J.D.

30.01.2011

Taxi Driver (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was having a lucid dream during which I went to a party in a hotel, hosted by some mob boss. I gradually lost lucidity as I downed shots at the bar, and soon found myself face down in a urinal in the men's toilet. I tried to get up but couldn't. I was far too drunk. A huge, suited, mafia bodyguard-type was standing in the doorway of the toilet looking at me with disgust. I was afraid he was going to beat me up or something, so I said,
"Dude, can you help me up here, I fell." This instantly reminded me of many previous WILD attemps. Usually there's some kind of threatening figure standing over me as I'm paralysed in bed. To make the most of the situation, I nod at my arm and ask the apparition to help me out of bed. This has the dual benefit of getting me moving and reducing my percieved fear of the thing through identification. The mafia guy helped me up with one tug of his foot-thick arm. I was still swaying dangerously. Before he let me go, he pulled me close to whisper in my ear.
"Remember you're dreaming, kid," he said. Immediately I stood still and looked down at my right hand. It had six definable fingers, and was blurry. I threw my arms in the air and whooped. It reverberated around the inside of the tiled bathroom.

I knew it was late morning in the real world, and I doubted that I had much dreaming time left. I opened a window in the bathroom and climbed out into the car park. A limosine pulled up, and out stepped Ricky Gervais. I wondered why he would be doing such a small gig, but remembered it was for the mob- they probably paid handsomely. As I ran towards the wall at the edge of the parking lot (with a few people running with my of whose identities I am no longer sure), I tried to remember one of the easier parts of the task of the year. I knew it was all to do with famous movies, and a lot of them would require a serious scene change. I was nowhere near water (Jaws), or space (Star wars), or Greece (300). I jumped the wall and found myself on a busy road.
"Aha!," I thought. "There's one part to get myself hit by the taxi from Taxi Driver!" Turns out there isn't, and I don't know where on earth I got that from! So I ran out onto the road and jumped in front of the first yellow taxi I saw. I shut my eyes for the impact, which wasn't painful. However I was thrown through the air, and bounced off several other cars moving at high speed. When I opened my eyes again, I was on the roof of the original taxi, somehow. It was still driving along merrily. I swung through the driver-side window, and booted the driver out the passenger side. Then I put my boot down and took off. After a few minutes, it became clear that I wasn't the only one driving the car. I looked to my right, and there was DeNiro at a steering wheel and pedals on the other side! I put this down to living in the UK, where the driver's seat is on the right side of the car, not the left, where I was sitting now.

22.01.2011

Beach Race (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was at a beach I used to go to years ago. It was wide, flat and open. Nearly always cold and wet though. There were about ten people with me- some were from my old class at school, others were people I work with now. The perpetual drizzle suddenly stopped and I looked up at the sky. There wasn't a single cloud except... The sun was going down, and around it was a strange arrangement of clouds, and lines created by aeroplanes, which appeared to all branch out from the sun, forming a giant star-shape. It was all lit up red and orange by the sun. I had a flash of recollection then, from the day before- in real life. I had seen this formation before on my way back into work after a break. My friend had commented then how his mind was blown by it. This was a much more intense, exotic version. I already knew it was a dream and a glance at my hand confirmed it.

I levitated slightly, just to show off to my friends. They thought it was awesome. My buddy Kay however, challenged me to a race. Him, on his bike against me, under my own power. I thought this was a fantastic idea and accepted. We would race to the ramp leading off the beach to the town in the distance, just below the sunset. It was a good half-mile. Someone shouted "Go!" and we were off. I lay back on the air with my hands behind my head and was propelled forward. Kay revved his engine and took off at the same speed. We were neck-and-neck for ages, and I tried to go a bit faster by imagining a force pushing me from behind, but it wasn't working. Kay got a slight lead which he kept until the finish line. I laughed and gave him a high five as I passed. Next thing I knew, I had overshot my landing and was on someone's balcony.

22.01.2011

A Whole Day Wasted! (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Once again, I had lived out an entire day in a dream. Actually, it might have been a weekend. I went to the beach with a few friends, weather was terrible, and came home again. I came home back to my old house, but it didn't strike me as strange. Me and my friend Hugh sat and talked for a while, then he went home. After he left, I flopped down on a beanbag and noticed that he'd left his phone on the floor beside it. I picked it up and went to the window, but he was long gone. It was cloudy, grey and raining a little bit outside. I sighed and headed out of my bedroom and along the landing. On the way I lazily reality-checked.

It didn't look quite right. I laughed to myself. Imagine if this was a dream, and I'd just spent all this time going about acting normal! Because I hadn't been paying full attention before, I looked at my hand again. Thirteen fingers on my right hand. I counted meticulously. My mum approached and asked what I was doing.
"Turns out this whole thing isn't real," I murmured. I wasn't sure what the point would be of telling a dream character I was dreaming, they never seemed to acknowledge strangeness. "Well, bye!" I said, and opened the window to climb out onto the roof. Heavy, cold rain had started now, and people outside were running for cover.

That's the last I remember.

18.01.2011

Re-Entry (WBTB)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

My friend rang me this morning to remind me to get up and study for today's exam. I said ok and promptly lay back down.

A few minutes later I heard someone rustling about beside my bed. It was definitely a person- I could hear footsteps. I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating or if someone had indeed invaded my room- in which case, what the hell was I doing??

Then this person got into bed beside me. It was a woman. I moved one of my hands over and found one of hers. Then she flung me out of bed.

I stood up. My bed was empty, and the covers strewn everywhere. I knew it had to be a dream due to the fact that my room was red. It's mainly blue in real life. I can't remember what happened next at all.

14.01.2011

Killing Freddy Kruger (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I think going to bed so wasted killed any chance of dreams during the night, but when I went back to bed again in early morning they were more vivid than ever.

I woke up in my friend Hugh's house. It was a dark, late winter afternoon, and there was loads of melting snow outside. I went to the window and stretched. Something felt a bit off, perhaps it was the snow looking like clouds, or the fact that I'd woken up there at all. I checked my hand just in case. The hand itself looked solid enough, but on closer inspection it had exactly seven fingers.

I was surprised to say the least. I genuinely thought I'd been awake. My thoughts were as clear as they ever are when I'm awake, and the dream itself was totally stable. I opened the window and climbed out onto the ledge, before dropping to the ground. I landed on some crunchy wet snow. Rather than waste my time, I decided to do part of the task of the year. I really wanted to take on the Persian army with the 300 Spartans, but I didn't feel up to the necessary change in setting. Instead, I turned to face the house and thought about Freddy Krueger. I'd had a couple of dreams about him before, but never lucid enough to take him on. I turned back around.



Freddy was charging at me across a field with his claws raised above his head. The most bizzare thing was that a sizable crowd of young children were running with him. I wasn't expecting that, and for a few seconds I just stared at the scene, half laughing. As he got closer to me, I helf up my hand and tried to telekinetically grab him, but it didn't work. Now he was close, he actually looked a bit scary. Nobody could look good in that skin. He swung his finger-blades down on me, cutting the side of my face. But at the same time I grabbed his arm and locked it in position under mine. I wrestled off the glove and kicked Freddy away. While he was temporarily incapacitated I put the glove on. It fitted my hand exactly. It ended up just feeeling like I had blades for fingers, they were very sturdy. Freddy got up and ran at me again, making a "screamy/gurgling" noise. I thrust my bladed fingers up through his chest, which ended up going through the base of his skull. A quick tug, and his head came off. It was stuck to the blades, so I shook the whole glove off.

This led into another dream I now barely remember, in which I tried to save a town from an alien infestation.

08.01.2011

Going to see the Pyramids (DEILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Somewhere between dreams this morning, I remembered the task of the year I'd been neglecting. Unfortunately I didn't remember that it was in fact next year, and there were new tasks I hadn't seen yet. Oh well, it was fun anyway!

After my previous dream about Cheryl Cole, I woke up into some kind of recording studio. I was lying on a comfy chair, in a circle with about ten other people. One of them was my friend Kay from work. We were all hooked up to one of those dream-sharing devices from Inception. Kay said something, but I ignored him, thinking about my last dream and how awesome it was. I tried to do a DEILD back into it, and a little loading icon appeared at the bottom of my vision. I paused, thinking of something more worthwhile I could be doing, like the task of the year on Dreamviews. I strained to remember what they were, and recalled that Egypt was definitely involved. Then it came to me. There were two related to Egypt- finding out how the pyramids were built, and watching the Exodus. I snapped awake back into the studio and stood up. After telling Kay of my plan, I went outside to the street. It was a huge crossroads, filled with people and the occasional car. I kneeled down in a patch of gravel and sketched out a (very) rough drawing of two pyramids and the Nile using my fingers. I looked at it very intently, visualising it in front of me. I lost touch with the crossroads, but felt Kay coming up behind me.
"Good luck," he said calmly.

By now I had a cartoon-ish picture of Egypt in my mind, and was trying to insert myself. I realised it would be hard to insert myself at the P.O.V. I had drawn, because I usually needed some sort of tactile sensation to pull myself into a scenario. The P.O.V. was in the sky. My vision zoomed down to the ground, on a sand dune. There was a tall wire fence along the top of it, separating me from Egypt. I wondered what it could be doing there, but used it anyway. I moved towards the fence and grasped it tightly. I got my whole body involved in climbing up and over the fence, and my surroundings got a lot clearer. When I was on the ground on the other side, I jumped up and down for a few seconds to make sure there was no chance I was going to lose touch with the dream from poor integration.



I found myself in a quarry. It was a huge hole in the ground, but nothing was happening. It was eerily quiet. I took off and flew downhill in the direction I assumed the pyramids were. I ended up following a wooden train track, which I thought must be for the transport of big blocks of stone for building work. After clearing one last tall sand dune, I saw an Egyptian city. There was one small pyramid, with a much larger one in the early stages of construction. I landed on a ridge overlooking the scene. Around me were a number of large stone blocks, each about the size of a car. It looked like they had been abandoned here. I went over for a closer look and laid my hands on one. It immediately turned a bright bronze-like colour, and looked a lot like metal. Many of the nearby blocks did the same. I flew off the edge of the ridge, and down into the city. I landed at the edge of the unfinished pyramid building site. Nothing seemed to be going on, again. I was curious for an explanation. There were people staring down at me from balconies and rooftops. I shouted,
"Pharaoh!" A man on the roof of a large building raised his arm. I jumped and flew over to him. He was very old, and wearing a ceremonial headress/crown thing. He didn't seem to want to communicate with me at all anymore. Another man on a different rooftop gestured for me to come over. I ran and hopped to his building. I had a long conversation with this man, who turned out to be the Pharaoh's son. He explained that production had halted on the pyramids, and that his father wouldn't allow him to go to university until it had resumed. I remember he said,
"What does he know anyway, he's basically mummified already!" I laughed. But down to business.
"How are the pyramids made?" I asked.
"Come and see," said the prince, and showed me to the edge of the rooftop. There were lights coming down from the sky through the clouds. Spotlights, which seemed to be scanning the blocks in the area. On finally stopped to scan a block I had turned into bronze earlier. The block then transformed into a bronze golem, which immediately got to work stacking blocks on the base of the unfinished pyramid. A voice boomed down from the sky,
"He has repaired our equipment. Construction can recommence." The people on rooftops and balconies all around me cheered. The prince turned to me and asked if I could fix a few more blocks before I left. I agreed, and jumped down to the building site. I placed my hands on a huge pile of blocks. They all turned bronze and transformed into golems. After a few seconds, the whole area was buzzing. The golems were lifting, pushing and hammering the blocks of the new pyramid into place.

I stood back, satisfied. I thought then of waking up into the previous dream level and going back into the gameshow for another round with Cheryl Cole, but I wanted to wake up and remember this dream accurately. I turned and waved. The Pharaoh and prince waved back. I closed my eyes and roughly three seconds later, I woke up.

08.01.2011

Banging Cheryl Cole (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had a very hazy false awakening where I really couldn't tell whether I was awake or not. I had difficulty moving and couldn't see my hand when I checked it, so assumed I must still be asleep. Rather than force myself out of this apparent inertia, I went for a WILD, inside the dream- with the intention of finding myself somewhere else.

I woke up sitting on a chair in what appeared to be a large, indoor arena for a gameshow. The lighting was low, but there were spotlights zooming about everywhere. The arena itself was covered in ramps and chairs. On each chair was a naked woman reclining. I was highly confused, but quite excited. The voice of Davina McCall (who hosts most UK gameshows) boomed out, explaining that under one of the girls was a playing card, which I had to find without being distracted by them. It was their job to try and seduce me. A klaxon sounded and I ran into the arena. The first girl I came across was an ex, who wasn't too hard to resist, depite the fact that she was naked and covered in massage oil. The card wasn't anywhere around her. I made my way down a ramp and was confronted by a naked Cheryl Cole.



"Fuck the card," I said, and we had sex on the ramp. It went on for a while, so long I thought I might be wasting lucid time, but it was worth it. When a buzzer sounded indicating that I had ten seconds left, I reached underneath her and pulled out a playing card. I threw it up in the air behind me and got back to business.