Visions in the Dark

This dream starts off in a big city with many tall skyscrapers. I think it may be New York city but I am not sure. I am a little girl of about 5 or 6 years old. I cannot remember the beginning of the dream but it has something to do with Batman, Superman and another superhero that I cannot remember now. They find me in a mysterious temple or something and take me with them back to their base in the big city. I discover while there that, despite having a child'd body and am very old and I do not age physically. I also discover that I can fly and at nighttime I fly above the skyscrapers of the city and look down at everything below.

One night something happens and the whole city floods. Only the tops of the tallest buildings can be seen and despite that fact that many people probably lost their lives the superheroes are flying around the sky with me and laughing and joking and stuff. They also do not seem to be doing anything to reverse the flood and I wonder to myself why they did nothing to stop it from hapening in the first place.

We eventually return to a fancy skyscraper that has become a refugee camp of sorts. Many floors are occupied by people escaping the water but the very top floor is reserved for superheroes and their families and friends. The hour is late and in the main room their is a party of some sort going on and I am put into a room with other children to sleep. I am on a bed and the rest of the children are on the floor. There is no lock on the door however and many times drunk individuals, including drunk superheroes, come into the room and start arguing or fighting with each other. The noise wakes me up and I ask them to leave, pointing out that their are children trying to sleep. The last time this happens one male superhero (Cyclops or Gambit?) retorts sarcastically "You're not a child!"

The dream changes in landscape but I am still a small child. It is sunset and I am somewhere I do not recognize. It is a large hilly field, with a red brick building on one side and a forest on the other. On the other side of the red brick building is a river with a train bridge and a watch tower in the center of it. The field is also crisscrossed with traintracks that sometimes randomly change position. I am alone at first but then find my parents. We are close to the train bridge watching the trains. My mother says something about my father inhereting a train baron's fortune soon, because he is next in line. My father doubts this and says the person a head of him in inheritance is young. There are so many traintracks crisscrossed everwhere that it is almost impossible not to stand on any tracks. Trains come almost nonstop so we are constantly moving around from one track to another so we don't get hit.

Cats start appearing. Some of the cats I recognize from waking life, and other I do not, but almost all are dressed in somesort of clothing and all are on the traintracks, seemingly unaware of the danger of the approching trains, like they cannot see or hear them. I am panicking and trying to save the cats by picking them up off the tracks, just barely missing a huge freight train every time. Every time I pick up a cat it disappears and another cat appears somewhere on the tracks. My parents are indifferent and tell me that I am wasting my time. Finally that cats begin disappearing and the last cat, my first cat Bambi, is saved just and time, and she does not disappear as I hold her in my arms.

My parents are talking to a man in the watchtower on the bridge and they find out that he works directly for the train baron. My dad starts arguing with the man about the inheritance or something and my mother and I wander off into the traintrack covered field. The trains seem to have stopped for now. I look up in the sky and see the full moon and guess that it is close to midnight.My father eventully catches up to us and I ask my parent's where my brothers are. They do not know what I am taling about. I tell them that I have two older brothers but they claim that I am their only child. I think it is weird they say that because I am sure that I had two older brothers, but their denial neither upsets nor thrills me and I am quite passive and indifferent about the news.

The trains start coming again from all directions, but this time they glow neon colours and are very bright. Some are even see through, like ghosts. My dad tells me to stand my ground and the trains will not hurt me. I am too scared at first but with one train I jump away at the last second it nicks my hip and upper leg on the right side. I am scared and upset because I feel intense pain in my upper leg and hip and nothing my father says after that can convince me to not fear the glowing trains, whom he insists cannot hurt me. I cannot remember how this dream ends.

The dream starts off with my parents and I at a very modern looking train terminal. My parents look the same as they do now, but I look like I did at about age ten. The station we are at sits on a narrow plateau on the side of a snowy mountain and overlooks a wide valley. The valley itself is entirely surrounded by high mountains and there is not way in or out. The train encircles the edges of the valley and the station my parents and I are at is the only station that is located on a mountain; the rest being located on the valley floor. The train itself is silver in colour and very sleek. The engine looks like a traditional steam engine, but it to is silver and has a very modern/sleek look to it. (It was very neat. I'll have to try and draw a picture of it or something.) There were no dining cars, only flat cars. The first two flat cars had metal canopies that were supported by curved beams on the car's outer four corners, and the rest of the cars were uncovered, with railings running down the middle.

Despite the snow, it is bright, sunny and very warm. We are dressed in winter clothing, but nothing too heavy and I do not recall feeling overheated, even though I had on a wool hat and scarf. My parents are talking with two people near the train's engine, one of whom is a smiling woman in a red sweater. I do not know who she is, but she keeps looking at me and nodding. While there is nothing unusual about her demenor, I feel anxious under her occassional gaze. While my parents are busy, I am looking at a row of machines near the platform's edge that look like ATM machines. They are either gambling videogames or real gambling machines, but I cannot remember which. I played the middle machine and lost two thousand dollars. I recall being confused in the dream about whether or not I had actually lost money or if I had just played a game, but before I could figure it out, my parents called to me because it was time to board the train. They were on the train's first covered flat car and I had to climb onto it even as the train was already moving. No one bothered to help me climb on, but I was able to pull myself up without any help anyway. I glance over at the train's engine and can see the smiling woman in the red sweater looking at me again. I go and sit by my parents and enjoy the scenic view as the train starts down the mountain.

There is no snow at the valley floor. The train first travels through a thick temperate forest, which soon thins out to an open, tree-speckled countryside. It appears to be autumn as most of the deciduous trees have lost their leaves, and those that still cling to the branches are brown and crumbling. There are no signs of towns or civilization along the way, though after travelling through the countryside for a while, the train suddenly slows down and stops at a brown brick building that seems to sit in the middle of park space. There are no roads or paths, but there are benches and empty flowerbeds. It is not a train station however as I discover when we are let off the train for a stretch and a washroon break. The building is like a kennel and it houses many cats, most of which roam freely about.

I am petting random cats when I see a cat that looks very familiar. When I pick her up and hold her, I realize that it is my old cat Bambi, and she appears as she did when she was a kitten.

I almost instantly become lucid, because I know that Bambi is dead in waking life. While I am aware that I am in a dream, I do not have any control over anything other than myself. I am happy to play with and cuddle Bambi but very soon we are called back to the train. It is sort of an unspoken rule, but the cats are not supposed to leave the kennel, but I decide I want to keep my cat and board the last, uncovered flat car of train with her in my arms. The train begins to move and I can feel a tugging, as if some unseen force is pulling at Bambi. I do not have the strength (or dream control) to fight the invisible force and I carefully lean over the edge of the flat car and drop Bambi down to the ground. She disappears for a moment and I panic because I think she has fallen underneath the wheels of the train. I attempt to stop my dream by holding my arms straight out and imagining everything to 'pause,' but nothing happens. The train slowly continues on its way and my parents come up to me, roll their eyes at each other and ask me what I am doing. I tell them that I am trying to stop the dream so I can save Bambi, but they just look at each other again, in annoyance with me, and point out that Bambi is fine, even though they don't look anywhere else but at me. I do not believe their confidence of my cat's condition, but when I turn to look in the direction of the kennel, there is Bambi playing with some other kittens by the brown building's front doors.

I try to stop the train several times by saying "train stop" very forcefully, but it just keeps on going. I cannot gain any control over anything, though my awareness of being in a dream does not fade at all thankfully. I even try to jump off the flat car but an invisible wall keeps me from doing so. The train doesn't travel very far before it stops infront of a large stage. It is damaged and looks as if it has not been used for a very long time. For the first time since my parents and I left the station on the mountainside, we see other people. They are gathered in a group in front of the stage and eave to my parents to join them, but I am too interested in finding my way back to the kennel so I can see Bambi again, even though I know she is just an image from my subconscious. I am also kind of annoyed by the lack of control I have in my dream.

The dream gets fuzzy and cannot remember that next part. I lose my lucidity somewhere along the way, but I do end up back at the kennel. My parents are long gone with the train and I am stuck at the kennel until it returns, and I have no idea when that will be. I play with Bambi and the other cats to my heart's content. Though it has only been one day, it has felt like I have been there for much longer. The sun begins to set and the train finally returns. My parents are very upset and tell me that I have been gone for a week. I try to argue otherwise, as it has only felt like one day to me, but they will have none of it. I do not care that they are upset with me because I am still cuddling with Bambi and she is purring anf kneading me at the end of the dream.

There is a some sort of family gathering in a small house. I think it is my grandma's old house, but I am not sure. There are many people , some I recognize as members of my family, and some that do not resemble any person I know in waking life. There only seems to be three rooms; the kitchen, the living room, and the basement. The kitchen does not have a table or chairs but there is a green sofa against one of the walls. The living room is sparse as well and only has a white loveseat and a large screen television. Needless to say, most of the people in the house were standing as they socialized.

There were some people in the kitchen preparing food and some people standing around with drinks. I was in the kitchen but I was not preparing food or drinks, nor was I socializing. I didn't want to be there and I felt very tired and bored. I sit down on the green sofa, curl up on one end and start to drift off to sleep. I can hear my dad come into the room and everyone starts asking him what's wrong with me, as if they can sense the fact that I don't want to be there. I cannot hear exactly what my dad is saying except that he is going around the room and apologizing to everyone.

I wake up when I feel someone sit on the other end of the sofa. I sit up and see that it is Uncle Doug. He is making rude and offensive jokes about women and everyone in the room (which I notice at this point is all male) laughs along with him. I am disgusted but I cannot think of anything to say. Uncle Doug turns to me, grabs my arm and asks if I am "cool" with the jokes he is telling. I scream at him not touch me and to stuff his misogyny up his ass. He gets embarassed and apologizes and asks if I am offended, and even though I am, for some reason I say no.

Everyone starts to head down stairs and I get up off the green sofa so that it can be carried into the basement. I start washing dishes because I am too pissed off to talk to anyone. Dinner is being served in the basement and everyone is down there, but I refuse to join them because I still feel raw about the incident with Uncle Doug.

I climb up on the kitchen counter and look out the window, but instead of seeing a backyard at groud level, the view is from several storeys up and I am looking down upon what appears to be a train station. There are many people walking around or just standing on the boardwalk as a passenger train very slowly pulls out of the station. Out of the corner of my left eye I see a frieght train appear out of nowhere and slam into the back of the passenger train at a great speed. I watch in horror as the frieght train cars pile up on each other and onto the boardwalk, violently crushing some of the people who had been standing there. I feel helpless because I cannot do anything but neither can I look away, even as people continue to be crushed and mangled by the crashing trains.


Then the vividness of the terror and sheer graphic nature of the train crash woke me up.