lucid

Non-lucidSemi-LucidLucid

I concocted a plan to confront LG, utilizing the golden bullets he left me. This is the plan:

Originally Posted by Sam's Paper Journal

Note: this is not a dream.

I'm standing by the Bar in McAnally's, the pub in Dresdenverse Chicago. The building is established neutral ground, and the place is specifically designed to break up magical energies. Its design is broken up into odd nooks and crannies perfect for a dream walk.

I order two beer from Mac and take them, handing Mac a twenty with my right hand as I hold the other two in my left. I thank him and make my way to a nearby table. I set down the beers.

I reach into the right pocket of my jeans, where I put the golden bullets LG had threatened me with. I place them on the table in front of me and look up at the ceiling while sipping on my beer. It tastes like I imagine butterbeer would: rich and sweet. Inexplicable.

"You really expect me to drink this?"

I open my eyes to find the Lunar God eying me skeptically. I relax and take another sip.

"I would have ordered a bottle of Pinot Gris again, but I'm really not in the mood for champagne."

The Lunar God leans forward over the table. "Sam." He says, "No games. What do you want?"

I'm wary of him. "I want to know who you are."

He leans back in his chair, satisfied. I watch the smirk form on his face and settle in for a round of bargaining. I don't forget that those little golden bullets on the table have been used to try to claim my life.

This is the result:

I'm with the Joker in an armoured truck in a scene eerily reminiscent of Fight Club. Now, what could that mean?


You're just a freak, like me!

I'm following two characters and a potential horror movie from a third person point of view. At one point, I accidentally possess one of the characters and take some time off from the plot to... dye my hair. So yeah.

Same location. I'm waiting for my karate class to start. I check my watch, and it's 6:90PM. I guess I'm late. No, wait, this is a dream sign. I look around, confused, because this doesn't really feel like a dream. I pay more attention to my surroundings, and realize that it actually is a dream. I stop to savour the amazing feeling of being lucid.

"I'm dreaming," I say, and I start to repeat it to myself as I move around the dream-world. I'm not feeling very well, so I go to grab something from the fridge (in a place I've never been). I'm craving rasberries. When I open the fridge door, I find clear Yop yogurt containers filled with frozen rasberries. I eat a few.

I'm moving toward the exit when Ben stops me and wants me to listen to a song. It's rap music. I'm not interested, and there was something I wanted to do tonight, so I'm busy. A brief wrestling match with my brother ensues, but I shake him off and run to the exit. A steel staircase leads to a latched window.

I will the window to be open. I crawl out and latch it behind me.

I remember that I wanted to go to McAnally's to meet with the Lunar God character. I stretch a hand out in front of me and will the dream to dissolve. I close my eyes briefly, but when I open them, the green grass and concrete and sun are still there. Energy continues to swirl around me. I close my eyes again, and push through the dream-fabric.

When I open my eyes again, I can't see anything. Everything is dark, though coloured energy swirls through the space to break up the monotony. There seems to be a slight tear in the dream, so I move toward it (zooming closer, not walking). I drop to my knees and feel for the wooden door that I'm sure should be there. I imagine the texture, feel for iron handles of the closed door. I visualize the grain of the wood that should be there, the glass that is set into it.

"Open the door," says Mac, rolling his eyes. "We keep them open while we're open."

I stand up and dust myself off, looking at the four pointed star mounted on the door, just above my eye level. Did I create that?


The dream star was more ornate.

I shake off the strange feeling and move to the bar beside the door. This isn't anything like I'd imagined the place to be. The wood is darker, glossier, and everything is more streamlined than I'd expected.

"Two beer." I say to Mac. I dig through my pockets for the twenty that should be there, but I only find a bunch of change in my right pocket, where the bullets should be. Loonies, toonies, quarters. I apologize for paying in change, and I give him the $20 pile of change, minus the six loonies I need for LG. I consider that since we're in Chicago, I should have given him American money. I let my hand hover over the pile of change, and will it into American bills. The money flickers and I see paper. I'm not sure if it worked.

Mac waves me off, and I grab the beer and my loonies, setting them both down on a round wooden table near the bar.

"Aw, you don't need to do that," says a voice, "You already paid for drinks."

"These aren't coins," I say, turning to look at what I think is the Lunar God. He's younger than any incarnation I've seen before. He grins in understanding and takes a seat.

I take a sip of the beer. It tastes like Pilsner.

There's a third person at the table, whom I never acknowledge. Her (?) presence seems shadowy, dark, barely there. I think it's Elaine.

A girl comes up to LG and asks if it's okay if she leaves with someone.

"Yes." says one of us, before LG can comment. We kind of need to talk to him.

Unfortunately, LG's very presence seems to destabilize all dreams, and I can't remember a damn thing after that. Including whether I still have the bullets.

Failed Interrogations. Scare Factor: 3. Reaction: I need a new plan.[/QUOTE]

I'm checking out a gym in the new city I've apparently moved to. It's based in a university/college/high school, and membership is affordable.

A group of (mostly female) students are being led around by their female teacher. Some of the girls need to use the bathroom, so the group is collectively looking for one. They're in subway tunnels now, and the teacher is talking to a bouncer outside some kind of establishment, who won't let them in because they're women or minors or both.

I'm talking to my brother, Ben, at some kind of family gathering on a farm, when he starts quoting The Spoony One verbatim while we're talking about a game. Movie. Book. IDEK. Anyway, I call him on it, but he has no idea what I'm talking about. My cousin Reg, who's the same age as my brother, says he got to see a screening of that once. They're online videos, I tell him. What the hell.

We're trying to watch The Daily Show, but Ben tells me that we can't watch the episode because it's only on the US version of the site. I explain to him how you can use an add-on for Firefox to - ahem. Never mind.

Running up the stairs at the farm.

Someone explains to me that the farm is in danger and we have this plot going on to save it. Jill rolls her eyes and tells me to run because I'll never hear the end of it.

"I'm dreaming." I realize at some point. I blink in surprise. "How am I lucid?" I wasn't planning on having any lucid dreams tonight.

I'm going for a quick meal in Tim Hortons, trying to decipher the menu and remember what I can eat. I really want some chicken noodle soup, but I can't eat it since I'm vegetarian. I could get a bagel, but I don't really want a bagel. When I step outside again, I continue with my dream. Apparently I'm a student in some Squamish/Halifax hybrid. There are mountains in the not-so-far-away distance, and one in particular is relevant to the plot. So are the houses I'm biking towards.

Unconscious Desires to Move to a New City. Again. Now. Scare Factor: 1.

Originally Posted by PrettyEyes

The Dog and Space

6/12/10

I am in this 3 story home and I am sitting by the computer answering emails. I look down and notice my arms are different as well as the hair on my head.. it is much shorter so I get up and I see I am wearing a red shirt and low rise jeans. This was not my body ..so I go over to the mirror and I can see that it was definitely not me.. but I can't see the face at all. I have this little hairy dog and he is hoping around. There is this man sitting on the couch looking through a shoe box. So I turn to him telling him I am going to walk the dog. He was a very handsome man.. and from what I gathered he had just arrived at my home for a visit. He came from Australia don't know how I knew but that is what was presented in my memory in my dream. I take the leash to walk the dog and this man is smiling at me. So I take the dog up the street by the grass.. and he is hyper ( the dog). I go by this playground and water sprinklers are on.. children are running in and out of it. So I decided to take the dog through it. As I approach the sprinkler a few of the children block the water.. I guess the assumed I didn't want to get wet. So I tell them to let it go.. my dog gets wet but starts to crap on the ground .. I start to pull him away and he is just crapping. I decided to head home and the dog wants to use the bathroom some more. I check to see if he was ok and notice his feces is similar to horse dung.. it had fiber like substance to it.. like hay. And he leaps on me. I tied him to a pole so I can go in the house and grab some towels to clean him up because he stepped on his own poop and his hairs had some on it too.
I go in the house and the guy that was there seemed a bit nervous.. so I ask him if he is ok. He told me he feels something is wrong. I told him everything is alright. I look out the window and see the dog is panicking.. hopping up and down trying hard to get off the pole.
So I go out there and hear this sizzling sound. I look up and one of the wires to the electric pole is whipping around above me so I quickly grab the dog to move him. I see the sky is starting to take a on a different color.. a storm was coming. I was concerned about this power line.
I take the dog back in but he is uneasy hopping around and the man tells me " we should follow the dog" I agreed and the dog started taking us away from the house..
Where we were walking it was quite steep.. we were moving uphill.. I guess that was how the street was made. I smell heat and the guy next to me is not looking back. The little dog is moving forward so I look back and to my horror being us moving up top of this steep slope I can see lava consuming the neighborhood below. The sky was half darken from the smoke and this lava was just moving slow taking everything in it's path. I look at the dog and feel content like he was leading us to somewhere safe.
My dream switches and I am moving through the skies upward. I begin to realize I am floating outside in space. It was quiet..dark and I see this blue light.. I look down and see it is earth. It started to hit me that I was floating in space.. and I start to get worried because I am moving away from earth. I notice this wire or rope attached to my hip and it starts to get tight.. not around my hip but tight as in stretching as far as it could go.. I was worried it might snap and send me spiraling into space in it's darkness. I look to see how far the rope is and it was attached to earth.. I tried to grab it and pull myself down.. this rope started to get thin.. like the size of a strand of hair and I was scared it will snap.. but at the same time I was calm.. I start telling myself to wake up..wake up!

I jolted out of my sleep breathing hard.. that was it

I'm drinking. A lot. At a bar. I'm wondering if it's Saturday night and I missed the meetup with Vicki. I see Matt and Jen from High School on the other side of the bar, and debate over whether I want to talk to them. I've been drinking things like rum and coke all night, and now I've moved onto Pinot Gris. I guess. It tastes like champagne.

I'm in the backyard of the Ixburg Inn, having been ordered to clean up the scaffolding houses by my dad. I notice movement in another yard, a brief dark flash. I watch the roof of a nearby building for another sign of it. There's a dirtbiker up there. My mom and I watch him ramp from that roof an impossible distance over the highway. He lands badly, but that was supposed to happen. He's fine.

At a fair, I argue with Gus about something. I'm Shawn Spencer, and my dad (Henry) is around, too. The fair has a layout suspiciously similar to the backyard I was just in.

As myself, I put the truck in park, turn off the ignition, and raise my hands slowly. I'm turning toward the man in the passenger seat, who is happily delivering his Hannibal Lecture while pointing a gun at me. It's a revolver, I notice.



He explains to me that the time I was born can be flipped backwards to show the time it is right now. "You see," he says to me, "This time is the antithesis of your birth."

"Yes, that's very poetic."

I'm ordered out of the truck. I keep my hands up as I follow his orders, stepping onto the green grass in the backyard of my house. I know that there are kids inside the house, quite possibly my cousins. At this point in the dream, though, I think they might be mine.

I try to bargain with the man, but I know that he's going to kill me. If I resist, he says he'll kill everyone inside, but I can't be sure that he won't do that anyway. We circle each other over the grass. The man tells me that these bullets were specially made for me.

Don't I feel special.

The gun wavers for a moment, and I take my chance. I lash out with a kick to his wrist, then grab for the gun. I pick it up and aim at my tormentor. He raises his hands and grins, daring me to do it.

I can't. I empty the revolver of the gold bullets. They spill to the ground, and I scramble for the six of them. I stumble backward as the man laughs. I step inside, latching the glass patio door behind me.

"Go downstairs," I order my cousins. "Get one of the adults to call 911. Ask for police!" I shout at their retreating backs. I move through the house, locking and bolting the other two doors shut.

"So..." says my uncle, "We're safe as long as we don't go outside."

I consider the patio door, how easily the man could get in. "We're safe." I lie.

"Wait," I say after a beat, "Has anyone called 911?"

I curse and grab for the nearest black portable phone. I dial three numbers. "Hello, I need police at -" Silence on the other end. I glance at the display and read 901. Great. I'm wandering down the stairs at this point, redialling the number repeatedly to no effect. I see a flash of the man, laughing. I consider that he might have cut the phone lines.

"Does anyone have a cell phone?" I shout into the basement, frustrated and panicking. I begin redialling numbers on a blackberry no one gave me. 090. 901. 109. 119. My frustration reaches a peak -

And I realize that this is always what happens in dreams. I look up the stairs to the side door, reasoning that I fell asleep in my bedroom and there's no way I could actually be here. I walk up the stairs, touching things (the bannister, the wall), feeling the texture in order to solidify the dream. I'm worried about waking up. I unlock the door, open it. When I step outside, it's dark, and there's a layer of snow on the damp ground.

I move toward the street, making footprints as I go. I look up to the night sky, which is clear and filled with stars.

"Go to the moon," I whisper aloud. "Go to the moon."

I stretch a hand out in front of me, willing a portal to open, for something to happen. A pulse radiates outward from my hand, blurring everything briefly and circling behind me. I can still see the stars. The dream dissolves.

I'm in some kind of afterlife realm, filled with ribbons and people and flying. I'm attached to the colour yellow, which I hate. I try flying, but can only achieve a delayed falling effect.

LG's Got a Gun. Scare Facter: 4.5. Reaction: Lucidity!

I did the faux-math LG was trying to tell me about. Apparently I'm supposed to die next week. Saturday-ish.[/QUOTE]

Overlooking a dirt street from the rooftops. A man is talking to a thief-girl he saw on the street. She bolts, and he makes no move to catch her. The girl swings her way onto the rooftops, moving directly past my hiding place. I'm immediately in pursuit. She panics, makes her way to a pillar jutting from the roof, hoping for a reprieve. It should be impossible to climb, but I use my momentum to move upwards and find handholds where there are none.

I may not be an alchemist, but I have my own talents.

I face off against the girl on top of an eight foot circle of concrete.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I say, "I just need to know what he told you."

The girl lashes out at me, shrieking. I dodge her easily. She strikes again, goes wide, and loses her footing - I grab onto her tattered cloak, and her momentum pulls me with her from the top of the tower. I'm holding onto the edge with one hand, but if I want to keep the girl from falling, I have to let go.

I let go of the wall entirely, touching only with my feet. I'm holding the girl in my arms and am standing at a ninety degree angle to the wall. There's a moment of breathless surprise from the girl in my arms before I jump -

We land easily on the roof below the tower.

I have a quick conversation with the dazed pickpocket, who takes off after giving me the information I need. I don't follow.

"Elric!" I shout to the street. The man from before, with long, dark hair and glasses, looks up at me, quietly amused. I drop down to the dirt road in order to interrogate him more quietly. Alphonse doesn't back down. "I need to talk to your brother."

The conversation goes nowhere, and I find myself tailing the younger Elric brother from the rooftops. I stay low, watching the reactions of the AS2-style city guards so I don't have to keep him in my direct line of sight.

I follow him to a building with glass double-doors, and I drop down onto the street. I walk toward the guard. I think about giving him a three-digit code for "I'm following that guy; don't get in my way," but I'm bad with numbers while I'm dreaming. I nod at the DC, willing him to pass on the message. It worked. As I walk down the hallway, I'm aware of the DC passing it on to the other guards in the area.

Alphonse is reporting to someone in an office with a glass wall. I can't keep the woman from seeing me, but Alphonse has his back to me, and I walk past the office as if I belong there, into an L-shaped corridor. As I round the corner I have a brief 3rd person glimpse of myself wearing Assassin's White. I stand at the edge of the glass wall, behind curtains, trying to hear what's being said.

((Note: Deliberate perspective leaps could be useful while spying. Try to induce these deliberately.))

The meeting is over and I quickly move down the hallway into an unexplored room. As I open the door, I realize that this is Edward Elric's study. I notice the cot jammed into the far corner. Or bedroom. Black blankets are piled around the room and I briefly consider hiding under a pile as Alphonse opens the door. Only, that would be undignified.

No, it's time for a two-sided interrogation. This should be fun.

Amestrian Conspiracies Involving Your Protagonist. Scare Factor: 2.

I'm standing in one of the cabins at a bible camp I used to attend. There are two girls in the room, and the first asks if I'll be staying here. I'm a bit confused, so I say that's possible, as I move my stuff across the room to an empty bed. This is an empty bed, right?

"What year is it?" I ask.

Without even blinking, the first girl replies, "1995". I do some quick calculations and realize that I'm pretty sure I didn't go to bible camp until '96 or '97. Briefly, my dream-self is my present-me, though no one other than me notices. I concentrate on shrinking myself to a point where I'll fit the story.

The first girl wants to make me feel better, so she hands me a 1995 issue of Climbing, still in plastic. I'm pretty excited, so I thank her and take the package, tearing it open. I ask if I can use the poster insert for the week, to hang on the wall. (Note: my real bedroom walls are plastered with climbing posters, art, postcards, and maps.) I notice that I've ripped the cover up the spine a bit, so I look for some tape to fix it.

Girl #1 asks me not to tell on her for using the word "hell".

I look around my suitcase and find a spiral bound notebook small enough to fit in the pocket of my cargo pants. The front pages are already filled with dream journal entries prefixed by the "~" I use in my written journal. I grab a pen, too. Might as well start on the kid genius routine to get a few writings published early.

Girl #2 is reading a book when the counsellor walks in, a girl with black curly hair who, huh, would actually be younger than me in real life. Weird. She praises the little girl with long blonde hair, who just looks more and more annoyed as she's praised and showered with gold stars and cabin points.

Hey, I remember that. In grade three. With the book on volcanoes. Hm.

Girl #1 immediately scoops up a book and pretends she was reading the whole time. The cabin counsellor looks at me expectantly.

"Eh heh, no." I say flatly, "I just finished reading The Great Gatsby; I'm going outside."

I wander away, looking for something to do. None of my contingency plans for time travel to bible camp go farther than "try not to get exorcised".

I sit on a swing and recognize a few relatives from an inlawish side of the family that doesn't actually exist yet. As I probably haven't met them, I resolve to swing on swings. And ask people what they would do if they got to relive their respective childhoods. Other than die of boredom.

Whatever it was that I decided to do, it got me in trouble, all right. There's a boy from the swing set crying in the kitchen we've been left in, repeatedly saying, "I'm going to hell!" I try to reassure him by saying that there's no such thing as hell; it's just a story. I stop short of saying "There's also no God, Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus," because that would just be mean. Oddly, the boy doesn't seem to have calmed down at all. So I ignore him.

From what they tell me, I'm half-sure they're going to get me to do their accounting for them. It turns out that the Mad Hatter intervened and I get to serve my time in the kitchen developing new flavours of candy. Mad Hatter, Willy Wonka, either way, I get to hang out with Johnny Depp.

Lucid moments while I'm waking up, or they wake me up. Dream scenes fade, swirling away into a brown-black nothing, while I hold on to the feeling of whatever I'm touching at the moment.

Bible Camp. Scare Factor: 2, oddly enough.

I think I used to have better dream control than I do now. More frequent lucidity, as well.

September 2007

Why walk when you can fly? I have an impression of stone steps and pathways. They cling to the steep, grassy hilltop, jutting out into the wet, grey sky. The pathway seems to be large enough for only one person, but the pair of us climb the steps side by side.

I am looking ahead of us as the path ends at an alcove made of stone and concrete, similar to the one that used to be behind our apartment building in Ixburg, but it doesn't smell like mushrooms. If there is a smell, it's sharp, soft, clean. The smell of rain or of mountain air. On either side of the alcove, a trail begins, forking out from the steps. There the trail barely clings to the steep slope.

I can feel everything around me, imagining the texture of a surface as my eyes glance over it. The pebbles in the pathway, the grass and moss... everything tingles with the prospect of rain.

I let go of the ground, and drift upwards slowly until I am floating about a foot above the path. I am being pulled upward and pushed downward, and I hold on to the feeling. This is effortless.

Like a ghost - a painfully, ecstatically alive ghost - I drift alongside my companion. We discuss this phenomenon. I can still feel the ground, the sky, the grass. I simply didn't want to walk anymore, I explain.

The breeze doesn't occur to me. I am not bothered by rippling air currents. All that exists is the humming force which keeps me suspended in my dreamworld.

Gravity Hack. Scare Factor: 1. I wonder who my guide was in that dream. I think he was part-animal in the mythological sense, somewhat similar to a minotaur. Except more friendly.

Go to the moon was kind of my madness mantra last night. Attempted to remember that I wanted to do this.



I'm in the basement of a building my grandparents used to own. In the dream, it had been extensively remodeled since then. I try to apply the actual blueprints to the dreamscape, but it's too confusing. I hear newborn kittens. I see a few heads of bread-mice scattered around. The mice here are made of bread. I pick up a half-eaten copy of a book by Neil Gaiman, and decide that this is all his fault somehow.

Shift.

I'm in a love story, switching between two of the three main characters' points of view. I leave down the stream with the guy who's not me? This is confusing.

Shift.

I'm in a forest, hearing a Voice that gives me instructions. I'm happily running through, surrounded by green, green grass and trees, when I come to a stream. I jump straight over it, but land awkwardly on the other side, not having gone as far as I thought I would.

Water saps your power away, The Voice explains, That makes rivers difficult to cross.

I'm frustrated, because dreams should be doing whatever I tell them to, but the dream-logic makes sense for now. I consider another, wider, river nearby.

I'm near where the forest was, but now I'm surrounded by stone: banisters and stairways and what could make for some very fun parkour sequences. I glide up onto the banister, ready to jump, when I suddenly realize that because this is a dream, I really can go anywhere.

Go to the moon.

Oh, yeah, I was gonna try to do that tonight. I hop off the banister, landing easily on the stone floor. I hold a hand out as I had visualized, feeling through the dream-fabric. I feel and hear a buzzing, and watch in amazement as the dream within stone building abruptly disintegrates, leaving only the night sky. I look down, fully aware that I made it and I'm on the moon and -

Too much surprise.

I'm lying face down on the bed, just like when I last went to sleep. Everything is dark and I keep my eyes shut, trying for another shot at the dream. I feel plastic beneath my hands*, but I aim to kneel down and feel the moon rocks that must be at my feet.

Shift.

"How the hell are we going to stop that thing?"

"I'll take care of it."

"How?"

"I'll take care of it."

I'm using a fellow officer as bait, but I don't have any strong feelings on the matter. The monster is approaching from down the hallway, turning a corner toward me. It spots me, and I retreat into the room, leaving the door open behind me. I'm standing just around a corner, out of sight from the door. The monster steps into the room, and spots the injured officer lying on the bed. I remind myself that this is a dream and I will be able to do this.

The monster rounds the corner, snarling, and I grab it by the scruff of the neck and somewhere along the back (it might have been wearing clothes) and I throw it - hard - toward the window. It goes flying as if it weighed a pound, crashing either through the mirrored door of the closet and the wall behind it. It didn't land as if it weighed a pound.

I'm outside, on the red, ceramic tile rooftops, no longer worried about the monster. I consider taking another shot at getting to the moon. I hold up another hand, trying to feel the dream fabric. I little bit of deep blue bleeds through where my hand is. I put up the other hand, trying to force myself through. It doesn't work. New method.

I'm standing at the edge of a rooftop, unable to see into the abyss that lies before me. I jump, only concerned that this might make me wake up. I land. Without looking, I can tell I'm still in the same dream-scape, so I jump again.

This time I fall and fall and fall, visualizing the black tower that Nomad described. I land, easily, and I can tell that I am, in fact, on the top of a black tower. When I open my eyes, though, I consider that this might not have been the one I was looking for. This one is only three or four stories high, and it's surrounded by brick buildings on all sides. A watchtower. I sigh.

I hop down onto the dirt and paving stones, and look around at the DCs in the area. There's a cute blonde with long, wavy hair, chatting with some friends at the edge of the courtyard. I consider that I might be half in the moon-dream somehow and these might be real people, but I dismiss the thought as unlikely and walk toward the girls.

I step through her friends, smiling at the blonde girl and holding out a hand. She takes it, and I spin her around and kiss her. Oddly, I have the sudden ability to smell and taste (morning breath) and I quickly block it out. And suddenly I'm playing a game of the Sims, and there are a bunch of options on the screen. Now I'm talking to family members on the other side of the courtyard and looking for the girl so I can actually talk to her?

Voices Trying to Limit Your Dream-Control. Scare Factor: 2. Though the bread-mice were somehow creepy.

*So very much a false awakening.

or

People to Deliberately Annoy Even More than You Already Have Just By Existing

I'm taking a course that requires all the participants to stay together in a hotel room for some reason. We pool all our food together to come up with a really weird breakfast. A can of brown beans are involved. Which are vegetarian.

Shift.

I'm staying in a hotel in a city where one of my friends from high school - Miranda - lives. I spot her, and we hang out for a while. One of those drivable carts and a supermarket are involved.

Shift

This is a duel between an approximately 20-year-old Harry Potter and one Professor Severus Snape. I smirk. This is going to be fun. I'm approaching the tournament as if it's a video game, wearing down my opponents with a barrage of spells, exhausting them. Then I'll disarm them with an expelliarmus.

"Expelliarmus!" I shout, aiming at Snape.

He shields easily, smirking at my incompetence. There's going to be a lot of smirking going on in this match.

"Sectumsempra!" I call out before he has a chance to get a spell off. A scythe of dark energy slices toward him. There, that one wasn't so easy to block.

I'm going to have trouble remembering spells for this dream, I realize.

We circle each other, I mostly dodging the spells that he sends at me. Until he's standing with his back to a seemingly bottomless pit, facing me warily.

Bad, bad move.

I shout two random words to cover what I'm doing, forcing a wave of kinetic energy towards Snape, who is pushed off the edge, and if that's from the wrong movie, I'm sure no one will ever notice. The boundary spells will catch him. Probably.

(I'm proven right when he's yelling, a few minutes later, that he will triumph in the end, and will beat me in one of the upper levels of the tournament. At least he's confident that I'll get that far.)

New match.

A kid - a young Crabbe from the movies, I think - is attempting to creep silently through a poorly-lit arena, stirring up dust as he goes. I think he has an allergy, because suddenly he has to sneeze, and he can't help it - he sneezes, the sound echoing loudly through the darkness. My third person POV catches the horrified look on his face as it zooms back to another room, where Snape is creeping along more successfully. Snape hears the sneeze, turns quickly to where the sound is coming from and moves hurriedly toward the other room, ready to sneak up behind Crabbe and take him by surprise -

Expelliarmus.

Snape's wand is sent flying out of his hand by my spell, and I catch it out of the air. I smile brightly and wave, and Snape is positively fuming while he's pulled out of the game.

Crabbe is expecting me, though, and our disarming spells are shouted at exactly the same time, resulting in a brief wave of energy that has both of us stumbling back. I recover first, and launch myself at him, scrambling for the wand. I catch it by the tip, and pull it with me as I roll past him, but the wand is about as strong as tumbleweed, and doesn't even make a decent snap as it breaks cleanly in half.

The kid is staring at his remaining half in horrified fascination.

"Ouch," I wince sympathetically, "And this is the world where no other wand is going to work for you as well as the first one." Crabbe looks crestfallen. "Oh well. I win, right?"

I guess the answer is yes, because the next thing I'm aware of is stumbling through a bar after a round of celebratory shots. I sit down at a table.

"May we join you?"

I'm reintroduced to Fleur Delacour, who I met a few years ago, as well as a pretty brunette with curly hair whose name I don't remember. I flirt shamelessly with both of them, and we have what I'm sure is an incredibly deep and nuanced conversation.

I'm still in the bar when I realize, abruptly, that I'm dreaming, for no real reason whatsoever. It's not so much that everything comes into focus, but that my awareness expands exponentially, and for those few seconds, I feel fucking awesome. I'm exploring the boundaries of the dream, looking for possibilities.

Then the brunette invites me to dinner, and I decide that here is fine.

We're sitting together on a couch, eating what I'm certain are some very expensive appetizers. She mentions that they'll be leaving to China shortly, for a business meeting, but we'll have to meet up again.

Shift.

I'm in a theatre, watching a movie along with, I think, my family. Water is pouring from a shower-head on the ceiling for some reason. I'm sure there was a very good reason for that, having to do with the toddler who has latched onto me as a babysitter.

Shift.

I'm in Halifax. Yay, I love Halifax! I'm along with my younger-than-they-are-in-real-life cousins and my brother. We decide that the most efficient way to get back to our hotel with all our luggage is to take a kayak back there.

...

So we rent a kayak from MEC, and paddle across the harbour with it. The geography has changed immensely, and I don't seem to be deathly afraid of the water.

Seriously, you don't want to go anywhere near the Halifax harbour water.

But I am concerned when it splashes all over my backpack, which holds my laptop, which is still on. I open it up, pop the battery out, and don't bother to wonder where all of my cousins are.

We get back to the hotel, where everything gets a little fuzzy. I think I'm either Sam or Dean Winchester at one point, having an argument with whichever one of the brothers I'm not.

But I have to return the kayak, so I bring it back to the dock, and then I'm at the hotel, but I realize I have to bring it to the store, so I convince someone who looks a lot like Alan Rickman into bringing it back to the store for us, please.

And then I spend the rest of the dream wandering around Halifax and making up parks that don't exist.

Pissed Off Teachers. Scare Factor: 2/10, but only for the first two dreams that were really feverish and hallucinatory.

February, 2010

It's been a long night. I'm standing in a creepy, unfinished basement and a group of college student survivalists have been spouting horror movie cliches at every opportunity.

"You can't touch the jelly sandwich," the de-facto leader explains. "It keeps all the other food good. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly," I say cheerily. I'm stealing from Spongebob Squarepants' logic. "Makes sense."

"No," he says, with a long-suffering sigh, "It really, really doesn't." He wanders away, morosely, muttering about crazy people. I briefly consider being a character that this guy is dreaming.

I go looking for food. I sit in the kitchen with my mom, even if she is upset about the potted plant sitting in the corner that looks like a tiger lily and is apparently called a "papyrus". At this point, I begin to tell her about the metaphors and symbolism in our current environment.

"The jellybean sandwich in the storage room is, apparently, there to keep all the other food from going bad, and the 'papyrus' is there because... you have really bad taste in fonts in real life."

"In real life?"

"Well, obviously this is a dream."

"You think so?"

"If it's not, tell me where these objects," I gesture at the flower, "Are located in your real house. Everything keeps shifting here."

The woman sitting across the table from me looks down, fighting to keep a grin off her face. She starts to laugh, and then to cackle madly. Shift. I'm standing near the door and she faces me from a few feet away. Her empty eye sockets are stuffed with bandages.

"Let me guess," I say, "You're my Other Mother."

She doesn't reply, but steps toward me. I wind back my left hand for a punch, but I'm moving so slowly.

The woman is moving in real time, and she takes another step, relaxed and confident. The punch doesn't connect. As she reaches for my throat, I desperately dig my fingers into her eye-sockets. There are teeth.

Everything is going black, facial features are twisting, and the only thing I can distinguish anymore is pain.

Shift.

I'm sitting on a deck, petting a stray cat that's wandered into the yard. Can I wake up now?

Shift.

"That rice is leftover from last night. And it's in front," Oma says helpfully, as I rummage through her fridge. I blink.

"Really?" I say, holding the plastic container. "You want me to eat this? Specifically?" I poke at the overabundance of soy sauce with a spoon. "I'm still dreaming, aren't I?"

As of right now I am on vacation, very far from home. I had woken up at about 4:00 A.M. After realizing that I am totally awake I listen to music for a little while and go to the bathroom. I'm chilling out there for a little while - about an hour. So now it's a little after 5:00 A.M. and I lay back down because I am slightly tired...

Now I close my eyes, and soon I get these visions. I saw my mom in a hall way that was non-existant in real life and she told me she is here on vacation with me now. My mom was about a 7 hour drive away, and I know that she wasn't coming. The extra hallway and the fact that it was 5:00 in the morning made me realize that those "visions" weren't real. In this dream state I also tried looking at my phone, but my eyes were stuck shut and extremely hard to open. My concious mind was still there though. I knew this was my chance. I relaxed and let it take me to some place. In almost no time I saw a forest take place in front of me. I look to my right and I'm moving in exess of 100mph+ down a road, just hovering above it. There was no wind resistance and it felt like room temperature. I then noticed that there was a forest on both sides of the road and the road seemed to go on to infinity. Looking back to my left, I drifted to the right side of the road, and I was now moving on a 45 degree angle in to the woods. Normally I would have paniced because going backwards, and blindly into a forest at that speed you would be guarenteed to hit a tree. I knew it was only a dream, so I remained calm. The hovering stopped and I landed firmly on both feet. I could now jump very high and fly, but I noticed the higher I got, the more my testicles hurt. Yeah, my testicles. I thought I was laying down in a bad position and forced myself to wake up. It was hard though, it took at good 10-15 seconds to leave the dream. And that was it.

Originally Posted by onemoretime

Date: can't recall, within the past two or three years [meaning 2004-2006].

Induction Method: DILD. I was out in a sleeping bag on Low Plaza. Sun setting, stars out, clouds out. I see a gigantic cloud baby, turning over in it's sleep. I'm stunned, and realize I'm dreaming.

Stabilization Tech: Didn't use any.

Dream Intent: Before I was trying for lucid dreams. Just took the dream as it came.

Dream Control: Interacted with dream characters, didn't try too hard to control them. Majority of the dream spent in flight, exploring fairly low to the ground, among structures.

Dream End: Can't recall.

Rating:
Stability: 3
Length: 4
Control: 3
Content: 3.5

Incidentally, several years after this post I would find a flickr photo that illustrated the dream perfectly.

Originally Posted by onemoretime

Date: 3/28/06 ~0700

Induction Method: DILD. My alarm clock was going off in real life, but I hadn't woken up yet. Instead, I had a false awakening, and turning off my dream alarm clocks wasn't affecting the sound of the alarm clock. Searching for the still ringing alarm clock made me recall a previous dream (non-lucid) in which I heard the alarm clock ringing in real life but didn't acknowledge it. I performed my favorite reality check, plugging the nose and breathing. But it didn't work. Confused, momentarily, I can't really recall what I did until I RCed again, this time checking out my hands. One of them appeared to have four fingers, so I went lucid.

Stabilization Tech: At one point walls started stretching/melting. Tried to stabilize with thumb rubbing. Failed! Immediately tried palm rubbing, everything snapped back really quickly, so I think I'll use that one preferentially from now on.

Dream Intent: I first tried to fly, and then went on to try to have my subconscious call up specific dream characters.

Dream Control: I attempted to fly through a close opaqued window, but it merely turned membranous and repelled me. After that decided to summon dream characters, but none of them were of interest to me, not fitting the requirements of what I was looking for. I should have been more specific or forceful. But I didn't want to control too much of the creation. So no go.

Dream End: Throughout dream ringing of my alarm clock was going on, I couldn't shut it off. So just ignored it, or suffered through it. But at one point my second alarm clock kicked in, and I woke up immediately. Not 100% awake, but not tired either.

Rating:
Stability: 4
Length: 3
Control: 2
Content: 2

Originally Posted by onemoretime

Date: 3/26

Induction Method: DILD. However, I can't recall exactly what triggered the lucidity! Which bothers me. I began in a normal dream, and was in the same setting of that dream when I recall the lucid memories. At one point during the dream I remember looking into a mirror, and seeing a carnival mirror like reflection, heavily distorted body, but this was in the middle of the dream.

Stabilization Tech: Used the thumb stroking once to bring everything into focus, but then I guess I neglected further stabilizations.

Dream Intent: I want to have a stable list of characters who will appear repeatedly in my dreams, just to maintain some continuity in my dreams. So I was trying to pull characters out of my subconscious. Holding auditions, sort of.

Dream Control: I only got up to two different characters, I did this by willing someone to appear in the adjoining room to the one I was in, and then walking into and seeing who it was. Then walking back to the original room, willing someone different, and walking back in.

Dream End: For some reason I stopped doing that and started exploring, and I think that was when lucidity drifted away from my control, and I segued into normal dreams.

Rating:
Stability: 2
Length: 1
Control: 2
Content:2

Originally posted 03-26-2006 02:00 PM:

Originally Posted by onemoretime

Date: 3/25

Induction Method: DILD. In a dream I was about to take a test, but I realized I wasn't prepared for it. Now in real life I really was supposed to have that test, but the weekend wasn't over so I still had time to prepare for it. So I recalled that, and it didn't make any sense to be taking the test now, so I realized I was dreaming. I performed a reality check, the breathing through pinched nose. No nose, clear breath, went lucid.

Stabilization techs: About 3 times during the dream I rubbed the top of my left hand with my right thumb. Each time felt the friction on my hand, and subsequently the dream around me became much clearer. It was as everything snapped into focus. I did this even when I didn't feel like I was losing much control, and it still snapped clearly.

Dream Intent: A short exploration and then flight.

Dream Control: Didn't try to control anyone, spent most of my time in flight, swooping and soaring in the open sky. Flew through a closed window at one point.

Dream End: I was flying through a multicolored starburst field, and decided to fly outwards into deep, dark space. And as it got darker and darker I guess the dream faded and I awoke in the darkness of my room, 100% awake. In the last flying part of my dream I hadn't thought to do any stabilization techniques.

Rating:
Stability - 4
Length - 3
Control - 4
Content - 4

An additional note, this was one of the most awesome dreams that I've ever had.