Amurehna

On my lunch today at work I decided to take a nap in my car. I honestly only remembered this because of the angle I tilted the seat back at, I had a moment of vertigo and deja vu. It's a dream fragment from last night.
I'm laying on a hard surface, my body feels so heavy. There are people nearby but I cannot move to show them I'm still alive. I struggle to open my eyes, but I cannot keep them open. My vision pans out to third person and I see the raft. The wood underneath me, the waves lapping at all sides. It's raining softly. I can see someone curled on his side, Liam approaches through the water. He grips the timber by my head and says something to me, pulling himself up so his shoulders are clear of the ocean.

SP
Non-Lucid
Lucid
I haven't had sleep paralysis at night in a long time, which is good because SP at night always produced nightmares even if it was just about my bedroom. This time I feel it coming and it doesn't scare me. It's faint, I know I can choose to go with it or to shake myself out of it. I consider SP a rare opportunity for a partial lucid dream, so I take it.
There's a distant buzzing and my body feels heavy. I tilt my head back slowly, and the more I tilt it back the louder the buzzing gets. I actually see myself for a split second, the crown of my head burrowed back into the edge of my pillow. Then I see my room, my eyes fix on the bookcase across from the bed. Everything still looks normal, which is a plus.
For one I actually remember that I've always wanted to try singing while I'm Lucid, and this is as close as I can get to it. I feel like I've slipped between the layers of the world and found a good...transmitting spot. I start to hum ascending notes. It resonates in my head, I can feel the vibration of the notes in my teeth like I'm humming with my jaw clenched except it doesn't -feel- clenched.
I wonder if I'm actually making noise, or if it's all in my head. So I will my mouth to move and issue the beginning of words. Definitely a difference, the singing is all in my head.
I sing Liam's name and wonder if he can hear me, midday is the best time for dreams like this.



I'm dropped into the middle of a dream. I'm Clary Fray from the Mortal Instruments series. She's at a hospital, waiting in the office. She's grilling the receptionist about some event, sure that the woman knows about the person she's looking for.
The receptionist is a pretty black woman, dressed in a blue skirt and jacket. Clary exits via a door behind the receptionist but my subconscious stays to witness the next part of the story. I notice the bluish-white walls and dark blue commercial carpet. The woman picks up the phone and dials a number. She looks terrified. I can only hear her half of the conversation.
"No, I didn't say anythin---please don't! You can't! I promise I didn't say---"
The sleep paralysis has warped the dream, I can only see part of her face and the longer I look at it the stranger she becomes. She begins to gain the appearance of a stuffed doll. The eye I can see blinks furiously, warding off tears. Each time she blinks and squeezes her eye shut it gets smaller until it is an oblong black bead.
This really disturbs me. What happens next is worse. She shakes her head and begins to choke, phone still at her ear. Her head separates violently from her shoulders, twists off and lands in the corner, spraying the room with bright red blood.
I stare at this in disbelief. I know I need to get help. I no longer remember why, but I go into the corner of the room. I look myself over to make sure I'm not covered in blood, there's a little bit of spatter on my shoes.
Out of the corner of my eye I notice a black kitten wandering over the threshold. Before she can track through the blood I pick her up and leave the room to notify someone of what has happened.

The hallway outside is wide and carpeted in that same commercial grade blue. The doors are all blonde wood with silver handles. I start checking rooms for hospital staff. The first room on the right stands open. The cat starts to freak out, flailing wildly and clawing the hell out of my arm. I hold on to her, when I look into the room I understand her distress. There are two large, collared lynxes standing at the foot of the bed. One is black, the other is a kind of white/cream/grey calico with a red collar. This room is brightly lit. I can see the foot of a big hospital bed.
The next room on the right is dark and has three big black dogs.
I begin to understand that I'm in the supernatural wing of the hospital. I set the cat down and she follows me. I see the mouth of the stairs at the end of the hallway. The female cat has become a male dog and runs ahead of me to the stairs. He looks back to see if I'm following and then darts down the stairs.
When I reach the stairs I hesitate. I know from previous dream experience that stairs give me trouble.
"There's no guard rail." I think, frowning at the wide, curving, steep stairway. The steps are long and shallow, covered with raised dark grey circles. "I hate stairs. Well...won't know if I can do it until I try." I try to keep my hand on the inside wall as I descend, but the sharp decline of the stairs gives me a bad case of vertigo. I trip, and fall down them like they are a slide. I tumble out by glass double doors and try not to be embarrassed about my inability to traverse a set of stairs.
There's a woman dressed in blue scrubs with her hair tied back in a ponytail. She's at a vending machine, I call to her.
"Hey, do you know who this dog belongs to?"
She looks surprised. "He's mine. I wonder how he got out, must have jumped his wall."
For some reason I'm defensive, "I don't know I just found him wandering around in the hallway." I hesitate, wondering how I should tell her that the receptionist upstairs has met a terrible end. Will she blame me? How much time did it take me to get down here? If it's been hours will I look guilty that I've waited.
"I thought I'd get something from the vending machine while it was still slow. "
I glance down at the dog, he has a long plastic wrapped stick of nutterbutters in his mouth. "I guess we know what -he- wants."
"Hey, I don't know who to tell..." I say finally, I don't actually tell her aloud what happened to the receptionist and I don't get to hear her response. She runs past me to phone upstairs, the phone is bright red.They want me to meet back in the office so I can tell them what I saw.

I appear back upstairs and I'm walking with Clary to the office. I turn to face her and one second I'm thinking she looks exactly as I imagined her and then I think "What are you talkin' about? She doesn't look anything like Clary." As soon as I think it, she begins to look different.
For one her hair is a dull wispy blonde instead of red. I stare at her, mentally shouting at it to change, while actually flailing my hands at her. "red." nothing. "Change!" nope. "YOU. ORANGE. NOW." Nothing. The dream-Clary is looking at me with mild amusement.
"What are you doing?" She asks.
For a split second I'm not myself, I'm her mother. I take her face in my hands and lean down. She smiles at me. Her face changes, because with SP dreams nothing is really fixed, she almost looks deformed.

There's a lapse. I'm in a van, in the middle row of seats. Another character from the book, Simon, is driving. He says he has no idea where we're going. I offer to take over because, you know, you can totally switch drivers while still moving. I climb over the seat in front of me, leaving three people sitting in the back by the rear doors. I see Simon with his light grey hoodie. I make my way over the next row of seats to where Simon is and he takes my place in the back of the van.
That's when I realize he was somehow driving from the second row instead of the driver's seat. I frown at it. The driver's seat is pushed really close to the dash. I squeeze myself between it and the wheel.
"How were you even driving from back there?"
"Just talented I guess."
"That is NOT an answer."
He laughs at me.
I really want to move the seat back but I'm afraid of crushing the knees of the people behind me. Besides, I have to concentrate on driving. I turn right at the intersection...

I don't really remember the rest. Something about parking on a road in a patch of woods bordering a farm.

1/15/13
I become aware. I'm laying on my back, on a mattress on the floor. The first thing I see when I open my eyes is a skylight. Something about the glow of the day outside is incredibly soothing. I sit up and say to my dad who is standing nearby "I've never thought about how comforting it is to wake up with a window overhead."
He keeps looking in my direction when he thinks I'm not looking in his. I realize that this is not a regular house, but a ward. I've been brought here because I'm crazy.
I frown a little, then the skylight catches my eye and I decide I don't care. The worry that I'm no longer sane slips away. I am comforted.

There's a door to my left, I know it leads to the garage, it slams open and a woman bursts in. Her face is bloody. Her eyes search the room, she doesn't find what she's looking for so she leaves calling to someone outside.
"I remember this." I think. "This is an episode of Supernatural." ((It's not actually)) I know what's going to happen. The Winchesters and their friend (the woman) go to live in a house out in the country. The place is infested with pests, raccoons, rabbits, rats. They kill them and only later realize that all the animals they killed were actually shapeshifters. They're remorseful about it, which even in the dream seems odd to me. My subconscious doesn't even try to come up with a plot hole filler like it usually does.
I see them do all this, I think I may have tried to talk to them about it. The scenes I see are at night, but when I actually leave the house to find them it's mid-morning.
I run out of the house and look back at it. It's narrow but wide, a flat-faced 3 story blue colonial with windows on each floor. The back of the house faces vividly green rolling hills, and just past the house I notice another line of buildings. It looks lovely, sitting there on a hill. All the windows are open, with each gust of wind white/yellow striped curtains billow outward.

1/16/13 (dream fragment)
I'm sitting at a round dinner table. Across from me is Liam. It's like a snapshot, the space between breaths, the break in a conversation. We had been talking, but we have since stopped. He's how I saw him in the first dream, wearing a loose white shirt. His hair looks a little more shaggy. He stares hard at the table, head tilted down and a little to the side. He clenches his hand then opens it. He seems frustrated.

1/18/13
I'm in the house again. This time I become aware while standing in the bathroom. The house doesn't have any furniture, the bathroom is bare. Behind me is an elevated tub. The bathroom itself is in the corner of the house, joining two bedrooms. The walls are a pale warm yellow.
"This is the house I was in before." I think, smiling. I walk into the master bedroom. The walls are blue, the trim white. The window to my left is open, and the day outside is bright and cheerful. I become entranced by the wood floors, they're a blonde wood but the grain almost looks like scratches. In a way I'm lucid for this, because I'm aware that the floor doesn't look quite right. The more I focus on it the more realistic it becomes.

1/19/13
I've returned to the house. I become aware while standing in the living room. Just like in the other dreams I'm standing in a spot where I can see into a couple other rooms. To my left I can see the entry hall and a small room right next to it. In front of me is a short hallway and en exit door. I can also see the side of the stairs going up to the second floor. I know that across from the stairs to the left is the kitchen, but I haven't been in there yet.
"I'm here again." I think. My return makes me happy, but I can't quite say why.
It's no house I have ever actually been to. I turn around to look out the window behind me...

I'm in a sort of hotel. All the shelves, trim, and tables are deep walnut and almost look black. I turn to put something in one of the mail cubbies and I hear a voice. There are two maids standing at the counter, intercepting a message. The man standing on the other side of the counter reminds me, achingly, of Liam. His face structure doesn't seem right, but his personality fits. He is sharply dressed, a black vest over a white shirt and black slacks. I try to get his attention, I can actually FEEL myself turning into a moron. (Well...not literally)
The women keep getting in the way, they think he's attractive and don't want me to talk to him. I stand off to the side, frowning. I see myself as though I'm standing right behind myself, so the side of my face, and the way my hair is pinned up. The fact that it's curly and black and not really my own anymore. While he's talking to them I doubt that he looks like Liam at all. I give up trying to get his attention, which just seems to get his attention.
"Sorry, I've got other messages to run. I'll come back by before I leave town." His eyes slide from the other two women to me as he's turning to leave and gives me a crooked smile. The familiarity of it strikes me hard, he's gone before I can react.

non-lucid
sleep paralysis

I've gone back to the medical center, it's Monday morning. I can't remember if they need me to get blood drawn in the morning or if they were just going to do it at the appointment that evening. I figure going anyway can't hurt, so I go. When I get there, people are gathering for a hallowing costume contest. A scary and annoying woman that I recognize from work (not really) is wearing a dark green robe with bright green-yellow stars on it, there are flames on the arms, and she has a cardboard box on her head with a picture of a witch's face on the front.
"I'm sure I'll win!"
Another costume goes by, for a second it makes complete sense then it doesn't make any. Two people dressed as Dracula are carrying a tall cardboard booth. It's height is even with theirs, the top of the booth has a cutout with a red velvet curtain fringed in gold. There's a face there, some politician. When they duck their heads into the flaps on the sides, the politician looks terrified and then starts to bleed. They talk about how genius their costume prop is.

I start to get a headache. I go upstairs where they're supposed to be drawing my blood. I briefly talk to the girl at the end of the hall, she tells me I'll have to come back in a few hours, but if I want I can rest in the room to my right.
"Do you have anything for this headache?"
"Sure, take this." she hands me a syringe full of opaque bright green liquid. I wonder if it'll even work on me.
"It should also help you sleep."
"Alright, thank you."

I walk into the resting room, which looks like my parent's room from the house I grew up in. Sort of how I saw it as a kid, that the bed takes up almost the entire floor and has a thin red velvet cover. I lay down as far from the door as I can get and I wonder if I should even take what's in the syringe. While I'm thinking, the ugly witch comes in and lays down. She says she doesn't have long before the costume party starts, but she wants to rest.
I start to feel strange, my abdomen is cramping then turns into a sharp pain, my head feels heavy. I start to worry that I'm having a miscarriage. I'm laying on the bed and I can only move sluggishly. I turn my head, wondering if the witch will notice I'm distressed, since I can't speak.
She does, she leaves yelling for help.
A man comes in, he's dressed in too-small clothes, he's overweight and has greasy curling black hair.
"I heard someone like you was in here. You're my favorite, all helpless. The best part about you is your spine." He climbs onto the bed and straddles me, pinning me down. He makes a grab for my wrists and I start fighting, as slow as I feel he's even slower. I claw at his face but he sits back out of my reach.
Then I remember the syringe. I fumble for it and find it under the covers. I pull it out and make to stab him but he slaps it from my hand.
"You stay right there...I'll be back for you."
He disappears out the door.
I struggle to move and only manage to roll over. I crawl out of bed and find the syringe, the needle has popped off. I find it and twist it back on. I can hear him coming back so I go and hide under the covers with the syringe in my hand....

The dream breaks off into another kind. I'm shopping, my boyfriend is with me. I glance down and realize I somehow have words imprinted on the crook of my left arm.
"I love Liam"
I'm afraid my boyfriend will see, I cover the imprint with my right hand and cross my arms.