Things to Run Away From Really Fast

★★★☆☆

LUCID

If my hair keeps changing colour in the pictures, it's because that's what it tends to do IRL.

09/26/10

Fragment about going to my (late) grandma's church for a Halloween party. There were some really cool decorations. A distinct lack of alcohol, however.

I'm in the front entrance to our house. Everything seems normal, and I do a routine reality check just because. I count my fingers. Onetwothreefour... new ones start sprouting. Well, that's weird. It's almost like I'm dreaming or something.

I try again, and I get to seven before I give up. Obviously I am dreaming. So... Nomad's task. I need to get to a forest. I jump out the nearest window into the front yard. My brother is there, hanging out with a DC from the Halloween party. Definitely dreaming, then, and whoa...

The dream is destabilizing. The entire world tilts on its axis, and white lines start running parallel to every object in the scene, as they do in Assassin's Creed. I stop to take a breath, keeping my eyes open, and I start touching the objects around me. I kneel down and touch the grass, the concrete driveway, a metal railing, and I'm back.

I decide that the best way to get there is to run in a straight line. There's a forest directly to the south, I convince myself. I cross the street at a run, hit the wall with one foot, and leap onto the brown-shingled roof.

I don't stop. From the first house, I jump onto the roof of the next. Keep moving. I land on some kind of antennae, and the structure sways dangerously as I make the jump to the next structure.

I'm on a scaffold. The next building - a warehouse - is an impossible distance away, several feet higher than the platform I'm jumping from, and twenty feet away. I jump the gap, and I'm suspended in the air.

I pull at my momentum, bending the dream to allow me a few more meters in height - and I grasp the edge of the roof. I pull myself up near the chimney. On the other side of the warehouse is a big camping tent set up in someone's backyard. I jump. I land on the tent, and it cushions my fall, billowing out around me. My vision is filled with yellow and red, and I think hard, imagining the demon boy I'm supposed to rescue, and the dark thing that's after him...

The forest is oppressively quiet. I can smell the pine, feel the hot mugginess created by a recent rain. Fully immersed in my character, I stand in the center of a huge clearing, waiting.

A flash of red goes zooming by. I've found Nomad's demon boy. I'm slightly disappointed. I was hoping I could use this opportunity to discover Amon's origin (a DC I've apparently mentored throughout his life). Instead, it's just a regular demon.

He's being chased by a wolf. I recognize the creature as an entity from my childhood nightmares. It's back, and I'll have to deal with that eventually. For now, I allow the demon child to distract it.

I spot a piece of paper on the ground near a pond. Picking it up, I skim the text. Instructions from Nomad on what to do next.

Did you save the demon boy? Y/N

I look up across the clearing. The demon is running as fast as he can, frantically trying to get away from my nightmare creature. The wolf is gleefully giving chase. I'm not sure whether he's actually any danger, or if he's just toying with the demon. Either way, I have no interest in rescuing the child.

Did you propose to the barmaid? Y/N

I look at the paper, and blink. And blink again. No, WakingNomad, I did not propose to the barmaid. Although, I should pay a visit to Denn sometime in the near future.

Scare Factor: 3

Also, this result amused me.

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

09/02/10



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

Friday, July 2, 2010

Teleporting is hard.

I'm standing by a river. The sky is bright blue, and the dry grass is long and yellow. I'm looking up at the sky, staring at an illusion that's some kind of sculpture, a clue into my quest during this dream. (This was a long and meandering dream, but I don't remember most of it.

I'm the producer for a play. It's going well, but during the middle of it, Harley Quinn and the Joker show up and start dancing. The crowd cheers, and I'm not sure if this is part of the play or if the characters actually showed up.

"Write as if it was my plan all along." - written in journal

There's a parkour club in Quickton. I tag along.

---

I'm Harry Potter, fighting Voldemort. He sends me into an alternate dimension, and I have to get back to my friends. There are death eaters in the buildings around us, raining down stunning spells as if they're snipers. "If you get hit seven times, you're dead," says my companion. I deliberately get hit by stunning spells, counting, and they send me back to the previous dream.

The windows are leaking. We have to stop it because the magic could get in. We're holding the building against Voldemort, but it's going to be destroyed soon anyway, so we do a quick job. Hermione staples stucco wire under the windows, and I use an air nailer to keep the frame in place. The way that I'm holding it in the dream would probably break my hand IWL.

I'm either Harry or Voldemort, fighting the other one. "Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus!" I shout, matching the other character spell for spell, effectively blocking them. I realize I'm probably Voldemort. "Avada Kedavra!" Seriously, these spells are kind of hard to remember.

---

One of Ben's friends, a guy my age, is pissed because I just told him off for something. He throws a few punches my way, but always misses. He attacks me in earnest, throwing punches hard and fast. I block them easily, redirecting them in circles. One punch hits me, but I barely feel it. The guy is getting more and more frustrated.

Finally, my brother pulls him off me, and we go rob a grocery store.

---

FA. I wake up in a house that resembles my rental in Squamish. Ben and my cousin Reg are in the basement. I look at my right hand and count my fingers. They're blurry, and my fourth and fifth fingers keep fading into one another. Weird. This doesn't feel like a dream. I try to remember a more dependable RC, and pinch my nose. I can still breathe, but shouldn't I be able to anyway? No, wait. I have my mouth closed. I really am dreaming. I wonder if the boys are gonna go all nightmarish on me.

I think back to my lucid goals. 1) Talk to a DC on a phone. 2) Find Hazel. 3) Teleport. I go to pick up the landline, but change my mind and grab my cell phone beside my bed. I call someone; I don't remember who. I talk to them and hang up. I type into my contacts for Hazel, but the number isn't there. I phone information, ask for Hazel. The woman on the other end tells me crabbily that there are a lot of Hazels in the world, which one do I want?

"The one from DreamViews, obviously."

"This number is not in service."

It's night outside. My mom is sitting in the car, apparently waiting for Ben. She has some weird emo-style haircut, and I'd be more weirded out if I didn't know this was a dream. I use telekinesis to lift up the fringe over her eye, checking for zombieness. Obviously, I'm not completely lucid. Ben leaves the house, catches a ride with my mom.

Reg is still here. I have my hand outstretched, focusing on wherever Hazel might be. I'm trying to draw myself there so I can teleport. I turn around briefly.

"How do I teleport?" I ask the DC.

"How the hell should I know?" asks Reg. He pauses and sighs, "Just... stay like that for a while. Until you wake up."

"Or it works?"

"Like hell."

The dream starts fading into different solid colours, and I wake up back in the Squamish-room.

I hand check again. Most of my fingers are missing. I pinch my nose. Still dreaming.

I go outside and there are a bunch of dogs on the porch. There are also a bunch of people talking about their pets.

Telephone, Take 2. Scare Factor: 2.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Apparently, psychopaths are drawn to the martial arts.

I'm in the middle of a karate class. I don't know the instructor, and I think I'm new to this dojo. The students are preparing for an upcoming tournament, concentrating especially on their kata. One man is leading a bunch of other students in a kata, but I notice that he moves with a limp.

The head sensei, an old man, shows up beside me. He explains that it was he himself who crippled the other man. You see, he explains to me, this man was my student at the time. Apparently, the other man was using what he learned in martial arts to abuse women he was in relationships with over the years, and the head sensei put a stop to it. The other man's punishment was that he would no longer be able to reach his full potential as a martial artist.

I'm talking with some of the other students, when I remember I have to check something. I sit down on the grass with my laptop. Firefox is already open, and I start to type something. Or maybe I'm clicking the Stumble button, I don't really remember.



A girl from high school shows up and sits on my lap, taking the computer. I look over her shoulder as she types something in.

I'm playing a video game that's a cross between Saint's Row 2 and Assassin's Creed 2. Why all the sequels?

I tell my brother about a bug in the game. I load my save game and see my character collapse and die. The game reloads, in a different place. I collapse and die. Cue loading screens to a bunch of different characters and places. Collapse and die, collapse and die, collapse and die.

Finally, we see a cutscene. An old woman is the queen of the land; she's bedridden and giving orders to messengers. Apparently, she was my character's mom at one point, only I keep dying and getting reincarnated, so I've been missing for the last thirty years.

"Change in next music and chocolate."

...what?

Lucid moment. I look at my right hand and notice that the three little fingers are bent, but it feels like two of them are, and the other three are extended. Wait a minute. I glance up and look around, but the dream is already over.

Sensei. Scare Factor: 2.

In which insane and bloody doctors offer to change my appearance.

I'm picking up floor joists by myself and placing them in a third layer over the existing ones.

"What are you doing?" asks my dad.

I set down the thirty-foot piece of wood and gesture like it should be obvious.

"We already did that," says Dad, "We don't need any more."

I look down, and realize that he's right. Oh.

---

I'm driving around Quickton, driving around all the cars that are parked haphazardly in the middle of the road. Did I mention that DCs aren't allowed to drive anymore?

---



I'm wandering around Ixburg. It's night, and my surroundings feel very real. I look at my hand anyway, count my fingers. I count five, but my pinky finger is just a stub, and I know that I'm dreaming.

I go through my mental list of lucid goals, and decide that I'll try to find Hazel. Only, I know exactly how this phase of the dream usually works out, so I decide to send her a message instead.

I pull out my cell phone and send a text, asking where she is. I immediately get a reply. I put the phone to my ear and hear a female voice telling me that she's at the zoo. I tell her to stay there; I'll try to come find her.

"I'm lucid, I'm lucid." I mutter to myself, going over to the church doors that I'm standing near. I pull them open, thinking, Lions and tigers and bears...

I see a faint blue light, but when I step inside, I'm still in Ixburg. I sigh. Obviously I'm going to have to work on that "power of belief" thing. Whatever, the door thing has never worked for me.

I'm standing by a mirror and idly playing with my appearance, going for "more masculine" and "more feminine", back and forth, changing faces at random. My skin is starting to feel stretched too tight, though, and I step back from the mirror.

A scalpel slices across my cheek, drawing blood. The girl holding it dances back, twirling happily around the room. I watch, unconcerned, as she and another, identical, girl come up to me and place their arms over my shoulders.

I don't remember exactly what they say, but the consensus is that my shapeshifting abilities leave something to be desired. Amused, I allow myself to be led over to the bed and handcuffed to the headboard. The twins step back and make a grand gesture toward the door.

An older woman appears, seemingly armed to the teeth with surgical tools. "I can help you gain any appearance you wish," she says.

"What," I say, taunting, "No anesthesia?"

"It's a dream. You don't need it."

I pause for a second, and seriously consider the offer. "Nah," I say, freeing myself from the handcuffs with a thought. "I got this."

The woman shrugs and disappears.

I stand up and walk over to the closets that are in the room, looking for a grey suit. I don't know why I'm looking for a grey suit, I just feel like wearing one. I try to make one appear in the one of the two closets, but fine-tuned dream control isn't my forte. I'm better at the "mass slaughter" kind of thing.

The twins continue to try to be helpful, but I ignore them.

I go over to the wall and stretch out a hand. I'm trying to dissolve the dream, reach through the Void, and pull up a new location. I see spots where my hands are, and I think it's working. I reach forward - my hand bumps off of a very real, very solid feeling wall. I try again. It's not working.

I wake up.

Like a Surgeon. Scare Factor: 2.

I'm running up an underground staircase. I had the route planned out ahead of time, parkour sequences that he won't be able to duplicate. I've run through the attic of a school and into this place, a spiralling staircase with nothing but a thirty-story fall down the center.

I get to level ground, and something feels off. I look at my hand. It's clawed, and pale-white, and moving on its own. I watch with sick fascination as the fingers move in impossible patterns, until I tear my gaze deliberately away, trying not to get more freaked out.

When I look behind me, nothing is following. I look down the staircase and wonder what would happen if I -

I jump.

I feel the sick thrill of falling for a few seconds, before I reach out and catch myself in a web of orange and yellow, meters from the stone floor. I float in mid-air, close my eyes in contentment, and wake up.

Spiral Staircases. Scare Factor: 5.

I'm in a familiar place, messing with the controls on a high-tech piece of equipment (possibly the Stargate). My partner is a girl named Susan.

The building is a small house with fake-wooden paneling on the walls. There's old and worn furniture scattered throughout, mismatched and comfortable. There are a huge number of people in the house, milling about and chatting, but the atmosphere is mournful. Apparently this is a funeral or a wake.

I'm trailing beside Susan as she moves through the room talking to people. Suddenly, she half collapses, sobbing. I turn to our boss and tell him I'll take her away from the crowd.

I tell Susan that we're going into the lounge. I support her weight as we walk into the room and I have a strong feeling of familiarity with the location. I help her over to a couch and she lies down. I go over to sit on a recliner.

When I look up, I see that Susan has come to stand beside my chair. She asks if she can sit with me. I move over, and she sits down with me. I imagine the chair laying back and the footrest coming up. Susan and I lay down together, and I drift off to sleep.

I wake up, curled on my side in the chair. Susan is gone. I get up and pad through the living room that was full of people last night. I pop into my head into the den, and ask my dad (who's watching TV) where Susan is. He says she's probably sleeping in one of the bedrooms.

I stare at all of the people in the room, whose faces I can't really see. I notice that some of the people seem to be disembodied heads under various blankets all over the room. I dismiss the phenomenon as being normal for a dream, and go to find Susan.

Susan is, in fact, sleeping in one of the bedrooms. I close the door quietly, trying not to wake her.

When I step away from the door, I decide it's time to double-check my suspicions. I do a hand RC for the first time in a dream, staring at my left hand until the fingers move separately from my will and thick red blood begins to foam over the knuckles of my ring and middle fingers.

I'm somewhat disturbed, but I decide it doesn't really matter. I look at the digital clock on a VCR, which reads 1:45 PM. I decide that the time isn't unreasonable, since it was around 11:00 AM when I last woke up, and I had time to sleep in today.* I will the time on the clock to change, and it flickers. I repeat the hand RC.

I stretch out a hand in front of me, willing open a portal to a skyscraper. Instead of a portal opening in front of me, the door across the room to my left opens with a bang, letting the bright morning sunlight stream into the room.

I step out of the house and look around. There are mountains surrounding the town. The mountain I can see between buildings is a sloping, tree covered hill, and I'm happy to be on the mountainous west coast. The buildings are probably a couple centuries old. The church I can see has a spire reaching up toward the blue sky.


St. Paul's Church, the oldest building in Halifax, NS.

I repeat the hand RC, hoping to extend the dream. The ring finger on my right hand is missing, but when I look closer, I realize it's still there. The light seems to bend around it so that it's just barely visible, like the non-existent puddles on the highway in the middle of the summer.

There's nothing resembling a skyscraper nearby, so I throw open a few doors, hoping for a portal to a bigger city. I go through one, into brighter light, but I'm still more or less in the same place.

I'm just outside of town, looking at a delapitated building. There are no doors that don't have shelving inside, so I focus on the people who are there. Selina, a girl I graduated with, and an old man who looks kinda like one of my art school professors (Mike) are the only characters who don't fade into the background. They're picking things up, working on repairs to the heritage site.



Mike and Selina greet me, and ask what I'm planning to do. Mike says that if I'm planning to go into the woods, I should avoid making deals with the beings there. They can offer a lot, so it's a hard temptation to resist - the creatures could bring back any of my relatives from the dead.

I wryly assure him that I've had a similar dream before, where someone warned me not to bring back the original Elaine. By this point, I'm well aware that anyone I try to bring to life will come back wrong.

Mike is wistful, saying that if they would come back right, all of us would be willing to live without our souls, and to hell with the consequences.

I remember to do another hand RC, but I'm waking up. Everything fades and when I wake up, I already have my eyes open. I do another digital-clock RC, but I'm really awake this time.

Girlfriends, Dead People. Scare Factor: 2.

*It was around 12:45 PM when I actually woke up.[/QUOTE]