Zukin's Dream Journal! <3

Descending into a Smothered Consciousness

I was at a speakeasy in the middle of the 1920s. The bar was crammed tonight. There was a pianist in the background and I was smoking a cigar. I was a flapper in the right crowd.

I was engaging in a conversation with a man when I began to notice that people were leaving towards the back of the bar. Curiously, I followed them to see what the rush was.

I discovered that they were all trying to go up a staircase in the back of the bar. I pushed past them to see where and why they were so desperately trying to go.

The rustic staircase winded up to a lonely attic where I found a door.

I opened the door.

And I saw stairs going back down again. But, these stairs were different. I was now out of time and out of place. I was in our era, but in the fire escape of an abandoned, vandalized building.

The stairs were lit up, as if calling to me, and I could see the dim spray paint letters on the wall. I sat down on a step, slipped, and then SLID down the stairs.

I was sliding down them as if there were no steps at all, just a smooth angle. Lights rushed past me and I felt my consciousness sinking deeper and deeper.

After that strange experience of sliding down four flights of stairs warp speed I tried to stand up.

I felt strange.

I felt as if my awareness had suffocated, my body felt heavy and I just wanted to collapse where I was. It felt like I was being drowned out by anesthesia.

I looked around and wondered how I would get back to the bar. It was dark in here, there were no more lights to guide me along.

From observing, I saw that I had two options.

My first option would be to continue on in the fire escape. I saw that there was another flight of stairs that I could take down, but in the middle there was a large gap. I might be able to jump over that. But what pushed me away from this option was that there was a hooded man standing in front of the gap. He stood there as still as a sign post. I felt as if he was a trap. I was already about to collapse, and this would make the perfect opportunity for a predator to capitalize.

The second option was a gleaming EXIT sign to the right of me. Naturally, this may have been a first choice for anyone.

Except, when I opened the door under the EXIT sign, I saw a bloody dead body on a tile floor.

I wasn't sure I wanted to take any of the aforementioned routes. But, I had to take the lesser of two evils, so I took the second option and walked past the dead body.

The door lead into a small convenience store. I was still feeling horrible, and I needed help. I felt myself losing consciousness and called out.

A woman answered my calls. I was interrogated by her to provide details of what happened and she requested me to show her this strange staircase.

We went back through the door from where I came. However, there was no longer a staircase.

We found ourselves in this strange nether region. The region was hilly and large, and we could see that on both regions there were doors. We believed that perhaps one of those doors held the answers to what we were searching for.

We split up, and I took the western door and she took the eastern door.

We quickly discovered that near each door out of the nether, there were strange little beings ready to attack us. They are hard to describe. They looked like little inter-dimensional robot things. For the time being, we called them 'caviar'.

These robot beings varied in fighting skill. Many of them were easy to just knock off, but others seemed like they just wouldn't die.

For a second, I woke up.

Before I could reach for my DJ, I instantly felt myself sliding back down that winding staircase, descending deeper and deeper into the murky depths and again feeling that horrible feeling of smothered consciousness. I couldn't escape it.

I slid down to the bottom of the staircase. Instead of winding up in the strange room with the malicious man, I was now in a rustic room with odds and ends everywhere.

I realized that I was on the western side of the door where the woman and I had tried to open.

The antique objects spoke to me and told me that I would need something to defend myself out there, because the robot beings were ready for attack. They gave me a shield. It was black and red. Seeing that I was also barefoot, they equipped me with old boots and gave me a sword. I thanked them, and was awoken externally.

That Familiar Feeling

I was in the lobby of Jin's apartment, even though he didn't live here.

The floor of the lobby had a complex circular design. There was ice on it. Slushy ice, that was melting.

"I feel...like I have dreamed this two or three times before..." I whispered, feeling the ice beneath my fingertips.

"Let's go," Jin directed. We went up to his apartment where his brother was. His brother looked like a miniature DJ Ravine.

His apartment was on more than one story. The kitchen would be on a different floor than the bedrooms. It was really fascinating.

He showed me his bedroom. It was blue. In the middle was a bunkbed. Off to the side there was a bathroom that connected to his bedroom, and near that was a shelf.

"I have definitely dreamed this before..." I whispered. I couldn't shake that strong feeling of familiarity.