nightmare

Had a dream, something about needing to get away from my house ASAP because a demon had been there, we had tricked it but it was going to return once it figured ir out. I was a pre-teen and had two pre-teen/teen friends, and I think I was a guy. Anyway, we packed stuff really quickly and took off in a station wagon. We got to this city full of bright lights and decided to go into a massive toy store. It was huge, several stories tall and the walls were made of glass. We played with a lot of the toys and I found a pile of stuffed horses, each as big as myself. I spent some time hugging one of them and decided I liked them, and wanted to buy one, but I wanted to buy a stuffed unicorn and they didn't have any unicorns.

Finally, the demon caught up with us, and we had to battle it. One of my friends somehow became a party member who was a man with blond hair, in his mid-twenties, and he was one of my best allies and a good fighter. We thought we were winning, but it turned out that the thing was just toying with me - before it took off, it turned my friend into a stone statue of a gargoyle. So not only did I now lack my best party member, but he was also my friend and he was dead.

I teleported into an alternate dimension which was an island, with three stone statues that had glowing blue gems in them, and this was where I fought the demon. However, I think I may have lost. In any case, I woke up.

I am Rosso the Crimson and I am in some sort of army. For some reason a small group of soldiers including Shelke Rui, Vincent Valentine and I, defect and flee from the main army, which is situated in a sparse and barren, temperate forest. The rest of the soldiers in our group seem to be young adults and children.

Vincent and I have the responsibility to lead the children away from that place but our ideas and ways of doing things are often at odds and we fall into verbal conflict, though most of the time I conceed to Vincent's way of doing things. I am kind of annoyed at first, but ultimately trust that he will not lead us astray. As we leave the main camp, and out of the forest, it begins to snow and our first night is tryng to find shelter where we can sleep. There are several large gaps underneath logs or holes in the ground large enough for humans to crawl into, but Vincent says to stay away from them because dangerous wild animals, like bears and foxes, might live there.

We crest a hill and come across a children's playground where someone has thrown a blue tarp over some of the equipment, and while we could all easily fit under it, Vincent insists that we are not far enough away from the main army yet and we must continue. At this point in the dream, Vincent suddenly disappears and in his place is my brother Ryan.

We do not have to walk far to discover that we are on an island or something and must turn back. We return to the playground and I lay down on the ground to sleep, with Shelke beside me, and hope the man who I still expect to be Vincent to lay down on my other side. Instead the man lays down on the other side of Shelke and I am shocked and angry to see that it is Ryan not Vincent.

Despite being very tired I refuse to sleep and insist that Shelke switches spots with me because I am afraid that Ryan is going to sexually molest her. One of the other children soldiers cannot sleep and wanders around and finds a radio which he immediately turns on very loudly. I want the young boy to turn the radio off because I think it will give our position away but Ryan says it is fine and mocks my obvious apprehension. I convince the boy to turn the music down and everyone goes to sleep eventually, except for me.

Suddenly I sit up because I have an overwhelming urge to find Vincent, without whom I do not feel secure. I walk around the playground area and see that while it is still cold, most of the snow has disappeared. I turn off the radio as I pass it by. All of the defected soldiers except for Shelke and Ryan follow me.

One little girl freaks out because there is a tiny brown snake in the sand. I pick it up and throw it as far away as I can but quickly find another, and another and then many more. There is a reddish brown snake with a yellow rattle on its tail near the playground and the children flee because I positively identify it as a rattlesnake. Suddenly all of the snakes I can see are of the poisionous variety and as I walk back to my sleeping bag I am bitten several times, though I do not seem immediately affected by the poison, which feels hot and firely, almost electrical, coursing through my veins.

I cannot wake Shelke and since I refused to leave her there I lay back down on my roll to sleep. More and more snakes appear, each is bigger than the last and they are increasingly a variety of bright colours. Soon there are so many of them that I cannot move without touching several of them and they turn and bite me, again with that fiery, electrical feeling shooting through my body. I feel myself becoming increasingly weak and disoriented, but I do not know if it is because I am exhausted or because of the poison.

I sit up and notice that Shelke and Ryan are gone. Still hoping for Vincent to return I cry out to him to save me. When Ryan appears instead I am very upset, still wanting/expecting Vincent, and fall silent in anger and frustration. I sit crosslegged and completely still and the hundreds of snakes surround me and almost bury me in their mass and I find that I would rather be crushed or poisioned to death (though at this point I notice they have stopped biting me) by the snakes than to have Ryan come near me or save me, the very thought of which makes me feel sick.

The last image of the dream is looking at the mass of snakes in my lap and taking note of a rather large, bright red one with intricate oriental inspired patterns down its back that are coloured a bright yellow or gold.

Original entry dated 05/16/2006:

I had a dream about interdimensional geckos crawling through the ancient haunted cathedrals of Paris.

Original entry dated 07/23/2008:

I had a lot of disturbing dreams the past few nights.

I had a dream a friend's girlfriend was pregnant.

Then I dreamed that J came and visited my house with his 2 daughters. I didn't recognize the house in the dream, although I realized it was mine. He kept trying to give me a Christmas ornament, which I didn't want, and refused to accept. Then his wife drove up and honked the horn angrily, and he left.

I had a third dream that the ghost of a man who had drowned was following me around, trying to tell me something. I desperately didn't want to be left alone because I knew that he would show up and try to speak to me again, but I got left behind while trying to lock my door, and he appeared. I screamed loud enough to wake myself up and bring C running into the room with her axe. Apparently it was also a rather inhuman scream, because she thought that it was the rabbit screaming rather than me.

Original dream dated 07/20/2008:

Dreamed that we (my family) were in a house packing. I was being followed around by a very annoying blonde-haired little girl who had several dolls. She wanted some ceramic stuff packed (dolls and tea pots) and I was trying to pack them carefully so they didn't break, but she was being very careless with them. In addition, the house we were in spooked me very badly. It always felt like something was there watching you, and some rooms were so bad, nobody would turn their back on them. It was bitterly cold in the dream, even though when I woke up the apartment was actually quite warm.

Had a second dream:
Dreamed that I was helping liquidate another store that was going out of business, only this one was full of odds and ends and books, and I had to sleep there overnight, which was very uncomfortable. I was very tired and everything, but the boss kept coming in and asking if we'd gotten everything sold yet, packed up and sent out yet, etc.
Then, my family was looking at different houses to rent (in the dream), one house had sort of like a river with a bridge across it, it was really cool but expensive (and the room they were renting was not large enough). The houses were within walking distance to a cool thrift shop.
Anyway, it was the 4th of July and my family wanted to go see fireworks. We wound up climbing up on this embankment with a bunch of other people. I dreamed that my aunt was driving the car to the bridge where we eventually climbed the embankment, only the car was being pulled along by cables and beads of light, and I kept wondering how we didn't fall off the bridge.
After the fireworks show, there was a woman putting on a juggling performance, only it was almost more like belly dancing. There was a story and a theme, with music. I somehow managed to get digital recordings of the music, and the performer said it was o.k. to share them with other people who'd seen the show and wanted the music.

07/07/08

Another nightmare.

Dreamt that I was on a trip with my cousins on my dad's side of the family, we drove up to an old decrepit building that looked like a warehouse, it was some religious thing and we had to go inside.

It was sort of like a conveyor belt/rollercoaster ride, and very dark inside, with all sorts of terrifying machinery. Halfway through I was invited to pick something up by a kind of monster/beast, but I declined, and said that I didn't want to take anything out with me. IT looked angry, but it let me go.

I wanted to tell the other people waiting in line the trick about not taking/keeping anything, but was worried the trick would not work for them. I also wanted to accompany my cousins back in even though I was terrified, but was worried that the thing would not let me go free a second time.

07/09/08

Dreamed about college again. Yeah, still having college nightmares.

Dreamed that I was taking an English course with Prof. Dimino, but hadn't been going to classes/hadn't kept up on my homework, and now I was terrified that I was going to fail and there was nothing I could do about it.

Original dream dated July 04, 2008:
Dreamed that Reese and I were trying to get home from an airport called Mariana airport, and we couldn't. Mom was supposed to pick us up, but never showed up, so we took the bus instead. Somewhere along the line, it turned into Reese driving her jeep, and we got stuck in traffic on the Interstate. It turned out that Mom had never planned on picking us up and there had been a miscommunication. For some reason, we lived in a 2-story white house.

I had a dream that my pet rabbit had a heart attack and was dying, so I wrapped her up in a purple towel and cried while she groomed my head.

Original dream dated July 05, 2008:
I had a dream that I was working on rules for a D20 game, and they turned into rules for the world...

Somewhere along the way, we got invaded by alien wasps that climbed up your nose and replaced your brain, stealing your soul. It happened to me, and I wasn't technically supposed to get another 'chance' at working things out in the world, but for some reason, I was given one. I had to abide by the rules I'd written, though, which stated that if you lost then it would rain forever and everything would be covered by 500 feet of soil over the next few thousand years. I escaped from the original area (which was quite dangerous) with some friends of mine, including a tall brown-haired man. We got to a coffee shop and tried to figure out what to do. We were sort of stuck in there, at least one of us was covered in blood, and I realized that we were all doomed unless I recovered the book I'd been working on and revised the rule set. The brown haired guy offered to run through the rain for several miles to get it, but it was very dangerous out there and there were zombies, and I argued that if he died it was permanent but I could revive myself... the dream left off there.

(original post dated 06/11/2008)

I had a dream that there was a baby who went missing, and that the stepfather was the suspect, but the police could never prove anything. Also something about him trying to give it away to another family by convincing them that it was their own lost child, but they came to their senses and knew better. In any case, the child's sibling spent their whole life trying to find out what happened, and prove that the stepdad did it.

I had another dream that R and I were driving around Orlando/Venice/Florida at night, looking for a public pool (I think?) and wound up driving up this ramp that wrapped around this condo building in a spiral, the top had no rails and Reese was scared to try backing up, we didn't know how to turn around and get down again, and she was ranting about how anyone who lived at the top of this thing was insane.

I had a dream about a woman whose boyfriend beat up on her, finally scaring her by threatening to throw her out of a window (the drop was 5 stories), she finally had enough and sent HIM through the glass. He unfortunately survived the fall, although he lost a lot of blood, and she was afraid he was going to come after her again. Somehow the dream twisted so that he turned into a gigantic robot for reasons I don't understand, and the cops were completely useless in the ensuing shootout, but somehow she got the best of him, although I don't remember how.

This was followed by a dream about giant anthropomorphic vampire bats. Throughout most of the dream, I didn't realize the grandmother, mother, and baby were vampires as well, only that the grandmother was intent on killing the Head Vampire (also the head of the family), which she finally succeeded in, revealing that she and the others were also vampires by commenting that "the baby needs fresh blood for feeding" and then commenting that she was willing to go without, and would fill up on milk, although that always brought the chance of disease with it into the house. Very strange.

In any case, I must have been thrashing around in my sleep, because when I do that my pet rabbit gets upset and sits next to the bed. When I woke up, she was huddled right next to me again. She tends to do this when I have a nasty nightmare, which makes me think that I may talk or yell a lot whenever I'm having one. This is corroborated by roommates, boyfriends, etc. It's touching that she does this, but I'm worried I might hurt her while I'm thrashing around.

Original dream dated 5/18/2008:

Had 2 nightmares the past 2 nights.

One of them was about college. Sort of normal. The usual - I'm taking a class, paying for it myself and running myself into debt to do it, yet can't get to class on time and never get my homework done. I can't get the motivation to do it, and have missed so many classes that I can never catch up. I live 30 minutes away by car and want to move closer, but can't afford to. My lease is coming up, but I don't want to sign a new lease when I'm failing the class.

Then, for some reason, I'm wheeling a motorcycle through the university buildings. Nobody notices. I get it up several floors, when I realize that the elevator I intend to use to get farther up only has a weight capacity of 250 lbs. and can't possibly support its weight, and the stairs are too rickety. Somehow, I wind up wheeling it across a narrow beam several hundred feet above the lobby floor.

Which brings me to the weird thing about universities in my nightmares - I'm always on the edge of some high precipice, because for some reason they have many many floors but all of them end at sheer drops with no railings, or else they're in bizarre configurations that you have to climb from floor to floor like a bug... I'm almost always terrified of falling when I'm in a university-like building in my dream, and the drop is always hundreds of feet. There are always narrow, rickety stairs, or broken elevators, etc. It's an ongoing theme that bothers me.

Anyway, the next dream involved Clarissa from Clarissa Explains It All, who was for some reason on a cruise ship fishing for squid, and was talking with her friend via text message before her parents showed up with her brother and her friend's brother. I have no idea what the point of the dream was.

Original dream dated May 9, 2008:

I had several dreams, probably around 4, all of them related by the fact that the characters in the dreams all passed through the same downtown bus station. The buses all went to different, and distant, destinations, but each main character (or busload of people) witnessed four disembodied hands that popped into existence and flew around like birds. This scared them, because they knew it didn't "belong" in their world, although they weren't all sure why. It was evidence of some interdimensional leak.


One busload had orphans on it, the dream followed them but I can't remember much, beyond that they were also anthropomorphic puppy children and I think there were three of them. One dream dealt with a superhero who had a vision of being a little boy trapped in the closet of a burning building - the little boy himself had been prescient, and had seen this coming and been unable to prevent it despite telling his mother about it minutes beforehand. His parents had been fighting, he had left the stove on, it exploded somehow, killing his father and starting a massive fire, and he hid in the closet and locked the door. His mother was pounding on it, trying to get him out. He escaped by crawling down a chute into the basement. There were gremlin/rat things in the basement that had orchestrated this whole thing, all to get him on their side, so they could steal a magical hat that his sister had - but he only had a sister in an alternate world. They successfully stole the hat while he distracted her, but I'm not sure what happened after that.

Original dream dated Tues. Feb. 26, 2008:

Dreamed that I was stocking shelves, some woman wanted to buy a whole bunch of boxes of large furniture, I said we couldn't hold it - she'd have to just come back and hope it was there. Boss was upset that someone in receiving mis-spelled something important (a name, apparently Freddie Mercury or a singer from Queen). Then, I went to the bathroom, but the toilets were weird - in wooden boxes that looked like they belonged in a sauna, and your butt touched the toilet bowl - and I was really afraid I'd get urine on myself.

Then the dream changed, and I was remembering being a middleschooler on my way to class, but we had to go through this weird forest maze thing, and some of the other kids ahead of us had played some mean pranks. The path was supposed to be lit, but they'd turned off all of the lights, so the other kids and I had to wander through the dark. We kept close together and made sure we could hold onto each other, but the path wound around a lot. Eventually, we found one of the light fixtures and turned it on. We were worried that we would be late and miss the tram, but we didn't. You rode the tram by putting a coat hanger under your clothes and hanging yourself on the tram, but we didn't have time - it was already moving - so I just grabbed onto a bar. My friend objected to this, but her alternative was to miss class, so she did the same. At the next tram (we had the transfer), we had time to hang ourselves up but I didn't really feel like it, so I just grabbed on again. The tram driver got very upset about this and wrote both of us up for it.

Meanwhile (this is the same dream "universe") there's this very arrogant king who thinks the world revolves around him, and he has a stupid little beard... in any case his advisor (who is a pretty decent guy) takes care of everything for him. They were having their own morning, which involved riding flying birds (the advisor's was a different breed, and smaller) to a meeting with a representative from another country, who for some reason was an anthropomorphic wolf rock-star. The king actually wasn't a bad guy at all, just really deluded. "I'm very well-known, or at least, that's what my advisor tells me".
The rockstar started talking about how he met his wife at a forbidden/hidden temple in the jungle that they had discovered, how he'd been welcomed by the priestesses and she'd danced for him, etc.
The rockstar talked about how he wasn't really eurotrash, it was just a show for the masses. The king didn't really seem to believe this, sardonically commenting, "Oh, I see. The eurotrash act is just a front for the masses...?" But the other guy was oblivious and just happily agreed.
The guy and his wife had 4 kids in this weird stroller which the mom was really proud of (she'd gone from exotic foreign priestess to soccer-mom in about 5 seconds, apparently) and then the guy mentioned how much his dad had paid for it. She started freaking out about the (insanely high) price and yelling about how she had become a rich white bitch. "Oh my god, I have become a rich white bitch!"

That was the end of the dream.

Original dream dated Feb. 24, 2008:

I dreamed about a church with a very high ceiling that was yellow glass with brown hatches on it. There was some confusion about whether or not it was appropriate for the nave of the church to also be a gym. There was some sort of space war going on, with spaceships flying all over the place over the church, and I think that's what turned into a hurricane.

I was driving in the hurricane. I was worried, because I was always late for work and thought that this time I would get fired. I wound up turning down the wrong off-ramp because the wind was so strong that I couldn't control the car. When I got to work, I explained it to my boss, who thankfully looked worried rather than chewing me out.

Original dream dated 02/16/2008:

Dreamed about a guy writing an autobiography about his brother, a historical war-lord. This turned into me and my mother watching a movie about it, but Mom didn't like it because it was violnt and graphic (at one point, a maggot-filled horse exploded). Then, it turned into real life again, only instead of a medieval villain he was a vampire-robot and the robots were trying to take over the universe. They destroyed a really large, advanced human city and took it over.

Some friends and I went on an archaeological dig to try to find out their source or history, and we found an ancient buried portal to a space ship, where we found Robocop. Then, we got chased by a fleet of enemy ships.

Then I dreamed that Princess Peach was evil and started taking over the world, and I was trying to play as Mario, except Mario was a Starship Trooper and I was fighting vampire robots who were also tiny ants. All of this took place in the evil vampire robot capital city, which looked a lot like a level from "Donkey Kong".

This dream came about by anxiety about medical appointments I thought I had February 4th, 2008. I thought that I had a doctor's appointment at 2:30pm and then a dentist's appointment at 4:00pm. While the doctor's was actually on that day, I ended up having to reschedule for a later date because my community support worker (CSW) had come down with the flu. I also later realized that the doctor's appointment was actually the day after. I spent the whole weekend worrying about these appointments which I mistakenly thought were on the same day and thought I had missed them. I had this nightmare because of it.


It is day time, the sun peeks through hazy grey clouds and there is a breeze which alternates between slightly chilly and refreshingly warm. I think I would describe it as a warm autumn day, especially with the breeze constantly blowing brown leaves and various other light debris through the streets. There are many people around, going wherever they are going, but they are all unrecognizable random DCs. Most of them are dressed for the weather, but almost all look like they have hard lives and come from lower class situations. No one is smiling or talking and everyone has a hard, grim facial expression as they go about their business. The surrounding facades are dull and faded but nothing looks abandoned or out of place, just dirty and worn down from much use and low maintenance. Most of the buildings are tall, imposing concrete office buildings with smaller businesses and apartments squeezed inbetween.

I look younger than I do now, maybe about 17 or 18 years old. I have my big black highschool napsack on and am carrying something in my arms - a book, I think. I cannot remember much about what I was wearing but I do recall that I had on my black banded digital watch on my left wrist, mostly because I look to it many times in the dream. The dream starts off with me walking down a gritty city street, squinting against the sun that just came out from behind a dark cloud and is shining right into my eyes. I am on my way to my community support worker's office but the city is unfarmiliar to anything I know in waking life and I am not really confident about where I am going. I am worried because in the dream I still think I have those two appointments today and I am late already and afraid that I am not going to get to meet up with Susie (my CSW) on time at 2:15 pm. I constantly look at my watch to see what time it is.

I turn down one alley, hoping it is a short cut, but I end up running into a deadend street. There is a parked car at the one end and the only way out is back the way I came. I cannot remember what happened next but suddenly I am sitting in a four door, dark blue car with a former co-worker of mine, his brother and one other person I do not recognize. Samir, the former co-worker, is wearing a black leather jacket, a dark blue skully and is sitting with me in the back seat of the vehicle. The car is parked in an alley way under a rusted metal staircase. Samir's brother and the other person in the front seat are talking and looking for something outside the vehicle or keeping watch for someone. Samir is leaning towards me and has a sad look on his face. He is talking, but I do not remember what he said. I think he offered me a ride to my destination, but I panicked because I do not know the way and I am uncomfortable being near Samir - not because I hate him, quite the opposite in fact, since I have a huge crush on him and I am afraid of what he will think of me if he finds out that I require community support to work on my life right now. I flee from the vehicle in shame and run out of the alleyway. Samir jumps out of the car and calls after me, but does not give chase. I steal one last look at his beautiful face before I turn the corner out of the alleyway and back into the busy street. He has a worried and confused look on his face.

Back on the busy street I run into a throng of people I cannot push my way through. The crowd is moving slowing down the street and I am pushed along with it. At this point I realize that my book and wrist watch are gone and I think that I must have lost them in Samir's car, but I am not certain. The anxiety I feel about the appointments is aggrevated by the fact that I still am not certain where I am going, I cannot tell the time now because my watch is gone, I am worried about what Samir thinks of me, and finally I cannot go back to find either Samir or the watch because the huge crowd of people is forced me to go wherever the hell they are going. The sky has darkened considerably but not because the sun is setting. Indeed it appears that the sun had not moved from where it was at the beginning of the dream, but that the clouds in the sky have became thicker and blacker and are moving much faster across the sky, as if a storm is quickly rolling in. The breeze is also picking up and becoming chillier.

There is a break in the throng of people and I am able to dive into a small stairwell in the side of a beige, bricked building. The steps lead down to a large metal door that was either green or brown but I can no longer remember. Since it is unlocked, and there is no break in the heavy crowd of people on the street, I open the door and go through. I am in a long, narrow hallway with flickering lights, exposed, leaky pipes and broken and decaying floortiles. It is not scary, just very badly maintained. At the very end of the hall is another large metal door and when I go through I find myself in what appears to be a large covered parking garage that is strewn with garbage and debris. To my right there is a brightly lit store or restaurant of some kind but I ignore it because at the far end of the parking garage I can see daylight and lush trees beyond the opening. I still feel bad about missing my appointments and wish I could call Susie somehow, but I figure that it is way too late for that and I want to go over to the trees.

Some of the garbage in the covered parking area is very large and I have to navigate through it like a maze. When I am close to the exit, I can see a glass building and a garden full of flowers and trees. I step on something squishy and stop to look down to see what looks like a lump of flesh. I am grossed out but determined to make it out of there but I notice as I walk along many more parts of flesh on the ground. I think to myself that it looks like the large intestine of a large mammal and as I follow the trail of flesh with my eyes until I see a human body laying face down on the ground. It is a caucasian man with dark brown hair and wearing a dark blue shirt and black pants. I cannot see his face but I think he may have been a business man or somehing. His entire body is surrounded by flesh and internal organs and makes me think the man was disemboweled. Strangely, there is not blood or fluids, just solid body parts, and near the man is a large translucent tarp that had been wrapped around something long, narrow and red.

I do not get much of a chance to see what is in the tarp because I hear a group of children laughing behind me. I turn and see about five or six pre-teens standing with their hands on their hips and trying to look tough. I cannot remember the details of most of the kids other than they were scruffy looking and wore dirty, ripped clothes. The only child that stood out was a blond haired girl wearing black goth clothing who seemed to be the oldest of them all and the leader of the group. She said in a matter of fact way that the tarp contained the body of another person. The other kids ignored the carnage and began playing in the garbage and debris like it was a jungle gym, except for the goth girl who just crossed her arms and glared at me. I forgot about wanting to see the trees and wanted to know about the children - why they were there and why they seemed uneffected by the dead bodies and garbage around them.

The children ran away when I approached them and turned the corner near the metal door that I first came through. I followed and discovered they had gone into the small brightly lit eatery which I now noticed had a large pink sign saying "Susie's Snack Stop" or something like that. The name on the sign reminded me about missing my appointment with my community support worker and I feel pangs of regret, but I enter the resturant anyway. I pass a large white tub as I enter and see many confectionary treats, like marshmellow squares and nanaimo bars but I also notice that some appear to be made of vegetables instead of candy. The kids are all sitting at a table with an older man who seems to be the only person running the place. He is bald, wearing a light blue t-shirt underneath a white apron and is dishing out what appears to be macaroni and cheese into small metals bowls for the kids. I want to ask the bald man how this place can operate while surrounded by such filth and carnage, but I do not feel comfortable discussing it in front of the children. The goth girl is still staring at me, but her expression has softened and she motions to me to come and sit beside her.

I remain standing at the edge of table and while the children talk and eat I suddenly hear men's voices from outside the eatery. I head for the exit and my eyes are drawn to the large white tub again, but I see nothing significant and continue on to the exit. The goth girl jumps up and chases after me. Outside the eatery the scene has changed. While it is still dirty and garbage strewn, the area appears to be a basement or something. There are exposed pipes and boilers around, but between those are tables and display cases with flags and lights for decorations. It looks like some sort of promotion or fair or something. There are adult men in business suits hanging around the tables and talking with each other. I see a man in a black suit head to the far end of the basement and walk through a solid wall. I start running in that direction, thinking it is a way out, but the goth girl catches up with me and tells me to stay with her. She has an expression of worry on her face that remind's me of Samir. I ask her why she wants me to stay and she says: "Because I love you." I do not know how to respond and turn to leave, thinking that the girl is being ridiculous. The other children come out and stand around their leader and they all watch me go.

When I get to the wall that the man in the black suit disappeared through, it becomes transparent and beyond it I can see a concrete staircase leading up. I walk through the wall and a freezing cold sensation almost paralyzes my body as I do so. At the top of the stairs things become much warmer as it leads outside into a busy street. It is different from the streets at the beginning of the dream and looks more like the city I actually live in. The first thing my eyes are drawn too is a clock tower down the street and the time on it says 1:48. I become excited because this means that I still have time to find Susie and make my appointments, but as I start down the sidewalk I run into people dressed in marching band gear holding instruments. There seems to be some confusion and they are all running around like they don't know what to do. Suddenly a marching band line appears from a side street and start down the road towards me. There is a large float parade behind them and the sidewalks are congested with people come to watch the parade. I duck into a walled yard to escape the crowd, hoping to find a way through to a street on the otherside of the building, but instead run into a group of inner city youth having a free style rap competition. I am accosted and told that I cannot pass until I listen to some of the contenders. I am frustrated because I know that I can still make my appointments, I can feel the anxiety welling up inside of me again, but I stay and listen for a while. The first young man has black and had a kickin' afro. It was awesome because it was like a perfect circle. His beats were pretty cool but I did not stay to listen to the entire rap of the second guy (who looked like Eminem). I ran through the yard and around the building and to the street on the other side.

I stood on the sidewalk and looked around to get my bearings. To my right, far down the street, I could see the parade approaching. To my left the road went under a large interstate bridge or something. In front of me was a small park space with trees and benches and stuff. I ran across the street to the parkspace and saw on the far side another road and beyond that a convenience store with a pay phone. I cross the park and come to another road which slopes down and is congested with cars. I think it is the parade again, but it turns out to be a funeral procession when two black minivans, followed by a black hearse, drive by. I almost get hit by the first black van when I try to cross. I do manage to dodge the cars and make it too the other side and I am almost overwhelmed by the emotions I am feeling. I am so close to being able to call Susie, hoping that she will come and pick me up, but my anxiety and frustration only grows as a approatch the pay phone. The walkway leading up to it suddenly narrows and I am either growing bigger or the store is growing smaller because all of a sudden my legs are trapped between the narrow metal railings on the walkway and my head hits the overhand of the convenience store's roof. I am stuck and frustrated and about to give up in despair...


...but then I wake up.

Original dream dates to around January 20th 2008, not sure on the exact date:

I dreamt that my friend T___ and his brother (I have not seen T since he joined the army) and I were having an argument. It involved power (as in, electricity) or something, and various power cells (I guess areas that were powered by a connection at a particular point) or something like that. We were arguing about how we needed to cut power/there needed to be some sort of lock down, it was critical that the power was cut for some reason, but I was arguing that if we did that we would be without power ourselves. T was communicating with his brother via radio or telephone and pretty much following his advice. He offered a very convincing reason for why we ought to go with the original plan, so I finally went along with it.
I looked out the window - we were either high up or in some sort of special building, and it was a very large window with a good view of the city and possibly a bay from what I remember - and there was a beam of light shooting up into the sky.

Then, somehow, we were running or traveling through somewhere, very fast, on some sort of jeep, and my brother was with us as well... I don't know if someone was following us, or we were in a hurry, or what was going on, although I knew that it was important to get the hell across the river. T said we were going to have to pretty much drive into the river and try to coast at least half way across, and we could swim the rest, but as long as we got that far we'd be ok. He warned us that as it sank, the jeep was probably going to roll, and that we needed to try to get out of it as quickly as possible before we turned upside down because it was very easy to get disoriented and drown as a result.

We managed to coast maybe 1/3 of the way across before the jeep started sinking, listing as it did so, and as we were warned it started to roll, so we scrambled to get the doors open. In the confusion, I didn't manage to see if my brother had also escaped, and when I surfaced and didn't see him I panicked because I thought that he hadn't gotten out in time. He broke the surface, though - it turned out that he'd gotten tangled up in a strap but still managed to get out of the door before the water pressure got too great. After that, we all started swimming for the opposite shore.

I cannot remember the beginning of the dream but at some point I am with several random dream characters by a large silty pond, deep in a thick tropical jungle. Because the jungle is so thick on either side of the pond, the only way across is through the water. I cannot remember why now, but I knew in the dream that it was imperative that I get to the other side. All of the DCs except for one get into the water and start swimming or playing around, but none make an effort to cross. I know I have to do it, but I am hesitant. I cannot immediately place my fear but then I notice something floating in the middle of the pond. At first it appears to be a large peice of wood or something, but it suddenly blinks and I realize it is an alligator or crocodile. I stand on my tiptoes to try and get a better look at the reptile and I can see that it is an absolute giant. It appears to be 20 to 25 feet long, though my measurement is possibly incorrect since the bulk of the beast is beneath the water and it is likely much bigger than it appears. I feel very afraid and do not enter the water. The DCs in the water seem oblivious to the presence of the creature and continue to happily splash around the pond.

I suddenly find myself in waist deep water, but I am kneeling so that water is up to my neck. I stare frozen in fear at the the giant grey alligator and it looks right back at me. The eyes of the creature feel very menacing as it stares at me and ignores the DCs that are swimming and splashing around him. It suddenly disappears underneath the surface of the water and I panic because I cannot see through the thick silt and fear that it might be coming for me, so I dash back towards the shore. I cannot get out of the water for some reason but there is a neatly stacked pile of red brinks just beneath the surface at the water and stand on it to get as far out of the pond as I can. When I stand on the brick pile, the water only comes up to my ankles and I fear secure enough that the giant alligator cannot reach me without me first seeing him approatch. I am still terrified of it though and make no move to enter the water again.

The lone DC that did not get into the water tries to coax me to cross with her. She is a teenager with brown hair pulled back into a pony-tail and looks like someone I used to know in waking life whom everyone called 'Bean'. Like the other DCs, she cannot see the alligator and does not understand why I do not want to get into the water. I am sure that at any moment one of the DCs who are already in the water are going to be eaten by the huge gator who is quietly laying in wait near the bottom. After some time Bean somehow convinces me to get back into the water and says that we will cross together. She is swimming beside me and I am trying to make large strokes with my arms with as little disturbance to the water's surface as possible.

Bean and I are about half way when I scrape my right leg up against somethine hard and bumpy under the water. I stick my face in through the thick silt I can make out the outline of the giant alligator floating directly below me. If I reached out my arms down below me, I could have easily touched the gigantic creature's back. My entire body stiffens in absolute terror and I begin to panic. At that very same moment Bean decides she's had enough of swimming on her own and jumps on my back and wraps her arms around my neck in an almost-chokehold. I am immediately forced under the water by her weight and my body's refusal to move because of the terror I am feeling. My fear frozen body slams into the back of the alligator and the mind numbing terror I felt is difficult to describe. I was sure that the gator would turn and snap both Bean and I up in one gulp when it felt the pressure of us on it's back, especially when my body's function suddenly returned and I used the beast's back for leverage and struggled violently to not only surface for air, but to wrench Bean off my back. When I surfaced I kicked and splashed and screamed at Bean to "Let go of me! LET GO OF ME!!!"

I was certain that the alligator would definately be attracted to my paniced spashing on the surface, but the creature did not make any move, though I could still feel it below me. Bean got upset with me because she could not understand why I had gotten upset over her jumping on my back without my conset and starting swimming back to shore with great indignation. Many of the other DCs turned to watch the commotion I was making and I was very frustrated that none of them knew about the giant alligator floating just below me. The dream gets fuzzy but the last thing I remember is making a mad dash for the otherside of the pond, and though I was still terrified that my kicking and splashing would attract the gator's attention, I could not swim calmly because I was still panicking.


Woke up ina cold sweat, had chills the rest of the night and could not get back to sleep.

Generally, in nature, if a gator is even slightly disturbed it will turn and attack anything that touches it. The fact that it wasn't "acting normally," like I expected it to, is possibly one of the main reasons why I was so scared thoughout this nightmare.

Image courtesy of Marathon Books.