Amurehna

I...don't feel like proofreading this.

My house is more like a dorm than a duplex, the hall is wider and has more doors, but all the colors are the same. I wander into our room and think it still feels more like his than ours. I can hear my boyfriend talking from the kitchen, he is telling someone that he is going out to pick up food for a party. In our room there is a stranger in the bed with a blonde woman. They aren't really wearing anything. He has coerced her into playing a sex game. I find myself sitting on the bed, strangely intent on their actions.
"What is the point of this game again?" The woman asks.
"Jesus! The point is to see how long I can kiss you without vomiting. You're disgusting. When was the last time you showered?" He's being a huge jackass but she doesn't leave.
He coerces me into 'playing', and eventually I say that I'll only have sex with him if he calls my boyfriend in to help. Some more strangers come into the room, the same ilk as the man in the bed. At least they're wearing clothes. They decide that since I'm not playing his game, I can play theirs. It's called 'See how long you can stay conscious while we beat you'. What, doesn't that sound like fun to you?
I struggle as they pull my legs out straight and begin to strike me. I'm surprised by how much it hurts. The stranger decides he's going to have sex with me whether I want it or not, says that's what I get for being a tease.
Thankfully I fall unconscious.
I 'wake' with the sensation of arms wrapping around me. It is so realistic that I cry out and try to struggle away.
"Hey, are you alright? It's just me." It is just my boyfriend. I relax and lay next to him for a while. Eventually we get out of bed. I want to tell him what I've done before the stranger does it. What will I say? I was curious and it turned out badly? For a minute I thought I wanted to sleep with someone else? Before I can figure it out, he leaves.

Something else happens. I can't remember, but I'm coming back into the dorm/duplex and I am suddenly lucid. As always, I'm amazed by the clarity, how real it feels. I round a corner and find myself in the hall outside our room. Ours is the only one standing open, I go inside but my boyfriend isn't there.
At first I intend to find him, but when I get back into the hallway I start to mentally call for Liam. At the end of the hall is a wide wooden gate that is about my height and 10' wide. I immediately notice that there isn't a handle but I'm curious. The force of my curiosity creates a gap between the corner of the door and the wall. I hook my fingers into it and pull until it creaks open. On the other side is a collapsed tunnel. I hear a distant rumbling and dirt showers down from above. Of course, I think cynically, the one way I want to go is blocked off. It doesn't occur to me that I can clear the way. Instead I close the door and as I'm turning away notice a faded white dumpster filled with sapphire blue dirt. I'm having trouble with my eyes. The right one keeps dragging and skipping images. I think that maybe if I keep it closed I won't wake up, so I gently close my right eye with my finger and cover it with my hand. It seems to work.
"What are you doing, silly? You aren't using your eyes." And once I realize that, I have no further trouble seeing.

There's a breezeway and another sharp corner where there's a bathroom. I hear one of the managers from work talking about me, saying that I was such a whore for sleeping with a stranger, in my boyfriend's bed, while my boyfriend was in the other room. It makes me ridiculously angry, I see them leave out the side door and take the front door which leads out onto a bright pink pathway made of metal grates, that runs parallel to the path below. I suddenly have a bat in my hand. I run, savoring the feeling of the wind on my face and how the metal vibrates under my feet with each running step I take. I run lightly, easily, cutting off the three people below and jumping down in their way.
I land on one person, smack the second with the bat, and when the manager has the audacity to be amused, I throw the bat at his face.
There. Problem solved.
Then I realize the person I landed on is my friend Laura and I have hurt her. Still, she is glad to see me. I pick her up to carry her home, but her body is stretchy like...rubber or taffy. Or maybe a length of fabric. And for some reason there's a cat sitting on her chest. I struggle to pry it off of her and then cast it away so I can lift her more easily.


Um, something about a funeral? I was being disrespectful by riding a bicycle around while a man tried to talk to everyone who had gathered to honor the dead. When he mentions that food will be brought out, and that the caterers are fantastic, two people come outside with the food...carrying a vat of pork in a container shaped like a pig, that's suspended between two poles and is dripping grease everywhere. It smells delicious.

Here I go. =/ Maybe I should have prefaced this with something: This is one of the most awful nightmares I have ever had. The first part seemed normal, and then my subconscious decided to twist it into something disgusting. I'm almost impressed. -.-

We are in a long wide dining hall, the walls and floor are worn wood. There are long tables with plank seating. I'm wearing a billowy

white blouse with khaki riding pants and knee high boots. I am a young women with chin-length dark brown hair. I sit down next to a young man who has short medium brown hair. His features are perfectly shaped, high wide cheek bones, a constantly smiling mouth. I am seventeen, he is eighteen. I am in love with him and sometimes I am certain he knows it, as my best friend he knows me well enough to understand. Sometimes I think that he loves me too but he has always been so careful. A friend of ours named Robert has recently returned home from a long trip comes to sit with us. I don't remember where he went but it had been years since we had last seen him. Adam, the friend I am in love with, gets up to follow Robert. Watching them leave makes me feel a little sad.

"Hey, Deidre, come and look at this." Adam calls. I go to him, smiling. This part is pretty strange. He shows me a man that isn't who he

claims. Adam narrates that it is a golem controlled by magic and enchanted to look like someone we know. Somehow we see straight through it and so we see black eyes set in a bald clay-gray head, slope shouldered, wearing a faded quilted black tunic. As soon as it walks up to us we greet it like it really is the ambassador. It responds with a proper greeting, but follows that with an unintelligible scramble of words.

"See?" Adam says, we all share a secret smile as the golem walks stiffly through the crowd. It was sort of like we were on

stage and that whole scene was an aside to the audience, we ignore It and follow Robert out of the hall like we encountered nothing out of the ordinary.

There is a garden courtyard between wings of the house. It is night and a single wrought iron lamp post stands in the middle over bench on a dais. I find Adam sitting on the bench. He is obviously upset but he won't tell me why. I remind him that we used to play here as children and he nods absently, pretending he is fine.

"Hey, Addy." I say in a consoling tone, "Whatever it is, you can tell me." I drop to my knees next to the bench and slide my arms around his waist, resting my cheek on his thigh.

Here I come back to myself a little and I am no longer Deidre. Holding him is peaceful and familiar. It reminds me of Liam and for a time I put aside the character of Deidre and close my eyes to savor the moment, smiling in contentment. He's wearing a faded black button up and black pants, I notice out of the corner of my eye. I can feel Adam becoming more upset and my understanding of his character overlaps with my interpretation of him as Liam. Adam cannot reciprocate Deidre's feelings for him because he is in love with Robert, and at the same time I can feel Liam as he is trapped in the form of Adam, wanting so badly to reach me but locked in the confines of the dream, so that it is not possible. I want to tell him that it is alright, that I know about Robert, I want to tell him that I know he is not Liam, but that doesn't matter because for now he feels like him.

Adam hesitantly strokes my hair and my dual-nature snaps apart so that I am once again Deidre. I know he is trying to force himself to

feel something for me other than friendship. I sit up and give him a brief hug, I realize then that he's fantastically drunk. I help him stand and we stumble to the far side of the courtyard, by the time we reach the heavy stone threshold he is crying freely. We fall down in a tangle of limbs and he sobs pathetically that I should not help him at all. He ignores my protests to the contrary, telling me that he is in love with someone else.

"Is that someone else Robert?" I ask. That stuns him into silence. It makes me sad that he'll never fall in love with me, but I know he can't help it.

....and then the dream takes an ugly turn.

The dining hall is inside and outside at once, so that the far end has no wall and lacks a ceiling. At the enclosed end in the corner is an

ivory colored couch. We have a female friend over, she's sitting on the back of the couch and I am kneeling on the cushions with the front of my body pressed to the back of the piece. I have something gross on my hands that I get all over the top of the couch, and when I get up I realize I have left a large water stain where my body had previously leaned. A courier arrives with news from our father. ((because, you know, we're siblings, and in case you weren't paying attention that means I'm in love with my brother, who is in love with our older brother...eeeeeee)) It is a letter for us and a small wooden crate filled with nesting fiber. There is a necklace in the envelope, it has two overlapping pendants, a crescent moon and a dagger. Robert hands the necklace to me and I put it on, when I lean over the back of the couch the dagger pricks my chest and I rub at the wound absently.

The courier is not a physical person anymore. Robert is standing nearby reading aloud a letter we have received. The letter explains

what happened to our father, how he went mad then raped and murdered a woman, he says something about the contents of the crate being cursed, and that it will spread to all our family. As he is saying this, I'm holding the necklace away from my skin, looking horrified. Adam though does not believe it. He is to enthralled by the crate to pay attention and neither of us are watching him. He thrusts his hand down into the crate and comes up with a handful of sand and a tiny stone artifact. The effect is immediate. The sclera of his eyes goes black, the irises turn orange/red, like flame. Black growths force their way out his skin along his cheekbones. He holds the artifact up over his head and a mad grin splits his face grotesquely.

"Adam?" I slide off the couch and begin to back away from him. He is too distracted by this new development that he doesn't notice me.

Yet. He stalks around the room, Robert seizes his arm to stop him and becomes cursed just as quickly. I know what they will do to me because of what is in the letter. Never mind that Adam is gay and a day before would not have touched me. It no longer matters because his mind is gone and his body under the control of the rage. I run for the door in the corner that leads out to the deck stairs. He gives my shoulders a shove and I stumble. I feel his fingers slip under a gap in the back of the waist of my pants, he tugs lightly. Almost tentatively. I scramble away but he is still hovering over me.

Spoiler for One of the rape parts, if you would rather skip it.:

Now I have a choice, I have a split second of lucidity and I think "It won't be rape anymore if I stop fighting. I know he isn't Adam anymore, but this is the closest I'll ever be to him, and so what if he beats me to death after? Then I won't care anymore."
I pretend that his hands on my waist don't make me feel sick, the greedy skittering of his fingers on my hips when I unbuckle my belt.
At first it isn't so bad. I don't feel anything one way or another, I just ignore his animal-like grunting and uncomfortable stab as he moves. After a few minutes he becomes wildly violent and I decide I made a mistake, that I really can't endure this, I fight my way to the wall. There is a button there on a touch screen that I can push to stop the simulation. So I do.

I get a do-over. I see Adam pull the figurine from the crate, and his transformation. I immediately dart for the door and make it halfway down the steps before he tackles me straight to the ground. I scream and struggle out from under him, fighting around to the front of the house.
Then there's something about the golem trying to attack us, and me and the others trying to throw flashlights at it, but the things are too heavy and not good for throwing at people. (O.o) The yard we are on is clearly the front yard from the house in MA. Except the grass has a blue tint and the sky looks more like a ceiling painted blue.

Spoiler for Second rape part.:

There's a break. I am out on the yard and the end of it morphs into a wall where there's almost an enclosed pool (I don't know, my dream layouts are weird). The curb is more like the edge to a public pool. We are waiting for help, someone has called the police and fire department. There are people sleeping everywhere, mostly men. They were all naked, and when the curse takes effect they are suddenly all uh...erect. They feel like time bombs to me. That if I wake them they will all be on me and then I will have no hope of surviving. I might get raped, but I am going to live damn it. A chubby young man begins to catch the curse and changes. At first he looks confused and distracted...then he notices me. I make a run for it and he chases me, I vault over the wall at the end of the yard and try to flee to the corner of the pool where the stairs are, but he leaps down with surprising agility and slams me into the wall. My head feels like it is going to split open and and I become disoriented. He flips me over, hands clumsily fumble with my nightgown. He's too heavy to knock off of me. My best bet is to wait until he's...distracted.

I try not to focus on what he's doing, and I try not to laugh at him, because even in the thrall of the curse he is inexperienced and can't

even effectively rape me. His movements are inconsistent, but the slack jawed expression he wears disturbs me. When he shifts his weight for a better angle, briefly freeing my arms, I reach up and slam my palms against his ears. He cries out and falls backward. I stand up and knee him in the face as hard as I can. I can hear people moving around on the other side of the wall, but they are talking so I am certain that they are not cursed men made monsters. I mount the wall and see female police officers everywhere. They are cataloging evidence. The worst part is there are children laying down at the edge of the pool. Some of the more unfortunate ones have lived through the experience. One blond-haired little girl with blood-shot eyes stares at me, too injured to move. The children laying on each side of her are either dead or asleep. Olivia Dunham talks about the signs of assault and rape, pointing to various pieces of evidence before pulling a sheet over piles of battered bodies.

There's a lapse, it is some time in the far future. Because I was one of the first cursed and I am a woman I have lived ages longer than I should have. I'm in a sanctum of sorts, there are priestesses who serve the Cold, they are called Whisper Mothers and Sisters. Their garb is almost like a nuns, except the wimple is shaped differently and their robes are in layers, slashed black over robes with white underneath.
They were responsible for subduing the entity before my father unwittingly unleashed it so many generations ago. It went curiously quiet after the event at the pool, laying in wait for the proper time. Now it has begun again. I hesitate then get the Whisper Mother's attention.

"Mother..."

She continues to pace.

"Mother?"

Distractedly she stops, clutching an elaborate cross that hangs around her neck. It is silver and has a ruby at its center. "Yes, sister?"

"What caused the Emergence?" I ask.
"I don't have time for questions, Lady." She responds.
"Is it true the madness began with a stone artifact?" I ask.

Then she truly looks at me. The servants of the Cold value truth and clarity above all things. They may seem harsh, but they are a product of the world in which they were raised. Her eyes sharpen and she purses her lips in worry.

"Yes. A stone artifact fed by the fire of shame."
"Please, I am only curious if there is a way to stop It from happening again?" I ask.

She paces the width of the sanctum. There is a heavy weathered wood railing and something like a decorative bulkhead bisecting the end of the room. "Truth may be enough to stop it, and the blood of the repentant. So, tell me." Her eyes flick to me, cold with recognition and accusation. "Are you repentant for laying with your brother Adam?"

"I never lay with Adam." I say, dropping my eyes. I suppose that allowing him to rape me counts.
She narrows her eyes at me. "You are a liar, Deidre."
"Yes." I agree, feeling the weight of my shame. "Yes."
"Still, there is something we can accomplish, the others are on their way here."

My view pulls out a little, viewing the scene from overhead. From here I can see the walkway outside, and the great circular stained glass gate where a Whisper Sister waits and an assassin in black and red leather armor is stealthed by the entry way. No one will get by, the Servants of the Cold must be protected.

I see a distortion in the air, a heat wave. A spark and a cruel laughing mouth inside a cooling lava face, horns curling back over its

head. Its flame tongue licks the air. Silent in its passing it steals in through the door, scorches on the wood mark its path across the floor, it slips in like a ghost and alights a touch upon her brow, and when the creature passes she has turned to ashes on the ground. Screams from inside filter out to where I stand, all within have died before they could lift a hand. I can hear the Whisper Mother inside, screaming wild negations and questions, "Why this, why now after all this time?", It has saved her for last.
The sister outside shrieks in a desperate forlorn way when she realizes that all the women inside are dead, the assassin at the door wrestles her away and they flee together.

And so I get a sense of the Flame. A vast, calculating mind that cares for nothing at all, its singular dream is to burn the world to

cinders and scatter the ashes in the wind. It wants only to consume, take, until everything is gone. And it will. It will.

False Awakening: I rise to another layer of sleep and think that I am awake. After all, my boyfriend is playing Skyrim on his computer just like when I fell asleep. He notices I am awake and comes to kneel on the bed. He kisses me but the idea of doing anything like that after a dream about rape is not at all appealing. I tell him to stop and I mention the rape dream, but he keeps touching me anyway not realizing that it is uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Then I really wake up. Thank God.

Captive
This one felt strange because for most of it I was a ghost. In most dreams, obviously, I switch characters seamlessly and hardly notice that it's happening. This time however, I consciously make the decision to become her.

We are in a small basement apartment and is an entirely new construction, which is odd for me. Most houses are, in some way, ones I

have lived in. The walls are dark red, the carpet beige. Immediately to the left of the front door is the bathroom, three steps in there's a couch sitting across from a loveseat. There is a floor lamp with a simple glass bell shade. I'm crouched by the loveseat.

On the couch is a thin woman in an ankle length light brown dress. She has extremely curly hair, it's a wispy pale brown. A man pins

her to the cushions, she is still mostly clothed, so is he, but it's still obvious that he's raping her. She issues soft, breathless sobs and negations, her blood smeared hands push ineffectually at his shoulders and chest.
I want to bash his face in. I urge her to grab the lamp shade and hit him with it, and after a moment she looks at it and considers following my suggestions. As she is reaching for the neck of the lamp, he finishes and stands up. I get a view of his back as he zips up his fly and tucks in his shirt. I glare at him. She watches him with fear and uncertainty. She sits up, lowering her skirt back over her knees.

He says that he has to leave for work, and explicitly outlines what will happen to her sister if she tries to leave. He muses that she can't

possibly expect the police to believe that she was held captive and raped, after all, he is a police officer. He turns to face her, looking out the high narrow windows, buttoning his cuffs. He's about 5'7" with short black hair, a cruel face with black, dead eyes. She can't stand to look at him, and when he begins to walk toward her, she darts for the bathroom and slams the door behind herself.

We can feel him on the other side and how little her flight has affected him, how very little she can do against him. She feels like

screaming or crying. We hear the front door shut and lock, apparently it locks from the outside too. Just in case she became adventurous.

My eyes settle on the single window above the toilet. I urge her to look out. She pauses to wash her hands and then does as I say. She

has to climb up onto the toilet to look outside. The bathroom, like the rest of the house, is painted red. The window is more like a screen on a hinge, and on the other side is a cramped tunnel.
I watch as she stares outside, between the hedges to where he's standing talking to my boyfriend. I hear him say that he has lost his car keys. Which is true, but he's also a police officer ((complete fabrication)) from out of state. Something has made him suspicious, but he can't put his finger on it.

"Sorry buddy, I can't help you. The manager inside might have a phone you can use."

My boyfriend heads inside the apartment building. The woman's captor stands beside the car there, talking on his cell phone.
Her hand falls limp to her side. I press my boyfriend's keys into her hand. She doesn't even question how she got them. I urge her to go, but she's too terrified. I step up and become her. I open the window and squeeze myself into the tunnel. It is a little more than one length of my body, I scrape my elbows wiggling forward. I reach the other side and wait until his back is turned, I separate from her and watch her crawl out. I follow after. We hide behind a solid backed bench on just the other side of the hedges.
She freezes, and she can't anticipate his movements like I can. I join with her again. He pivots and we go to hide behind a black Dodge Avenger. We hear our captor get into a car and drive away. For a moment I'm confused, and think I'm looking for my boyfriend's old car, a teal Sunfire. I hesitantly click the unlock button on the key and the Dodge Avenger bleeps from behind me. I separate from her hand urge her to get away before my boyfriend comes back. She opens the driver side door and slips inside...

Battlestar Galactica

The house we're sitting in feels like my childhood home in MA, except that it is only one level, and beside the front door there is a

raised part of the floor, like a single step. Across from that is a low, dull gray table.
I am Cally, Chief Tyrol and Boomer sit on the raised section of floor, grimly regarding the table. I walk to the Chief on my knees, my eyes are burning and my throat feels thick. Our story has run its course, and yet we find ourselves here all over again. Running from the Cylons. I get a sense of where we are in the story, sometime before the settling on New Caprica.
Chief has his arms cross. I tug one of his arms free and he looks down at me with mild surprise.

"Cally." His voice holds the trace of a warning, but now is not the time to worry about appearances.
"Chief, could I...?"

He lifts his arm and a curl up by his side, he drops his arm across my shoulders.

"Chief, does this mean that we have a chance to do things differently? To make better choices?" I ask, it's difficult to speak.
"Yes, I suppose it does." He replies thoughtfully.

The relief that brings me is amazing, it's such a gift, to start over. The chance to treat people better. Knowing how the story ends, would we make the same choices?
"

She should be here soon." He says softly. We lift our eyes from the table to the darkened doorway on the other side of it.

Starbuck appears, there's something wrong with her face but I can't figure out what it is. She's also pregnant. Just far enough along that it's obvious. She leans heavily on the table then lays down on it, clutching her belly.
I leave Chief's side and go to hers. Hesitantly, I stroke the hair away from her face.

"Are you feeling alright?"
"I think I'm miscarrying." She says. The look on her face, and the fact that she's Starbuck makes me wonder if she's making a joke.
"Are you kidding? Is she kidding?"
"Help me sit up."

I oblige her.

There's a lapse. I'm standing in front of Starbuck who sits with her legs dangling off the side of the table. Another woman has arrived

but I can't look straight at her, even out of the corner of my eye she disturbs me.
Starbuck trembles violently and then her mouth moves of its own accord, speaking words I don't understand.

"Avre ein en Novem-ah."

The disturbing woman laughs at her. "Oh yes, your vast knowledge of forgotten history is astounding. You only speak of the Novem, how can you possibly know what it is to call the Novem friend?"

Starbuck can't seem to look straight at her either. Her eyes shift away uncomfortably. The disturbing woman doesn't speak again but I

get a sense of timelessness from her, wondering at the vastness of her existence that stretches across aeons. Starbuck may know these things too, because of the child she carries, but she has not lived it. Not like the Queen. This knowledge deeply chills me. This is the house of eternity, there are other paths to walk besides this one.

Then I am outside. I am a fit and unpregnant Starbuck. Admiral Adama gathers us to him on the lawn and we walk together to the road which is wider than I remember. There's a 5 foot tall wall where the woods should be. It isn't smooth, it has uneven grooves all along its length.
We walk to where the crew has broken through a 3 foot thick ice road block. We file through the ragged opening.

The oddness of what stand on the other side strikes all of us. The wall curves gently, to the right of the wall is the ocean, to the left is a dusty courtyard with a rickety wooden structure that has a roof and thin support poles, but no walls. At the far end of the enclosure is a leaning ladder of long branches, fastened together.
"What is this, ice?" Adama says, touching the wall as though we have never seen it before.
"Bet your ass it's ice, I like it!" Colonel Tigh exclaims, picking up a handful of slush and throwing it. His reaction doesn't seem child-like or whimsical.
I wonder what they were doing, obviously the wall holds back the ocean. What were they doing, forcing the ocean to recede?

We fan out and walk toward the ladder. We all start to climb it, but the top of the ladder is no longer tied down, so people keep falling off. I'm Starbuck though, and I'm certain I can climb it. So I haul myself up. I can feel the texture of the branches under my hands, and how the ladder sags outward. I reach the top as Admiral Adama and Tigh do, trying to figure out a way to leap the gap from the last rung to the next section of ladder.
I drop down and run a few paces back, where there's a thin twist of rope. I grab it and lift myself up with one arm, it holds my weight but starts to fray.
I had hoped that I could use it to cross the gap.

I wander away and start taking note of other things under the canopy. Maybe there are things that we can take away, supplies. There's a pick-up truck parked in the corner and a chest. They're full of yellow bags of dog food. Who were the people that came before us?
I watch the others, frowning at their behavior.

The next part I can't remember very well. I see flashes of what happened to the last people who found this place. They were a family of three, and a couple of farm hands.
I watch the mother, a tall brunette with short hair, wearing a red shirt, command her eight year old son to find the secret of the letters they found carved in the wall.
The task sounds like a threat. His father has gone missing, and at least one of the hands has died.