memorable

I'm climbing a staircase - I quickly realise that I'm in my primary school. The steps are smooth, angular concrete, and so are the walls - I remember that in reality, they were brick walls painted white. There is no artwork on the walls as I climb; the stairwell is cold and empty and my footsteps echo off the walls. It rises up a great shaft through the square school building.

I step onto a landing and turn to a set of grey double doors with small windows, to the nursery. They have no frame and are flush with the wall. I push open the doors and enter the nursery. Straight inside the door is a narrow hallway, the staff bend over tables on both sides of the wall. The space feels narrow, crowded and chaotic. I make my way through them and the hall opens into a much wider, clearer room, lit up brilliantly from all over. Half-height bookshelves double as partitions between different areas of the room, coloured beanbags are scattered about and children mill throughout the room. I'm not sure if I'm one of the children or not.

At the back of the room is a wall of narrow cubbyholes. I search for mine; I know whereabouts it is, but someone has let their coat hang out of their cubby so that it covers mine. I fumble around for a bit before finding my cubbyhole, only to discover someone else's stuff inside. I pull it out: it's a black drawstring bag, almost empty so that the fabric sags when I pick it up. I'm wondering what to do with this when I feel a tap on my shoulder.

I turn around. The girl standing behind me is someone who went to my school, but left before Sixth Form. We used to chat from time to time. "Sorry," she says, "that's mine - I'll take it. I just left it there for a moment." I hand her the bag and notice that her hair is darker and shorter than I remember it. "Did you get a haircut?" I ask. When she fully turns to face me I'm stunned to see that there's nothing left of her hair but sparse, thin and wispy curled strands; I can see clearly her near-bald scalp. I know she sees the shock in my eyes as she looks away with a regretful smile. She tells me that she was diagnosed with lymphoma ("lymphomatic") recently and is being treated. I don't know what to say. A crowd throngs around us of girls trying to collect their belongings.

I leave the nursery. As the doors fall closed behind me, something compels me to open them and look inside once more. Every teacher in the hallway snaps their head towards me, terror in their eyes. Each wears a plain dress, a crisp white apron and a cloth bonnet, and they bend over to tend to babies wriggling and squirming on the tables. Left speechless by their reaction, I slowly close the doors again and leave.

Then I am on the train, going home. It's cramped and I am squished against the wall of the carriage, arms clutched to my chest. The light down here is cold and dim, occasionally flickering. The train rattles as it rushes through the tunnel. I feel tired of the monotony, my eyelids flutter.

Soon I am walking down the high street away from my station. I compulsively check my belongings; touch my backpack strap, check. Feel my coat over my arm, check. Then I feel around under the coat and on my shoulder, but I can't find the tote bag that I always carry. At the realisation adrenaline bolts through my body and I almost feel sick. Where is it? At school? Then I have to go back. My wallet, phone and keys are in there, not to mention library books. What a pain... I'm already dreading the thought of getting back on that train.

As I'm figuring out what to do I clench my left hand and feel the resistance of something hard. It's my phone. That should be in my other bag, and it's here - but the bag isn't. All these different trains of thought and lines of reason swirl into a whirlwind of confusion. I stand stock-still in the middle of the pavement, mind racing as I begin to feel worse and worse.

Ugh I am not having a great time on the site recently... Every time I visit I get to spend much more than a few seconds 'verifying you are human' which then repeats itself after a few minutes and in the process logs me out and deletes the DJ I am editing. Drives me mad!

Long dream this time!

This is Day 42 because I noted some fragments during the competition, and forgot to send them in...

Two dreams tonight!

I'm inside a house, in a white dress, holding a baby. The front door opens and a man enters, he's wearing a hat and sunglasses and his expressionless, confident manner creeps me out. It seems I'm used to his entry, and I keep my head down and stand still while he walks up and down the living room before leaving. I don't remember arriving - I get the feeling I've been here for a long, long time.

Sometime later, my parents have come to visit, and I break down. "I don't want to live here," I sob. My dad pats me on the back but they both have expressions of not knowing what to say. This house looks a lot like my own house.

I'm outside, standing near the bottom level of a sort of Roman amphitheatre, a hand resting on the iron fence surrounding the arena. A soft shawl wraps around my shoulders. The theatre is sandstone-coloured and completely empty, weeds springing up through cracks in the stone. A man approaches from the arena and we talk for a while. I feel relaxed and peaceful, breezes are blowing.

Then I am in the house once more. I go to open the front door and let my mother in. She is outside and a little way back, waiting, is the creepy man. I hurriedly usher her in and shut the door in his face - I don't want him here today. Through the peephole I can see his face peering boredly in.

I show her into the lounge, and wanting to be far away from the man at the front door, suggest we go and stand by the far window. She agrees and we walk to the back of the room, gazing out. And then, the creepy man steps into view. He's come around the back of the house to the very edge of the window. I stand frozen in apprehension and he, too, is still - until he winds up his arm and smashes a wooden chair through the glass. Still expressionless, he moves to climb through the window. My mother and I seize another chair and use it to hit him and push him back. He doesn't yield.

Suddenly my dad is here, and so are the police. They have a 'stun gun' - not a taser but actually a tranquilliser gun with very short darts - and start shooting rapidly towards the man, and us behind him.

He's knocked out, but I feel and see a dart pierce my skin. I try to tell my dad that I've been hit, but no-one is listening and I feel my eyelids growing heavy. My eyes close as I'm babbling, grabbing at his arm.


2

I'm on a 'snowmobile'. No idea how those are actually supposed to look or what they do, but mine has a wide driver's seat and wheel, two seats behind and one on the back facing backwards. I drive it through the market street in the evening when who should I run into but a boy from my primary school (who I actually just met yesterday for the first time in ages) and his friends. We both exclaim at the coincidence and they ride on my snowmobile for a short distance. They drop off as I turn out of a narrow street onto the main road.


Regarding the first dream, the setting was a sort of dystopian society under heavy surveillance. I don't know how to fit it into the journal, it was just a feeling I had; the creepy man was there to watch me and how I lived. The baby might not have been mine, either.

I'm in a sparse one-room cabin high up on a hill. The hill is steep and covered with green.

Then, I'm sitting about halfway up the tiered seating (this is also very steep), in the middle of a lecture theatre, listening to a lecture. I can't remember what it was about now but I felt moved and I remember discussing it with the man sitting next to me. I thought he was in the anime club and I remembered that I'm in that club.

When the lecture ends, I head to the anime club room. It comes is off a high-up hallway, seeming to float over the hillside, bridging two towers together. The sky is dark now and it's pretty dim and shadowy up there. I am the first one to arrive. There's a smallish room with three long tables and benches, and an even smaller one through a door at the back of it which is either an office or a cloakroom.

Two women arrive, one blonde and one brown-haired. They sit down and, unusually forward for me, I ask the brunette (she's closer): ' Hi, What's your name?'. She tells me, it's a pretty normal one, and asks enthusiastically what my subjects are. I tell her that I'm studying Italian, French and Latin!

Then she goes into the back room and I slide along the bench to be opposite the blonde girl. I ask her name. "Don't laugh," she says, "My name is Tickdick." I'm slightly incredulous and she explains its meaning to me.

More people come in. I look around the room and now apart from the women I spoke to I see several men all in the same pale blue waistcoat. I remember thinking that I didn't expect there to be so many men in this club.

Later, after everyone has left and the room has grown even darker, my friend (IRL) comes in and we talk.

She speaks about how many girls in the school (including her) are now in lesbian relationships after failed relationships with non-binary people. They weren't sure about their sexualities when they previously said they were bi. I say something about this and she mentions that others in the school used to talk about me a lot, years back, when she was LGBT and I was the only one who supported her. I ask in interest what they said about me but I can't remember her answer.

She gets up and says she wants to go out to the field to see the olive saplings. I think that's it, at least. We leave the room and head down the hill to a bright, sunny green field nestled among the hills. There are rows of olive saplings on the hillside and rows of smaller plants below. We spend a while admiring them.

A farmer lad arrives, to take care of the field. We chat to him awhile. He needs to break down all the plants as it will help them grow. My friend protests a little but we watch him sweep his arm along the rows, breaking the stalks in two. He collects the broken tops. My friend tells him to leave those, at least -they'll dissolve into the soil and help the plants grow. He agrees and scatters them about.

Once he leaves I notice three birds glide out of a tree. They are positioned as if sitting upright with their wings folded to their backs, looking ahead. They still move forward steadily in the air. I point out to my friend how weird this is and we both stare at the birds in confusion, continuing to talk. Finally, high above the trees, I see the birds open their wings and begin flying faster, beating the air. "Of course!" I say. "They glide first, then they flap their wings to stay up!"

I'm lying in bed, because I'm sick again. My parents had gone out for a walk in the woods or something like that, I feel like they've been out all day. When my dad gets home he comes into my room and sits on the edge of my bed.

He tells me that my mum is dead. She fell down in the woods and died. I think of my mum falling onto a pile of sticks, breaking her leg. He tells me that the funeral has already been held.

I can't believe this. I ask him how he could have held a funeral without me - in one afternoon? I protest that I wanted to see her one more time but my dad himself has a distraught look on his face. I think that maybe he couldn't bear to wait. I'm in shock but I feel tears sliding down the sides of my face, wetting my ears. 'How old was she?' I ask, '58? 59?' We share the feeling of her being too young without having to say anything.

"Try not to think of her body," my dad says. "It disappeared in the fire I burned her in... Think of her soul." I think of a flaming wooden funeral pyre.

Some time later, there are lots of people over at my house. I seem a lot younger here than I really am. The adults stand talking with my dad and they each drink a vial of liquid that is supposed to make them the opposite of drunk. Some kids climb up onto my bed and we discuss that drink, agreeing that it is evil. We drink something that makes us hyper before knocking us out.

The news hasn't really sunk in yet, but when I wake up the next morning while everyone is getting ready to leave, I look out of the window at the bright blue sky and it makes me wail and cry out. "I want my mum back!" I say it twice and my dad tries to comfort me, but he doesn't say anything.

I changed my mind about posting the lucid. I can't piece together the sequence of events and have literally been agonising over it for more than a month which has been causing me to slack off on practicing (trivial, I know). So I've decided to forget all about it. It wasn't even an interesting dream!

Winter Competition Night 12

Most cliché dream I ever remember having. I read a lot of transmigration manga.

I've definitely had this dream before. A girl is transported into a fantasy world - I remember that she had bobbed black hair and wore a hoodie and jeans. After some back-and-forth (which I don't remember) among the society's elders, she is assigned to live with two guys who don't like her. They disapprove of the food she puts in the cupboard, her tastes, where she goes. But she has strong magic powers so they let her stay as per orders.

Another day they are watching a scene projected onto a big screen in a large, grand, wood-panelled hall (it looks a lot like an IRL place I know) when the boys cause images of a girl screaming while being electrocuted to play on the screen, intending to upset her. Enraged, her whole body crackles with electric light and she levitates out of her seat. She destroys the screen and everyone gasps out loud. She then faints and is caught by a female elder. After this incident she is given a room in the boys' house.


Fragment: Someone stole my phone! I'm floating in the blue sky at about roof-level when I see my phone fly out of my hand and rapidly away. I am shocked and about to give chase to get it back, but my dad says it's fine since I need a new phone anyway.

I hadn't actually had that dream before. But throughout the dream I felt a strong sense of déjà-vu. I was sure that this was a dream I had dreamt before. How didn't I become lucid despite thinking that...

Excellent RCs: 2pt
Brief meditation: 0.5pt
NLD: 1pt
Night 12 total: 3.5pt
Competition total: 38pt

Winter Competition Night 4

Finally a full dream!

Fragment: I am living in some cheap area and know some weird fashion folk. I have a boyfriend and live in a small dark apartment. I talk to a friend about a manga and say slice of life seems to be fashionable lately - there are loads floating around with similar art style.

Then I am on a canal boat with my family. We're going along the canal and the boat is rocking a lot. The water is rough. I see a great blue wave splash up and hit the front window (which narrowboats don't have) with a lot of force. The boat rocks and all the passengers gasp and scream. Boat is a bit red and green on the inside. The water rises up again as we go under a bridge. There seem to be quite a lot of low bridges rather too close together.

We reach our destination and get off the boat onto the towpath. The canal seems much wider here and its layout makes less sense. It's more than twice as wide and on the far side only there are more bridges cutting off that area of the water - as if it is splitting into pipes. I see a man moving quickly through the water with only his head above the surface, grinning widely. This makes perfect sense to me. We are here to go kayaking - except that in this dream it's a bit different. The kayak along with most of the body (and the paddle) sinks under the surface of the water and you can paddle around at high speed with only your head and neck above the surface.

We get onto the water and I immediately set off, paddling fast and hurtling around in a spiral across the canal. I don't notice a thing until I open my eyes and see I am about to crash into the brick wall of one of the further tunnels, but I manage to pull myself back with my paddles and rush straight into the tunnel instead. Looking back I can see the instructor laughing at me. The way I'm steering the kayak doesn't feel realistic, looking back - I've kayaked before but this feels more like steering in a video game than paddling in real life

As I turn back and come out of the tunnel, I come almost face to face with a blonde seemingly middle-aged woman. Evidently I can see a bit more of her - seems her body above the waist is out of the water since she's wearing a lanyard and plastic name tag. It says "My name is Bridget B[can't remember]."
"I talk like this:"
Underneath that line is her name rewritten with an odd alphabet composed of smiley faces. They are squashed and warped in different directions to correspond to letters of the alphabet. I remember examining this a bit more closely, comparing these to the English letters of her name - I decided it made sense.

She might be an instructor too. I look back at her and see her name label shows even more information now, about her life. I'll paraphrase what I can remember:

"When I was...,..." I can barely remember any of the first column. Something about her mental state and how she ended up writing with smiley faces when she was younger. The second column says: "Now, I'm 63. I spent time at X hospital and got much better. Now I teach kayaking here and blah blah." There was also a third column but I don't remember a thing about it. But I do remember reading this whole label and I remember how it looked: perfect English and the lines were spaced evenly. That wouldn't have helped me become lucid...

Hand-drawn artwork:

I did a drawing but right now the drawing is at home and I'm not... And I want to publish this before it gets too late. I'll add the drawing later. For now please give me the benefit of the doubt and let me claim the points.

Excellent RCs 2pt
NLD 1 pt
WBTB (failed) 2pt
Hand-drawn artwork 2pt
Night 4 total: 7 pt
Competition total: 15 pt

Went to bed 9:56 PM
Attempt START 10:18 PM - FAILED

Bridget, by the way, did not look 63

School pool. We are having a swimming lesson, though the person teaching us is not a swimming or PE teacher. The pool is small, two metres deep perhaps, and raised off the ground, the water is blue-green. Beside it the surrounding floor is built in something like sandstone. The floor at the right side of the room is a step below the pool, but that at the back is raised by a big step and what seems like low bollards are spaced out along its length. I look closer and each one has a name on it in slightly raised stone letters. They are memorials. The nearest name looks like 'Marjorie'.

Below the raised pool is a very shallow one, the water is completely clear.

We begin swimming, but now we're not in the pool anymore. It's like we're swimming in the air over the city. Below me I can see skyscrapers and the biggest buildings of the financial district, and lots of houses with red tile roofs. I'm in a group and we float around, laughing, every now and then stopping to rest our feet on the roofs of the buildings. They seem much smaller than us at this distance. I place my feet on a group of houses and feel the roughness of the surface on my skin.

Now it does feel like we're in water again. But we're still above the city. I don't quite get how this works but I feel that the water's surface is far above these buildings. There doesn't seem to be any water down here. It's like two spaces overlapping one another.

I swim slowly, but I keep bumping into a girl in my group. I apologise to her and try to swim a bit further away. She's laughing a lot and with her friends seems to be communicating with someone else far away, I don't know how. While swimming away I turn around and realise she - and she only - is now naked. I'm shocked, and then, I bump into her again. It's much more embarrassing this time.

We are finally back in the murky school pool. I swim around a bit more, feeling good, I can hear my teacher talking. I look up and realise I am the only one left in the pool and everyone else is sitting on the side farthest away at the front of the room. That feels awkward and I quickly get out. The small pool is between me and the others, so I slide in, bracing my hands against the bottom to avoid hitting my head. This pool is really too shallow to swim in. I get over to the other side and get out.

I didn't remember this one at all when I woke up, which was disappointing. But then I was reading in the morning and came across a scene which involved a severed head. I thought of the head and then I thought 'Taxidermy' and everything came back to me. This dream was so strange. The second part wasn't at all gory to experience but I suppose it could make some feel queasy.

Fragment 1:

I remember being in a boarding house with classmates from school. The building has two floors and is painted white or grey all over. There are no lights on and the sky outside is dim white, so inside it's shadowy. It's just us here, no host.

My room is on the ground floor and I step outside into a long hallway. The doors too are smooth and white, with pull-down handles. Recessed inside their frames they are dark with shadow. I walk past a pink laundry basket and up the single flight of stairs.

The upper floor is just as shadowy and plain. I pass along the hallway by closed white doors. At the end of the hallway is a dark, empty room with a window on the opposite wall and off to the side a doorless doorway into another empty space. In the wall opposite the doorway are two white doors, and one in the adjacent wall, all closed. I see two of my friends come out of this latter door. They are laughing and carrying a laundry basket.

Fragment 2:

I arrive at my street with a friend from school, we get out of the car. I see that there are two naked corpses, each splayed out face down on top of two cars which are next to one another. One of those cars - the blue one - might be mine, the other is grey. My friend has some reason for these being here. She wants to preserve the corpses so I offer to help her. I take a short scaffolding pole out of the boot of the car and push it into the anus of the nearest body. It enters cleanly and easily with a long part still sticking out. She pushes another into the other end of the body. I'm not clear about this part - in the dream I was sure this was the vagina, but it can't have been, more likely the mouth. But I'm sure it wasn't the mouth. I'm not sure these bodies even have heads. I suppose that's dream logic. At the end of this process poles stick out of both ends of the body, as if it has been impaled.

She asks if I'll help her with the other one too. I look down at the pole I now have in my hand. The pole is dented at the end and has some smudged black marks on it so I tell her it might not be suitable - I'm worried about it causing an infection. I walk up to my house leaving her to finish up on her own.

Outside the open door of my house I stand talking to my mum. She looks out and asks me what that's all about. After a moment's thought I tell her that my friend is interested in taxidermy.

Looking back I can see that both corpses have now been 'impaled'. From here they seem in a sort of spread-eagle position, toes pointed and arms stretched backwards, faces looking up.

Day 14 (Night of Friday 01.12.2023) is too fragmented to merit an entry.

Fragment: looking down a gently lit stairwell at school, sound of girls chattering below.

Me and my best friend from primary school are in a café (restaurant? Eatery?), waiting for another friend who I haven't seen since primary school. It's a small, narrow, high room built entirely of light-coloured planks, roughly hewn. There are large gaps in the wall like floor-length windows, but with no glass in them. I can see outside on a sort of market scene. There's a shop serving lots and lots of lovely-looking baked goods for pretty low prices, I can see their menu even from this far. I don't know what's on the menu of the place I'm in.

We sit at a table - also made of planks, it's what you might find in a hipster café, sideways-box seats on both sides and a white runner in the middle of the table. My friend and I are chatting while sitting next to each other. I look to my left and see a classmate from my current school sitting at a small table, on a school-style chair with a thin cushion, drinking a cappuccino. I go to the bathroom and when I get back she's moved to my table and is sitting opposite my friend. We all talk for a while before she leaves.

More time passes, I don't know how much, but it feels infinitely long as we keep waiting. He's really late. The light outside is still as bright as ever so we keep talking, discussing him, how long it's been, talking to each other.

Finally he arrives. The two of us have almost finished eating (when did the food appear?). He sits opposite, we all greet one another joyfully. For some reason he's wearing a black suit - not the most likely dress for another person my age. I'm delighted to see him.

I'm sad not to remember any of our conversation, since I know there was one. I really need to work on recalling speech! Anyway, after a short time of discussion, I get up and go to the bathroom again. When I return, he isn't here anymore. She tells me that he's already left. It's only been a short time since he came.

"But he only just arrived!"

"Well, you'll see him again. He said to say goodbye to you."

"I wanted to talk to him more. After all, he's my friend, too. And I've missed him..."

The view out of the window is different to before. I can see the back of the bakery shop. There's a bar bending around a corner piled high with giant, glistening canelés and other baked goods to be sold.

I love Sailor Moon. Does this count as a scary dream? I wouldn't call it a nightmare...

I am Tsukino Usagi (the main character of Sailor Moon) - appearance-wise, at least. It might be better to say I'm alternately watching her and being her. She has one sister and a father who is very controlling and doesn't let her go outside. But one evening, somehow, she manages to leave. As I'm walking down the street away from the apartment, I see my father outside a pub on the adjacent street. He is talking and drinking in the warm light and doesn't seem to have noticed me, so I continue walking at the same speed, head down, to avoid attracting his attention. As soon as I'm past the street corner and out of his view I run as fast as I can into town. It's dark out, and there aren't many people about, however the night this time has a dark brown sky rather than a blue one. It reminds me of an old photograph and imparts a sense of finality.

Some time later. I can see inside the apartment while not being there. Usagi's father is there seething over her disappearance while her mother frets, her younger sister (who looks a lot like another character) sits on the floor at his feet. I get the feeling that they are all afraid of him. He vows to find Usagi and bring her back.

Usagi goes to hide in various places. I see her inside a closed shop, a single dim light overhead. Her wristband glows (when did that appear?) and some waves radiate downwards from the lamp. I know instantly that they are transmitted by her father and he now knows where she is. I feel a terrible foreboding.

I don't remember much after that. I feel that she ends up being caught but continues to plan another escape.

I'm not sure if this dream is scary so much as unsettling. It's been years since I had a proper nightmare.

For a moment I see myself: a tall man, dressed in black and with black hair. I'm not myself in this dream, I am him, seeing everything through his eyes. I don't feel like a girl anymore.

A street at night. It's wide enough, paved evenly, though the slabs vary in colour and shade. The streetlamps give off a low, cool white light that's like moonlight. The sky above is dark blue without a single star.

In the middle of the two-lane road is an industrial-looking island, a tangle of thick pipes and ducts that come out of the ground and go back in again, twisting over one another. It's confined into a strict rectangular patch of ground. In the light the curves of the metal are glinting dully. I walk with quiet but sure footsteps onward, past railings and railings and railings, black and gleaming along the length of the street and around the corner. As I near it, eerie music starts playing from one of the corner houses. The house is purplish-grey and has three stories and a basement. On the first floor only the house's corners are missing and covered with a thick dark grey mesh. From here a bright purple mist is wafting out from inside. A purple van in front of the house reads in bubble letters above the windscreen: 'Ultra Shelibatology'.

I pass the house and walk through many more residential streets, across main roads; everything is dark and cool and quiet. Until when passing a garden square I catch sight of a man inside, watching me. He has light hair sticking up in tufts and his whole face is obscured in the dark except his staring eyes. Our eyes meet. Another person walks by in front of me.

I was half-asleep when this one came to me. It's mixed in with details of what I was reading when I dozed off and I can remember a bit of a story!

I am in a boarding school - the buildings are somewhat old. All are built in different colours of brick as far as I can see. I'm eating lunch at a small, square table in the large canteen - a little ways off I can see a white brick pillar capped with brown bricks, and beyond it a broad vague expanse. A girl is sitting across from me, but she's nobody I know. She's eating a hot dish - it looks to me like white rice covered with a thick layer of tomato sauce and then sprinkled with walnuts (would this actually taste good???). I notice and register that our school should be a nut-free one, but pass it off thinking that perhaps she brought her own food. I am allergic to nuts.

A teacher (who I recognise) approaches us and sits near our table. As she's talking, for some reason I decide to try a bite of my companion's dish. Chewing absentmindedly, I suddenly remember that I can't eat nuts and spit out the one in my mouth. I see it's been slightly chewed and I feel myself start breathing faster as fear bolts through my body. Meanwhile, the teacher has left some time before without my noticing. Hurrying up to my dorm room I tell myself that this is just a panic reaction and I'll be fine, since I didn't even swallow.

I arrive at the door to my room. The dormitories are laid out along open-air walkways which form a square around a central courtyard and rise for several levels, all in the same white and brown brick: the balconies are white, capped with brown. The walls of the building are brown. A blond-haired boy steps out in front of me and begins speaking, but I push past him and begin heading back downstairs - when I realise I was in such a rush that I forgot to pick up my EpiPen. So I run back, get it, and go back to lunch. But I never suffer an allergic reaction.

Later, a Christmas celebration. Most of the school is crowded into the brown-brick church. It's Victorian-style and reminds me of the chapel on the grounds of another well-known boarding school. Organ music drifts across the snowy churchyard to our ears as we wait for the service to begin. I am outside the church, skipping the service with my friends, the chilly air chafing harshly against my face, and the snow still falling.

My childhood friend's house. This house is small (ish), old, rickety and crooked. It has some charm to it. There are several articles of furniture in lime green, enough to form a colour theme. From the kitchen, with an oven squeezed against the wall on the uneven wood floor, carpeted stairs rise up twisting round against the walls. The treads of the stairs are sunken with age.*

After we climb some way up the bizarre stairs, we get to the top, our heads almost bumping against the ceiling. The stairs finish in a dead end, the banister folding neatly around to form a balcony of sorts. Beyond, seemingly attached to the ceiling, are a large partly-open leather bag, its zipper facing towards us, and an irregularly shaped red box with a centre clasp opening. He tells me there are two spare rooms at the top of the house and he has the bigger one (his parents have the other). They have high security. To enter his room, which was once his grandma's, one must be his grandma or a trusted individual and say the correct password. I don't know any password and feel uncertain as I squeeze my head and shoulders into the opening of the box. But the next moment I'm inside the room and so is he.

His room has light grey carpet, a heavy old wooden table in the centre of the room surrounded by half-height bookshelves. A tall window in the corner opposite the entrance is framed by heavy floor-length curtains. The view outside is of a bright white sky interspersed with pale clouds.

I don't remember what we talk about but later on he has to go talk to someone else, another girl. I leave the house. But soon after I go back in. I'm jealous. I'm surprised at myself for feeling this way - for in real life, I don't have the slightest crush on him. I creep back up the stairs until I am again in front of the strange double entrance. From the further one (to his parents' room) I hear voices. That's where they went. I once again insert my head and shoulders into that box to enter his room while holding a small, dusty old blue cloth-bound book. I crouch down and place the book on his table trying to be as quiet as possible. I lean against the wall intending to listen in, but I don't hear anything.

From time to time I hear noises. I hear his parents come back home and move about below, and try to hide against the thick curtains unless they hear me. But they evidently don't, so I come out. Then I hear him returning to his room. I start to hide behind the curtains again but I realise I won't be able to stay hidden for long while he's here. So I bravely stand up as he enters. He sees me, is surprised for a moment, but laughs. I tell him, embarrassed, that I'm only there for the book. But his teasing eyes say he knows that's not the truth. Blushing hotly, I say goodbye and leave his house, hurrying away down the road.

*It need not be said that his real house looks absolutely nothing like this.

I'm in a large butcher's shop with an old-fashioned feel. It's really big, laid out like a supermarket, full of meat - and not cold. I remember that, from the street, the windows looked dusty and the shop dark. The interior is black and dark green, and it feels like I could get lost in here.

The owner of the shop approaches me. A bald, genial old man. He talks to me, saying how happy he is to have a customer, and sells me some meat. He jokes that I should come back if the place's still in business - as it will likely close down soon. I protest against this idea, but he tells me that it can't be helped - he rarely has customers. Then he indicates a tall shelving unit full of packets of pink meat and admits he doesn't even know what is in them.

As I'm about to leave, he insists on giving me several items of antique/vintage furniture in the shop.

Later, I return home with purchases. This doesn't look like my road, the pavement is raised a few feet above the road with a railing running alongside. The houses are wider and without the usual stucco on the ground floor. I am laden with old furniture as well as shopping bags and some pink chinaware. I see my parents near a parked car. This looks like a normal car from the outside, but inside it's big: four seats in a row.

My parents have shopping bags too, for a picnic: several buns for each of us, olives, focaccia, vegetables and some other stuff. We talk to the other family inside the car. There is a police car with doors open in the middle of the road and the whole street is quiet - something's off.

Close by is a very small car. A pair of legs stick out from under it at an odd angle, crushed by the car body. "Terrible, isn't it?" I hear someone say. I approach and peer through the windows. The passenger is crumpled over their seat and driver cannot be seen in the dark interior. I knock on the window and the passenger stirs - a young boy in a puffer jacket, looking annoyed with me. Then the driver looks up as well and moves his legs. I see the car has eyes and is red plastic. Just two boys in a toy car. I've woken them up and I hurry away.

I rarely remember a dream as long as this one, with so many details. I can still visualise the dream scenery quite vividly. Currently I'm working on increasing my recall, since I'm a beginner, so I may not have any lucid experiences to note for quite some time.

1. School day?

Remember a lecture earlier, at school, in the pool. The bottom of the pool is raised to floor level and we are all sitting on it. Swimming teacher (IRL) tells us her belly is fake (attached by some permanent procedure, who knows why) and that's why she's fat. There will be more lectures, by others, in the future, and one has already happened - I know this thanks to a paper stuck to the wall, with a list of lectures typed in blue, Times New Roman.

After it's over, I leave, I'm in the school building. Exams are either coming up or have just finished. The school (not IRL, but a squarer, more industrial-looking, white building) is empty. Hallways seem like endless white square tubes, with blue noticeboards on the walls. The carpets in there are blue - IRL they are red. I leave.

I'm standing on an unfamiliar street corner, outside a food shop of some sort. The air feels fresh and cool and the area seems lit up by almost blinding white light, as if a faded white photo. The buildings opposite me are white and glowing. There are cars on the road but they don't seem to move or make a sound. I get the impression I'm near my local library.

A girl runs up to me, I know her IRL, though we aren't as close as friends. She grins and greets me with my name. She has a cup of bubble tea in the left hand. We chat a while about school and I have the impression I'm doing quite well in my exams. We're still talking when quickly, she says she has to leave. She runs across the road, between the cars, and jumps in through the already-opened door of a shiny, sleek black car. Then she's gone, leaving our conversation unfinished.

2. Chase

Fragment: my brother chases me through the streets around my house. IRL geography. I run past the pharmacy but don't remember where I go next.

My (?) cousin (blond) arrives. He wants to see my brother and they enter the bathroom (?) together. I stand outside eavesdropping and feel frightened by what I hear. Cousin touches brother's shoulder and a whitish-yellow light glows. As the door begins to open, the landing lights turn off and I dodge and tumble down the stairs to curl up in the corner of the next landing. My brother descends as I'm pretending to be asleep. I fidget a little, and feel myself shaking in fear, wondering if he'll see through my act because of the trembles. He walks past.

Then I am in the living room. (It's mine IRL). My aunt is here. We talk - I don't remember the words, but she knows they are after me now that cousin did something to my brother. Speak of the devil - my brother suddenly races into the room and makes a beeline for me. Aunt intercepts him, grabbing him by the shoulders while telling me to run. I run out of the house and turn left, racing across the road and into the nearest street off mine. I know I need to quickly get around some corners to make the most of my head start - hopefully, this will confuse my brother since I'm not taking the route I had before (in fragment above). I run through several streets and around corners and the architecture shifts from almost-real to a cartoon-like candy land. The houses have uniform pointed roofs with cherry-pink candy borders.

Soon I realise this isn't the fastest way for me to move and I start bounding, somewhat like a four-legged animal, putting both hands on the ground and pushing, propelling myself forward in great jumps. My whole body lifts off the ground as I jump. The scenery is blurring around me as I'm moving so fast.

Suddenly I can see from my brother's point of view. He's looking for me, running through streets of beige gingerbread houses. The streets are lined with heaps of giant, golden, caramel popcorn piled up steeply against the walls. He throws out his arm and scatters a heap of popcorn as he turns right to keep running. It seems my cousin is speaking into his mind. He makes several left turns. I feel relieved at this since I've been turning right and seemingly heading in the opposite direction.

My point of view again. Suddenly, I see him turn a corner and come towards me. I skid and hurl myself backwards. This time I feel like I'm soaring up into the air, flying on my back, as if I'm floating in a swimming pool. My brother soars up as well and slows to float above me. I hear a conversation between my cousin and him, to the tune of 'about time, do it'. He unfurls a huge flag, in blocks of colours: red, yellow, green. It's made as if of many round beads close together, forming a flat (flapping in the wind) surface, yet with nothing obviously joining them. It billows out against the direction of the wind. I'm still desperately trying to propel myself away.

I hear 'NOW!' and brother comes down on top of me, flag gone. We fall to the floor. I fear my cousin controlling my body, as he is currently controlling my brother.

Then we are sitting in the road, as if we've been dropped from above (I suppose we have) and my cousin and aunt reappear. They cry out: 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY!'. A surprise? My brother has returned to normal, unaware of what's been happening. The dream ends.



Note:

- The first dream had familiar but not quite real landscapes
- The girl who approached me was someone I actually know
- The second dream took place partly in my IRL house
- IRL I don't have a brother, or a male cousin
- I didn't remember any sounds of speech or particular words, nor any faces. Make this a goal for next time!