Visions in the Dark

I am at a public fair of some kind. I don't know the place but there is a large circular Romanesque building in the center and rides and consession stands surrounding it. The circular building in the center is multistoried and I am on an elevator going down to the ground floor. There I meet someone I knew in public school, J.P, though he looks older. He is lost and trying to find his way somewhere. I help him orient himself and he goes on his way.

I am there for army training and see the group that I am supposed to be in and start following. The group is led by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire and he is weaving us through thrater seat aisles and pillers around the building and various rides and events outside. After we have completed a circuit we start again but this time jogging. The rest of the group seems fine but one other girl and myself soon start to tire and have difficultly keeping up.

After the second circuit is completed Lieutenant-General Dallaire starts the group running. Halfway through the circuit I am too tired to run anymore and fall behind, losing sight of the group. I am outside of the circular building and near a large inflatable male lion that is coloured black. It is laying down but it's mouth open as if amidst a might roar. I feel disheartened already because of failing to keep up with the group and falling behind but also feel equally small and pathetic next to this mighty lion. I sit down on a folded metal seat nearby and mope.

Sometime after I have caught my breath the Lieutenant-General and the group rounds and corner and approaches me. I stand up and apologize profusely to Dallaire but he only responds by asking if I am ready to go. I do not understand and he says that he "never leaves a man behind." I protest and say that I am not good enough but he responds that I won't know if I give up trying. I am feeling a bit refreshed after my rest and agree to try again. The group starts off again at a jog and as I follow I look over my shoulder at the inflatable lion and see that it has changed colour to a bright and luminous golden. For some reason this gives me confidence to press on.

The group eventually starts to run again and this time I am able to keep up for the whole circuit. The running comes to an end at a clearing on the tarmac outside of the circular building where a small stage with a red curtain backdrop has been set up. Many civilians have gathered around and in the crowd I can see my father. Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire gets up on the stage and starts introducing the runners, giving them little medals and declaring that they have completed the recruitment process and are now officially in the army. Everyone else goes first and I am last.

When it is my turn the Lieutenant-General gives me a metal, says I have completed my training and then adds that I have a special significance in completing this because I persevered in the end and made my father proud. Dallaire notes that I am now in the army at the same age that my father joined the navy and that our proud family militay history will continue. I am confused by all this and though happy to have completed the training I still don't feel that I am good enough to be in the army.

The dream ends there.

I am Rosso the Crimson and I am in some sort of army. For some reason a small group of soldiers including Shelke Rui, Vincent Valentine and I, defect and flee from the main army, which is situated in a sparse and barren, temperate forest. The rest of the soldiers in our group seem to be young adults and children.

Vincent and I have the responsibility to lead the children away from that place but our ideas and ways of doing things are often at odds and we fall into verbal conflict, though most of the time I conceed to Vincent's way of doing things. I am kind of annoyed at first, but ultimately trust that he will not lead us astray. As we leave the main camp, and out of the forest, it begins to snow and our first night is tryng to find shelter where we can sleep. There are several large gaps underneath logs or holes in the ground large enough for humans to crawl into, but Vincent says to stay away from them because dangerous wild animals, like bears and foxes, might live there.

We crest a hill and come across a children's playground where someone has thrown a blue tarp over some of the equipment, and while we could all easily fit under it, Vincent insists that we are not far enough away from the main army yet and we must continue. At this point in the dream, Vincent suddenly disappears and in his place is my brother Ryan.

We do not have to walk far to discover that we are on an island or something and must turn back. We return to the playground and I lay down on the ground to sleep, with Shelke beside me, and hope the man who I still expect to be Vincent to lay down on my other side. Instead the man lays down on the other side of Shelke and I am shocked and angry to see that it is Ryan not Vincent.

Despite being very tired I refuse to sleep and insist that Shelke switches spots with me because I am afraid that Ryan is going to sexually molest her. One of the other children soldiers cannot sleep and wanders around and finds a radio which he immediately turns on very loudly. I want the young boy to turn the radio off because I think it will give our position away but Ryan says it is fine and mocks my obvious apprehension. I convince the boy to turn the music down and everyone goes to sleep eventually, except for me.

Suddenly I sit up because I have an overwhelming urge to find Vincent, without whom I do not feel secure. I walk around the playground area and see that while it is still cold, most of the snow has disappeared. I turn off the radio as I pass it by. All of the defected soldiers except for Shelke and Ryan follow me.

One little girl freaks out because there is a tiny brown snake in the sand. I pick it up and throw it as far away as I can but quickly find another, and another and then many more. There is a reddish brown snake with a yellow rattle on its tail near the playground and the children flee because I positively identify it as a rattlesnake. Suddenly all of the snakes I can see are of the poisionous variety and as I walk back to my sleeping bag I am bitten several times, though I do not seem immediately affected by the poison, which feels hot and firely, almost electrical, coursing through my veins.

I cannot wake Shelke and since I refused to leave her there I lay back down on my roll to sleep. More and more snakes appear, each is bigger than the last and they are increasingly a variety of bright colours. Soon there are so many of them that I cannot move without touching several of them and they turn and bite me, again with that fiery, electrical feeling shooting through my body. I feel myself becoming increasingly weak and disoriented, but I do not know if it is because I am exhausted or because of the poison.

I sit up and notice that Shelke and Ryan are gone. Still hoping for Vincent to return I cry out to him to save me. When Ryan appears instead I am very upset, still wanting/expecting Vincent, and fall silent in anger and frustration. I sit crosslegged and completely still and the hundreds of snakes surround me and almost bury me in their mass and I find that I would rather be crushed or poisioned to death (though at this point I notice they have stopped biting me) by the snakes than to have Ryan come near me or save me, the very thought of which makes me feel sick.

The last image of the dream is looking at the mass of snakes in my lap and taking note of a rather large, bright red one with intricate oriental inspired patterns down its back that are coloured a bright yellow or gold.

The dream starts off in the small gymnasium of my old public school. There are no children, just new recruits for the military. The small gym is the sleeping quarters, whereas the large gym is for training. There are no chairs and the new recruits are forced to sit on their duffle bags and use small fold out card tables, or in some cases, cardboard boxes to eat and write on. I do not know anyone there, but we are assigned to small groups of five or six people to a table/box. I do not remember any of the details about the others in my group, but there is a guy sitting on my left who looks like a stereotypical jarhead. I cannot remember his name but I think it started with an "L."

L is a real bully to everybody and no one really likes him. I try to be nice to him, but in return he starts harassing me with rude comments and constantly tries to grab by breasts and buttocks. I am able to fight him off but from then on I have to be on alert at all times because L takes every opportunity to harass me. I try to keep my distance, but that is almost impossible since we are in the same training group within our unit. The dream skips ahead a little and it is months later. Our commanding officer is giving us our orders and assigning every soldier with a "war buddy." I don't have to wait to find out who my partner is. Somehow in the dream, I just know. It is L of course and I couldn't be any less excited about it if I tried.

The dream skips ahead some more and L and I have been deployed in a thick tropical rain forest, hunting down the unseen enemy presence. I think that our settings look like scenes I have seen in Vietnam war films, though this though does not bring about lucidity. I tell L that if he tries anything towards me that I will not hesitate to defend myself, and will go so far as to kill him if I have to. L doesn't respond. We travel for quite a while without engaging in any battles, and L concentrates on his soldierly duties and does not harass me. We come across a wide river that is thick with brown silt and is flowing quite rapidly. Crossing it would expose us to possible enemy fire but we have no choice, as our destination is somewhere in the forest on the otherside. As we are crossing someone starts shooting at us. I become afraid and try to go back the way we came, but L grabs me by my munitions belt and forces me across the rest of the way. He is spraying the part of the forest where he thinks the enemies are hiding, but neither of us are actually sure where the bullets are coming from.

On the otherside of the river L and I dive under the tree cover and the enemy fire suddenly stops. L begins berating me verbally for trying to run away, and though I am angry and not in the mood for his verbal abuse, I say nothing. From then on L declares himself the leader of our team of two and starts bullying me around. I am indignant at first, but soon realize that he is pushing me hard because he is trying to keep me on my toes and alive in the dangerous situation we are in. At random intervals we are attacked by enemy units but L and I are able to fight them off. I cannot see the details of the enemy fighters as they appear as sillouettes of people dodging in and out of the thickette of trees and ferns. More then once L saves my butt and a few times I save his. We are unable to stop for sleep and rest only a few times to eat, as we are constantly attacked.

We reach our destination and it is some sort of military outpost in the edge of the rainforest. On the far side of the camp the flat field dips down into a deep lush valley, where several small villages of the local population exist. We are summoned by our commanding officer and are required to report our experience. It turns out that L and I are the only members of our unit that survived to complete our mission. All of the other soldiers in our unit were killed and the commander wants to know what we did to survive. We report our experience and when we are done I openly admit that it was likely because of L taking charge that we survived. The dream ends with me saying "I think L is an @$$hole, but he's also a damn fine soldier" or something close to that.

This dream starts off in my hometown of London, Ontario. I am on the way from my parent's house to my new apartment on Adelaide Street. For some reason I am in the country side west of the city. An unnumbered city bus comes along and I get on, but I cannot find my transfer. I can find transfers from several days before, but not the one for today. Only after going through ever pocket on my person do I find today's transfer crumpled up in my left hand. The bus driver sighs with impatience as I hurridly take a seat, red faced from embarrassment but relieved. Despite being out in the country side, but bus is packed and everyone on board seems scruffy or rugged, like they have been camping outdoors for a long time. They are all men and seem to be all staring at me and I feel a bit creeped out and threatened.

The bus drives into the city, to the edge of downtown then suddenly stops. The driver tells all of the passengers to get off and promplty drives away as soon as we have done so. I walk down the main road, Dundas Street, for a while before deciding to wait at a bus terminal in front of a white multi-storey building that I do not recognize from waking life. I am expecting the Dundas bus to come along, but after a short wait, the Adelaide Street bus shows up instead. Though I am confused as to why it is the Adelaide and not the Dundas, I happily board the bus, hoping it will take me straight to my apartment.

The bus pulls away from the terminal and passes a group of asian men standing in the middle of the street, waving various melee weapons around and shouting loudly. I cannot hear what they are saying, but the majority of the noise comes from a man wearing a blue hooded sweater over a white t-shirt. He is waving a hunk of wood around and seems to be directing his anger at random pedestrians on the street. I feel the atmosphere change and everything seems suddenly darker, eeiry and inexplicably desolate. The bus suddenly slows down and stops. A burned out pickup truck, and a pile of damaged cars, is blocking the road and there is no way around. The bus driver manages to turn the bus around and starts heading back to the bus terminal.

As we pass the group of angry asian men, the one in the blue sweater, waving the hunk of wood, pulls out a pistol from his waistline and opens fire on a group of people who have gathered by the side of the road to watch the commotion. The first shot hits a woman holding a baby and the crowd panics and scatters as she goes down. As the man begins randomly firing at the running people, the other men in his group start attacking people with their melee weapons. The bus driver floors the gas pedal and tries to drive away from the ensuing chaos, but a large military truck pulls directly infront of us and forces the bus to stop. The doors are opened and the passengers make a run for it. I run towards the white multi-storey building, with the intention of hiding in it or behind it, but asian men in military uniforms start appearing between and around the buildings. At first I mistaken them for London's Area Support Unit, but it becomes apparent very quickly that these military personnel are foriegn and hostile. I run towards central downtown but it seems that the entire area is surrounded by this mysterious invading army of asian origin.

Many people are captured, myself included, and forced to sit together in large groups with hands behind heads. People who do not comply, or who try to escape, are shot on sight. When the street is overcrowded with captured prisioners, the armed guards start herding us into the large white multi-storey building by the bus terminal. The inside is decorated in bright red fabrics and paints and seems to be a giant theater of some sort. The ceiling is open for several storeys up and the parameter of each floor seems to be made up of box seats, except for the ground floor, which is bare tile like a gymnasium. The prisoners are forced to sit on the floor and face a large screen on the west wall. The military men start playing some sort of propaganda film about their greatness or their great leader or something, but I cannot follow it because it is not in english and I am being distracted by several fat white male prisioners who insistantly try to stand up and show their private parts to the rest of the captives. Their penises are very small or severely deformed but I am finding great amusement in their last acts of bravado, as it seems to really piss off the armed guards.

I suddenly notice an unguarded electrical socket to my right. I descreetly pull the plug and hope that I am shot quickly if I am caught. I have no idea what pulling the pull will do and I am surprised when not only does the propaganda film end, but the electricity to the entire building goes out. The invading asians go into a frenzy trying to maintain control of the prisioners while trying to sort out what is going on. Some captives manage to sneak out in the darkness, while others are caught and executed, but the majority stays put in fear and confusion. Whe the emergency lights come on, the invading army is still a bit frenzied and there is a commotion outside. A man I assume is a commander of the army comes in and motions half of the armed guards to follow him outside.


I cannot remember anymore of this dream.