Visions in the Dark

(There is a "trigger warning" on the content of this dream.)


I am an archeology student working in a museum in Montreal. I have volunteered to document and study items that are in the backrooms of the museum's storage areas. All of the items had been ignored or forgotten about because no previous archeologists thought they were important. The civilizations or cultures and time frame the artifacts come from are unknown and it is my job to find out when and where they came from. The items I found and set aside to look at include various peices of ancient looking jewelry, a few peices of pottery and a roughly triangular peice of metalwork that features some sort bird with its wings spead out and the bird's head facing to the right. The outline of the bird and the outer edge of the peice is orange while the background is a deep blue. I give this item the name of the "Eagle Crest."

I tell my department head (Professor Alberts) about the items and he doesn't seem interested at first but says that I can continue my investigations as long as they do not interfere with my other student studies in the museum. One night, after closing time, I am working on a thesis on a computer in one of the museum offices and suddenly a bunch of screens and files start popping up at random and I cannot close them. The files that are appearing are refering to some of the items I found and disclosed to Prof. Alberts and when the files start being downloaded to an outside source I finally realize that the computer is being hacked and I turn it off.

The next day I tell Prof. Alberts what happened and he tells me to put the items in his office where they will be safe, which I do, except for the Eagle Crest, which I had on my desk, because I wanted to study it that night. When night comes, after everyone has gone home, the museum is broken into and the box of artifacts I had set aside to study was stolen from Prof. Alberts's office, except for the crest which was in my desk in another part of the museum. The buglars stole nothing else and seemed to beeline only for that box of artifacts and this made me think that they knew exactly what they were looking for and knew where to find it. Suspecting an inside job, I do not tell Prof. Alberts that I still have the Eagle Crest and instead I hide it in one of the unorganized and unused storerooms filled with undocumented artifacts, knowing that no one will find it there. I am also worried that if I come forward that I did not put the crest where it was supposed to go the night of the robbery, that people will think I had something to do with the robbery itself or knew about it in some way.

Later I am in my apartment thinking about the crest and the robbery and the nagging feeling that the two are related somehow. It is early in the morning because I have not been able to sleep and I am in my night clothes with are nothing more than an orange tank top and blue panties. I am so deep in thought that I do not hear someone enter my apartment until that person opens my bedroom door. It is a tall, thin, blond man, wearing glasses and dressed in a black suit. He is holding a handgun and demands that I get dressed and come with him. I am freaked out that someone is in my apartment but also angry and embarassed that I am walked in on when wearing so little clothing. I demand that he turn around so I can change but he says no and watched me with no expression as I get dressed. I ask him who he is and where we are going but he ignores me and says that I need my identifaction and passport. I resist leaving my apartment but the man says that I am in danger if I stay and that he is taking me somewhere safe. I demand to know why I should trust him and he says that there are some gangsters on their way to kidnap me because they think I know the location of the Eagle Crest and that they will torture me to get the location of it. I ask the man how I am supposed to know if I can trust him or not but he ignores me again, grabs my arm and drags me downstairs to his car waiting behind the building. I know he has a gun so I don't want to piss him off and just obey.

As we are in his car and pulling out of the apartment complex driveway, a car pulls up to the front of the building and several large, burly looking men in dark suits and wearing sunglasses get out and start toward the apartment. One of them looks our way and they seem to recognize either me or the man I am with because he begins shouting and the other men begin running our way, pulling out guns and pointing them in our direction. The blond man speeds out of there and down the street as fast as he can, even as the gangsters start shooting in our direction. The blond man ignores the traffic lights and roadsigns and races through the streets at top speed but soon the dark car is behind us and we are followed all the way out of Montreal. We speed and weave through traffic and eventually seem to lose our pursuers. I ask my kidnapper where we are going and he says New York City. I begin crying because I am scared and the man says that I should not be afraid because none of this is my fault and that he is just trying to protect me. I say I still don't know if I can trust him or not, and he asks me to open the glove compartment which I do. Inside is a large silver coloured hand gun and he asks me to take it. I protest because I have never held a gun before, let alone use one, and he says that it is for my protection and that he will tell me how to use it.

Shortly after giving me instructions on how to use the gun and telling me to hide it in my bag, the blond man loses control of his car when we are rear ended by the dark car filled with gangsters that has suddenly caught up with us. The car skids out of control and comes to a stop in a ditch and before the blond man can reach for his own gun, several of the gangsters open fire through the driver's side window and he is struck several times. I am pulled kicking and screaming from the passenger side and dragged over to the gangster car and forced into the trunk. My bag is still hanging over my side and the gangsters do not search through it. It is hot and cramped in the trunk and we drive for a long time. I do not know how long but it is dark by the time the goons stop at a motel and finally let me out of the trunk. They let me go to the bathroom in the motel room and I lock myself in and cry for a while. Eventually they bash the door down and force me to come out. None of the gangsters talk to me at first, but one tries to get me to tell him the location of the Eagle Crest by saying that they will let me go immediately if I tell them where it is. I say that I don't know and that it was stolen when the museum I was interning at was broken into. This is the answer I give many time when they press the same question many times in different ways. Eventually they give up and let me fall asleep on one of the beds.

I wake up at some point in the night and without moving myself much to alert them to my wakened state I try to see were the goons are. Two are sleeping on chairs by the window and I cannot determine the location of the third, but the fourth is laying on the other motel bed with his pants pulled down and masterbating to a pornographic film playing on the television. I am using my bag as a pillow and I can feel the outline of the gun under my head, but I still lay motionless, fearful to alert the gangster who is still awake that I too am conscious. I close my eyes with the intention of waiting for the guy to fall asleep but just then the gangster that I could not locate comes out of the bathroom and jokes with the other guy that they should rape me while I am sleeping. The other guy thinks that is a great idea and rolls off of his bed and on top of me. I scream and struggle and try to reach for the gun but I am dragged out of its reach by the two goons who pull me to the end of the end and start ripping my clothes off of me. My screams awaken the other two gangsters and they fight off the would be rapists and remind them that I am not to be harmed until "the Boss" can speak to me.

The goons start arguing and even fistfighting and I am able to grab my bag and lunge at the door. One of the gangsters grabs my legs and pulls me to the floor, as the other three goons take no notice and continue fighting amounst themselves, and while the guy who has me struggles to hold my logs with both arms, my hands are free and I pull the gun out of my bag, unlock the safety and stoot the guy holding me squarely in the forehead. The other three gangsters stop fighting and stand stunned for a second as I scramble out of the dead man's grasp and for the door. The gangsters simutaneously reach for their steel and I am sure that I am dead when the motel room door is kicked in and a hail of machine gun bullets rips into the bodies of the remaining gangters and cuts them down where they stand.

I look up and see the blond haired man from before standing there holding two mini tommi guns, blood from his own gunshot wounds all over his shirt and a trickle of blood out of his mouth. He is backlit from headlights in the parking lot and looks enraged as he stands there and stares down the bloody corpses of my kidnappers. His expression softens when he sees that I am alright and I don't know how he survived being shot several times but he takes me away from there and we continue drivng down the highway - I assume to New York City, but I am not sure because I cannot remember anything more from this dream other than that the blond man reveals that Prof. Alberts organized both the robbery and my kidnapping and was "the Boss" behind the whole mess. He also revels what the Eagle Crest is and why it is important (it is magic or something?) but I cannot remember exactly what the details were now.

Dream starts off with me in a very small town in a desert. There is a variety store that sell guns, and a fast food outlet, as well as a few houses scattered around. I am in the variety store looking at the guns that are displayed on a wall. There is something about someone trying to rob the variety store or something but he is chased away by the owners who have their own guns or something. I remember contemplating buying one but I cannot remember if I actually did or not.

I go to a building next door (to the left) that seems like an art gallert or something but it is dark and empty of people. There is a raised platform at the back where suits of armor are displayed along side aquariums filled with gold fish embedded into the walls.

I go back into the variety store and into a hall that connects it to the fast food joint (to the right). The hall is windowless and narrow, its walls made or cork board and it has a dirt floor. In the middle of the hall are two juvenile African lions. They are both male and one is a pale yellow, almost white in colour and the other is a dark golden colour. A women taking care of them tells me that they have been raised together and are the security system for the gun store. The lions are play fighting with one on it's back on the floor and the pouncing on top of it. As I walk by the lion on top growls and takes a swing at me, but then goes back to play fighting with it's brother.

I am not in the fast food joint and the layout is really weird. The door I walked through leads to the eating area but it is seperated from the ordering counter by a stone and glass wall. To get to the counter you have to go outside to a door at the back of the store. I go outside and around and into the ordering area and make an order of a two burgers, some fries and a drink. The man and woman who own the store are of oriental decent and when they are done making my order they go into the eating area and start eating my fries. I have to go back around the store and into the eating area and take my food from them and ask for a refund since they ate half my fries. They say nothing and get up and leave the store.

I eat my food and go back into the variety store which has changed in sixe and is now larger. There are arcade games at the back now as well as a few computers with games on them, though the computers look like open, three ringed binders. I am play a few games, one an RPG with princesses and another a shooting game and break the current records for best gameplay.


The dream fades and I cannot remember anymore.

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.

This is one of those long, detailed, epic-like dreams that my subconscious seems to produce every now and then.


The dream takes place in a post-apocalypic world where small populations of people often battle each other over limited resources. Technology has been reduced to horse-drawn carriages and flint-lock pistols. There is a man who lives away from the fighting and he works in a forge underneath a damaged bridge by a wide river. The Swordmaster, as he is called, made swords (duh!) and armour. He had a reputation of being a ruthless fighter and a loner, and had no known friends or relatives. He sold his creations to whomever could pay, choosing not to take sides in the frequent battles.

The dream starts with a young girl (about eight years old?), with black hair and green eyes, wandering into his forge (I think her name was Jeyna, or something like that). The Swordmaster tries to scare her away, but she seems unafraid of him and interested in the swords that are on display. I cannot recall the conversation they had, but the Swordmaster eventually bribes her into leaving by giving her a delicately crafted knife for free. The dream takes on a kind of montage effect and shows Jeyna returning in secret several times to watch the swordmaker at work with great fascination.

The dream skips a few years. Jeyna flees to the forge because her hometown has been destroyed and with nowhere else to go, she begs the Swordmaster to take her in and teach her how to make swords. He challenges her to a deal and though she is able to deflect a few blows, Jeyna is utterly outmatched by the Swordmaster. However, he is impressed with her skill and determination and agrees to take her on as an apprentice, but warns of his sudden moods and ill temper. Between teaching her how to use the forge, the Swordmaster also teaches Jeyna some swordfighting skills.

The dream skips a few more years to when Jeyna is a young woman. Despite his cold, emotionless demenor, the Swordmaster has grown quite attatched to Jeyna and become very protective of her, though he tries not to show it. While working in the forge one day, and while the Swordmaster is out, the forge is raided by bandits looking for supplies. Jeyna tries to defend the place but the bandits are armed with long-range weapons like bows and spears and she is captured. The bandits are about to kill Jeyna when a group of soldiers on horseback and wielding flintlock guns and rifles show up and chase the bandits away. The captain of the soldiers tries to recruit Jeyna, telling her of how much of the population has come together to live in peace, but says that she can only join if she can use a gun. The soldiers then ride off in pursuit of the bandits.

After the soldiers leave and the Swordmaster returns and Jeyna has filled him in on what happened, the Swordmaster gives his apprentice directions to a trustworthy and neutral gunsmith that lives a few kilometres south of the forge. Before she leaves, the Swordmaster gives to Jeyna his strongest and most cherished sword. It is a rapier with a white and gold handle and the Swordmaster says that the sword is the best made in the world. Though curious as to why he is passing on the sword to her, Jeyna takes it without question and sets out across no-man's land alone.

The Gunsmith's shop is unmarked and located right between two colonies of people that often fight each other and Jeyna has to find it without being seen or caught. When she does find the place, the Gunsmith, a fat, bald man with a thick curling mustach, scoffs at her request for a gun. He claims that she cannot afford his creations and that he only shares his weaponry with soldiers, not children. Jeyna tries everything from threatening him to begging and the Gunsmith just gruffly laughs at all of her attempts. Finally, Jeyna gives up and goes outside, loudly cursing the Swordmaster under her breath. As she starts to walk away, the Gunsmith runs (or waddles, being fat) outside and chides her for not mentioning the Swordmaster before, as they are old friends. The Gunsmith gives Jeyna his best weapon for free and tells her that she is welcome back anytime to learn how to use the weapon. He also says that she and the Swordmaster to come and visit some time.

When Jeyna returns to the forge, the hour is very late and the Swordmaster is no where to be found. It is only after a couple of days that Jeyna becomes worried, though she is afraid to leave to forge unguarded. Jeyna continues to work the forge until she runs out of resources, which the Swordmaster had always provided before. Only when all of the goods had been sold and there was nothing left of value in the forge or shop, did Jeyna contemplate leaving. She was torn between searching for the Swordmaster, or trying to find the group of soldiers who had tried to recruit her. The Gunsmith suddenly shows up for a visit and while he can provide her with the location of the soldiers, he has no idea where the Swordmaster would be.

The dream gets fuzzy here. There is something about Jeyna searching along the riverbank and running into some of the bandits who raided the forge before. They are unarmed and with their children, bathing and washing their clothes at the water's egde. There is a lengthy conversation about something before Jeyna leaves and returns to the forge. As she is going back she sees two people fighing in the wasteland in the distance and when she gets closer it turns out to be the Swordmaster and the Gunsmith. They are in hand to hand combat and both are battered and bruised. Jeyna runs between the two and tries to seperate them, but the Swordmaster pulls her sword from it's scabbard and violently cuts down the Gunsmith. Jeyna stands in shocked silence while the Swordmaster wipes the sword clean and walks away from the bloody scene. He does not return to the forge and disappears again.

Jeyna does not return to the forge and goes to join the soldiers instead. The dream becomes fuzzy and I cannot remember any more.

The young oriental woman in a white dress is called Chun-li; the muscular man with red hair and a goatee who dresses in black is named Walter. The young blond-haired man who wears white and blue clothing and rides a motorcycle is Trevor.


The dream starts off with the two men in the street in front of some old decripid apartment buildings. The entire city is very slum like in some post-apocalyptic word and there are no trees or park areas anywhere. I cannot remeber why now, but there was a gun battle going on and Walter and Trevor were trying to get into the apartment building without getting shot or captured. The people who were shooting at the two men were never seen in the dream so i do not know what they looked like.

The two men were able to make it through the doors of the apartment building and found the lobby empty, except for the young oriental woman who was lying unconscious on the floor. Walter picked up Chun-li and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Trevor said that he would create a diversion so that Walter could escape with Chun-li. The two men agreed to meet up outside of the city.

The dream skips to a lightly forested area miles away from the city. I do not know if this is how the dream is supposed to be or if I have just forgotten the escape sequence. Anyway, Walter lays Chun-li down on a large blanket under a big tree and then proceeds to hide the vehicle in which they escaped. Chun-li wakes up and asks what happened, apparently not remembering how or why she ended up unconscious on the apartment lobby floor. Walter doesn't have any answers for her and just says that Trevor will meet them soon.

Night falls and both Walter and Chun-li are worried about Trevor, but neither of them want to go back into the city to find him. They dip there feet in a nearby pond and talk about various things to pass the time and eventually they fall asleep under the big tree. The two of them wake up when they hear a vehicle approaching, grab their guns and prepare to fight, but it turns out to be Trevor, who apologizes for being late.


I am guessing that Chun-li, Walter and Trevor make up some sort of personal archetypes or something because they have appeared together in my dreams several times.