden, and i mean ALL OF A SUDDEN a train cuts thru the middle of our group. i can't see the rest of the people, and one lady is missing. she might be my grandmother, but that's a 50/50 chance.
the train goes by, or somehow we all re-group with the train still going, and after everyone thought she died, she is here, fine, shooken up but alright.
i think to myself how we really have to be careful because the trains can come from anywhere, anytime. there are no tracks.

scene 1.5

we all go to the train station. the train hasn't arrived yet. there are two hobos who are waiting for it, to jump into the boxcars and go. there's a third man, standing and staring at us. well fuck, that's the guy!
someone says his name is "dale" or something with a D....the train arrives. he was on the other side.
me and someone else go into a boxcar just to see how it is.
it is pretty much the inside of a VW, two facing seats inside a rectangle box. kinda nice.
we get out and the train leaves. no dale and the hobos are gone.
my mom is with me, or maybe she's part of the group. she uses my phone to call someone named dale.
"wait no, now he'll know my number and know where i am!" she called the wrong dale, i had two: some guy, and THE EVIL GUY!

scene 2

we are outside a supermarket. we are coming up with some kind of plan. we go in, and everyone scatters.
time goes by, maybe i do my part in the plan, i don't know. after some time, i start to panic.
where is everyone!?? i run thru the aisles, and there is a feeling like i'm being chased or watched or waited on.
i see a boy i know who wasn't part of the original group but was part of this plan. he's running around with his cart empty, so i go up to him. he talks to me and i help him put a lot of wine in his cart.
i hold a broom. it's part of a plan.
we escape now, and run out the door. the alarm goes off, and they chase us out for a second, so i throw the broom at them. "yeah i stole it, here have it back," is what the action meant to say. they didn't notice the wine.

scene 3

i am running, running running up a hill, towards a bingo hall. i am with someone else.
we run up to the top of the hill that it's on finally and hide. we are going to try and track down where the cold room is, where dale is.
i go into the hall and it's a store. i take a magazine and when i come out and open it i realize its 300 pages of models. boring. i text heather. my mom's here. we're going to look together.

scene 4

i am in the cave/forest/dungeon/tunnel/room. the final one. the-boss-key kind of room. we will find the cold room here, and dale, and defeat him or whatever we're doing.
we are all spread out in this long room. its like mountains and forest inside a cave, inside a building.
i climb thru some of the obstacles for awhile. its just a hunt for a long time, dream-time too. climbing and climbing.
then, behind me someone yells they've found it!!! what? i'm pretty much at the entrance.... she's behind me even further. how'd we miss it?
seriously, how'd we miss this: at the beginning of the room, there's a secret ledge. there are footholds but they have no depth so they don't look real. well, they are. she climbed up 'em and at the top is the cold room!
which isn't actually a room. it's a cylindrical hanging piece of cloth, and i guess dale is inside that. and it's probably cold in there...because that's what someone told me.
well, okay, looks like i'm gonna be the one to confront him first. i grab a ribbon thats hanging from the ceiling and swing over to the ledge, grab it, and hang on. i climb up, and talk to dale.

his voice booms, like thru a loudspeaker. it is just like wizard of oz. a big big boomy death voice...actually a man behind a curtain. well actually...dale gets to talking, and the voice is completely female afterawhile. whatever?
dale asks what i want to eat, and i say a grilled cheese please...i get it, and eat it, and it's good.
now he confronts my mom, who's sitting at the entrance.
lobster! duh....he sends her lobster. she's eating, and then dale makes it rain electricity all over her.
what. what. what. what. he just killed my mom!!!!
it's still raining, and i don't want to live without my mom, so i jump from the ledge onto the floor where my mom's sitting.
i get struck by electricity balls already accumulating on the floor and more from dale. the feeling is crazy.
my whole body is conscious of every other part of my body, and i can feel my skeleton. i am my skeleton only.
i crawl to my mom, and close my eyes.
then i open them. i'm not dead...this just feels really cool. she slowly opens hers, and she's not dead, but she's worse off than i am. we sit together as dale addresses my dad now.
i don't remember what he asks to eat, but he doesn't get struck or anything bad. just eats.
after dale asks everyone in the entrance what they want, he talks to me. (he's talking in a male voice for this now, before it was very female).
he says something about music to me. recently i have wanted to try my hand at an instrument in waking life because i've never really studied music, or how it all works, or really listened to music with a musician's ear.
he talks to me about this, and scolds me by saying how i've never listened to real music.
he offers me more lemonade, which i guess i had a glass of with my grilled cheese. i say no...
my mom says "that's like a GOD and you're not accepting more of the food he's producing on his own by magic???"...shit, put that way, i realize i'm an idiot.
he offers my dad more watermelon and he lets me have a piece, now that i realize what this food is. (somewhere along the lines, dale became a neutral figure, not good or evil, and very magic...)
the watermelon is the worst i've ever had. it's chewy and without water.

The Glowing Forest and a Coaster Ride



I am in a really junky part of Maine, although like always, it’s beautiful. This time its exceptionally pretty: the car I’m in is traveling through a dark forested area on an old road. The moss on the great redwood trees illuminates our way enough so we don’t have to use our lights. Little glowing worms and luminescent animals scurry around. I see a moose with glowing green antlers in between the giant trees. In the car, my mom and I are discussing how much money the houses here cost.

“About the same price as living in the library,” my mom says. I nod as if this makes sense. It does in dream world I suppose.
Our friend Alice Louise is taking us to appraise a house for a guy and his daughter. Along the way she points out some noticeably pretty houses. Most of them have been built into the surrounding landscape; some are carved into trees, some are half sunken into muddy swamplands. One that she points out she’d like to live in seems too small, perhaps the size of a fairy house but a fairy mansion.

We turn into the driveway of a pretty normal trailer; one of the only normal houses in the area. It’s unfortunate that this is what we came to see, not one of the prettier houses. We meet the father and the daughter. The daughter is Abby (an acquaintance in waking life). All of us step into the sunroom which is attached to the side of the trailer. Suddenly it moves, detaching itself from the trailer, and rotates all around it to the other side. This was the “appraisal” that we came here for with Alice Louise. We’re ready to go.

Strangely, when we leave, it’s just Alice and I. She’s driving and I’m in the passenger seat. We’re in the country now, surrounded by low green fields and a big blue sky. The occasional farm passes by my window and there are silos on the horizon. In front of us there’s a guy running manically. He has long scraggly black hair and barely anything on except skin tight white running shorts. If he had a shirt on, I don’t remember. He seems to be running for fitness comically. We kind of catch up to him and slow down for some reason. He comes to the window.

“This is still Washington even though it’s not snowing,” he says, leaning into the window on Alice Louise’s side. She nods and they keep talking about how we are in the very middle of Washington where there is never snow or rain. He gets a little aggressive when he speaks, as if we aren’t particularly welcome right now. We drive off and he begins to run again.
Now the country road we were on has a four lane high-way coming the other way.

“See, we’re not even in the country anymore. We’ll be home soon,” Alice says.

The scraggly-haired man is ahead of us again. We see that he’s throwing sandbags on the road! That will definitely stop the Jeep we’re in. We dodge one but the next is in the center of the road and our front right wheel hits it dead on and we come to a stop. Now the only way home is to use…the roller coaster that is running along the road on the shoulder.

We each get into one of our own coaster cars on the ride. They are cartoon dinosaur heads; you step into its mouth, with the eyes and the nose above you as a roof. Mine’s blue, Alice’s is red. They not only run forward on the roller coaster track, but turn 360 degrees with inertia. I don’t like this. There’s a big hill that we are going up. In front of me, I see other coaster cars. They are jumping from track to track; we are on a similar four lane high-way but this side of the road is a roller coaster. I want to jump tracks like those cars, so I do. It’s easy with intent. When I jump, the coaster car does a flip mid-air and lands on the next track. Sometimes, the cars jump over other cars. It’s kind of a nice sight.

I realize we are going uphill faster than I expected and I don’t want to feel the fall. Although I like roller coasters, this hill is steep: twice Superman, if you will. I close my eyes and forget the dream. I become aware of my sleeping body. Yes, still asleep, not on a roller coaster, not about to fall…

I become aware of my dream body again once I am at the bottom. Alice Louise is gone from my dream. I am now in a gift store: the final destination of the coaster cars. There are a few wooden racks of hand-knitted things. I look at a pair of mukluks that my brother Holden had (dream memory, not in waking life) and remind myself to ask him to buy them for me. A girl comes over and looks at a rack of facial creams. They all have a certain element to them, but I forgot what it was specifically. She debates if one of the creams has that common element with the store clerk.

Kayla (a girl I know in waking life) is buying a pretty unique pair of gloves. They have the fingers cut off hobo-style and are black with Nightmare Before Christmas things sewn onto each finger. The back of the hand part of the gloves have a big skull sewn onto them. She is dressed all gothic-esque and has an air of “I don’t give a shit if I’m retreating back into this style.” (She dressed the same way years and years ago). I lose the dream.



Lucid Beach

I am on a beach with Heather. There’s a ton of people all taking up the shore space, but we find a little sand-muddy area. It’s not particularly nice, but it is the beach (and its winter in Maine, so its pleasant to dream of). Heather starts having an anxiety attack because of the people so we go to the “next” beach, a few feet from this one. They are distinctly not the same beach, but are very close. On this one, there are no people. We have sex, but it doesn’t really work out and we end up laughing and leaving.
There’s a sign on the beach that says there’s a sale going on at “B♠N”. What a weird name for a store I say to myself! We look up and B♠N is right in front of us. In the parking lot area of the store, which is all sandy and car-less because of how close it is to the beach, my mom’s kind of disembodied voice begins to talk about Zelda. Heather responds by saying she’s played all of them, which she has (in dream life, not waking life). I feel weird because I introduced her to the series and still haven’t played all of them (I have in waking life). I become lucid thinking of the name of the store. Jack and someone else are with Heather and I now and we all go into the store. I retain my lucidity but simply watch the events and notice the surroundings. In the store Heather says something about dreaming.

“This IS a dream actually!” I try to convince her and she laughs and kind of “knows” that it is, and I keep pestering her about it. I touch her and really feel her skin.

“It’s weird how I can actually feel your skin,” I say. I’m not amazed about the act of feeling it, but at this point I’m thinking of how my mind is either creating the feeling of her skin, which is an exact representation of the feeling in waking life, or I really am feeling it…on the dream plane. My cat jumps onto my sleeping body and I wake up.


An Anonymous Gift

I’m in my high school. For some reason I take my pants off and put them on the janitor’s cart. I have my white long johns under them though, so I don’t look too strange. I begin walking to my class. Someone in the rotunda says my mom is embarrassed in her classroom (she doesn’t work here in waking life) so I go see her first. Her room is where my 11th grade English class was. It’s set up the same way. She tells me I have a package in the office and I should get it soon. I don’t remember to ask why she was so embarrassed.

I go into the bathroom. Heather is here. Somehow, she ends up out the window, trying to crawl back inside from two stories below on one of those fair game ladders that twist and turn as you climb them (usually horizontally). She’s crying manically and saying the ladder is slippery and she’s going to fall. I somehow manage to take all her limbs and with the help of the janitor who comes in to clean, we get her inside. She’s really distraught.

I leave the bathroom and Heather is now Autumn. We go into our classroom. My 5th grade teacher is our teacher now. Lynn, a friend of ours, laughs when we enter the class an hour late. The teacher is really upset with me in particular and tells me to go get a late pass if I have a good excuse for my tardiness. I leave but have no excuse; I just want to be gone from the room.
I walk downstairs and take a drink at the fountain. My teacher had been following me to see if I was going to the office to get a late pass or not. I casually stroll into the office. I don’t like being in trouble, so I intend it to be the end of the day so I can get off the hook. The bell rings and all the kids scurry out of their classrooms. I sneak into the back area of the office and call UPS from the office phone and tell them not to deliver my package if it’s going to be late. I don’t know why I do this, since my package is already here. It’s nicely wrapped and has a stamp with my name on it.

I bring it upstairs to the benches and open it. It’s a pair of goggles, like steampunk-esque but modernized. They’re red with orange accents. I close the box and leave the school.

My mom picks me up and we begin to drive on back country roads. It’s raining pretty hard, but I’m having a nice conversation with my mom and we don’t mind it. I show her my goggles and she likes them. Neither of us know who got them for me or where they came from. We arrive at this old trailer that I used to know in waking life. In my dream, it’s where Heather lives. Without getting out of the car, my mom somehow knocks but no one comes to the door. I know Heather is home. We just leave.