Recent DJ Posts

I'm walking along a hall filled with exhibits - first, fragments of stones covered with hieroglyphics; then statues of Dumuzi; then a small section filled with art based on myths from various old African and Middle Eastern cultures, done by artists from the current African and Middle Eastern cultures - a reclaiming sort of thing. A painting of Eve holds my attention. Here I meet a very influential man and a woman who he has some claim on, but who seems mentally elsewhere - she speaks only nonsense. I feel protective of her, and I follow her out to a field where she gathers flowers and speaks nonsense at me for a while, but eventually that influential man and his followers come outside and she has to return. She hands me the flowers she's gathered and indicates I should eat them. Heather, foxglove, peony and violet. I put down a plank for her to walk across to return to him, and she hands me the traditional few coins for her passage.

A scene involving statues who came to life ends with a man speculating about whether it's possible for something carved in stone to change its role. He thinks it's possible, within limits. He speaks in a manner that's difficult for the people around him to understand - they say he speaks in riddles, but that's not intentional.

As I'm listening to him speak, the scene transitions; I'm in a dark stone room, listening to someone else speak to himself. I've lost track of what he was actually talking about, too busy focusing on his mannerisms and speech patterns, because I/Rumpelstiltskin recognize this scene - this is the man who I'll steal some of my more showy mannerisms and speech patterns from. Eventually he says a phrase that he uses very often, and recognizing it, I join in with him word for word. I've got his tone down very well, though my voice echoes, an effect of the spell I'm using to stay hidden - helps distort the location. He startles when he hears me, and I say, "Chilling, isn't it?" The similarity in our voices, I mean.

He looks around to try to find me, unsuccessfully, but he looks deeply unimpressed. "Expressing affection?" he asks.

"Precisely. But as an aside-" I drop the spell and step into the light as I speak.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Me and Jules are meeting as strangers - a man led us down to a room displaying various things that were important to each of us in the past. He wants us to go over our own displays to make sure there's nothing that needs to be changed. When we take a break, however, I wander over to some of the objects that are on the wall. There's a statue of a golden lion - something Jules made. He explains that it was based on an ancient model, but it's difficult when you can't be exactly sure of the symbolism each detail had to that ancient culture. I sympathize - I'd once studied the original pair of lion statues he based this one off of.

After several scenes on the streets of New York, I wander off into some hills, go lucid, and start to fly. Once I gain some altitude, I come across a river with several boats making their way downstream. I'm aware that if I follow the river downstream, it'll lead me back into the city; upstream, elsewhere. I'm torn, but then a large boat on the river draws my attention. Marie Antoinette's leaning on the railing, drinking an immense glass of pink champagne, and generally looking very inviting. I land on the boat and we go inside. Unfortunately, although I hear her meaning instead of her actual words, she complains that she can't understand what I'm saying - she's hearing the actual English words. I have to deliberately switch to speaking French - she can understand me well enough now, but my vocabulary's limited. I join her husband at a buffet table where he explains the various delicacies to me - they all sound fascinating, though I'm not eating. I leave him to go remove my overcoat; I meet a handsome guest and we enjoy some extremely unsubtle flirting. Eventually he leaves to rejoin his boyfriend, and as I'm admiring the pair of them I have a false awakening.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a witch sorting through various moments of time from her past. The first one she selects isn't the one she's looking for - it's the moment when she was taken to the castle, associated with a sense of pain, before she became a witch. She puts that moment back.

The second moment she selects - her daughter's choice between death or banishment. I think of Sleeping Beauty, converting a curse into something that's still a curse, but survivable. The daughter herself would have chosen death - young romantic type, I think of Romeo and Juliet - but her mother the witch says, "I gave him the terms quickly." By him, she means me/Rumpelstiltskin. She struck a deal with me to get her daughter away safely, before the daughter could choose a 'noble' death. The scene changes - I'm standing in the shadows at the very edge of a forest, looking at the castle on the hill in the distance. Despite the various fairy tale references in this scene, this castle's no fairy tale confection; it's a squat, practical thing. The daughter was somewhere inside at this moment in time.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

After uncovering a secret lab leaking some kind of contamination that was killing the rats in the neighboring building, and making a quick escape out a second floor window and over a series of rooftops, I've wound up coincidentally coming across a scientist from that same lab and having a civil conversation on the subject of traveling through portals. We passed through one without her realizing it, and I'm baffled as to how she could not have noticed, but also baffled as to how to explain that moment of transition to her - I compare it to a change in air pressure, something you feel rather than something visible that you can point to.

She's excited about having found someone to talk to about this, someone who's used to traveling between worlds, and she asks me a variety of questions. But her expectations are so wildly different from my experiences that we're having trouble communicating - she seems to have a worldview straight out of Lovecraft. She asks me first about Old Ones, and I had no idea what she was talking about - the ancient beings that created the world, she explains. She describes them very specifically. That's something I've never come across, sorry. So then she asks about some other creature I've never heard of, and this one she explains as the demon lords that currently run the world now that the Old Ones are gone. This is hilarious. Again, sorry, no - if there are any demon lords running the world, I have yet to meet them. I start wondering if this story is actually a misinterpretation of some of my own past actions.

Have a bit of a sore head, think it has affected my recall - which is normally pretty solid. I will write down what I remember in a quick update during this Wbtb. This is all non-lucid btw

It's dark out, we're in the city I currently live, in the middle of the night during peak drinking hours. People are bars and pubs and me and my friend from high school are walking with a few others. Leon has always been a bit of a character, he likes to make fun of people in front of other for recognition. However, outside of that he does actually have a decent sense of humour and an crack a joke from time to time. We're walking together, in our group and he decides to start throwing insults at these two big dudes. They were black and he was throwing racist insults, shit! The guys turns around and start getting aggressive with him, and Leon is like "what!? calm down, it's not that bad". As the two guys decide to leave it alone, Leon fires another insult, again racist and at this point I grab him by the scruff of the neck and throw him in a whole in the ground, which happens to be full with water, enough to completely submerge him. The two guys leave, and I try to get leon out with some rope in the water. He was not there, he has slipped through a hole in the inside frame is is heading out to the bay and is most likely dead. It's at this point his other friends admit they were smoking pcp...

... I need to get back to sleep but to cut a long story short, I rescue him and I specifically remember his eyes. His pupils were so small you could barely see them and the colours of his eyes were a significant colour of blue green. They looked like they pierced your soul.

I will update this later if I remember, I will leave some mental reminder notes at the bottom.

- Talking with girl she refuses me for sex, i bring it up again she compliments me.
- evil guy fucking with people for no extra cost
- pokemon, save squirrel, help reach goal
-

going back to attempt another wild, wish me luck.

To bed very late, more holiday-related alcohol consumption, very busy days, stress, so dreaming is not perfect. But came away with two fairly long vivid coherent dreams, probably much detail forgotten.

+ new guy at a new company, give them a false name, tour the facilities and observe the huge workbenches and covered with huge plots

I'm settling in my cube at a new job, the boss calls me in to a meeting. In a conference room, sitting around a long table, I tell them my name is "Kirill," but they can call me "<my real name>", it's my nickname. Why did I tell them a false name, will that cause a problem?

I don't really know what's going on at this job. I should ask JL who also works here and used to be my manager at another job (real memory), but I think no, I should figure it out on my own.

I'm standing by a printer station, this is a printer that has many different names, all of which comes to this one device. A 3-ish page document comes out from a young woman, I pick it up and set it to the side of the printer, she comes by and I imagine she'll find it.

I'm given a walking tour of the company. It is extremely crowded with workers who all work very hard and long hours. It's a computer hardware company apparently. Everybody's desk is really long, and their work areas are covered with huge very wide (2-3 meters) plots of the systems their designing. The plots are colorful and are made up of large numbers of lines arranged mostly in rectangular grids, like this:



Discussing a particular circuit with somebody. It's a 9x2 or 9x3 arrangement of cells, it's a multiplier.


+(f) walking outside a company outdoors in daylight

+ performing a concerto at a concert in a very steep concert hall, should I use music?, conductor goes on first

I'm performing a solo at a concert. I'm climbing down a steep practically vertical audience area almost like a ladder. I pass by the principal orchestra <my instrument> player, and nod to her. I look down to the stage area and see a music stand has been placed on the stage next to the chair I will sit in. Hmm, should I play with music? I'm trying to decide, it's less professional to play with music but there's less risk of forgetting the music.

Later I'm down on the stage level it's darker waiting to go on stage with the conductor, the announcer introduces the conductor and I start on to the stage but they indicate I should wait until my turn. There are no curtains and everyone can already see me so i wonder why I should wait.

I’m not exactly sure how to describe this dream, but it felt like I appeared in somebody else’s lucid dream in the fully lucid state. I had a similar experience once before (which I need to journal), and it sort of feels like the dream environment is different than how I would normally perceive it. It has very distinct edges and boundaries, seems very solid, and feels like I’m in a large fish tank, because there’s very little background, if any. Usually my dream environment is as large as the universe itself (literally) with no boundaries. Here’s what happened.

I appeared in the backseat of car with my wife as we were being driven someplace at night. I was facing my wife. I was perfectly lucid, and the clarity and vividness were perfect. I thought to myself this sort of feels like an OBE, but I didn’t do an OBE exit, and this doesn’t feel like an LD, so how did I appear here perfectly lucid (I was confused, but loving it). My wife was young and beautiful, and she looked the same as she did when I first met her 30 years ago. I was really taken back by her beauty. My father in-law was driving; everything in the interior had warm lighting, and I could only see blackness out the windows. Then I saw some hair sticking up above the front passenger seat, so I leaned forward to see who was there. My dear daughter was there! She was half turned, tucked down, with her face pressed against the seat back, and she looked like she was hiding! I said her name with excitement, and then she sat up smiling at us. I reached my left arm around the front seat and gave her a warm hug.

During the lucid dream, I remembered wanting to hear my daughter sing her new song. As a bit of background regarding this; my dear niece is also a lucid dreamer, and a couple of weeks ago, she said my daughter sang her a song in her lucid dream that she had written in Heaven. I leaned forward in the backseat of the car and asked my daughter to sing the song her cousin (my niece) told me about. Next thing I knew I was remote viewing, or 3rd person, in front of a nicely lit, little, wooden stage, surrounded by blackness, and my daughter was standing there ready to sing in her cute dress. I was totally unable to move around or change the view, and it felt like I was looking out somebody else’s eyes. There was a couple of stage props neatly placed here and there. She started to sing a melody by repeating a phrase like ‘A-Meah-Ah’ over and over, and then she went into the verse, all while she danced and spun around the stage and props. It sounded absolutely beautiful and very modern! She made it to the start of the chorus, and then she stopped singing and said, “Oh crap, I forgot the words.” I then woke up, and I didn’t try to stabilize the dream because it didn’t feel like I was driving. I really enjoyed her song and dance.

For several months now I've not done any lucid-related activities, at all. I feel as if I actually forgot how fun lucid dreaming is and how it greatly improved my life always being excited for what might happen next night. Mid-term exams are done, they were a little more than a month ago but I think it's still something to mention because they were so good I'm quite relaxed for the rest of the year, my last year. Not sure if university-life will allow me to continue my lucid efforts but we'll see later.

[Empty space to make text reader-friendly]

Maybe once a month I could still boot another LD up using DEILD/WILD but the thing that really motivated me was not the low frequency of my LDs but the shockingly low vividness of the few I had. (It is annoying looking around in a dream when your right eye doesn't work...) So yeah, my goals are to write some more crazy stories down that happen deep inside my complex mind, built my DR back up to standards and have a lot of fun.

[These empty space really help don't they?]

Another goal is not to learn LDing anymore cause I did that in my previous "chapter" but instead to actually start utilising my abilities for various things like:

-completing TOTMs
-Improving learning capabilities even more
-Have fun

I hope you didn't miss me too much (Not sure why anyone would care) and a happy new year.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #262: Arcade Action

I’m walking through an arcade, heading somewhere but in no particular hurry. It’s a huge place with a very high ceiling and lots of cool-looking games. I come to one beat-em-up game that looks sort of interesting. It’s got a pair of joysticks (one for each player) and a “Kick” button. The “Kick” button looks sort of messed up and mashed to one side.

I notice an odd message flashing on the screen: “Press Kick to Start”. It looks like someone left a credit in this machine! I look around to see if the credit belong to anyone nearby. There’s a black guy in his late 40s walking by and I ask him whether this is his game. He seems confused by my question, so I turn back to the machine, and become lucid as I reflect on my good fortune.

I press “Kick” to start the game, slightly nervous that the dream won’t be stable if I play games. I start singing an impromptu song about dreams and video games (in my lucid dream voice, which is much much better than my waking life voice!)

The game begins and rather than a beat em up, it’s some kind of shooting gallery game where you have a little video game hand with a gun. The graphics look 8-bit, and there are these little circular targets that I’m supposed to be aiming at. When I move the joystick, the gun moves, and pressing kick makes the gun shoot. I miss a couple of times, and then hit a target, which shatters!



The shooting gallery attendant walks out and resets the targets. Unlike the rest of the game, she’s completely lifelike, a petite Asian woman with a medium build, probably in her late 20s. I do another round of shooting. Aiming the gun is kind of a pain, but I eventually shoot two more targets, and the attendant walks out to reset the targets.

I think about trying to change the game into a beat-em-up, but the attendant turns to face me. I see that she looks Thai or Cambodian, and her appearance is very vivid and attractive. She asks me…

Spoiler for Sexytime:

... whether I want to have sex with her. I have no idea how I’m supposed to do this, but sure, I'm interested! As sexytime commences, I find that my dream body’s able to be in two places at once; I’m both standing in the arcade playing the video game and living in the game and doing things with the shooting gallery attendant. (This goes on for about 90 rather action-packed seconds.)

Afterward, I emerge fully back into the video arcade and wonder whether I can play the game some more. The attendant looks toward me, seemingly ready to set up another round. As I’m messing with the controls, the attendant wanders off, leaving the shooting gallery in sort of a half-ready state. I mess a bit more with the game controls, but I’m feeling less tied into the dream, and pretty soon I’m awake.

Working at some new job involving answering the phones and a square table with a few people standing around it. We are putting parts together sometimes, answering phones other times. I decide not to wear the uniform - some tan shirt with a collar. There are some other people out of uniform also. We get to talking a bit, but don't get along. Then I find out that they are the highest corporate bosses in the whole company, and they are upset about me not being in uniform! I tell my coworker if he thinks it'd make a difference to get in uniform. He's not sure. I tell him to wait here and I'll be right back then take off sprinting to my locker. I'm not sure what my locker combination is. I think it's 27, 3, 33 or something with a 17 or a 29 in it. I manage to get it right, and open the locker. Inside, no uniform. It must be in my other locker... I leave the lean-two locker room and run across a field at night to another small lean-two with lockers inside behind a small counter / cafe / bar where someone is serving food or drink. This time my locker is not even locked. Inside is the lock, with the combo set to 1337. I leave it inside and grab my shirt. It someone takes my lock, I don't really care, I just keep my work shirt in here. I put it back on and return to my post after what seemed like 20 minutes of trying to get the first locker open.

Kind of a lame lucid dream, but I had it.

Something to do with Lego People in Minecraft or Minecraft people in a Lego world or something like that.


I was in the family van with my mom and dad. They were driving over these steep sandy hills preforming jumps. This was the first sign that I was dreaming; I began to question how the family van, being almost as old as I am was able to handle 20-foot jumps and landing on its nose with no sign of damage or distress.

At one point we drove through a barn. I got worried not only that this might be reckless and damage our van, but that an angry owner might show up.

At one point we stopped because my dad had to check the engine. I preformed a nose pinch. I could breathe fine. Dreaming. I looked up at the sky and saw five moons in the daytime sky. One of them was huge, obviously. I looked away and looked back and saw that the moons had somehow become conjoined together.

"Uhhh... that doesn't' look right."

"What are you talking about? It's just the moons sticking together. That's what all the craters on the big one are for, so all the little ones can fit nicely in the basins."

It was my mom. I told her that this was a lucid dream that I was going to leave her and go fly. I started climbing up one of the sandy hills. She started begging me to show her how to lucid dream like I do, thinking that it was really cool. At first, I told her no, but after she asked three or four times, I gave in.

I decided to teach her one of the first things that I had ever learned in lucid dreaming; how to run at high speeds. We found a black asphalt path. I explained to her that part of it is preforming the correct physical motion and part of it is having the correct mental state, knowing that your dream control has to work.

She took off running. I tried to go after her, but she didn't look back to see that my high-speed running had actually failed. But I still went after her for a minute. This led me through the woods, over a wooden bridge and to a small gas station/cafe place deep in the woods. There was a small lot with some strange cars in it nearby.

To be honest, I find that my parents, in lucid dreams make for pretty annoying DCs. In hindsight, I probably should have made an effort to get rid of her or distract her. She asked me why my running hadn't worked. I told her that I didn't know, but if we went into that gas station, we might be able to cheat the dream into giving us what we want.

I started to walk in, I pushed the door open and tightly squeezed the metal handle with my hand, picking up some dream stabilization. "A good friend of mine works here, I think she'll be able to help us." Luckily at this point was actually the last of my mom that I saw in the dream.

I came in. It was a small convince store that sold candy, chips and the likes. I saw a menu above the counter and apparently they sold a variety of common hot foods. (Pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, etc.) There were a couple of dream characters waiting in line. I just cut in front of them and they didn't care.

The person at the check-out counter was a short black lady with straight hair. I think she had the face of one of my old gym teachers from middle school. (Man parents and middle school teachers, this whole dream is just a host of awkward and uncomfortable dream characters.) She also had a bionic arm on one side. I kept looking at it, though she didn't seem to appreciate that. (She didn't seem particularly cheerful to begin with.) It kept changing sides.

"Are you going to buy anything or just stare?"

"No, I'm not hungry. Is Manei off her shift yet?"

"Yeah, I'll let you in."

Success. Manei was in the back room. She had on one of those really heavy native American ponchos for some reason. She was talking with this really short black boy who I assumed was the woman's son, and this fat girl with brown hair. I said hello and she said goodbye to her friends.

"What I tell you? No meet me in gear room! Meet me in bedroom! I tell you ten times! Now I cannot *do something* for ten days. Why you no listen?"

I open my mouth to talk.

"Come, we talk downstairs, in private."

She takes me back out front of the store and to the women's bathroom. I look in and there is a toilet filled with poo. (And I mean filled, like a mountain of poo.) There was also a lot of pee and *ahem* other liquids on the floor.

She closed the door and then opened it agian to reveal a flight of stairs with a bed at the bottom. She asked that the both of us jump at the count of three and land on the bed. We do it. Completely pointless but we do it.

"Now, Atakonk yatoo tahuatok bararr satago izquen lavis al Ukatok. Urtem kaso aleey" (Something or other.)

"Manei, I don't understand your dreamspeak all that well, remember?"

"I know, but I want you to listen- I want you to listen- I want you to Lis-Lis-Lis-Listen."

"Katago Lalataktaktak. Katago Lalataktaktak. Katago Lalataktaktak. Katago Lalataktaktaktaktaktaktak..."

Manei.exe has stopped working. Would you like to close the dream or check online for a solution?

The dream faded to black slowly around here. I tried to squeeze the pillows and blankets on the bed we were in to hang on, but I guess that's no different than squeezing the pillows and blankets in your waking life bed.

Sitting in the living room on the couch by the fire, my friend is busy doing something with headphones on. I take my headphones off and they want to eat. I have a few shopping bags with various kinds of chicken and cabbage, but think it'll be too hot to cook it inside, even though frying it is the best. Rather than decide what to do, I pick up my guitar and start learning how to play. I don't remember the chords after 7 years. I make up what I think is the A chord, barring my first finger across the 2nd and 3rd strings of the 4th fret, and playing the 3rd fret of the 5th and 6th strings. I strum with my thumb as a pick, and then see a pick stuck in between the strings near where I'm strumming. Perfect! I use it and play the chord and then the individual notes of the chord to a peaceful rhythm. It sounds awesome. I find a chord diagram and stand up to play so I can see it, but without a guitar strap, I don't yet have the strength to hold the guitar and play it. The B chord is wonky. The diagram indicates that B is just the 1st and 3rd fingers on the 12th fret of the 2nd and 5th strings with the rest open. Seems too far along the neck to be right. Before I can play it, another friend comes in and does a really fast yoga routine right on the wood floor. Looks like a pro. I take in the moves for later reference: Cobra, Downward Dog, and others. Then I go back to playing with the too open because I'm always worried that everything I do is displeasing to others.

Train. Class. Responsibility.

NOTES:

I wrote down keywords but can barely read them when I fully woke up.

First dream

I was unskilled, yet strong warrior. I worked as a freelancer mercenary in a small town. One day some knights appeared and told people that they need some help fighting dark lords. I joined them, and we started our journey. We were getting close, and when dark knight attacked my companions escaped frightened. I took a strategy, to run away, and try to strike. Suddenly mystical energies gave me power and I was using spells against the dread champion. We fought until the evening, with the gigantic citadel of molten cheese in the background.

Second dream

I recall only a fragment of this dream. I was walking down the road. It was cold, everything around was covered with snow. As I walked, I looked up and saw fat, yellow bird fying across the sky.

I was working with my PC and suddenly a new icon (two computers getting connected with blue screen) showed up.What the hell is this?!Suddenly a page opened displaying the icons in big size.Under one of them was wrote:"Ramin's PC Hacked" and under the other one "By X's PC"
It scared the hell out of me.I instantly disconnected the LAN cable of my modem.(Others were using Wi-Fi so for not interrupting their business I didn't turn it off completely.)The page and icons were still there.So I tried resetting it manually.Didn't work either.Finally I used the button behind the case and finally it got turned off.I turned it on again.It was a mess.By turning it on a game like Mass Effect showed up and there wasn't anyway for accessing my files.Suddenly everything turned off,my room became dark,absolute silence.
"Holy Sh*t.I'm dreaming!"I realized then.Got out of my room and moved to living room.While I was in the middle of living room something like a hand grabbed my face and it's fingers were covering part of what I see.I got rid of it somehow.Started running toward the the exiting door and moved through it.Holy sh*t I was lifting upward!without even trying to.Maybe I intended it subconsciously.Anyway it was like sky pulling me up with an amazing speed.It felt very awesome!
I looked down,OOPS!What a long distance between where I was and the ground...Didn't have any idea how to land.I don't remember what did I do exactly after that.(free falling perhaps?)Whatever I did caused me to wake up.But I stayed still and after 2 seconds(I guess),I was transitioning.I was feeling the vibrations,when it gone my eyes where still closed,tried to open em and what I was starting too see was a part of my room.So I said damn I'm waking up.Closed it again and I was asleep again.However I guess it was a part of dreams scene...

In this dream I was at somebody’s house (not sure who or where). I was standing in a doorway to the living room, and to my surprise, my dear daughter went racing right by me, and then ran into the kitchen. I immediately became lucid (because my daughter’s in Heaven), and ran after her. When I reached the kitchen she was standing with her back to me, and then she turned around to face me. The clarity was perfect and vivid. She no longer looked like my daughter, but she was beautiful like my daughter, had short brown hair, and the biggest smile. I asked her, “Are you my daughter?”, and she excitedly answered, “You saw me!” Her voice was the same as my daughter’s, and I replied, “Yes, I saw you when you ran past me, now you look like somebody else?” I put my arms around her, hugged her, and then I said, “You look different.” My daughter softly replied, “Yes.” I woke, and then moments later my alarm went off.

The tower walls had a hollow metal ring to them, and stretched to unknown heights and depths. There were concrete platforms jutting from walls out of the void at irregular intervals. I flee from platform to platform, unsure where I'm going. I figure the only way out is up. I come to a swaying dark gray pillar, it looks to be climbable, but when I launch myself at it, I scrabble helplessly at the sides which are soft. I realize then that the pillar is all mattresses. The platform I'm on is also mattresses and jumping off has knocked many off the top. So if I don't climb the taller pillar then I will fall. I start to panic, seeming to hang in mid air. Then a hand seizes my wrist. It is a hand I know as well as my own.
Liam.
He doesn't so much pull me up, as make sure I have a hand hold before releasing me and moving away. I clamber over the edge. There's a set of pillows under a two foot high window that runs the width of the bed. I get a good look at my rescuer.
This is the weirdest thing ever, okay. This has never happened to me before and I don't fully understand why it happened at all.
My savior is a woman. She feels like Liam, though, and has all his physical markers. The angular features, red hair, blue eyes (though faded and icy). She is not quite his height or breadth. My heart catches in my throat. I can't believe he's here. I am not in awe, because he is a veiled avatar, but neither can I speak freely. I edge closer to...her. Fascinated.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, voice a whisper.
She flicks her eyes in my direction then averts her gaze, callous. “Did I say you could touch me?” I realize then how close I've gotten. The words seem more like “Who said you had the right to do this?”. I hastily retreat and sit back on my heels.
She won't look at me, suddenly intent on the dirt under her fingernails. From this angle she is male, clearly Liam. Hard-faced and bitter. Each word is distasteful, quick, bitten off. “It's...clear you aren't coming home. I know that now. I know you can't.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, he doesn't answer it directly. "How do you know?"
“Sometimes I wish you had just died with the others we helped.”
This one sentence changes what I know of our story. In my version I assumed that we ventured into the Between as incorporeal beings, broke the Serpent into pieces and then killed ourselves or each other to absorb the pieces and carry them here within us to this aether-dead world. In this story, Saja and the others left their bodies behind, having sent their souls onward through the veil.
He makes it sound like those who stayed behind, people outside the groups Wolf created, helped with the killing. I see him from the point of view of a young man, Liam's dressed in a loose white shirt, eyes flashing, mouth twisting with disgust for the task as he raises his arms overhead. His hands are quick, stabbing a thin straight blade down into the man's chest.
The image is lightning-quick and stuns me. I know then that having anyone on the outside of our group helping was a mistake. They were killed in the Between like Saja and the others, but their cords snapped almost immediately, ensuring that those sacrificed that way died within weeks.
“You...helped them?”
Still he doesn't look at me. “But you didn't. You won't. You...persist. Living endlessly despite the lack of sustenance. So I'll never be able to let you go.”
He's the woman again. I touch his knee, unsure if I can comfort him. Or even if I should try. I want to ask him if he still loves me, but you don't tell someone you love that you wish they were dead.
Then it became horrifying. I was trying to dig for information while I had him in front of me, despite what he had just said. We were running out of time. There's a flash, I'm distracted, and when I turn back she is laying back on the pillows as though dead. She becomes younger before my eyes, becoming a tiny infant, and when her age stops decreasing, the crown of her head shrinks from a grapefruit to the size of a golf ball. Then the top erupts liquid all over the pillow. Sick, I stare down at her. What now?



I tossed recklessly, before falling back to sleep. I am at work, but the layout of the building is kind of crazy. One end of the vast building is a restaurant on a beach, with an open patio overlooking the water. All the trim is bright white.

I only remember a few parts. Someone sends me to the middle of the store from Flooring to tell a man that we aren't sure about the price on a rug. As I'm running it occurs to me that I should have scanned the tag before listening to the associate who sent me. He's sitting at a table at the center of the store. This area is like a dining area, enclosed, with doors on each wall leading through narrow halls that go to every department.
“We couldn't find the price for it, I'm sorry. It isn't usually priced by the square foot....” My voice comes out with a Hispanic accent, even though I have no accent in life. His mouth quirks up in an unkind way. I narrow my eyes at him, suddenly feeling sassy.
“Of course you couldn't, look again?”
“I could go back and scan the tag...”
“Are you sure you can read it? Do you even speak English?”
I concentrate for a moment and my voice comes out normal, unaccented and cold. “I assure you that I do. Maybe if you weren't such an asshole, we'd be more willing to help you.”
He got up and left.

There's a blond man and a little Indian guy at the table. There's a phone booth on one side of the table and we hear a girl I work with telling a friend about a guy she met in California. She's bragging about how smart and successful he his. The two men think she's lying and start mocking her. I'm extremely offended and with a surge of protectiveness I tell them to shut their stupid faces, that it isn't fair for them to treat her this way just because they think she's a whore.

There was another instance with the two men but I don't remember it very well. I felt like they were mocking me.

A man tells me to check out the new attraction, because he's the leader of a Freak Show. There's a wide stable, the floors covered in straw. There are horses of many colors, they're all beautiful. I see the one he's talking about though. It is a large dray mare, a coat color they call 'fleabitten'. She's large and beautiful...until she turns to to the side and I see an extra horse head protruding from each flank. And then from the shoulders are two human arms above the horse legs. I'm fascinated and a little disgusted. Especially when I realize the horse is male...? Ish? And that it wants a hug. It speaks to me with a sudden human head and grabs me, making me really uncomfortable....

I went to visit my old school. My mom dropped me off at the back of the building. It was lunch time so everyone was outside doing stuff. I saw some people that I knew at that school. I walked inside and saw that they were doing some remodeling. There was one room that they were putting a pool in. Some guy came in and started asking me random questions and stuff.

I was at this big adventure thing on an island. It was like a giant, interconnected aquarium that you could swim in and you could go through rivers and stuff to get to other little lakes and sections. My friends told me to follow them and we went in to this little cave and the river pushed us through it very fast. We ended up in a part with some turtles and dolphins swimming around in it.