non-lucid

March 2010

The underwater station might as well be in the vacuum of space. Our oxygen generators are broken, environmental systems are failing, and lights are flickering their hearts out. At least nothing's sprung a leak. Yet.

Lassiter and I are running at a full sprint down the narrow hallway, but our progress comes to a grinding halt when we reach a fork in the tunnel. Left or right? A flash of an image: I recall the unofficial layout of the station from a map I may or may not have wrangled from a drunk first mate.

"I'm sensing left!" I shout over the ambient noise of the dying station.

"How would you know that?"

"Really, Lassie, after all this time, don't ya trust me?"

A beat.

"If you're leading us the wrong way, Spencer, I will kill you myself."

When we get to the escape pods - because of course we're going the right way, don't insult me - there's a woman near us, kneeling over an unconscious woman with long, curly blonde hair. I don't recognize either of them, but I get the feeling that the unconscious woman might die if we don't get her out of here soon.

The woman - the conscious one, we'll call her Joy - spots us and points at me, "You, in the t-shirt, I need some help here. Help me lift her into the escape pod."

I hurry over to their side, and pull the unconscious blonde's left arm over my shoulders. Joy takes the right side and three - two - one - lift! Lassiter hovers over Joy's shoulder (not literally, I feel compelled to point out) in case we need help. More help.

The "escape pods" are basically miniature submarines scattered throughout the station, designed for a one-way trip to the surface. They're also very small.

Sparks are shooting everywhere, but I'm focused on the escape pod. "Hang on a minute," I say to Joy.

The door to the pod is open, possibly jammed that way. And there's something wrong with the controls. The autopilot, maybe?

"There's no way we're going to make it to the surface in that." I say.

"Are there any escape pods left?" asks Lassiter.

Flash. Two escape pods to the northwest, through a section that would be venting poison gas into the hallway right about now. That's the quickest route. I shake my head. "We can't make it."

Joy looks at me, considering. "Not with the two of us, you mean," she nods at her friend.

Lassiter and I, and Joy, even, could make it to the remaining shuttles. There's no way we could make it while dragging an unconscious woman with us. And we're not leaving her behind; we're the heroes in this story!

"We're going to have to make it work."

Somehow, we do.

When we surface in the pod, and climb out, we're not greeted by sunlight, but what looks like a conference room with a pool. Several men in suits are staring at us expectantly. From my position, balanced on top of the pod, I hone in on the man who's in charge of this whole fiasco. He's smiling. I sigh.

"I have to go down there again, don't I?"

This time, it has sprung a leak.

Doomed Research Stations. Scare Factor: 3.

March 9, 2010

My name is Lucifer, and I'm busy.

"But you have to stay here! You're the Lord of Hell!" says the ex-cherub, who seems to have been recast as my secretary.

"I don't, actually. I've left this job once, and I'll leave again once I have this place reorganized." I'm standing up at a desk, looking at blueprints.

I turn toward the ominous wooden door at the other end of the (hellish) office-space. The door leads to a dimension where damned souls are trapped. As they make their way to the door, they inch closer to the end of their torment. At which point, welcome to bureaucratic hell.

He continues to pester me, "But God wants you to-"

"Okay, look," I interrupt, "I don't care what God wants. In the actual comic book, Lucifer didn't care what God wanted. Every version of the devil, ever, actively resisted doing anything that God wanted him to do. So what makes you think that I care?"

I realize that I've broken out of character at this point, but the demon seems to actively resist the idea that this is a dream and I'm not really Lucifer. I decide to be amused instead of summoning up a gale of fire with which to burn him alive. Because, as the devil, I could totally do that.

Instead, I throw my hands up in the air, metaphorically, and walk through the now-open doorway to the realm of the damned. The door swings shut behind me, cutting off the shrill ranting of my unfortunate secretary.

I take the form of a woman with short, blonde hair as I take the first steps into the realm usually thought of as Hell. This area is closest to the exit, and as such, is actually fairly pleasant in comparison to the rest of hell. This, of course, means that it's a boring approximation of a cave that slopes slowly downward. The cave curves away in the distance, and I know that it's an infinite spiral to the bottom.

The soul nearest the door looks like a boy in his young teens, although he probably lived to be older than that. The boy is building a fence up the sloping ground, not noticing as it collapses into inexistance behind him. He is intensely focused on the task, trapped, as all the damned are, in a nightmare of his own creation. I approach, and as I do, I hear deep, threatening barking. The boy reacts in a panic, looking about wildly for the source of the noise, not seeing me.

Part of the fence has been shaped into a basket-like form, with half-rotten plywood as the bottom. A rottweiler puppy comes into existence as I look at the space, and it barks at the boy. When the boy sees it, he starts to back away from the puppy, and away from the door.

I'm standing directly beside the puppy, so I pick it up. The dog starts barking and the noise in the boy's nightmare lessens. I look at him, and he sees me for the first time. Finally, his eyes land on the door behind me...

End.

Bureaucratic Hell. Scare Factor: 3.

Spring 2008

I'm in my grandmother's old office. Shift. It's dark, and I'm surrounded by beautiful, frightening living statues made of shadow... twisted, slender, lethal. I want to remember them when I wake up, because they're mine.

The office space gives way, and I'm in the basement of my old house. I'm waking up, still surrounded by the last traces of my shadow-creatures. I'm trying to remember them, listing their traits aloud. Onyx. Jet. Shadow. Cat-like, bat-like, tribal, sharp, angular. They wouldn't have been out of place on a tattoo, if they weren't so real, so dynamic.

I hear a scream.

From upstairs. My mother? Why am I in the basement? Everything is hazy and dream, and my reactions are sluggish. I stumble through the basement and away from my dream-room. I reach the base of the stairs, which, oddly, are not located where they should be. The only light is coming from upstairs. I look up. There is a man standing there.

He's old, unremarkable. I wouldn't recognize his features if I saw him now. He's small, but not in any particular way. Not overly short, not overly skinny.

There was a scream from upstairs, but now, it's all about me. Because the man is stepping down stairs toward me, and I'm just standing there. There's no screaming - it's so quiet - and I couldn't move if I wanted to. And I want to move.

I'm rooted to the spot, affixed by an unbreakable bond to the dreamscape. I can't flex my muscles or flail, because it's not about my feet. I am stuck, immobile, immovable.

And the old man is walking down the stairs, unremarkably. Not sinister or threatening, but I need to get away. Because something horrible is about to happen.

And he reaches the base of the stairs and I haven't moved because I can't, although this is my last chance to rush him, to push past him onto the bare wooden steps.

He's standing in front of me, and of all my will, the only thing I can do is push two words past my lips, "No, please" and it's barely more than a whisper, because nothing's moving, and I haven't thought about drawing breath.

And the old man looks at me, his expression unremarkably pleasant. He places his hand on my forearm -

End.

First Appearances. Scare Factor: 9.

I'm not sure what it was about the dream that freaked me out so much. But I couldn't be alone in my apartment once I woke up. Not in the dark. It was something like five in the morning, and the Tim Hortons beside the building was open. I threw on clothes and nearly flew down the stairs. I ordered a hot chocolate, and a bagel, and sat with my back to a wall where I could see every exit, I and waited for the sun to come up.

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

13.06.2010

Humans for Vampires, Apparently (Non-lucid)

Fragments...

Spike (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) got stabbed in the stomach. I was crying and helping him along. We got to my sister's house, I banged on the door. When we went inside, there was Edward (from Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter) with a weapon concealed as some household item (like an umbrella). He's crouched down and looking antsy. He's not happy with me barging in.

Earlier...I walked up to Spike, and when he turned around I saw that he was all pale(r than normal) and looked sick. I joked to him that 'he was still attractive though'. He started burning/blistering in the sunlight, though it wasn't that bright and we were under the shadow of a roof thing. Maybe that's when I saw he had a stab wound?

'Oops, I Did it Again' by Britney Spears was playing in McDonalds at some point. What's the McDonald dreams???

We (me and ?) were chasing after a woman who'd apparently caused this. Think we saw her at an airport. She was a mix of anime and real life and it was curious who she seemed out of place, and reminds me of Lum from Lum Invader (pictured above, only taller, older and deep green, shiny hair).

She/the enemy was sorry and sowed up Spike's wound in apology.

Notes: I don't actually find Spike attractive, so that remark was interesting. I haven't heard that song in forever either. And this is my second McDonalds dream...is it because of APH or is my subconscious is just craving Mickey D's? XP

A stoner decided to get back at the school. He decided to strap guns onto the feet of every drug dealer in school. He put a gun on my foot. I was deeply offended. Everyone was in panic because all of the drug dealers had guns! I was able to get the gun off of my foot, and hide with my peers. Our 3rd hour class was hiding in the surrounding bathrooms. I joined them, and noticed that T was there. I asked him what he was doing in the girls bathroom. I heard gunfire from the halls, and one of the girls clung to him. Ugh.

We eventually made it back to our classroom and our chemistry teacher decided to put on a movie about the chemistry of fires. I looked at his TV and noticed his TV was on fire too!

"Your TV is on fire!" I shout.

He looks at me for a second and says, "Oh no, it's always like that."

I was walking around the neighborhood with my mother and my sister. In my hands I was holding our pet dove. She was being very quiet, gently cooing. When we got about halfway around, a bus dropped off a small kid. The sun was setting fast, so I started running home (dove disappeared). It was getting really creepy, so I did a reality check and found that I had 5-6 fingers (it was hard to tell in the darkness), but I didn't want to acknowledge that I could be dreaming because if I acknowledged that I was dreaming then I also acknowledged that there were things in the dark that could get me!

I was working for the government to produce deadly pathogens. The pathogens were in vials with different colored liquid. Somewhere along the line, I was also a subject for an experiment in creating a robot test tube baby. They took genes from me and genes from another subject and put them together. A robot baby was formed. For the first 5 or so years of his life he was extremely socially awkward. I worried about him. We left the government agency to live in the back of a theater. We would go to many plays, and I found that my robot baby was always extremely disruptive.

For some reason, I had to leave him for about 10 or so years. I came back to visit him after this time because I was leaving the country. He was still living in the theater. I walked up a set of stairs (and saw a dead dog along the way) and found my grown up robot test tube baby. He had matured and was wearing a suit. He was an actor in the theater.

"Oh, mother!" He says cheerfully. "I love you!" He says and wraps his arms around me. The girls standing around get jealous.

"Oh don't worry girls, it's only motherly love!" He says to them.

I was walking to a different campus of our school, where I was apparently taking a baking class. The baking class was taught by my economics teacher in a stable with horses. Our goal was to use baking to create swing sets for kids made out of biscuits. The teacher asked if I had a permission slip for her, and I said no...She explained to me that we needed permission slips to go across the street for a lesson in baking.

Before you read, let it be known, that I missed a ton of dream signs in this dream.
I dreamed that I was atop a hill with my classmates(DS). My friend Isaiah and I went over to some place to play a video game. I can't recall what game it was, but I know it probably doesn't exist anyway. We came back to the hill.
"Time to go."a teacher said. So, we gathered up our stuff. Oddly, we were going to our destination by plane. My classmates(DS) got on board. I missed the plane.
"Oh s***."I said. Then, as the plane went forward, I sprinted like a cheetah all the way to the plane. I jumped on the wing, just in time. The plane ascended, and I held on for dear life. Then, the plane started to do stunts. It did a flip, and I screamed at the top of my lungs, while trying to hold on. I held on and screamed the whole way, and finally, the plane did one last flip. I let go by force, and plummeted to the Earth's surface like a meteoroid. Oddly, I landed without a scratch on me. Convenient. I had landed on a small bridge. There was a nearby river, and a big city in sight. Then, two semi trucks were coming from both directions. I dodged them, but just very narrowly. I wondered the streets for awhile, and finally caught up with my classmates(DS). We arrived at a park.
"Ok, let's go everyone."a teacher(DS) said. So, we hiked for a little while, and we had to dodge a lot of goose feces. We finally arrived at an abandoned house. I took some classmates(DS) inside for a look. This kid named Riley was climbing everything and getting into trouble. I found a vast collection of electric guitars inside. I grabbed one, and tuned it up. Then, I started to play "American Eulogy" by Green Day(DS). (Let the record show I actually can play that song on guitar in real life.) We left the house, and continued the hike. Soon, we found an abandoned fort. I once again, took some classmates(DS) up to see it. At the top, there was a pack of wolves!
"Oh crap! Stop them!"I shouted. So, me and this other kid went and beat up the wolves, and they did the same to us.
"We have to defend the girls!" I said. So, we finally got rid of the wolves, and we were all beat up. So, we continued the hike.
"What's that?"Brian(DS) said.
"I don;t know."a teacher(DS) replied. It was a weird stone structure. Very hard to describe.
"Well, it's time to leave."the teacher(DS) said. So, we returned to the plane, I and I once again missed it.
"Oh, come on!"I said. So, I chased the plane, and caught on to the wing again. I climbed in through a window, so I wouldn't have to live through more stunts. I soon woke up. And I realized I missed multiple dream signs(everything I marked with DS). My classmates are DSs cause I'm currently in summer vacation, and I only see most of them in school. Also, Green Day is a band I run into in dreams a lot, so I missed that DS too! I've gotta remember these things better next time.

Wikifragment

Just a fragment from during the night.

I was editing Wikipedia... that's it.

Basecamp / The Big Stick

One dream, two distinct scenes. I remembered nothing until I saw a Coca-Cola advert on TV a few hours after getting up and since it featured in the dream, I was able to remember what I think is all of it, or nearly all of it.

PART 1 - Basecamp

I awoke in a pitch black tent. People were entering the tent stealthy. I sensed danger. There were three of them. All of a sudden one of them was coming at me. I pulled a pistol, not sure where from, and shot him point blank in the head as he came up on me.

With one down I saw that the other two were going for two men sleeping in the tent. I shot both the attackers without hesitation. Startled, the two sleeping men were now awake and scrambling around in the dark.

On the floor there were two more pistols. I handed one to each of them. We proceeded to leave the tent, them following behind me. It seemed I was in some kind of military camp. There were tents all around and a perimeter fence.

We moved to the back of the tent so as to be along the perimeter. The ground was raised and the fence was pretty tall. The raised ground provided good cover as we silently moved around the perimeter towards the exit/entrance.

On the other side of the fence there were soldiers of some kind marching. We tried to remain hidden as we moved. Upon reaching the entrance we waited for the soldiers to enter. It seemed clear. I lead the other two men out...

We must have been caught, because the next thing I knew I was back in the camp. It was light. I was talking to the guy in charge. I recognised him as an ally of some kind. He asked me what had happened to the camp. I didn't trust him, sensing he and his men had betrayed us -- whoever "us" was.

He said I should eat and drink something. He brought me to a large white tent. Inside there were lots of people, but they weren't soldiers, the were civilians. There were tables of food in the tent, and the sides were lined with free-standing shelving units also full of food.

I looked for something to drink. All I could see were some cans of coke. I walked over to them. There were six in total. Two regular, two diet, one coke zero, and one cherry coke.

It was this that I initially recalled when watching the coke advert on TV.

I picked the cherry coke. I remember thinking that I don't really like Coca-Cola and would much rather have a Dr. Pepper or Pepsi.

Next I looked for something to eat. There were shelves full of small glass pots, like you'd find sandwich spreads in. I wanted a sandwich but couldn't see any on the tables and shelves. I saw a woman eating one and asked where she got it. She pointed to a seemingly empty shelving unit in the corner.

I looked and saw that there were only four sandwiches left. Damn. They were all either turkey or chicken, I couldn't tell. I don't eat chicken that I haven't cooked myself so I didnt want to take one. I was starving though, so I picked one up.

I get sick easily if my food isn't so-so. The scene then changed, or at least that's all I remember until...

PART 2 - The Big Stick

I had sold a big stick on Ebay. It was about 20ft long, 2" wide, and a 1/4" thick. It was plastic and quite flexible. For some reason I had to hand deliver the item to the buyer. Not only that but I had to carry it through a nearby town centre.

I was walking through the town centre holding the stick thing vertically. I had to pass through a small shopping centre. It was easy enough because the ceilings are so high. However, I then had to pass through a videogame shop to exit.

In reality no such shop exists. I don't know why I couldn't go through the normal exit.

The shop was very cramped. There were kids everywhere. I had to carry the stick thing horizontally. I kept knocking things over and bumping in to things. The stick broke! Damn. I decided to go home.

Back at home I emailed to buyer telling them I had broken it. They said it didn't matter and they could repair it. I got the sense now that it was some kind of video storage medium that worked like an old fashioned film reel, but was obviously a stick...

Weird, but that's dreams I guess.

13.06.2010

Restless Night Was Restless (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID







Fragment: It's The Throat, I Swear

★☆☆☆☆

I'm apologizing to those around me for my terrible singing. Coughing, I blame it on my sore throat.

Fragment: Warriors For Hire

★☆☆☆☆

Warriors are needed for some kind of job or task. I can't help but thinking of Raven, MoSh, Nomad, and the rest of the gang.

Fragment: The End of the Beginning of the End that Started it All

★☆☆☆☆

On a certain day, at a specific time, in a definite place, good would be pit against evil in a battle for the world's soul, or something like that. It turned out to be much more small scale than that, though.

Dream: Horsing Around

★★★☆☆

Enjoying a fun game of HvZ, I soon discover three prized horses have been stolen! We put the game on pause and begin tracking them down. I end up finding them in, and I quote, "One of my favorite HvZ hiding places," which turned out to be a broken down silo. Sending out a mass text, I joined the horde as we converged upon the silo, surrounding the thieves and blocking all escape routes.

Confronting them, I use my TK to pull them and their saddles off the horses and into the water. One is a friend of my girlfriend and thinks my girlfriend is responsible for the TK antics, so I just keep letting them believe that as I screw with them some more.

Eventually we return the horses and strap permanent saddles on them covered in nails to prevent future theft.

Dream: New Music

★★☆☆☆

A bunch of "famous" musicians have invited me to join an experimental band they were forming. Accepting their invitation, I got to emulate playing Bass and Drums at the same time using a very odd instrument. The music we ended up producing drew elements from Indie, Metal, and Classic Rock, and actually sounded really good.

I was skateboarding down a street. Someone said something about another someone going to University of Wisconsin. My friend Sam calls me to find out who, but I'm busy Skateboarding. I get onto the Highway ad switch to Rollerblades (Which I DO know how to ride)

Type: DILD.
Lucidity: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Vividness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes:
The thing I hate about lucid dreams is that, sometimes, your brain happens to switch on as soon as the dream's ending. Anyways, I was watching the pilot of this intense show called Lie to Me yesterday, so I guess that's where the dream content came from.

I was in the basement of my house. The lights were made from steel, and they were modern-looking fat cylinders that hung from the ceiling. But the lighting in the room was dim, as if someone had turned the dimmer switch almost all the way down. That was okay though, because I was sitting in one of two brown suede couches, both reclined, watching my mom put a DVD into the player. The television moniter was already on, and it was flashing white light every few seconds. Flash. Flash.

As soon as she inserted the player, the movie started, but I wasn't interested in watching anything. Instead, I got up and sat behind the couch I was just on. "Mom," I told her, "since you're the one who chose the movie, we've probably seen it way too many times." I picked up a DVD case with a label sort of like this:

Of course, it wasn't exact and was probably distorted, because it was a dream. I then realized this and gained lucidity, but two seconds later I felt the dream ending. "Crap".

My DEILD attempt ended in failure.

1. I'm reading a comic targeted at bass players, in some world where music is much more prevalent than it is here. Tabs are printed in comics like the one I'm reading, and the lessons show different famous groups' interpretations of the same song (Thelonious Monk's ensemble, as an example). The other page of the comic has parody scenes of real world comics, including a Peanuts parody in which Snoopy is preparing for anal sex. There are words printed, so I fail that reality check chance.

2. I see, in sequence, two car accidents. The first is horrible and flaming, but the only other spectators are a car of punk kids wearing sunglasses at night. They deem the chaos "awesome," and their dad, driving in the front seat, cries behind his own sunglasses. Secondly, I come across another flaming crash. This time, I go to help, but the passengers (all women) are unhurt and manage to walk out easily, disdaining my efforts to help.

I am in a strange house where my dad is sitting at a computer. I call my friend Tom on my cell phone, but for some reason we either get disconnected or I hang up. I text Tom my next thought (about playing Bomberman on GBA) and he responds in his snappy way that it is tactless to text someone you just hung up on. I reply that it is only tactless if Bach inspired you to do so (WTF??).

I woke up at 4:50, so I decided to write this one ^ in a notebook and then go back to sleep. I tried to MILD by repeating 'I will realize that I am dreaming' to myself, but it didn't really work. I do remember the dreams, though.

I am in a strange city with not very many people. I sit on a bench with a boy and his girlfriend, and when they ask me who I am, I tell them they're not going to believe me, but I'm from the future, I've been sent back to kill someone, but I don't want to. I want to tell them to meet me in the past and tell me to not go back, but I realize that this could create some paradoxical problems.

I am going to work at some office where a small Indian man is our boss. He tells us that he wants to try new foods, forsaking his country's sacred cow. I put some kielbasa in the microwave for him.

Vampires are trying to round up and kill a lot of humans, but their plans go awry when only one shows up to the outdoor movie screening they planned. I discover this covert operative and the humans all rebel against it. RAWR. Then I see my friend Starfox with his girlfriend Peggy as we watch the movie. Starfox is smoking a cigarette. I leave and run into some strange man outside of what I believe to be a library. He wants to use my card to get some books, but I hold off until Starfox arrives. Apparently the man is Starfox's (nonexistent) brother. We hang out and watch the sun rise.

I am in my livingroom at home when my girlfriend Angela comes over. My mom has found a trailer for some new Disney movie about reptiles. It seriously looks freaking awesome, better than Avatar, and I want to see it. Angela and I want to go to the mall or something for a snack, and then my parents decide they want to go too. Angela and I run into some people who think I flipped them off from my front door, but I assure them I was just waving. The mall is weird, and I find Sonic the Hedgehog soft drinks that have codes to download Sonic games on the underside of the cap. I show my dad; he thinks they're cool.

I am at a party at a house of a family friend. At first I am shooting arrows off their balcony, but then I go downstairs to get a drink. There is a man who is singing while he is peeing, and I finish the line he last sings.

I am IN that weird made-up Disney reptile movie, and I'm marrying a reptilian version of Angela. Their living place is very weird but decorative. Everything that's going on in this dream is really too confusing to remember.