nightmare

So after a few days of failing to pay attention to my dream journal due to finals stress + traveling stress + attempting to recover from this stress, I unexpectedly had a lucid nightmare last night. Good times!

Dream
The basic premise was that I was watching a scary R-rated movie. Or maybe I was just hearing about it from friends who actually were into that kinda thing. I knew for sure that this wasn't something I wanted to watch.

The movie's plot went something like: a random doe in the forest was given a choice of two plants by a forest god, one of which would unleash a disease that would kill all but one creature, and the other that would... maybe not do that? Maybe kill everyone and leave not even a single survivor?

The doe, being a doe of average deer intelligence, happened to eat the first one, and thereby unleashed the plague upon herself, her nearby deer husband, and the world!!! Smashcut to the plague infecting college kids.

The plague was pretty much tailored to be horror movie material, killing indiscriminately and in various horrible ways (like one dude's eyes fell out of his face cuz of his eye sockets warping and that was pretty average), and it was basically just a bunch of friends watching each other die. So it was a lot like the typical horror/serial killer story, where characters are killed off one by one and the focus is on whoever is currently dying or whoever is in danger of dying next.

True to the forest god's promise, there was one girl who, though she was infected, wasn't torn apart from the inside by the disease the way the others were. And the dream/movie got increasingly ridiculous with its plot until the last girl was flying a small biplane for some reason under the direction of her professor and with the oversight of one of her few surviving friends, and I have zero idea how this could possibly have helped anything but maybe my brain was just out of ideas at that point.

Next, the dream/movie started over, except now I was very much in it or watching it or basically put in a position where I couldn't avoid it. It felt like I was right in there with everyone else, but there was no danger of me being infected, so it didn't exactly feel like I was part of their world. I was just trying not to watch people die despite it happening right in front of me.

I think what triggered my lucidity was the whole "being in a horrible situation and wanting to escape" thing, because next I knew I was lucid and trying to figure out what I could do about this awful dream. I was already on a rooftop by that point, now recognizing my surroundings as the 1319 area, and everything was creepy and dark and people were still dying below me (sidenote: lately I don't even remember physically flying up to rooftops when I'm lucid? it's like my brain takes that bit for granted and it just kinda gets cut out, which sucks. I used to struggle with flying and not know whether or not I could make it, but lately I don't even remember it...). Trying to fix the darkness, I said something like, "It's bright out! It's daytime!" not expecting this to work. To my surprise, light appeared instantly, followed by a glorious sunrise that bathed the street in orange. Soon it really was daytime. I was quite surprised that this had worked instantly and effortlessly, but though it made things a tiny bit cheerier the horror story was still going on in the streets below.

I think the movie played out the same way as before, and I hadn't become lucid enough to try to find a way to wake up, so pretty much the main cool thing that happened was me magically making daytime happen. Nice!

Today's dreamsign is: wanting to escape the situation being stuck in a time loop.

uh man it's like 9:42 PM let's see
I wrote some out earlier but then had to restart google chrome gggg but I can still remember some...

Dream - Can't Get Out
So in this one let's seee first of all my bro and I were chilling in this big old movie theater complex, and we befriended this one kid in a wheelchair and borrowed something from him, like maybe a handheld game thing. And then later we realized we needed to give it back to him, but by that time he was chilling by the concession stand next to the stairs, and we were on the second floor directly overhead (also next to the stairs), and for WHATEVER reason we decided to try to lower it through a hole in the floor to him, rather than just going down the stairs. Think there was also an elevator by them stairs. But nah. Too convenient I guess. Too easy.

So we tried to lower it to him using a jumprope but I'm pretty sure that didn't work. Like, maybe there wasn't even a hole in the floor to begin with. Crazy stuff.

Next bit was me alone in the theater complex still, in some back area that was super well decorated. Looked like the living space for some rich retired guy; open spaces, fireplace with a mantel, gold stuff and nice furniture all around, and like, random stuff displayed on stands like it was a museum or art exhibit or somethin'.

I think I was looking for something. The mood was sort of heading towards horror-ish, though I'm not sure how. And then the rich retired guy walked in behind me. He was pretty friendly, really. Quite welcoming. I guess we were sort of buddies or on the same side or whatever.

So then I hopped in an elevator and started heading down to the basement, but had a brief moment of lucidity when I realized that this was a dream and that I really did NOT want to go down to the basement. There was going to be something terrible down there. That's how basements are, in horror games, and this dream had at some point become a nightmare. By now I was huddled in the corner of the elevator, facing the door, fighting my fear.

I started trying to figure out how to wake up. I tried to feel my IWL body, asleep in my bed, but there was absolutely no sign of it. I couldn't perceive it even slightly. It really was just me in the dream, as far as my mind was concerned. I think I abandoned the attempt to feel my body and instead tried to just "wake up", but that didn't work either and soon the lucidity died.

The elevator reached the basement and the doors opened to reveal darkness, and a menacing basement sort of atmosphere; but where I was expecting some monster to appear, the confident retired man walked up, in a white suit that defied the darkness around him. He stepped into the elevator, and we headed back upstairs.

I don't remember what happened next. I think we ended up back in the main part of the theater, and I might have woken up soon after.

Fragment: Me walking along, hugging myself, then realizing that the people around me can see my body language.

Hey nice I made it to April neat

uhhh hm let's see I'm not super happy about last night's dream because it was so dark but I guess I'm putting it down anyway. the nice thing was that although it had some disturbing content and I didn't know it was a dream, my mental state was still pretty ambivalent about the whole thing.

Spoiler for icky horror things:

Dream - YT Let's Play + Wicker Man, I guess?
aiight so the main setting of this dream was that I was watching a horror let's play on YouTube, so practically the whole thing was third person. The main character was this incredibly unfortunate little boy and the bad guys/monsters were a bunch of women on an island (so like The Wicker Man, pretty much).

Uh man I don't even remember that much except all the terrible stuff that happened. I suppose the sequence of events was something liiike...

(1) The horror game's entire premise abruptly devolves into "let's watch this boy get sort of ritualistically tortured by crazy people". I remember he was in some odd dark torchlit room with some powerful male guy leading the whole ritual and a bunch of female subordinates carrying out other stuff. I don't quiiiite remember what happened except for the part where the kid, already injured in some way, was standing there looking up at the (very tall and shadowy) male leader guy in horror, and then looked down to see that his left foot had been cut off in the middle of his shin, so quickly that by the time he looked down it was already gone. And he was just standing on one leg. Or something. And that was pretty much just the latest in a long list of things that had already happened but those have slipped my memory OH WELL 8)

(2) Dreamed my (old) cat Mitsie was in the horror game engaging in typical Mitsie shenanigans: that is, doing the thing that you don't want her to do, and running away when you try to get her to stop. In this case, she'd found that chewing on some kinda poisonous gel capsule gave her a nice high, but it was probably also killing her. Some girl who wasn't me (but who I think I was controlling) kept trying to stop her, and had to chase her around because Mitsie was pretty adamant about this course of action.

(3) Back to the kid again. It had now been firmly established that he was at the mercy of the Wicker Man-esque ladies, trapped on the island, and basically totally screwed. It was also apparent that whatever they'd been doing to him wouldn't or couldn't kill him. He may have had advanced healing powers which is basically a must if you're going to vacation to that island, apparently.

Uhhh *thousand yard stare* right yes so then the last bit I think I can remember was that two women were torturing him again, saying that there were two things in his chest that they were going to remove, and their surgery tool of choice was a file. They were going to cut two squares in his chest/stomach just by rubbing the file against his skin until it cut through, which would make one line, and they'd need like eight of those *waxes mathematical*. Even though it was third person I could sort of feel it as they started. So uh. Hm. Yeah that's about as much time as Imma dedicate to recording this.

Had an episode of nightmare SP while on my side/stomach, which seems kind of unusual. Also first time I've had SP. Bleuch.

Dream 1 - Dream SP?
Started out with me dreaming I was in a grocery store with Andrew at like, 6 am, so maybe it counted as a false awakening? The grocery store was mostly deserted. Then I was trying to walk normally but I kept sort of falling into a crouch or to one knee. I couldn't seem to stand up, not for longer than a few seconds. I had the impression it was because of the shoulder-strap bag I was carrying, maybe it was way, way too heavy.

Anyway before all that happened it was just a nice 6 AM grocery store visit. I also got the impression that nearby was an older couple who visited the grocery store at 6 AM as a nice little custom of theirs, before other people were around. And also I was trying to find a nice jug of apple cider, but I kept running into the storebrand stuff, which was kinda watery looking and bleh.

Then I started having trouble staying up, like I was just too tired, and the bag was too heavy. I made continuous and valiant efforts to rise, but even when I could stand up, staying standing was impossible to maintain. I think it kept getting worse, but before it hit that point I ran into some older dude who chatted me up and then invited me to his and his wife's divorce ceremony; she showed up around when he was saying that and I noticed two rather recent-looking scars on the back of her right wrist. It sort of looked like a failed suicide attempt. I determined that the older dude was Pretty Terrible.

At some point the mp3 player in my bag started going off. I don't know what song it was playing. I started digging through my bag looking for it, but even this was difficult; I was not only weak, but uncoordinated. Also, around this point Andrew had been replaced by Ben, who I spotted wandering away from me, and following him was impossible. I think I called after him. Probably some sort of striking metaphor for coolkids goin' to college. And the random peeps around me didn't seem to notice that I was in need of assistance. It was all pretty weird.

Uhhh I think I woke up briefly and then slipped into a nightmare.

Dream 2 - Nightmare
Bleuuuhhh I don't remember much of this, except the traumatizing part. It was basically like watching a movie. Trigger warning: rape, etc.

*siiigghhh* okay all I remember is that the movie was cutting back and forth between two different groups, one of which was two businessmen, and the other one being, idk, a woman and her friends ?? so I really only remember a couple cuts before it got dark. It cut from the female group to the two guys in an elevator, one being some guy who'd been around in the company longer but maybe wasn't much older than the other guy and was probably a psychopath and wore glasses, and the other being some dude who was pretty similar but did not wear glasses and I'm not sure how to describe their characteristics. Then a cut to the woman and her friends goin' out in the dark to party or coming back from a party, idk. And then just this fricking cut to the glasses psychopath raping the other guy, who was pinned down, gagged, and making pitiful noises that have thankfully slipped my memory, while the glasses psychopath was talking like this was perfectly normal or doing some sort of villain monologue. My brain flipped the frick out like "what he must've chloroformed the guy oh no him being alone in the elevator with him was such a mistake I want to wake up now", and then I think I was awake.

dat SP tho
So I was awake (though still mentally only half-awake) and still traumatized and wanted to just kinda get up, but I couldn't move. It didn't really occur to me that this was a huge issue. I think I was just waiting for my body to move. I was on my stomach with my head turned to the right looking at my desk, and the edge of the bed was right next to me. So, when it became clear that my body was not going to move, I decided that I was just going to roll off the edge of my bed and wake myself up. These calculations were all done while I was still half-awake, and some part of my mind was processing the whole not-moving thing in a fairly analytical way that (for the moment) staved off panic. (Also, realistically, there wasn't really room for me to roll off the bed, and I would've probably hit the desk and ended up awkwardly wedged between it and the bed frame to some degree, but at the time that seemed a reasonable risk and/or I felt invincible, like I was still dreaming, and/or my view of the floor was a bit skewed so it seemed like I should've been able to land without injury. Presumably the same part of my brain that jumps out dream windows was managing things.)

My plan to roll off the bed failed as I continued to not be able to move. It didn't feel like being pinned down. It sort of felt like being too ill or tired to move, which for some reason felt familiar, though no real reason for that comes to mind. I still wasn't panicking, just sort of continuously sending signals to my body that it should roll off the bed.

Then, all at once, fear rolled over me and I started hyperventilating through my nose. I got the impression that if I looked over my shoulder, I'd see a demon on my back. I looked back (I could only move my eyes) and seemed to glimpse darkness; not the absence of light but something that entirely defies light. At the same time, there was a building roar in my right ear, and something like a demon voice laughing or making some kinda weird noise, not actually speaking, and maybe some third louder noise, and then it all just snapped off like a light switch.

I can't clearly remember the line between being paralyzed and suddenly not being paralyzed. Looking back it seemed like I started getting up the second I was able to, though not in a panicking way (wasn't hyperventilating anymore either). The fear had been temporary and sort of artificial, as if it was just sort of The Thing To Do in that instance, which is reminiscent of other nightmares. I suppose the reason for that is that realistically, there isn't much for me to be afraid of. If I'm afraid of something in a dream, it's because I'm supposed to be, but I don't really have a death phobia in dreams so that lends a sort of invincibility. Bahhhh I can't explain it. I'll try again later.