Nerefa

This dream was from 3 nights ago.

I boarded a subway with sectioned rooms big enough for one or two people. Each room was empty with just a handrail.

I stood inside, waited for the doors to close, and felt the train move. Stood there for what felt like a few minutes, thinking it was a bit odd that my dream wasn’t changing. I can normally sense the motion of my dreams and things change around me.

Something felt off.

Then I felt something wash over my spine (the sensation I get with SP). I noticed a presence in the room and looked up. There was something nonhuman hanging on the handrail above me. I didn’t want to see it, so I blocked it from my mind with a blur effect as soon as I realized it was there.

it’s been a while since I’ve been scared like this, normally these don't get under my skin. I attempted to wake myself up, but did an FA into a room that looked nothing like my bedroom. I recognized it as a dream, but played along with it until I started feeling the sensation again of SP again and saw the creature coming back for more.

Woke myself up for real that time.

I kept accidentally DEILDing back in several times after that, though, and having waking hallucinations.

So eventually, I got up and walked around to wake myself up enough to stop the DEILDs.

I’m so glad this isn’t common for me any more. I used to go into SP multiple times per week and the experiences were a lot worse (this wasn't too bad). Once it would start, I would get stuck in endless DEILD chains.

The dream control skills I’ve picked up from this community make a world of difference. I didn’t lose sleep or experience any panic like I used to. Pretty great improvement.

I always loved going back to old memories through dreams. To recreate my childhood home and the white-painted window sill with the little chips of wood in it. How it opened horizontally. To remember the shape of the bathroom rug, and that heater lamp in the corner by the floor. To use one of those old bulky televisions from the 1990s, hooked up to Broadband satellite with Nickelodeon on channel 300.

It's incredible the things we consciously forgot. We have a treasure trove of seemingly forgotten memories inside of us. As a dreamer, I take full advantage of my access to them. One of my favorite pastimes is to eat food I used to enjoy in the past that can no longer be bought. The spring rolls from my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in 2014, the sweetened condensed coffee and chicken saute from another, saag and rice from the first Indian takeout I ever went to. It was amazing. I've never had anything like it since, and may never again—except literally any night I please.

Ah, but last night wasn't pleasant. I dreamed I found an old family album. It's one I've never seen before, and it occured to me that this dream album contained all my missing photos (any that I want it to contain). That's why it looked new. It was just for this.
There's a lot of family memories I'll never be able to relive—old photos that are gone, copies of my mom's songs...
So I thought now's the opportunity. I can get back some of those memories.
I'll never lose them. I may never again hear the recordings of her voice or see her smiling face during waking, but I'll always have this album in my dream home to look at any time I want to remember her again.

I couldn't...
Just sat there sobbing in my miserable dream.
My SO woke me up, says I was acting distressed in my sleep.

Well, this entry took a turn for the sad. Whoops.

Had a dream my friend had baby and she needed me to help with childcare. I didn't have much experience with infants, so I bought a robotic infant for learning purposes.
This was a new product on the market. They advertised them as lifelike both in appearance and behavior (thanks to AI). The commercials showed happy couples who couldn't have children taking care of the AI infants instead.
You could even get them upgraded to various stages of child models when you're ready for them to "grow up."

So I ordered one with the intent to use it to learn how to care for my friend's living baby.It came in a box with a charging station. During the first charge, it would download the AI software, develop a personality, name, and start its intelligence off so it could learn naturally from there. Basically this thing was being brought "to life."

I practiced holding it while it charged, following instructions for imprinting so it would think I'm its mom.

As I sat there, I questioned the ethics behind what I was doing, and wondered if maybe I shouldn't. What if it's too lifelike and gets attached to me? I don't actually want a baby, I just want to practice with it so I can help my friend with childcare. This wasn't the intended use for the product.
I decided to continue with it since this was just a dream anyway.

Waiting for first charge and startup process, I heard it speak. It started out making lifelike baby mumbles and sputters, but then after a minute, the baby sounds starting evolving into fully formed words. It sounded like it was talking to someone.
It started mumbling about killing people and became increasingly more malicious and aware the longer I held it.

The robot was having thoughts, and thinking them out loud because it hadn't yet downloaded the part that separated its thoughts and speaking function.

Part of this process also involved the new AI baby receiving information from other AI babies that are already activated (a collective AI consciousness).

Since it wasn't fully conscious yet, it didn't have the awareness that I was holding it, but it was becoming more aware the longer I let it charge. I immediately unplugged it, halted the startup process, and put back in the box.

"Phew... Bullet dodged." I thought to myself as I sat on the floor across from the deactivated killer baby in the box.
Good thing I didn't let it finish.
I naively assumed everything would be fine now, but then discovered that the world was in a state of emergency. People were panicking outside and the news was covering an urgent story about rogue AI babies roaming the streets. They were killing everybody. Sometimes they posed as real babies to lure people in, or they would just straight up murder on sight. They were highly intelligent and using manmade weapons. They walked around in adult clothes.

In fact, they infiltrated the building I was currently in. I had to run and hide.
Knowing I was in a dream, I turned myself into a robot baby to blend in so they wouldn't kill me. Using this disguise, I was able to interact with them. They were suspicious of me because I wasn't hooked up to the collective AI hivemind that they were all synced up with, but I distracted them with goodies and treats.
They were programmed to enjoy goodies and have the emotional regulation you would expect from a baby/toddler/young child.

So like, these super intelligent killer babies couldn't really pass a marshmallow test. I used this to my advantaged and became very popular amongst the killer babies. They adored me. I tried to work my way up to becoming their leader.

I don't remember much else and woke up in the morning eventually.

Just had a lucid nightmare. I’m currently waking myself up fully to avoid DEILD.

It would have been much worse if it wasn’t lucid. I dreamed that myself, my spouse, and an ex friend were driving through the hills. We hung out, caught up on old times, stopped at a café, and drove for a bit.

I bought the ex friend some food and thought things were going okay, though she seemed cold. Then, suddenly, she swerved and intentionally drove us off the side of a cliff.

I was lucid, so I made us land gentry and then snapped time back a few seconds to put us back on the road.

But she immediately did it again and again… and again. She grinned and I realized that she was lucid. She knew I was rewinding time.

She had every intention of driving us off a cliff. It wasn’t a misunderstanding or an accident.

I got fed up and pulled her off the steering wheel, then shoved her out the window. After she was gone, I sat back down with my spouse and had a breather.

I woke up with the next natural WBTB.

I still feel uneasy. It’s that uncanny sense you get about a person. It feels like they’ll kill you if they’re bored and can get away with it, but that’s so extreme, you tell yourself there’s no way…

But this feeling didn’t originate in dreams. I’m more aware now. It’s real.

The night before last, I visited an alien planet. There were no plants and no breathable atmosphere. The ground was covered in gray sand (which had the appearance of ash).

There was no life outside, but civilization existed within an indoor city. Because indoor space was limited, the city was very compact with buildings being closed together and no roads for wide vehicles.

It resembled a shopping mall, but with more businesses and residential buildings all packed together.

Because this planet wasn't naturally habitable, it had no native life. The economy was sustained mostly through tourism.

I explored the city for a bit, then turned into my dragon to explore outside in the uninhabitable parts. Eventually woke up in the morning.

The following night (last night), I came back to this planet and applied for the local college. I’m not sure what I'll be studying yet, but I took a bus to the campus and enrolled, so I'm a student now!

The admissions office directed me to a grassy indoor field, which had a large spiraling staircase smack-dab in the center of it. The staircase looked like it was once heavily polished and adorned with artwork, but it was now an archaic relic that had been restored.

This was where I would be taking a test. The admissions office told me to climb the stairs as high as I could to test my eligibility for classes. Weird, but alright. I followed the instructions and started going up the stairs. At first, it was just stairs, nothing peculiar. Maybe the test was at the top, I figured.

Then, as I got higher, creatures started emerging from nooks and crannies. They attacked me.
There were spiders, rats, bats, bugs, and other critters I had to fend off. It was mostly just an annoyance and I jogged my way through them.
As I went up further, more creatures came at me. Bigger ones. Tigers, wolves, alligators. This was more challenging, but I got through them, too.
Then I encountered human soldiers with military grade weapons. They attacked me on sight and I had to use my dragon to shield myself and get past.

I began to realize this was the test. Every student who climbed this stairway would face these increasingly difficult challenges.
For a while after passing the soldier level, I wondered what the next one would be... and I walked with more caution, looking around every corner.

The next trial wouldn't be around any corners, though. Instead, it was in my head. I heard a voice.
The higher I went, the louder and clearer the voice became. It cackled and taunted me demonically, threatening me with the trials ahead. It told me that it knew my greatest fears, and that's what I would soon face.
Knowing this is a dream, I don't doubt it. I seriously thought about going back, but decided that the voice in my head wasn't a deal breaker.
I continued up the stairway, ignoring it.

Eventually, the voice faded as I ascended beyond it.

But it was true that much worse things were higher up. The creatures that came for me next were supernatural. Zombies, ghosts, demons, and hallucinations of blood and other horror that personally disturbs me. However, I had already mentally prepared for it thanks to the warnings. I was determined to keep going and ascended past the supernatural scares. 


After getting past all of that, I stopped and looked up to try and see the top of the staircase.
There was no visible end. It seemed to go on infinitely, actually.
The stairs disappeared into gray fog in the sky.

I saw a glimpse of the stairway reaching into space and past the boundary of the universe.
This terrified me more than any other horror, so I stopped and jumped down from the stairway, declaring that I was done with the test. That's as far as I went!

Originally journal on 06/29/2023.

Bizarre experience! I've never had anything quite like this happen.

I had a lucid nightmare the other night. Being lucid, I decided to stay in the dream. However, my spouse (in waking life asleep next to me) woke up in terror and started yelling.
Her yelling woke me up. I opened my eyes and she was yelling right in my face clear as day. She was looking straight at me, shouting "Go away!"
I could distinctly see the horror in her eyes. I told her that everything is fine, trying to calm her down.

Afterwards, she told me that she was NOT yelling in my face at all. That never happened. Not from that perceptive, anyway. She did yell those words, but not at me. She was looking at something red behind me and that's what she was yelling at. She had leaned forward to get close to it when she started yelling at it.

So, I saw from the perceptive of the red thing she was yelling at, not my body, which was facing a different direction in a completely different position in the room.
It was completely dark in the room as well. I saw her as though there was a bright light illuminating her face, but there was never any light.
This was an OBE, I concluded.

That's all for now!

Journal from 06/23/2023. This is one of my PR dreams that was especially fun!

Since I haven't been journaling my PR much, I'll include some backstory for what's been going on.

I started this particular dream in my territory, which is a dreamed replica of my childhood home (I really should come up with a name for it). The property spans about 2 acres. It's by the coast just outside of an isolated fishing town.

This place is dreary and full of death, guarded by my zombie hoard and packs of wolves. The whole place is surrounded by towering trees, which is where the zombies and wolves usually creep in from.

The home itself is a small two-story shack. The ground floor is half kitchen (with concrete floor), and half garage (which I'm pretty sure is haunted).

Recently, I've decided to put a portal to hell here. It was originally in the field, but I moved it inside the house to be the kitchen to go with my haunted garage (seems only right to have them be side-by-side).

Specifically, I made this a portal to the Helluva Boss universe hell, because that version of hell is fun. I figured it would help liven up the place.

And boy, it worked! Lots of terrifying entities have been coming through my portal ever since I added it, ranging from spicy to downright malicious.

This has resulted in a few lucid nightmares for me, but that's fine—it was my intention to expose myself to nightmares in a controlled environment like this in order to overcome my fears. I used to have a severe fear of demons, ghosts, and other hellish beings... *cough* This was pretty embarrassing and debilitating, since I live a good portion of my life in dream realms as the supposed Lucid Guardian.
What kind of lucid guardian is afraid of ghosts? Bah!
So this is why I've done this to myself, and I've since made breakthroughs because of it. I'm not easy to scare anymore. I can deal with zombies, ghosts, demons, you name it.

Anyway, I was standing in the kitchen looking at my nifty new hell portal. It's invisible now (used to be more noticeable). I can sense its presence, though. When I walk through it, there's no immediate signs that I've entered hell, but very subtle differences in the atmosphere clue me in. I can feel the emptiness in the air and something ominous.
Everything looks like a mirror image of the same location, but it's not the same.

There was a native mortal human visiting my house in this dream. She unknowingly went through my portal, so I followed her through. I crept behind her as a shadow while she wandered outside.

Human girl noticed the dark clouds rolling in and seemed rightly unsettled by the place. The sky was a mixture of ashen clouds and yellow fog lit by distant fires.
I revealed myself to her, telling her that she had stumbled into another realm. With glee, I warned her that she better turn back.... Unless she wanted to brave the demons and animated dead.
Only a fearless soul will survive in a place like this. So which will it be? I gave her the choice to go back, but I'll be honest that it wasn't without provocation. I was having too much fun!
I asked if she'd cave in to cowardice and flee for her life like scared little mortals do, or dance with me?

I drew flames up out of the ground, engulfing my home in a blaze to demonstrate that this was no joke. I began a musical number (yes, like a Disney supervillain!), dancing and singing to a variation of that "It's Tough To Be a God" song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZKE10BQlXY).
It was fun coming up with lyrics on the spot! This was my favorite part of the dream.
Through my own version of the lyrics (I forget the exact details), I conveyed my identity as a dream deity, revealing that her universe was my lucid dream. Isn't the nature of reality frightening?

Stolas (from Helluva Boss) came through my portal during this, so I pulled him into it without skipping a beat. He passively went along with the number as I used him as part of my demonstration to the human of the kinds of hellish beings she'd find here if she stayed.

Right as I was singing about being a dream god, I woke up because my significant other rolled over in bed and slapped me in the face, mumbling in opposition. lmao
She was half asleep. When I told her what she interrupted, she said (jokingly) that somebody had to put a stop to me because I was getting too cocky, and that's why she did it.

The dream god Achilles heel! One second you're singing about having unlimited dream god powers, and next thing you know you disappear because waking up is all part of the gig. That's so annoyingly hilarious! I love it.

I gotta do more of these.

Was spending time with my dad and he said "It just occurred to me in bardo that, this whole time, you wanted to spend time with me..." and he and stared straight ahead in shock as the realization hit him.

I nodded. I wanted that more than anything, but gave up because he was cold towards me. I tried for years and he always shot me down.
One time I asked if he wanted to go to this festival we went to once when I was a kid, one of the few memories I have of him, and he said "No, that's for young people. I don't do that anymore." with bitterness as though he thought I cared about the festival.
That was when I realized he didn't cherish those memories. I don't know if he ever thought twice about me and the more I tried to spend time with him, the more it seemed he didn't.

"...No one ever wanted to spend time with me. Why?" he asked me, looking so shocked, confused, and heartbroken.

I lifted my hands struggling to come up with the words, but gave up. "I don't know. Your my dad. I love you. And... I thought you seemed fun to be around, anyway." I said but couldn't hold it together and started crying. I had to leave, so I walked away.

I saw it on his face that he finally understood.
If only it wasn't a dream. I cried for a bit as I put away the dream ice cream I was going to eat—but no longer felt like eating—and then woke myself up because I was only dreaming to avoid waking reality. It's like 10 AM...

Before going to bed, I told my SO about a strange feeling I had. "It feels like we're not alone. Like there's something in the kitchen." I said and shrugged, going to sleep without a second thought.

--- The Dream ---

Me and my SO were organizing our house and I found a pair of child-sized dolls with real black human hair. They were in the same area that corresponds with our kitchen.

I touched the hair and noted how it stuck into my skin and started burrowing into my finger.

“Well, these are definitely haunted.” I said.

I yanked the hair out of my finger and we arranged to meet up with a professional who could get rid of the haunted dolls for us. We met up at a restaurant.

“My rate is $500 an hour.” he told me off the bat.

My heart sank a bit as I wondered what I would have to do to earn money like that. That sounds like a lot. Sure, I could just materialize $500 into my hands at any moment, but that’s only useful for native laypeople (who don’t know the nature of dream reality) to spend on normal goods in dream world.

This guy is a lucid spirit worker. He wants payment obtained through legitimate means, not cheaply manifested dream notes.

“Do you have any use for my services? Would you be up for a trade?” I asked, but he shook his head with a politely dismissive gesture.

“Shoot. Alright. I’m not sure if I can afford your help. Do you have any DIY advise for someone with my abilities to deal with this on my own? I’n a… I guess you could call it a dream deity. This is my dream state right now.” I explained.

“So like a time traveler.” his assistant commented.

“Well, I can manipulate space, too.” I added.

--- Awake ---

Then my SOs work alarm woke me up.

--- Back to Dream ---

We were back at the house again. Sigh. That’s kind of embarrassing. Just as I’m explaining my abilities, I disappeared right in the middle of a conversation.

That is so something a dream traveler would do.

So I wasn’t feeling particularly competent by then. We loaded the dolls up into the car and drove to my grandfather’s house to talk to him. He was living with his girlfriend and was putting up some cabinets when we arrived, so I helped him out while we talked.

He asked us things like how it was going, and talked about his house. All was going good at first. I told him about the dolls, and he criticized everything I did, of course— because that’s what he does. Criticizing me over the dolls eventually evolved into them both blaming me for everything else in their lives. Even stuff I was completely unaware of/had no involvement in was all my fault and they reveled in complaining about me at length.

So I took the dolls out of the car and left them there.

--- AWAKE ---

Woke up in the morning shortly after. I told my SO and she lost it, thought it was hilarious because she knows how malicious my grandpa gets. Haunted doll problem solved the DIY way, I guess. lol Also it dawned on me afterwards: I forget who, but either the realtor or a family member had referred to this house as "the doll house."

I was a young boy in this dream, sleeping on a couch in a room with the lights off.

A black ghost-like entity crept up from behind me and I felt a tingling sensation on my back, then an electric sensation in my spine.

Whatever this thing was, I felt a malicious femininity from it and got the impression that it normally targets children (it didn’t know that I’m not actually a child).

I wasn’t scared or intimidated, and don’t like giving into these things, so I sat there for a moment.

But the electric sensation in my back continued, so I woke myself up. The sensation persisted for a little bit after I woke.

Dreamed that I went to a family reunion with all my dead ancestors (whom I've never met).
I've been feeling sad about "losing my family" lately, but in this dream, I was told that those currently alive are only a fraction.

One of my great great something grandpas (don't know how far back he went) gave me a shell that was rainbow-colored like an abalone, but shaped like a conch and heavy as a brick. He said it was important and he wanted me to have it.

Some other family members told me he was sexist, but he never gave that heirloom to his sons and was stingy in general.

Well, that was a nice time.

I was at a convention, about to make a sale, and was in a bit of a hurry. I was nonlucid.

Suddenly out of nowhere, my grandpa walked by, as though just passing through. It didn’t fit with the scene and was a noticeable interruption from my current state of mind, but not because he was trying to be noticed. I got the feeling he wouldn’t have even looked at me, had I not initiated eye contact.

He smiled with genuine happiness, the way he used to smile at me. It was real, I thought. Something I hadn’t seen in a very long time, and never thought would happen again. I was instantly lucid.

There was something peaceful about him. He was ready to just walk by without interrupting the show, but I greeted him and we walked away from the convention into what appeared to be a Denny’s booth (with dark gray carpet on the floor, the wooden table and bench, and the red fake leather seatbacks).

“How are you doing?!” I asked, addressing him by his first name.

“Doing good! Its so nice to see you!” he said with a jovial lift in his voice like he used to have. I’ll never forget the joy he had.

“I’m glad to hear it.” I answered. “How is the real one doing?” I asked, referring to his physical self.

He frowned and seemed more dubious on the subject. “I just wish I could wake up…” he said with a sort of frustration and disappointment that was dwarfed by his happiness to be here. It seemed like he had been dealing with something lately.

That was about it for this one. I purposely woke up to write it down.

Had a dream in the same world as my previous “No Outside” dream: https://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/ner...outside-94602/

I didn’t realize it until later in the dream. It started out in waterways between tall (concrete?) buildings that had no visible windows or doors.

There was a hole-in-the-wall market. At the entrance, a man sold goods to customers (literally it was a hole in the wall of one of the buildings, it was well hidden). He sold everything from foot to housewears to electronics to drugs.

He asked me what I was looking for (his products were in the back mostly, customers stayed outside and he brought things out to them). I knew I was dreaming so I though “Sure I could go for some dream drugs.”

But I knew there was something I wanted to remember to do tonight that could be applied to this moment. What was it…?

Then I remembered. I was trying to figure out how to be truly happy again (been feeling off lately). So I told him I’d like something that’ll make me happy. He handed me some drugs and I took one. Nothing extraordinary happened, I just felt sorta drunk/high afterwards.

As I left, I noticed there were cameras watching just outside. Other customers told how to sneak around them.

Through dream scan, I realized this whole city was being watched by something and people lived in secret within the crevices. These people were surrounded and trapped.

I went out to look at the cameras and realized they were the same drones from my “No Outside” dream. Same world, different location. The drones were trying to recapture people who escaped.

I ended up letting the drones capture me out of curiosity to see what would happen but woke up (either SO woke me up or other natural waking).

After the wake up, I went back in but appeared in the woods. I was standing in a path when all the sudden about thirty soldiers in light gray uniforms showed up, but most of them were noticeably drunk.

A couple others appeared behind me with a higher ranking officer in green. The soldiers flanking him moved to join the group and they all looked at him as he spoke to the group.

I just happened to be there and was in the way, so I moved off the path and watched.

They were about to go home, which I guess was why he didn’t care about some random bystander being there, or the drunken murmuring. Everyone seemed tired, done, and eager to leave. Happy, in a way? Eh.

I suppose that’s what I’ve been feeling lately, whatever the hell it is. I’m done fighting, I’ve lost my entire family, everything I thought I knew was a lie, the world has been turned upside down and will never be the same. Time to go home and live life like none of it happened. I don’t know who I am anymore but everythings fine now and I’m supposed to be happy. I *want* to be happy. If I’m broken, that means they won. All they ever wanted was to break me. I’m so angry that I’ve let them win.

This dream was from the night before last.

---

I was lucid through the whole night (WILDed back into it after each natural WBTB). Most of it was one big dream (there was one smaller lucid dream at the start of the night, but I forgot it).

I traveled around a world made up of holograms. The people were real, and they had a system where if they wanted an object that they could pick off the land, they had to purchase it through a system. The purchased replaced the hologram with a real object.

For example, if they wanted a to chop down a tree to build something, they had to purchase that tree for it to materialize fully.

They had big cities for people to live, society, all built with stuff that’s real from past purchases off the land. It was mainly the rural areas that were holograms.

The boundaries of the world were in the ocean. The ocean didn’t get too deep, it just cut off at after a certain point and I could see the boundary's edge in the distance.

The forests were symmetrical. They looked like normal forests, except the trees and the animals, everything in them was perfectly lined up. You can walk a certain number of steps and find the same bear next to the same rock next to the same tree stump on repeat. Each forest was shaped like a pie this way and had its own unique stuff on repeat.

There were many different holographic landscapes. They were solid and I could interact with the holograms, but I couldn't use or take them.

I at one point tested this by getting a bear to chase me. It only chased me a few yards before going back to its spot where it was locked in with an "invisible" tether.

The people in the city were nice, good people, but I didn’t like the way society operated. I forget why, but they had some sort of societal problems.

I went off into the rural landscapes and found nomads living off the land on the rocks by the edge if the sea. They got by with what little they had. They had escaped the main cities and didn’t want to go back, even though life was harder for them.

I found a nice lake hidden away in a beautiful grove. The water was no more than four feet deep and crystal clear. There was a rainbow of beautiful rocks at the bottom.

One of the nomad women rowed a small boat around the lake and I spoke to her in private, enjoying the scenery and company. She told me that entertainment, play, and any forms of self expression or leisure were frowned upon in society even amongst the nomads. They needed to work 24/7 and should not have nor desire anything more in life.

She told me that she liked to come here to this lake to be at peace. This was her haven, a secret place she could escape to, and goof off. To live and relax. This was her freedom, no matter how small it was.

I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone, that I was from somewhere far away and this was my escape, too. I’m also just looking for somewhere to relax and be at peace. I told her how blessed I am to have this time to myself in such a beautiful world.

I didn’t tell her this was my dream since that usually gets complicated and I have to explain how that works, which I didn't feel like doing.

But we had a nice time.

This is a personal dream that I wouldn’t normally post, but I wanted to share one of these. This is a good example of a therapeutic lucid dream. It shows one of the ways you can benefit from lucid dreaming if you experience grief or other difficult emotions.

Warning: A lot of unpleasantness ahead.

—-

We went to my grandpa’s house since we happened to be there and I decided to real quick grab some more of my stuff like the office chair. We didn’t leave much there, but the office chair was the one big thing I left.

He wasn’t home. I deliberated skipping it, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to just go in and grab the chair so he wouldn’t have to worry about moving it.

I know how much I personally hate unannounced guests and I would never want someone doing this for me, but I keep thinking of how much he’s expressed difference from me in this way. It makes no sense to me, but he never cared about people just walking into his house. He used to refuse to put doors between rooms in his house, removing them any chance he got, and didn’t like locks—he’d never lock his house. He’d leave doors wide upon and get excited about the happy surprise if anyone like a neighbor just happened to walk in out of the blue. All the time he’d invite people to show up and do things for him when he wasn’t home, as if the very thought of (what I would consider) an intrusion delighted him.

So I went in and got the chair. It was already sitting by the door, affirming his intention to get rid of it.

He then pulled up just as we were leaving. He was pissed, but not because it bothered him that I walked into his house. He wasn’t truly bothered at all, but acted as such merely because it violated the boundaries he knew I had. My boundaries, which he found a way to weaponize in this moment. It was shallow anger laced with the “Gotcha” delight that almost overided it to a point where I couldn’t take it seriously.
“So we’re just walking into people’s houses now.” he said with a sneer, but he could barely take his own pseudo rage seriously and I could hear the laughter below out from behind it.
It was strange, though. Something wasn’t right.
He then turned to me and I saw glimpses of the nice grandpa I used to know as he held his arms out and hugged me. He said he was happy to see me, he loved me, and goodbye.
There was anger and spite still in him, directed at me at the same time.
I asked if he wanted some money to cover any potential bills.
I felt bad that I don’t have much now because we just moved, but I’d give him whatever I could.
He answered with two voices clearly speaking in unison. One said yes, that it would help. The other voice cheered with derision. “Ooh money, hehehe!” it chuckled, as if celebrating plundered goods despite me giving it freely. It made it sound like I was being robbed even though that’s not what this was. I owed him far more than I could give, and I wanted to help him more than anything.
I didn’t like how that voice made me feel gross helping him, so I ignored it. I gave him $100, silently promising I’d have more later, and hugged him again. I told him thank you, that I loved him. I knew it was stupid to cry, but did so anyway.
I hurriedly got back in the car after waving goodbye and could hear the deriding voice cheering and mocking me as it celebrated the money.
His other voice didn’t speak, but it was sad and watched us leave as if it wished it could leave, too.
I felt pulled in two different directions whenever I was around him lately, ever since we moved here.
I never used to feel this way.

As we pulled out of the driveway, I saw something sitting there. It was short and black, and it sat in a massive puddle of itself. Now that I looked at the house from outside, I could see it better. There was black grime everywhere. It was all over the property, having spread itself onto everything, a wet spiderweb of black goop. It was all over my grandpa too. His clothes, hair, and skin had little strings of weblike goop all over. It leaked out from inside his mouth and the corners of his eyes.
I thought about how, in waking life, there was always this strange invisible grime that follows him. It has a physical texture and smell, but I couldn’t see it. The only time I ever saw him without it was for a few years when he was practicing Buddhism. At that time, he was happier than I had ever seen him before.
He still keeps all the statues and pictures from his trip to Burma, but I avoid talking to him about Buddhism as it seems to anger him if it’s brought up.
Anyway in this dream I didn’t see it when I was in the house, but I could see the black grime clearly now from the car.

I looked down at myself, checking our car and things. We were clean. It wasn’t on us. I wasnt worried about it getting on us either, as I knew it didn’t want anything to do with us.

It had already tried over the course of the two years we lived there. That’s why it spited us, and wanted us gone.
I looked out the window at my grandpa, who watched us drive away.

“…I got manipulated, didn’t I?” I then turned and asked my partner.

“Yeah.” she said.

I nodded, not knowing why I asked other than to get her opinion, I guess.

For a moment, we couldn’t decide where to go, but ultimately we decided to go home to the new place.