lucid

False Awakening
Lucid
Non-Lucid

Sometimes I can't recall the actual order of the dream because it all feels the same. Anyway. I'll tell it in the way that makes the most sense. Jack always wears blue and black, though this time he also had a grey vest. He appears in uniform, police or military. He has dark hair and pale skin. He's always my friend but is sometimes more.
I wake up in my house but it feels strange. I can't figure out why exactly but I know I don't like it. It's like having a word on the tip of your tongue. Anyway, I get out of bed and I wander down the hallway. I glance over my shoulder and it's only when I realize the master bedroom is swapped with the other bedroom that I know I'm dreaming. There's a subdued sense of relief and I make my way to the front door. Instead of being on the east wall it's on the north end, and it feels so damn familiar. I know I've been here before. I push the front door open and frigid winter air greets me. I'm delighted when I find it's snowing. I can feel the air and the sharp bite of the snowflakes melting on my cheeks. There's a white crosshatch gate. I open it and climb out onto a massive snowdrift, laughing and spinning in a circle. My neighbor crosses the lawn and I wave. He gives me a small smile and ducks his head against the icy wind. This does nothing to dampen enthusiasm and I throw handfuls of snow into the air in wild exultation.

Suddenly I am back in bed. I experience a moment of vertigo as I sit up. It's only when I realize that the two bedrooms of my apartment have switched places that I know I'm dreaming. Still, it is a distant realization. I move toward one of the two closets and look inside, there is an old washer and dryer set in there. I back out and see Jack there. I should be clear though, I only know it's Jack in retrospect. I have been doing this a lot lately. Depression makes me indistinct and so my recurring dcs are indistinct. I know him because he is wearing blue and black, as Jack always does, and because he feels the same way. He's the right build, though I never see his face.
I recognize him, standing in front of the other closet. He is mine.
He shows me the new washer and dryer set in the second closet, though I have already seen it. It's like a game. I turn to kiss him and get an impression of pale skin and black hair, also very much Jack.

There's a lapse. A very stark lapse. I'm in a dim hospital. Jack was a police officer who was killed on duty. All of his friends gather in vigil around the room containing his body bag. I can't quite believe he's dead and I wander away from the sober scene, all those uniforms gathered in chairs around the room. That is the only reason I survive.

The hospital is so very still in the late hours of the night. Dim. Quiet. The recently dead become quick, nimble zombies pouring down the hallways in waves. I hear them before I see them and have a moment of intense annoyance and disbelief. Of fucking COURSE there are zombies. Why the fuck not.
I run away. I realize I'm barefoot. I can feel the doors under my hands as I push them open, and the rush of night air that greets me. And the sound of the undead pouring out in my wake. I almost lose my lucidity and think I have to find MY car. Then I think "No, you're lucid. ANY car will work. PICK ANY CAR." I don't get to find out if that is true. I run for a car, the zombies coursing around me like I'm a wide river stone. I pull a car door open---

My vision...fluctuates. I try to focus. It's hard to say how I do it. It feels like I'm looking up, like I'm willing my eyes to close? I find myself in a motorcycle shop with a familiar blond, bearded man in a leather vest. I immediately start to cry. "Where am I?" I ask him. "How did I get here?"
I move around the counter as I ask these questions, my eyes straying to the tv mounted on the wall behind him. I ask but I already know that he saved me from the onrush of zombies. He asks me if I've seen a certain documentary, or heard of a series of experiments. I know of it in a distant way, but it still feels like I'm lying when I say I've seen it and he seems to know it is a lie. He explains that the undead are everywhere and they managed to pull me here, though it is unclear if I will turn.

I took a nap and had sleep paralysis for most of it, I attempted to become lucid but didn't quite make it.
As with most sleep paralysis, dreaming and waking were blended together, so that for the dream I was laying in my bed, but the room around me was slightly different. For one, there was a very tall man in a black suit, with a dark blue dress shirt standing beside my bed. I only got a glimpse at part of his scalp, since he covered his face with one hand. The other hand knocked against my knee, startling me anew ever few seconds. It was very unpleasant, trying very hard to become creepy. Then I realized he used the tapping for emphasis while speaking.
"Mother has died. Mother is dead. Mother is dead."
My voice came out sluggish, "I'm sorry." He tapped my knee again. "Please stop that."
The man paused and then repeated, obviously grief stricken, "She's dead."
I managed to lift my hand to catch his pale grey-white fingers before they tapped again. He ripped his hands from my feeble grip, seeming wild and angry.
"I asked you to stop that."

There was also something about finding the head of a doll in my blankets. I picked it up and smoothed down the hair, it had those eyes that blink when you tilt it. I was waiting for it to blink on its own.
Then I saw a tangle of thread that became a spider, crawling under my blanket.

I got out of bed, my feet heavy. I made it to the patio door and stepped outside onto the rough, wet concrete. It felt so real, but my vision remained dim. I walked out to the front gate, waiting for something to tip me off that I continued to dream, nothing did. One of my eyes remained closed. I put my hand over it, worried that the neighbor I could see standing across the street would think me odd, with one eye stuck shut.

I 'woke' in bed, and made my way out to the patio door. This time it looked different. There was a 3ft, red wooden door where the doggy door usually sits. I opened it and tried to go outside, but I was too big to fit. Of course.

Non-Lucid
Actual Waking
False Awakening
Lucid

I left work early today and took a nap before my guitar lesson. I slept from 2:30pm to 3:58p, waking myself up two minutes before my alarm. I spent 10 minutes after that just laying there, waiting for the world to feel less strange and my blood to stop pounding in my ears. I had...11 short dreams? I can't decide if I like the false awakenings because they allow me to practice lucid skills, or if I hate them because they're creepy. And I never have one.

_____I'm in my room, it looks just as it should, but I can hear music playing somewhere in the house. When I turn over to listen, there's a deepening of sorts and I realize that there can't be music playing because I'm home alone. I see movement out of the corner of my eye, through the open door and it startles me into a lighter layer of dreaming. I'm confused, thinking I'm awake. I can't find my phone to check the time, it feels like I've been asleep for hours...
________I find myself out in the cul-de-sac. I take the sidewalk, walking along the curve, the image dims and intermittently is replaced with darkness, I know I'm close to waking and try to stabilize the dream. I once told myself that I should keep moving to give my brain something to work at, if I stop then the images stop and I'll wake up. I don't follow my own advice, and close my eyes to concentrate. It doesn't work.
_____I hear music again.
_____I'm pulled back under and when I leave my duplex, my control is steadfast. The world is bright and it's warm outside. I cross the street, curious about the open door in the duplex on the other side. I try to ignore the creepy man in a black fedora and trench coat eyeing me from one of the inside-curve driveways. He disapproves of my actions. I smile at him and continue on.
Going into the other house supplies a new storyline for me to walk. [B]Immediately inside there is a set of raw-wood riser-less stairs leading to the upper level. There are young girls everywhere, showing up for a party. I know I'm not invited, the two girls are best friends and they're popular, I'm not. I feel a spike of shame for inviting myself, but continue up the stairs. I can see them on the upper level, one is blond with blue eyes, the other has brown-black hair. They look familiar but I can't figure out why. I don't want them to see me, I'm certain they'll be mean. There are other girls everywhere participating in different activities. A smaller girl storms up the stairs, surprising me. I stand there, unsure what to do. Worse, the Birthday Girls appear, and tell the smaller girl they want to play a trust game. She's enthusiastic about participating. The game is stand on a higher step and lean back onto the hands of someone lower down. Then you walk up the stairs that way. Their eyes meet mine only for a moment and I'm so worried about what they'll do. I get out of the way for the blond to push the smaller girl up the stairs, but trip and fall backward. The brunette catches me and walks me up the stairs, giggling. I start laughing too, relieved that they have decided to be kind.
_____Drawn back to my room, there are other people in the house. I consider them family but they aren't people I know. There's a tall man with black hair and a bushy beard, an older man with steel grey hair pulled back into a tail, and two women. I don't recall much about this one. I realize they shouldn't be here and decide to go outside. This time I turn left, I see a cheetah running through the neighborhood and I can tell people are afraid of it, so I tell it to run away. It starts to but, I change my mind. It would be fun to run with a cheetah, I think. So I yell for it to come back, then immediately regret commanding it to do anything. I would rather it had chosen to be at my side.
_____I desperately try to check the time but my phone isn't working right. I'm at it for a while before I realize I'm still dreaming. I attempt to still my panicked heart and instead close my eyes, focusing my mind back and down. I open my eyes when I hear music. The song has clapping at the beginning. The room is...different. I'm laying not on the bed, but on a green chaise lounge set very close to the floor. The curtains are open now making the room very bright. The bed is under the window, the foot of it very close to the open door. I realize it isn't a song playing, but a man singing. The familiarity of his voice draws my eyes to the doorway, he's coming down the hall. He will be here soon. Liam.
Saja lays on the bed dressed how I often see her when I become her in my dreams, in an ivory ankle-length shift. She isn't resting, but she isn't awake either. She's paralyzed. I see her briefly from above, her head tilted back, lips parted, eyes slightly open but rolled up. She has one arm pinned to her chest like she's suffered a stroke. Liam appears in the doorway, just like I remember him, though he actually seems...happy. He's singing a song to Saja, I know it's a message, to correct the awful thing he said to me before, about wishing I/she had died with the others. The lyrics: "I'm here with my beautiful wife, in our wonderful life together." Liam is carrying a tray with tea and a bowl of water with a washcloth on rim. His eyes shift briefly to me before alighting on Saja.
"Are you Walking again, dear?" It indicates he's aware of my presence. Meaning that I have dreamwalked to this scene, and I am myself and Saja as well.
It is difficult to move, my mouth feels so stiff. I groan a reply, loathing the spit that runs from the corner of my mouth. "Noooooo." I manage to sound playful in my denial, slightly sarcastic. I don't want him to scold me for dreamwalking here to see him. He smiles down at her contorted form, one knee is bent, her right foot is up by her hip. He sets the tray down and draws her body out straight, covering her with a blanket, she's broken into a cold sweat. He takes the damp cloth and gently wipes the corner of her mouth, humming to her all the while.
____The previous scene slips away and I am back in bed. I know I'm still dreaming because everything feels heavy...and also because one of my friends from work is sitting by the bed using my nightstand as a table, her back to the wall. She is writing on a yellow legal pad, I can only make out one section that is all X's and 0's, but she pressed down so hard on the paper, obviously in a state of distress. I'm not sure she knows I'm there yet I'm certain I can comfort her anyway. I stroke her hair and tell her it will be alright.
"You're right, you're right. M's the dead one. I'm still here." She says, referring to her husband who passed away a few years ago. I continue soothing her. Eventually she pivots to look at me, becoming an old woman with her white hair back in a short ponytail.
She begins to tell me about what will happen next, but in the past tense like she's lived through it herself and wants to spare me the confusion. "Then the storm swept in from the sea. Everything changed after it obliterated New York City...and he arrived. The_____." I lean closer to hear her better but it doesn't help. I don't understand a single word she says to me, it's all gibberish.
"Wait, I can't understand you."
"Of course not, dear. It's here." Her watery eyes fix on something over my shoulder as terror steals over her features.
Very slowly, I turn. Behind me, looking like a terrifying mix of Mrs. Trunchbull from Matilda and the police sketch of Penelope from her suitor who saw her and flipped the hell out. The woman is thick but tall, with her hair in a bun, wearing Trunchbull's uniform...her eyes are black with no sclera under a rage-contorted brow. Her mouth is perpetually open, showing sharp needle sharp teeth...this thing leers down at me and starts to reach her hand out.
Nope.
I force myself into another layer of sleep and for a moment I think I'm awake. But my body is so very heavy. I can't even turn my head and for a moment I worry that something burst in my brain and I'm as paralyzed as Saja now. I struggle to move and when I see my deformed hand, I come to the relieving conclusion that I am in fact still dreaming.
____I find myself in a room like mine, but all the furniture is gone. There are long windows running the length of the room, very close to the floor. The whole room is painted dark purple. I can feel it looming behind me. I run at the mesh covered window, thinking I'm lucid enough to push through it but I am inhibited by my panic. Instead, I use the door. I think I hear the door open and call for my boyfriend to help me, but I realize that he isn't home. (Progress!) The apartment is laid out like my duplex but it feels higher off the ground, when I escape out the front door there is a black porch and awning, all modern lines, set against the purple building. In the distance I see a massive storm brewing and know that it is what my friend was talking about. I stand with 5 others, watching the horizon.
____I'm standing in front of the family from earlier. I'm trying to explain what's happening to me, but they just think I'm crazy. Behind them, the wall has disappeared and I see a train.
"There's a train."
"A train in our kitchen? You're hallucinating.."
"No I'm NOT. I'm...lucid."
"Obviously you're not lucid."
"I mean I'm dreaming."
They just look at me.
_____More music.
_____I rise to what I think is waking, but quickly realize I'm still dreaming. I'm starting to panic again, this round of dreams is extremely disorienting. I close my eyes and focus, putting my hands together against my chest, fingertips pressing together. I focus back again. There's a deepening and when I open my eyes I am sitting on a wooden examination table. The room is cluttered, tables against every wall and all surfaces covered with tools and stacks of books and papers. There's a frameless doorway at the top of two narrow steps. A creepy old man with round spectacles puts a q-tip with a long stem in my ear. It freaks me out and I cringe.
He picks up another one. I realize then that I'm a child. "Raise your arm, now." When I don't, he pulls my arm out straight and presses the q-tip to my armpit. It feels so weird, almost real. It gets weirder.
Liam appears in the doorway. While he isn't the cruel-faced man I've become acquainted with, neither is he quite the man who spent the morning singing to Saja. I still love him though. All versions of him. His outfit should have looked ridiculous...instead it was...eh, fantastic. The garb was vaguely...Musketeer? A capotain with a wider brim, his copper hair hanging to his shoulders. The material of his clothing is multicolored but by large these many colors suggest purple with threads of gold, green and blue. It's a long doublet.
His mouth set in a grim line, he looks so tired. I wonder if the person I have become in this scene is his child.
He confirms this by saying, "Hop down from there, son. It's time to go."
The kid hops down from the table, leaving me there to stare at the old man and watch Liam and 7 year old son leave the shop.
The old man looks at me. "You know you can't be here alone, you've gotta leave too."
He's right.
I jump down off the table, running to the window just in time to see Liam turn a corner. I press my hands to the glass but I cannot slip through it. The shopkeeper suggests I use the door, I run to it and pull it open, I can feel the metal frame against my hand as I rush out into the alley. The streets here are confusing and narrow inlaid with dark grey cobblestones. I go to where I last saw Liam but it's a dead end, he must have gone a different way. I stop a familiar looking woman who has her hair pulled back, wearing a white tank top, a long bronze necklace, and a leather satchel over her shoulder.
"Have you seen a tall, red haired man?"
She blinks slowly at me and resumes walking.
"Hey, wait."
"No."
"He'd have a child with him?"
"Haven't seen him. Stop talking to me."
____I think again that I am awake, just to find that I am not. I am worried I slept through my alarm and have missed my class. I feel like I've been asleep a very long time. I can't do this anymore. I lay there, the room doesn't feel right at the edges, so I know I'm still sleeping...but I'm so close to waking, I know it. I fight through several layers of fragments, where I look at my phone or can't find it or can't move. The dream is like a pool of tar, refusing to let me go, continually trying to drag me under. I protest violently, mentally wrenching my arm out from under the pillow. It takes too long for it to really happen. I force my eyes to remain open. I'm laying on my stomach, I raise my head and sluggishly toss the blanket aside.
I manage to final wake up, roll onto my back, resisting the draw of sleep and finally check my phone. It's 3:58pm.

Non-Lucid
Actual Waking
False Awakening
Lucid
The dream setting is uninteresting, I'm facing the wall and I see the edge of the pillow and the face of the mattress. There's a vague sense of unreality that makes me think I'm dreaming, to test it I press my hand flat against the mattress and push. My palm breaks the surface like it is a pool of water and I reach down past the mattress into a strange place that is infinitely black.
Something drives me to a lighter sleep, it feels like waking but isn't. My boyfriend comes into the room and lays behind me, it makes me uncomfortable but I can't tell him to stop. He says something about going to the store and gets up. I can hear his keys jangling.
I descend once more, for a moment I'm confused about whether or not I'm awake. I press my hand down into the mattress, past it into the dark. My knuckles brush against a metal bar, then I feel a hand grip mine. At first I am startled and frightened, and I rip my hand free. The force of my extraction jars me almost unto waking.
I have some awareness that I'm not yet awake, I see the same view of my wall, the edge of the pillow and the face of the mattress. My mind sinks a fraction and I thrust my hand into the mattress. I immediately feel a small hand (about the size of my own) grip mine. It slips away so I reach further, this time with both arms clear up to my shoulders. My left cheek and ear descend as well, once my ear clears the mattress I can hear a woman screaming. Sometimes wordlessly, other times for help. I can't speak but I try to pacify her, all the same. This works for about two seconds. I have one of her wrists, I can make the shape of her arm. There is a very dim source of light nearby. I catch a glimpse of her face...and then she recognizes me.
"YOU!" She yells, it's accusatory and terrified, threaded with uncertainty for my motive. She wrenches herself from my grasp and, heart hammering, I retreat. I can't give up though. What kind of person would I be if I just left her there, all alone in the dark?
So, once more, I reach down. My knuckles brush the metal bar then her wrist. Her wild struggling and screams echo hollowly in the cavernous maw. I rear back, pulling her out through the mattress and collapsing backward, pulling with all my strength.
Honestly I was expecting to find Saja but she...is entirely different, if familiar. She is tiny, like Saja. Bird-boned with a pointed chin and high cheeks under ice blue eyes. She has light red-brown hair to her shoulders. I notice that she is naked, but while obviously feminine, her body could have belonged to a mannequin for all the details I didn't assign her form, and for all the notice I take of said nakedness. She's trying to catch her breath, laying there gasping. She seems...disgusted with me, but I don't know why. I glance away and then back at her, and she's suddenly gone.
Then I realize she's fused into my back, and her arms are hanging under mine. EEEEEEEEEE....WHYYYY?
I decide it's time to leave!
I take off down the hallway and out into the yard. (I used a door!) I reach up to grab the top of the brick privacy wall and climb up. While I'm doing it I wonder why I didn't use the gate, and decide that it's easier to stay lucid if I do things a different way. I get distracted by my (the woman's) extra arms flailing around....

There's a moment of vertigo and I wake briefly, this time for real, though I'm confused because my view is...the wall, the edge of my pillow and the face of the mattress.

When I fall back asleep, I am still in my room, the woman lays nearby. I remember my initial purpose when laying down for a nap. I wanted to get answers out of Liam, I wanted to try to find him to ask about the whole wanting me to die thing. So I repeat his name in my mind, a low mantra, and extend my right arm down into the darkness. I don't feel hands this time, much to my disappointment, but a scene lays itself out for me. It's a warehouse with two large, dim, circular light fixtures. They reveal a pool table and a vaguely familiar man with chin length dirty-blond hair. He wears a loose white shirt and one of the harnesses from Maze Runner. I see their story clearly, that I was once friends with them. The man I see is a serial killer ((*annoyed sigh*)), who at this point is wearing a very convincing person suit. The woman believes they are good friends, but this is before he betrays her and confines her forever to the Dark. He turns his eyes very slowly up to meet mine, jarring me to a lighter level of sleep. You know, this isn't the only time I've gone looking for Liam and found a serial killer instead. What exactly are you trying to say, subconscious?

Once more I find myself in my room, laying in bed. The woman is not here anymore, as far as I can tell she is no longer fused to my back. I rush down the hallway, out the front door and into the patio. I use the gate this time, because it's standing open, to get out to the driveway. The wind blows my hair across my eyes, annoying me, but I'm worried if I try to brush it back, the motion will wake me up. So I turn my face against the wind and let the next gust do it for me. The dream starts to break apart and I stop walking, hoping it will stabilize. That only makes it worse.
Keep moving,my subconscious whispers, it'll force your brain to keep creating images., I take my own advice and continue to the end of the driveway. I feel flush with pleasure when everything settles back into place. I want to see how far I can get and how different this is from reality, before I wake up. I get to the end of the cul-de-sac and there's an unsightly gap between the houses, the lawn there is all churned mud, and beyond that the landscape drops down. I can see a great city reaching out across the horizon, as far as I can see. But before that is a messy highway. Hmm.
I trip in the mud.
My leg jerks violently, interrupting the dream. I wake briefly.
Oops.
When I slip back under, I run outside and this time decide to go left. The street is much more interesting in this direction. I actually think I've visited this in a lucid before. The wind presses my glasses to my face...wait, I haven't worn glasses in years. It feels like when I use to fall asleep with them on. But I'm dreaming, I don't need glasses. I try not to think about it too hard, because that's what usually trips up my lucid commands. I instead blink slowly, and think about not needing them and POOF. They're gone. I grin, taking in the wide street, lined with trees. The next cross street is also wide, but there are white and red bricks in 3 ft walls at the edge of the sidewalk. I see a man riding either a golf-cart or a bicycle, it's hard to tell. He's an older gentleman, wearing mostly white, with a white beret and a plaid undershirt. He uh...notices that I'm lucid and grins. He then makes a show of reaching into his pocket and pulling out a coin. He throws it at me and I raise my hand to catch it (even though he's pretty far away) but the wind makes it go wild. I see it whip past and I see it, willing it into my hand. I feel the sharp slap of the coin against my palm and hold it up in triumph. He throws his head back and laughs, then gives me a thumbs up and a finger-gun, buddy-Christ-style.
The interaction makes me feel light, happy, and unspeakably amused.
I turn to continue exploring the street, but only make it a few more yards before waking.

I left work early because I was sick, so of course I came home, opened my window (it's a nice day...) and took a nap. I shift restlessly, occasionally jerking awake, worried that at any second the wind is going to finally knock the curtain from my window.
During this nap I had one of those weird lucids. I saw my room but it was different in a few ways, the electrical box on the wall was missing, and in its place was a hole. I focused on it and tried to will it to change "I think I see light on the inside." I said to myself, focusing harder. "I do, there's light." But there wasn't. I gave up, considering my intention had been to turn the hole into a tunnel, by which I would leave the room. Instead, I turned my focus to the window. *eye roll* You know, because I can't use a door. That's just crazy. I flop over, but my body still feels heavy with sleep. I claw my way up to the sill and manage to look outside.
"Come on, you're going to have to do better than this or the dream will fall apart." I thought, trying to will the heaviness from my limbs. Nope. Still not working.
Then, of course, the wind knocked the tension rod out of my window and across my legs, shattering my delicate lucidity, the room suddenly awash with sunlight. Damn it.

The first part is extremely sexual, so I don't think I'll be sharing that. I'll pick up with the part where the DC in my bed help's me stand up. Kind of. I read a post before laying down about how to summon a DC, and I used one of the suggested techniques to make other things happen too.

At one point he laughs at me, saying I'm being very familiar and don't even know his name. He hands me a sheet of paper but it's all

gibberish, the only thing I can make out on it is HTFPBEAN and I refuse to call a man Bean, that can't possibly be his name. I hand the sheet back.

"And your name, my lovely?" He asks, he has a light accent that sounds like Jimmy Angelov from Practical Magic. I don't say it

aloud, but have willed it onto the paper, "Ah, yes. Saja, what a beautiful name." He almost hisses this, but it's not creepy.
Eventually I am laying on my stomach and he is laying on my back. He responds to my unspoken annoyance and frustration by chuckling.

"Soon, I promise. But first we need to get up."
"I can't. I'm so heavy." I protest. My body feels like it weighs a ton. He rests his cheek to mine and when his eyes look over the

side of the bed, mine are drawn there too.

"This is not my place, since this area belongs to you, you must find the floor. I can't see it. Once you see the floor, I will move us

there. Do you understand?"
Absurdly, I do. I look outward but all I can see is mattress. I try to lift my head but it's so heavy.

"Are you ready?"
"Wait." I gasp. "I can't see the floor from this angle."
"We'll have to do this together, Saja."
"I know, I know." We fight the weight of our bodies and make it to our knees. He's pressed tight to my back, one arm across my

shoulders.

"Focus." He says against my ear.
"I'm trying." The world falters and my vision doubles. We collapse forward and hit the wall where the pillows are stacked.

I force myself to expect my vision to be normal. No. I shift my perception and make my vision normal, I turn my eyes to the floor, "Okay, now!"

Everything twists and suddenly I'm standing in the doorway to my room. My companion is gone. I frown and look around,

then I realize I can still feel his arm across the front of my shoulders and I relax. We make our way out into the living room. The layout is slightly different and an ugly green-gold velvet couch that used to be in my living room growing up is there.

"That...is an ugly couch." I say. He agrees.

My sister appears and my companion leaves me there to watch her and my nephew talk about how school went for him today.

I shake my head to dispel the daze of common dreaming and make my way upstairs into the bathroom (my house doesn't have an upstairs), the closet door is paneled in mirrors. I catch sight of my face and stop, startled. The top half is all charred with angry red cracks. My eyes are ice green instead of their regular green and the pupils like pin pricks of darkness. I touch my face and lean toward the mirror...what happened?
A maid appears from the far end of the bathroom, there's a door standing open. From here I can see what looks like the railinged side of a hospital bed. Apparently that's where Bean has gone.

"It took it's toll, the burns did." She says to me. "You've been asleep so long." She leaves without another word.

I examine the charred remains of my face. This isn't at all sexy. I can feel Bean watching me from the other room, grinning. I cover my eyes with the flat of my hand and slowly raise it to my hairline, willing the charred flesh to disappear. It does. I reform my nose but have some trouble. At one point my eyes disappear, and my nose was just a bridgeless nub protruding from my face. I don't panic, I just refocus and use my hands to form it, make it small and straight. I think I am finished so I turn away but realize something odd about my face as my eye is catching my reflection in the mirror.
I have to jaws, two mouths. That won't do.
I return to the mirror and take the second jaw lightly between my thumb and forefinger, then I pull it away and it disintegrates. There are ragged lines following the bone of my remaining jaw, so I gently press the skin back together and the cuts vanish. I smile at myself and turn to face Bean who leans against the hospital bed railing with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Look at you! That was fantastic! Just for that show of skill, you get a free ride." I don't for a second think he's talking about his car

. I join him in the other room. Now he's opening the door to a red SUV. He mentions qualities he likes in a woman. I realize then that I've kept my own body. I've always hated my chest. I grab myself and lift my breasts, adjusting them to a smaller size I like more. ((o.O Well, I guess I would if I could.))
He closes the car door and runs to the driver's side. I notice that another me is sitting inside already. He's already taking off. I feel a little cheated.

"Better hurry up!" He calls out the window. I will myself into the car's back seat. He says it will take several hours to get where

we're going. I know I can shorten our travel time. I close my eyes and will the car 'forward'.

The SUV appears beside a tall brick wall holding back a forest. There's a glowing purple portal in the wall. A friend of mine, thinking that this is the way home and to his soulmate has already gone inside.

"Where's Cel?" I ask Bean.
"Went to find Xy, or something like that."
I rush toward the portal.
"Where are you going?"
"To find Xy." I reply and step closer, as I approach it the purple pulls away and reforms into a dark green field, darkening sky

and a hill with a house atop it. There are people milling around everywhere, most of them wearing formal attire and masks. I stop one of them, time feels incredibly short. "Do you know where Xy is?"

"Up on the hill, where she always is. You should know that."
"I'm sorry, I don't remember anything from Before. Thank you!" I run up the hill and into the house. I scan every face knowing

that while I have never actually seen Xy, I will know her when I see her. She emerges from the kitchen and her lovely features pull into a welcoming smile. She enfolds me in a warm, tight hug and slowly rocks/spins us in a circle.

"It is so very good to see you again." She says to me.
"Did you see Cel?" I ask, "He came up here ahead of me."
"He had to leave, the veil won't stay open long."
"Moneca." I say, a small spike of bother hits me. Moneca? This should be Xy. She pulls away and she suddenly looks more fierce,

mean.

"How are you managing the rage, Saja?"
"Well I haven't hurt anyone before, have I?"
"Look at you, altering history to make it more appealing." She grins at me, showing all her teeth.

I snap awake.

Lucid

The first part is a little odd, I don't remember it very well, it was a nap dream. I walk into a room, where Maggie and a man (not Hal) from Falling Skies are talking about the dreams they have of their soulmates. The man is certain that she is his, because they have dreams together, but Maggie informs him that she had a dream where her real soulmate told her that he was coming for her. That he didn't even bother packing an extra shirt. The man in her dreams is Hal, but she doesn't know his name yet. This announcement unsettles her suitor who isn't sure what to make of not actually being her soulmate.
"He said 'I'm coming for you'," When she says it she looks straight at me and it feels like a message. Then she turns her eyes back to the man, "Funny isn't it? If you were my dream man you wouldn't have to come to me, you'd already be here."

Then I am in my car with my boyfriend, he's in the front passenger seat and there is a brown haired woman in a white nightgown in the back seat. She is injured, her body separated from her soul (which looks identical to her physical body) and sits beside her in the back seat. I am driving down a country road and am not paying attention so that I don't brake soon enough and hit the front of a truck which is facing the wrong way, stopped on the side of the road. I can feel the driver glaring down at me. Under the pretense that I am just backing up, I start to turn the wheel to flee the scene. My boyfriend asks me what the hell I'm doing. Everything feels really odd, and just like most car wreck dreams, I start shaking my head.
"No no no...don't worry. I'm dreaming. Everything is fine."
"What do you mean?! Nothing is fine!"
"No really, I didn't really hit that truck because it isn't real. None of this is real."
"Are you crazy?"
I drive back the way we came. "Look around you for a second, look at those loping koala and tell me this isn't a dream." I gesture to the field beside us where a herd of giant koala are running on all fours. He stares at them in amazement but still refuses to believe me.
I stop the car on the side of the road, things start to get fuzzy. "Do you think I could do this if it wasn't a dream?"
He gets a little antsy because there's a man standing on the other side of the fence threatening us with a gun. I raise my hand (with no actual idea what is going to happen) and am surprised when bees spring into existence from the dirt and swarm around the gunman. He growls at us and shoots the woman in the backseat, a single bullet splits and hits her and her soul in the forehead. My boyfriend panics.
"Relax!" I say, I wave my hand and think 'resurrect' and she comes back to life. I make the gunman disappear, then I snap awake.

*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.

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.

Non-lucid
Lucid

Fragment 1: The Lady and the Disgruntled Serving Woman

The people here are human in shape but their skin has different hues. I'm watching a scene play out, there's a woman with pale skin with obviously pink/red undertones gliding around the estate giving orders to the serving staff. Half of them know her well, a quarter of them don't care to know her any better, and the last quarter resent the elevation of her status. She has not been the Lady long, and it is within her rights to make demands, but not all of them like it.
The mansion, in contrast to the people, is all stark white walls, white marble floors with grey veins. There are, however, colorful paintings at intervals in each hallway and where there isn't a painting there are half-circle tables with white vases and bright flowers. The serving woman in question mutters every time the Lady leaves the room. She's now standing on an open patio that leads to the garden. There's a large white planter at her feet full of flowers. The half the flower buds are dark blue fading to white in...splotches. The other half are yellow.
The serving woman's skin has blue and purple undertones, her hair is silver-blue, pulled back into a long curling tail. Her anger makes her seem ugly. A man approaches her from inside. She glances at him and takes one of the flowers in her hand and pulls off the yellow, revealing a blue flower underneath. It's almost like the color is just a sleeve that's meant to be removed. She tosses the thing into a basket at her feet.
"Is there something you want?" She asks, it seems she's inherently unpleasant.
"Her Ladyship is giving you a choice. Either fall in line or leave. Happiness is not a requirement to do your job." I get a good look at him, his skin is faint yellow green. "Do you really think she doesn't know your movements? She sees everything. Remember that."
The serving woman gives him a sarcastic curtsey.

Fragment 2: The Wagon
The area seems like it is inside and outside at once. Like it is a hallway but also a natural occurrence in the landscape. There are gates at regular intervals, locked to keep the enemy from having access to our trade routes. Something has happened to the world, it is winding down, it is more violent than it used to be.
I unlock one of the gates and allow a wagon through. A man I used to work with is driving it, he offers me a ride. I say I have one more thing I need to get first. He asks me a question, about work or how I'm doing.
I turn my back on the wagon and crouch down to do something as I'm answering. When I turn back around I see that they have already started up toward the next gate without me, and that they didn't listen to me at all. It makes me really angry.
"Sure, just leave me here, that's fine." I mutter, kicking at a rock.

Fragment 3: Abandoned (Lucid)
I'm a child, my parents have died and I've been living at a refuge for lost children. There were two cruel boys who are making their way to being cruel men, they are both seventeen and have never been considered for adoption. They don't like me. When a foster parent decided they wanted to adopt me and not the boys, they either hurt or killed him, ensuring that I would end up back at the refuge. There's a man who used to know my parents, a traveling merchant named Nedus. He regrets that he cannot take me with him, because of what the boys might do. He has a son at home to think about.
I'm standing in a library, my back to Nedus. The two cruel boys are hiding, watching us with jealous eyes. I hope they understand that I'm not leaving with Nedus, so they'll leave him alone. I face the door, it's a rectangle of golden light. I'm tired of just standing here.
I decide I can do anything I want. It will be easy. Just like that I leap into a back handspring. I do it again, then again. At first I don't chain them together. Then I think that I should just keep going, so I do. I do several back handsprings and end in a back flip. I'm surprised at how easy it feels and that my mind hasn't gotten into the way and made me smash the hell out of my face or something.
There's a lapse and I'm in what looks like an outdoor office. This, too, is inside and outside at once. For instance, there is a wire fence, and a gate, and there's grass and a hill. But in the corner there is a desk and a bookshelf against a dark green wall. There's a long dark wood beam pointing toward the gate.
I decide I want to do a front flip now. It seems like a new and exciting idea (Why is this more awesome than flying? o.O I'm so weird), I climb up onto the beam. I figure it will be easier to do a front flip off of an edge as opposed to trying to get enough air from a jump to not smash the hell out of my head. I go to the far end and run toward the gate. My mind plays a trick on me and as I near the edge, the beam shortens making me stumble off. I frown and as I'm about to climb back up, I hear the two boys behind me. I wander over to the desk and I see a single book on top of it. It's a thin volume. The top half is smooth, white and pale green plaid. The white has yellowed. There's an oval in the center with an illustration, the bottom half of the book is solid pale green. I think that Nedus' son would love this book.
The boys spot me, I run for the beam, they follow. I climb up onto it and run to the edge, leaping off and front flipping over the gate.
"Do you really think that will save you?" One of them calls after me.

Fragment 4: The Queen
I'm in my childhood home. I'm running up the stairs to find that our pregnant queen/president has been attacked and dragged into one of the transport tubes that line the wall where the fireplace used to be. The tubes go from floor to ceiling, the top and bottom are dark blue, the middle is clear plastic with a handle. It reminds me vaguely of a vacuum cleaner.
I follow after the assailant, pulling open the door and slipping in.

At some point I hurt my forehead, so that I have a cut through my right eyebrow.

I'm in a theater. I think that it's too bright in there and after a long moment I realize that instead of facing to the front, we are all looking to our right to watch a movie on a small projection screen. They stop the movie so they can transfer it to the actual large screen in front of us. The entire time I'm sitting there shaving my eyebrows. At the time I think it's because I cut my head, it seemed perfectly logical to shave off my eyebrows, but I couldn't finish because of the cut. I decide I need to look in a mirror. I walk over to the wall where there just happens to be a mirror.
I'm all dirty, covered in smudges of soot so that I can't really tell what my features will look like with my shaved eyebrows. At first my appearance shocks me, but the longer I look, the less startling it is. I think that I need a towel to wipe off the soot....then I wake up.

Non-lucid
Lucid
False Awakening
I've fallen asleep on the couch in the middle of the day and this is what I got.

I'm in my house, laying on the couch. Everything is in its place and it all feels right. My boyfriend comes into the room and starts to pick a fight with me, it was over something really stupid but I can't remember what it was. He leaves the room, still fighting with me from another. I feel compelled to follow him but instead I roll over and go back to sleep.
I'm in my house, laying on the couch. everything is in its place and it all feels right. My boyfriend is in the kitchen, talking to me. I get up and the world shifts around me. It feels sluggish and my vision keeps warping the room. I walk into the kitchen,
"Hey! This is really weird. I think I'm still asleep."
"Let's watch Supernatural." He says, walking past me into the living room.
"Didn't you hear me? Something weird is happening."
"Are we going to watch this or not?" He asks.
I frown in response, bothered by how he's ignoring what's happening to me, but I follow him. He sits down on the couch with his coffee and waits for me to put in the dvd. I seize one of the cases and put it down with more force than is necessary, annoyed that for some reason I'm expected to do this. Why can't he put the damn dvd in the player? I put it in and turn on the tv. I look at the screen, the play menu keeps blending with an episode making it hard to watch. The then realize it isn't Supernatural but Beauty and the Beast.

"Sorry, this is season 5 of Beauty and the Beast."
"Let's watch it anyway."
"You want to start at the end?"
"Sure."

It bothers me because I realize he doesn't care at all about the story, I wonder if that extends to everything we watch together that I suggest to him. Everything goes blurry and I hold my head, waiting for it to stop.
When it does I'm laying on the couch. Everything is in its place and feels right. I experience a moment of vertigo but it passes. My boyfriend comes into the room and picks a fight with me, and then storms off outside to mow the yard. The front door is open. I move to follow him and run into a small desk pushed against the wall beside the door. I resist the urge to overturn it. It seems extremely stupid that we have a computer right here, and that it's not even centered on the desk. As I move it into the middle I realize why we had it offset, it's sort of...school desk shaped. It's got an uneven side that reminds me of a bottle neck.

"Now I'm questioning everything!" I hear him say. "If you've lied to me about this, what else have you lied about?"

It still seems like a really stupid thing to make him call our relationship into question. I roll my eyes. He starts working and I go into the garage to fix something. The garage door is open and right at the edge of it I can see he's talking to his dad who, per usual, has asked when we're getting married.

"I don't even know if I want to be married now!" He snaps. As he says it he lifts his head and shoots me a look. I'm deeply offended.
"REALLY? Right now? Right there on the yard?" I snap back. He ignores me. Fine. I leave the garage and as I step back into the main part of the house I have more vertigo. This time the unreality of the situation strikes me. Besides, wasn't it raining when I fell asleep?

I shake my head, annoyed, and go to my room to get my shoes. Everything looks as it should, except the colors are more vivid. Movement is easy, like I could jump or fly if I wished. Like I'm weightless. I put on my shoes and jog back out to the living room. I look out the open door and the tree on our patio has large white flowers, near the center it becomes dark pink. The shape suggests an orchid. I decide I'm wasting my time standing here arguing. I run out onto the patio. Why stay here when I can do whatever I want? I look up into the sky, an elegant branch full of flowers hangs down just out of arms reach. I can do anything. I crouch and then leap skyward. At first all I can do is grab the branch.

"Let's try that again." I say, then jump again.

I feel weightless and full of energy. I climb the branch hand-over-hand like it's a rope, I notice there is fruit mixed in with the flowers, they look almost like already cut quarters of a peach but they are dark brown. They smell wonderful. I release the branch and jump down to the roof of the house, fruit in hand. As I walk, I eat. I briefly see the house from overhead. When I see the layout it feels like I've come home, though I've never been to a place like it.
It's got a wide, flat, tan roof. There's a lower section of roof over part of the patio, hugging top right corner of the house in an L shape. I can see the dark vividly green grass, more like moss here. The trees lining the wire fence, hiding everything beyond it.
There are many animals on the roof. I startle several birds. A raccoon-like creature regards me warily. I drop a piece of fruit at its feet and will it to eat. It does so reluctantly.
Anything. Anything. What will I do? I do not want to fly. Besides, the dream has made the boundaries clear and if I have to focus on flying and creating something knew outside the fenced area I'll probably wake up.
I scout the edges of the roof and smile when I see the gate. Of course, my way out.
I drop lithely to the grass below and lope to the gate. I try to walk through when light pink bands of energy repulse me. I frown and look at the guard who just appeared.

"Hey, you wanna let me out?" I ask.
"We're under orders to---"
"To let me out?"
He frowns at me, nonplussed that I'm being difficult.
"Listen..."
"Nooo. YOU listen. I live here, I can leave if I want. If anything happens to me I promise I won't throw you under the bus."

He very reluctantly unbands the energy and allows me to go through. As I'm stepping out to the clear faintly pink bridge beyond I think

"Well, this is new and interesting." Since it isn't remotely like anywhere I've been or imagined, and doesn't match a game I've played. I waggle my fingers at him to say goodbye and then I run across the bridge, then up a ramp. I'm almost out, thank god.

There's an arched doorway ahead. I duck inside and immediately see the rectangle of bright light on the other side of the room, the next and final doorway. A tall man in red robes blocks the light and glares at me.

"What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm leaving." I say, glaring at him.
"So you'll just throw it all away? You know what's expected."
"I don't CARE. I don't want any of it."

I notice a wall, it rises out of the floor at a slant, on the other side of it are lit candles and pictures. An alter for my sister's family, an alter for my brother's. I know this means that they have long since died, but they have done their duty to continue the line, by bearing children.

"They need your children. They will be the most adept."
"I. Don't. Care. I want to leave."
"You can't defy me this way! Do you know who I am?"
I glare at him over my shoulder, absently picking up one of the pictures. "Do you know who I am? After all I've been through, everything I've done for this miserable little world, all I have LOST. You can't make me stay."
"Oh? And who are you?"
I am speaking as Saja even though I have not become her like I usually do. "Are you saying you can't tell?"
"It doesn't matter, I still have to stop you."
"Go ahead and try."

He has strayed from the door. I drop the picture and dart past him. He grabs my shoulders and pushes me off to the side, as I'm rounding to face him.

"Prove it then." He says, drawing his hand back up over his head.

A pinkish-purple energy orb appears in his palm. He throws it at me. I hold out my hand to stop it and absorb it into my palm. It tingles. He looks surprised, especially when I throw it back, but now it's faintly disc shaped and white. He grabs it but instead of absorbing the energy it spreads all over his skin and flickers orange like fire. I charge toward him.
"Ah.Oomeht.Kaelish. Oruk-ti. Ah.vet.MAH." I say it with quiet conviction. I hold my hand out and try to snap to ignite the stuff on his skin (a la Colonel Mustang). But the priest grabs my hand in his fist, making it impossible to move my fingers. We grapple for a tense moment.
He looks disconcerted.
"Didn't you hear me?" I ask.
We end up saying the words together, and I'm amazed that I remember them perfectly.
"So you're an angel, makes no difference to me. You cannot leave."

Spoiler for Random racy scene between myself and another woman. I'm amused to realize she's about Liam's height. My subconscious has a SERIOUS problem.:

Aaaaand then it gets weird. I have no idea what happens here. The camera pulls out and I no longer look like myself but Brienne of Tarth and the man is now a woman with long honey blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. We stand there, holding onto each other. It's kind of an embrace.
"My place isn't here." I say. She agrees with me and we study each others faces. I know she will allow me to go. First though...
I separate from the scene again and Bree leans forward and kisses the girl squarely on the mouth. Watching, I'm really confused why that's happening. WTF?
Then they start to make out. Suddenly I'm the girl with the ponytail and she is bearing me to the ground, settling between my legs and grinding against me. It feels amazing, and real and sharp.

The world wavers and I wonder why the pleasure should feel so real. I tilt my head back and I come to the conclusion that it's something that's happening in the waking world. Even though Bree is sitting back on her heels, I can feel a head on my chest. I run my fingers through their hair, it's long and smooth. My boyfriend, obviously. I allow myself to wake up.

Except that I don't. He sits up and smiles at me. I'm disappointed that he woke me before I could finish the dream and I don't really feel like having sex. He gets up and I follow him into the kitchen. The front door is open. Suddenly a girl I used to work with, Brittany, who has chin length red hair, comes through the door. I'm confused, because if I'm awake the gate should be locked.
I experience another moment of vertigo and I go to greet her like she's supposed to be here.
She smiles, looking radiant. "Hi! Sorry to drop in on you like this, I just wanted to see if you were going to come to the gathering tonight?"

"Of course we are."
"We can just all head over there together then! Here, let me introduce my husband to you."

Her husband comes in through the door. He is at least 6'5", which is gigantic next to my meager 4'11". I stare up at him. He has blue eyes like Liam and his hair is even a little red, though red-blonde. I'm am suddenly intensely jealous of Brittany. Then I'm distracted because another giant comes through the door. This one is an older man, all around big, a little overweight. He's at least 7 feet tall. I wonder how he came through the door without ducking. I shake her husband's hand, ignoring the familiar flush of tension as I regard his height and how similar his build is to Liam's.

For some reason the party is on our lawn. There are a lot of people milling around. I walk outside and I start to feel sick. I stagger back inside and lean over the trash can at the end of the counter. It's tall, about chest high. At some point it turns into a garbage disposal. I feel like there's something in my throat.
I reach into my mouth and start to pull out long ropes of...something. It looks a little like hair with strings of meat and some white stuff. A couple of women come inside and stare at me. I'm embarrassed that they're seeing this. Obviously there's something wrong with me. I grab another handful and pull it out, dropping it into the sink. I cough.
One of them says something I can't remember. Then she asks me if I'm okay.

"Oh yes. I'm fine." I say sarcastically. "Sure. Just stand there and watch, that's fine."
They keep staring at me. I cough and grab another handful from the back of my throat.
"This is what happens when eat meat and you haven't had it in a long time." She says.
"But I haven't."

More vertigo as dream memory replaces actual memory, and I remember a steak I ate earlier. Maybe she's right. I think I'm done for now. As I leave the kitchen I realize one of my back teeth is loose. I'm horrified when I spit several molars into my palm. No no...no. Well, I'll have to go to the dentist...at least I make enough money now that it won't be a problem. I lay down on the couch, feeling dizzy.
I wake up for real this time and am vastly relieved to have all my teeth.

Lucid
((The parts where I see him as Liam and become Saja feel different, like I'm on the edge of being lucid, but I don't make any choices. I just have clarity.))

The beginning is a little hazy. I was a member of an archeological dig in the desert. A man from the government came in to

find a missing woman and debunk our findings. He was being an irritating, arrogant ass, who kept ignoring facts and wouldn't listen to me.
There's a tent pitched alongside a wall, the wall looks like it belongs to the outside of the house I grew up in in MA. Out of the corner of my eye I see a dirt floor and observe all the 7x10 photographs tagged to the canvas. The government agent, Jack, is speaking to a blond woman who pins another photo up and then exits the tent. It annoys me that he's still following the evidence this way, because he's ignoring the danger. He has his back to me, he's wearing a black suit, white shirt, with a thin black tie. He considers the line of photographs, hands on his hips.

I can't help myself. "Still refusing to follow the facts, I see." I say to him. He turns around and drops his eyes to the floor, smiling

a little.

"Oh. Hello again, Brenna." ((I've never been a Brenna before. Huh.)) He ignores my jab and looks after the blond woman

as she makes her way down the narrow canvas hall. "I was sad to see that she had dyed her hair."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"I have a particular weakness for women with black hair." He gives me a significant look, it's almost playful. He's giving me the

option to ignore it. It's only then I realize that I'm Saja. My hair is waist length, black and wavy. I'm even wearing one of her dresses, the hem falls mid-calf, it's a spring green-yellow with a white apron. I draw my hair over one shoulder and smile. He walks over to stand beside me and examines another line of photographs. As he crosses the floor, the wind snaps the canvas overhead creating gaps for the sunlight to stream in. Where it shines on his hair, it makes it look less brown and more red. The longer I look at him the more red there is. He suddenly reminds me of Liam. It's only when he's standing next to me that I realize he's the right height, too. Before I had seen him as my enemy and would not allow myself to find him physically appealing, but he's opened a door and I can't ignore it. Because he looks like Liam.

I turn to face the wall of photographs. They all look the same to me. It's dimly lit snow with a faded splash of blood.

"Well. As long as we're sharing. I can't help but notice how much red you have in your hair...and I have a certain fondness for

redheads." I stare at his profile while he looks at the pictures, and see a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

I fix my gaze on the pictures, pretending to look at them, knowing that as I turned away he looked over to study my profile.
"Look at us. Being civil. Can't have that, can we?" He comments wryly. "Why did you come here?"
"I want to try one more time to help you see the truth, Jack."
"Brenna." his tone is sharp, warning. His expression turns cold. "I don't have time to listen to your tripe."
"TRIPE?" I exclaim, suddenly outraged. "Oh YES. Why bother with facts when you can make up whatever story you like!"
"You were falsifying your findings and when you needed proof that these 'creatures' exist, you murdered a young girl to fit your story."
"You are so incredibly wrong. How can anyone stand to be around you?"
"Well, naturally I'm offended by deception. Honest people get along with me nicely."
"Oh, I'm sure." I snap sarcastically.

There's a lapse. It's after dark. I'm fleeing the tent because I've stolen evidence. Jack caught me at it and is pursuing me with ill

intent. I also overhead him talking about the undercover agent in our unit that was meant to disrupt the core stability of our group, to try to suss out who exactly the murderer is. The landscape looks like the yard outside the house in MA. Where there is a small hill leading down into the neighbor's yard, the lawn fades into sand and the landscape becomes a desert.
I'm barefoot and I can feel the cool sand under my feet. I get a brief bird's eye view of his pursuit. I'm shouting over my shoulder as I run.

"How can you be so willfully blind? When all the evidence is right in front of you!" The dune to my left is, I know, actually a

sphinx that has been swallowed by the desert. I run my hand along the front paw, clearing it of sand. There's some sort of creature nesting between its front legs, close to its chest. I eye the thing and hope it hasn't noticed me. A little ways further there's a stone wall and a line of open doorways. I think I've lost him for now. I jog up the next dune and at the bottom of the following valley is our research and living trailer.
I'm inside now. I pass a guy who looks exactly like Sendhil Ramamurthy. I ask him where Nate and the new girl went off to and he says to the kitchen.

"Will you get them for me, I just found something interesting." He says.

Attachment 4750 I suck at describing this crap, so I made another layout. I cross the living room and go to hall, the door to the kitchen is slightly open and Nate has his back to the door and the new girl, who is Jack's undercover agent. She doesn't feel right somehow, she is raising a large kitchen knife.

"HEY." I say loudly. They both turn around, she drops the knife and looks a little embarrassed. "Looks like we found something.

You wanna follow me?"

They follow me back to Sendhil. We act like I didn't just find the new girl about to murder Nate. Sendhil talks about how he

just found some proof that our group had been infiltrated, but we won't know by who until we can get all the hands together in the morning. The new girl looks extremely awkward, I wonder why I'm not saying anything.

"Jack is on his way here."
"We can meet him outside if you need some time." The girl offers.
I grin at her a little, her cheeks flush. "Sure. Whatever you like."

There's a lapse. Sendhil is trying to show me something, it's a really confusing image. We're looking at something like a mirror

or a tv screen. There a thin metal frame around it and it glows a dim blue. He's sitting right behind me, chin on my shoulder, urging me to look and see for myself.
I see my own face, and his. I can't really remember what happens here. I notice the shape of my eyes, and the curve of my jaw.

There's another confusing moment after another lapse, he says he's going to meet Jack outside. I say I'm going to follow but

when I pass the mirror in the living room I'm a fat young man with pale green eyes and cork-screw curly hair. Then I try to put on my shoes but I forget my socks, and my shoes are shaped all funny. They look more like a walking cast. I don't want to get sand in them when I go outside. So I take them off and try to find socks...

There's another lapse and the story picks back up. I have traveled to a snowy place up north, I have tipped Jack off, telling him

that if he follows me there he will find the proof I've tried to convince him exists. That the woman he thinks I've murdered is actually here and alive. I meet him outside the house, he's huddled next to the wall. I sit down across from him.

"Oh, I didn't realize you'd be here." He says.
I let him pretend I wasn't the one who gave him the tip, and remain silent.
"He said he'll come get me. The girl wakes up every morning at the same time, like clockwork."
"I'm glad you're here." I whisper.
"Are you? Well. There's that at least." he pauses. "We're on different sides."

He looks so much like Liam that I forget he's Jack. "LIAM." I say, leaning forward so my nose is almost touching his. "Do you really think I care about that?"
He doesn't look startled or confused that I used the wrong name. He meets my eyes squarely and shakes his head once, just a little. I can feel my name on his lips. I want him to say it. He's never used my name in the dream.
I will him to call me Saja.
He opens his mouth like he's going to speak and then closes it.

"At least put your arms around me, then?" I say, disappointed.
"I..."
"It's cold."
"I can't."
I want to kiss him on the cheek but I don't. "Fine."
"I'll...see how things play out."
"As you wish."

He smiles a little but he looks sad. We hear the front door of the weathered shack open and we go inside. The girl we have come here to see, lost her fiance out in the snow. They thought she would die. Physically she recovered, but once she woke she would just do nonsensical things and spout gibberish.

"Can we speak with her?" Jack asks.
"You can try." Says her grandfather. "I'll give you ten minutes." He leaves the house and we proceed in trying to talk to her.

I don't remember any of what she says, but she goes over to this small round table by the door.

"You might want to be car---" she deliberately runs into it. "Yes. That's right, keep running into the table."

She and picks up the lamp, "You might want to not---" she then leans forward and knocks her head against it. Hard. "Okay, sure. Knock yourself out."
Jack kind of rolls his eyes at my sarcasm.

"I don't think we'll get anything useful from her, do you?" I ask him.
"I'm gonna talk to the grandfather again."

Now the girl is laying on the table, cuddling with the lamp, her head hanging off the edge. Her skin has an unhealthy blue cast and her eyes look strange.

"Odd are the hours that meet us at the gate." She says. I frown at her.
"What gates?"
"The ones on the edges. IT lives beyond the gates. Follows every grain."

She's really freaking me out and I get the sense that she actually did die out in the snow and whatever THIS is, is no longer human. She's changing into something else. Her lips look blue. She reaches out and grabs the front of my shirt. I tear it out of her grasp and join Jack outside. I'm am done with this creepiness.
He gives the grandfather his best and we start to leave.

"I guess that settles it. You didn't murder her."
"Someone sure did."

He stops me and gestures at my shirt. There's a splash of luminescent blue on the front. Just beyond him I see two tonberry trundle out from the darkness, carrying their lamps and stylized blue knives. There's a glowing blue orb on the ground, they're attracted to it. One of them starts to come toward me. Jack pivots and sees the tonberry.
"Uh oh."
We watch as the second tonberry viciously stabs the blue orb and absorbs its energy. The other one stops in front of me and makes a weird keening noise. I take off across the snow.
"What are you doing?" Jack hisses after me.
"I'm running ya moron. I'll be fine."
The tonberry follows me to the edge of the lake. Running is fluid, so easy. I dive in, and hear a splash as it moves out into the water. Swimming is even easier, I glide effortlessly through the water until I reach the other side and leap to the bank. There's a large snowdrift there, and on the other side I know is the road. I climb over the drift and fall into the snow on the far side startling three strange turkey-peacock creatures into flight. There are three giant zebras in the road. They are the size of draft horses, I know they are extremely aggressive. I grab a handful of snow and pelt the zebra stallion's flank hard, and then dive into a snow drift to hide.
A second later the tonberry bursts through the snow hill I climbed over, the stallion is offended, thinking that the tonberry hit it with a snowball...so the zebra tramples the hell out of it.

Gleefully triumphant that my plan worked, I wake up.

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.

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.