Amurehna

Here I go. =/ Maybe I should have prefaced this with something: This is one of the most awful nightmares I have ever had. The first part seemed normal, and then my subconscious decided to twist it into something disgusting. I'm almost impressed. -.-

We are in a long wide dining hall, the walls and floor are worn wood. There are long tables with plank seating. I'm wearing a billowy

white blouse with khaki riding pants and knee high boots. I am a young women with chin-length dark brown hair. I sit down next to a young man who has short medium brown hair. His features are perfectly shaped, high wide cheek bones, a constantly smiling mouth. I am seventeen, he is eighteen. I am in love with him and sometimes I am certain he knows it, as my best friend he knows me well enough to understand. Sometimes I think that he loves me too but he has always been so careful. A friend of ours named Robert has recently returned home from a long trip comes to sit with us. I don't remember where he went but it had been years since we had last seen him. Adam, the friend I am in love with, gets up to follow Robert. Watching them leave makes me feel a little sad.

"Hey, Deidre, come and look at this." Adam calls. I go to him, smiling. This part is pretty strange. He shows me a man that isn't who he

claims. Adam narrates that it is a golem controlled by magic and enchanted to look like someone we know. Somehow we see straight through it and so we see black eyes set in a bald clay-gray head, slope shouldered, wearing a faded quilted black tunic. As soon as it walks up to us we greet it like it really is the ambassador. It responds with a proper greeting, but follows that with an unintelligible scramble of words.

"See?" Adam says, we all share a secret smile as the golem walks stiffly through the crowd. It was sort of like we were on

stage and that whole scene was an aside to the audience, we ignore It and follow Robert out of the hall like we encountered nothing out of the ordinary.

There is a garden courtyard between wings of the house. It is night and a single wrought iron lamp post stands in the middle over bench on a dais. I find Adam sitting on the bench. He is obviously upset but he won't tell me why. I remind him that we used to play here as children and he nods absently, pretending he is fine.

"Hey, Addy." I say in a consoling tone, "Whatever it is, you can tell me." I drop to my knees next to the bench and slide my arms around his waist, resting my cheek on his thigh.

Here I come back to myself a little and I am no longer Deidre. Holding him is peaceful and familiar. It reminds me of Liam and for a time I put aside the character of Deidre and close my eyes to savor the moment, smiling in contentment. He's wearing a faded black button up and black pants, I notice out of the corner of my eye. I can feel Adam becoming more upset and my understanding of his character overlaps with my interpretation of him as Liam. Adam cannot reciprocate Deidre's feelings for him because he is in love with Robert, and at the same time I can feel Liam as he is trapped in the form of Adam, wanting so badly to reach me but locked in the confines of the dream, so that it is not possible. I want to tell him that it is alright, that I know about Robert, I want to tell him that I know he is not Liam, but that doesn't matter because for now he feels like him.

Adam hesitantly strokes my hair and my dual-nature snaps apart so that I am once again Deidre. I know he is trying to force himself to

feel something for me other than friendship. I sit up and give him a brief hug, I realize then that he's fantastically drunk. I help him stand and we stumble to the far side of the courtyard, by the time we reach the heavy stone threshold he is crying freely. We fall down in a tangle of limbs and he sobs pathetically that I should not help him at all. He ignores my protests to the contrary, telling me that he is in love with someone else.

"Is that someone else Robert?" I ask. That stuns him into silence. It makes me sad that he'll never fall in love with me, but I know he can't help it.

....and then the dream takes an ugly turn.

The dining hall is inside and outside at once, so that the far end has no wall and lacks a ceiling. At the enclosed end in the corner is an

ivory colored couch. We have a female friend over, she's sitting on the back of the couch and I am kneeling on the cushions with the front of my body pressed to the back of the piece. I have something gross on my hands that I get all over the top of the couch, and when I get up I realize I have left a large water stain where my body had previously leaned. A courier arrives with news from our father. ((because, you know, we're siblings, and in case you weren't paying attention that means I'm in love with my brother, who is in love with our older brother...eeeeeee)) It is a letter for us and a small wooden crate filled with nesting fiber. There is a necklace in the envelope, it has two overlapping pendants, a crescent moon and a dagger. Robert hands the necklace to me and I put it on, when I lean over the back of the couch the dagger pricks my chest and I rub at the wound absently.

The courier is not a physical person anymore. Robert is standing nearby reading aloud a letter we have received. The letter explains

what happened to our father, how he went mad then raped and murdered a woman, he says something about the contents of the crate being cursed, and that it will spread to all our family. As he is saying this, I'm holding the necklace away from my skin, looking horrified. Adam though does not believe it. He is to enthralled by the crate to pay attention and neither of us are watching him. He thrusts his hand down into the crate and comes up with a handful of sand and a tiny stone artifact. The effect is immediate. The sclera of his eyes goes black, the irises turn orange/red, like flame. Black growths force their way out his skin along his cheekbones. He holds the artifact up over his head and a mad grin splits his face grotesquely.

"Adam?" I slide off the couch and begin to back away from him. He is too distracted by this new development that he doesn't notice me.

Yet. He stalks around the room, Robert seizes his arm to stop him and becomes cursed just as quickly. I know what they will do to me because of what is in the letter. Never mind that Adam is gay and a day before would not have touched me. It no longer matters because his mind is gone and his body under the control of the rage. I run for the door in the corner that leads out to the deck stairs. He gives my shoulders a shove and I stumble. I feel his fingers slip under a gap in the back of the waist of my pants, he tugs lightly. Almost tentatively. I scramble away but he is still hovering over me.

Spoiler for One of the rape parts, if you would rather skip it.:

Now I have a choice, I have a split second of lucidity and I think "It won't be rape anymore if I stop fighting. I know he isn't Adam anymore, but this is the closest I'll ever be to him, and so what if he beats me to death after? Then I won't care anymore."
I pretend that his hands on my waist don't make me feel sick, the greedy skittering of his fingers on my hips when I unbuckle my belt.
At first it isn't so bad. I don't feel anything one way or another, I just ignore his animal-like grunting and uncomfortable stab as he moves. After a few minutes he becomes wildly violent and I decide I made a mistake, that I really can't endure this, I fight my way to the wall. There is a button there on a touch screen that I can push to stop the simulation. So I do.

I get a do-over. I see Adam pull the figurine from the crate, and his transformation. I immediately dart for the door and make it halfway down the steps before he tackles me straight to the ground. I scream and struggle out from under him, fighting around to the front of the house.
Then there's something about the golem trying to attack us, and me and the others trying to throw flashlights at it, but the things are too heavy and not good for throwing at people. (O.o) The yard we are on is clearly the front yard from the house in MA. Except the grass has a blue tint and the sky looks more like a ceiling painted blue.

Spoiler for Second rape part.:

There's a break. I am out on the yard and the end of it morphs into a wall where there's almost an enclosed pool (I don't know, my dream layouts are weird). The curb is more like the edge to a public pool. We are waiting for help, someone has called the police and fire department. There are people sleeping everywhere, mostly men. They were all naked, and when the curse takes effect they are suddenly all uh...erect. They feel like time bombs to me. That if I wake them they will all be on me and then I will have no hope of surviving. I might get raped, but I am going to live damn it. A chubby young man begins to catch the curse and changes. At first he looks confused and distracted...then he notices me. I make a run for it and he chases me, I vault over the wall at the end of the yard and try to flee to the corner of the pool where the stairs are, but he leaps down with surprising agility and slams me into the wall. My head feels like it is going to split open and and I become disoriented. He flips me over, hands clumsily fumble with my nightgown. He's too heavy to knock off of me. My best bet is to wait until he's...distracted.

I try not to focus on what he's doing, and I try not to laugh at him, because even in the thrall of the curse he is inexperienced and can't

even effectively rape me. His movements are inconsistent, but the slack jawed expression he wears disturbs me. When he shifts his weight for a better angle, briefly freeing my arms, I reach up and slam my palms against his ears. He cries out and falls backward. I stand up and knee him in the face as hard as I can. I can hear people moving around on the other side of the wall, but they are talking so I am certain that they are not cursed men made monsters. I mount the wall and see female police officers everywhere. They are cataloging evidence. The worst part is there are children laying down at the edge of the pool. Some of the more unfortunate ones have lived through the experience. One blond-haired little girl with blood-shot eyes stares at me, too injured to move. The children laying on each side of her are either dead or asleep. Olivia Dunham talks about the signs of assault and rape, pointing to various pieces of evidence before pulling a sheet over piles of battered bodies.

There's a lapse, it is some time in the far future. Because I was one of the first cursed and I am a woman I have lived ages longer than I should have. I'm in a sanctum of sorts, there are priestesses who serve the Cold, they are called Whisper Mothers and Sisters. Their garb is almost like a nuns, except the wimple is shaped differently and their robes are in layers, slashed black over robes with white underneath.
They were responsible for subduing the entity before my father unwittingly unleashed it so many generations ago. It went curiously quiet after the event at the pool, laying in wait for the proper time. Now it has begun again. I hesitate then get the Whisper Mother's attention.

"Mother..."

She continues to pace.

"Mother?"

Distractedly she stops, clutching an elaborate cross that hangs around her neck. It is silver and has a ruby at its center. "Yes, sister?"

"What caused the Emergence?" I ask.
"I don't have time for questions, Lady." She responds.
"Is it true the madness began with a stone artifact?" I ask.

Then she truly looks at me. The servants of the Cold value truth and clarity above all things. They may seem harsh, but they are a product of the world in which they were raised. Her eyes sharpen and she purses her lips in worry.

"Yes. A stone artifact fed by the fire of shame."
"Please, I am only curious if there is a way to stop It from happening again?" I ask.

She paces the width of the sanctum. There is a heavy weathered wood railing and something like a decorative bulkhead bisecting the end of the room. "Truth may be enough to stop it, and the blood of the repentant. So, tell me." Her eyes flick to me, cold with recognition and accusation. "Are you repentant for laying with your brother Adam?"

"I never lay with Adam." I say, dropping my eyes. I suppose that allowing him to rape me counts.
She narrows her eyes at me. "You are a liar, Deidre."
"Yes." I agree, feeling the weight of my shame. "Yes."
"Still, there is something we can accomplish, the others are on their way here."

My view pulls out a little, viewing the scene from overhead. From here I can see the walkway outside, and the great circular stained glass gate where a Whisper Sister waits and an assassin in black and red leather armor is stealthed by the entry way. No one will get by, the Servants of the Cold must be protected.

I see a distortion in the air, a heat wave. A spark and a cruel laughing mouth inside a cooling lava face, horns curling back over its

head. Its flame tongue licks the air. Silent in its passing it steals in through the door, scorches on the wood mark its path across the floor, it slips in like a ghost and alights a touch upon her brow, and when the creature passes she has turned to ashes on the ground. Screams from inside filter out to where I stand, all within have died before they could lift a hand. I can hear the Whisper Mother inside, screaming wild negations and questions, "Why this, why now after all this time?", It has saved her for last.
The sister outside shrieks in a desperate forlorn way when she realizes that all the women inside are dead, the assassin at the door wrestles her away and they flee together.

And so I get a sense of the Flame. A vast, calculating mind that cares for nothing at all, its singular dream is to burn the world to

cinders and scatter the ashes in the wind. It wants only to consume, take, until everything is gone. And it will. It will.

False Awakening: I rise to another layer of sleep and think that I am awake. After all, my boyfriend is playing Skyrim on his computer just like when I fell asleep. He notices I am awake and comes to kneel on the bed. He kisses me but the idea of doing anything like that after a dream about rape is not at all appealing. I tell him to stop and I mention the rape dream, but he keeps touching me anyway not realizing that it is uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Then I really wake up. Thank God.

You know, when I woke up I kept trying to figure out who we looked like, convinced they were rooted in actors. Like Sarah from Lost (Jack's ex wife) mixed with the girl from Warm Bodies, and then a really pale Robert Downey Jr crossed with Jack. O.o then I looked up pictures and I'm not sure where I got those impressions from.

My name is Sarah, I have been friends with Stephen since we were children. I see us running a silly kind of race with five other

children, where we team up and one person runs carrying their teammate on their shoulders. Stephen always insisted on being the runner, even though at that age I was a lot bigger. Then, he was a little thing with slightly round features, his black straight hair in a bowl cut around a pale face with black rimmed glasses. The only person without a partner is a large girl to the left of us, the top of her head is even with mine even when I am on his shoulders. He makes for an amusing figure, his little face red with effort, swaying back and forth trying desperately to stay upright and to keep me on his shoulders. He is wearing a gray sweatshirt with a circular panda face on the chest.

Then I am nineteen. When we finished school a few of us got together and rented a house. We even all work at the same place,

employment opportunities have been scarce since the end of things. Still, we are content with our lives. I am leaving work with Stephen, he has grown into a solid broad-shouldered man, none of the roundness of boyhood left. His grandmother has come to give us a lift home. The drive home is terrifying, mostly because Granny can not keep her eyes on the road for more than a few seconds at a time. Stephen obviously thinks that it is hilarious, I might have laughed with him if we were not constantly on the brink of death the entire way home. She goes on about her difficulties in finding a clear path to our place of employment.

"I finally made it! You have no idea what kind of trouble I had. I even cut through a road blocked area!" She exclaims.

I groan and cover my eyes with one hand while Stephen cracks up in the back seat. "And then, there was a car blocking the road!"

"What did you do then, Granny?" Stephen says with a little too much enthusiasm.

"Stop encouraging her." I hiss at him, he just laughs at me. Granny does not hear me but karma pays me back for the

comment anyway since Granny is clearly oblivious that our lane merges with another and haphazardly sails past a line of angrily blaring horns before wedging her SUV between two cars. I find that I cannot handle anymore and I duck down in the seat with my arms over my head. I have a moment where I think that I need to be paying attention because it's my dream, and I'm driving even if my character isn't watching the road. I risk peeking out the windshield just in time to see her run a red light and speed past a cop car that's sitting across one lane, and narrowly missing one that hurdles in the opposite direction.

We make it home alive. Finally. The scene cuts to us walking through the front door where I live with Kenna, my brother, his girlfriend Beth and Stephen

. The walls are all dull gray metal and the doorways are rounded off at the tops and bottoms. The dining room is a large wide open area with a big rectangular table, to my left is the living room and on the same wall as the door is a little alcove with bunk beds, my brother Roe sits in the chair crammed between the bed and the door frame. Like me, Roe is tall and athletically built with pale blonde hair and blue eyes.

"Hey, little sister."
"Hey yourself, brother."
"Just a little bit of a warning..."

Little Kenna storms in from the living room, like a tiny angry cloud of red curls and green skirts, and slams a long chain of pill packets onto the table.

"They wouldn't do that, I said. They wouldn't keep drugs, I said. WELL! It looks like they were right!" She growls, glaring at me. My

brother lounges placidly and regards us expressionlessly.

"Did the sisters tell you that?"
"It doesn't matter who told me! I found these in the dryer and they melted all over my clothes! Now I have drug laundry!"
"Kenna, I really don't---"
"Don't you try to turn this around on Double H!" Kenna is so busy ranting that she does not notice when I look at Stephen who mouths

'Double H?'
Kenna keeps going, "You're the one with the drugs, I'm leaving. I'm going to go live with Haddie where I can do my laundry in a non-drug-caked dyer."

"Yes ma'am." I agree and give her a slightly sarcastic salute.

She scowls and rages her way out of the house, leaving her laundry basket behind.

"Does anyone else think that was incredibly weird?" I ask, frowning down at the pill packets. My brother shrugs and Stephen can barely

contain his amusement.

"Drug laundry!" He snorts, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. His amusement makes me feel better about the situation.

Haddie and her older sister Haley had been giving us trouble since we were children. The tormenting had settled down for the others, but Haley somehow intuited that I knew her secret: she had lied to Haddie about how their parents had died.
Haley had practically raised Haddie and based her methods somehow on their parent's death. Once I had considered telling Haddie about the lie, thinking it would drive a wedge between them and end their rampage of villainy, but Haddie would never believe me.
The sisters only ever said things when others were not looking, then I would explode and they would see my disproportionate reaction. Recently they had been hanging around the house, Haley was trying to get at Roe despite the fact that he had a girlfriend and pointedly ignored her advances, and one day Stephen had said something funny to them. Instant approval! I think he hoped that if they spent more time around me they would stop trying to enrage me. So far they tolerated my presence because they wanted Stephen around and he had made it clear they he would not ditch me for them.

Now Haley and Haddie arrive at the house and Beth welcomes them inside. I don't remember the conversation but Beth said something,

Haddie replies, and when Beth turns her back Haley says something behind her hand about me to Haddie. Instantly I'm angry, I'm standing right here. I make an angry retort and roughly shoulder myself between them to get outside. Behind me I hear Haddie say "What was that about?"
Followed by Haley muttering, "Crazy bitch."
I feel so angry and frustrated. The outside looks like the house in MA that I grew up in. I run to the left side of the house where there is a hill and Beth follows after, ripping into me when I turn to face her. She tells me I am being childish, that I need to grow up. I say something rude, she tells me to just get over it. My sudden rush of rage has actually made me feel faint, so I move around to the massive oak at the corner of the driveway, it will hide me from view. As I'm dropping to my knees I see Stephen stalking toward me.

"What, you too?" I ask, I could not help myself.

"Excuse me?" His jaw tightens and he says stiffly, "I came out here to tell you that the things they say don't matter, to remember that

I care ab---"

"Well I don't care!" I snap. Then seeing the look on his face, I realize the mistake I have made, how he must have taken that.

"Stephen...I didn't mean--I only said..."

"I know what you said, Sarah. Just...take some time to cool off before coming back inside." He shakes his head at me and retreats

to the house.

I don't go back inside immediately, I take his advice and circle the house twice before I've calmed down. I see Haddie and Haley

talking, there's a long staircase along the side of the house that does not exist in waking life. They stand near the top by a narrow door, conspiring. Once again I contemplate how I could arrange for Haddie to overhear that her sister has lied to her. They open the door, I hook around to the front of the house and go back inside.

I am in the living room. Haddie, Haley, Beth and my brother Roe sit on the couch while Stephen sits on the floor. They are watching a

movie. Haddie and Haley make a joke about me. Something about The Six. When we were children there was a group of children (myself and Stephen included) that were outcasts and generally made fun of, we called ourselves The Six. I stand beside Stephen. He hands me a beer and smiles a little.

"Conveniently you forget that I was one of The Six." He interjects smoothly.

"Really? I don't...remember that." Haddie says politely embarrassed.

"Oh yes, I have pictures if you need proof." He replies, this shuts Haddie up. He seems to have the talent for pointing things out or laughing without making a person feel stupid.

Stephen keeps his eyes on the television and asks me absently if I feel any better. When I shake my head and sit down next to him he pats his leg. I settle my upper body across his lap and he lays his arm across the front of my shoulders. This is immensely comforting and very slowly my nerves calm and I am no longer sad or angry with the H sisters. I sit up and arrange myself in his lap with my arms around his neck. He is still distractedly watching the movie and we have known one another so long that such closeness is not beyond us. While the everyone else is otherwise occupied, I make a decision.

I see us from a foot away, the clean line of my jaw and one sky blue eye, my hair is back in a ponytail. His hair hangs straight to his

ears, it's fine and black, like his eyes. He has stubble on his cheeks, when did that happen? I down the rest of my beer, set the bottle on the floor with a clatter, and before I can lose my nerve, I press my lips to his temple.
He has gone very still in response. He is quietly shocked, I can tell, still he tries to give me an out.

"Well...that was fun." He says with a fleet meeting of the eyes.

"Fun isn't the word I would use." I say softly.

"Sarah, what was that for?" I sweep my eyes over his familiar features and realize that I love him. I answer by bending gracefully to

touch my lips to his. I can feel the pressure of them against mine and the weight of his arms tightening around me.

There's a lapse and we are in his room, laying together on his futon. We're both wearing pale blue jeans and gray sweatshirts, my

head is on his shoulder and my hips rest between his legs. I lean down to kiss him again, then trace my fingers over his abdomen where his shirt has ridden up. I shift my weight to my knees. I know he is savoring how my waist feels under his hand, I have always been fit but hidden my figure with shapeless shirts. With a sinuous move I kiss his chest---

---and that's where my consciousness separates from Sarah. I am vaguely embarrassed that I am watching them. This is a private, intimate moment for them. It is the look on his face that makes me turn away. I should leave them alone with each other. ((I censor my own dreams, how lame is that?))

Next I am following Stephen. There is a large metal grate in the floor of the dining room, he has dropped down into the tunnels that run

underneath the house. He is crossing to another area of the house, the tunnel dips down into a lower level. The side he is on is higher, the other side has two regular steps going into a bare metal room. As he is walking to the opposite side he glances up to the small round mirror above the tunnel hole. In it he sees a figure standing with its face in the corner. He freezes and only just keeps himself from cursing aloud. It looks like a boy, with a long t-shirt and shorts, but is dripping with toxic green ooze. It mumbles under its breath, smacking its forehead into the wall.

"He..." SMACK, "He...killed..." SMACK, "He...killed me." SMACK.

Stephen knows he only has a small window of opportunity to kill it before it obliterates him. This is a Shade, the spirit of a person who has killed themselves and cannot come to terms with the action. Some of them can be reasoned with, the worst ones are hard to kill.

"He..."SMACK the boy begins again.

"Jesus." Stephen thinks, "He doesn't even know that he's the one who did the killing." He raises his handgun, it has a laser

pointer. He aims up at the mirror and sees the laser appear on the back of its head. He has to time it between the smacks. He firmly squeezes the trigger but at the last second the thing intuits his action and stands very still, thus taking the bullet in the back of the neck instead of the head. This time Stephen curses as he whips around to dodge the Shade. He manages to catch it off guard twice, the second time it rushes toward him he stumbles past it and hits the low stairs hard. He scrambles backward into the corner and unloads the clip into the Shade's back and head while it still faces the other way. It refuses to die. It will kill him, he knows.

That's when I, as Sarah, fly into the tunnel and pin the thing face-first to the wall. It struggles wetly against me, oozing and issuing

raspy whimpers.

"RUN!" I cry over my shoulder.

"Sarah, what are you doing? Get out of here!"

"Are you stupid? Run while I distract it!"

"NO!" It's clear we won't be leaving each other. About then the Shade's oozing face reforms out the back of its skull and it clacks its

teeth horrifyingly close to my ear. I recoil in revulsion and release it.

"HEY over here!" Stephen shouts. It advances on him, a jittering sort of stalking. I will die before I let it take him. With a fierce yell I grab it by the

arms and swing it like I am ringing a gong. I slam it against one side of the tunnel and then the other as hard as I can, yelling on impact. Its wrists are green slimy bones in my hands. It breaks into pieces and when all that is left are the arms, I drop them between Stephen's splayed legs. He's staring at me in awe.

"That...was the most awesome thing I have ever seen." He says into the sudden calm. I let out a shaking laugh.

"Are you alright?" The three remaining fragments of Shade quiver violently startling us badly. I bring my heel down hard on the largest

piece and grind it into the floor until it stops moving.

"Let's get out of here, yeah?" He says, I offer him my hand and pull him to his feet.

Grimm
The room is empty except for a queen sized bed that sits on a low metal frame. The walls are pale blue. At first I am Sayid from Lost. As I'm settling down on the bed I consider sleeping on the floor instead, at least there it will be dry. There's a leak in the ceiling and the mattress is damp. It's been so very long since I've slept in a bed.
The dampness bothers me. I keep waking up.

Then I am Nick from Grimm. I feel weak and my limbs are heavy. I see myself from the other side of the room, I am extremely pale and there's a layer of thin clammy sweat on my skin. My right shoulder hurts. I sit down heavily on the edge of the bed, my back and shoulders to the wall and with my right foot planted firmly on the floor to keep me upright. Everything has gone to hell. Everyone I know has turned and I have one more task to complete before I can rest.
I hear movement beyond the dark doorway in the corner and I know that my father has just finished Turning. I hear him moving around, reorienting himself with existence. It won't be long until he finds his way back to me. The dead always seek out their loved ones. I glower at the door and tighten my grip on the machete.
My father is a tall and trim man in his sixties who has lost most of his hair, what remains is greying fluff in a band behind his ears. As he stumbles across the threshold his shoulder clips the door frame and he goes down in a tangle of limbs. He crawls across the floor and grabs my ankle. I lift the machete and bring it down atop his mottled skull, I want to kill him before he bites me. I can't seem to put any force behind my blows and the blade just leaves wet indentations in his skin. He isn't phased by my ineffectual attacks.
He sinks his teeth into my outer thigh and I gasp. It doesn't matter, I'll kill him and then kill myself. Easy.
I give him a shove with my right hand but he latches onto my wrist and sinks his teeth into that too. The machete feels awfully heavy, I decide to let the weight of the weapon do my work for me, I lift it high overhead and let it drop. It neatly cleaves into his skull and he immediately stops moving. I push him off of me and black out.

I get glimpses of things going on around me. I get a sense that a lot of time has passed and that I waiver in and out of consciousness. There's a woman at the bedside, I know she's been taking care of me. A man leans over me.
"What happened to him?" He asks.
The blankets are pulled up to my shoulders, hiding my bite scars.
"I found him here four years ago, I don't know what happened but it effected his entire body. He can't speak, and he can't walk."
"...seems kind of cruel to keep a vegetable alive in this world."
"We've lost enough people already."
This stranger is protecting me, she knows that if the traveler finds out that I've been bitten (even if I didn't turn) he might kill me.
The man leaves. The woman wipes my face. I struggle to sit up and she helps me, she doesn't seem particularly surprised.
I get the sense that more time has passed. I'm moving around the bedroom. I can even dress myself, but I still can't speak. My tongue and jaw feel heavy, the inability to speak doesn't bother me yet.
"Are you up for a trip?" The woman asks me, when I nod she says that she has some trash I can drag over to the processing facility down the street.

There's a lapse and now I'm in a receiving area. It looks a whole lot like Lowe's. A couple of people observe my approach, a man and a woman. The woman looks really uncomfortable. The man already seems to know me. When the woman walks away he gestures for me to follow.
"Nick." He says, "I have something you should see." As he's walking he tells my story, how the woman found me. How I didn't turn because Grimm's are physiologically different from other humans. About their discovery of my nature as a Grimm and what it meant to them. He walks to the RTM cage and emerges with a large leather bound book with an embossed pattern on the front.
I recognize the book immediately and feel a surge of disproportionate rage.
"I can see from your face that you recognize this book."
I do. I want to tell him to give it back, and I feel the words stopping as they hit my frozen tongue. Damn it. He walks past me toward the garage door exit.
I follow after him as quickly as I am able.
"HEY." I try to yell, but it comes out thick and quiet. "That's mine. Give it back." My voice gains strength but is still weak. He's wearing an expression like this is exactly the reason he showed me the book.

He looks over his shoulder at me as he hands the book over to a woman who looks exactly like Topanga from Boy Meets World. She beckons for me to follow and I do, desperately trying to keep the book within my line of sight.
"I'm sorry about this, I'll explain once we get inside." She says, I know they've set up a room for me. She takes me to the house where she lives with her father the Mayor. I remember her from when I was a boy and am very relieved to find she is still alive. There's a stair case running right next to the house, going up to the second floor. We go inside, then up the stairs to the attic. The room has a large window with a bench seat. Even up here the floors are polished mahogany, the sunlight streams in making the room seem cozy. My bed is a pallet on the floor. I don't mind. She kneels down and opens the book. I sit down across from her.
"It took us a while to figure it out without you. At first, of course, we thought it was a plague, but when all our attempts to discern the source gave us no results, we explored other ideas. We found your books. It became clear that it wasn't a plague, but a curse. Think about it..."
I smoothly interject, "One person is cursed, he doesn't realize it, goes to the doctor..."
"Yes exactly. The curse went wild and started to take other people too. Now that we know the source, this book is the key to stopping it. We can't return our loved ones to life, but we can keep the curse from taking more from us."

There's a small lapse and I'm just having a conversation with her. She moves over to a wooden chest and opens it. Inside is a large water gun and some water balloons. Of course. Just like when we were kids.
"I should have known you'd have that stashed close by." I say.
She grins and pulls out the supersoaker. Then she drenches me.

Battlestar Galactica/Harry Potter
((Absurdly...this is not my first Battlestar Galactica/Harry Potter dream. I have no idea how those two are connected, but my subconscious seems to think they go together. Really...wtf. I woke up after the Grimm dream at exactly 5:33AM, I still had two hours before my alarm would go off, so I went back to sleep and had this weird thing.))
When I fall back asleep I'm driving a car across the train tracks. There's a traffic jam, to my left a building explodes and the sky is active with Vipers fighting some odd cube ships that glow pink around the edges. I think that I've averted disaster, a jet liner flies so low that the belly of the plane barely misses the tops of the cars.
My relief is obliterated when I realize that the tail section of the plain is dipping low in their attempt to pull up, and it smashes through my windshield and drags my car into the air. The car cartwheels away, but I am no longer in it. I rise into the sky, suddenly a pilot of some sort. A string of cube ships fly at me and I raise an arm to ward them off and just like that I'm lucid.
I realize I can shoot at them by clenching my hand into a fist, and several cubes burst into flames as though I've crushed them.

Then I'm in a warehouse where we, the crew of the Galactica, have gathered the insurgents. Admiral Adama tells them they have a choice. They can participate in reunification after they are punished for insurgency, or they can die.
Adama gives the speech completely naked while Apollo laughs in the corner.
For some reason I'm laying on the floor, I am Starbuck. I try to cuddle with Colonel Tigh. He legs me.
I glance up toward the wall and see my friend Kelly's face in the bookshelf there, she's making faces at me so that I'll laugh.
There's a little bit of a lapse and I am in a stone town overgrown with moss. I'm a man, crouching down next to a little boy with black hair. His mother comes in and asks what's taking us so long.
"Trying to decide on a movie to rent." I pause, "The little one picked Harry Potter 4."
"Again? I can't believe we don't own that yet, considering how often we rent it."
My wife offers to take the boy home, and I promise to follow after soon.
I leave the building and things get confusing. More confusing.
I know that the world outside is how things would be if Voldemort had succeeded in killing Harry. Hermione is married to someone else, but is having an affair with Ron. I see them as their 13 year old selves.
I walk by a damp stone ramp going down into a stone hallway. Someone runs out and tells me that he is going to learn the true name of Stone by conjuring a stone wight. As he's speaking a stone creature appears in the hallway.

There was also something about an mmo. I create a character called a Gelfling. They're forest elemental thingies. o.O

The hallway is outside and inside at the same time. At some angles it looks like a sidewalk and at other angles it looks like a classroom. I'm on an old orange and off-white tram, it stops and we wait for more people to get on. I'm sitting alone, the seat is only wide enough for two people.
An extremely pretty woman sits down next to me. At first she doesn't look in my direction. She's holding a bouquet of yellow flowers in her lap, she has waist-length brown wavy hair, a heart shaped face, a perfect doll's mouth, and her eyes are slightly rounded on top so that even when she isn't smiling she appears to do so with her eyes. She exudes quiet joy and goodwill. When the tram starts moving, she begins to hum. Her voice is lovely. She turns slightly to look at me, catching my eyes. She begins to sing. While she is singing, I know the song lyrics. I smile cautiously. Her expression brightens, making her even more lovely.
We sit facing each other with our legs crossed. I join her in song, perfectly taking the high harmony. She sings that I am beautiful and even though a part of me knows that she chooses a person to sing to every day, I believe her. She sings it, and it is so.
She still has the yellow flowers in her left hand, her elbow resting on the back of the seat. I have a bouquet of fake white flowers tied to green wire stems in my right hand. I sweep the flowers up from my side and offer them to her. The fake flowers separate from the wire and tumble away.
I'm embarrassed. She smiles to soothe me and continues to sing. On the last note of 'beautiful' we bend our heads together in perfect sync with one another, our foreheads touching. We draw away from each other and smile. She offers me her flowers and I take them. She rises from her seat as others arrive and leaves, waving to me. I return her wave.

Then I am Ephram from Everwood (WOW, I haven't thought about that in a long time). I return to the town and find Amy at a college that has sprung up in the area. The university is dark inside, it has dark blue carpet and blue walls. Amy is surprised to see me, her hair is chin length and wet, fitting since we just came in from the rain.
"What are you doing here? Sean will kill you if he sees you." She hisses.
"I just needed to see how you are." I say.
We walk past a classroom and I get a glimpse of 'Sean' who is around my height with blonde hair and a sharp face. He glares at me. Obviously he hasn't forgotten what I did to him. ((I have no idea what that is, by the way))
He starts to give chase and I run. I'm wearing rollerblades, and the hallways are carpeted. The wheels don't push off smoothly, it's more like I'm running, with a more resistant stride. It doesn't bother me, it's kind of fun....

I don't remember the rest. I'm with Amy in a deserted classroom, we're looking for something.

I don't remember the beginning very well, but I'm sure it looks a whole lot like the end of the dream, considering the course of events.

I'm walking through a parking lot at night. The pavement glistens with recent rain. The group fans out ahead of me, already sure of the tasks that they've been given. Out of the corner of my eye, I first notice Jack from Lost. He's wearing a faded red shirt and is carrying a black back pack.
"Someone left the van open." A man, the owner, says. I'm closer to it.

"I got it!" I call out and go over to the van. It's an older model, faded brown with dark stripes down the sides, with an aluminum ladder

and spare tire on the back. The door on the left has a top and a bottom half that move independently of each other. When I press the bottom closed, the top springs open. The tire is in the way and I'm short, so I can't put enough pressure on it for it to click shut.
Jack sees that I'm having trouble and splits off from the group to help. He reaches over my shoulders to put his weight on the stubborn door, for a few seconds my back is pressed against his chest. I'm enjoying the contact, but he doesn't notice. The lock finally clicks into place and he steps away, gesturing for me to follow.
After a moment he drops his head like he's trying to hide his amusement. He briefly smiles at the ground and says,

"You couldn't close the van door because you're too short."

I pretend to be offended. "Jack! I could reach the door, I just couldn't get enough...leverage."
The word seems vaguely dirty, though the connection is too vague for me to grasp.

"Because you're too short?"

"Yes, fine, because I'm too short. Jerk."

I smack his forearm, he chuckles.

We reach a closed off section of the parking lot. The others separate into groups.

"Are you clear on what you need to do?" He asks me.

"Yep!" I say enthusiastically, even though I'm struggling to remember what I'm supposed to do. He kneels beside a pile of junk. It's a lot

of plastic shopping bags, a mattress, and there's a man spread out on top of it.

Jack sets down his back pack and starts taking things out of it. I produce an alarm clock, intuiting that I'm supposed to set it. We're

being...secretive. At the time, I understood the reasoning behind the alarm clock, but I can't remember now. It was supposed to help us prove a point. The clock says that it's 6:47AM, I start to set it for 6:49AM, and I turn the volume down, clicking the buttons carefully, so not to wake the man on the mattress.

"What time should I set it for?" I ask, realizing that I don't know when we're supposed to test it. I so very much what him to think I'm

clever, quick.

"Don't worry about it now." He snaps at me."I'll tell you when I'm finished."

I suddenly feel stupid and useless. I set it back to a default setting, the time displays as 99:99.
A woman crouches down next to me.

"Are you almost ready?" She gives me an encouraging smile. I nod. We stand and move a few steps away from Jack. She moves in

front of me and holds out her loosely closed fist.

"Tell me what this will do, so I know you understand." She says.

Dutifully, I recite the plan. I will take a pill that will allow me to become Lucid and to Travel to the places in question. I will help them break the stalemate on the case by giving them notes written in my sleep, that will let them know which areas are the right ones to search for new evidence.

"We're done preparing. Are you ready?" Jack asks, coming to stand with us.

I nod and the woman opens her hand. Resting in her palm is a small, round red pill with RD imprinted on the top.
Jack wishes me luck.

I take the pill and pop it into my mouth. I briefly wonder what will happen to my body while I'm out Walking. Does it stay behind? Or am

I sleepwalking? It bothers me that I never wondered before. Immediately upon consumption, the world sharpens to waking clarity. I'm freed of the restrictions of the dream. I turn a full circle, taking in my surroundings. I run a few steps and leap into an elaborate string of tumbles. Apparently I like acrobatics. I bend forward, plant my hands on the ground and lift into a perfect handstand, I fold my legs backward until I'm almost C shaped, before touching my toes to the ground and standing up.

Now I get to see all the things that happened at the beginning of the dream, I get a do-over. I'm walking down a drab street choked

with black dead trees. The buildings are dark grey, the cobbles are a lighter grey. Two boys try to get my attention by pretending to be rude. They're teenagers, skateboarders. The last time I did this, it made me angry that they were being rude. But I'm not the only one getting another chance. The last time, they allowed me to walk into a confrontation and I was hurt.
This time, the boys know that the Midnight Watch is coming and they are trying to warn me without appearing to be involved. I wave to placate them, they know, but I know it too.

I walk to a wide trunk thrusting its way out of the middle of the street. From the other side I can hear whimpers of pain. I peek around

the tree and two men leap from the treeline, howling like madmen, making for the person huddled by the roots.
I smile and pull a throwing knife from my belt. I leap around the tree and neatly throw a knife into the leading man's stomach. He falls down, clutching the wound.
I look the other man in the eyes and, slowly, draw another knife from my belt. I smile.
He hastily gathers his friend and they stumble back the way they came.
The person I rescue clutches at me, trying to thank me for my intervention. I don't even look at them. I still have work to do.

There's a lapse. I know I went somewhere else but I can't remember where. Something about soldiers being called, the front of a grey stone building with cobbled streets outside.

I'm in Jack's house. The front room is oddly shaped. Just inside the front door is a single step up, the living room is large and bare. The living room curves back alongside the front door, there's a wall ledge sticking out of the floor? The wall is painted a dull orange. The ceiling is yellow. Jack's father is laying on the ledge, bundled in blankets. He is dying.
His father refuses to share the secret with Jack before he dies, he says that Jack's high morals are a liability and that his pure ideals make him worthless to the company. He says that it makes him weak, and he has no business cunning.
The hurt and rage heats Jack like a furnace, it fills the entire room. Jack yells something and turns to leave. I follow him.

"He doesn't mean it, it's the.."

"What do you know about it, little girl?" The way he says it makes me feel small and stupid. I know that the last time I gave him a

reproachful look and swept out the door. I also know it only makes him feel worse. I see myself from his point of view. I'm wearing a vivid navy blue v-neck t-shirt with black Jeans (funny, I usually see all Jack characters wearing blue and black), My hair is pulled back into a glossy, wavy tail. Now I get a choice.

There's a wall that juts out in front of the door at an angle, making a narrow V shaped space. He's standing at the peak of the V.

I reach the door and instead of leaving, I walk back around to the other side of the wall. He is tall enough that he can rest his head on his folded arms atop the wall. I take his face between my hands. He reluctantly raises his eyes to mine and then drops them. I lean forward to kiss him and he tenses, giving me a distracted smile and a tiny shake of the head. Now isn't the time. I'm disappointed and sad, I know I've overstepped my bounds.
I can tell his father has hurt him though, I know I should go, but first...
I vault over the wall and fling my arms around him. He protests, I refuse to let go, tightening my arms around his middle and squeezing. He issues a startled laugh and drops his arm across my shoulders, giving me a brief, breath stealing squeeze. I release him and tell him everything will be alright, then I wander away.

I see some scenes where I have completed the dreamwalk and the team follows in my wake, picking up notes I have left behind on yellow post its. Where jack's father died, I wrote a note that says "sleep, little dreamer, wake when all has ended. Until then, dream on little dreamer."
Someone picks up the note and asks another team member, "What do you think this one means?"
"Damned if I know..."

Olivia Dunham, Me and K on a Forklift
I rush into the mall. It's vast and busy. It's around noon, I know I have several hours yet before I have to be somewhere. I'm headed for the escalator when I notice Olivia Dunham standing by the railing, across from a dress shop. She looks amazingly pretty, but serious. Her lips are bright red, long hair gathered over one shoulder. She's wearing a black dress.
"Would you like to buy a dress?" She asks me. She smiles, but it doesn't look friendly. I can tell she doesn't care one way or another.
"This is your shop then?"
"Of course."
I glance over my shoulder and see several circular racks full of dresses. I wonder if any of them will fit me. A black and white dress with a zig-zag pattern catches my eye. I know they are probably too expensive for me, at least $200 for one dress. I step closer to her, but I'm about to make an excuse. I need to leave, I'm getting married tonight. (Really not, but my subconscious likes to use that as an excuse to make me feel terrible.)
She can feel my hesitation. "Your hair is lovely." She kind of means it, just a little. "How do you get it to do that it?"
I briefly see myself from her point of view. My hair is fantastically wavy.
"It just dries this way."
She doesn't believe me, and any spark of friendliness she showed me is gone. She flicks her eyes away, annoyed. I notice an archway next to her.
I know it's a doorway to the other universe.
"Can you open that?" I ask, intensely curious. I would like nothing more than to escape from my impending marriage, to go Home.
"Oh yes."
"Would you open it for me?"
"Sure. Go to the other side of the arch."
Obediently I do as she says. I pick up a piece of chalk from a box at the foot of the arch and draw a symbol on the side. Nothing happens. When I go over to her side, she is crouched by her mark, clearly amused. I see a mocking smiley face. She glances at me and smiles meanly.
"Oh, did you actually think I could open a gate?" She asks with a mock apologetic tone. She has made me feel incredibly stupid. She stands and crosses her arms, smirking at me.

There's a lapse. My friend K and I are driving down the highway, in a loaded forklift. We're going ridiculously fast, such speed that I can't make out anything that's happening on the road. We fly out into the open air, having driven off a cliff.
"Oh no." He says. The vehicle tumbles through the air. I wonder when we're going to land, and if it's going to hurt. As I'm wondering that we land wheels down atop a semi, unharmed.
"Huh." He says. "interesting." He hops down to the ground. "Now, how do we get the thing down from there."
He tries to figure a way to move the forklift without damaging the product.
I roll it off the semi.
"How did you do that?" he asks.
"I dunno."
"Weird."
Yeah."

Fragments 06/16-06/25

06/16 Dancing

I'm in a bar, it has a sleepy feeling to it, like it's on the verge of becoming busy. It has two levels, the lower level where the front door

is, has all the tables. Raised a few feet above that is a dance floor, the bar pushed back against the far wall. There are purple and blue neon lights around a mirror surrounded by shelves of liquor.
At the end of the bar by the wall, is a man with one gold eye and one silver. I get a close up of his face. I smile at him but he just stares at me. At the other end of the bar is a young man in a suit. He even feels young to me, even though I know I can't be more than 5 years older than him. He asks me to dance and I hope up onto the bar while he goes to start the record player.
While I wait for him to join me I dance across the bar top, my feet move quickly and cleverly, I spin, and the bar blurs around me. I turn toward him expectantly. He's standing at my feet, smiling. There's something about him that unsettles me. It has something to do with the shape of his face, and the color of his skin. I hop down next to him and I tell him I had better go.
We walk over to the table-top record player. He looks down at me, and asks me for a kiss, since I'm the one of the two of us who knows about these things.

I think it's a shame he's never been kissed. He bends down to kiss me and before our lips meet I see that half his face is yellow and the

other half green. His mouth is split in two and I have to remind myself that he hasn't really changed. I can feel his mouth, hard against mine. As I pull away I slide my leg between his knees.
I end up leaving, but I don't remember what I did.

06/18 True Blood

I see Sookie as she runs around a corner and stops short, finding a moving truck with the driver's side door open. There's a greenish

puddle underneath it, and three large segmented larvae (two yellow, one green) are wiggling sluggishly. She is relieved that there is a green one, it means that the plague is neutralizing. She flees as a zombie falls from the moving truck and lunges after her. I know that a plague has ripped through the vampire population, turning them all into flesh eating zombies.

Work Fragment

I don't know, something about work and the out of town managers giving us instructions on how to deal with increased business.

The registers are where Plumbing usually is. I see a former manager of mine checking out with her family. Instead of having blonde hair and blue eyes, she has short black hair and green eyes. I want to tell her it looks good on her, instead, I walk around the registers.
They had a run-in with a woman that they all dislike. I start telling a story that echoes their own, and they start laughing, not knowing I'm making a joke out of it on purpose. It's funnier to them because they think I don't know.

Second Work Fragment

I'm trying to build a kitchen for an older woman. I'm doing pretty good, too. I'm asking all the right questions, but she's picky and I can't

get her to make a decision. I retreat to our cabinet aisle while she looks at the door styles and color options.
Instead of the cabinets, there is a kitchen, and I move things around to show her all her options. There's a white pedestal sink with a shell shaped bowl. I keep thinking that something's wrong with the kitchen, and don't realize that it's because the heavy grey racking is still in place and in the way.

Third Work Fragment

There are giant quartz and granite display tiles on pallets in topstock, there's something about how I write down lyrics on a sheet of

paper, and a someone points out my mistakes, making me feel stupid for thinking I knew the words.

Captive
This one felt strange because for most of it I was a ghost. In most dreams, obviously, I switch characters seamlessly and hardly notice that it's happening. This time however, I consciously make the decision to become her.

We are in a small basement apartment and is an entirely new construction, which is odd for me. Most houses are, in some way, ones I

have lived in. The walls are dark red, the carpet beige. Immediately to the left of the front door is the bathroom, three steps in there's a couch sitting across from a loveseat. There is a floor lamp with a simple glass bell shade. I'm crouched by the loveseat.

On the couch is a thin woman in an ankle length light brown dress. She has extremely curly hair, it's a wispy pale brown. A man pins

her to the cushions, she is still mostly clothed, so is he, but it's still obvious that he's raping her. She issues soft, breathless sobs and negations, her blood smeared hands push ineffectually at his shoulders and chest.
I want to bash his face in. I urge her to grab the lamp shade and hit him with it, and after a moment she looks at it and considers following my suggestions. As she is reaching for the neck of the lamp, he finishes and stands up. I get a view of his back as he zips up his fly and tucks in his shirt. I glare at him. She watches him with fear and uncertainty. She sits up, lowering her skirt back over her knees.

He says that he has to leave for work, and explicitly outlines what will happen to her sister if she tries to leave. He muses that she can't

possibly expect the police to believe that she was held captive and raped, after all, he is a police officer. He turns to face her, looking out the high narrow windows, buttoning his cuffs. He's about 5'7" with short black hair, a cruel face with black, dead eyes. She can't stand to look at him, and when he begins to walk toward her, she darts for the bathroom and slams the door behind herself.

We can feel him on the other side and how little her flight has affected him, how very little she can do against him. She feels like

screaming or crying. We hear the front door shut and lock, apparently it locks from the outside too. Just in case she became adventurous.

My eyes settle on the single window above the toilet. I urge her to look out. She pauses to wash her hands and then does as I say. She

has to climb up onto the toilet to look outside. The bathroom, like the rest of the house, is painted red. The window is more like a screen on a hinge, and on the other side is a cramped tunnel.
I watch as she stares outside, between the hedges to where he's standing talking to my boyfriend. I hear him say that he has lost his car keys. Which is true, but he's also a police officer ((complete fabrication)) from out of state. Something has made him suspicious, but he can't put his finger on it.

"Sorry buddy, I can't help you. The manager inside might have a phone you can use."

My boyfriend heads inside the apartment building. The woman's captor stands beside the car there, talking on his cell phone.
Her hand falls limp to her side. I press my boyfriend's keys into her hand. She doesn't even question how she got them. I urge her to go, but she's too terrified. I step up and become her. I open the window and squeeze myself into the tunnel. It is a little more than one length of my body, I scrape my elbows wiggling forward. I reach the other side and wait until his back is turned, I separate from her and watch her crawl out. I follow after. We hide behind a solid backed bench on just the other side of the hedges.
She freezes, and she can't anticipate his movements like I can. I join with her again. He pivots and we go to hide behind a black Dodge Avenger. We hear our captor get into a car and drive away. For a moment I'm confused, and think I'm looking for my boyfriend's old car, a teal Sunfire. I hesitantly click the unlock button on the key and the Dodge Avenger bleeps from behind me. I separate from her hand urge her to get away before my boyfriend comes back. She opens the driver side door and slips inside...

Battlestar Galactica

The house we're sitting in feels like my childhood home in MA, except that it is only one level, and beside the front door there is a

raised part of the floor, like a single step. Across from that is a low, dull gray table.
I am Cally, Chief Tyrol and Boomer sit on the raised section of floor, grimly regarding the table. I walk to the Chief on my knees, my eyes are burning and my throat feels thick. Our story has run its course, and yet we find ourselves here all over again. Running from the Cylons. I get a sense of where we are in the story, sometime before the settling on New Caprica.
Chief has his arms cross. I tug one of his arms free and he looks down at me with mild surprise.

"Cally." His voice holds the trace of a warning, but now is not the time to worry about appearances.
"Chief, could I...?"

He lifts his arm and a curl up by his side, he drops his arm across my shoulders.

"Chief, does this mean that we have a chance to do things differently? To make better choices?" I ask, it's difficult to speak.
"Yes, I suppose it does." He replies thoughtfully.

The relief that brings me is amazing, it's such a gift, to start over. The chance to treat people better. Knowing how the story ends, would we make the same choices?
"

She should be here soon." He says softly. We lift our eyes from the table to the darkened doorway on the other side of it.

Starbuck appears, there's something wrong with her face but I can't figure out what it is. She's also pregnant. Just far enough along that it's obvious. She leans heavily on the table then lays down on it, clutching her belly.
I leave Chief's side and go to hers. Hesitantly, I stroke the hair away from her face.

"Are you feeling alright?"
"I think I'm miscarrying." She says. The look on her face, and the fact that she's Starbuck makes me wonder if she's making a joke.
"Are you kidding? Is she kidding?"
"Help me sit up."

I oblige her.

There's a lapse. I'm standing in front of Starbuck who sits with her legs dangling off the side of the table. Another woman has arrived

but I can't look straight at her, even out of the corner of my eye she disturbs me.
Starbuck trembles violently and then her mouth moves of its own accord, speaking words I don't understand.

"Avre ein en Novem-ah."

The disturbing woman laughs at her. "Oh yes, your vast knowledge of forgotten history is astounding. You only speak of the Novem, how can you possibly know what it is to call the Novem friend?"

Starbuck can't seem to look straight at her either. Her eyes shift away uncomfortably. The disturbing woman doesn't speak again but I

get a sense of timelessness from her, wondering at the vastness of her existence that stretches across aeons. Starbuck may know these things too, because of the child she carries, but she has not lived it. Not like the Queen. This knowledge deeply chills me. This is the house of eternity, there are other paths to walk besides this one.

Then I am outside. I am a fit and unpregnant Starbuck. Admiral Adama gathers us to him on the lawn and we walk together to the road which is wider than I remember. There's a 5 foot tall wall where the woods should be. It isn't smooth, it has uneven grooves all along its length.
We walk to where the crew has broken through a 3 foot thick ice road block. We file through the ragged opening.

The oddness of what stand on the other side strikes all of us. The wall curves gently, to the right of the wall is the ocean, to the left is a dusty courtyard with a rickety wooden structure that has a roof and thin support poles, but no walls. At the far end of the enclosure is a leaning ladder of long branches, fastened together.
"What is this, ice?" Adama says, touching the wall as though we have never seen it before.
"Bet your ass it's ice, I like it!" Colonel Tigh exclaims, picking up a handful of slush and throwing it. His reaction doesn't seem child-like or whimsical.
I wonder what they were doing, obviously the wall holds back the ocean. What were they doing, forcing the ocean to recede?

We fan out and walk toward the ladder. We all start to climb it, but the top of the ladder is no longer tied down, so people keep falling off. I'm Starbuck though, and I'm certain I can climb it. So I haul myself up. I can feel the texture of the branches under my hands, and how the ladder sags outward. I reach the top as Admiral Adama and Tigh do, trying to figure out a way to leap the gap from the last rung to the next section of ladder.
I drop down and run a few paces back, where there's a thin twist of rope. I grab it and lift myself up with one arm, it holds my weight but starts to fray.
I had hoped that I could use it to cross the gap.

I wander away and start taking note of other things under the canopy. Maybe there are things that we can take away, supplies. There's a pick-up truck parked in the corner and a chest. They're full of yellow bags of dog food. Who were the people that came before us?
I watch the others, frowning at their behavior.

The next part I can't remember very well. I see flashes of what happened to the last people who found this place. They were a family of three, and a couple of farm hands.
I watch the mother, a tall brunette with short hair, wearing a red shirt, command her eight year old son to find the secret of the letters they found carved in the wall.
The task sounds like a threat. His father has gone missing, and at least one of the hands has died.

*sigh* I'm getting a little sick of the undead theme. Seriously.

First, a few fragments.
Fragment 1: Toes
I'm looking at my big toe, it looks like there's dead skin or something around the nail. So I pull at it and it rips off a couple layers of skin.

Fragment 2: Bugs
I walk into my kitchen and where the trash can is supposed to be, there are 5 small beetles and one large, green scarab beetle. By large, I mean it's larger than the other ones. It's not, say, the size of a cat. I lean forward to examine them, wondering why there are beetles in my kitchen. The scarab chitters its mandibles at me and chases me into the living room. I'm more startled than scared.
"Aggressive little bastard..."

Fragment 3: Hair
I'm looking in the mirror trying to fix my hair. Except I have bangs. I brush them out and am surprised that they look alright. I haven't had bangs like that since I was a kid.

Fragment 4: Infected
The infected have taken over our cities. There's a girl with short blond hair who has the innate ability to use telekinesis. She's in a room with a wide mahogany table, they're trying to draw out a plan of action. An older woman with red brown hair gives them a dismissive wave.
"Annaleigh," She begins, addressing the blond. "These plans are all well and good, be we all know how we're really meant to win this. The rest of us have to start learning the things you can do. Can you teach us?"
Anna responds with a resolute nod.
I see a coastal city at sunset, it's all narrow cobblestone streets and low flat buildings. There are undead everywhere. A man realizes that the zombies have cut off the larger group's escape route. He knows that blood will draw them. So he raises his hand in farewell, and the next time I see him his throat is slit and the knife hilt is sticking out the side of his neck.

Vampires
I'm a man in my early twenties. I'm of average height with deathly pale skin and short black hair, black-brown eyes. Half a year ago something happened to me, it left me in an unfortunate state of undeath. I'm not a zombie, I don't rot. I'm not a ghost, I'm definitely solid and other people can see me. I'm not a vampire, I don't crave blood and I can go out in the sun. I would not entertain such fantastic explanations, except for the fact that my skin is extremely pale, cold to the touch, and I don't have a pulse. Only my friend Simon knows my secret. I don't often go out, and he's the only real friend I have left.
Simon has a friend who is throwing a party, they used to be my friend too. I decide I'm going to go. I see the restaurant from outside, there's a wide wooden staircase leading to a deck, and a sliding glass door. I go inside and Simon freezes in shock. He comes to stand by me as I settle in next to two other people in a large booth seat.
"Are you sure you should be doing this?" He asks, pretending to smile. He's worried.
"Yes, It'll be fine."
"If you say so." He wanders off, but I can tell he's going to keep an eye on me. I smile and shake my head.
There's a sort of magician or storyteller. We all know the routine so well that we shout along with key points in the story. I catch Simon's attention and roll my eyes, wondering why we even bother to hire the guys if we already know the story.

I'm not sure what happens here. Someone sees me and I feel a shock of recognition though they are a stranger. I climb over the back of the booth and thrust the door open, I make for the stairs but my pursuer somehow beats me there, so I jump up onto the wide flat rail and run past them. They yell something at me. I know that they are a vampire. It feels like it shouldn't be possible.

There's a lapse and I'm standing in a dim stairwell. There's a girl with pail skin, bright red lips and chin length black hair, her bangs hang into her eyes. She's crumpled against one wall. She looks delirious and afraid. I go to help her. And so I learn her story, and the mystery of what happened to me six months ago.
She was attacked outside a bar and fought back, killing her assailant. She became sick and only just made it back to her apartment. She slept for three days straight and woke up ravenously hungry, but when she tried to leave the sun burned her. She came to the rather obvious conclusion that she's a vampire.
It sounds similar to my own story, except I was never certain of the fate of my assailant. She was sure she had killed hers. I only knew that I had wounded him. I realize that this is how vampires are made, you kill a vampire to become one. Since the vampire I wounded survived, I got stuck somehow.

There's another lapse. The vampires have found that two of their children were killed. They threaten the city, saying that anyone who knows of me and the girl should catch us and turn us over.
I decide differently. I need to finish what I started 6 months ago.
There's a wide, open courtyard, all concrete. It's sundown. In the far corner is a swirling gold and magenta portal. Standing in front of it are tall pale, elaborately dressed figures. They all wear gold and magenta. It's hard to describe, the women's dresses have long bell-shaped sleeves. The dress is all magenta with thick gold veins running from neckline to hem. Their hair is twisted around a kind of...y shaped headdress. They all have amber colored hair.
Their leader shouts an absurd challenge that a week ago I wouldn't have countered. Now I enter the courtyard directly into their fenced off area. They say they'll kill me. I laugh.
One of the women steps forward and draws a large thorn shaped weapon covered in the gold veining with hints of magenta underneath. She throws it at me. I snatch it out of the air, rush her and stab her in the chest. With her death my strength grows, she falls to the ground and I rush the next one. I take out five more this way before my alarm wakes me up.

*Note* I don't think about Dave and Patrick often. In fact, the only time I think about them is after I've had a dream with them in it. I don't understand why they keep coming back, since I haven't seen them in almost 8 years. At one time I thought they were my friends. I don't like to think about that period in my life because it is just a sharp, painful reminder of how stupid I can be.
Dave and Patrick were in a band, I used to go see them play and hang out at their practices. They didn't care at all when I stopped coming by. That is how little of an impact I made. Fantastic.


Lowe's
I'm at work. Just like IWL, other stores have lent us their associates to help us cope with the extra business the tornado may bring us. One of them is a woman I used to work with at another store.
A department manager expresses his frustration to me, that all our extra help keeps leaving early with the excuse that there is nothing to do, and then our people end up staying late to get things done.
I can see my former co-worker making that excuse and I agree that it's ridiculous.

"They say we haven't had any sales, but they're wrong! There are things they could be downstocking!" He says.
"Yeah!" I agree, "A guy and his son came through here and bought a ton of fishing gear."

((because apparently Lowe's sells fishing gear...))
I see a scene where the man is taking an armful of fishing rods over to an H cart and dropping them.

Dave and Patrick
The setting is a little confusing. The back end of the building is Lowe's. The front is a bar. The Lowe's part is currently closed, all the lights are off.
My phone rings ad an unfamiliar number pops up. Usually I don't answer, this time I do, with a politely questioning "Hello?"

"Julie? It's Dave."
"Dave! How are you?"

He says something about life being too short to leave people behind. He says that his fiance was diagnosed with cancer and judging by how badly his voice is shaking, she has recently died. He asks if I'll meet with him and he apologizes for never contacting me.
I tell him where I'm at and he asks if he can drop by.
A little bit later he shows up.
He's 5'7", wiry, black hair. Always wearing a black button-up with the sleeves rolled up, black jeans and black square-toed boots. [I]((note: in hindsight it's not so strange that I wanted to spend time with them. I'm seeing a trend. You wanna guess what Patrick looked like? If you're thinking he's a tall red-head, you'd be right. Aside from their hair color and body types, they are absolutely nothing like Liam and Jack. What is wrong with me?))

We're in the bar.

He reminds me of the shows he used to put on and I see a different band playing. He waggles his eyebrows at me, suggesting that he'd steal the stage from them if I asked. maybe.
He ventures into the Lowe's section of the building and of all absurd things, he spots Patrick who used to the bassist in his band. I wonder what he's doing here, since I know he moved to another state. He looks different. He has a moustache, for one. And his clothes are a dirty grey. He looks like a homeless person, he's rifling through a bin on the floor.

"Patrick! what are you doing here?" Dave exclaims, looking askance at me as he crosses the sales floor.
"Decided to move back."

Patrick says. I wonder what he'll say to me, if he'll mention the e-mail I sent to him a couple of years ago or not. He completely ignores me. Of course. How depressing. I wander away. Dave follows me out to the front of the bar. There's a raised wooden patio. I climb onto it. Dave asks what they pay me. I tell him my hourly wage. It seems like he has fallen on hard times and the pay isn't bad, I'm tempted to tell him to apply. I reconsider though, knowing that he wouldn't want to work for a place like this. Music is his life. Besides, I wouldn't want him to feel obligated to work with me.

Pirate Ship
There are holes in this dream.
Dave has a pirate ship, I'm there with him. We are fleeing from his enemies.

"They're closing in." I say, frowning at the the pick-up trucks that are parked around us. We aren't even in water, we are stranded in the middle of a parking lot.
"I guess we have no choice."

We exchange an unhappy look. In the holding area below deck there are hundreds of small chests half submerged in water. At his say-so they burst open, light and water pouring out from inside.
At an earlier point there was some sort of time travel involved, that had kept him from sacrificing the innocents whose souls were in those chests. So I'm aghast when he gives the order.

"Call it insurance." He says, "When we did things over I...held some back."

I had thought he changed, obviously I was wrong.
The water from the chests floods out of the ship and begins to cover everything in sight. The trucks have a large empty plastic bottle tied to their bumpers.

"Are they stupid? How is that going to help?" I ask, leaning against the railing.
"Better than nothing, I guess." He replies. I don't really understand still.

There's a lapse. Dave is gone. There's an undead version of a guy I used to work with named Fernando. He's a shortish mexican man, portly with a shaved head. He isn't rotting, he is just extremely pale. When I see him I flee to a 4x4 cubby in the wall with a white-washed door and a black handle, and slam the door behind me. I turn and reach up to lock it, but as my hand is reaching the knob he is shoving it open. I throw my weight against it and try to twist the lock. He gives it another shove. I scramble away as the door explodes inward. He ducks inside and towers over me. I wonder where the hell Dave is.

"Seems like we've taken your ship."
"Seems like."
"You want to come outside? Give me your weapons?"
"Waaaaant?" I say, drawing the word out like I'm thinkin' about it. He clacks his teeth at me.
"Wouldn't want to have an accident, yeah? I could snap your pretty little fingers off with one chomp."

I scowl at him and he steps back so I can crawl out of the cubby. There are undead lined up along the sides of the ship. All just extremely pale.
This is stupid. I see a table nearby, there are knives all over it. I run to it and they don't stop me, because it's my dream and I do what I want. I grab three off the table. I sabotage myself by thinking about how they aren't balanced for throwing, since two of them are kitchen knives. I don't think to change them. I run to another level of deck and there is a strange, tiny creature with giant eyes and long hair perched in front of me. I throw the knives at it and miss with all three.

"Well, that went well." Dave says to me. I run over to him and just stop myself from grabbing his sleeve, it would be a terrible invasion of his space.
"Shut up. What are we going to do about the zombies?"
"You'll see." He smirks at me.

Submarine
In the first part of the dream I'm in Lowe's ((Sigh...)), and a woman is showing me how to work in my new department. It all seems really complicated and I'm not sure I can understand it enough to do my job. She tells me that once I submit the estimate, I have to go over to Millwork and attach it to another one.
Right in front of the Millwork desk the concrete rises into a ramp, so that Building Materials is elevated from the rest of the store. Millwork is enclosed in a tent. We go inside. She says she has to handle something else real quick and leaves. There are two tall men with red blonde hair and a girl about my height. One of the men jacks with us by crowding really close to my left side and scooting us over to stand by the other man. I smack his arm.

"Would you quit that?"
He laughs. "I'm just messing with you."
"Yeah yeah...how am I supposed to look at this screen if you keep pushin' at me?"

He laughs again. I roll my eyes. He wanders away. I look up at the other red-haired man. Just like in every other dream with someone vaguely Liam's shape I am suddenly attracted to him. I bite my lip and he looks down at me.

"Hey, you're new here right?"
"Yep."
"You...are tiny."
"It's not my fault you're huge."

He grins a little. His shoulder is a couple of inches higher than my head. His biceps are about the size of my head. The more I look at him, the less attractive I find him. He's too buff for me. Like always, I start mentally subtracting features, running a mental comparison to Liam. Because I'm crazy.
He leaves and I follow. He's sliding backwards up the ramp singing some church hymn I find vaguely familiar. I decide he really isn't my type, and he disappears. I can still hear his voice though.
I walk up the ramp and slip near the top. It really is more like a slide. As I'm thinking that I trip and slide down the ramp on my knees. I feel like I'm going too fast and somehow direct myself into the Millwork tent.

There's a lapse and when I come to, I immediately understand that I'm in a kind of submarine, stationed under a lake. I know it's called the Hollow Pearl. I can't decide if the name is clever or stupid. Something shifts and I become lucid.
The world is slightly warped. I try to correct it by repeating the same action and focusing on how it should look. I have a little success, but feel like I'm wasting my time. I decide I want to do a front flip. ((God I'm so boring)) I run a couple of steps and throw myself into a flip. Kind of. I stumble and decide to try again. The next time I succeed, but can't stop flipping. Instead I wake myself up and go back to sleep, I very briefly rose into another dream where I was checking my phone. The screen taints the scene around me. I close my eyes and focus until it goes away.
I run out of the room. There's a long hallway full of doors.
I don't remember what happened there. More flipping probably.
Then I'm with my boyfriend, outside. Except he has black hair instead of blonde, just like his WL hair it's pulled back into a tail. I'm leading him to the Hollow Pearl. I gesture to the lake and think about how muddy the water is. There are people in the water, our enemies. He wades in and dives under. I follow after him but I'm afraid of the people in the water, so I walk back out.
He emerges, sputtering, choking. I panic and rush into the water to pull him out. I drag him to shore.
He no longer looks like my boyfriend, and isn't even wearing the same clothes.
He's wearing a light grey t-shirt, with a slightly darker grey neck and sleeves. I put my hand on his chest and lean over him.
He's got high cheek bones and a more narrow face. His eyes have turned a clear grey, his hair is waist-length and black. I remember how the water clung to his skin and eyelashes, how he choked and spat water.

"Are you okay?"

He manages to nod.

Oh my god I haven't updated in a while. You know what, I'm just gonna post this. I don't feel like adding my fragments.

05/30/2013 Daryl Dixon, Mocking a Moron, Ghost-Vampire-Zombies

Fighting Zombies: Part 1
I'm carrying a sawed off shotgun. I am, of course, out of ammunition. I'm in the kitchen of a run down farm house, by the sliding glass door. I hear movement outside. The back yard is a huge expanse of green grass, butted up against and overgrown field. A woman stands beside a faded white picnic table.
I run outside. I can't decide if I should draw on her or not. After all, she doesn't know my gun isn't loaded. I settle for a potentially aggressive position, the gun half raised.
I'm about to ask her what she's doing out here when she says, "There are zombies out here. Did you know there are zombies out here?!"
I open my mouth to say something sarcastic, but a zombie lumbers out of nowhere and opens his arms to bear hug her. I cry out a warning. The girl twists around and neatly stabs the zombie in the guts, doing absolutely no damage.
I roll my eyes. "Aim for the head!"
"What?" She asks, stupidly.
"Stab. it. in. the. brain."
"Oh...right."
"Riiiight." I say with a sarcastic nod.
Another zombie bends between the wires of the fence of the field and comes at me while she's still struggling with her opponent. I think a few unkind thoughts in her direction and realize that I shouldn't belittle her intelligence...after all, which one of us is the moron running around during a zombie apocalypse carrying an empty gun?

There's an unrelated interlude. I'm pretty sure I'm in Rapture from Bioshock, but I only notice the similarities once I woke up. I'm approaching a class room. There's a well-dressed pompous jerk criticizing everyone's writing skills and proclaiming that he alone has the finesse to properly write a short story, I have every intention of verbally ripping his face off, remembering that I've read his short story and every single word in it was spelled wrong. He even made up some words. Like 'richutoushely'.
A friend of mine, Laura, gets my attention.
There's a lapse. She joyfully skips to the elevator at the end of the hall. I'm telling her about Pompous Ass. Or there's a voice over where I"m telling her about him. She purposely puts herself beside him in the elevator and does her best to make him feel ashamed for being a jerk. When that doesn't work, she makes fun of his short story.
I remember hearing her amused disbelief that such a person exists.
Then I'm in an office. There are two young men watching me as I sit down at a desk to write. I set down for lines of poetry, all using a common word to link them together. When I look over it, I laugh. I spelled the common word differently at each occurrence.
"Look at me, making fun of a guy who can't spell, and then I sit here and can't spell a word like 'pearl'." I laugh at myself again and then wonder aloud. "What's pearl-fire anyway?"

Later I'm telling Laura about how I can't spell.
"Poetry, Julie? Really?"
"Whaaat, I was writing what's-his-face a letter and I was writing the poem to make fun of him!"
She gives me a look, "Suuuure." but she's smiling.
I fake-pout at her.

Fighting Walkers and Sirens with Daryl Dixon: Part 2

The first dream repeats itself, except that Daryl is with me. We exchange a glance upon hearing a noise from outside. We go out to the back yard and I raise my still empty sawed-off to threaten the moron girl exclaiming about zombies. We spread out, myself at 6 o'clock, Daryl at 3, the girl at 12. The corner of his mouth twitches as she yells about how she can't believe there are real zombies out here. We're stupidly distracted by our subtle amusement.
A zombie lumbers out of nowhere and opens his arms wide to bear hug her. I cry out a warning and she stabs him. Daryl tells her to aim for the head. He is, surprisingly, without his crossbow. He only has a hunting knife.
"We never found ammo." I say.
"I think I saw an ammo pouch on the shelf behind the desk?"
I run inside while Daryl is preoccupied with two walkers that have come into the backyard from the field. Out of the corner of my eye I see stab the walker in the head that's attacking the girl, and then lead the other three in a circle around the picnic table. I scan the shelf behind the desk and see a faded leather pouch. I look inside and only see gunpowder. It doesn't occur to me until I've poured it into my gun that it's not going to do me any good. Well, it'll serve as a distraction. I head back outside and yell.
One of the walkers breaks off and heads toward me. I shoot at it. I see the find gunpowder permeate the air, doing...of course, absolutely nothing to my opponent. Daryl has dispatched his already, and when he circles around the picnic table scoops a heavy, splintered table leg from the long grass. He casually hits the walker twice, obliterating its skull and breaking the table leg in half.
"Come on, we don't have much time." He brushes past me into the house. I discard my gun and cast about for something useful.
I grab a log, a large wooden stake, and a shard of wood that's kind of knife shaped.
I have a moment where I wonder why I'm grabbing pointy objects...it's not like I'm hunting vampires.
....right?

The rest of our people are trapped upstairs. We are not the only ones who were drawn to this place. The foyer is sort of octagonal. It's all dark, the windows are boarded up. Shafts of light slant through the gaps. Daryl is quicker than I am, there's an extremely pale woman who has long brown hair with black streaks and golden eyes, wearing all leather. She lunges at him, he has her pinned, I round the corner as her hunting partner (an extremely pale bald man with a peeling scalp and silver eyes) is creeping up on Daryl. I smack him as hard as I can with the log.
We all exchange tense glances. The bald man bares his teeth and growls.
Urgency is pressing us into action. Daryl releases the woman and she scrambles up the stairs on all fours. Daryl follows, the bald man goes after him, and I go up last. The stairs are steep, we climb them just like the golden-eyed woman did, on all fours. We reach a landing near the top and the woman stops abruptly. She has heard something we can't.
Daryl narrows his eyes at her.
"Sirens, up ahead." she says, then after a moment of hesitation adds, "And at least three Shamblers in the rooms beyond."
Daryl scouts up the remaining stairs and then creeps back down. "There's at least one sleeping a couple of paces from the last stair." He gives the woman a stiff nod, not wanting to admit that she's done us a favor.
The bald man says, "And where there is one siren..."
"...her sisters soon will follow." Daryl supplies reluctantly.
The golden-eyed woman briefly looks me in the eye. I have dropped my 'weapons'. The bald man tries to steal one. I bare my teeth at him and he sets it back down, grinning a little.
"Your little nightcat has teeth." the bald man says.
Daryl looks a little amused.
The woman intentionally forgets a quiver of arrows blue-green-black fletching. I scoop it up.

The next part is kind of confusing. We go upstairs. There's what's called a siren hovering vertically, a few inches off the ground. She is tall with light purple skin, black hair and pointed ears. Daryl circles around behind her, reaches up and throws a hand across her mouth, an arm across her shoulders, tugging the siren roughly to the floor. Her eyes snap open. I lunge forward and drive the stake I've been carrying into her chest.
The golden-eyed woman and her companion are dealing with the walkers in the next room as quietly as possible.
There's noise from the room next to us and sounds of a scuffle. We rush in and I have randomly produced throwing knives. There's another siren, screeching her blackened little heart out. Whip-quick, I draw and throw three knives, one after the other. The first sticks in her abdomen, the third in her chest, the last grazes her cheek.
Daryl has retrieved his crossbow. He shoots an arrow into her eye and she collapses.
"Nice throwing, why didn't you aim for her head though?"
I frown and shrug. "I don't know."
"Remember for next time, yeah?"
I nod. ((Tacking 'yeah' onto the end of a sentence is something Liam does. And 'little nightcat' is often a reference to Saja, even though I wasn't consciously her in this dream.))
After searching the rooms, we realize that the other members of our group aren't here.
"They've been taken to the bluffs, then." Daryl says something about needing to stay up here, but he hands me a longbow, telling me to take out our enemy from the overhang.
"Shouldn't you be doing this? You're a better shot than I am."
He says something about not really worrying about it because he has faith in my archery skills.
The golden-eyed woman and man slipped out while we were slaying the second siren.

There's a lapse and I'm repeating the dream again, this time Daryl is already upstairs. I'm with the golden-eyed woman and her hunting partner. We scramble up the stairs and when we noisily reach the top a siren bursts through the door, screaming. For a moment I'm worried, then Daryl appears from behind her and (quite easily) kills the hell out of her.
The room Daryl emerges from is distinctly Rapture, it is even leaking. There's water streaming down the wall and pooling on the counter before cascading to the floor. The house would be pretty if it wasn't so beat up...

Fragments 06/02/2013 to 06/09/2013
06/02/2013 Restaurants
I'm driving, trying to leave town after a tornado has hit. I'm with my brother and we're looking for a place to eat. He tells me about a French food place that's really good, so we drive there. Except it looks suspiciously like a Chinese food restaurant. There are hanging lanterns and the place is full of mirrors and blazing lights. It's really crowded too, there are people everywhere. As I'm getting out of the car I realize that I drove the entire way without my contact lenses in. I'm also realizing that I'm not wearing shoes, and that I'm keeping my contact lenses in the water in my shoes. I spend the next few minutes trying to fish them out.

06/03/2013
Walking around work singing Minnie the Moocher. My co-workers echo the chorus back to me.

06/04/2013
It is the anniversary of DV and it is tradition to recite a serious speech with a fake speech impediment. You only get one shot. Tom Levitt from Smash is sitting outside the theater which is also somehow a browser chat room, reciting a speech to Julia. He says something like "It is not only empirical, but illogical to believe that showmanship is an improper forum..." He speaks the words slowly, only just able to keep himself from cracking up, because the speech doesn't make any sense. He is so close to the end.

I want to start by pointing out the obvious, that this is a dream journal entry from before I began posting here. My retro-posting has a purpose, as I've begun to mention Jack in recent dreams, I wanted to write a little bit about what he represents to me and post his first appearance in my adult dream-life. He may have made earlier appearances, but it is only recently that he gained a name.

I may be crazy, but I've always been a little infatuated with the character of Jack Sawyer from Black House. And, also, after reading through my journals I've found many instances where I dreamed about various characters named Jack (though never actually the one from Black House). It seems I have a fondness for them. So, in a way, my Jack may be inspired by many Jacks.

Jack feels like a guardian, someone who will watch my back no matter what's going on. I'm excluding this dream because Liam and Jack mixed personalities. It was distinctly different from other dreams, just like my dreams of Liam and of Jack are distinctly different from each other. That one was...very odd for me. I guess the blending of traits explains why Jack was being so stubborn, Liam can be...bull-headed.

Call of Cthulhu
I sat with three men (one of them my boyfriend) at the Home Decor desk at work. My boyfriend is sitting diagonal to me. A pale, dark haired man is directly my opposite (this one is Jack). Next to me is a man I never look straight at. The department manager of Plumbing is very loudly leading other employees in a song aimed at one of his underlings as an insult. It begins to annoy me, I can't concentrate on the game we are playing.

Suddenly I say, "He shouldn't be allowed to talk to people that way, it isn't right."
"Relax." My boyfriend says, "It'll blow over, he'll lose interest eventually."
I frown, glancing over my shoulder toward Plumbing as they erupt into another round of clapping and singing.
"Hey, you want to go stop him?" The dark haired man says to me.
"Yeah! I do!"
"Alright." He says, giving me a wicked smile. "Let's stop him then." He rises from his chair and I follow suit. He has short

black hair, wearing a navy blue button-up with black jeans. The shirt has pearl-capped buttons. He leads the way. The Plumbing department looks like a restaurant. The walls are painted dark red and the trim is a bight yellow-gold. We reach the restaurant and discover that the man we came to confront has fled to one of the upper levels. There is a flight of stairs going down on the left side of the department. We take them. I'm confused about why we have to go downstairs first before we can go up.

The stairway is enclosed in a tile tunnel. The tiles are small, gray 1x1s. It's cool and damp and feels like a storm drain. The stairs are very steep. I only realize how steep when at the halfway mark, the guard rail disappears. It find it difficult to breathe, and I become nervous about falling, I step very cautiously. The man sees how afraid I am and passes in front of me, so that if I stumble he will be between me and danger. I clutch his shoulder to keep my balance. He flashes me a knowing smile.

Something catches my eye and I look up. There is a large circular cut out in the ceiling, edged in stone. I can see the night sky through it. The moon is full, casting its clear light down into the storm drain.

"Hey look.." I say.

The man halts, we both look up. Now, instead of night sky it is like water is suspended in a well and we are looking at the underside of it. There is an image of a brunette woman. Her hair is blowing across her face. The image ripples as though on water, and stretches, her mouth gradually opens in horror and green tentacles erupt from her mouth, before the image disperses entirely.
We continue down the stairs. On the wall across from us, I notice another disturbing display of art. It looks like dark green tentacles bursting fort from a sewer mouth. My uneasiness grows.

"Are you sure we should be down here? Haven't you read call of Cthulhu?" (and I still haven't read Call of Cthulhu so that...doesn't

really mean anything to me haha.)

"Relax, we'll be fine." He says.

Once we reach the bottom of the stairs, it becomes muddled. Something about a girl laying on a platform that we raise to cross the water. She thanks us for rescuing her. I try to offer her my hand to cross the gap from platform to walkway but she insists it is easier to cross on her own. She says the man we're pursuing trapped her on the platform, but she knows where he's going.

Forgot that I never copied this to my Dream Journal even though I made a post about it. I may as well add another while I'm here.

Co-worker acting Strangely - 12/14/2012

I don't remember how the dream began. Like many of my dreams it took place in one of my childhood homes, except that the wall dividing the two bedrooms at the end of the hall is gone so that it is one big room. A co-worker of mine (I'll call him K) is intentionally scaring people. But not in a leap-around-corners kind of way. More in an extremely-creepy-I'm-intending-to-murder-you way.

I'm watching him from the end of the hall. He's wearing ancient Chinese armor. It's all brown and black, the front and back are dark brown tiles linked together, with black plating underneath. He's wearing kind of a conical helmet with a face on the front, and a face on the back. The armor is designed in such a way that it's very difficult to tell which direction he is actually facing in. K is moving around the two people at the other end of the hall, twisting and sliding and bending like a contortionist.
This is about when I become aware it's a dream. I go to the other end of the hall, though he really scares me. I see that he's pulling a small bronze knife with a triangular blade from inside his armor. I can see another one. I make the choice to steal it as he's twisting around the man at the end of the hall. I believe that this is my only chance to stop the horror of K. So I grab the knife from inside his armor and stab him in the neck. The blade goes in, but he is bloodless. He takes the helmet off and removes the knife from his neck. It slides out like his skin is a sheathe. K slides the knife back into his neck and pulls it out several times, grinning at the three of us. I'm horrified.

The dream skips scenes. I'm standing at the start of the hallway again. I am very tired and I can see my bed. I'm really looking forward to sleeping. It has a tarnished brass frame and stark white sheets. That's when I realize K is laying in the exact middle of the bed, his presence deeply dismays me, though now he's just wearing a white t-shirt. The armor is gone. I assume he's not playing the creepy guy anymore, and see that as a role, a costume. I'm afraid, but I'm tired and I just want to rest. I walk to the bed and pull the sheet back like I'm going to lay down, but then I just stare at him. I can see the bloodless slit in his neck where he was keeping the knife. It really unsettles me. I go into the black doorway across from the bed, knowing it's my parent's bedroom. I realize the couple inside are not my parents, and I don't really know what I expect them to do about my problem. But, like a frightened child (that's even how I identified this action in the dream), I wake the man by lightly touching his foot.
"I don't know where I'm supposed to sleep....K is in my bed."
"It's alright, don't worry about it." The man says.
"But I'm afraid."
The man doesn't respond, I know he's gone back to sleep. I return to my bed. K rolls over and sits up. I just look at him warily.
"It's okay if you lay down." he says.
Reluctantly, I get under the sheets. I'm still afraid. He tries to reassure me that he's not going to kill me, but as he says it he pulls the bronze knife from under one of the pillows and casually slips it into the slit in his neck. He grins. I'm not reassured at all...

I honestly don't understand. As a person, K doesn't scare me. We're even work friends. On top of that I very rarely have nightmares, so I don't know why I had this one. Nothing has happened at work with K to trigger it. ((In hindsight this is hilarious. At the time it was true, I didn't really have nightmares for a long time. I've had many lately =/))

A man in a suit is talking to a young man with a narrow face, black eyes and black hair. He's giving him news of some inevitable event. The guy reacts childishly, beginning to protest in a high, frightened voice. "No, no, no, no, I don't want to. I don't WANT to. No, no, no."
The man in the suit frowns at him, thinking that obviously this person is more child than man. He had expected a more mature reaction. The kid looks dead-eyed, and for a second I wonder if he's pretending to be scared. Then I realize I've misinterpreted his wooden expression, he's terrified.


Saja and Wolf, Shame and Separation 02/05/2013
Part of this is going in a spoiler because it's sexual.
The beginning is much less clear than the end. I'm traveling in proximity with a group of people. It feels like we are on foot, going in the same direction but not actually together.
There's a long lush green field. They sky is gray overhead, but I've always liked how vivid the world looks following a rain spell. There are a couple of people flying kites. From the back, I recognize Walter Bishop. We end up riding bikes down the length of field , careful not to run long black hoses. I had a reason for doing that, but I can't remember it now.
We arrive at the house just before nightfall. The house feels old and rundown. The walls are wood paneled, the carpet dingy white. A few feet from the front door is a large mattress and a chair at the foot of the bed. I stand by the chair. A middle-aged man with curly black hair going gray, decides that the thing to do now is have sex.

Spoiler for grossness. :

Everyone except one woman and a couple of the men object. On the left half of the mattress is the man's brother, laying with a long legged blonde woman. She is only wearing a light blue button-up. He opens the shirt, spooning behind her. I catch the eye of the other man laying on the right half of the bed.
He eyes me lustfully. I just stand there, uncertain, unwilling. All around the house, people are pairing off. I feel like I have to do it too, and at the time, I almost want to.
"Take off your shirt, pants and bra. Leave on the that jacket and your panties."
I do as he says, leaving myself barely clothed now in white panties and a fuchsia duster that hangs to mid-thigh. He holds his hand out to me and I walk across the mattress on my knees to take it. He pulls me down in front of him. I feel a surge a disgust.
"Yes, that's nice." He croons as I lay down on my side. When I move the sweater pulls open. I'm pretty sure I don't want to have sex, especially with all these people around. He tries to convince me otherwise, telling me to watch the others. My eyes skate over the blonde and his brother. He's calling our attention to her arousal.
The man starts to touch me, pressing his lips to my neck and fondling my breasts. He slips a hand down between my legs and whispers to me. This goes on for a long time, but he doesn't take me. The whole thing feels like a mockery of something, and I can't put my finger on what it is. Like there's a deeply buried memory similar to what the man is doing, but this time I'm revolted.

A fierce-looking woman with red-blonde hair stands at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, looking disgusted. She beckons to me. I'm relieved I have a reason to desert the bed, I feel unclean. She goes to the window and peers out through the slats of the blind. It is late and the End is on its way. Unhealthy light flashes through the slats.
"They've started to gather. It's almost time."
"The others are out there?" I ask, intrigued. She glances down at me and I'm acutely aware that I'm mostly naked. I pull the sweater closed and cross my arms to keep it that way. "Is Wolf with them?"
"Who?"
"Our leader." I start to feel stupid. "The one who brought us here." I feel like I've made a mistake and it worries me.
"Oh. Him. I haven't noticed." She pauses. "So...you think that he orchestrated all of this." Her tone makes it sound like he's a low-brow brute and that my suggestion is entirely ridiculous. I'm offended for him, and for myself.
"No, the Spirits told him what to do."
"Oh, of course they did."
I wonder if 'Wolf' means nothing to them but I can't think of another name to call him. I sink into a chair that's angled slightly away from the window. She doesn't realize how deeply her lack of reaction has affected me. I ask about the first person I can think of.

"Is Saja with them?"
She gives me an uncomprehending look. "Could you check? She's..." I briefly describe her, she'd be small with curling black hair to her waist. I'm on the verge of tears now, my voice is thick with emotion.
"No." She responds, looking outside. "Maybe they just haven't arrived yet." She says it like she's just trying to make me feel better.
I completely lose it. My sense of purpose, my hope for all this to be over. The belief that my instincts were right just crumbles to nothing. I feel shame and revulsion for letting a stranger touch me so intimately and in front of others.
"I left for this?"
She doesn't understand what I'm talking about. I realize that she has forgotten all of it. Who we were, what we did, all that we left behind.
"I left Home so that some disgusting perverted stranger could feel me up? I left Liam for this?" I'm crying hysterically now. A different woman tries to comfort me but she has recently left one of the men and I can't stand the thought of her dirty hands on me. I've pulled my knees up to my chest and I'm hugging them as I sob nonsensical questions. The idea that we've come to this has broken me.

02/21/2013 Unsettling, Liam

This dream is unsettling because it was always difficult enough to walk around with this guy at work, because of how much he reminded me Liam. My reasoning mind kept me from thinking about it too much and after repeatedly working with him I had conditioned myself to ignore it. I had never dreamt anything like this with him as the focus and it made me very uncomfortable. For anyone who is hasn't been following along, Liam is a vivid DC who often appears in my dreams. He's tall, with copper or auburn hair and blue eyes. I'll leave the description at that.
I'm sitting on a dark blue couch pressed against a wall of dark tinted windows. It is night outside, it has a very...after-hours feel. Beside me is someone I used to work with who reminds me of Liam.
A pretty young woman sweeps out of the place, calling over her shoulder about meeting him later for coffee. He looks troubled, tense, unhappy. As I am about to ask him what's wrong, he speaks into the stillness.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to tell my wife." He says.
I smile sympathetically and pull my knees up onto the couch.
"I guess that depends on your intent. If you're going to coffee because you have feelings for her..."
He cuts me off with a humorless laugh. "You think this is about her?"
I freeze, unsure what I should do or say. Does that mean I'm the problem? Even in the dark I can tell he keeps glancing at me, deeply troubled. He averts his eyes, bowing his head, thinking how difficult this has become. He's trembling with the effort to...stay contained. To not cross a line. After a long moment, he reluctantly reaches over and touches my knee. This forcefully reminds me of Liam. I blush furiously, trying to stifle the rush of emotions that beset me. I sit very still. He starts to withdraw his hand when I pull it back by linking my pinky and ring finger with his, very aware of the weight of his hand and the pounding of my heart. He desperately wants this and doesn't at the same time.
I release his hand and rise to my knees beside him. I'm wearing a faded green tank top that I haven't seen since I was in high school. He presses his hand flat against my abdomen. I realize that this is the closest I will ever come to being intimate with Liam and decide to revel in the moment. He looks up at me. Faint light from outside illuminates the left side of his face and turns one eye into a shining pool. He looks so much like Liam that it hurts. He reaches up with his free hand and presses his palm to the left side of my neck. Again, I think of Liam. He draws me down and brushes his lips below my right ear. I lose track of everything.
Something forces me awake.

At times there is a game UI on the screen and sometimes there isn't. At first I am Lara Croft, I see a screen where you can name the character anything you want. I'm thinking "I could name her anything I want, and I pick Lara?" still, it makes sense, I think. That is who she is, changing her name will not alter that.
Then I am running through a department store. A monster kind of like...a rock genie, (I don't know, it's all blocky but it's blue its torso tapers down into a slender cord that attaches to a sidestack), it gets in my face and the UI pops up. I scroll through my weapons and realize I'm all out of ammo. So I jump forward and punch it until it dies.
I pass through the department store and I'm desperate for ammo. Jack appears, much like he did before. He's tall, wearing a black suit, thin black tie and a white shirt, his hair is completely black this time. He beckons to me,
"Hey! This way!"
I'm so relieved to see him, now I'm not alone. "You okay to pass through the Wastes? We're almost Home."
"Yes, but Jack, I'm all out of ammo."
"I'll show you where you can get more."
The area is like a basement with a low roof, but it's covered in rock and dirt. I want to think of it as a cave, but it's too regular for that. Blue monsters dot the otherwise barren landscape. He turns to face them and instructs me on how to open a secret weapon/ammo cache in the wall while he guards my back. It all seems too easy, but I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Get as much as you can carry, there isn't another one of these for a while."
I see us from overhead, tiny 2D pixelated versions of ourselves. I'm no longer Lara Croft but Annie from Covert Affairs, wearing a floor length black strapless dress with a slit almost up to the hip.

I'm in the department store again. I'm myself, my dad walks with me to where the rock genie was.
"Aaawww...you killed the guardian?" he says.
"What? It was in my way."
"I really wanted a beard though..." he whines.
"I don't know what you're crying about, the beards are still here." I gesture to the sidestack and take a moment to think about how stupid all the beards look. They're not even hair, they're pieces of cloth folded into small oval shapes in plastic. He walks away without taking one. I shrug and make my way around the store.
My sister is there with her son, except he isn't as old, he's only three here. And he's making a mess. I discretely try to pick up after him. I realize I'm embarrassed, not because he's making a mess, but because people watching will just think he's being unruly. They don't understand that he's autistic and isn't comfortable here. I'm worried they'll think badly of him. (He really is autistic, by the way.)
After a moment I decide to leave the mess.

Then I'm at work, standing at the appliance desk. Jack is waiting for me, sitting the wrong way in a chair. He smiles.
"Jack!" I think, delighted he has followed me here. Now I am Annie again, I try to flirt with him without being outrageous about it. I can't seem to find a balance. We banter back and forth, but I don't remember any of it. I say something clever (which of course, I don't remember), and think about how I want to threaten to kiss him. I don't say it, but after a moment I take his face in both my hands and lean down to do it anyway.
Except that while I can feel his face between my hands, he disappears when I get close. I pull back, frowning. He gives me an apologetic look.
From a few feet away David Boreanaz rubs the back of his neck in a gesture of mild discomfort and chagrin at our situation. He's dressed the same as Jack.

Some other things happened, but I don't remember them.
Oh yeah, I have no idea how it relates to that, but i see a guy's face and he mumbles something at me.
"What?" I ask.
"I'M TERRIFIED OF SQUIRRELS!" He yells, startling me and DC.
I frown at him. The other DC leans over, "...is he serious?"
Then I see a mental picture of why he's terrified. Apparently he thinks they're ravenous and blood thirsty and if he opens the closet all the squirrels will fly out and tear him to bits. I think he's being stupid.

Non-lucid
Lucid
I'm traveling with a woman, her eight year old son and a research intern who also happens to be our translator. We're going into a third world country collecting stories on demon possession. When we arrive we don't believe any of it. It all feels like...we're just tourists instead of researchers.
Our translator/intern has gone ahead of us. We are both Caucasian women, he looks a little middle eastern. The house we approach is adobe style, all stark white stone. As we mount the stairs we see the women of the house gesturing to something on the floor. I can see a vague red mark, they have covered it in sand. They say that after their daughter read the inscription she began to act strangely. They warn us not to look at it too closely. The intern crouches next to the mark. An unnatural wind violently sweeps the sand away and up into his eyes. Startled and hurt, he bends over the mark, and has no choice but to look at it.
He covers his eyes and stands up, assuring us he is alright.

There's a lapse.
When I come to, the house is dark. The intern has stolen the boy and has tortured his mother into madness. My vision is grainy, black and white. I have some trouble moving, but the choice is mine. Dream story-line says that I stay where I am until he comes to threaten me. I'm laying on the floor a few paces from my friend. The intern slithers up next to her and hisses something into her ear. She gives a whimpering little scream and, satisfied, he crawls away.
I claw my way to my friend's side and huddle next to her. Lucidity saves me from being truly frightened. I'm on the edge of a screaming madness, I try to comfort the woman by taking her hand, when my fingers curl around hers, her head lolls toward mine and I only just keep myself from recoiling violently. Her head is...all, wide open mouth with tiny round eyes. The image scares the hell out of me. She keeps making noises somewhere between sobbing, laughing, and screaming. I remind myself it's just a dream, over and over. This litany is the only thing that keeps me from going over the edge. I tighten my grip on her hand and whisper to her until her visage becomes somewhat more normal.

There's a lapse and I've risen to another layer of sleep that is slightly less terrifying. I am crouched with my friend underneath the porch. We can see a small, hairless, emaciated child looking at us from a few feet away. I urge her to move more quickly. It follows us.
"Shit, the creepy child is following us..." I mutter.

I rise to another layer of sleep that is more confusing than scary. It turns out that everything that just happened to me is a play put on by a boy who looks remarkably like a brown haired version of Chucky from the Rugrats (o.O Holy crap I haven't thought of that cartoon in a long time), I see his picture on the wall.
I'm standing on a darkened stage, there's a bright red curtain and a spotlight trained on the center. I'm so glad it isn't real.

Fragment 1: Shark
There's a vault with a circular door. In the floor of the vault is a round platform with 3 steps descending. The guards show me a shark strapped to its surface. They stand on either side of the creature and thrust their swords down into slots to activate the platform and lower it. Below is a bedroom. It has a twin sized bed with a brown and spring green comforter.
The next time I see the platform, there is nothing on it. The strap is broken and the room below is empty.
Where did the shark go?

Fragment 2: Sam and Dean
There's a desert encampment, all rough wooden buildings, canvas and chain link. Dean has an elite group of soldiers who, just like himself, have angel rune tattoos all over their bodies.
Sam was not Blessed with Heaven's Mark and in a fit of self mockery, he covered his body in demon runes.
He is sitting with his back to a length of chain link fence. No one walks within ten feet of him. He is the cursed brother. He looks unnaturally pale, more heavily muscled, and the runes stand out like burns against his white skin. He glowers at all the people avoiding him.
A group of soldiers run by and shouts ring out from near the Demon Portal at the heart of the encampment.
Sam leaps to his feet and fights his way through the crowd, shoving people aside, snarling at anyone who gets in his way and gnashing his teeth which have (strangely) become pointed.
He rushes to Dean's side and proximity to the gateway has had adverse affects on his tattoos. What before had not benefited him, like the tattoos of the Blessed, as he gets closer to Dean he is overcome with a vast and ravenous hunger.
He needs to consume the angelic aether given to Dean by God. Sam bares his teeth, trying desperately to consume and to deny the urge at the same time. Dean gives off a faint golden glow. Sam breathes in deeply...

Fragment 3:
I awake, when I fall back asleep I'm telling someone about the Sam and Dean dream I just had, laying out all the details. Seeing it again in flashes. Then I'm standing in line in what used to be my sister's room in the house in MA. They have gathered us, to interrogate us. I walk with someone at my side. Where my sister's bed used to be there is a table and a soldier behind it. He nudges a box in my direction. Inside are coins of all shapes and sizes.
I sort through them until I find two octagonal coins with a hawk on one side and a face on the other. We are supposed to pick objects that remind us of our past lives. I snap them onto the table top.
"Those, I think." I say.
The soldier nods at me and then gestures me to the other line going into what used to be the closet. I hope they don't find what they're looking for, at least not in me. How would I even know what I had done wrong?