New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

Note: I had some plans to meet up with Tigress for a dream in the world of Oblivion. I managed to achieve my WILD, but even though the WILD was successful, I didn't wake up enough after the WILD to make myself take notes… and consequently all I remember are fragments of the dream. I really have to stop telling myself that I'll remember my WILD later just because it was a WILD… sometimes that makes absolutely no difference at all.

A fragment of Tigress and me walking down the streets of Skingrad, a city in Cyradil, the world in the game of Oblivion. There were other people wandering around and talking to each other. I did notice that they seemed to have more of a purpose than in the video game Oblivion, they didn't seem to be repeating the same mundane things over and over again, either. I didn't pay too much attention to all of the people, though, Tigress and I were heading somewhere. We finally reached a building in Skingrad that I didn't remember ever seeing before.

The next fragment included Tigress and me inside a house that looked appropriate for one of the houses in Oblivion, we were using dream powers to design it to fit our needs. Tigress was getting a bit impatient, wanting to go out and shoot stuff, but I was saying if we set things up in the house properly we would be able to meet up there more easily next time. To that end, we made three bedrooms to aid us in using FA's to our advantage. A bedroom that looks like mine, one that looks like Tigress', then one that looks like Silver's room since Tigress will sometimes be sleeping there. Finally that was done, so I set up a few mirrors throughout the house that could be used as portals if we needed it. Tigress was still impatient to go shoot stuff, so I said we could go out and find some enemies.

The next part of the dream that I recall involved Tigress and me in Oblivion, we were making our way down a canyon of sorts, there were steep cliffs on both sides of us reaching into the sky, and the path we were on was pretty narrow and it was winding upward, getting ever closer to the top of the cliffs. There were enemies everywhere, both on the path and on the cliffs overhead. The ones overhead were firing projectiles at us including balls of flame, arrows, arrows on fire… and even some lighting. Tigress was taking all of them out one by one with rapidly fired arrows from her bow, she seemed to be firing them faster than it would take to aim… But I didn't spend too much time considering her skill with the bow, as I was in a fight, myself. I had my Witchblade sword formed, and I was engaged in battle with several of the daedra right there on the path, keeping them away from Tigress, who was firing her arrows from a bit farther behind me. She was effectively keeping the enemies above from hitting us with distance weapons while I was keeping the melee attacks away from her so she could continue focusing on her archery.

The last piece of the dream I remember had Tigress and me in a large round room with the sigil stone in the center of the room, there was a beam of energy flowing from the sigil stone, and it was keeping the Oblivion gate open. Once again we were fighting. I was using my sword against the last daedra between us and the sigil stone, while Tigress, who seemed to have an infinite number of arrows, was taking out the ones trying to approach from the outside ring of the room. I took out the last daedra between us and the sigil stone, and still more enemies were pouring into the room, even Tigress' speed wasn't keeping up. She called to me to grab the sigil stone, but I didn't really need to be told, I was already grabbing the stone. Then everything went dark briefly, followed by a flash of light, followed by Tigress and myself hanging in the air a couple hundred feet over the forest below… I could see Skingrad from there very well, not a bad view… and then we were falling, and then I woke.

I was in a bedroom with my ex boyfriend, James, and we were both sitting on his bed and talking just like we used to before I found out that he didn't really care about me at all… Well, at this point we were both sitting on his bed and talking about a bunch of random stuff, about video games, movies, music, etc. We both had iPods there with us, they had been set aside since it was hard to talk to each other while listening to music. I noticed absently that James was playing with my earphones, just fiddling with them, but I didn't really care about that as long as he wasn't damaging anything. I was looking through a strategy guide for some video game, then when I looked back at James I saw he had a knife and was cutting at my earphone cord. WTF? I told him to stop that, and he did, but there was already an area of the wire left exposed, possibly damaged. I got mad at him, he said to fix it with electrical tape, I said it wouldn't help if he had damaged the wire… I tested it on the iPod, and the sound was compromised… I said I would have to buy a new pair now, and those aren't cheap. He didn't seem to have much of a response to that, when I repeated myself, he said the store down the road sells them. I knew he had a spare pair of earphones, and it was pissing me off that he hadn't offered that to me to make up for damaging my pair. For some reason, instead of coming out and saying that, I bitched more until he finally offered them.

I took his spare pair of earphones and I was leaving, I had to go home. Now he was the one bitching at me, complaining about not having his spare pair of earphones and why should I get his earphones instead of just buying new ones for myself. He was pissing me off, I said those things aren't cheap, and he had deliberately destroyed mine, so he owed me the replacement pair. If he was that set on having a backup pair, he should go to the store and buy them. The argument escalated, and changed topics several times, moving on to money problems and then on to him bitching that I don't have sex with him enough and then on to my not liking his way of trying to initiate sex by saying, "Let's fuck," when he wanted to go… I got more and more pissed, and I finally drove away, really upset and pissed off.

I was now driving down the street, driving rather recklessly, and muttering expletives about James, from what he had said I could tell perfectly well he didn't really care about me at all, much less love me. What a crock of shit! I didn't really feel like going home now, so I drove until I came to the store James had indicated had the earphones in it, and even though I didn't need to buy earphones, I went into the parking lot and parked. They also had a lot of other cool electronics, and I needed to calm myself down before I got into a massive wreck. I got out and went into the store, not only did they have their usual stock, they had some special stuff on display, too. Virtual reality gear, and lots of it, every kind of it from gloves to head mounted displays to 3D goggles and glasses… they even had one full virtual reality setup, where the player stood inside a sphere and the computer could scan out their every movement. The person in the system now was wearing an HMD, and other than that she was just going through the movements needed for the game, and the computer was doing the rest. As she walked, the sphere turned like a ball made for a hamster. I really wanted to try that, but there were so many people waiting and watching it… I would never get up there.

I wandered around a bit more and found there were smaller virtual reality setups around, most of them had the form of vehicles that the player sat in. I was heading towards one that looked like a miniature version of Star Tours, thinking maybe I could at least check that one out. I went over to the machine and waited a few minutes for the person currently using it to finish. While I was waiting, my mind went back to James and I got pissed again, and I was also able to spot clear indications that he was cheating… I had no doubt in my mind. So I was just sitting there getting more and more upset.

The machine finally came to a stop, so I got up and waited impatiently for the person to get out… they were taking forever! What was taking so long? I just wanted to kill something since James had been stabbing me in the back… I just wanted to hurt someone… I just wanted… someone to care about me… my anger turned to depression, I felt like I might cry now, which I really didn't want to do where other people could see me. I could do it once I was in the machine… and finally the door opened and a man came out. I was about to get into the machine when I recognized the man, it was MoSh! I felt like I really needed a friend, maybe it wasn't a coincidence that I had met him here… I didn't say anything to him, I just put my arms around him, and though I was ashamed of it, I was crying anyhow. MoSh seemed confused by my behavior, but he finally returned the hug. That's all I remember before I woke.

I was walking down the sidewalk in a normal looking neighborhood, it looked to be a typical lower middle class neighborhood with homes that looked like they could be quite nice if they were kept up better. But whether due to lack of finances or to laziness, the necessary maintenance kept getting put off… I was somehow at least partially lucid, I realized I was dreaming, but that was about the extent of it. I wasn't thinking at all about my waking life any beyond that. I followed the sidewalk for a while, I figured I would soon find out why I had been brought to this particular place at this particular time. So far nothing looked out of place… a nice evening, the sun was setting, a gentle breeze was blowing, some dogs were barking, a cat darted across the road to the cover of some bushes on the far side. I just kept walking, listening and watching carefully for any sign of why I might be there.

It didn't take long for me to find that out… As I was walking past one of the houses, I heard screaming inside, someone was being attacked. It sounded like a child screaming, but those weren't the screams of an angry child throwing a tantrum because she hadn't gotten what she wanted… those were screams of terror. I ran up to the door of the house, which was locked. There was more screaming from inside the house, though the screams sounded muffled by something now, I couldn't tell what. Since the door was locked, I just blasted it down with a blast of energy and went into the house anyway. The muffled screams were coming from the basement, there was another locked door there which I also broke down. There were three people in the basement. There was a little girl, appeared to be about ten years old, tied up and lying in a shallow hole which looked like a grave, there was a man standing on the far side of the hole holding a gas can, the flammable liquid was still pouring out of the spout onto the little girl in the grave. I could smell the gas from the base of the basement stairs. There was a woman standing by the side of the grave, she was holding a box of matches… it didn't take a detective to figure out what they were doing.

I told them that the girl was coming with me, the woman seemed very upset by that, she told me to stay out of other people's business when I don't understand the situation. I said I understood the situation much better than they thought. Now step away from the pit, I was taking the girl with me. The woman said it was too late, quickly lit a match and tossed it into the pit at the girl. I telekinetically caught the match and knocked it away from the girl in the hole, making sure none of the gas fumes managed to ignite. I wondered if these people were really assholes or if they were only trying to kill the girl because they thought she was a demon… because they knew of the evil inside her… so I did a quick mental scan of the man, then I wished I hadn't. I got images of the couple's first child, a little boy, the father doing absolutely unspeakable things to the child and then the mother would tell the boy he was evil because of what the father had done to him… it was enough to make me sick. He had died when they had decided to punish him by burying him alive for a while to be alone with his claustrophobia and fear of the dark, but they had left him in there a bit too long and he had suffocated. If the girl was a demon, this couple definitely deserved her!

The mother lit another match and threw it into the hole with the girl, I knocked it aside like I had the first one. This one, however, landed next to an empty gas can at the father's feet, but it apparently wasn't quite empty after all. A flame sprung up suddenly, taking both of them by surprise, and igniting the man's pants instantly since he was surely covered with at least the fumes from the gasoline. He saw the fire and started flailing around, which of course just made things worse, the woman seemed at a loss as to what to do about it… while that was going on I jumped down into the hole and untied the girl, giving her a boost out of the hole and then climbing out after her. The father was now completely engulfed in flames, screaming loudly in terror and pain, the mother was trying to use a blanket to put the fire out. All she accomplished was catching the blanket on fire. She threw the blanket down on the ground, but part of it flew back in her face and set her on fire as well. She responded to the fire about as well as the father had, by flailing around a lot. She fell to the ground and started rolling, which is what is supposed to help, but then she rolled into the hole where the girl had been… and into the puddle of gas there… and burst into flames.

I picked the girl up and carried her out of the house, which was starting to burn quickly behind us. There was no way that house was up to fire safety codes… but that didn't really matter. I could hear sirens in the distance, apparently someone had called the fire department or the cops and emergency vehicles were coming. I quickly carried the girl away from the house and down into a dark alley where we wouldn't be found. The girl was acting like she was completely traumatized by the experience with her parents. I wasn't buying it, I could see from her energy signature that she wasn't in a truly traumatized state, I could also see that she had quite a bit of dark energy in her which was most likely the thing that was causing her to behave in an evil way… so basically she did have the energy of a demon. It seemed to me that if she could learn to control that energy, she would be able to focus it better and take care of people who deserve to be eliminated, like her parents had deserved to be eliminated. But that would take time, and I was about to wake up. This is where my recall of the dream ends, but as I woke up I heard Q saying he had brought the girl back to my inner world and set her up in a home in a separated part of my inner world, populated by DC's and anyone from my inner world that felt like visiting her. I remember hearing Q say that since I had wanted to bring her back, she was now my responsibility… congratulations, you adopted a ten year old demonic orphan!

Note: I fell asleep having plans to meet with Tigress again, to go do something different tonight. So as I fell asleep with my light / sound machine on and I slipped into a WILD… This time, I was focused enough that when the dream started I was already in the landing area of the biodome tower.

I looked around the landing area of the biodome tower. All of our ships were there, and there were a couple extra vehicles there. One was a hover bike, the other one was a robot mech… the bike was blue and the mech was green, both of them looked pretty cool. The robot mech was Tigress' and the hover bike was mine, we each went to our own vehicle. Tigress did something over there with hers, a few things seemed to change slightly before she got inside it. I got on my bike and we both launched out of the tower into space where we found a portal, which had been opened by Q so we could easily get where we needed to go.

Tigress and I emerged from the portal over a desolate place, there was a dry wind blowing over a parched landscape… it looked like the middle of a vast desert with no sign of even a cactus. Just by looking at the scene it was impossible to tell what had created the desolation, but I remembered Q saying it had been caused by a massive war that had nearly destroyed the entire planet. For a short time we flew over the desolate landscape, I did see that there were occasional ruins that looked like they might have once been buildings of some kind, though it was hard to tell what they had once been. For the most part the only thing that was there to be seen was wastelands extending into the distance.

After we had flown for a while I finally saw something up ahead, as we got closer to the place I could tell it was a small area of green in the middle of the desolate wasteland. We got closer and saw there were some simple buildings there and some densely packed trees as well. The small oasis was partially sheltered from the dry winds and dust storms by a small mountain, although it wasn't completely protected. We got closer and I saw the larger trees were being used to shelter and protect smaller trees as they were getting started. There was an irrigation system coming out of the mountain where apparently they had been able to find a water source to help support their little community. I wanted to get a closer look at the place, so Tigress and I flew in towards the oasis.

It was then that I saw a cloud of dust approaching the oasis from another direction, and I realized I had been completely forgetting about the attack Q had warned us about. Raiders were attacking the city, trying to take some valuable power cells from them to use for their own needs instead of wasting it on restoring life to the planet. Apparently they were either too short sighted or just too stupid to realize that once all of the energy cells ran out they would be shit out of luck. So instead of heading directly towards the oasis, Tigress and I diverted our path to intercept the raiders cloud of dust. They weren't even trying to go unnoticed, they clearly were completely confident they had the upper hand over anything that could defend the oasis. They were wrong.

When we intercepted the raiders, they didn't even bother trying to communicate, they just attacked on sight, though I heard some of them saying the restorationists must have more energy cells hidden away than anyone had realized if they were able to send actual mechs out to meet them. Others said there were only two mechs, though, so it's not like they had been able to mount a serious defense. A few of the raider mechs, which only amounted to some hover craft that couldn't fly very high and a bunch of motorcycles that were equipped with weapons, broke away from the group to intercept us. Apparently they thought that would be enough, there were only four of the hover craft breaking away from the group. One of the raiders on the craft intercepting us called to the others to capture as many restorationists as possible, keeping as many of them alive as possible… they needed an extra food source, and the meat would keep better if the cattle was still alive. The four attacked Tigress and me while the others tried to continue to the oasis.

They soon found out that leaving such a few of them to fight us wasn't a good plan when we blasted through the four of them before they even got a shot off, then we flew up and cut off the rest of the group. Now that they realized they would not get rid of us so easily, a battle broke out right there and they had apparently decided they needed to deal with us first before heading to the oasis. Since my hover bike was able to fly and theirs only hover while some of them were even ground vehicles, I was flying circles around them and blasting them from every direction. I could see Tigress wasn't even bothering to avoid their attacks, which were doing absolutely nothing to her mech, and she was blasting many of them, too, as well as crushing some of them beneath her feet. While there were a lot of raiders, none of them were particularly powerful. Just because I wanted to do it, I transformed my mech into robot mode and continued blasting the enemies. I saw Tigress' had shifted into the shape of a wolf and she was tearing enemies apart with razor sharp metal fangs, blasting them with eye lasers, and firing missiles from the claws. Cool transformation!

The battle continued for a short time longer, but soon there were no raiders left at all, we had gotten even the few who had tried to escape, I had the idea if they got back to their base they would return with more. We landed near the oasis and got out to look around the place. The people at the oasis were clearly grateful with us for stopping the raiders, but they also seemed a bit wary of strangers. We looked around their oasis for a while, and it turned out they had taken many different kinds of plants and animals into a mountain shelter, which was also where they were getting the water from, to protect the biodiversity of the planet when it was hit with what they knew would be a devastating attack. But even they had been underestimating the total damage it would do, they had not thought they would have to start over planting the very first tree and nursing it to growing just a little so it could take root in the hostile environment…

I wandered around the oasis for a while, looking at the trees and grass which looked like it was all taking root very well especially considering the conditions. The irrigation system was a series of small canals branching off in different directions to access the entire oasis, there were some small animals drinking from it as it poured out of the ends of the canals at the roots of the larger trees. It really was beautiful, but it could use some help… I took out my ocarina and started playing a nice tune, as I was playing the music, the plants seemed to perk up and grow, I could see them visibly growing and getting greener. Around the edge of the oasis I could see the green area expanding out into the desert, grasses were sprouting out of the parched ground, saplings began growing into small trees, a spring bubbled up from the dry ground and quickly filled in a small depression in the desert to make a small pond, plants grew on the bottom of the pond and around the pond… more trees sprouted as well… Some of the people from the oasis had followed me out there, and they were clearly amazed at the effect of the music. I soon felt like I was going to wake up, so I told the people that what I had done should help them get things started… and maybe I would be back to do more. They seemed rather speechless… they were still staring at me when I woke.

Note: The rest of the night was filled with fragmented non-lucid dreams which I will post here, partially to get me back in the habit of posting in my journal regularly. After missing so long it would be easy to get lazy…

I was with Tigress at a couple of desktop computers, I was working on one of the computers and Tigress was working on the other. I was designing a video game, it was a 3D space game that looked like it had similarities to both Star Wars and Star Trek. The graphics looked awesome. The part I was testing involved the ship coming around a planet into range of a target, the targeting system on the screen looked really cool and high tech, and I was doing this over and over again as I tried to time a certain feature just right. Tigress was saying that feature wasn't really that important when I finally got it right…

I was inside an arcade in a casino, the casino was so huge that there was a small city actually inside it. I was playing the game I had been developing in the previous dream, but I was running out of quarters, so I needed more. I kept a few quarters out and figured that with my programming knowledge it would be no problem for me to hack into one of the electronic slot machines and make it give me a big payout without anyone noticing…

My mom and I were putting a new screen on my window. The old screen had been damaged quite a while ago, this is also true IWL. So I went and got the screen and brought it back. After fighting with it for a while, my mom and I finally got it placed back in the frame… only to see it was the wrong one. We had just put the busted screen back in the window, which did absolutely no good. My mom was annoyed that I had brought the wrong screen, I kept asking her why she had even bothered to keep the old screen…

I have apparently been playing too much Farmville, as now I was sorting a bunch of miniature animals in my own house. I was putting a bunch of cows and calves in my mom's room, a bunch of goats in the living room, foals and horses in the kitchen, and all the felines in my own room. There were just a couple of problems. My mom was complaining about the manure all over the place, the wild cat cubs in my bedroom were chasing the kitty cats, and I was trying to figure out where to put the fish… even though there are no fish in Farmville…

I was in my car driving down a street near my house, it is a long two lane street through a desert area with a few gentle hills and no houses around. It was mostly the same in the dream as IWL, but there were more trees in the dream version. I was driving very fast, and I had classical music blasting out of the speakers, I don't know what composer since I am not too knowledgeable about classical composers. But I liked it. MoSh was sitting in the passenger seat, he was clutching the sides of his seat and seemed to think I was insane for driving so fast. I had the idea I was taking MoSh back to my house, and that it was urgent for me to get him there quickly…

I was in my living room with Tigress, I was on the couch with my laptop and Tigress was behind the couch looking over my shoulder as I worked on the computer. She was telling me about an idea she had for the game I was currently working on, it was a platformer, and it looked pretty cool. It was a futuristic looking setting in the game and Tigress was describing how she thought the next level should go…

I was in my bedroom, but it was quite a bit bigger than it is IWL. There were quite a few musical instruments in there as well, all hooked up to some pretty cool looking speakers. MoSh was there with me, he was playing a guitar. I wanted to learn to play the guitar, I really wanted to try playing it for a bit and see if I could get any decent sound out of it. I told MoSh I wanted to try it, he said sure, but he wanted to try something on it first. He played it for a bit longer, playing something I didn't recognize but I definitely liked. I wasn't sure if I wanted to play after that, but it didn't matter, since that's where the memories end.

Note: I know I have been away from posting dreams for a long time, and that is because I haven't been remembering any dreams. I have been having an extended drought in the area of dream recall and lucid dreams, but for last night I actually have something to post! What I remember is a lot of fragments, but part of it was even lucid, so I will post it all here. I finally remembered dreams again! Yay! My first point was to meet Tigress in the tower on the moon, so when I surprised myself by entering into a WILD, that was my first goal.

I was lying in my bed with my light / sound machine on, focusing on letting my body fall asleep while my mind remained conscious. Almost without even realizing what had happened, I slipped into a WILD. I was still thinking about my first goal, thinking I was still awake and had to use the bathroom. I got up and realized my door was closed, which is not normal, I leave it open so my cat, Midna, can sleep with me. I opened the door and found myself looking out of my bedroom into the sickbay of the tower on the moon. I did only a brief double take before realizing I was definitely dreaming, I was already in the WILD.

So now that I was in the WILD, I entered the sick bay and looked around. Janet and Tigress were in the room, Tigress was lying face down on one of the beds, and Janet was scanning her with a strange device. I remembered telling Tigress I was going to try a healing massage on her back, and Janet was also going to take a look. I went over to the bed and was going to wait for Janet to be done examining Tigress…

Some other stuff happened there which I think involved me completing the healing massage, but the next fragment I remember clearly included Tigress, Link, Janet, and me on the beach, I was looking out over the ocean with the adult form of Link by my side, it was an entirely beautiful scene. Tigress said the merpeople were in this ocean, and then she headed out into the waves. I followed her and Janet, then finally dove into the water and transformed into a mermaid at the same time. The four of us swam down into the ocean, at first the water felt kind of cold, but I soon adapted to it and found it felt very nice. We swam down, I watched the colorful fish around us, and we were soon greeted by a merman who indicated we should follow him. We went deeper into the ocean, it was getting darker as we went deeper, but then we came to an area which was illuminated by glowing plants and mosses. It was a really cool effect. The merman we were with said we had been expected, I wondered who had told them to expect us, but I figured it didn't really matter, it was probably Q. We were swimming towards what looked like an underwater stadium where this fragment of memory ends…

There must be some more stuff I forgot, because the next piece I remember I was in the stadium, swimming out in the middle of it with a bunch of merpeople. I felt I knew what was going on, everyone had on a different color belt indicating which of the two teams they were on, there was blue and yellow. I looked and noted I had a blue belt on. The other merpeople with blue belts were chasing after the merpeople with yellow belts, and they were all chasing after a ball of some kind that was drifting through the water. One of the yellow team hit the ball with his tail, sending it towards a goal, but a goalie for the blue team sent it right back out again to one of my teammates. With a blue team merman on each side of her, the blue team mermaid batted the ball with her tail and guided it towards the other goal. One of the yellow team managed to swim in and got his tail on the ball, sending out off to the side… in my direction. No one had been paying much attention to me, I had the idea I was just in this game because they were trying to be nice and let me play a bit, so I would just have to show them that I could contribute to the team, too. I went after the ball and hit it with my tail, hitting it away from a couple of approaching yellow team players, then I followed it and hit it back in almost the opposite direction as hard as I could, catching the yellow goalie by surprise and scoring a goal. I could hear the merpeople in the stands cheering, I thought they would mostly be surprised, and I was glad I had been able to at least score a goal… and that's the last clear memory I have from that part…

The next clear memory I have is when I was swimming along in an interesting place with Tigress, Janet, and Link. I didn't notice for sure if Tigress and Janet were merpeople, but I still was, as was Link. We were swimming through water that felt strangely warm, and very relaxing. There were colorful luminous flowers all over the ocean floor that gave off a rainbow of colored light that was very beautiful. We passed the rainbow flowers and entered into what looked like ruins of some ancient temple. The ruins continued, and I realized it was much more than a temple, it looked like the ruins of a lost city. I saw Janet and Tigress swimming very close together, and I felt Link was right beside me. I remember swimming through a particularly interesting series of pillars that looked like ruins from ancient Greece or Rome, I was wishing I could take photos from the dream plane into my waking life, I would really like to remember that. Since I couldn't pull out a camera, I continued looking around, trying to take in every detail of the place, I was thinking maybe I could create a digital picture of it in Photoshop or even a 3D rendering of it. This is the last part of the dream I remember, though I think it continued for a bit longer.

I was in my car driving quite fast down one of the streets in my home city, Speedway, and heading for one of the malls. I was heading for Park Mall, though I was looking in the wrong place entirely, but I didn't seem to notice that. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew this was a dream, but I didn't actively think about it, so I continued going about my business as if I was in waking life. There was someone beside me in the passenger seat, I think it was Tigress, and she was urging me to hurry up before it was too late. I could see tall mountains to the east of Tucson, which aren't there in waking life, the mountains there are rather small. But now they towered over Tucson and disappeared into the clouds, I couldn't even see the tops, and they were covered with thick forests and sheer cliffs. Finally I reached the mall and turned in to the parking lot, the mall was drastically different, too. There were so many trees around, all pine trees, it looked like the forest had moved in to reclaim the area used up by the mall.

Tigress and I got out of the car there, and we went to find what we were looking for, which was a specific pool that was out behind the mall. There was too much forest to park any closer to the pool, but the path leading there was pretty clear and easy to follow. Tigress and I followed the path until we came across something weird, something I haven't seen since I regularly created my own levels for the original Doom… What was referred to as a line definition problem, which was basically just a spot where the pieces of the world didn't meet up properly and the player was able to see out of the level and into infinity. But line def problems in a dream? How could that be? My dream wasn't a poorly constructed video game level!

I peered through a couple of these cracks in reality, and saw nothing on the other side but a blue sky. That was pretty weird, too. I looked through another of them and I saw a plane in the sky, writing letters with its contrail… I watched until the message was formed, then I could hardly believe what it said… It said, "James Still Loves You," with a large heart around it, what the fuck? Why was I seeing a dumb message like that, since I am fully convinced James never did really love me, he stayed with me for so long due to fear of being alone, and I was all he could get at the time… but now this? I was about to get Tigress' attention to point out the message to her when I woke.

I woke up on a bed that wasn't my own, but it was very familiar just the same, and I could hear someone whispering into my ear as I woke up. That someone was behind me on the bed, and he had an arm around me. I remained still and focused on hearing what he was saying, he was saying stuff like, "James loves you," and more shit like, "James will love you forever." I sat up and looked behind me, and it turned out I had been lying on James' bed and sleeping, I looked around the room, it was as cluttered with crap as ever. I got up off the bed, thinking this was really awkward, what would this look like when Tina got home, but then I decided I didn't care what it looked like to Tina.

I was thinking aloud when I asked what I was doing in James' bed, he answered by saying I had been tired so I had been taking a nap. He looked at me strangely and asked if I was ok, he looked genuinely concerned, but I know that if he was really concerned for my wellbeing he wouldn't have lied to me repeatedly and he had been the cause of so many nights when I cried myself to sleep… that's not love. I said I didn't know how I had gotten to that room, but I was leaving, James got up and actually blocked the door, now he was asking who I was. When I was dating James, the entities living in my inner world would sometimes take control of my body, with my permission, to either do something or more easily communicate with James, and apparently he thought that had happened this time. I told him to get out of the way, he said I was not leaving until I put Shanna (my waking life name) back in control. I told him it was me, and I just wanted to leave, but he didn't seem to believe that. I then noticed he was looking behind me, he had a strange look on his face, a rather shocked look. I looked behind me and saw a demon there, rather nasty looking. The demon went right past me, picked James up, and threw him through a portal where the window of the bedroom should have been. He smiled at me and said there were still more levels of dreams to go… then I woke.

So now I was lying on a couch in a strange house, but I thought I knew what was going on. My mother and I had been visiting friends for dinner, but I had suddenly gotten really tired, so I had lied down on the couch and fallen asleep. I was hoping no one had minded. I sat up and looked around, there were cats everywhere, so I went after the cats. I was able to catch a few of them, which I sat there for several minutes per cat petting and hugging that cat before releasing the cat. The house was absolutely huge, and when I lost track of the last cat I was a bit worried that I didn't know how to find my way back to the front door, I had actually gotten lost in a house! Then I woke.

I woke up in a seat that was only semi-comfortable, it was on a bus? No, I thought as I looked around, it was a train of some kind, perhaps a subway, and I wasn't entirely sure of how I had come to be there. My confusion didn't trigger a RC as it should have… I looked around the car I was in and saw it was empty except for me and a boy, who looked to be about 15 years old… he had short black hair, he was wearing a white buttoned shirt with blue jeans, and he was looking at me with the creepiest look I have ever seen from a 15 year old… I thought I should get off the train, so at the next stop I got up and moved towards the door. There was a crowd of people boarding, however, and I wasn't able to get off. All the seats filled up quickly and the door closed, now there were no open seats except for one right next to the creepy guy, and apparently I had to sit. The other passengers were glaring at me and telling me to sit so we could go, so I finally sat beside the kid. He continued to eye me with a creepy look, looked like he might have been in a trance… At this time I woke again, but this time I woke into waking life.

Wow… A dream(Tigress/mall) in a dream(with James) in a dream(house guests) in a dream(strange kid)… some seriously nested dreams going on here…

Note: I fell asleep with the goal of meeting up with MoSh, who said he wants to get in contact with his guide and ask him a few questions, but before that MoSh had said he would help out in an attempt to heal my ailing pet, Frodo, who is a guinea pig who seems to be suffering from a serious illness. I don't know how much chance there is of doing a dream healing on that, but I figure there is nothing to be lost by trying. I fell asleep, aiming for a WILD, but epic fail…

I got up out of bed, annoyed at myself that I had been unable to successfully enter a WILD, I wondered what is going on with me that it seems to be so much trouble getting into a WILD. It either works wonderfully or epic fails, and I am getting pretty tired of it. I went into the bathroom to use the facilities before going back to bed, somewhere around the bathroom door I thought I had better do a RC , I did that, and discovered I was already in a dream! Now that I was lucid I completely forgot my need to use the bathroom and considered what my goals were, I didn't remember everything clearly, but I remembered MoSh was part of it, so I would start by getting to MoSh's inner world. I tried to open a portal, but nothing happened, wtf? I knew I was dreaming and that I should be able to open a portal, but it wasn't working, which was just another annoyance. I saw the closed door to my game room and focused on it leading to MoSh's inner world, but when I opened it, all I found was my game room. Frodo was in his cage making some soft noises that sounded more like groans of pain that purrs, so I went over to check on him, he didn't look good at all. That was when I remembered the goal of healing him, and I remembered MoSh and Pablo had both offered to help, so maybe I could do that first if I wasn't able to open a portal to find MoSh… um… but I still had to find MoSh…

I decided maybe if I could just get out of my own inner world I might be able to go find MoSh and Pablo, but I wasn't even sure how to do that… I cursed out loud at the fact I was lucid and yet I didn't seem to remember how to use my abilities that I have been using for so long. How to open a portal 101, sounded corny, but that's what went through my mind. Step 1: Decide on a destination. Done, I was going to Pablo's inner world. Step 2: Focus on the image clearly in my mind. Done, I had a nice image of the forest I have seen repeatedly in Pablo's inner world. Step 3: Use Through the Never by Metallica while tracing a circle in the air to indicate where the portal will open. Through the Never, that was the problem, I didn't have any way to play music. I went back to my bedroom to find my purse, I needed my iPod, that would have the song I needed… but I couldn't find it, there was nothing but $20 bills stuffed in my purse. I finally found a music player of some kind… it was weird, but I knew it would do, and I somehow knew Through the Never was on it… so I played the song and opened a portal, which I went through.

On the other side of the portal I was exactly where I wanted to be, I took a step forward as I scanned the forest for any sign of Pablo, I tripped, and I face planted right there in the grass. What had I just tripped over? I turned to look and I saw there had been a fox right at my feet, and he was what I had tripped over, now the fox was just eyeing me with a mixture of amusement and concern. I got up and dusted myself off, since I had landed in the grass it hadn't hurt at all, and I asked the fox if he had somehow planned that. The fox shook his head, but I hadn't really meant it seriously anyway. I said I had come looking for Pablo, he had said he would help me heal my pet, which triggered the fox to transform from an adult fox to an adorable little cub and then jump into my arms. I caught the cute little bundle and gave him a hug before returning to my inner world through the same portal I had used to get there in the first place.

Once I was back in my own house, still holding a cute little fox pup, I saw MoSh was already there and seemed a bit surprised to see me back. He asked me where I had been, I just responded by holding up the fox, he said he had thought I was going to come see him. I said I had tried, but my portals weren't working very well. He said ok, then said he wanted to visit his guide, I said he'd agreed to help me heal Frodo, he said ok to that. We went into my game room where Frodo was in his cage, still huddled in the corner making some noises that didn't sound good, so we did a healing spell on him, then Nomad showed up and we did it again. I wondered if the healing spells had any chance of working if the little guy had cancer… I didn't want to be thinking like that, but I couldn't help it. MoSh said he hoped the little guy got to feeling better soon, I said I also hoped for that. MoSh asked if we could go meet up with his guide now, I said sure, I was not sure if I could open the portal, but I tried it… nothing happened. I still wasn't getting anywhere towards opening a portal, so I grabbed my music player and opened the portal as I ignored MoSh saying he would do that. I didn't want to admit I couldn't do it myself, it was too annoying. MoSh and I went through the portal and exited into his inner world. I looked around to see if I could find his guide, but I didn't see anyone else anywhere around. MoSh said he knew where his guide wanted to meet up, so he would open the portal. He did that, we went through, and we met up with MoSh's guardian.

It turned out that MoSh wanted to know if his guide knew anything about what might happen in the year 2012. I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but Victor and MoSh were talking about it for a time, and this is what I remember. Victor said that the year 2012 doesn't indicate the date of some kind of fire and brimstone / rapture type end of the world, he said the end that could be beginning in 2012 is caused by much more mundane sources… people. And it's not something that will happen overnight, rather it is something that is already in progress, but will be more apparent after 2012. It basically has to do with consuming more resources than can be replenished, leading to some serious issues, basically if people don't start being more careful with how they take care of natural resources, there won't be anything left. But there is still time to change things before it's too late, so there is not necessarily anything serious to be started after 2012…

Victor talked about the different things that people are doing to self-destruct as well as destroying the rest of the world. Using too many resources will lead to shortages worldwide, famines, droughts, war… As he was talking about all of the negative predictions my mind wandered, and I realized I wasn't paying as much attention to that as maybe I should have since I have basically heard it all before, and I have little hope that anything is going to change before it's too late. The next thing I noticed was that MoSh was asking me if I was hearing anything Victor was saying at all. I said sure, I was, but I've heard it all before, and nothing is going to change, so what's the point? Victor was now talking about music, he was talking about remembering dream music in waking life. This was something I was quite interested in, so I was paying attention again.

Victor was talking about remembering the first part of the song being the most important part, because if we make sure and remember the first part then the rest of it will be much easier to recall. MoSh and I were practicing on a song I didn't recognize, he was playing his guitar while I played on an electronic keyboard. I tried the song the first time… epic fail. I thought I heard MoSh laughing… I was going to be annoyed, but I didn't allow that since I really had epic failed at the song… I tried again, and this time I did a bit better. MoSh was doing very well on his guitar, my keyboard playing still left much to be desired. We tried it one more time. I still thought that while his music rocked, mine was still second rate, but at least it seemed to be passable.. I was happy at the improvement I had accomplished, MoSh was talking to Victor about what else helps. Victor said that it is important to play the song ourselves instead of just listening to it. It can be done with just hearing it, but playing it makes the tune stay in the mind much better. I continued playing the song on the keyboard, and MoSh was playing along with the guitar, and I was wondering if I might be able to remember this IWL. I was hoping I could, then I woke.

I was on the street in a normal looking neighborhood, walking along the sidewalk. I had absolutely no idea that I was dreaming, but I knew exactly what I was doing. My plans were to go down the street to meet up with and spend some time hanging out with MoSh. His house was just a short way down the street, and the weather was beautiful, so I had decided to walk instead of drive so I could save some gas and reduce pollution. I reached MoSh's house in just a short time at which point I went right up to the door and knocked. It didn't take long before the door opened to reveal MoSh inside, smiling. He said I don't really need to knock every time, I can just come on in whenever I want to. He stepped aside to let me in.

I went inside and looked around, MoSh had a very nice place there, it looked like a really welcoming place. I was about to say something to MoSh when line of kids came running down the stairs from the second floor, they all charged right out the door with Data right behind them and a couple of dogs right behind him. They left the front door wide open, though MoSh didn't really seem to care, he seemed more interested in getting me to follow him into the living room. Since the weather was so nice outside, I didn't bother closing the door before following MoSh into the living room.

The living room was a fairly large room, MoSh was standing beside a comfortable looking couch and pointing at the largest wall in the room, which was completely taken up by a huge flat screen television. The flat screen television was mounted on the wall, or maybe the television was the wall... I couldn't be sure since there was not a single square inch of the wall was visible. I was wondering exactly how big the screen was. MoSh seemed quite pleased with the television, he stood there for a couple minutes as if waiting for me to say something, but all I could say was one word... Wow. Apparently that was an acceptable response, since MoSh continued to say he had an extensive library of movies and games, so let's watch or play something. I was thinking how awesome it would be to play games on that thing, so I immediately agreed and said we should play a game.

MoSh went over to a shelf and looked at some cases there, talking as he did. He was only halfway talking to me, however, he was mostly talking to himself. He said something about me not liking Starcraft, he muttered some more stuff, then he took a game out and slid it into a slot in the television. Wow! It even had a built in video game system! The game that started up on the screen was a space game, I had been right in thinking a game would look awesome on that television... The graphics looked absolutely amazing. MoSh and I were playing a co-op mission where it was the two of us against a fleet of enemy ships... Fortunately the enemies weren't very bright. MoSh and I came at them from different directions, each of us had a squad at our command, and we took them all out.

MoSh and I were playing a death match version of the game when Asuka came in, I blasted MoSh before I realized he was distracted... Asuka had sat down on his lap and kissed him... Not really a fair kill. MoSh won that part of the game, I have never been really good at death match games. Then we played a version of the game that was a race through an asteroid field, there were rings we had to fly through while avoiding running into the asteroids. I won that one, zipping in, out, and around the asteroids and through the rings to the finish line which was a space station inside a cool looking nebula. MoSh wasn't far behind me. I was wondering what other versions of the game were available, but I didn't get a chance to find out before I woke.

I was in a strange town, I didn't have any idea how I had gotten there but that fact didn't occur to me at the time. The town looked like something I would expect to see in an RPG or fantasy movie. I was dressed in the white robes of an Assassin's Creed Assassin' which was a good thing since the sun was shining very hotly and the white robes helped keep the direct heat off. That certainly didn't make things comfortable, however, so I was looking for a public place to get in to so I could cool off a bit, I ended up going into a tavern of some kind, though I didn't notice the name.

The inside of the tavern was quite a bit darker than the bright exterior, so it took my eyes a couple minutes to adjust so I could see clearly. There were lots of people in the place, all talking amongst themselves, making it impossible to determine what any one person was saying. I walked farther into the tavern, I noticed that there were quite a few people looking at me, I wasn't sure why that might be, so I ignored them and went over to the bar and ordered a beer. I wasn't sure why I ordered a beer, I don't even like beer, but I opened it Nd took a drink. It was better than I expected. The bar tender asked if there was anything else I needed, I thanked him and said the beer was it for now... I asked how much I owed him, he said I owed him nothing, I thought that was odd, but I stepped away from the bar.

I was feeling like a character in a video game, which was how I looked, so I thought I should find a quest to go on. This was a tavern, there should be some kind of quest available in here... So I wandered around the tavern a bit, eavesdropping on some conversations to see if there was anyone who sounded like they needed help. I wasn't hearing anything interesting at first... A man was speaking lovingly to a woman, telling her not to worry, his wife would never find them there... A woman getting quite angry, talking to her friend about how she wanted to kill her cheating husband, a couple of women were kissing as lovers... None of this really got my attention, these were all personal matters, so I continued looking. I was starting to worry that I might become obvious when something caught my attention, someone was talking about their daughter having been kidnapped. I sat down at a table close enough to listen in on their conversation.

The mother and father were both talking to a rather creepy looking guy, the mother and father looked like pretty well-off individuals, more so than most of the people in the tavern. The creepy guy, on the other hand, looked like he had crawled out of the city dump, or more likely the rats had thrown him out for being too disgusting. As I listened, I found out that the couple's daughter, 15 years old, had ben kidnapped and would most likely be sacrificed to some nasty called a spider demon. At the mention of a sacrafice, the parents looked horrified. The creepy guy seemed to savor that reaction... Then he continued to say the girl would be alive for a good week yet, since that was the gestation period for the little ones. Apparently there were many spiders controlled by this spider demon, and they would feed on the girl for the entire time while making sure to keep her alive, they would lay their eggs in her, when the eggs hatch in several days, the little ones atr hungry. But no worries, the girl would make a ready food supply, if she was lucky she would be too delirious to feel the excruciating pain as the little ones ate her alive from the inside. By now the mother was in tears... The father was begging the guy to tell them where the girl was being held, offering to pay any amount, but the man said he just wanted to be sure the couple would know their daughter would be dying a very slow and painful death. He walked out, leaving the parents too stunned to react.

I wondered if those horrible things the man had said were true, he also seemed the type to make up a horrible series of lies just to watch the parents' despair and pain... But if there was any chance that was true, I had to check it out, and I had been looking for a quest... So I followed the man from the tavern and onto the street, somehow it had become night while I had been in the tavern, and even stranger was the fact my Assassin's robes had turned black. They were adjusting to keep me hidden in any situation, which I thought was pretty cool. I saw the man moving down the street at a quick pace, he definitely knew where he was heading, and I followed him. I wanted to stay close enough not to lose him and still far enough back that he wouldn't spot me, although my robes kept me well hidden so there wasn't really any threat of that. I followed him for quite a while, he clearly knew where he was going, though I had no clue. He left the town and made his way through the darkness as if he had been there many times before, he had no trouble navigating the narrow trails through the rocky landscape with little to no difficulty while there were a couple places where I nearly face planted due to tripping on a rock I hadn't seen. The man disappeared into a small cave, glancing around to be sure no one was following him before disappearing inside. I noticed that he looked directly at me but gave no indication that he had seen me at all.

I followed him into the inky darkness of the cave, at which point he finally revealed that he could not see in total darkness by lighting a torch to see by. Of course that made it really easy to follow him through what seemed to be an endless maze of caves branching off in every direction. He finally entered a cavern that was illuminated by torches, that was his final destination. I entered the room to find a scene from a horror movie, there was a girl in there who looked like she was about 15 years old, she was naked and bound to the side of the cavern with what looked like wads of spider webs. That wasn't the worst part of it, either. The worst part of the scene was that there were small spiders crawling all over her, it looked like they were biting her, and there were red welts all over her body where she had been previously bitten, and she was hanging limply from her bonds and crying. When the man entered the room, the girl looked up at him, still crying, she said she wanted to go home, please help her... The man looked at her and laughed, he said he was going to help himself to her, that's what he was going to do, and as he said that he pulled his pants down, I was grateful that I couldn't see what he pulled out. The girl saw it, however, and was repeating over and over, "No… no… no…" and "Don't… don't… don't…" through her tears. That dirty, rotten, filthy piece of shit!

This would stop now. The girl fell silent as I walked up behind the asshole, she was looking at me with wide eyes… I figured it probably looked to her like I had just materialized out of nowhere. Time to take out the trash… but not too fast… that filthy asshole… his sickening chuckles fell silent as I ran my hidden blade into him. He turned towards me before I could even remove the hidden blade, which resulted in the wound getting torn even bigger… He opened his mouth to curse, but all that came out was blood, he fell down to his knees and coughed up blood again, then fell onto his side and twitched there for a short time before coughing up blood one final time and then being still. I noticed the girl was staring at me with wide eyes, I wondered if I had made a mistake by letting her see what I had just done, well there was nothing to be done for it now. What I had to do was get her out of there.

I remembered that in dreams I am able to control insects and spiders, so I ordered the spiders on the girl to get off of her, and I was surprised when they actually obeyed. I was actually considering doing a reality check but I was distracted when someone entered the room, this was a big and ugly guy… I remembered the freak saying there was someone he called the Spider Demon. Well, this guy was definitely ugly, but he didn't look like a demon to me. He proved that he truly was able to control the spiders, however, when he summoned all of the spiders in the room to gather around him. I'm not sure what had happened before I had arrived, but the sight of the ugly demon wanna-be set the girl off on some uncontrollable screaming, I wondered what sick things that asshole had already done… He ordered the spiders to attack me, I hadn't had a chance to cut the girl free yet, the asshole was laughing insanely. The spiders seemed to hesitate, but then started moving towards me, but I told them to turn around and attack the asshole. They immediately turned around and surrounded the asshole, completely ignoring his commands now, and then swarmed over him as he yelled his commands at them to attack me, not him. His yelling soon became muffled as the spiders filled his mouth with web, and they completely bound him in web, he fell to the ground, futilely struggling, looking like a big worm trying to break out of a cocoon of spider web, only his nose and eyes were still visible. His muffled cries of anger changed to cries of pain…

I pulled my attention from the "Spider Demon" and cut the girl free of the spider webs, then carried her out of the cavern. I'm not sure how I managed to find my way through the maze of dark passages, but I somehow did and emerged with the girl into the night. She was still crying, still naked in the night… I took off my robe and wrapped it around her, which left me wearing a non-descript shirt and pair of pants. There were so many spider bites all over her, I thought that since I could control the spiders IWL, maybe I could now use my healing powers IWL… so I focused on healing the girl's wounds, golden energy formed and flowed through her, wiping the bite marks away as if they were nothing more than spots of dirt on her skin, the energy also served to calm her down and relax her, she stopped crying, and now she just looked tired, completely exhausted… so I ended up carrying her all the way back to the town, I was surprised that at no point during that hike did I become tired nor did the girl start feeling heavy. I didn't really consider why that might be. I went down the main street in the town and went directly to the tavern, I wasn't sure if the parents would still be there, but that was a good place to start looking for them.

The first time I'd walked into the tavern quite a few of the people in the room had turned to look at me. When I walked in carrying the girl wrapped in my robes, everyone in the room turned to look at me. I scanned the crowd, searching for the parents of the girl I was holding, and I spotted them over in the far corner talking to a man who appeared to be an adventurer or a mercenary of some kind, I figured the parents were looking everywhere, desperate for someone to help them find their daughter. Now they were looking at me along with everyone else. I didn't really know what to say, so I just carried the girl over to the couple, at which point I pulled a fold of robe away from the girl's face, revealing her to her parents. The two of them were beside themselves with relief, the girl had been sleeping in my arms, but now she woke up. I set her on her feet, her parents embraced her, the three of them hugging and crying tears of relief and saying a bunch of stuff I couldn't understand due to the fact they were crying tears of joy. Excellent. Another sappy happy ending, though I wasn't sure why that was the way I was thinking of it… I turned to leave the tavern, to leave the happy family to their celebration, but the mother grabbed me, she was saying she didn't know how to thank me enough, she didn't know how to repay me, I just said I hadn't done it for payment. Both parents were expressing their gratitude now, the father took off his cloak and wrapped it around the girl before handing me my robes back. He said they looked like an exceptional garment… I felt like I was going to wake up, so I told them I had to go, there were places I had to be. I turned and left the tavern quickly… as soon as I stepped out the door and around the corner I woke.

Note: It seems someone has come and kidnapped Asuka yet again, I'm not sure why that keeps happening or even how it keeps happening. There is supposed to be a shield around MoSh's inner world, but it doesn't seem to be doing a lot of good when it comes to protecting Asuka… I'm not sure exactly where the problems are originating, enemies might be getting to Asuka while she's outside of his inner world, but they keep doing it, and this is getting old. So that was my first goal for tonight's dream, to locate and bring Asuka back, also to do some healing on both her and MoSh. I fell asleep with my light / sound machine on and was successful in slipping in to a WILD…

I was inside MoSh's inner world, which is where I intended to be. I didn't pause, I just walked over to the closest house, which was MoSh's house, and I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I thought that was strange, there is always someone there, was there something else wrong? I was hoping there wasn't something more going on than I already knew about… I opened the door and went inside, once I was inside I saw Data coming down the stairs. There were kids there with him, several kids, Data said he would have come sooner but he kind of had his hands full right now. I told him I was looking for MoSh, we were going to go out and find Asuka. Data said MoSh wasn't dreaming at this time, so he couldn't help me there. I asked if he knew when MoSh might be entering the dream state, Data said he wasn't sure, it could be any time now, or it could be a while. I thought maybe I should go ahead and find Asuka on my own since I wasn't sure where he was right now. So I focused on opening a portal to locate Asuka, and after focusing for a bit, a portal opened and I went through.

On the other side of the portal I was in a weird place, it was night time there and it looked like a dock area, a warehouse district in some random town, and I somehow knew exactly where I needed to go, so I went towards one of the warehouses. There was nothing about that warehouse that looked any different than the other ones, but I somehow knew that was where I was heading. As I approached the warehouse some thugs came out and approached me, they looked like petty thugs, I knew right away that they weren't the brains behind this. There's no way they could be the brains behind anything… One of them walked over to me and tried to talk like a gangster, he told me I had better just turn around and go the other direction. One of the others said if the pretty girl wanted to join the party, she should be welcomed, he was licking his lips avidly as if he was looking at a particularly choice cut of meat. I told them I was here to get Asuka, so they had better just get the fuck out of my way. The one who had met me said that wasn't right, he said there was supposed to be a dude looking for Asuka… not a chick… he told me to go away and get the dude, because this wasn't how it was supposed to work. I told them I would give them one more chance to get out of my way, but then they were going to find themselves getting hurt. The one in front said those were big words for a little girl… I'd had enough of these idiots, so I formed Witchblade into a sword and kicked all of their asses, I instinctively knew that killing these idiots would be no loss to anyone… and then I went through the main door into the warehouse.

Once I was inside the warehouse, I looked around and saw that it was completely empty, or almost completely empty. There were some catwalks around the room at the second level, and I could see there was a small office area over there, and the rest of the room was completely empty except for a couple of crates in one area of the room. Those crates stuck out very clearly, they weren't directly in a corner, they were sitting right out in the middle of the floor, so I went to investigate that first. There were a couple more thugs around the back of the crates, I quickly dispatched one of them, but I had the idea the other one didn't really want to be there, he had kind of been tricked, so I threatened him, he was already shitting his pants after seeing me cut the first guy down with no hesitation, so he was not going to hesitate when he saw the chance to escape with his life. I walked back into an area between two of the crates and I saw a trap door in the floor, it was pretty hard to see, I thought it would have been better for them to not have anything hiding it than it was hidden behind those obvious crates. I opened the trap door and descended down into the darkness.

The trap door led to some underground passages, there were several of them, so I had to focus on finding Asuka again to determine which of the passages I should take. I followed the passage as it descended into the ground a bit farther, and then there was a single door at the end of the passage. The door wasn't even locked, so I opened it and went into the room beyond. Asuka was there, she was singing, in spite of her surroundings that looked like a dismal dungeon I might be able to include in my video game… There were rats scurrying on the ground, the room was damp and the walls were dripping, there was the smell of mold and decay, a skeleton hung on one of the walls, and the room was illuminated only by a single burning torch. I went over to Asuka, who was staring at a particularly disgusting patch on the wall and singing to it… I looked closer and saw a partially decayed, maggot infested rat corpse stuffed into a crack there, yuck! I touched Asuka on the shoulder, she turned towards me as if she was startled, then she said hello, greeting me just as she would always greet me. She handed me a rock with some blobs of goop on it, said I should eat as many cookies as I want. Blech!

I told Asuka I was there to take her home, so let's get out of there. I was actually surprised how easy this seemed to be, but if this was going to be an easy one, I would gladly take that. I took Asuka's arm and went to lead her out the door, but she pulled away from me and said no, she would not go. I said we had to go, MoSh would be waiting for her. She said the name 'MoSh' as if it had a foul taste to it, then said she was never going back to him again, she was free now and she was going to stay that way. I did a double take, I said I wasn't sure why she was saying those things, but I had the feeling we had to get out of there now before something else happened. She said she didn't want to go anywhere near MoSh… I didn't want to argue with her here and now, so I said fine, we would go to my inner world. She finally said ok, then I led Asuka out of the underground dungeon, through the warehouse, and outside before opening a portal and going through it to my inner world.

I stepped out of the portal into my inner world, but I saw that I was alone, Asuka was not there. Wtf? How had I lost Asuka on the way here? I should have known that it wouldn't work that easily to get her back, I had better go find her again, so I opened the portal to track her down. I went through the new portal to the area outside the warehouse… the same goons were in front of the warehouse, the same ones I had killed… I killed them again without even waiting to hear them bitch that I wasn't MoSh. Inside, the warehouse was the same, I killed the one thug and told the other to get lost, went down underground and found a reluctant Asuka in the dungeon. Everything had been exactly the same, which I found to be really annoying. This time I went ahead and used the song Liberate by Disturbed, and that effectively freed her of whatever illusions had her trapped in here. She looked around and saw how disgusting things were, then said she wanted to go home… to MoSh? Of course to MoSh, she said, was something wrong with MoSh? Had they done something to him, too? Asuka looked very worried now, she asked what about the kids? What about… I interrupted her and said the kids had been fine with Data, and I had no reason to think MoSh was in danger. So let's get back home. I opened a portal to MoSh's inner world, and holding tightly to Asuka's arm, I led her through the portal… and she was gone before I reached the other side. Damn!

Ok, it seemed there was something there to keep me from bringing Asuka back, and I would have to find a way to counteract that before I would be able to effectively rescue her this time. I focused on opening the portal again, I focused harder on it this time, I was thinking maybe I was only finding an illusion of Asuka that was there to distract me, so I had to try harder to find the real Asuka. So I ignored the first portal that opened, in fact I let it close, and I kept focusing on going beyond opening that portal, on finding Asuka… and finally a portal opened, though that one was considerably harder to keep stable. I was finally able to keep it stable long enough to go into the portal. The only problem was that once I was in the portal it completely fell apart, branching off in several different directions, all at once, creating a really divergent dream… I found myself functioning on several planes all at once, it felt quite confusing, though I have experienced similar feelings in other multiple-plane dreams. For this dream, I will record the events to keep things as easy to understand as possible.

Earth
So I stepped out of the portal into a medieval looking dungeon, and there were strange orc guards all around, and they immediately. They didn't even take the time to ask any questions or give a warning, they immediately came and attacked me, they all had clubs with spikes on them, I formed Witchblade into armor and a sword and engaged them in battle. They didn't seem to have a huge level of intelligence, and I dispatched them without much difficulty, then I was able to search the dungeon. I found the doors were locked, but after searching one of the dead orcs I found that they had keys. I began unlocking the dungeons, most of them were empty, one of them had a prisoner in it that was hanging from a chain in the middle of the room, he asked me to help him, please help him… so I unlocked his chains and said he was free to go, but he would have to find his own way out because I had to find someone else. He attacked me, grabbing a piece of scrap metal and trying to stab me with it, I ended up killing him with Witchblade, that was gratitude. I set him free and he attacks… lame. I found Asuka in a dungeon cell, used Liberate by Disturbed to free her from the illusions, and took her back to the healing glen, which seemed like the best choice at the time.

Water
I stepped through the portal and found I was under water, there was a bubble on the bottom of the ocean where I saw Asuka going about her business as if nothing was wrong, most definitely lost in another illusion. As I approached the bubble, I realized I was under attack by some reptilian enemies like some I might see in DDO, the sahuagin, and they attacked me with spears. I had to use Witchblade in combination with the same techniques I use to fly with energy to out maneuver the sahuagin and take them all out before I was able to head towards the bubble that Asuka was inside. I phased through the bubble and fell to the ground, there was no water in the bubble and I hadn't really considered that, but Asuka looked over at me as if she found my face plant to be quite amusing. I used Liberate to free her from the illusion, then opened a portal to the healing glen.

Fire
I exited the portal in a long passage, the passage had a faint red glow in it and it was very hot there, I already knew what I would find at the end of the passage. The end of the passage opened onto a huge open chamber which was actually the inside of an active volcano, the boiling lava down below looked quite agitated. On an island in the lava I saw Asuka going about her usual business. I flew out over the lava and realized there were several dragons heading towards me, breathing fire in my direction, but I didn't really want to take the time to fight several dragons at once… I counted five dragons coming at me… so instead, I swooped in, grabbed Asuka, and flew through a portal to the healing glen, taking a very shocked Asuka with me. The portal closed behind me in the face of the attacking dragons, a small burst of fire got through as the portal closed. Now that I was back to the healing glen I used Liberate to free Asuka's mind.

Wind
I stepped through the portal and found myself at a high altitude, I fell a short distance before I caught myself and flew. I was then able to take a look around, there were many floating islands in the area, one of them had Asuka on it, trapped in an illusion, and there were bird people circling the island to keep her from getting off of it even though she wasn't making any move to try to leave. I figured they were there to keep someone from coming to rescue her. There were a bunch of the bird people, all of them had staff weapons, and as they saw me, they all turned and started firing energy bolts from their staffs. There were so many of them I didn't really want to fight them all, so I chose to dive in at high speeds and grab Asuka, carrying her through a portal to the healing glen, where I used Liberate to free her mind.

Nightmare #1
I exited the portals into several nightmares at once, too. A normal looking living room in a normal looking house where MoSh was being tortured while Asuka was tied up and being forced to watch, some big ugly guy had MoSh tied up on the couch and he was working with a clippers of some kind, right now he was clipping off part of one of MoSh's fingers, he screamed in pain, Asuka screamed at him to stop that… Using Liberate destroyed the entire illusion, and it turned out both MoSh and the big ugly guy were fake, I was able to take Asuka to the healing glen.

Nightmare #2
In another one MoSh was facing her at the door to their house, he had a suitcase full of crap that was partially sticking out, and he shoved that at Asuka as he yelled at her with mean, mean, words! Asuka was crying, MoSh was saying he wished he had never met her. I used Liberate and destroyed that illusion, then took Asuka to the healing glen.

Nightmare #3
In the living room of MoSh's house, MoSh was tied up again and Asuka was standing there with a machete, and there was a big guy there, big and ugly, with a gun. He told Asuka she had to kill MoSh, Asuka said no that she couldn't. The man said she could either kill him and make it quick and relatively painless, or he would start killing MoSh slowly and painfully and Asuka could watch, it was up to her. She was crying, saying she couldn't do it, so the big guy shot MoSh in his right foot, drawing a scream of pain, making Asuka cry more. Liberate broke through this nightmare, at which point I took her through to the healing glen.

Nightmare #4
I exited the portal into a green meadow with some really beautiful trees, grass, and flowers. It was very peaceful there, looking around I realized it was a cemetery filled with very well tended grave sites, most of them had colorful flowers on them. I wandered through the grave sites until I spotted Asuka, she was dressed in black and crying, she was standing in front of a line of coffins, it seemed that not only one of her family had died, everyone in her family had died. I went over to her and saw there were more coffins than just her family, there was one that said MoSh, one for each kid, one said Nomad, one said Raven, and there were more, it appeared that there was a coffin for each person in her life right now. When I got closer to her I saw she was crying and muttering that something was all her fault, I touched her and she jumped, saying she thought I was dead… I destroyed the illusion with Liberate and took her through to the healing glen.

The Final Asuka
After completing all of those dream segments at the same time, I found I was in the healing glen with a bunch of Asukas, each Asuka was semi-translucent, I had the idea there was one more Asuka to go get, so I opened one more portal to go retrieve Asuka. I went through this portal, which I thought would be the final portal, and found myself once again outside of the warehouse that I had first found myself in front of… with the same thugs waiting for me and complaining that I wasn't MoSh. So I repeated myself one more time… killed the thugs outside, killed one of the inside thugs while the other ran away, went to the dungeon, found Asuka, Liberate to set her mind free, then took her back to the healing glen and the other Asukas.

When I got back to the healing glen, all of the Asukas merged back to one, and now she no longer looked semi-translucent. As if there was some cue for it to happen, MoSh came through a portal into the healing glen, I wasn't sure where he had come from, if he had opened his own portal or if someone had sent him through, but it didn't really matter. Asuka ran over to MoSh, throwing her arms around him, she said she had thought she would go mad with being in so many places at once… MoSh hugged her, and now there were other people there with us. I focused on using a healing spell on the both of them, I used Touch My Heart, and then I used Voices from the Macross Plus soundtrack to focus healing on MoSh's chest area, on his physical heart, due to chest pains I was worried about, possibly muscle pains, but the heart itself is a muscle… I continued the healing spells, and when they were over, everything around me faded to black and I woke.

So now I was facing this huge dragon, I had no idea what its intentions might be, but I felt like I was losing the dream, like I was going to wake up. No way! There was no way I was going to let myself wake up now that I was face to face with this amazing creature! Refusing to lose the dream, I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, and by doing this I managed to stabilize the dream, which I will continue in the next post.

The huge dragon stood before me, and I was struck dumb… , "Wow… you are absolutely AWESOME!" I said to the dragon, "Absolutely AMAZING!" That sounded like a foolish thing to say to a dragon that looked like it might be about to toast me like a marshmallow, but I was unable to contain it. The dragon eyed me strangely, it was either growling or snarling or speaking in a language I have never heard. It finally paused and then spoke in English, it asked me if I thought I could hide forever. That statement confused me, I had not realized there was a dragon looking for me, so I hadn't been hiding at all. I asked him what he was talking about, he said I already knew that, so now there was only one thing left to do… prepare to defend myself. I told the dragon I had no interest in fighting him, his only response was to say the only alternative to fighting was to die. With that, the dragon flapped his immense wings and soared off into the sky.

I was standing there in the clearing looking up at where the dragon had disappeared from sight when I saw something moving in the sky. It was just a speck at first, but that speck rapidly grew in size until the dragon was filling half the sky, the force of the wind from his wings created tornados all around that were trying to pull me into them, once the tornados were going, he added a breath of fire to each of them which made each of them from a tornado of wind into whirlwinds of flames…

All of the fire tornados were centering in on me, setting everything in their path ablaze… which I found particularly annoying since it was such a beautiful forest… I used the song Trapped Under Ice to generate a blizzard of ice and snow which quickly extinguished the flames and crushed out the tornados, also extinguishing the flames the fire tornados had started in random places throughout the meadow. The dragon was coming in for another attack, I wasn't sure why he was so set on fighting, but I told him if he insisted on a fight he would have one, but not here, it would take place somewhere that there wouldn't be so much collateral damage. I opened a large portal with that in mind and went through it, the dragon right behind me. I wasn't sure if he had heard me and agreed with me or was just following me because I was leaving, and it really didn't matter.

On the other side of the portal I found the dragon and I were in a desolate place that looked like the surface of an asteroid or a small lifeless planet, there was no breathable atmosphere to speak of, but that didn't seem to bother the dragon one bit. The pull of gravity was also greatly reduced on the strange planet. The change of location didn't seem to have any effect on the dragon at all, he was apparently too focused on me to the point that he wasn't aware of where we had gone or just didn't care. The portal closed behind us, and he just continued his attack as if nothing had happened.

The dragon came charging from the black sky, this time breathing a breath that was composed of lightning, Witchblade formed immediately and I jumped into the sky to avoid the majority of the blast. Witchblade formed into a sword and absorbed the rest of the electricity and became charged with it, sparking brightly. Having absorbed the lightning into my sword, I moved around to counter-attack… if the dragon wanted a fight that badly, I would give him one… and there was a huge fireball right behind the blast of lightning that pushed me down into the planet surface, into my own personal crater. Witchblade armor absorbed the force of the hit so I wasn't hurt, but the attack surprised me just the same.

Before the explosion even cleared I was up and in the sky, using energy powered flight like they use in Dragonball Z, using some of the speed Vegeta has been teaching me to control, such that I was up and onto the back of the dragon in an instant… only to find out there was no opening to attack. The dragon's sparkling armor scales were the very image of perfection, or so it appeared, fitting together to create as tight a seal as if they were just one solid piece. The dragon did a full flip and flew up into the dark sky with me on his back, there really wasn't much to hang on to there with the smooth scales, however, so I dropped back down to the planet surface. There were several eruptions from the ground around me, it was pretty clear this dragon had an affinity for tornado formations, but this time it was a water tornado, a water spout formed from water that seemed to come from underneath the surface of the planet.

There were five of the waterspouts, I used Battery and added a bolt of lightning to each one, electrifying them before using Whiplash to send them right back at the dragon that had created them. The electrified waterspouts surrounded the dragon now, sparking and exploding all around him until he used a massive flame tornado to burn off the water and thus leave no easy conduit for the electricity. The dragon himself was still sparking a bit as he glared down at me from his towering height as if unsure how I had managed to turn his own attack back on him.

I still wanted to know why the dragon was attacking me in the first place, so I tried again to ask what was the reason behind this attack. Before I could get more than the words, "Why are…" out, however, he was on the offensive again, this time attacking me with yet another whirlwind, this one was an ice tornado, filled with extremely sharp and fast moving shards of ice that were exploding violently against my Witchblade armor, one particularly large shard was heading for me and I sliced through it with my Witchblade sword. I used the song Phantom Lord to call forth a wall of fire that surrounded me and melted away all of the ice before it actually reached me, effectively adding a large quantity of steam to the dead planet's thin atmosphere. The dragon seemed to be getting more and more pissed off that his attacks weren't getting through to hit me, and immediately followed the ice attack with a fire attack. I used the cover of the fire and smoke to teleport to a spot behind the dragon and try to strike from there, but he was too fast for that. Apparently he sensed me back there and brought his huge tail around, using it as a spiked mace to send me to the ground again, though the attack was still largely ineffective since he hit Witchblade again.

Ok, this was getting nowhere… the dragon couldn't harm me, I couldn't harm him, so maybe I would have to try something else. If I was going to try to strike the dragon from behind, I would still need a way to slow him down, but on this planet he was even faster than he would normally be due to the decreased gravity allowing him to… gravity. That was a definite possibility… I used the song Crush 'Em by Megadeth and hit the dragon with a massive ball of gravity, sending him out of the sky and into a large crater in the planet, the size of the crater made me wonder if the planet would be able to hold itself together by the time we were done there… well, at least there was no life on it, my penticon computer had scanned and confirmed the absence of any life form even as small as a bacteria. The dragon glared up at me from the crater he was now lying on his back in… and then I saw the spot where I would have to strike, this seemed a bit too much like Smaug in the Hobbit with the one missing armored scale on his chest, but I could clearly see there was a spot there that wasn't covered with the shimmering armor.

He blasted a fire tornado surrounded by lightning at me, I used another gravity attack that effectively pulled the fire and lightning attack right back down to the dragon, creating a huge explosion and forcing his crater a bit deeper than before. The dragon issued a loud roar, but it sounded more like rage and anger than pain, so I figured the attack wasn't really making any progress towards hurting him or weakening him even. This was getting on my nerves to have been attacked for no reason at all when I had been having a nice peaceful dream, I took the opportunity to teleport right in close to the dragon, right to the spot where the missing scale was… Even as I drove my Witchblade sword into that spot, the dragon was sending another whirlwind of electricity and ice at me, I flew down the center of that whirlwind with my Witchblade sword and hit the mark where the missing scale was, driving the sword all of the way in.

This time when the dragon roared, I could tell it was even more pissed off than ever, but it was also in some pain, so apparently I had finally made an effective attack. I pulled the Witchblade sword out and jumped back out of the dragon's reach just before he tried to cut me in two with his razor sharp claws, he was laughing now even though he was bleeding from his chest, he was saying there was no way something that minor would kill one such as him. I was still wanting to know why he was attacking me, so I asked what the attack had been for in the first place. He said I already know that, and I would not escape judgment this easily. It seemed the blood loss was weakening him more than he cared to admit, he said he would be back to get his revenge, and next time he wouldn't be so easily defeated. I was getting really annoyed that he wouldn't tell me what this was all about, so I tried doing a telepathic scan to find out what he was thinking… I got a glimpse of many dragons flying through the sky over a planet covered with beautiful forests, but that was all I saw before I woke.

I was in the living room watching the television, it was a show about fat people and ways to lose weight. I watched it a bit more and I realized it was a Dr. Phil show, he was talking about the importance of exercise in losing weight, I was feeling particularly fat right then, but I didn't want to exercise… Dr. Phil kept talking about the various things that could happen to overweight people, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attacks, strokes… endless amounts of problems that can come from being overweight. I was thinking I really should get out and exercise, so maybe I would take a walk, I certainly didn't have the patience to listen to Dr. Phil any longer.

I went outside and started walking, the weather wasn't as hot as I had expected it to be, so I thought this walk might actually end up being a decent length one. The main road near my house is under heavy construction, so I didn't think it would be very pleasant to walk there right now, so I decided to look in other directions. I headed down a path I had never noticed before and I soon found the landscape changing around me, I was slowly leaving the desert landscape and entering a forest of trees. That seemed really odd… odd enough for me to do a RC, which revealed I was dreaming!

So now that I realized I was dreaming, I stopped to think of my goals for the night… at first I couldn't think of any of them, but I finally thought of the one from Mortal Mist where the goal was to explore a forest and note all of the details of the season long with the animals, weather, and other details. That would be a nice relaxing dream to have right now, so I thought I would do that. I walked through the trees, looking at the place and making note of all of the details I could, the trees were beautiful, the leaves were blowing in a gentle breeze, all of them were changing color to various shades of red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, and teal… um… blue, purple, and teal? Well, that didn't matter, this was a dream forest after all… I wondered if there are places where the leaves really do turn to shades of blue and purple, then I thought of course there are! I'm in one!

I continued walking through the forest, making note of and enjoying every detail I could take in, the feel of the cool breeze on my skin, the smell of the trees… it smelled like it might rain soon… I listened to the birds singing in the trees, the crunch of the fallen leaves on the ground as I walked through them, I caught glimpses of small animals running around in the trees, several squirrels, a couple of bunnies. One of the squirrels was quite brave, it ran right up in front of me to grab a fallen nut and then ran back to the trees and disappeared into its branches, I figured the squirrel was storing food for the winter. I saw more movement in the trees, and this time a fox emerged, cute! The fox was definitely brave, the fox came trotting right over to me and looked at me as if he expected me to pet him. Wait a minute… that fox could be none other than Pablo!

I sat down in the fallen leaves and stroked Pablo, the dream had become so vivid as I focused on every detail, the fox's fur was so silky and soft as I pet him. Pablo was a red tailed fox with a white chest, red fur on most of his body, dark brown feet, a long fluffy tail, most of the tail was red like the rest of Pablo, but the tip of the tail was pure white. What I noticed most that I couldn't get over was how soft the fur was, as soft as petting a cat, it was too soft to resist putting my arms around him and giving him a hug, burying my face in that soft fur. I saw movement near a tree and I looked, there was an animal I didn't recognize digging a hole in the ground near the base of the tree, I figured that would be a den, I wondered if that might harm the tree to dig right there… Pablo changed from an adult red tail fox to a fox cub so I could scoop him into my arms and continue walking, such a cute fox cub… I carried Pablo farther down the trail until I found a stream flowing across the path, the sound of the stream was so clear, the water was also clear, I could see some small fish swimming around in it. There were rocks positioned perfectly for crossing the stream, things were so clear that I could clearly see the difference between the dry rock and the wet rock that was being splashed by the stream.

I had to do a RC again, because I thought I would soon forget I was dreaming if I didn't remind myself, so I re-confirmed that I was dreaming before crossing the stream… and then the fox disappeared from my arms! I was momentarily alarmed, then I realized Pablo had probably just woken up, so I got down on my knees by the stream and splashed some of the cool water on my face, and it felt wonderful. I sat there for a bit longer, letting myself take in the details of the blue sky which I could see between the trees on either side of the stream, and there were some fluffy white clouds drifting across the sky… nothing looked like rain, I wondered why it smelled like rain… I got up and headed back into the forest, watching the birds flying around as if they were in a hurry to get something important done. I was walking down the path, getting close to forgetting it was a dream, when a huge shadow fell over the forest, a huge dark shadow. I also heard a loud "THWUMP… THWUMP…" sound from overhead and felt a rush of strong wind blowing down from above. This wind felt a bit chilly, and many of the colorful leaves that had been hanging on to the trees now fell off and blew around in the hurricane type winds. I looked up just in time to see a huge winged creature fly overhead, creating the wind as it flapped its massive wings.

The animal had flown farther along the path, so I followed the path faster, I really wanted to see what that thing had been. I knew it was a dream, so I had no fear that I would be in danger from it. I finally exited the thick part of the forest into a large clearing, a meadow, and I spotted several deer running past me and disappearing into the shelter of the forest. Whatever that thing was, the animals were scared of it, and maybe with good reason. I looked up and I could hardly believe my eyes… it was a dragon! A huge dragon, it flew over the meadow, swooped around in a large arc, and then returned to the meadow. It flapped its massive wings to slow down and land, the force of the wind almost knocked me over, and finally it landed and roared a deafening sound. Wow! The dream was so vivid and now I was meeting a dragon! Awesome! I had barely found a bit of voice to my awe, "Wow… you are absolutely AWESOME!" I said to the dragon, "Absolutely AMAZING!" I stood there taking in the details of the dragon, his size… he was huge… his scales, they were of various colors of greens and browns, but all of them glistened in the sunlight like gems… he had claws like spears on each of his limbs, teeth, huge white teeth, and his wings! He really could make a hurricane with those wings! I was sure of it!

So now I was facing this huge dragon, I had no idea what its intentions might be, but I felt like I was losing the dream, like I was going to wake up. No way! There was no way I was going to let myself wake up now that I was face to face with this amazing creature! Refusing to lose the dream, I focused on Allura's method of time dilation, and by doing this I managed to stabilize the dream, which I will continue in the next post.

To be continued…

I was in a bedroom that wasn't actually mine, but my waterbed was there along with a few other beds crammed into the room. There were a total of four other people in the room, four beds other than my own, there were two men and two women there, I knew them all as friends. It was larger bedroom than my room IWL, but it was still very crowded with five beds crammed in there. I was lying on my waterbed, fading in and out of sleep, when someone got my attention. It was one of the guys, he was boasting and bragging on how he pwned some mugger that had gone after him, he said he had pulled out his knife and gutted the guy, that sounded a bit violent to me… the worst part was that when he stated he had knifed the mugger in the gut, he drove his knife down into my waterbed, tearing a big hole in the mattress! I was pissed off at him, I told him he was paying for the new mattress, he said the leak was small and could be fixed. I got the leak repair kit out and tried to put a patch on the leak, but it was too big for that. I repeated to the guy that he would be paying for my new mattress.

I thought for a bit, trying to think of the name of the place I went to last time I needed a new waterbed mattress. I was annoyed at the fact I couldn't think of it since it hasn't been that long since I have gotten a new one. I couldn't think of the name, but I opened the phone book to the right spot to find the bed stores. I finally thought of the name… A Bedder Bed… and then I went straight to the phone number for the place. I picked up the phone beside my bed and was going to dial, but there was no dial tone on the phone… I immediately figured someone had forgotten to pay the phone bill. Well, I knew where the place was, so I would just go out and get the mattress. I pointed at the guy who had stabbed my bed, repeating one more time that he would be paying for my new mattress, which would probably be $70 to $90 dollars, so he had better have it ready. With that I got in my car and left the house, which was a place I didn't recognize at all, and headed to the main road.

As I left the house, I reminded myself that the house I had been staying at is downtown, so I would have to drive out from town to get to A Bedder Bed instead of in towards town. I drove along a couple of the roads, was force to take a detour by road construction, and then I proceeded to get completely lost in a really confusing neighborhood before I finally found my way back to the main road. I went to the shopping area where I knew A Bedder Bed was, pulled in to the parking area, and went to park in front of the store… but it was gone! It was seriously closed, there were boards over all of the windows, there were signs on the boarded windows and door that said the place was closed for good. Shit! Where was I supposed to get my waterbed mattress now? I saw what looked like a yard sale in the parking lot, so I went to check it out. There was a man selling off the remaining inventory of A Bedder Bed, so I looked for my mattress. Unfortunately I didn't find one… crap. The man said the stuff in questionable condition was in the trash dumpster out back, so I went there next. I was literally digging through the trash until I found a waterbed mattress that said Super Single, the size of my bed, and was still sealed in its packaging. I just hoped it would be ok.

So I got back in my car and drove back to the house, this time I managed to avoid getting lost. I was thinking I might just go ahead and tell the jerk who had stabbed my bed that he owed me some money, but maybe drop it to a round $50 and said it was a going out of business sale. I was debating as to if that would be an acceptable thing to do or if that would make me an asshole. I parked in front of the house and went in through the carport. There was a guy, not one of the ones from the bedroom earlier, sitting in a car with the engine running. I immediately noticed there was a hose going from the exhaust into the cabin of the car, he was in the process of killing himself! I went to the driver's door and I was going to do something when I realized the window was wide open. Actually, all of the windows were open. I asked the guy what was going on, he said life wasn't worth living so he was putting an end to it. I told him the windows were all open… he said yeah, he'd tried it with the windows closed, but the exhaust had smelled bad, so he opened them so his dying moments wouldn't stink. I figured that obviously he would never successfully kill himself like that. I told him that he was, however, wasting gas and putting off unnecessary air pollution for those of us left behind to deal with… so he should turn off the engine while waiting to die. He said I had a good point, no reason to ruin the environment for those of us left behind, so he turned the engine off. He leaned back in the driver's seat and continued waiting for his suicide attempt to work. I didn't bother telling him his attempt at killing himself was destined to be an epic fail.

I went into the house and looked for my waterbed, I found it was still filled with water. The asshole who had stabbed it was putting one final piece of duct tape on the mattress, which was practically entirely covered with duct tape. It looked like the entire mattress was made from duct tape. The guy looked at me and said my mattress was as good as new, so he wouldn't have to pay for my new one. I told him I didn't think that would hold, but if it did, then I would agree to that. He seemed happy and drank down a beer in one gulp, following it up with a loud burp. I didn't really want to hang out with these people right now, so I went to leave the house again. The guy who had been killing himself met me at the door and said he had decided against suicide. He said it just takes too long, and it's so damn boring! That completed his epic fail at committing suicide. I just shook my head as I walked out the door and woke up.

My mother and I were moving the last of our moving boxes into the new house, which was much larger than the old one. Comparatively, we were moving from a shack to a mansion practically. There were many rooms, so many that I thought I might get lost in there somewhere, and there were two bedrooms that I particularly liked. The entire house was furnished, and all of the furniture was very nice, but the beds in those two bedrooms were particularly nice and comfortable. I was thinking I might not move my waterbed right in, I might try sleeping on a standard bed for a while, and one of those would be just the bed to try it on. So I chose the larger of the two rooms, both of them had their own bathroom, and I moved my boxes in there.

My mother came in to see the room I had selected, and she said it was very nice. I was going to take a shower or a bath, not sure which, maybe a bath because the tub was so big I could swim in it… but when I turned the water on there was a lot of disgusting brown stuff coming out that I certainly didn't want to bathe in, the stuff smelled like raw sewage… yuck… so much for the bath or shower. I went into the bedroom and was going to get ready for bed, I sat down on the bed to see how it felt… and the bed collapsed. Now I know there is no way I am that fat! I might be a bit over weight, but not enough to break a bed! I turned on one of the lights so I could get a better look under the bed at what might have broken, but as soon as I flipped the switch there was a spark and the light went out, not only that, but the spark set the bed sheets on fire… My mom came in with a fire extinguisher and put out the flames.

Ok, maybe this room wasn't the best choice… did we actually dare stay the night in any of these rooms? My mother said her room was fine, so I went to the room that was my second choice and checked that one out. I was able to run water in the tub and found out it looked clean, the bed supported my weight, and there were no sparks when I turned on the light. That was a good start, so I sat down on the bed and looked around at the furnished room. There was a strange book there, it looked pretty old, so I decided to take a look at it. I opened the book up and found it was about the history of the house I was in right now, and it was a strange history indeed. About 250 years ago the house wasn't a house at all, it was a tower, a tall tower where strange rituals took place. The people performing the rituals had disappeared long ago, and then the tower was transformed. There were three main segments of the house because someone had segmented the tower into three parts vertically and then placed the upper two parts on the ground near the base of the tower, and had then built the three parts together as a house… weird… and I got the idea that the house might be cursed, which was why everything there seemed to be failing…