non-lucid

I'm walking along a path by the river in Quickton. There are a large number of orangutan/dog/otter hybrids about, and the locals have been warned to stay away from them. One that looks like a great dane approaches me and jumps up, trying to lick at my face. I laugh.

Shift.

I practically fall out of the truck when we reach the police station. "It's okay", says Kate Beckett, "You're safe here."

My POV switches to Beckett, who's trying to solve the mystery of the invisible animalistic murderer. I'm now interacting with myself ("Sam") as the character Kate Beckett. I note that we don't have much ammo.

An Asian woman stumbles toward the safety of the police station. Already, she's bleeding from numerous slashes to her torso, which look almost like claw marks. The monster must have followed us here.

Sam mysteriously disappears, and we assume the worst.

I interrogate people who are the collective head of an international company. Someone sabotages the elevator, almost killing one of them.

They upgrade security.

The elevator is sabotaged again. I almost catch the culprit, but I have to stay in order to save the people inside. I catch the chain of the machine used for sabotage, and pull it up to a floor where they'll be able to get out.

The Chairman of the company is killed. The CEO chooses to reveal his identity.

The murderer decides to talk to me. It's Sam, complete with all my lucid superpowers. Apparently, I was the murderer all along. I'm watching myself give a villainous monologue. From a third person perspective apart from Beckett's character, I'm very surprised.

Murder Mysteries. Scare Factor: 2. Reaction: Did not see that coming.

I'm working on a short-story adaptation of this dream, minus the identity confusion. It was actually a lot of fun.[/QUOTE]

Two characters are around my old apartment in Ixburg. They look like Johnny Depp and Robert Downey Jr.. I play with story lines and wonder what's about to happen. Then I'm running over rooftops and away from Sweeney Todd.

I'm on the roof and he's on the ground. I double back quickly, jumping down and landing a flying kick to his head. Then I turn around and keep running.

I'm in a playground, on top of one of the structures. There's a man with me. He has the head of an eagle, and wings. He tells me that something is out of alignment within me, that my back hurts because of it. I see tattoos dancing across skin as he presses into the pressure points on my back. I see his wings spread out above, and ask if I can touch them. He tells me not to.

I decide I liked the old tower better, even if it was less accessible. I crawl in through the window and realize that someone is lying on the floor. I ask him if he has a pulse. He says that he doesn't.

I fall into an ocean of black water. I swim to the surface, take a breath. I'm treading water for only a moment before I'm pulled under again. Everything is fuzzy, but I keep breathing, and I realize that I'm dreaming. I swim to the bottom, covered in dark grey silt, and maybe a shipwreck or two. I concentrate on dissolving the dream or opening a portal or maybe both

I'm balanced precariously on the dark surface, which is riddled with craters. Briefly, I believe that I've made it to the moon, but I see the crescent moon on the horizon. I think that I'm on an asteroid between the Earth and the moon. I walk over the crest of the asteroid (10m in diametre), and look out at the moon. I'm perched at the top of a crater. I'm pressed against the ceiling, and everything is going dark.

I'm in Ixburg. My parent's house is next to my oma's house as part of a duplex. The door is unlocked. I talk to my oma and am invited in. We make room for the group of Katimavik kids that are in town.

Outside fighting against some kind of non-human enemy. My character isn't supposed to have superpowers, but I do anyway. I see myself flying from a third person POV.

Demon Barbers, Malfunctioning Portals. Scare Factor: 3.

Below deck, on this particular pirate ship, there is a structure made with cooked spaghetti. We're sitting around it in a circle, making fun of Dean Winchester as he tries to add noodles to the structure, Jenga-style. He loses balance and half the structure collapses around him. The group laughs uproariously, and it's the next guy's turn.

I'm standing on deck, looking out over the water. Apparently we're being sold into slavery. Those of us in this very special group are making some very necessary escape plans.

"Have you ever been to [Modern Tortuga Expy]?" Asks Jack O'Neill from beside me.

I'm a short-haired blonde, badass and immortal, and I've been everywhere, man. "I'm familiar with the area," I say, and pause, considering. "I hope they've forgotten about me."

Now that we're on shore, we can put those plans into motion. We just need to make some tiny adjustments to fit the current situation. I'm standing next to our packed-together bunk-beds with O'Neill. All we need to do is lure one of the guards close enough...

A jaffa guard approaches us, demanding to know why we're breaking curfew.

I look at O'Neill, shrug. "No time like the present."

We escape.

Shift.

I wander the same environment in my real life persona, trying to remember where I parked, and if it was in a tow-away zone. Several days have passed.

Shift.

I decide to go to one city or another. Calgary? I'm driving badly, wondering belatedly why I'm cutting so many people off. I end up walking into a store that I'm apparently the manager of. I watch someone in another store across the mallway play the guitar. I pull out an electric guitar from my stuff, even though I cannot play the guitar.

Shift.

I'm in Quickton, riding a bicycle and absently wondering why there are so many hills. I talk to a DC, a woman I apparently don't like very much, and retroactively acquire memories of whatever it is she's talking about.

Shift.

I'm on a farm for yet another family reunion. I'm pushing a steak around on my plate, mildly discomfited to realize that I've already been eating it. I decide to finish it anyway and ignore anything the anti-vegetarians around me decide to say. There's a woman with long, dark hair sitting beside me. She seems uncomfortable with all the religious proselytizing going on. I assure her that most of the godless heathens in the family (myself included) have already eaten.

Shift.

Playing with a dog.

Shift.

I'm to play the bad guy in some game. I adopt an atrocious English accent and hope the one English woman running around somewhere won't be too offended.

Shift.

I'm a female lawyer with an English accent, long dark hair, and a crisp grey pantsuit. I'm also very good at what I do. Also, evil.

Shift.

I'm jumping through impossible puzzles suspended over darkness. I'm communicating with someone via radio. I drop the rope. I jump down a couple levels, only to find it all tangled up. I'm presently annoyed by all that is paranormal, so I use a magic trick to cause the rope to "magically" raise itself to the next level. It involves wire.

Shift.

I'm standing in front of a magic shop.

Shift.

I'm in a mall. As Barbara Gordon, I talk to a cannibalistic hyena man. I'm replacing my right arm with something, and the hyena man tells me that they've ripped my arm off (before I jumped into the character) to make me more appetizing. I leave.

A Pirate's Life. Scare Factor: 3.[/QUOTE]

I take out the one item of clothing in the washing machine that was, apparently, very important to wash separately. I throw in the rest of the clothes, consider using oxyclean, and wash on hot. When I go upstairs, I'm in my old apartment in Ixburg. The dishwasher is in front of the sink, so apparently I'm doing dishes as well.

***

I enter the building through the only set of doors that are open. Apparently it's not the entrance I'm supposed to use, though. I talk to a middle-aged woman with short red hair, who tells me off and gives me directions. I head past the stairs and onto a set of escalators. Presumably, these will take me to the elevators. I need to use the elevator because this is a really tall building that I've dreamed about before. Something about an orchestra.

***

I'm dreaming about university classes. A photo of me working on the project outside. There's a rack of clothing in the background, sitting just outside of the open door of a store. High quality clothes, a lot of black. All very feminine, though. I think I need to talk to my professor about something related to the project.

***

We're going on an impromptu trip, just because. Also, a national/provincial park in BC (which was also in another dream, which involved running and rock climbing) demands that we return the photos we took there. I tell my mom to make copies and send them, but to keep the originals. I'll take down the ones that I (did not) post to my online dream journal. The photos look remarkably similar to the ones I took in Squamish.


You will never take my pictures away. I will not allow it.

We were planning to go north to go skiing, but Castiel wants to go east because he's never been. We think we might not have time to get anywhere interesting on this road trip, but we go anyway. (I think we split into two groups. One goes west, one goes east.)

We're in Halifax. I'm thrilled, pointing out all of the imaginary landmarks that I see. My mom is driving through a strange version of downtown Halifax where all of the buildings are even closer together and the streets lead into each other in ways that they don't in real life. Also, running on the rooftops in dream!Halifax would be delightful.

There's a detour to my old apartment. We stop in to see my building manager. My mom wants to talk to him about something specific, but I'm just there to say hi, I guess. He now has a fancy glass office where the elevators used to be. He's talking on the phone right now, so I distract myself while we wait.

I overhear my mom talking about/pointing at camping equipment. I ask if we're going camping because that would be awesome but what are we going to use because we packed really light? I have a bookbag worth of clothes that might actually be carried in Amelia Pond's suitcase from the Eleventh Hour. Which is small.

I walk in to a huge tent that apparently has some of my old stuff in it. I don't recognize any of it, but rationalize that something mundane and forgettable, like the broom in the corner, could very well be mine.

When I walk out of the tent, my high school classmates are sitting on the lawn, drinking. Someone pours me a rum and coke. Matt regales me with a "when I was a bartender" story and teases me about the hangover I had yesterday. I'm a bit defensive, saying that I did pretty well for someone who rarely drinks.

I walk into an apartment on the first floor, waving to my old classmates as I go. I press along the wall near the thermostat, and a second room opens. I guess that this is a bedroom I left here. I set down my mini-suitcase, somewhat glad that I still have (outdoorsy) clothes here. Oh, and apparently I'm Batgirl.

***

This dream occurs frame by frame, manga style. Most of it is even in black and white. Ed is singing into a tape recorder about alchemy. There may even be text balloons. A caption says that alchemists are obsessed, and don't think of anything other than alchemy, ever. Alphonse wanders through, still armor, and wants to know what the hell is going on. Ed happily explains that he's recording a tape for their recently discovered grandmother. Alphonse is understandably disturbed.

Familiar Places. Scare Factor: 1. Reaction: I'm sure I've seen those places before.[/QUOTE]

I'm checking out a gym in the new city I've apparently moved to. It's based in a university/college/high school, and membership is affordable.

A group of (mostly female) students are being led around by their female teacher. Some of the girls need to use the bathroom, so the group is collectively looking for one. They're in subway tunnels now, and the teacher is talking to a bouncer outside some kind of establishment, who won't let them in because they're women or minors or both.

I'm talking to my brother, Ben, at some kind of family gathering on a farm, when he starts quoting The Spoony One verbatim while we're talking about a game. Movie. Book. IDEK. Anyway, I call him on it, but he has no idea what I'm talking about. My cousin Reg, who's the same age as my brother, says he got to see a screening of that once. They're online videos, I tell him. What the hell.

We're trying to watch The Daily Show, but Ben tells me that we can't watch the episode because it's only on the US version of the site. I explain to him how you can use an add-on for Firefox to - ahem. Never mind.

Running up the stairs at the farm.

Someone explains to me that the farm is in danger and we have this plot going on to save it. Jill rolls her eyes and tells me to run because I'll never hear the end of it.

"I'm dreaming." I realize at some point. I blink in surprise. "How am I lucid?" I wasn't planning on having any lucid dreams tonight.

I'm going for a quick meal in Tim Hortons, trying to decipher the menu and remember what I can eat. I really want some chicken noodle soup, but I can't eat it since I'm vegetarian. I could get a bagel, but I don't really want a bagel. When I step outside again, I continue with my dream. Apparently I'm a student in some Squamish/Halifax hybrid. There are mountains in the not-so-far-away distance, and one in particular is relevant to the plot. So are the houses I'm biking towards.

Unconscious Desires to Move to a New City. Again. Now. Scare Factor: 1.

I am, once again, my female Lucifer character, where I introduce myself to people as Sam. I'm following a version of the character in which I'm sent from place to place through dimensional portals. I open the portals myself, but I have no idea where they lead to when I step through. I don't remember most of this dream, which is a shame, because it was fun. I think.

I've secured myself an invite into the apartment. I don't need it; it's just polite. I open up the window and step inside and -

splash

- find myself doused in holy water. It has no effect, of course.

Buffy is very suspicious of me, for good reason, I suppose. I'm not actually an antagonist to her and Angel, though. This time.

Buffy, When You're Quite Possibly Evil, Maybe. Scare Factor: 2. Reaction: I really wish I could remember more of this.

I'm walking around a version of the grocery store in Ixburg which I've seen before. Produce by the entrance to the southwest, ceiling-high shelving running east-west all through the store like a warehouse. I'm looking for strawberries.

Still in the grocery store, I'm now a different character. I'm an employee and also some kid genius version of myself from an alternate timeline that I can't recall the gender of. I help someone with a difficult problem. They try to complement me, but I tell them, "Hey, I just work in a grocery store."

I don't and never have in real life.

Now I'm in a strange mix of Halifax and Quickton, where the rivers cross through the city, forcing roads to follow bridges and riverbanks. It's topsy-turvy, and hilly, and it's a bright, sunny day.

Various members of my family, including aunts and uncles, are waiting on the patio section of a restaurant, looking at menus and hoping someone will get around to serving us eventually. I'm looking at the menu, unable to find anything that's vegetarian, but the menu itself is really hard to decipher. A waitress shows up to say we're supposed to be ordering right now, but they're really busy, so is it all right if we just wait a bit?

My mom, another woman (possibly Sandra, my mom's friend), and myself go to check out another restaurant. When we get there, we notice that our other group hasn't been served yet, either. It's a lose/lose situation, I guess.

Sandra is driving. We cross a bridge and are headed downward on a slight slope when, from the passenger seat, I notice a truck heading toward us has suddenly flipped into the air without warning. "Whoa." is the collective consensus. Sandra hasn't slowed down and I call her on it. The truck is still flipping, and it's starting to roll into our lane. As we get closer, the truck flips up into the air again, and we zoom safely underneath.



"Nice timing!" I say to Sandra.

I'm still in the Halifax/Quickton hybrid, zooming across the city at a bird's eye view. I think about karate classes once a week, and the fact that I keep moving from city to city, changing up disciplines and instructors. I'm a martial artist, I think to myself, I need to take my training into my own hands. A flash of me running down a dirt trail.

City-Fusions. Scare Factor: 1. Reaction: I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

I'm drinking. A lot. At a bar. I'm wondering if it's Saturday night and I missed the meetup with Vicki. I see Matt and Jen from High School on the other side of the bar, and debate over whether I want to talk to them. I've been drinking things like rum and coke all night, and now I've moved onto Pinot Gris. I guess. It tastes like champagne.

I'm in the backyard of the Ixburg Inn, having been ordered to clean up the scaffolding houses by my dad. I notice movement in another yard, a brief dark flash. I watch the roof of a nearby building for another sign of it. There's a dirtbiker up there. My mom and I watch him ramp from that roof an impossible distance over the highway. He lands badly, but that was supposed to happen. He's fine.

At a fair, I argue with Gus about something. I'm Shawn Spencer, and my dad (Henry) is around, too. The fair has a layout suspiciously similar to the backyard I was just in.

As myself, I put the truck in park, turn off the ignition, and raise my hands slowly. I'm turning toward the man in the passenger seat, who is happily delivering his Hannibal Lecture while pointing a gun at me. It's a revolver, I notice.



He explains to me that the time I was born can be flipped backwards to show the time it is right now. "You see," he says to me, "This time is the antithesis of your birth."

"Yes, that's very poetic."

I'm ordered out of the truck. I keep my hands up as I follow his orders, stepping onto the green grass in the backyard of my house. I know that there are kids inside the house, quite possibly my cousins. At this point in the dream, though, I think they might be mine.

I try to bargain with the man, but I know that he's going to kill me. If I resist, he says he'll kill everyone inside, but I can't be sure that he won't do that anyway. We circle each other over the grass. The man tells me that these bullets were specially made for me.

Don't I feel special.

The gun wavers for a moment, and I take my chance. I lash out with a kick to his wrist, then grab for the gun. I pick it up and aim at my tormentor. He raises his hands and grins, daring me to do it.

I can't. I empty the revolver of the gold bullets. They spill to the ground, and I scramble for the six of them. I stumble backward as the man laughs. I step inside, latching the glass patio door behind me.

"Go downstairs," I order my cousins. "Get one of the adults to call 911. Ask for police!" I shout at their retreating backs. I move through the house, locking and bolting the other two doors shut.

"So..." says my uncle, "We're safe as long as we don't go outside."

I consider the patio door, how easily the man could get in. "We're safe." I lie.

"Wait," I say after a beat, "Has anyone called 911?"

I curse and grab for the nearest black portable phone. I dial three numbers. "Hello, I need police at -" Silence on the other end. I glance at the display and read 901. Great. I'm wandering down the stairs at this point, redialling the number repeatedly to no effect. I see a flash of the man, laughing. I consider that he might have cut the phone lines.

"Does anyone have a cell phone?" I shout into the basement, frustrated and panicking. I begin redialling numbers on a blackberry no one gave me. 090. 901. 109. 119. My frustration reaches a peak -

And I realize that this is always what happens in dreams. I look up the stairs to the side door, reasoning that I fell asleep in my bedroom and there's no way I could actually be here. I walk up the stairs, touching things (the bannister, the wall), feeling the texture in order to solidify the dream. I'm worried about waking up. I unlock the door, open it. When I step outside, it's dark, and there's a layer of snow on the damp ground.

I move toward the street, making footprints as I go. I look up to the night sky, which is clear and filled with stars.

"Go to the moon," I whisper aloud. "Go to the moon."

I stretch a hand out in front of me, willing a portal to open, for something to happen. A pulse radiates outward from my hand, blurring everything briefly and circling behind me. I can still see the stars. The dream dissolves.

I'm in some kind of afterlife realm, filled with ribbons and people and flying. I'm attached to the colour yellow, which I hate. I try flying, but can only achieve a delayed falling effect.

LG's Got a Gun. Scare Facter: 4.5. Reaction: Lucidity!

I did the faux-math LG was trying to tell me about. Apparently I'm supposed to die next week. Saturday-ish.[/QUOTE]

I'm wandering around a casino parking lot, looking for my car. Two other people are there, one of whom I met at a first aid course a couple weeks ago. The other one might be my friend Miranda. I think I spot my car, but it turns out it belongs to Mel, the first aid girl. It looks remarkably similar to my car until I realize that the plates don't match. My plates are --- ---, I remember with perfect clarity. Also, she parked rather crazily, and apparently I consider myself the better driver. We then find my dad's car close by. Maybe I drove this one? No.

Making out with a girl in a bathroom.

Having a conversation on another forum about whether I can be considered bisexual if I'm pansexual. Um... yes.

Dude, Where's My Car? Scare Factor: 1. Reaction: There goes a dream-sign.

Originally Posted by Samael

Obviously, I've been watching too much Supernatural.

I've somehow been entered into a race that involves hopping on one foot and a flutter-board. I argue that 5K is a long way to hop on one foot.


idek.

I'm crowded into the entrance of a bar. I think these are people that my brother knows. I notice that one guy is acting suspicious, so I follow him outside and onto the roof. I find him threatening another man with a knife.


You know that little voice people have that tells them to quit when they're ahead? You don't have one!

"Hey!" I call, stepping out of the shadows. Both men turn to look at me, one still brandishing his knife.

"Hey, calm down," I say, hoping that I don't sound patronizing, "There's no need for that, right? Put the knife down, and we can talk."

We circle each other, and I'm moving closer with every step to the side. The third man moves away, more or less forgotten. The man with the knife focuses all his attention on me. He's not going to listen.

I step in without warning, grab the wrist holding the knife and twist. He doesn't drop the knife, but I have a hand on it, and suddenly I can see all the outcomes of the fight at once, blood spraying everywhere. Mostly his.

I'm sitting back in the bar with a group of people that I know. I'm invisible part of the time, so I play with the DCs a bit, asking them what they're seeing as they look at me. One replies that she can see the skull of my grandmother's rotting corpse, covered in maggots. I decide that this game isn't fun anymore.

The police are all over the bar, trying to figure out what happened. The patrons are willfully ignoring them. I'm glad that I'm wearing black, because at least you can't see the bloodstains. I look down at my grey shirt, covered in blood. No, I was wearing black the whole time, I convince the dream. I get back into the story by willing myself into a different form. I decide to shift into a guy, because that's an unlikely disguise. Hey, I can be Jensen Ackles!


Yay! I'm him a lot. Why?

I consider changing eye/hair color so I don't look like an actor, but I decide that he doesn't actually exist in this universe and go talk to the cops. Because it's... fun, or something.

There's a female detective on the roof, speculating about what happened. I see these speculations in flashbacks. The girl (me) made a grab for the knife, she says, and cut her attacker, injuring him. Then he killed her, and disposed of the body somewhere.


Not nearly this cool.

I'm somewhat insulted, actually, but it helps me put the pieces together. I must have won the fight. Since the man with the knife is missing, I probably accidentally killed him and disposed of the body somewhere. Wow, do they have it backwards.

Nobody wonders where the third man went.

They're talking about fingerprints, so I decide this would be a good time to change mine. I will the change, and zoom back into watching an onscreen sequence of the patterns changing.

Skinwalkers are the bad guys, right? I wonder on the irony of shifting into Dean Winchester as a shapeshifter. Am I evil right now? Maaaybe.

I converse with the suspicious detective who probably suspects me for something. I swing around the wire fences on the rooftops for a bit, before coming back to the ground where the detective is waiting on a park bench. Apparently we had a long, in-depth conversation that I can't remember, because she actually trusts me a bit now. Yay, we're friends. Or possible love-interests. Hm.

The detective is wondering if I'll be okay to get home by myself, being as it's after dark in a city infested by the supernatural. I assure her that I'll be fine (being as I'm one of the supernatural monsters everyone seems to be afraid of). I check the area, zooming out to the east, where I'm headed. Dark alleys lit by an orange glow. I zoom out to the west, only to find a pack of Dark Jedi closing in on us, jumping around as NPCs do in Jedi Academy. I spot a couple of green and blue lightsabers among all the red, mostly carried by those wielding dual lightsabers.

"We should go," I say, still tracking the pack remotely. "We should go now." I'm more concerned about the detective than myself. I heal fast.

We walk eastwards away from the group, hoping that we won't bait them if we don't run away.

They catch up to us. Immediately, I draw dual sabers in red and blue, slashing down the first two Dark Jedi to reach us. I take down another, still standing protectively in front of the detective. I rush out past a female Dark Jedi, striking her in the back before she can turn. Finally, there are two left. I face the leader and send one of my sabers flying at his remaining minion. She's down. I rush the leader with a flurry of strikes.

No effect.

I pause in my offensive. "Okay," I tell him, "That was at least three direct strikes to your neck, minimum. You should be dead." He just grins.

A blow to the arm, and I have him disarmed. I grab him by the hair and slash across his neck. "Are. You. Dead. Yet?" I ask the disembodied head. That would be a yes.

Also, fail for lack of gore.

I'm covered in blood, so I figure now is a good time for a tactical retreat. We make it to the Best Western where I've made a reservation. I figure we have a half hour to shower and make ourselves presentable (read: not covered in blood) before the antagonists start to come after us.

"I'd offer 'ladies first'", but I'm the one who looks like a walking horror movie right now."

Unfortunately, I'm really bad with numbers when I'm dreaming, so we end up wandering the halls looking for the hotel room. Which is on the third floor. No, the first. No, the second. Wait, are we in a hostel?

Skinwalkers. Scare Factor: 2. Reaction: Violence is fun.[/QUOTE]

There's a tall building reaching to the sky in a giant spiral. It has something to do with Bruce Wayne, I think I met him, I don't know. I'm exploring the huge building when I happen onto a route outside. I've found a viewpoint from Assassin's Creed. For some reason, I need the eagle, so I sneak up to it and catch it! I'm holding onto the eagle as I jump, knowing that I'm about to fly up into the sky!

I fall. And fall, and fall, and fall, and (viewpoints are very high up, you know) fall. I twist around to protect the bird I'm holding in my hands, and land on my side without much of an impact. Aside from turning into a very small owl, the bird is fine. I'm glad, but I'm also very disappointed at the lack of flying.

***

I'm in a space station, trying to sabotage a robot, because it is evil. I pop the robot's cassette tape from a wall, and move over to a desk. Or a checkout. I think I'm resisting the change from space station to convenience store.

Two female DCs are freaking out on me (one is my fictional boss on the project), wondering what the hell I'm doing with that tape because it could ruin the whole project. They're not getting in my way, so I ignore them. I pop the tape into a recording device and record the ambient noise. I briefly consider reprogramming the robot by manipulating the sounds being recorded.

***

Teletubbies are attacking the earth.



They're flying in from outer space and attacking us. I zoom into the tall cylinder building from a previous dream and start fighting teletubbies.

Teletubbies. Scare Factor: 2. Reaction: Kill them. [/QUOTE]

Overlooking a dirt street from the rooftops. A man is talking to a thief-girl he saw on the street. She bolts, and he makes no move to catch her. The girl swings her way onto the rooftops, moving directly past my hiding place. I'm immediately in pursuit. She panics, makes her way to a pillar jutting from the roof, hoping for a reprieve. It should be impossible to climb, but I use my momentum to move upwards and find handholds where there are none.

I may not be an alchemist, but I have my own talents.

I face off against the girl on top of an eight foot circle of concrete.

"I'm not going to hurt you," I say, "I just need to know what he told you."

The girl lashes out at me, shrieking. I dodge her easily. She strikes again, goes wide, and loses her footing - I grab onto her tattered cloak, and her momentum pulls me with her from the top of the tower. I'm holding onto the edge with one hand, but if I want to keep the girl from falling, I have to let go.

I let go of the wall entirely, touching only with my feet. I'm holding the girl in my arms and am standing at a ninety degree angle to the wall. There's a moment of breathless surprise from the girl in my arms before I jump -

We land easily on the roof below the tower.

I have a quick conversation with the dazed pickpocket, who takes off after giving me the information I need. I don't follow.

"Elric!" I shout to the street. The man from before, with long, dark hair and glasses, looks up at me, quietly amused. I drop down to the dirt road in order to interrogate him more quietly. Alphonse doesn't back down. "I need to talk to your brother."

The conversation goes nowhere, and I find myself tailing the younger Elric brother from the rooftops. I stay low, watching the reactions of the AS2-style city guards so I don't have to keep him in my direct line of sight.

I follow him to a building with glass double-doors, and I drop down onto the street. I walk toward the guard. I think about giving him a three-digit code for "I'm following that guy; don't get in my way," but I'm bad with numbers while I'm dreaming. I nod at the DC, willing him to pass on the message. It worked. As I walk down the hallway, I'm aware of the DC passing it on to the other guards in the area.

Alphonse is reporting to someone in an office with a glass wall. I can't keep the woman from seeing me, but Alphonse has his back to me, and I walk past the office as if I belong there, into an L-shaped corridor. As I round the corner I have a brief 3rd person glimpse of myself wearing Assassin's White. I stand at the edge of the glass wall, behind curtains, trying to hear what's being said.

((Note: Deliberate perspective leaps could be useful while spying. Try to induce these deliberately.))

The meeting is over and I quickly move down the hallway into an unexplored room. As I open the door, I realize that this is Edward Elric's study. I notice the cot jammed into the far corner. Or bedroom. Black blankets are piled around the room and I briefly consider hiding under a pile as Alphonse opens the door. Only, that would be undignified.

No, it's time for a two-sided interrogation. This should be fun.

Amestrian Conspiracies Involving Your Protagonist. Scare Factor: 2.

Three weeks without missing a day and suddenly something interesting happens on the weekend.

A man is holding me and two other woman captive. We're being kept in the employee section of a motel in Ixburg, and though I pretty much wander around as I do in other dreams, the women who are with me are terrified.

I'm left alone in the laundry room, which comes complete with all the stuff involved in running a motel. I idly search through needle-nosed pliers and other vaguely pointy things, before I pull a box cutter from the cleaning cart on the west wall. I use the pliers to pry the safety-features from the knife. I hear footsteps. The man walks into the room.

I have him pinned to the wall with a knife to his throat before he can blink. I can feel the savage grin splitting my face as I call to one of the other women. Lucy - long, curly brown hair - is standing down the hallway, looking nervous. I tell the man not to move; I won't hesitate to cut him open.

"You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, I really, really would."

Lucy hands me the phone in lieu of phoning 911 herself. I'm wondering if she can still speak.

"They're not going to believe you," says the man. "They're going to think you did this."

I ignore him.

"Amy speaking."

Confused, I ask, "Um, this is 911?"

"Yes."

"Wait, Amy?"

"Sam? Is that you?"

I break myself out of my reverie. "Amy, I need police -" I glance at Lucy, "and an ambulance at the Ixburg Inn." I briefly explain the situation.

"Phone number?" Remembrances of the first aid course I took.

I list off the phone number for the motel, as I remember it.

The man laughs. "It's been a while since you've lived here, hasn't it? We changed the phone number!"

"I gave them the address!"

The man may or may not have lived to stand trial.

Really Mad Hostages. Scare Factor: 3.

Actually, I'm pretty sure he did live, considering he was following me through a museum later on. Any tips for dealing with in-dream stalkers? Anyone?

Perspective switches like whoa.

Mad Scientists in Halifax. There's a pool ready for some Olympic event, and there are a lot of people crowded throughout the room, but no one in the pool.

***


I'm travelling through a Middle Eastern country by car. Two families are in the car together, neither is mine, and the characters who are sitting in the 5-person capacity car keep rotating out on me. We/They are passing farms on either side, scattered across the hilly prairie like they are, well, on the prairies. The hills are practically mountainous, they're so steep, and the grid road has been built up a lot so that it doesn't have to follow such a treacherous path. I see people wandering the hills on camels, and wonder if I'm driving through a stereotype. Miranda's driving. I collaborate with a girl in the backseat, trying to find a way to make bread on the road. Just... because.

We/They are walking into a tourist trap.

"McDonald's!" I cry with faux glee. They really are everywhere, goddamnit.

The group heads to a sign that says bathrooms, and also has baths. We've been on the road for a while, and would really appreciate a chance to get clean. These are public baths, divided by gender. The group crowds around the front desk, looking at the signs on the desk for how much it would cost them to use the baths.


Somehow, this represents prices.

One of the girls catches up just as the rest of the group goes in. She doesn't have enough money? So she/I go(es) into one of the unisex bathrooms that are supposed to be private. Some random freaky guy shows up and she/I kick(s) his ass in a fight and then she takes off. Then I'm collectively the entire group of girls trying to figure out what happened and making up the story as they go.

Someone who looks like Cordelia Chase shows up and starts insulting everyone who works at the front desk no matter what their nationality is. DC behind the desk shifts into four different people.

I might be in an episode of a made-up season of Digimon, except there are no Digimon. There is an attempt to peer and squint at my handwriting, before I give up and just make shit up a group of characters that are replaced by new people when the original characters are taken out of the game die. A girl named Risa Cooper becomes the new Joy to much fanfare. She might be the girl from the previous dream.

There are two boys who seem to be best enemies. I alternate between their points of view for a while. Apparently, one of them is destined to kill the other, but neither of them wants to very much. They keep getting near to finishing the other one off, then backing off and doing it all again. They work together to defeat a monster. Then they put the eggs of the monster in the ground with the body and a bunch of fish or something. Then they bury it and decide that will hold them for a few years. Zooming back into a view of the desert.

I'm watching the episode online, and think about leaving a review via Stumbleupon along the lines of "You fucking idiots, why do you not smash things to pieces then bury everything in separate fucking places so they do not immediately have something to feed on upon hatching."

Nitwit Protagonists Take 2. Scare Factor: 3. Reaction: WTF.

I'm standing in one of the cabins at a bible camp I used to attend. There are two girls in the room, and the first asks if I'll be staying here. I'm a bit confused, so I say that's possible, as I move my stuff across the room to an empty bed. This is an empty bed, right?

"What year is it?" I ask.

Without even blinking, the first girl replies, "1995". I do some quick calculations and realize that I'm pretty sure I didn't go to bible camp until '96 or '97. Briefly, my dream-self is my present-me, though no one other than me notices. I concentrate on shrinking myself to a point where I'll fit the story.

The first girl wants to make me feel better, so she hands me a 1995 issue of Climbing, still in plastic. I'm pretty excited, so I thank her and take the package, tearing it open. I ask if I can use the poster insert for the week, to hang on the wall. (Note: my real bedroom walls are plastered with climbing posters, art, postcards, and maps.) I notice that I've ripped the cover up the spine a bit, so I look for some tape to fix it.

Girl #1 asks me not to tell on her for using the word "hell".

I look around my suitcase and find a spiral bound notebook small enough to fit in the pocket of my cargo pants. The front pages are already filled with dream journal entries prefixed by the "~" I use in my written journal. I grab a pen, too. Might as well start on the kid genius routine to get a few writings published early.

Girl #2 is reading a book when the counsellor walks in, a girl with black curly hair who, huh, would actually be younger than me in real life. Weird. She praises the little girl with long blonde hair, who just looks more and more annoyed as she's praised and showered with gold stars and cabin points.

Hey, I remember that. In grade three. With the book on volcanoes. Hm.

Girl #1 immediately scoops up a book and pretends she was reading the whole time. The cabin counsellor looks at me expectantly.

"Eh heh, no." I say flatly, "I just finished reading The Great Gatsby; I'm going outside."

I wander away, looking for something to do. None of my contingency plans for time travel to bible camp go farther than "try not to get exorcised".

I sit on a swing and recognize a few relatives from an inlawish side of the family that doesn't actually exist yet. As I probably haven't met them, I resolve to swing on swings. And ask people what they would do if they got to relive their respective childhoods. Other than die of boredom.

Whatever it was that I decided to do, it got me in trouble, all right. There's a boy from the swing set crying in the kitchen we've been left in, repeatedly saying, "I'm going to hell!" I try to reassure him by saying that there's no such thing as hell; it's just a story. I stop short of saying "There's also no God, Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus," because that would just be mean. Oddly, the boy doesn't seem to have calmed down at all. So I ignore him.

From what they tell me, I'm half-sure they're going to get me to do their accounting for them. It turns out that the Mad Hatter intervened and I get to serve my time in the kitchen developing new flavours of candy. Mad Hatter, Willy Wonka, either way, I get to hang out with Johnny Depp.

Lucid moments while I'm waking up, or they wake me up. Dream scenes fade, swirling away into a brown-black nothing, while I hold on to the feeling of whatever I'm touching at the moment.

Bible Camp. Scare Factor: 2, oddly enough.