Carabas

I'm occupying someone else's body, and I-the-character am not entirely clear on the body's identity. A woman greets me in Korean, and following her expectations, I enter an elevator. I-the-dreamer am aware that the body I'm occupying owns this building, he's the president of a company, and this is his private elevator to his penthouse suite. There are no buttons inside the elevator; I-the-dreamer am aware it uses facial recognition, I-the-character am surprised when it starts to move.

The elevator opens onto his suite. There are a number of people in the bed, clearly after a party; the body's owner recognizes one of these people, the rest are strangers. I order everyone out; only that one exception stays. He's sitting up against the headboard, wearing an animal's pelt draped over his head, a wolf or a coyote. (It occurs to me after waking up that we were both wearing something else's skin.)

Another man appears, and he grips this man by the throat. I recognize him; he's the reason I-the-character occupied this particular body, in order to meet with him. He speaks to me, believing he's speaking to the body's owner. I-the-dreamer switch to third person because I want to see the expressions of me-the-character.

Speaking in English so that we won't be understood by the man with the animal pelt, I-the-character chide him for being "so eager to sink your teeth."

He says, "Not the only thing I'm good at. But surely we'll still eat this-"

A production of Faust, I'm going over a written list of the scenery needed for each scene. One scene is described as the Altar of Hell, and I have a mental image of Faust being pinned to a circular stone by two demons; that's the contract signing scene. The next scene is set in a field surrounded by trees, and my perspective changes so I see this as the audience would.

Curtain rises on Marguerite and women of the chorus in the field; shortly afterward Faust enters from the right. In response to what the women had been singing, he sings something satirical about the dangers of love and the unfortunate fools who are caught up in it. This annoys Marguerite, and she turns away and pointedly ignores him. The women of the chorus exit, and Faust realizes how angry Marguerite is, so he jokes around in the hopes of getting back in her good graces, teasing her by singing a humorous song that starts with a verse about roosters and hens. She forgives him easily, and by the time he gets to the chorus she's joined in the song, flirting right back at him. The second verse is about deer and hunters, and she playfully leads him on a chase around the stage. As they exit, laughing, Mephistopheles strolls by in the background, keeping an eye on how things are playing out.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There are four men, or people who were once men and are now weapons, kept chained up in their sleep. Two 'chains,' really - the collars around their throats, but also something much deeper that's never meant to be removed. I'm removing that second 'chain' from each of them. They wake up as I do so, and their first reaction is to moan about the pain, but gradually they regain a sort of awareness. It's interesting to watch - they're becoming aware of how much of their personality has been stripped away from them, but without actually regaining that personality they lost. Their master arrives then, and I expect them to attack him in revenge - that's the whole reason I freed them - but instead they cower in the corner, just looking at the pair of us.

Memory gap. Next thing I remember, I've gone semi-lucid in order to pursue that master of theirs. He's closed himself off inside a tower where I shouldn't be able to follow, with an irritatingly arrogant attitude about it - he's essentially the god of this place, it won't allow me entrance if it goes against his will. Or at least it's not supposed to. The tower's a sort of futuristic art deco confection, lots of spheres and glowing purple lights, and I'm flying around it, demanding that it create an opening. With my next pass around the tower, I find an entrance has been created, opening onto a single room containing an elevator. It signifies that this place is as willing to depose its 'god' as I am. I take the elevator up to that man's private sanctuary - the elevator doors open to show me a vast pool lined with twisted white trees without leaves, and quite a lot of statues, including some of himself. This guy is unbelievable. There's a mansion at the far end of the pool, and I expect his mental trail to lead me there, but instead it leads me off to the right, to another body of water, and I focus on a light at the end of a pier.

I got on an elevator expecting it to go up, this being the ground floor - there's only one floor above us, and only arrows instead of floor numbers. But it went down. I wonder how many basement levels there are. I reach to press the up arrow, saying something about my mistake to the woman still on the elevator with me. I'm new to this building. We talk about the company a bit as the elevator continues down, about finding your way around the various floors, and various luxuries that are provided for employees. I mention soul-selling and Satan, meaning it as a joke, but she talks about Satan fondly. We reach her floor, and she leaves.

My point of view switches to follow her - she walks down a hallway into a club. Her brother who goes by the name of Beelzebub - a fake name, it's really Samael - is lounging around with a cocktail glass in his hand, some glowing blue drink inside. He's a pretty man with long dreadlocks, wearing something black covered in stylized eyes in red. The woman's removed the pale coat she was wearing on the elevator, and the dress she's wearing underneath matches her brother, black and covered in stylized eyes in red. They consult about someone he describes as "a friend and a most simple prize."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's this swirling black mass of many colors, like an oil slick, lit up from within like lightning seen from above. I'm eager to dive in immediately - it's a portal - but I'm also thinking I should stop and go lucid first. As I'm torn between these two desires which are apparently conflicting, I wake up.

(Side note: that last was a reaction to trying reality checks. As a rule I'm not interested in them, but I have a lot of false awakenings that I tend to just spend dream journaling and I thought I could put reality checks to use there. So today I tried a reality check as I wrote that first dream up, and apparently this sort of thinking is the immediate result - associating lucidity with stopping what I'm doing to perform an action. Nuisance.)