Burke's Nightly Escapades

Well, I haven't been here in a while! I pretty much stopped with my whole online DJ, aside from the tasks, but maybe I'll have to change that But for this entry, it's still a TotY one, specifically Aladdin! Off to it, then

The dream started off in a large, traditional Japanese house, with multiple rooms and corridors, but only one floor. I was in a big dining area with a good size table and about a dozen elderly women kneeling around it drinking something out of mugs, likely tea. I stood in the doorway looking at them and could see outside behind them -- there was a large gap in the wall where sliding doors should've been. It was sunny and summertime, everyone was in light clothing and I think I was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt -- the women were dressed in kimonos, but they were thinner and more breathable than more traditional ones.

I walked past them and into another room where there were some end tables and a couple lamps, but nothing out of the ordinary. I continued to walk around the building, from room to room, just looking around, not really having anything in mind. I came full circle back to the room I was just in, but the women had gone out back and were suddenly having a barbeque. One was cooking hot dogs on a grill, a group were talking, and others were playing Frisbee. It was summer after all. I poked my head outside to see what exactly was going on, but just sort of stared for a little bit, zoning out at these elderly women dressed in kimonos and having a cookout.

I came out of it and turned away, walking back the other way through the house. I came to a room that has a small swimming pool in it with a small ladder in the corner. There was tile around it amidst the hardwood flooring that normally covered the floor, and luckily I noticed something was amiss. I thought to myself, "Am I dreaming?" and plugged my nose to do a RC. I breathed in, and after a second, I could definitely breathe! It was a relief; I had been having a dry spell for a while which was broken recently with a really short, low vividness lucid which wasn't very satisfying. Being able to do a complete reality check with actual substance behind it was liberating. I looked around the room I was in, getting a full sense of what it felt like, and rubbed my hands for some stabilization. The walls were all vertical wood paneling but the ceiling didn't really look like anything; the room just sort of stopped and there was a roof, but no distinct ceiling.

Either way, I was lucid! So I didn't really care too much. I looked around the room, thinking of all the things to do, when I noticed a lamp in the next room over sitting on one of the end tables. I had remembered the TotY, but couldn't really remember what the specific tasks were. Luckily, the lamp reminded me of the Aladdin one: wish for a magic carpet, then whatever for the other two. I walked over to it, picked it up, and rubbed it. It wasn't what you'd expect a magic lamp to look like, but it was smooth and shiny, so I figured it'd work. Of all things to pop out, a DC from a couple previous dreams I had (my Hindenburg (TotY from 2012) DJ entry described him well) appeared right behind me. "Hey, what's up!? he said, startling me. I turned around and couldn't recognize him at first. Seeing my confused expression he told me, "Don't you remember? I kicked your ass a while back! For the task?"

Then it hit me, "Ooohhhhhh!... it's you. You didn't kick my ass, you kicked me in the head!" I retorted sarcastically. He had, in fact, kicked me in my head to wake me up. "It's just a saying, geez. You don't have to get so worked up about it," he retorted. "Anyway, you need a carpet, right?" That's true, I did have to take a magic carpet for a spin. "Uh yeah, you got one?" I asked. He nodded his head behind him and, sure enough, there it was. It wasn't magnificent looking at all like it was in the movie. It looked like a standard rug you would put a coffee table on over hardwood. But hey, if it's "magic" then I don't really care what it looked like.

"Thanks," I said halfheartedly. I walked past him and hopped on the carpet. I floated up above the floor a couple inches, and I turned around to say goodbye to him, but he had disappeared. Figures, he never did stick around for a while. I look back at the room with the pool in it, lean forward, and start flying quickly towards the wall on the other side. I put my arms up in front of me and break through the wall, nearly losing my balance and being blinded by the sun. I hadn't done too much dream control in a while, so I was a bit rusty. I basically rode the carpet like a snowboard, since that's something I was used to in real life.

I leaned right to turn around and take a look back behind the house to see the women still there, having their cookout. There were some guys there now, and the women were younger, much closer to the age you'd expect to have a random cookout and play Frisbee with. I got a good look at the house and the surrounding area and it was just as big as I had thought it would be. It was completely secluded with forest all around it and a small path leading out to a road a couple hundred yards out. I looked around me -- I was about 100 feet up at this point -- and could see a fairly large mountain in the distance. I circled a house for a bit a decided that this was probably good enough for the task and headed back to wish for two other things. After all, I could fly whenever.

I dropped straight down through the roof approximately where I thought the room with the lamp in it was. Something about the roof must've been off, because when I went through it I got thrown off the carpet and hit the ground hard. I could feel the dream about to be fading. "No! Not now, dammit!" I thought loudly, and as I tried to spin and save the dream, I unfortunately woke up. However! I laid still and kept my eyes closed and tried to jump right back into the dream. I'm continuing this! I won't be defeated by some roof!

And I was back in the room with the lamp, completely lucid! I did another RC just to be sure, and sure enough I was good . "Welcome back," I heard a voice say. It was him again. "Have a nice trip?" Wow, I didn't know he made bad puns too. "Oh yeah, lovely," I told back. "Can I just have two more wishes?" I wasn't sure if I could still complete the task (Ophelia tells me now that yes, a DEILD is fine) but I wanted to be safe. "Sure! But what're ya gonna wish fer?" He said colloquially. "Give me some ideas!"

"Why not another task? Or... oo! I know! A Hindenburg blimp!" Wow, he just loves making fun of me, doesn't he . "Well then, Mr. Sarcasm, how about that pool over there becomes filled with chocolate pudding?" I pointed my finger at the pool. Why pudding? I don't know, I couldn't think of anything. Why chocolate? Because chocolate pudding is best pudding. Period. "Uh, sure, whatever," he spoke lazily. I watched intently as a small portion of the pool in the middle began to turn thick and chocolatey. It slowly expanded across the water and down to the bottom, just like supercooled water freezing.

'Damn, that's a lot of pudding' I thought, and I walked over towards it. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a spoon (sometimes things are just where they need to be in dreams) and bent over. I scooped some up and right as I'm about to taste it I get kicked in by the aforementioned asshole. I fell in face first into the weird, chocolatey concoction, which was not at all like water, but I managed to right myself and breathe. He was standing there laughing, "Just be glad I didn't wake you up again!" He spouted rudely. I just spit some pudding from my mouth angrily I just now realize my lucids are often like little sitcoms/cartoons xD) "Well? What's number three going to be!?" He asked triumphantly. I thought about just wishing to be out of this mess and cleaned up, but that wouldn't be entertaining to do, let alone read .

"How about you let me kick you in the head!" I shouted. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone, part of the TotY and a little revenge . "Well..." he pondered, "I suppose I am playing the role of the genie, so I guess I kinda have to." He rubbed his chin while he spoke. "Alright then!" I yelled, jumping out of the pudding pool. No clue how I jumped, but I also didn't have any pudding on me anymore. Yay dreams! He turned his back to me, "Have fun!" He shouted. Right as he finished I sung my right leg around and roundhoused him right in the head, just like he had done to me. I blinked and was laying in my bed, awake. GOD. DAMMIT. That asshole got me again. By the end of this task I better beat him. Perhaps it'll be some good motivation!

I was driving in a car, I'm not sure what kind, down a large hill on a long, winding road. There were a few cars coming from the other direction and for some reason I thought there wasn't many for this time of day, it must've been rush hour or something. As I came to a bend in the road I looked over the guard rail overlooking a large cliff with a huge city in the valley below. I turned to my sister who was in the passenger seat and said, "We're almost there." We must've been going to whatever city that was. As we turned the corner I noticed temporary dividers in the middle of the road, like they would put down for construction, but nobody was working on the road. There weren't even any vehicles. As we continued down the road I noticed that there seemed to be an awful lot of police cars, the majority of whom were pulling people over. I wasn't speeding so I thought I was fine.

I distinctly remember passing a small, deep purple sedan with a cop standing next to the door. He was leaning into the car trying to reach something in the passenger seat. I didn't know what it was or why he was doing it but I continued on driving glad it wasn't me pulled over. Right as I thought this I saw blinking lights in my rear-view mirror; Damn, why me!? I continued around the next curve and pulled over to the side of the road. The officer got out of his car and had a very large hat on, much like troopers often wear but much bigger. He started walking towards our car and I began to get nervous. When he got to our car he didn't stop, he just kept on walking past us. He went around the next bend and when I looked behind me the cop car was gone. I looked over the edge of the cliff that the road weaved down and could see the officer standing at the bottom looking up at me. He winked.

For some reason this bumped me into lucidity. I'm not quite sure why but I didn't really question it; I was glad to have ended my dry spell and did a quick clock check for a RC. At first it said 3:17, pretty normal. I looked away and turned back to it. This time it said 9:62. Perfect, this was definitely a dream. I got out of the car and rubbed my hands together, not wanting to waste my first LD in a couple weeks. I asked my sister who was still sitting in the passenger seat and had been silent the whole time what I should do. She looked at me and said, "Weren't you asked to do some tasks or something?" Ah-ha! The TotY! The first one that came to mind was the Colosseum one but for whatever reason I decided against it. The next one that popped into my head was Africa, riding the great sphinx and fixing its nose.

I got back into the car and decided I would try a different way of getting there instead of just teleporting. I pushed a button that just appeared on the console and the car began to hover above the ground. I pulled back on the steering wheel which could now move like the controls of a plane and pushed the gas pedal. Away we went. I flew over the city, going quite fast since I figured we were in America and had to fly over the Atlantic. I looked down and couldn't quite tell what city it was but it was surrounded by desert and mountains beyond that. I figured either Las Vegas or Phoenix Arizona. It only took a few seconds to reach the mountain range and when we crossed it I could see the great pyramids over the other side. I opened the console of the car and found a staples button. Cheesy, I know, but I pressed it and a loud and, for some reason, female voice said, "that was easy."

I pushed down on the steering wheel and eased on the breaks. We landed about 200 yards from the sphinx and I knew I had to ride it up the pyramids but felt like something else was missing. Of course, the nose! As I looked it over I realized that its nose was completely intact; the whole thing looked like it had been completed just days earlier! What the heck, I was supposed to fix it . I figured since I had to fix it I might as well break it first. I flew up to its face and pulled my arm back, taking a good, solid swing at the nose. The tip fell off but I needed more, granted the whole thing was twice the size of me. I ran my hand along the bridge of the nose and then hovered over it and kicked down. The whole thing slowly slid down the face of the sphinx and it looked just like it did in the history books.

Now I had to undo what I just did. I was a little annoyed at it but hey, I want to get this done! I floated back to the ground and picked up the nose. Even though my arms couldn't reach all the way around it I was still able to somehow lift it. I flew back up to its face and set the nose in place. I then pushed it into the face and the whole thing fit like a key. Apparently this was indeed some sort of key, for the sphinx immediately began to move. Slowly but surely the whole thing stood up, looked around, and gave a long stretch and yawn. It then proceeded to lick itself, damn cat.

I hopped on its back and tried to get it to move, granted the thing's back was 25 feet wide, it wasn't a horse. I squeezed my legs like one would to get a horse to move but the sphinx just looked around and then laid back down. What the hell, this was supposed to be fairly straightforward! I thought for a moment while it started to drift off to sleep and then remember seeing cats chasing the little red dots that laser pointers create. I reached into my pocket and, sure enough, there was a laser pointer! I pointed it at the pyramid and could faintly see a little red dot, not nearly enough to get this thing's attention. I figured that, if it were a little bit darker out the light would be easier to see. I looked down at my wrist and found a watch. It said 4:00 P.M. so I pulled out the little time-set thing and changed it to 8:00. As the hands moved forward the sun went down and the moon came up. This was pretty cool, given that I had never really changed the time of day before.

As the sun went down I could feel the dream begin to fade. Damn, I haven't done this in a while! I quickly rubbed my hands together which stopped the fading and brought back some clarity but I knew that I didn't have much time left. I patted the sphinx on its back, which was still quietly laying there. It began to stir and I pointed the laser pointer at the ground in front of it; it was easy to see now! The sphinx's ears twitched and its head perked up, clearly noticing the little dot. I pointed at the pyramids which were about 400 yards away. The sphinx jumped up and immediately began to bound towards that light. I squeezed my legs as tight as I could just to stay on.

When it got close to the pyramid, the sphinx jumped, trying to pounce on the light. I quickly moved it up about halfway to the top of the pyramid, but it still ended up hitting the base and knocking some blocks off. C'mon, kitty, don't knock the thing down! It regained its awareness and found the dot again and immediately jumped up, running up the pyramid. This thing was steeper than I thought, it had to be at least a 40 degree angle (after googling it, the actual angle is almost 52 degrees). The sphinx stuttered on a few steps as blocks fell out from under it but it continued to climb up the top.

I pointed the light right at the very peak and, right as we got close to the top, the sphinx jumped again, this time overestimating the height and clearing the entire pyramid. We both fell down for a few hundred feet and when the sphinx finally landed it began to slide down the side of the pyramid. The ride was quite bumpy and I could feel the dream beginning to fade. We reached the bottom just a couple seconds afterwards and I immediately jumped off, rubbing my hands to try and stabilize but to no avail. I decided that, since the dream was pretty much over and I had accomplished what I wanted to do, I would give the sphinx a treat. I waved towards the distance, motioning for something to come towards me. While doing this I envisioned a giant fish coming out of the horizon towards the sphinx. I tried to reward it for its hard work but just as I though I saw the fish come over the horizon I woke up in my bed, my arm over my head in the same position I was waving in. The entertainment isn't confined to just the dreams

One down, six to go. Hopefully the next one won't take three weeks just to get lucid