CanisLucidus

This was the third of my LDs from early Christmas morning. This WILD was rather nightmarish, but in the end pretty amazing. Hands down, the most hostile DCs that I've encountered.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #50: The Gauntlet of Greed

The WILD drops me into a wood-paneled room. There's a door in front of me, and behind me is a frosted glass window through which sunlight illuminates the room. In the middle of the room is a huge, square pile of $100 bills. It has to be, at minimum, something like $30 million. Probably more.

Someone starts shouting and hammering on the door. I feel grasping and suspicious that it's someone who is after my money. They slip a note under the door that simply reads, "You're broke, bitch." I should find this funny, but instead I feel insulted, entitled and petty. Not in my LD, not when I'm sitting on this much cash. There's a chorus of angry voices outside of the door now and fists and feet are slamming into the door. It's about to rattle off the hinges.

I throw the door open and I'm stunned to see a broad hallway filled with literally hundreds of hostile dream characters. The enraged mob (all male) is armed to the teeth, aggressive and bristling with guns. Somebody punches me in the face just as a mobster aims a lupara-style sawed-off shotgun at me. The crowd howls, and I see AKs, handguns, machine pistols, and every other manner of gun pointing my way.

They open fire and I feel a spray of bullets trace across my body. Buckshot rakes the left side of my face. Everything is chaos as stray bullets rip into DCs, who fall to the floor and are trampled by the others as they run toward me. I know that nothing can hurt me but I'm still gripped with aggression, fear and nervous energy. A man in a trench coat is unlucky to get close and I punch him as hard as I can. He goes flying, crashes into the wall, and lies still.

The chaos is getting to be too much for me and I feel lucidity slipping. I hate that I'm fighting and the madness of the whole situation dawns on me. Am I even sure that this is my money? Do I really want to go to war with some unknown element of my subconscious over this worthless pile of dream cash? I decide to just walk forward, leave the money behind, and separate myself from the riot going on all around me.

DCs continue to run past, firing at me and occasionally striking me with fists and feet, but as more and more of them run into the room behind me, the hallway ahead clears out. I hear some kind of frantic melee going on in the money room but I ignore it. The few remaining DCs that run past now ignore me and as I continue forward through the hall, I soon find myself alone. I feel calm again, and the thought of the Pyramid refocuses me on my goals.

I pass a large window on my right that gives me a view into a busy newsroom. Reporters run excitedly from desk to desk but I don't investigate further. The exit is up ahead, and I find that it is the same set of automatic doors from the last dream. I again imagine that the Great Pyramid lies just beyond the door, but this time the dream fades just as I approach the doors.

This was the second of my galantamine dreams from last night. The beginning and middle were fun. The end? Not too good.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #47: Lost in America

The wind is loud outside but the noise suddenly settles into a murmur. I know that I'm close to a WILD, and soon... I'm in a light rail station, holding hands with my son E. The floor is red brick and the sky above us is clear. Tall buildings surround us on all sides. I don't recognize the buildings, but for some reason I believe that this is New York.

I tell E, "Well, buddy, we're in New York. This is... well, this isn't real, but it's a train station." He hops around, pointing gleefully at the train. I walk with him to the opposite end of the station.

The train starts to move, and E suddenly breaks away from my grip and runs toward it! I'm panicked at the site of him running carelessly toward that train and I run after him. He stops short of actual danger and I grab onto his hand, making sure I've got a good grip this time. "E, you can't do things like that! If you're going to run off, we can't be here."

I take him with me out to a parking lot and our family car is waiting there. There's a small memory gap here, but I'm pretty sure that the car didn't have child seats, but I just ignored this. We're driving in the neighborhood where I grew up. E is there at first but after a few blocks I look back and he's gone.

I pass a set of kids that look like they're fighting. I can't tell what's going on but it looks like someone might be taking a beating. I jump out of the car, forgetting that it's still moving. To my dismay, the car keeps going, turns the corner by itself and drives out of sight. The kids disperse, and nobody seems upset anymore. There's another memory gap before I find myself being shown a house by a real estate agent who looks kind of like CSI's Marg Helgenberger. She calls herself "Madge" and the house has a beautiful, open interior. I'm impressed with the place and wonder if it's similar to any other houses I've seen IWL.

When she takes me into the back of the house, though, things take a horrible turn. The rooms in the back are dark and smoky with makeshift drapes blocking out the sunlight. Drug addicts are passed out all around the place, laying on beds, floors and furniture. Some of them twitch occasionally and I see one man whose leg is streaked with blood. Madge seems mildly embarrassed and says, "It does need a little fixing up."

When we get to the bathroom, I see a clearly dead man lying in the tub. I panic, probably lose lucidity, and run back down the hall. Madge is running too, but the hallways have all changed. I can't find my way back to the sane part of the house and my panic collapses the dream.

A wild chain of false awakenings and DEILDs finally led me to a most interesting encounter with Wife's DC, who was even more irrepressible than usual. This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night's session with galantamine.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #46: The Blind Man, the Bully, and the Nerd

I'm in the kitchen with Wife. I'm talking to her but I'm almost completely blind. I'm embarrassed by my blindness, convinced that it's some side effect of the galantamine that I just took. Rather than seek medical attention, I try to slink up to bed so Wife won't know. Unfortunately, she keeps asking me to hand her things, and I flail around the kitchen knocking things over. "What's wrong with you?" she asks. I have a false awakening into...

...sitting on the floor of our living room as my 1-year-old son "R" runs around me. My vision is dim but I can see better than before. I'm still convinced that I'm suffering from some kind of bizarre galantamine side effect. R is sprinting around the room, pulling objects off of tables, knocking stuff over, and tossing various knickknacks into the recycling bin. I try to stop him, but he just laughs, squirting right through my arms when I try to grab him. He says, "This is so fun, Daddy!" and I briefly become lucid, remembering that he's way too young to speak like that.

I quickly wake up but keep my eyes shut and hold still for a DEILD... and I find myself lying in a bed in a room I don't know. I get up, ready to explore. A strange, gnome-like creature with a hooked nose hops off of the floor and gets in my face, waving his arms wildly about. He's about three feet tall, covered with warts, extremely agile, and very annoying. He brags to some unseen listener: "See? I can stop him from doing what he wants in this dream!"

I try to leave the room but the little gnome keeps hopping up in my face, cackling and poking at me. He jabs me in the eyeball and I get incredibly angry. I grab the gnome by the throat, push him to the floor and hold him there. He growls and kicks his legs, but he isn't able to move. Even though he's immobilized, I'm so out of control that I still punch him once, hard right under his left eye. I immediately feel terrible about this and release my grip, allowing him to scamper away.

I stand there brooding about this for a moment before the gnome walks back in. He no longer looks disgusting and infuriating, but just like a small little man. I tell him, "I'm sorry that I hit you. I didn't need to do that." He walks up to me, points at his blackened left eye and softly says, "Fix." I nod, touching his bruised skin, and the black eye immediately heals. "All right, hug it out," I say and I kneel down to hug the little dude. The dream fades...

I buckle down for another DEILD and in a few seconds I'm back in another bed room, although it's different from the last. I'm standing and Wife is here making the bed. "Hey!" I say. "This is a lucid dream. Quit making that bed and let's go play."

She keeps making the bed. "You can go do what you like, but this work still needs to get done."

I can't believe it. "But it's all a dream. You don't have to worry about whether beds get made. Come on, I've got lucid goals I want to work on."

She stops for a second, laughs, and looks at me, wrinkling up her nose a bit. "Lucid goals? What does that even mean? You better not be trying to arrange a threesome on the bed that I just spent all this time making!"

"Come on, get serious. You'll like this... I want to visit the Great Pyramid." Then I look at her, hold out my right hand and say, "You will come with me."

She laughs. "Oh my God, nerd! I can't believe you just tried to 'command' me. Is that the kind of stuff you do in these dreams of yours?"

I smile, amazed at how like herself she is and how much I'm enjoying her company. "I think I can do this, though," I say, and levitate her a few feet off of the ground. She looks amused.

I float her over to me and set her on the ground. When I try to kiss her she doesn't resist. I feel her fingers graze my left temple but then she turns to walk away. "I still need to make this bed," she says, as the dream fades.