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May 05 - 8:56 a.m

Sitting in a casino with lavish surroundings with a guy who looks like Birdman. He had rings on all fingers and lots of diamond chains on. He had diamonds in his teeth, i was sitting across from him in the casino environment talking with him and i got to see an in depth look into his lifestyle. At first i thought he was on hard drugs the way he was talking to me because he talked like he was putting little effort to pronounce the words, very quiet and mumblish. Once he took his glasses off and looked into my eyes i got the feeling he wasnt on hard drugs, he was just the most intelligent being ive ever seen, it was an intence feeling seeing his eyes, its even hard to describe. He had cataract looking eyes , they were very glazed , very bright light blue eyes, they looked like ice almost. He told me" Never take from the earth. Don't even touch it unless you absolutly need it, even if some1 is offering it to you. Crazy feelings. I woke up right after he said that because my window was open and i was freezing.

i keep dreaming about the sun and sun related things, like his cataracts. Ive been looking at the sun for 2 weeks now and i have filthy rich people show up in my dreams recently.

[Home from work around 3pm. Sleep from 3:15pm to 9:15pm - deep sleep without dreams. Sleep again at 12:15am, alarm set 4am. Woke with no dream memory and back to sleep immediately. Woke around 6am.]

Dream 1
Finally, I get to take a nice hot bath and just relax for a bit. My tiny cat Harley is sitting in her usual spot on the side of the tub staring at the water. Suddenly, she overcomes her fear of water and just jumps in! She's so cute, swimming around in little circles but as she settles down and just sits in the water, I start to panic the water level might go over her nose and she would drown. I drain a bit of water from the tub and almost regret it as the chilly air hits my skin. She must have felt it too because she climbs up onto my chest and curls into a wet, furry ball. Perfect, I can get some more water back in here now.

Dream 2
I'm living in my grandmother's house again and my bedroom is downstairs. I just bought a futon and want it set in front of the TV, so the room needs a little rearranging. Time to take a break and get some homework done. There's a paper due in History in three days, so probably time to look at that. Looking at the assignment for the first time, the question follows a "what would you do if" kind of format but the scenario is incredibly vague. How close to this scenario do I have to stick? Can I change the plot? Characters? What we're doing? There's no way I can write it like this. [For the life of me I cannot remember what the question was, but I was having a lot of trouble!] Well, at least it only has to be three pages long. I'll just ask the instructor tomorrow and bang it out. Mouth falling open, I realize I've made a gross mistake. The paper isn't 3 pages long, it's 23 pages! Oh. My. God. NO way I can get this done in time. Panic sets in.

Dream 3
Finally given the opportunity to open my own business, I open a drive thru restaurant from my bedroom window. Aaron, my latest trainee from the manager program, is working with me as well. The night has been slow, business-wise, until about 5 minutes before closing. I would love to serve the guy, but he's driving a semi-truck and there is NO WAY that's fitting in the drive thru. After explaining that to the driver, he gets very irate and demands I bring out some coffee. To appease him, I ask Aaron to get him a cup.
"But we ran out of coffee, remember?"

Oh shit! He's right! "Then give him some food. Just something to get him out of here."

"Bitch! I don't want any god damn food. I ASKED for coffee! You dumb or something?!"

At this point I am tired and in no mood to deal with this guy. Starting to lose grip on my temper. "Sir, there is no need to be rude. I'm very sorry, I do not have any coffee right now. I am more than happy to get you something else but if you are going to continue yelling at me, you can leave. Thank you."

I close the window, lock up, and turn the lights off. Hearing the guy peel out of the parking lot, I double check to make sure he's gone but now there is two more semi-trucks outside. What the fuck? Half hour later, now that everything is clean and we are ready to leave, the two trucks are still outside. Seeing me, the drivers get out and walk towards me. They look very similar - mid 20s, maybe 6 feet tall, shaggy brown hair, light skin, dark eyes - so I conclude they are brothers.

One in a leather jacket starts hitting on me and dropping cheesy lines which his brother find hilarious. Thoroughly annoyed at his obnoxiousness, I curtly tell them, "We're closed and I'm going home. Night." The second brother threatens to do damage to the house or something if I do not serve them. Of course, I still refuse.

Out of nowhere, leather jacket man starts throwing up and cannot stop. The brother, and then myself, start to panic.

"Call 911! What's wrong with you?!" For whatever reason, he takes his time picking up the phone. In attempt to calm down Mr. Leather, I sit down and put his head in my lap. However, he then throws up on me and the smell is so ghastly I'm about to be sick.

Fighting to keep it down, I yell again, "Did you call the fucking ambulance? Where is it?" A few minutes later it finally shows up.

The EMT jumps out of the back and yells, "Does he have insurance?" Since when do EMTs ask for insurance?There's no answer so he asks again.

"Yea, yea, of course he does. The card is in his wallet."

He reaches into his brother's pocket but pulls out three wallets. "Wait, is that my wallet?! You guys are thieves! This is why you didn't want to call for help!"

Then I see a small Latino boy by my front door. As the EMT calls the police on the thief, I walk over to the boy, but as I get closer I see he is terrified. "Como te llamas? Como estas?" "Estoy bien..."

He switches over to English and I'm impressed with how intelligent he is and how he has almost no accent. He explains the guy stole something from him, a very fancy painting, and now that he's super sick, the boy is worried he might never get picture back.

"Don't worry hon, I'll find it for you." The scene changes and now the thief is locked in jail. Well, he's not dying at least. I found the picture and gave it back to the young boy. He was so happy and his smile so brilliant with gratitude, I remember seeing sunshine in the background. Dream ends...

Observation
After each dream, I remember retelling each one to someone. I don't know who and they didn't say anything. It seems this happens a lot in my dreams lately. Is this how I might be remembering them so vividly when I wake up? Hmm...

Note: This is my first lucid dream that I have had in months. It was really a great experience to have again. Almost forgot what it felt like, almost. It is rather short, but I hope you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed having it.

I am inside a cafeteria of what resembles my old high school. That wasn't enough to tip me off though. I look around, there are people sitting chatting and eating lunch everywhere. I can hear multiple people having conversations at once. There was a black man that was staring at me, about 4 feet away, sitting at a table. He definitely looked too old to be in high school, and this is where I realized I was dreaming. "I'm dreaming", I thought, trying to block out the face of this man that looked very angry. He looked like he was pissed at me. He stood up and pushed me. I pushed him back and he threw a punch to my face. I retaliated with a mean right hook and he dropped to the tiles on the ground. I plugged my nose and started breathing as that's my go-to reality check. I reinforced to myself that I was dreaming. It was a really awesome feeling.

As I start heading to the front door, a young black kid runs by(it looks like the older guys brother), giving me the stink eye like he wanted to fight me. I just ignored him and was thinking about trying to run up the wall and flip off. I lost my train of thought and looked ahead. There was a display case with pictures and trophies in it. I punched through the glass. My fist didn't break the whole glass pane but it put a little hole in it. I felt the corner of the glass pressing up against my skin, I thought for sure that I would be bleeding. Luckily, nothing happened.

I looked to my right and seen the ladies restroom. It really made me wonder what was inside, so I started heading towards it, walking around crowds of people that were everywhere. As I walked into the ladies room there was a girl peeing at a urinal. I didn't really think anything strange about it at the time. I looked under the stalls and I seen the feet of another person using the toilet. I looked to my right and there was a small hallway. Me being curious, I headed into it. It went around a bend, then to a dead end. I stopped and looked at it for a minute, then proceeding to turn around to leave. What? What happened? There was no longer a exit, instead there was a hole about 1ftx1ft that lead back into the ladies room. I got on my hands and knees and pushed my head through trying my hardest to make it out to no avail.

My phone vibrated in my pocket like I had received a text. I picked it up and I had missed texts from a name called "Vancouver". I have an iPhone 5 so it showed up like "Vancouver (4)". I unlocked the phone and there was a game screen on it. To be exact, skyrim. It was my character sitting in a scene I recognized, Whiterun, if you're familiar. Whenever I would move my phone around, the screen would move as if I were moving the characters aim around. I pressed the home button because I wanted to read the texts. I couldn't figure out how to read them so I locked the phone and put it back in my pocket.

I glanced around. A picture in a picture frame caught my eye. It was on a shelf that was about eye-level, that also mystically appeared. I picked up the picture and inspected it. It appeared to be a Japanese mer-man. It looked like an engraving and blue was the only color. It had incredible detail for it just being a single color, I thought. I looked at it closer and remember thinking about how focusing on this painting would help increase the stability of the dream. It worked too, everything went from slightly blurry to crystal clear.

Then, I awoke with my right arm tingling from falling asleep. I can't help but imagine if my arm didn't fall asleep that I could have continued that lucid dream. I really need to learn to sleep on my back, I always have problems with my arms falling asleep. Glad you read it, feel free to leave a comment if you like!

Welcome DV members. Thank you for checking out my online dream journal. I believe the dream journal is a priceless tool and an awesome function of this forum. Adds another layer of awesomeness to what is the Dream Views forums! I am going to try to put at least 1 entry into this DJ a day, lucid or not, remember or not, just to keep my motivation up. My problem with LD'ing is that I could never keep my motivation up. I'll do good for about a week, then completely forget about LD'ing. That is changing! Lucid dreaming has been an interest of mine for years, and I've been having them for years. It's time for me to really learn about how to have amazing dreams and keep them going for as long as I can. I had my first LD using the Sporadic Awareness guide. It really blew my mind the first time I had a lucid dream after reading all about them on this site. They really are quite the experience to have.

I am going to try to place the dreams from my dream journal (new journal started on 5/5/13) onto here so I can get some insight on what others think about my dreams, and maybe make some new friends while I'm at it. You may see me around the IRC every once in awhile, so if you see me in there be sure to say hello! I am going to color code my entries and try to provide as much information as possible. Hopefully this will train my mind to retain as much information as I can during my dreams. When I LD, they are usually DILD's or MILD's, I haven't had much experience with any other technique besides WBTB. The type of lucid dream I had will be on the entry as well.

I really hope you enjoy this journal, and I hope that it evolves into something great over the course of time and frequent LD's!~

I was playing some Doom mod with SilentEternity. I forgot to set difficulty level when we started, but when i checked it was one level below maximum. I asked if i should set to max, but then we decided to leave it as is. The level started outside, then there was enemy base, two other marines were helping us, but i am not sure if they were player controlled or bots. Some parts of the level were some platforming puzzles, like there was one part that required jumping between small rocky platforms in the canyon.
Later on there were some ruins to which we got through teleporter. There were alot of big powerful enemies, and it were not enemies from Doom, but some weird creatures, one of them was giant thing covered with vines and it was shooting very damaging vine projectiles. After going through the ruins we were back outside and we have reached our target which was corner of the map with a number of bosses that could be fought in any order. The first one was some warrior dude, which was supposed to be powerful, but i had plasma shotgun that fired green flaming projectiles, each shot of which was taking out like 1/10 of boss's health bar. Then there was some big crab-looking boss and big monkey-looking boss, which we dealt with easily as well. I started thinking that we should have upped the difficulty.
After the game i was posting something on dreamviews and then i was in some dark room in different place and i was talking about something life related with gab, who apparently was male( ). I recall we were talking about something pretty deeply, but can't recall what exactly. Then i got some weird message from bot on Youtube, but it was not just bot, it was official YouTube bot of some kind, and started talking about that. Soon the dream ended.

I had more dreams to write, but I didn't get the chance to type them because of minor computer problems. Therefore, I forgot a majority of them.

Dream 1: DYNAMITE: I dreamed that I went to a Do it yourself type-store (Home Depot) and I bought dynamite. Each set of dynamite was sticks of three cylinders stacked in a triangle shape (like Loony Tunes) wrapped in plastic. I had two red sets and two grey sets. Red was stronger than grey. I went to my house and I set a grey one off on a pile of rubble in my backyard. The explosion was intense, but the blast radius was actually quite small. Maybe about the size of a large beach ball. I set off a red one next to it and the explosion was slightly bigger. I got excited, so I decided to lure the family dog under the kitchen table, tie him to the remaining dynamite, and set the timer. The dog had no clue what I was doing, and simply acted casual except for the fact he was tied up. After 5 minutes I decided it was wrong to explode the dig, so I untied him and got rid of the dynamite.

Dream 2: CANYON: It was dawn, the sky was orange and purple with stars still shining. I drove out to a desert with orange sand in a red jeep (I don't own a jeep, but I live in the desert) and parked next to a canyon. I got out of the canyon and began to walk toward the canyon. I walked up a natural ramp which led me to a cliff. As I walked, the dust went into my nose, and it smelled like peanut butter. I got to the cliff and a path led me to a circle that went around a natural structure that looked like a loop-de-loop that was made of rock. The path led me higher up the canyon, and I thought I'd get lost. The path then led downward and led me back to the jeep. I was disappointed the path didn't take me anywhere exotic.

I remember waking up thinking this was a healing dream. Well, that was the intension anyway: I had a pounding sinus headache which would not do away with medications, so I napped in the hope that I would feel better afterwards. I now do feel a bit better: still got a headache, but a bit more manageable.

In the dream I kept getting PMs by Sageous. I don't recall actually reading them and no contents or subjects, but I remember opening them, and they kept coming.

I wonder whether this dream is more like a metaphor for my headache: being bombarded by PMs?

Unfortunately did not get lucid last night but had quite an odd dream. I was walking around a place I don't recall from waking life and was approached by a girl I knew in high school who told me to come with her as she had a spare ticket to see Bill Bailey perform stand up nearby. I followed her as I was really excited. We arrived in what kind of looked like a cinema foyer and when I asked her for the ticket she said she didn't really have any. I was very annoyed but that's when I saw another old friend who took me to this special queue. The woman behind the counter was a high school teacher who I never liked and she started to flirt with me, which was really weird but I went along with it and managed to get free tickets out of it.
At this point I had a perfect chance to get lucid but failed. She had a little bag and tipped it upside down and tons of metal dice fell out. Now in waking life I have a metal die that I sometimes use for reality checking. As all these dice tumbled out she asked which one was mine. I inspected loads and said I wasn't sure. With enough awareness I could have reality checked but alas I didn't. We then went and got our seats and I noticed the first friend had sneaked in and the second friend wasn't happy about this and started a fight. That's when the dream ended. I never got to see Bill Bailey. Shame

Sunday 5/5/13

Last night, bed 1:15am - 6am (Didn't fall asleep till 2am)

WBTB 6am-7am. Had a cup of one bag mint tea with green tea and one bag of peppermint tea just minutes before nap. Got up once at 8 to go potty. Dream afterwards. Got vibrations twice, after turned on my left side, but no LD.

Thought about ToTM. I imagined, how I will detach my thumb and put it back on with helo of either duct tape, or laser shooting from my other finger.

This is what I got:

Non-lucid nap DR: I'm walking down the street, that looks like is in village where my gramma lives. Single story houses. I'm going to a house I have previously been to. But I don't remember well how it looks like. I overhoot by a few houses and have to track back. I recognize the house now.

Inside, I'm standing at the kitchen sink with some older lady on the other side of it. I'm showing her my left middle finger. It looks bruised and deformed. She tells me "honey, you have ? fly worms in there". I look closer and I see heavy movement under the skin.

That's when my finger breaks open at the knuckle and out come pouring black worms. 1 inch long, kinda skinny, color of black, coagulated blood. And it seems like that's not enough, bunch of smallish beetles come rushing out too.

Worms fall in the sink and I wash them down with water. Lady is complaining "now I'm gonna have a worm smell in my sink". I can see, how that would be upseting.

Bugs scatter all over. But I chase them down, until there is just one left. It's little more colorful than others. It's a special bug. I keep swatting at it with a ruler, but keep missing. Then it gets under some stuff on the desk. As I move the items around, I see a sea of fleas on the desk. I figure, I better let them be. But I do get the last bug.

There was another dream after this one, but I only feel, what it was about. Will keep thinking about it.

Date: 1 May 2013

Pre bed: 400mg valerian

Total sleep time: 6.30 hrs, pre travel

Recall: Had vivid dreams today, but my recall is very weak. A strange combination perhaps due to the valerian. Had to rush out of bed so that may have contributed too.

Overall impressions: It feels like I had a great night, whatever I was dreaming left me with positive feelings.

Dream1: I went somewhere before that and now am on my way back. Following me are the brothers of someone who looks like my boyfriend. He is Armenian and obviously so are his brothers. Overall positive feelings towards these guys. I think about them and how their family is looking for someone like me, to get married to their son. I also think about how I have figured out they are Armenian and find myself in an Armenian church.

I am back from wherever I came and me and another DC not sure if he was Armenian, are on the street. I am looking at the sunset and commenting it. The sun looks a bit strange but since a few days ago I was looking at a very strange sun phenomenon, caused by the setting sun and some rain clouds, I thought I am seeing something similar.

Fragment 2 mini-DILD: I am on the street and suddenly a strange creature, like a game-like monster with a skirt, similar to a Cyclops maybe, appears out of nowhere. I immediately become lucid and tell myself not to be afraid and that this is a dream. He vanishes as fast as he appeared, I find this a bit strange. Memory gap. (I did not know about TOTM May at the time, this is game-related residual I guess).

I suppose that after he was gone, I lost my focus and lucidity and engaged back in the dream. I have no other recall.

LUCID

*I became lucid while driving on these random streets. I just remember flying a bunch of places, enjoying the views. The dream was long but I don't remember to much of it since it was the start of the night. I do remember meeting with a bunch of people like my self who knew there potential and power, like super heros.

*I am lucid and with this girl that works with me. We decide to see who can create the best dream scene. Then we end up on top of huge mountain covered in snow! I don't remember who actually created the scence, but of course utimately it was me.

Well, I woke a went back to sleep multiple times last night without writing down or even trying hard to remember my dreams. A night wasted

But I do remember that one of my dreams, the last one before i got up, my mother had come with my sister and brother to visit me at university. I met up with my sister beforehand (wow, this is literally coming back to me as I'm typing), and she told me that we had to meet my Mother in the Tesco's car park. I told her that I needed to go back to tidy my room, because it was a tip (this is true) and she would kill me if she saw it. My sister said there was no time since we had to go to Tesco's at that very moment, but she informed me that at 4 mum had to go and pick my brother up from a clinic and then come to see me, and I could tidy my room before that.

I admit, not the most interesting dream I've ever had . But it made me realize that my mother is in quite a few of my dreams. Since I don't see her often, due to me being at uni, I feel like I should question it more but dream me just goes along with it. In a dream i had last week, I was at home. I didn't even think "Hey this is strange, I don't live here anymore".

Maybe next time I see her in a dream I will actually think about whats happening.

Fragment 1: Creepy
I'm on the edge of sleep. I feel heavy and the room feels off like there's someone in it with me.
"I hope she isn't here again." I think. So of course when I drift off I see a picture of a girl with chin length dark hair. At the time I didn't think she looked familiar, but she looks a little like Sailor Saturn. ((Completely freakin' random, but whatever. It's less random than strangling a bear and harvesting happy clams from it..)) She's standing in some version of my room, she's got a long-handle mace, it looks like bone and there's an evil grinning face painted on it with blood.
NOPE I think and force myself awake, but begin to drift immediately. When I fall back asleep she isn't there.

Sharks
I'm an eleven year old boy with pale skin and dark hair. I'm in the water with my older brother, he's only a couple of years my senior. We're clinging to some sort of wreckage. The water feels enclosed like a lake, but is behaving like the ocean. I get the feeling it's supposed to be part of a resort but all I ever see is the water. We never intended to be out this far. Something has happened that forced us into the middle of the lake. We look around for other people, over by the side of a boat there's another boy, that one is younger. Seven maybe. I grab at my brother's shoulder as I try to catch my breath.
"Do you see that kid over there?"
"Yeah--"
"We have to help him!"
We see movement in the water and see a dull nose bump the body, searching. It's a shark. It's...nibbling, searching, until it finds one of the boy's feet.
"Adam." I say, my brother just watches, horrified. "ADAM."
"Why are there SHARKS here? Why would they do that?"
I shake my head in frustration and I let go of the wreckage and swim furiously toward the little boy and the shark. Somehow my movement startles the shark and he lets go. I get a hold on him and kick to the surface. Someone leans out of the boat and gestures to me.
"Hand him up!"

There's a lapse and I'm treading water where I rescued the boy. I'd been unconscious. My head hurts. I feel something bump against the small of my back, then my shoulder.
no, no, no I think, trying to right myself so I can figure out what's going on. Teeth start to close around my hand and I jerk my hand free. If I keep moving it won't be able to grab me. A wave smacks me hard, rolling me under the water. I get a terrifying visual of the shark's head and jagged teeth through the hazy water.
Then Adam is there and pulling me to the surface. An old man leans out of the boat and drags me onto the deck before giving Adam a hand. I lay there and quiver violently. There are patches of skin missing where the shark had nibbled at me, and the flesh on my hand is a mess but to my immense relief I can still move my fingers and it doesn't even hurt too much.
"You're lucky, that other boy lost his foot." Adam says.
The old man grimaces and hobbles away. I see that all that remains of his feet are the heel and he's put metal caps over the bones so he can walk. Other people have similar injuries. One woman is missing her whole left arm.

Fragment 2
In a narrow kitchen. Everything looks like a dim yellow. A short, hunch-shoulder Mexican man, hands in his hoodie pockets. At first he looks normal, he casts a frightened look over his shoulder. I approach him. When I get a little closer he drops his head and grins a little. The expression is really unsettling.
I'm tired of being creeped out, I swat his shoulder.
"STOP THAT."
He looks startled, then afraid.
"Sorry." but he can't help it. He does it again and I force myself awake, roll over.

Fragment 3:
Sitting in a booth in a diner. There's someone across from me but I can't remember his face. It was like we were on a date.

haven't updated my dj for a while.. got lazy. have to get back into the habit. this was a very long dream and my descriptions don't really do justice to the feelings of absolute terror it inspired at points.


i dreamt that i lived in a big house with some other teenagers. occasionally my boyfriend came over. we played video games and cuddled and it was very good. i remember feeling anxious about how to arrange our next meeting.
then i was walking around downtown. it was sunny out. some store had gone out of business and they were giving away their furniture. i found a large bed, whose bottom panel comprised several dressers. i opened each of the dressers and i discovered very elaborate blankets and dresses, as well as some scraps of paper.
there was writing on the paper. although it was in "polish", i was able to understand it. (i don't know any polish). the words frightened me. i cannot remember what they said but the content was very paranoid, surreal and fragmented. it chilled me to the bone.
i went in search of the woman to whom the bed & these papers belonged. (she was an old decrepit polish woman with long grey-brown hair.) i was wandering through downtown at night. i remember also seeing medieval-style maps of eastern europe that the woman had made. an atmosphere of visceral horror pervades this dream segment.
i finally found the woman. at first i was terrified of her and i tried to hide from her as one might try to evade a bear. later i took pity on her and invited her to a formal dinner with some of the people from the dream house. she wouldn't eat at first but i got her to eat a small amount.
then i got into a car with a man in his late 20s and we drove around downtown, which was now sunny. there were two mario figurines in... uh... the little things on the inside of car doors where you can store tiny stuff. one of the figurines toppled over and turned into a waluigi figurine with oddly coloured, very dark (but not black) clothes. when this happened to the second figurine i knew the polish woman was dead. i felt relieved.
we knew that some scrawny ginger guy was responsible for her death and we took a different route home to avoid him. when i was home my boyfriend was there and we decided to go to a café called "the simoleon". this café was buffet-style: they had many sweets on offer and you could load up your plate with as many as you wanted. i ate a weird pudding thing and it tasted good.
next my boyfriend and i went to the mall. he wanted to buy a watch. there were two stores that sold watches, an absurdly expensive designer store and american eagle. the watches were bands of engraved black leather with detachable clock pendants that hung down from the leather band. my boyfriend went into american eagle while i tried to steal one of the expensive watches. i could not steal them because they were attached to the display rack with strong magnets.
i joined my boyfriend in american eagle but when i tried to leave the alarm went off. i hadn't actually stolen anything so i was confused. some people took me into the back of the mall to interview me. they thought i had tampered with mail? one of the people commented to the other that they had heard me talking about incest and even if i hadn't done anything they should arrest me for that.
at one point i became half-lucid and sort of willed the dream to become less stressful. i walked away from the interview and entered the "back" of the mall, which was where all the extra items were stored. i went into the luxury store and looked around. i also recall going into a store called "HERON CLOTHES" which sold low-quality clothes with small embroidered emblems of forest animals (no herons though). the dream ended shortly after.

This lucid dream was very unusual for me because it occurred less than 25 minutes after falling asleep, right at the beginning of the night.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #91: Talking to Myself

I'm seated at a restaurant, talking to a couple of friends, including "Leroy". I'm making a point about some amusing fact I'd heard when a waiter seats himself at the fourth chair at our table. I say, "There's even this study where..." and trail off when I realize that the waiter isn't going away. I turn to him and say, "Uh, how's it going?"

"It's going well," he says. "I was wondering if you needed anything." He says this last part with some concern, like I might be very unwell.

I look back at the rest of the table and see that my friends are gone. I'm confused and a little embarrassed. "Were there two other people here...?" I ask. The waiter gravely shakes his head. I start worrying about myself for a moment before realizing this is all a dream. "Don't even worry about it. This is a dream."

"Ah, very good, sir," he says, standing from the table and gesturing toward the exit.

I get up from the table and walk toward the exit. There's a glow coming pouring through the cracks at the edge of the door as if something as bright as a star was behind it. I phase through the door, winding up in a room that has plywood flooring and a ceiling that's sloped like the top of a roof. It looks like an attic. At the opposite end of the room, maybe 25 feet away, I see the source of the light: a fiery, brightly glowing furnace.

I walk toward the furnace as it spits these little gobs of liquid fire onto the floor. I'm close now, but I don't feel any heat. As I close to within just a couple of feet, the view of the furnace fades and I find myself on a set of sharply descending stairs. Each stair is only about 4 inches long but drops almost 2 feet. As I walk down them, I'm descending so fast that it's almost like slowly falling into a pit. I can't see where I'm going. I wind up stepping onto the railing and slowly making my way down that way. Somehow that seems to normalize the slope of my descent.

I get to the bottom of the stairs and I'm in what looks like a family room with hardwood flooring. There's a board game laid out on the floor. The dream starts to fade around the edges, but I manage to hold onto my view of the board game for a couple more seconds, seeing that it's composed of a game board, a stand with some cards, and some sort of gently-spinning purple sphere. I can no longer move and my field of vision shrinks rapidly until I'm awake.