Amurehna

I hardly remember. I know at one point I woke myself up laughing because a dog had a sign on its back, it said "Parental Dog" on it in green lettering, I read it as "Penis Dog" and started cracking up. My subconscious is so easily amused. *rolls her eyes* I dropped easily back into the dream and had to explain to the dc why I thought 'penis dog' was funny.

There was also something about a heavily burdened dun horse in a parking garage. It looked vaguely cartoony and in a perpetual state of consternation. The concrete was impossibly slick and slightly slanted. Every time I tried to approach the horse I slid around like a crazy person before maneuvering myself back to the railing.

I was traveling? Or talking to someone? I don't know.

This dream had a storyline but I can't remember what connects all the pieces.

1: Winter Already
An imp-like little man, that had animal features. He wore a floppy cream colored hat and a blue shirt. He hid between the worlds so that he would have more time to figure out how to deal with his enemies. I see him by a pond at night. The water is deep blue around the edges, with spots of lights scattered at the bottom, shining blue and green. The trees line the water, skinny and tall, weaving together like a net.
He skips by the water, telling me that the sky here doesn't know the passage of time, so that you could spend many dawns not knowing a dawn had passed. Suddenly it's cold enough to see his breath on the air. He moves over to a smooth bone white bridge that curves over the pond. The bridge is like a living thing, when the water becomes cold, it draws back slowly in shock, then begins to slowly reach across the surface.
The little man coaxes it forward until it tentatively touches its tip to the pond's edge, sending find ripples through the freezing water.
"It shouldn't be this cold, is it winter already?"
Troubled, he leaves the water's edge. There's a tree there, the roots divided to either side of an earthy, root wall. There's an impression of a door. It opens and out steps a bent old man,kind of like this guy. Except his robes are gray and drag on the floor. He's more bent than actually short. The little imp-man is surprised to see him. He exclaims that everyone thought he had been lost to the Between.
"I just stayed away until the time was right..."

2: Outcast
There's a dark haired woman standing on a docked ship. It's pulled up length wise along the dock, she's waiting for someone. She's ousted royalty, someone no longer considered equal to the nobility. She's wearing a dark purple floor length gown. But it had glints of gold filigree hidden in the folds of the gown. Her luggage match her dress, one of the cases is huge and stands taller and wider than she is.
"Wow, that is a big suitcase." I think, and then wonder what else she would carry her wardrobe in.

3: Great Dane
A white and black Great Dane is actually a person in animal form. He is intent on killing the Heir. The wizards keep asking him if that is wise, and that he should consider another course. He does not listen.

4: Threads of Song
I'm in a room with a dark wood floor and yellow walls. I want to show someone that I am creative, by taking parts of different songs and making something new. There's a computer program displayed on the wall for separating tracks. I select the track I want, "Hate to See Your Heart Break" by Paramore. I reach up to the screen and the different vocals actually become threads on a flat piece of plastic. I try to unwind them, first white, then yellow, then aqua. The threads are longer than I expected and become tangled. I'm trying to separate them...

5: Tigers
In the same dark wood floor room with yellow walls. They are telling me I have to distract the tiger, to mate with him if necessary, otherwise they will never be able to leave the room. I ask them if they know how dangerous tigers are. They just gesture me forward.
I become a tiger. The male tiger across from me looks agitated, flicking his tail. He's bright orange, I can hardly see any black in his coat at all.
I keep flickering between tiger and girl, and it's confusing both of us. I'm afraid of his claws, and know that he could easily break me. I stalk forward and bat at one of his forepaws. He bares his teeth, ears back. I feel the swipe of his paw close to my arm.

I'm not sure if I can properly express just how much I hate body-snatcher dreams. As disturbing as the cannibal dream was, I'd gladly watch that again if it meant I didn't have another one of these.
Possession. Body-snatchers. People who look like my loved ones but no longer act like them, knowing that everything that made them who they are is GONE. They are dead and still walking around. (Oddly, zombies don't really bother me. There's a fine distinction there.)

I'm in my childhood home in Massachusetts. My father and brother are there with me and after a time, so is Liam. The house is dark, all the lights are off. The three men are sleeping in the living room.
(I went a little crazy there for a minute and built you a layout)
I'm dropped into the middle of an action, walking down the hallway from my room. The house feels wrong, but I can't figure out why. We came home in the middle of the night. I pass the kitchen door and catch a glimpse of something on the floor. I take a step back, feeling tense and on the edge of fear. Yellow and green balloons litter the floor. I don't like the look of them.
Suddenly one of them moves, and I realize there are things inside them. A slimy, translucent thing. Kind of like a gooey slug. I start yelling for the men to wake up, that we have to get out of here before the things finish becoming. Blearily they rise, I beckon them to me.
"Quickly, get your things. We need to leave."
"I don't understand the problem." My brother says.
I stab a finger toward the creepy balloons. "You're telling me that doesn't bother you at all."
Fear steals over their faces. Liam seems pretty placid, but he's mostly a shadow right now. I don't see his face so much as I know he's there. He's taller than my brother and father by a good half foot.
We rush to the other end of the house, everyone splits off and goes into various rooms. Gathering clothing and other necessities. I duck into my room, the only one that's lit, and see a slug-creature on the wall above the nightstand. It has a yellow-green center, surrounded by clear membrane. I find my dad and tell him that they've finished becoming. We rush out into the hallway, the four of us together, but I've forgotten something so we go into my room first. The slug is gone. I feel a spike of panic. I know that when it takes a person, they will cease to be who they are and be in control of the slug.
I step back into the hallway, relieved, "Good, it didn't get any of you." Liam stands mid-hall. He has his head cocked to the side, standing very still, his back to me.
"You're wrong." He says quietly. The words are like a slap.
"What? NO!" I reach out to him and my fingers brush his elbow, which has creepy slug goo on it. "No, no, no! This isn't happening." I retreat a few steps.
"I'll....fight as long as I can. Go. While I can...hold it off." His voice sounds distant, watery.

I force myself awake and roll over. When I fall back asleep, I dream about Dream Views. NewArtemis has posted a dream. It's just a picture, a claymation still. There's a tree, there is a large hole in the middle right before the crown. Wooden boards make a crude ladder up to the hole, one branch juts out to the left. On the jutting branch is a boy. Climbing up the ladder are a boy and a girl. The climbing boy has dropped one arm and is facing the 'camera', his mouth is open in a horrible grimacing smile, lined with sharp teeth. I scroll down and Artemis posts "My pack is dead."
I don't understand, I scroll back up and the image flashes. First there is an orange and white cat crouched in the hole in the tree. When it flickers the cat first stands on its hind legs, and in the next it disappears.
"See, he's gone."
(O.o wtf...)

I drift into a deeper sleep and I'm sitting next to a dog. She even looks a little like my dog, with less white in her coat. My sister adopted her and I hear my sister say what a good find she is. That when they retired her from the Fire Department, everyone clamored to adopt. Just like when _______ was retired. I heard a name, I don't remember it. He was a bright red, looked a little like a blood hound. I see his collar drop off to signify that he is retired.
I pet her a little, and then test her patience. I'm curious if she's as well-behaved as Caspian. She doesn't look pleased when I put my hands on her face, but she only bares her teeth a little and then dips her head away.

I'm sitting on a couch telling people on the forum about my creepy slug dream. I only really remember the man. Slim, lean muscle, short wavy dark hair and black/brown eyes. He's wearing a grey tank top. He's sitting next to a girl. He calls behind me, to my boyfriend who is laying on the couch under some blankets.
"Does any of this bother you?"
My boyfriend throws a hand out from under the blankets in a dismissive wave. "Just a dream."

Attached Thumbnails

 

I was going to give you some back story on Saja and Liam, but it seemed incredibly stupid when I typed it out. I often become Saja and almost every time I have a lucid dream I go looking for Liam.
Lucid
Non-Lucid
False Awakening

The layout of my house is huge. It also seems to share something of the more important houses I have lived

in. It is also, in part, Lowe's. I'm making my way down a wide hallway with cream-yellow walls and dark walnut trim and flooring. This part looks a little like my house in MA. I take a right at the end of the hall, the next one has a heavy dark walnut door with little lanterns on either side. I open the door and outside is the Lowe's parking lot. There are racks of flowers on either side, and then standing placidly between them is a team of horses hitched to a small wagon. It's a string of six. Well, I guess they're ponies. They are all paints, and only one of them is black and white, with black flecks all across his coat. I look at that one fondly. All the others are variations of chestnut and white.

I decide I want to ride one. I almost choose the last one in the train but he's tethered at the back of the others,

so I pass him by and walk to the less pretty first horse. This one is mostly chestnut and has very little white aside from a diamond marking and some white in his mane. The top of their heads are even with mine, making them fairly small.
I'm pleased by how small they are because I'm short, and I can climb onto his back without standing on something. I straddle the pony and grip his mane. He starts walking forward. The dream feels more vivid here, like before I was just on the edge of lucidity and now I've found it. I start experimenting with control, using my mind to change his path since I don't have any kind of reins. The parking lot is cold, there's some snow on the ground, and few cars. I lead the horse back toward the door and slide to the ground. I pat his neck. Something startles me, and I can't actually remember what. I run inside and slam the door, then take off down the hallway. Hoping that they didn't see me, and that if they did I'll be too far into the house for them to know where I've gone.

There's a lapse, I'm in the same building but this time it looks more like Lowe's. The aisle is also open

to the outdoors. A co-worker is talking to me. I stare at the wall behind him trying to figure out what's different about it. What's there that shouldn't be?

"....Did they put a bathroom here?" I ask, a little incredulous. This is one of my aisles after all.

"Why yes, it looks like they did." He says. I stare at the blue wall, which is just like the stalls in the bathroom. I can see the

seams now.

"There's no handle on the door, must not be finished."

Somehow I know this is the Women's stall, and there's a Men's room a couple aisles over. My co-worker wanders off outside and again I feel like I'm on the edge of lucidity, then pushing into it. It's a beautiful day out, and suddenly I wonder what the exterior of the building looks like. I run outside, feeling unnaturally fast. This section is actually a second floor, set higher than the main part of the building. The concrete is new and yellow-white. I run along, rushing past my co-worker who says something I can't remember. I fling the door open and run inside...

Another lapse and I'm in a hospital-like section. I'm here for tests? I think? I need to go to the bathroom

first. I walk down a long, wide hallway. It feels deserted. At the end is a bathroom. I can't figure out what's weird about it, despite the fact that there aren't stalls and there are just chairs by the sink. At first I think the chairs are toilets, until I sit down on one and realize it is, in fact, a chair. The cushion is yellow, wider at the front lip and more narrow by the back of the chair. I frown at it, I really need to go.
The room is kind of C or [ shaped. I go further inside, it's all white-pink tile with pale pink stalls. Finally!
The bottom of the stall panels are tall enough for me to duck under. I go into the first stall and am disgusted to see flecks of urine on the seat. I hear someone else come into the bathroom, and I'm suddenly embarrassed. Even as I'm doing it I wonder why. I duck under the wall and go into the next stall. And then into the next one. Which...puts me in a kind of mail room. It's dimly lit and there are bags as tall as my hips full of mail, with people rushing in and out. An old man with white hair is directing them.

"Trying to find the bathroom?" he asks.

"Yeah.."

Behind him I notice the wall is the side of a stall. He gestures to it. I smile and duck underneath. It puts me on the far side of a

string of stalls. When I turn the corner I'm walking with a tallish black girl, wearing a green t-shirt, her hair is pulled back into a fluffy bun. I feel a moment of vertigo. I hear myself say that I'm Saja and that 'd been looking for her everywhere. What had I just been doing? Something odd happens here, my vision doubles and I'm standing a couple feet from the black girl and a slightly taller willowy woman with long brown hair. I've separated from the woman, like I'd just been inside her. I can see the back of my head, the wavy black hair. I've become Saja.

"Hey!" I call after them. The girl in the green didn't hear me, but the other woman tenses and when I call

after her again she glances at me, whip quick. Then pretends I don't exist.

"Hey, I KNOW you!" I say. She looks extremely uncomfortable and leaves as quickly as she can without breaking into a run.

The girl in the green looks startled, and suddenly I become real to her. The woman had been pretending to be me.

"Who are you? What just happened?"
"I am Saja."
"Do you know her?"

"Yeah..." I say something I can't remember. I look up at her. I'm little next to her, she's almost a head taller than me.

We walk out of the bathroom, next to it is a kind of study with a long table. It's dim and cozy, dark red walls, a banked fire, bookshelves lining the walls.
"

Can you use magic?" She asks me curiously.

I smile a little, walking over the threshold behind the girl. "I am magic."
There are people gathered around the table. A male dc sitting across from us is trying to influence the dream by telling them all 'my' story.

"How do you know anything about her? Your family is broken, disgraceful. Thieves and murderers, all. Why, your father could

come in here right now and murder us all--slit our throats where we sit." I can feel the others start to believe him, but what's the benefit of being lucid if I can't change anything.

"That sure would be a trick, wouldn't it? Considering he's dead." The man is staring hard at me, and it takes me a minute to

realize that I'm lying. "I killed him myself, murdered the bastard in his sleep."
Another moment of vertigo, the man is smirking at me, like he wanted me to say all that. "No wait." I amend. "That isn't my story at all. You want to hear my story? All of it?" He rolls his eyes and leaves the table. The green t-shirt girl and a few others sit down. I remain standing.

"Have you ever heard of the Serpent?"

The all give me blank looks.

"Alright then, I'll tell you about It." I try to decide where to start. I try to tell them about Ru-em, the province I'm from in

the Midlands, and how our culture developed, how we learned to plant and harvest. Then I shake my head, trying to clear it. That's not where I want to start. "There is a creature, on the edge of existence. It moves from world to world, consuming all in its path." Someone rolls their eyes at me, bored. The girl in the green t-shirt is rapt.

"It's massive, as big as the sky." I can see it, the purple-black scar against a clear blue sky. How the world shook. "Ancient.

It crashed through our reality and into the earth, and down into the Spirit of our world. Which it would eat until nothing remained."
I move around the table, to a smaller one in the corner. The girl and a couple others follow me. I sit down and they take the seats across the table. There's a small spiral notebook.

"It wasn't really serpent-like." I pick up a pen and begin to draw. "More...like a--" I think a slug, but decide not to say that out

loud. "Like a whale and a manta-ray and--"

"And a worm?"
"Kind of like that, yes."

She stares down at my small drawing, the ridges by the tail fin. "It looks scary."

"It is." I pause, thinking that no one wants that horror to visit their door. I look down at the paper and decide I want to write

something down. I open a pen and write "Saja is magic."
It's clearly legible, actual words. The ink is a little thin, but I can't have everything.
I tug at the cap of a marker and worry for a second that this effort is going to wake me up. The dream wavers as I pull off the cap and settles again when I set marker tip to paper.
"Liam is alive." Instead of black, the words come out pale translucent green. The tip has split so the letters, while I know what they are, blur together.
I try to write it again, but the tip is still messed up. I stare at the notebook and smile. What am I doing here, playing these little games? I could be off looking for Liam. I leave the table and then the room, when I reach the hall I start to call out for him.

"Liam! Liiiiiaaaam? Are you here?" I call out several variations and my eyes are drawn to a window. For some reason the blinds

are on the outside. 1" aluminum blinds. I see blue eyes and then a smile through the slats. My heart pounds with excitement. It's never been so easy to find him! The man opens the window and I rush to meet him. I pull up short as he's trying to dip inside. It's not Liam. Not even close.
He's scrawny, medium-height, with gray-brown hair and sharp blue eyes. His teeth are crooked and yellow, he's dressed all in black. Skull-cap, jacket, jeans. All black. I frown at him.

"Who are you? Where's Liam?"
"What d'ya mean 'where's Liam', Liam's dead."
Panic grips me for a second but I refuse to believe him. "You're lying, he can't be dead. I would know."
"Wooould you?" He has an accent, faintly Scottish. "From all the way over here?"
"I would."
"I don't know what to tell you, swee-heart. He's definitely dead. Been dead a long time."
"Stop saying that!" I yell, twisting my hand into a fist in his jacket. "He isn't dead!"
"Suit yerself. Don't say I didn't warn ye." He laughs at me, I hate how amused he is at my expense.

I'm in my bed. I can hear talking in the other room, thinking my boyfriend is watching something on his computer. I get up, decide to ask him if he wants something to eat. The voices get a little louder and I distinctly remember hearing them on the episode of Revenge I watched before laying down. I approach his door, which is cracked open. I wonder if he's watching Revenge, something he never watches. I go inside. His bed doesn't look right, it's all gold and red. There's a woman wearing blue striped shorts and a white tank top curled up along his legs near the foot of the bed.
What? I frown at the form huddled under the blankets. He turns restlessly and it's not my boyfriend at all.

"God damn it, I'm still dreaming." I say, surprised. The man blinks awake and startles into a sitting position.
"What are you doing in here?"

Before he can even finish the sentence I glance to the wall behind me. It has a wide window, I recognize it as one of the rooms from the building. I grin and run to it, open it and shove the screen out. I throw myself out and land in the hallway down below.

I land at the foot of a concrete staircase. At the top is a door with a sign above it saying who is broadcasting inside and has radio station numbers.
I can hear them through a speaker by the door. "Just like Jack and Ron except, me, obviously like Jack, doesn't have a problem clearing the saliva from my throat." It makes his voice sound less thick. A man comes outside and notices me listening, he tips his hat to me but my eyes kind of slide around him. He's tall, wearing a black ball cap a dark green t-shirt and black knee length shorts.
A tv screen on the wall at the top of the stairs flickers to life. It features a short blonde woman who looks vaguely like Amanda Bynes, wearing a bring pink uniform and hat, standing under a spotlight in a black room. She is trying to act out their radio show and is getting mixed reactions.
I frown, what am I doing? I was looking for Liam. I find I'm standing in front of the tv, I head back down the stairs. The hall there ends in a glass door with a metal bar across the middle. I push it open and rush outside, calling for him. The dream feels brittle, like it's about to fall apart. The walls are...papery. Thin. A man on a motorcycle rushes past me and stops. He flips up the visor and for a second he looks exactly like Liam. I rush to him and him to me. He pulls of the helmet. The closer he gets the less he looks like Liam. It takes me a second to realize it though.

"Are you him?" I ask.

He looks puzzled. My heart sinks a little when I realize he's a stranger. "No, you're not, are you."
He smiles apologetically.
Wouldn't he be here if he were alive? Maybe he really is dead. The man from earlier moves up beside me.

"I told ya."
"Stop it." I snap.
"Tried to warn ya." He says. The buildings to either side of me are beginning to break apart, like sand in the wind.

I realize I am close to waking and I try to focus to hold it together a little longer.I ignore him. Even from here I can see muddy black waves crash through a line of structures, tearing them to shreds and beginning to flood the parking lot from 3 sides. I stand and observe.

"What do you think will happen if I let it have me?" I ask, I feel a little hopeless and wrung out. What's the point of anything if

Liam is dead?

"Likely you'll die."

I stare at the water. It's consuming the building closest to me.

"Here, step on that." The man shuffles a large thin piece of blue foam board at me. "Fat lot of good it'll do you."

He then escapes back the way we came. The water lifts the foam board, it starts to float away under a black truck. I step onto the corner, and it rises with the water. Water takes the path behind me, it's too late to run now. The board won't last me long, there's no way it can stand up to the raging water. Cool air blows the hair back from my face. The board is swept from under me and I remain in the air. I flap my arms like a bird and rise above the water, deciding I'm not quite ready to die. People beside the front of the Lowe's/Hospital/House are pointing up at me in awe. The water is receding, leaking away from the parking lot. I see a small group beside what looks like a...firetruck shaped like a four wheeler. I direct myself toward it, the police officer there is tall and fair skinned. He has bright blue eyes and I can see a little red under his hat. He holds his hand out to receive me as I alight on the top of the ladder extending from the top of the four wheeler. He helps me down. The top of my head barely reaches his shoulder. He looks strikingly like Liam but I know it isn't him, this man is only an echo. He knows exactly who I am though.

"You look just like him, you know."

He takes it as a compliment and smiles a little. "Thank you."
The police officer/Liam Echo turns away from me and speaks to the small group of survivors.

"Let's head inside where they are waiting to treat any injuries." He touches the brim of his hat when he glances at me, and then

his eyes rest on a legless woman in a wheel-chair with an IV drip. He says it's a miracle she survived. Given her health problems, the quality of her existence, I wonder if it might not be kinder if she had died. I'm not mean enough to say it though. He leads them inside, there's an emergency room bay just over the threshold.
Beside the door is a table. I walk to it. I notice there's an egg sitting in the middle of it. I pick it up and it slips from my hand, cracking against the table. It makes a noise like breaking, like it's boiled, but when I shake it I can hear the yolk. I test it between my hands and cracks spider out from the palms of my hands.
Now I'm curious. I throw it at the ground and the shell breaks away, but the yolk remains egg-shaped. Tough but still obviously a liquid. I begin to laugh, the revelation hitting me like a stone. I'm extremely delighted.
Of course, this is the message my subconscious wanted to send. Though the egg looked fragile, it could never actually have been broken.
I pick up the yolk, thinking to show the police officer. He seemed like he would enjoy a neat epiphany like this.

"Hey! Check this out!" He turns to face me and I throw the yolk. He isn't expecting it so he misses entirely and it breaks in

the most awkward spot. The crotch of his pants.

"Oh...I am so sorry! I just....wanted...to show you the egg!" I start laughing again, he looks a little amused and bewildered

and embarrassed. I leave, my last view of him is him trying to brush away the yolk. I decide it's time to wake up.

I've visited this place before. It's a vast water park, it is all you can see in any direction for miles, and is so large that there are hotel rooms on every level. I'm following another girl around the park, we reach the water slide that goes down to the next level. I think of how nice the cool water will feel. She's standing on a platform next to the slide, there's a swing bar that you can use to give yourself more speed going down. She gestures for me to follow and smiles.
"Wait...I have to go to the bathroom." I turn to the wall behind me and there's a convenient bathroom nestled in the corner. It's on a swinging door, there's grids of 1 inch tile in random patterns on the inside hall. There's a really confusing twist. I thought I'd gone into the women's bathroom but straight ahead I see a door with a wooden sign that says Men's Room. I back track and see a hall branching off to the left with a sign that just says "YOU" on it.
"Me." I agree, and take the hall, and the door at the end. I can't decide if the room I find there is a bathroom or a hotel room. There's a bed, but on the left-hand wall the carpet meets straight with white tile. On the tile is the strangest toilet I have ever seen. I can't even figure out how I'm supposed to use it. The bowl is flush with the floor, and the handle is also on the floor ten paces in front of it.
My friend comes into the room and decides that we're here to rest. It seems that this is a hotel room after all.
"There's someone bringing our bags, we can head back out in the morning."
I really need to use the bathroom, but I don't want to while she's lookin' at me. That's if I can figure out how to use the toilet. I turn around and examine the contraption again. With the lights on it looks dirty. There's a crusted mess of what I will kindly call mud on the back of the seat, and cobwebs are strung all over it. Maybe I don't want to use it after all.

I remember another part where we were picking up our bags. A long dim hallway, an orange-pink rolling suitcase. A brown toiletry bag. Hmm. Now that I think about it the hotel parts were familiar too. I guess I have a 'hotel' set in my brain to go along with the amusement and water parks I've visited.

I'm standing outside my childhood home in Massachusetts, the front lawn isn't as long. It's a bright lush green. The trees that stand between my house and the neighbor's are impossibly tall, like a wall instead of woods. A girl meets me outside, we talk a little bit.
"Strange things happen around here sometimes, though." She says.
"What do you mean? Seemed ordinary to me."
She laughs at me, "You really don't remember?"
"What?"
She tells me that when I was sixteen I disappeared for four days without warning and then reappeared unexpectedly with no memory that I had gone, that for the four days I was missing strange things happened, centered around a carved wooden chest. Somehow the idea that I can't even remember any of the events surrounding that deeply disconcerts me.
"We found it again you know. It came back." She makes the chest sound like a living thing.
"Can I see it?"
She leads me into the house across the street. It's dark inside, but I can hear people moving around. In the dining room that connects the kitchen and the living room is the chest. I come around the corner, following the girl. She shines a flashlight onto the floor near the chest, drawing my focus to the light. I give her instructions to change where the beam falls. She is being dense about it, finally it shines near the foot of the chest.
I'm actually surprised by how vivid it looks, how real. It stand out from the dream like a real photograph next to an animated one. Live against the darkness. I start to feel a kind of buzzing, it's low and frightening and sets my teeth on edge. The box stands open. It is golden mahogany. The latch is broken. The lid stands open a few inches. There is a double-chevron pattern repeated 8 times, 4 each on either side of the square center emblem that I can't remember. I really don't want to look at it. The girl grins at me in the dark.
"Do you want to see what's inside?" She takes out a stack of chips. They look like dull dented metal and bone, with carvings on the front. "We can play the same games you played before."
I shake my head and back away. I hear the clack of the chips as she sets them on the floor, one by one. It jars me awake. I'm having a faint case of sleep paralysis. I feel heavy and keep trying to doze off. I move my head every time I start to drift because I can feel myself returning to that room with the chest. I finally manage to turn over instead of just move my head, and when I fall back asleep I'm sitting in a folding chair in a wide alley. The chairs are in two groups with an aisle down the middle. Seven rows of five on each side of the aisle.
Christina Aguilera dances into the alley with her body guards, wearing a black fedora, a white halter top with black suspenders with black shorts, fishnets and tall spike-heel black boots. The music starts and she dances quick impressive steps, I can tell she's lip syncing but it doesn't bother me, it seems she would have to choose between singing and dancing and this number is all about the dance. It becomes more clear she's lip syncing when the recording keeps going and she skips moving her mouth on a part.
An idiot across the aisle looks surprised and says "I THINK SHE'S LIP SYNCING!"
I roll my eyes. Someone else mentions she looks good for being 40...o.O

I had a work dream that I couldn't get into the break room. In the dream it was underground, you had to go down a couple flights of stairs and then a ramp to get to it. At the door is a tall shiny water pump. I know that to open the door you have to level the pump a certain way. I know you have to do something else but I can't remember what it is. I stand there stupidly, watching as another employee opens the door and sprays one of our PSAs in the face, he's on his way out. I jog forward and ask them to hold the door, they do. I go inside, out of the corner of my eye my HR is making fun of me for not being able to get in.

There's a wide, grassy courtyard. They are filing us out from one building into another. I am a man, leaning on another man. There's something wrong with both of us. The extreme opposites of a case. An orderly holds up a curved piece of metal with padded ends, meant to be pressed to my temple. The orderly is monitoring the machine so he doesn't see that my friend likes the treatment. His face twists into an intense mask of joy and amusement. I know he's on his way to being possessed, but I have my own problems. I'm having trouble moving. I know that the treatment will knock me out, even though it's not supposed to. It's supposed to prove that we have passed through the haunted building without picking up any passengers. I lean against my friend and brace myself. When the orderly puts the device to my head I pass out.
"What's wrong with -him-?"

I'm myself again. Someone suggests I go to see the nurse. I do, I wait in the office. It's comfortable, dark red walls. A place to lay down. My friend says he'll go get the nurse. While he's gone the HR manager comes and sits down across from me.
"Sorry, the nurse is out for the day. You can tell me what's wrong though."
"Well...I've been having trouble doing things that used to be easy."
I glance at my friend. He urges me to continue.
"I couldn't remember how to get into the break room and I forgot how to use a---"
She starts laughing at me. "I'm sorry, I was there when you couldn't get in. It was really funny."
I frown, "it isn't funny, you don't understand I--"
"You're right, of course it isn't funny." But she's still laughing at me.

The room feels wide and open. Ahead of me is a stone tunnel. From where I'm standing I can't discern any details. As I focus my eyes, it becomes more detailed. I start to describe it to myself and it becomes. I'm delighted, thinking how it's like drawing, I see it in pencil shadings first, before it becomes real, and the image flows more smoothly than any drawing I have ever created.
When it is finished the stone is a mossy deep brown, wet with rain. I can't figure out where I've seen it before, but it feels so familiar. There are stairs leading up to a platform that sits to the right side of the tunnel. I start looking for something there but I no longer recall what it is.

The Poisoning of Azela Grey
I had a dream at midday, telling the tale of Azela Grey. I'm watching a news report, showing footage from a live Council meeting. She had fought for her spot as a Speaker, and a woman, which was something spectacular in its own right. She's tall, with dark shoulder-length hair. She's wearing a light gray business suit with a white shirt under the jacket. The council meeting is built like an amphitheater. A platform at the center where the primary 5 sit, and then 4 tiers of gently curving wood tables with seats where the rest of the Council sits. Azela sits in the last ring, of the least importance. The meeting is about to commence, she takes a sip. My awareness pulls back, showing a pixelated tv screen, a red band at the bottom.
"The Poisoning of Azela Grey"

I'm driving down a highway. The road is impossibly fast and crowded. A woman on a tiny black motorcycle that has a regular sized cream/tan motorcycle folded up above the back wheel speeds past me. I think how awesome that is and wonder where I can get one. She looks like this actress http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1490300/. A moving truck doesn't see her and moves lanes. I'm worried about her, so instead of getting hit, one of her wheels breaks off and she skids to a stop on the shoulder under an overpass. I go over to see if she needs help. Now she looks different, a tall brunette with wavy hair and olive skin. I separate from my character and I see myself from behind. I'm tiny next to her, the top of my head only just reaches past her shoulder.
I have shoulder length black hair. I'm wearing a white denim jacket and a brown dress with boots. Even with short hair I recognize her as Saja, I become her often. It seems perfect that she would stop to help someone, she's always thinking of others.
"Can I help you?" I ask her.
"Don't worry about it, this isn't your problem." She glances at me and does a subtle double-take. I know she thinks I'm attractive. I stand there patiently. She rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. "Fine, I guess I could use some help."
"Perfect! I'll help you get the cycle into my van."


It skips to a grey, dim-lit room. On one end is a photographer. On the other is a two foot high, smooth white statue shaped like some kind of bird. The idea is that this is therapy, and in expressing my depression...on top of the bird, while someone takes pictures, I'll be able to feel better (riiiight...). I am Azela Grey, I no longer look like Saja. I'm taller, my hair isn't black but still dark brown, wavy and is a little longer. I'm wearing a dark brown dress with tiny white flowers, knee length boots and a netted brown jacket thing. The statue looks a little like a duck now. My photographer therapist urges me to begin.
The stress of the campaign has taken its toll. There are dark circles under my eyes and I look like I haven't smiled in a long time. My awareness pulls back and I'm watching myself pose on the duck. After a few flashes my friend from the highway comes to join me. She presses her body against my back and runs her hands down my sides. I smile. I know I shouldn't. I have a girlfriend. Plus, now there are pictures.
She has been trying to show me how to enjoy life again.

I'm walking down a cobbled street, it's dark with the recent rain. I duck into a bookstore. It's small, with 5 long tables. Tall bookshelves line the walls. There is only one book. It has a dark blue jacket with yellow on the front. Sometimes the yellow looks like flowers, sometimes like angelfish. Sometimes like stars. I can't make out the name either. Sometimes it looks like Seascape. Sometimes Starsea, sometimes Starscape. I open one of them and flip through it. I can't make sense of the text.
I think of how eroded our culture has become under the weight of the law. How this bookstore should have the freedom to sell more than one book. I suppose that's what my campaign is about, freedom. Now I have made a serious miss-step. There are the photos of myself and the woman. If they see those they could ban me from the council.
When I leave the bookstore my girlfriend is outside. She throws the pictures on the ground in front of me and leans forward, red with her effort not to yell.
"What are these? WHAT ARE THEY? After EVERYTHING we did to be together, to keep our relationship a secret you let some half-wit photographer take pictures of another woman groping you? These are all over the papers! AND there's mention of me! Why did you tell them about us and then take these pictures? This could ruin my career!"
She's a doctor, it's strange enough for a woman to be practicing medicine, now her license could be taken away because of my mistake. She storms off. I stare down at the pictures and gather them in my hands.
Behind me there are two steeply arched stone bridges that cross each other like an X. A man in a tux and top hat is narrating my story. He's telling a group of people who are singing and dancing under string-light decorations that it's sure I'll be banned, they might have listened to me on the council before this. They may have even passed the laws I suggested, but never now.
He talks of a time when people could love whoever they wanted.
Then he tells the part that hasn't happened yet, that as they are about to ban me, someone poisons my tea because of hatred for my sexual orientation, and the laws I wished to pass.


Huh. I've had dreams as men before, I've never had one where I was a lesbian. How interesting...

I'm warning you now, this is really disturbing. Actually I think I'll put the worst part in a spoiler link so no one will be scarred when they're ambling by my post.

I'm in a classroom, in high school. My boyfriend sits at the desk next to mine. One of the popular kids, a tall girl with a long blond ponytail is called up to give her presentation. She keeps looking at me while she's talking, which I think is odd because she has never really paid any attention to me. She's looking for some sort of affirmation but I'm the only one that matters. She's still trying to persuade the teacher that her idea is correct. To do so she drops to her knees and slides across the classroom floor, shrieking "LOOK! I'M SWIMMING LIKE A SAILBOAT!!!" As she says this she thrusts her hand out in front of herself, it somehow propels her forward. She reaches the teacher's desk, grinning like a beatific moron. He smiles at her, finally convinced.

I'm worried that he'll call on me next, only a few students will even be tested this way. He lets us take a break. The class starts to pull apart into groups.

The school has turned into a house. The students have both taken a dangerous drug and been dosed with a mind altering chemical. The people least effected only retreat to corners and spout nonsense. Others suffer to have their bodies distorted, or the mental barrier that would stop them from doing something terrible to themselves removed.
I wander through a giant auditorium, there are no seats, but there's a stage. A disturbing woman with long straight back hair, wearing a white t-shirt and nothing else is...poised by the stage. She has a cruel sort of beauty, a sharp face, a wicked smile. I don't like to look at her but I can't help it. She has a manic gleam to her eyes and her legs are twisted straight up behind her back. ((you know how you could twist a barbie-doll's legs up alongside her body? It looked kind of like that))

Spoiler for Gory Disturbing Stuff:

I pass through an open door hurriedly before she can intercept my path. A fat young man with shoulder-length curly brown hair is sitting on the floor beside the door. When I first see him he's obsessively eating his way through a bag of chips. There's a lapse, I feel hazy, and I pull myself up from where I'm laying on the floor. I look at the young man, I can't wrap my mind around what he's done to himself. He's issuing a bright, breathless laugh.
"I can't stand up." He says. I look at him more closely and horror grips me, I have a stark realization that I've never felt horrified before. He has somehow eaten through his entire middle, severing himself at the waist. But he's still alive. The drug has kept him from feeling any sort of pain, or even thinking that he shouldn't eat himself.
There's are bloody splotches around his waist, covering his hands, his mouth.
He laughs again but it sounds distracted, confused. His expression becomes briefly concerned.
"Why can't I stand up?" He tries to laugh about it. Then he sees his legs nearby, still twitching and starts to hyperventilate and tremble violently.
I try to scream but it comes out as a whisper. I don't remember what I said. "Help!" "I don't want to watch this!" "Oh god, what have you done?"
I trip over a woman laying on the floor. She's either passed out or dead, frightfully pale, purple-white hair, lilac dress. She's covered in the same bloody splotches, I can see some around her mouth. She was helping him eat through his flesh, and when that wasn't enough, she started on her own hand, consuming it from fingertip to elbow, whole.
My attention is drawn to the young man. He is caught between panicking and a wild, mad amusement. When he tries to lift himself off the ground with his meaty arms, I can see the tail end of his spine sticking out of the bloody mess that his mid-section. He lets out a keening noise and pants with disbelief, terror, horror. Then he starts to laugh again, reaching over and picking up his lower-section, shaking it out like a pair of pants.

I can't take anymore. I back out of the room, returning to the auditorium. I'm sitting on the stage, my boyfriend is standing next to a woman with black curly hair. She's wearing a flowing faded blue dress halter-dress. She has lovely tattoos across her back and shoulders, a gentle twisting of long-stemmed flowers, green and pink and purple. She looks familiar. I know I've seen her before. My boyfriend and the woman, Gale, approach. I'm not sure I like her, I have a reason to distrust her. By the time they reach me, I feel small, like a child. Now my boyfriend seems more like a father or brother, he links arms with the woman and smiles at me.
"Do you know what's going on?" I ask them.
"We should get out of here." Gale says. She has her arms hooked around my waist and mine are around her neck. She smiles warmly, reassuringly. I notice the disturbing woman with straight black hair glaring daggers at Gale. The woman knows that she can pass the madness with a touch. She walks over, on her hands, legs still pressed against her sides. She's moving too quickly. I want to warn Gale, suddenly our differences don't matter. She doesn't deserve madness, I can't stand the thought of her eating herself to death.
"Look o---"
The disturbing woman reaches out. Gale shifts subtly away. I worry that she didn't move in time, I'm denying the possibility that she has been taken from me too. Gale glares down at the woman, she slinks away.
"Wait here a moment? We'll be leaving soon." She steps away to talk with another man, my boyfriend stands with them. When I see her from far away I'm vastly relieved to see that she's wearing a sheer-white cropped jacket. Dream logic says that the disturbing woman can't have touched her skin if the jacket was in the way.
Gale comes back and picks me up. I want to tell her I like her tattoos. She smiles like she heard my unspoken compliment.
"Wait!" I say, trying to remembering something. "I forgot my..."
My boyfriend holds up my wallet. It fell out of my back pocket in the room with the young man.
"Oh thank you!" I say. He hands it to me. I want to tell him I love him.

((So, the most disturbing part is that even though I had no part in the eating, all day yesterday and today my jaw muscles have been sore. >.<))

There's a man sitting in a 60's convertible, top down, arm around his new wife, Ria. His first wife who he had loved deeply was named Kari. A woman who has always been in love with him scowls at Ria, she wants to make him look bad on radio. Transmissions have been few and far between, such that news of even highly public figures like Dan and Kari is scarce. Even though Kari died many months ago, many sectors are only just now hearing of it. It doesn't help matters that Ellen, the woman who has always loved him, is a reporter and lumped the two news pieces together to make it sound like Dan remarried weeks after his first wife died. I'm worried for him.
He doesn't seem concerned though, he knows how it will look and doesn't care. He smiles at his new wife. "I didn't think there would be anyone after my Kari passed away, then I met Ria."

They are being ushered into some sort of medical compound. Well, it's supposed to be a medical compound but it really just looks like a corrugated metal barn with a grass floor. There are two garage openings. One of them is only half open, and Ellen has arranged for some sort of accident. Dani and Ria are pulling into one of the open doors, but there's a large engine sitting in the middle. They crash into the obstruction and the garage door slams down onto them. My subconscious feels separate from the story, like I'm watching a movie. I feel so bad for Dan, losing the woman he loved. I don't want it to happen again. I think "Who would put that there?!" Ria is put on an operating table. Dan is nowhere to be seen, I'm afraid he's dead. Ellen is in a pale green hospital gown. She's reaching over to the far wall where there's some sort of handle or lever that you can push back. It will drop something heavy onto the table Ria is laying on, so she will certainly die. Except she slips as she's pushing it back and it snaps toward her, turning her arm below the elbow into a bloody mess.
"No no no, stop it. I don't want to this to happen. Not after everything." I think. The dream changes. I don't get any sort of resolution from it, not even a bad ending. I'm standing in the barn, the grass feels cool under my feet. It's night outside. A co-worker of mine is telling me I have to find a way to turn off the power, because there's a loose cable and the floor is wet. I spend the rest of the dream anxious that I'm going to be electrocuted.

There was a dream before this one but I don't really remember it. I'm traversing the highest part of a vast, sprawling city in the quietest part of the night, swinging, leaping, running. I get so carried away that I forget where I'm going. I stop, thinking I've gone too far, and that now I'm a section of the city that I don't recognize.
I stare down at the street corner. It has a lonely, deserted feel. The building is curved to match the street corner, and there's a wide band of red neon flickering hectically. Just beyond that is an abandoned bank. The IBC sign hangs down over the street, it used to be a neon sign as well, all the letters overlap. The longer I look at it the more familiar it seems.
I drop down to the street and into another persona. I'm a cop, I've tracked two young men here. They've gone on a crime spree across every sector of the city. The last being the murder of a city official and taking the official's wife Becka as a hostage. They seemed frantic, terrified. Like birds startled into flight, they fled and settled here. I creep inside the building. It's tiny. Just a front desk hugging the right-hand wall and a couple of glass-walled offices. They have broken the last glass panel and are inside the office. The lights flicker. The walls are a warm cream color, the glass framing dark bronze.
For a second I think I see a fox-like red dog dusted with shattered glass, delicately stepping over the shards, trying not to damage her paws. She looks at me for a moment. Then It's Becka, the red-headed official's wife, looking at me. Like a moron she steals the element of surprise from me. She sees the gun in my hand and pleads loudly for me not to kill her.
I lower my weapon and approach the room. Inside two young men, brothers, are setting up a camera. They are both dark haired and blue eyed, wearing navy t-shirts. One is in the middle of a hysterical tirade. Neither of them seem to concerned about my presence.
"They're everywhere--we can't be certain who has been taken." He sets up a tripod and tosses a length of cable to his brother.
"I'm only concerned about your hostage..." I break in. They glance at me.
"She's not a hostage! Once we showed her her husbands true face, she came with us willingly."
I look at the tall red-headed woman trying to figure out of they're telling the truth, but I can only see her profile. I frown a little.
"What do you mean?"
"They've been staging a silent take over for a while now. Fae demons who wear the skins of men, ghosts possessing our families!" The young man says, I glance at his brother. His brother rolls his eyes, I know that the other brother is the only believer here. He notices me looking and schools his face into passivity. "We'll open the door, and show everyone their plan. Is the Key ready?"
"Yeah Bran--"
"Such fools." Becka says quietly. For a second I think she's talking about people in general. "Did you really think you'd get away with this?"
My realization is quick, how perfectly she infiltrated their little group. They go on their crime spree, seem to take a hostage, and all the while she's planning to murder them. Who would question a captive killing her captors? She wouldn't even have to break her cover as the Official's wife. As I look at her, her eyes change from dark brown to...glass filled with white mist and curlings of blue-gray smoke. Over Bran's shoulder I see that the portal is open. There's a dark green square of land with a group of tall fae women.

I'm standing in a weathered-wood pig pen. The gate is even open. On a raised platform to my back, the tall fae women sit on elegant stools and chairs. They lounge there, waiting. They're all dressed in long gowns with elaborate jewelry. They are not really concerned with restraining me. I walk through the open gate, feigning a casual stroll. I check the back of my belt for the small knife I usually keep there. It's missing, of course. One of them laughs derisively, "Humans."
"Becka" is standing all the way on the other side of the square of land, there's a fence and wheat reaching a few feet taller than even her. There's a stirring in the wheat. She frowns at it.
"Boys got away, did they?" I ask no one in particular.
"Not for long, I'm afraid." A woman answers.
Becka turns back toward, out of the corner of my eye I see someone duck under the fence next to me, into another patch of cultivated land. I walk slowly, very conspicuously, toward it.
"Look, she's trying to escape." Someone says mirthfully. It's probably a good thing that they underestimate me. I break for the fence, but I can't climb over the top. They've set up chicken wire in a cage over the area. Becka runs at me bears me to the ground. I struggle wildly, wiggle free enough to kick her hard in the shoulder. I scramble under the lowest bar of the fence and as I'm regaining my feet her hand swipes at my ankle. I dance away into a run. There isn't much room in here. There's only a foot and a half between the rows of a vine with dark glossy spear-head leaves and bright red flowers. They grow up into the chicken-wire cage and around, then down again into the earth. I can feel her right behind me, I dodge around a corner as she makes a grab for my shirt.
I can't believe how fast I'm moving, but she's keeping pace with me, I can't seem to shake her. I take a right, feeling leaves slap my face. I turn again, hitting the dividing rail hard, squeezing into the space between the last row of vines and a low wall with a galvanized metal planter with new plants in them.
I hear her curse behind me. I'm a small woman, I don't have trouble running here. Becka is built a lot larger, wide at the shoulders. I smile a little. I can see the corner of the plant cage from here. It's just a matter of finding a gap I can climb through. I run to the corner, I know she's moved back into the adjacent row. I'm turning right and see my way out. As I reach it she knocks me to the ground. She pulls my knife from behind her back, on her downward stab I somehow smack it from her hand. It hits the dirt. I scramble toward it. She grabs it before I can.
There's a sort of galvanized trap door. On the hood is the knife Denna from The Name of the Wind carries, a thin sharp blade with leather wrapped around one end. It glitters in the light. I wonder if Becka has noticed it. I dearly hope not, I would love to use it. I look at the knife hungrily, almost.
There's loud crash and she looks over her shoulder, startled. I use the distraction to crawl through the trap door.

I've lost my pursuers in a crowd. The building feels somewhere between a mall and a university. I insinuate myself into a group. I notice a weird shop, with a yellow neon sign. I hear a girl saying that she might need to stop in there to have her skin tightened.
"They sell skin tightening here?" I ask, intrigued.
We reach an arched ramp, and at the bottom I can see the last door that will take me to freedom. She tells me about it and I turn around to go look at the shop. Then I wonder what the hell I'm doing and why I would even need skin tightening. I turn back to the ramp. Near the door, standing guard is Brienne of Tarth, looking like the actress who plays her on Game of Thrones. She's sitting in a chair, one leg extended, arms crossed over her chest. Her bare arms, neck and side of her face have angular designs in faded woad. I hesitate. I know that she would joylessly take me in, since it was her duty to follow the orders of the Fae queen. Even if she didn't want to. She is looking away, now's my chance.
I hurry past her, my hands are on the bar of the glass door---
I wake up.

Non-lucid
Lucid

I'm in the back seat of a blue van that belongs to my sister. Instead of a trunk space, the seats are pressed against the end of the vehicle, and there's a dash under the back windshield. She's driving. A child that is supposed to be her son but looks like a combination of my brother's little boy and hers is laying on the dash behind me.
We're almost ready to leave, parked on curved driveway in front of the rock house we grew up in. The van starts to roll forward.
"You alright back there, kid?"
He giggles and joyfully smiles at me. I lightly pinch his cheek and he giggles some more. I smile and turn my attention to my dog, Caspian who is laying across my lap. He twists to expose his belly so I'll pet him. I do.
I notice, for some reason, his fur is getting increasingly more soft and his ribcage smaller. I look down at him and he's now a kitten with the same coloring. He's a bluetick beagle. The Caspian-kitten yawns and and grabs at my hand with his little paws, claws out. I start to play with one of his claws. My boyfriend walks up beside the van and it stops rolling. My window is down a little. I can't recall what he says to me. I hand him the Caspian-kitten who stretches languorously across my hands. My boyfriend smiles and takes him, Caspian clings to his teal button-up.
We finally leave the driveway. Something about my nephew's changeable face and the fact that my dog just turned into a cat has given me the choice to become lucid. I'm looking toward the front of the van, and the dream would have me continue doing so. I have a choice. I worry that the dream will distort and fall apart if I take initiative.
I decide to risk it and am pleased when everything remains normal. In fact it becomes more vivid. The early morning light swells and becomes impossibly sweet and warm against my face. The road we're taking hugs a cliff, it's narrow with no guardrail. We reach a red, arched metal bridge. The curve before the bridge is such that she speeds around the corner and almost hits a blockade made of cars. Everything slows down. I make the van fly over the blockade and hear my sister make a surprised, amazed noise. The van lands hard near the other side of the bridge, and the back wheels skid close to the edge where the beams have broken. I get out feeling awesomely smug and look outside curiously.
The road is a mess, it's the aftermath of an attack, the men assaulting the road have gathered near my end of the bridge, awaiting orders.
A thin man in a black suit with long black hair looks surprised to see me. Then he grins. I hear a strange sliding noise and turn to find my sister, nephew, and the van gone. Fear grips me, I notice a tall blonde man dressed in a striped red and black shirt and black slacks climbing down to a rough red-stone ledge that juts out from underneath the bridge. He tosses his jacket down and jumps into the water after my family. Without a second thought, I dive. I feel the wind on my face and the cool water closing around me. Everything is a delicious deep blue, far ahead of me I can see the man reaching my sister at the bottom of the lake. Both her and my nephew sank like stones, and float at the lake floor, he's in front of her, her arm draped over his shoulder down his chest. I see that the man has them, one on either side of him. I wait for him on a rock ledge. As he passes he nods to me, I push hard off the floor and slide my arms around his waist, adding my momentum to his.
The closer we get to the surface the easier it becomes. I foolishly think it's because I'm still lucid. He beings to break apart, becoming empty clothes. When I break the water, he's just a shirt in my arms. My sister and nephew are gone. Where are there? What happened to them? Are they still at the bottom of the lake? Someone calls to me but I ignore them and dive again. I get to the halfway point and do not see anyone down there. I swim around looking for them. For a second I'm worried about not having enough air, then I realize I'm already breathing, cool water along with air, in through my nose.
Then my boyfriend is there, he tugs on my arm and gestures to the surface. I shake my head, I don't want to go yet. He pulls me along after him anyway. We pass a ledge with treasure on it, a faded mahogany box with a gold circle with a Greek maze design engraved in a gold metal circle, it has one of these circles on each side. I want to see what's inside, but instead I follow him. When we climb out of the water, he tells me he has some idea where we can start to look for them. He makes it sound like they've been abducted.

I follow him, a little uncertainly, into a bar. This is not the kind of place I would usually go. He doesn't really feel like my boyfriend, more like an acquaintance with his face. The place is narrow and drab, the bar is on the left as I walk in with backless stools bolted to the floor. On the right side are red cushioned benches running the length of the wall, leading up to a door with a frosted glass window. There's a man standing in front of the door.I don't remember seeing any tables.
"Wait here, I'll be back." He goes to the man and talks quietly with him.
The dishwasher has made his way out from the back to gather some glasses. He's a little rough looking, scarecrow thin with bright almost hectic blue eyes, missing teeth. His hair is dirty blonde and sticks up straight up from his skull. He's wearing a dark brown apron over a dirty white thermal shirt. He sees me and says something about how a pretty lady shouldn't come alone to a place like this.
"I'm not alone." I say, giving my boyfriend a significant look.
"Oh, of course."
He catches the attention of the waitress. She seems like she's humoring him, he creeps her out a little with his intensity but she knows he's harmless. He starts to tell us a story about a renegade that passed through a few years ago. I wonder absently if he's talking about Liam.
"The reddest hair I've ever seen, big guy! You know what I said to him, I said--"
The bartender, a handsome man with a shaved head gets the waitress's attention, effectively interrupting the dishwasher. I can tell from his expression that this happens to him often.
"Nevermind, no one was listening anyway." he starts to leave. I cut in, partially because I hate to see that happen to people, and partially because I want to hear the end of his story.
"I was listening!"
I move over to the row of cushioned benches, backing away but keeping eye contact so he knows I'm still listening. His expression brightens and he smiles, I see he's missing some teeth.
"What did you say to him?" I prompt.
"I said, sir, that beard ain't much of a disguise." When he says it he tugs on his own. "Besides, everyone knows who you are, hair like that there cain't be two of ya!" he laughs, amused by his own wit and daring, questioning a dangerous rebel.
I laugh with him, but not really because I think it's funny. He moves off into the back, waving goodbye to me. I setting back on the bench. After a minute, something strange catches the corner of my vision. I look over, to my left is an extremely large man dressed in a black suit. I don't mean to say he's fat. Even sitting down I can tell that he's at least 8 feet tall. His leg extends nearly halfway to the bar. He's the biggest person I've ever seen. Bald, ridiculously muscular, sharp blue eyes with pinpoint pupils in a grizzled face. He's not a particularly attractive man, but his size suddenly appeals to me. He smirks at me like he knows what I'm thinking. I glance away. My boyfriend sits down to my right.
"Did you find anything out?" I ask anxiously.
"Not yet, the man I came to see is in a meeting. When the time comes he'll only see me, alone. We just have to wait a little bit."

The next part looks like an SNES video game, a world map. We're following a trail and gold beads dot the ground in our wake. "Hehe, it looks like Mario." I think. A flashing dot appears in the spot we just left. I refuse to turn my quest into a marrior game. I focus and the avatar gains a little more definition, turning into a 16bit version of me and my boyfriend. The lack of detail annoys me. I focus, willing myself closer to the 'screen'. The dream starts to lose cohesion. My boyfriend has led me to a cliff.
"Where are we even going? How will this help me find my sister?"
"....these look a bit heavy to carry." he replies and points behind me. There are four chest-height empty boxes, they almost look like giant square mugs, tied together at the handle with a hot air balloon or parachute. They have angry bird face on them.
"We just have a little further to go." he says.

The beginning of the dream has the visual clarity of an old movie, a little faded, with occasional black lines. An elderly woman narrates, standing beside a large car. She's wearing a powder blue dress with a straw hat. Her fluffy curls look very white against her clothes. She's helping to load light mauve luggage into a net atop the car.
"Things were different in those days. Raised entirely on the farm, in quiet schools. When you came of age you would go off to University, and if the music was good (as it usually was) you'd join the chorus."

I don't remember what happened between that and this next scene.
Kvothe from The Name of the Wind is sitting in front of a small cook-fire, ringed in stones. He's wearing a loose white shirt and dark brown pants. His hair looks very red. He shifts to the other side of the fire as a slim woman with honey colored skin and short chestnut hair moves over to use it. She keeps looking at him disapprovingly. There's an L-shaped awning sticking out from the shed, connected to the front of the woman's house, it's her house we sit in front of. In front of the shed are two tables. I can see the front door and dusty sand-colored stone steps. Her husband comes home as Kvothe lifts a deep green guitar, using it like an upright bass. He is learning how to play the true names of things. He has just perfected 'fire'. He starts to play 'tree', gripping the neck and sliding all four of his fingers down the strings.
"HEY!" the man yells. Kvothe isn't quite playing it right, a tree nearby quivers violently and threatens to topple. Kvothe alters the note a little and instead of quivering the tree sings with the truth of its name. Kvothe grins and stops playing. The man rolls his eyes.
"Yes, yes. You are very clever."
The man keeps scowling at Kvothe, like he doesn't want him there but is obligated to teach him Name Songs so that he doesn't hurt anyone with his wild talent.
I think how the color of the guitar matches his eyes.

I'm running on a long narrow walkway that stretches from one end of the street to the other, hugging a sand colored building. I stop at the edge and look at what I'm holding in my hand. Three colored stones. One is the amethyst crystal I fell asleep wearing on a chain around my wrist. The other two are pendants I have, usually labradorite, and amber. Now they are both dark red. I blink, thinking they should be a different color.

I hear the alarm going off in the other room and wake up. I doze back off trying to think of how to start writing my forum DJ post. It starts with the old woman. When I get to the part where she mentions music, a strain of music swells in the back of my mind drowning out her voice. I try to focus on it and backtrack to the end of her sentence. When I regain focus the car is gone and I am a young girl, reveling in new found summer freedom. There's a dirt path in front of the house where the car was parked. I run down it to the stable. I'm thinking how the house was small and correct myself, thinking that it was the 60's, it should be a large, sprawling property. As I think it, my surroundings change subtly, feeling more open.
The stables are huge, when I pass them I look inside, they are corrugated metal.
"We had many animals, of all different kinds."
They pour from the stalls, horses (which I'm very excited to see), cows, sheep, chickens, cats...so many. When they run out into the open with me I notice a simple black tent pitched in the middle of the field. It moves to follow us, I can't see inside. As my father meets us the tent jumps a little, I think that inside is a wolf. A feral one. Then I see our tame wolf she's mostly white, looks kind of like this:
http://4packs.webs.com/1%20%20%20%20...%201%20aca.jpg
She sits down at my father's feet, looking lovely. I stare intently at the tent, waiting for the other wolf to emerge...

And the alarm in the other room goes off again.

(Once Upon a Time, Supernatural and Cthulhu Mythos. Apparently.)
I am Snow White's daughter, but I'm not Emma. I have an older brother who looks like Charming, while I look like mother did when she was young. I also have two younger siblings, a two year old boy and a newborn. Our parents have gone missing and we don't know what has happened to them, in actuality they have disappeared to another world and gone to war. They've left us to care for the young ones, I'm worried I'll never see our parents again. Our own world is filled with demons, even the hospital is infested. Such that when I see my brother walking with a portly red-haired female nurse, I'm afraid that he has become possessed. In terror, I watch him from afar. If he has been taken, it's possible that no one in my family remains unchanged. I notice him doing normal things and am vastly relieved. The nurse turns her black eyes on me and I look away. It seems that even they would not dare hurt royal children just because the king and queen are away.

There's a lapse and I'm outside, it's dark. The trees framing the monastery walls are black and dead. I'm looking for my little brother, he has been missing for days. I'm at the edge of the clearing when I see the nurse from the house, wearing a shark's smile, kicking a box under a table. She disappears, I run to where she was standing and find my brother in a yellow shoebox under a long picnic table beneath the awning stretching out from the face of the building. I start to panic, he looks tiny and emaciated. I'm afraid he will starve if I don't get some food into him immediately. I cast around for some food but the place is dead, empty. I start to cry, grief and helplessness tight in my chest. It's hard to breath around it. I'm terrified that I'm being tested, and realize the truth of that fear when I see my options. An old oven is illuminated in the wall behind my brother, and off to my right by the arched red monastery door, are three orphan babies left in the cold. Usually the monks here would take them in. It's the dead of night and whoever left them didn't bother to ring the bell, leaving their lives to fate or to demons.
Upon seeing the oven I felt a surge of hope, I could bake something for my brother to eat. He wouldn't die! Then I saw the freezing orphans and knew I had to make a choice.
"No no no, I don't know what to do. Don't make me choose."
But it's a test, and I have to choose. What do I do? Is it selfish to choose one life, because it belongs to my brother? Will my mother be disappointed that I didn't save the three children?
Indecision tears at me. I pace between my brother and the three shriveled children. I start to sob, twisting my hands into fists in my long black hair. I don't want to choose, I don't want to choose. I fall to my knees beside my brother and...
The pain becomes too much for my subconscious and I feel myself retreat. I am myself and the daughter no longer. I'm asking someone if they're caught up on episodes, and it's terrible what happens to Snow's family, that I can't believe what they have to go through.

I follow Snow around and don't participate at all. Like I'm watching a movie. The day is overcast, we have gathered for war games to prepare for battle. This seemingly insincere call to arms is the only way we can meet under the eye of the enemy and avoid retaliation. There's a beautiful dark-haired cat-eyed woman who can't take the games seriously. She knows the true purpose of the call, but keeps joking around. At first she steps up to the man carrying the roster and gives him a salute, somewhere between a mocking gesture and seriousness. When he looks away she grins a little and hops into rank with five others. Snow sees her for what she is though, that despite her attempt to remain a jester, she is very capable and charismatic. Snow calls out that those she hands hats out to will play officers in the coming game. They've all mounted horses, and the black-haired woman is on a black horse with a white stripe down its nose. Snow drops a hat onto the woman's head, surprising the hell out of her. For a second she looks disconcerted, then she smiles and tugs on the reins, her horse neatly side-steps and dances up beside another person in line. She takes the hat off and drops it on someone's head. When the woman glances up she sees Snow's wry look, it also says "you won't escape that easily."
"Aura. Come HERE." Snow points firmly at the ground in front of her.
Aura, the woman, grins at the person next to her and prances up to the commander.
"I don't know why you're so reluctant to help."
"I can't be of use." The humor vanishes from her face and is replaced with sharp deprecation. "My heart just isn't what it used to be. I bet you didn't even recognize me..." She hands a male soldier a greeting card. On the inside is her picture, she looks subtly different. When my vision pulls back from the card, I see a triangular bandage on her chest, indicating that she has been injured. "Besides, do you really want a super model leading your troops?"
Snow looks annoyed but gets called away before she can say that it doesn't matter who you are here, it matters who you used to be back Home.

From where I stand, the sea is a grey choppy mass to my back. There's a rough rock outcropping jutting from long pale grass lain flat by the wind. Dean from Supernatural is holding up a mess of purple string.
"WHAT is this?"
I gesture for him to hand it over, and he does.
"It's our early warning system."
He looks extremely amused, something about how the words and their implications are of this world and alien to the one we are from.
"Early warning system?"
I roll my eyes at him. "Can you please take this seriously? It works, alright? They've proven it." I explain how the string is staked into the ground all around the world and that each attack from our Enemy is preceded by vibration. The direction of the vibrations will help us pinpoint the place the Enemy intends to attack, and will appear on our map. Showing us where to go.
He nods at me, knowing he needs to stop joking around. He turns to the others around us and holds up a map. "The...early warning system," he cracks a smile and I shake my head at him, a little annoyed. He clears his throat, "the system indicates that the next attack will happen in Ghana." But he doesn't say Ghana. He says Ana, leaving the G silent. I hear somebody snicker.
"Hey Dean, the G isn't silent..."
"Sure it is."
"Nope, pretty sure it's Ghana."
"Shut up..."
"Fine, okay, does it say WHERE in Ghana?"
I look at the map and as I expected, there's a rough wooden pin sticking into a mountain range. I think it's a large crescent shaped range, then realize it's actually a solitary mountain at the range's back. I tug on the mass of purple string, trying to straighten it out. I can feel it against my fingers when, hear the sound it makes between them.
"Here. In the hills."
"Let's get to it then!" Dean says.

Myself, Snow, Charming and Dean have gathered with what's left of our people in Ghana. We know that It plans to come here, and we're going to be in Its way when it does. We pretend we're having a meeting, the leaders from each race was invited to the panel, so that we could decide how to handle the Enemy, together. When It invaded ten years ago, It forbade large meetings like this. Snow tenses and runs past me. I catch her arm,
"Hey, what's happening?"
"It's here. Prepare yourselves everyone, it will see right through our excuses." She goes to face the black wall behind the table we had all occupied a few minutes before. We thought that we would have more time.
A woman in glasses with dirty blonde hair rings her hands.
"He's coming here?"
"Don't call it a 'he' Sara. Giving it gender will only humanize him." I frown, "It."
We hear it before we see it.
"A panel? And I wasn't invited? You're in violation of the One Law." The black wall behind the table becomes a fathomless void, and from the abyss emerges an androgynous child. It would almost be pretty if not for its dead eyes. It's dressed in a white and grey skin-tight spandex. Bare footed. Head shaved. The only indication that it is not human (aside from it's eyes), is the lesions from corruption and plague on its scalp. I'm afraid suddenly that he heard me call him an IT and will be violently displeased.
It seems the creature will be violently displeased anyway. It gives us a mad-man's smile and its true form appears behind the child. An giant scaly eye with yellow sclera, innumerable tentacles snake out from behind the eye, this monstrosity filling the room with its vile, suffocating presence. We tense---

AAAAND MY ALARM GOES OFF. >.< WHY?! I was going into an epic battle against an eldritch abomination!

I'm having some trouble remembering this one. I was at work, following a storyline about a murderer. An old story that matched up with current events. Something about a bloody pipe?
I run around a corner by the garden doors and there's a man kneeling there gathering items he had dropped. He gives me an embarrassed smile. I'm stricken by the similarities between him and the dream character Liam, what I call a Liam echo. Meaning that he shares features with the DC, even evokes the same emotions, but I know it isn't him. Even kneeling I can tell he's tall, his hair is dark red. He has the same general face shape, eye color, smile.
"I almost ran over you." I say as I pass him, I hope he thinks I'm pretty and then I'm annoyed with myself. I'm taken, I can't think this way.
"No worries, I'm the moron on the floor."
I keep walking fast, I want to go back to talk to him, but I have to follow the storyline of the dream.

I'm outside, walking with a housing agent and my friend L. We're looking for a place to live together. We find an old apartment building, there are two apartments near the back and right next to each other that are for rent. We think it's perfect.

I'm standing in a bathroom, looking in the mirror. I'm blue all over. A deep sky blue. The color of Liam's eyes. My hair is slicked back, also blue, in a long braid down my back. I'm wearing a matching blue dress with oblong gold beads at the waist and in intricate patterns down the skirt. It makes my eyes look a glowing, impossible green. I turn to my boyfriend but he isn't paying attention. "Hey, look how green my eyes are." ((I'm amused that neither of us care that I'm painted blue))
He still isn't paying attention. I lean close to the mirror and look at the brightness of my eyes. "Hey, look how bright my eyes are!" I say to him again. He waves dismissively and goes back to whatever he was doing without looking at me.