CanisLucidus

This is the second of two lucid dreams from the morning of September 6, 2013. So glad I caught that emotion dream sign for this one because it gave me an exit from a nightmare and brought me into a really nice lucid.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #144: Cooling Off

I'm in a furniture store, looking around at couches. A plump Hispanic woman is seated nearby, answering my questions. The front of the store is a huge glass window with a clear view of the street outside.

Spoiler for Upsetting dream premise:

A big luxury car pulls up outside and a man in a light gray suit gets out. He has a mustache and is wearing shades but I can't see him well enough to make out the details of his face. I see other men in the car that look just like him. The man reaches into the car and pulls two teenage girls out of the car by their forearms and tossing them to the ground. He jumps back in the car and it speeds off.

I run outside. Both girls are weeping and it's obvious that they've been terribly mistreated by these men. They're bruised and bloodied and their clothes are in tatters. I help them inside the store where they disappear together into the store's bathroom. I'm boiling with rage and at the same time feel like I'm close to tears.

I tell the woman that these girls have been abused by these men and that we have to do something. She says, "I know" and then calmly tells me that these girls are her daughters and that she willingly sold them to the men. Now I'm yelling at her, telling her that she's an awful person, demanding that she tell me who these men are and where I can find them. I stalk back and forth in the store's aisle, the anger getting worse and worse. Again I demand that she tell me where I can find these men so that I can dispose of them personally.

The rage is so over the top that it feels bizarre to me. I can't remember feeling this way any time in waking life, so I reconsider my situation and I become lucid.

Immediately I feel this huge sense of relief as I realize that there's nothing to be angry about and that none of these awful things have actually happened. I'm still a little shaken from the preceding scene, and I walk to the bathroom where the girls retreated to earlier. I open the door and to my relief it's empty. I close it again.

I take a few deep breaths, cooling off the last of my anger and reminding myself that I'm dreaming. The anger has been replaced by happiness and a sense of peace. I feel contentment at the idea that I took control of this nightmare.

Now happy and relaxed, I remember the goal of getting to the Colosseum. I imagine that the bathroom door now leads to one of the tunnels beneath the Colosseum. I open the door, but nope, still an empty bathroom. I close the door again and walk to the back of the store.

I find myself in a hallway made of cinder blocks. There's some kind of socket wrench lying on the floor and I scoop it up. I feel like playing so I throw the socket wrench at the wall. With a thump it embeds about half an inch into the cinder block. I grab it, prying it back out and throw it toward a nearby mirror. Crack! The mirror cracks rather than breaks, but I'm delighted by how realistic the sights and sounds of this are.

There's a door at the end of the hall that leads outside. I step out into the sunlight, seeing a pavilion with long, wooden eating tables to my left. I remember to hook myself into the scene before continuing further, so I kneel down and run my hands over the small stone squares that make up the flooring. As I run my fingers over the cracks, I see that a tiny river of brown water runs through the separation between each stone. Somehow I can dip my fingers into this tiny stream and it feels cool to the touch.

As I make my way through the lunch pavilion, I lock eyes with a blonde woman in her early 30s. I'm stunned by how realistic she looks. Something about me seems to surprise her as well. For a moment I wonder what she's reacting to, but in the end figure she's just mirroring my reaction. I hop over some tables, reach the other side, and look back at the crowd of people calmly eating lunch. This is why I work so hard at lucid dreaming, I think. I wish that there was some way to permanently capture this experience, but I know there's nothing that can completely pierce the veil between waking and sleep to bring this experience back to me.

As I leave the pavilion, I see an ampitheater up ahead of me. I'm contemplating how to work this to my advantage when the dream ends.