Recent DJ Posts

"You thought this place was haunted," I tell the brown-haired child. "As it turns out, you're not the only one with powers."

I raise a hand and Matilda floats up off the floor, her eyes alight with excitement. I cut the enchantment, and she lands on her feet.

"So you're my teacher?"

I nod.

07/26/10

I try to WILD. I notice the beginnings of HH, let my fingers twitch and decide I haven't reached SP.

I fall asleep. I'm laying in a bed when I feel someone lie down next to me. I freeze, and pretend to be asleep.

I make an impossible jump onto the roof of a barn.

I'm walking along cold grey tiles of a huge grocery store. If I look around, I'll see water flowing past the high windows, held at bay by degrading technology. I catch a glimpse of myself from the third person. I'm a teenage girl with pixie-like features. My shoulder-length brown hair is pulled back from my face.

I turn a corner, shining my flashlight up and down the aisles.

Since I'm a girl, I'm caught up in a rite of passage that all girls in my post-apocalyptic society go through. It's less a test and more of a sacrifice. If all the girls feed the monster a part of our souls, it'll be less likely to kill us.

My flashlight flickers and goes out.

I squeeze my elbow into my side, reassured by the blade I feel hidden under my jacket.

"Come to me, child," says a voice, rasping hollow through the darkness.

The voice resonates like a song, notes ringing through my mind, weaving a compulsion. I let the song flow over my mind like water, leaving my intentions to lie quietly in the darkness.

I let the flashlight fall from my hand. It clatters to the ground, the sound harsh in the relative silence of the warehouse. The music has reached a quiet hum. The flashlight rolls away.

I feel drowsy as I respond to the tug of the song, shuffling my feet toward the back wall of the building.

In one moment, I'm alone. In the next, the monster has apeared before me, a writhing mass of shadows moving toward me and invading my space. It brings me in, compliant, pulling me to the heart of it.

A distant part of me feels panicked and trapped, but I'm ready for this. In one smooth motion, I'm grabbing my blade and rushing forward, slicing through the monster's fleshy heart. Blood bursts from the wound, spraying everywhere.

I lick my lips, and step back, triumphant. The shadows dissipate, leaving the warehouse with the dim, directionless lighting of a dream. The scene starts to fade.

I'm standing in the produce department, wearing a more comfortable dream form, short-haired and androgynous, no longer covered in blood. The dark-haired man across from me looks annoyed as he holds a hand over his heart, willing the wound to close.

My lips twitch. "You lose again, Amon."

The Test. Scare Factor: 5.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

My journey from ambitious underling to rival archangel.

I'm sitting at my desk, poring over some ancient text, but my mind is elsewhere. My team has just made a fascinating discovery, a book that could unlock ancient magics unknown even to the angels. Whomever can harness its power could go so far as to take over the world.

Unfortunately, we're working for Lucifer (from Supernatural). It's not by choice, I can assure you.


Sandman!Lucifer could kick your ass.

I hear the alarm go off. Immediately, I'm running down the stairs to our secret underground laboratory. The place is collapsing; dirt is streaming from the walls and rocks are falling around me. I run to the desk where Lucifer was working earlier, and grab the grimoire, the codex (decoder), and the journal that he was translating it into. Beside the books is a black LED keychain that's supposed to be a portkey. I pick it up, but nothing happens.

I'm running for the exit, not sure if I'm going to make it. I'm at the entrance hallway, but all of the main-level exits are blocked. An old man - possibly Amon - appears beside me. He says that there's a ladder I can use.

Sure enough, there is. I climb up the ladder - Amon is behind me - and we both make it out.

Lucifer is in the common area, sitting at a table with his head in his hands. He looks really mad - probably because the grimoire is lost. I try to turn down another hallway, but he sees me and the grimoire before I have the chance to leave. Suddenly, Lucifer seems very pleased.

Once we're out of sight, I turn around and smack Amon over the head, wondering why he had to take us directly past Lucifer. Comprehension dawns on his face, and he asks me if I was trying to betray our boss.

Yes! Obviously!

Amon wants to know if I really think I can get away with it, but I shrug and tell him I'm not worried.

Lucifer corners me later and asks why I'm not grateful that he brought me back to life.

What? Of course I would be... oh, I remember now. My character was really mad for some reason.

"Thanks for that, by the way," I say. I'm still taking over.

---

I'm at some Misha Collins fan-thing. Everyone around me is all excited, but I have things to do. I go and try on jeans in a store. They don't fit, and I'm tired of clothes-shopping already.

---

On a bus, I see Lucifer again. He's avoiding me. I try to unobtrusively sit beside him, but he switches seats when people get up to leave.

I see Sally, from school, is on the bus too. This can't end well.

Why am I not worried about myself, though?

Oh, right. I'm Michael. Duh.

I tell Sally that she has to get off the bus. People are turning into piles of maggots around us, and she has to leave before she does too.

"Ask the bus driver to open the door." I say.

She points to the bus driver, who's a pile of bugs covering all the controls.

I run over to the front of the bus. I plunge my hands into the squirming mass of maggots (and I can feel them wriggling all over my skin), and pull the lever for the door to open. Sally gets off the bus and starts running.

All of the maggots on the bus are streaming towards Lucifer, somehow going to power him. He looks weak right now, though. He's lying down on one of the seats, and I go over to him.

He asks me if I'm going to give one of those good-guy speeches about love an acceptance. I tell him that just because I turned out to be an angel (again) doesn't mean I'm one of the good guys.

I call up a small amount of light energy to cleanse the pile of bugs. It starts off tiny, and gets bigger and bigger...

---

I'm in a dark hallway with the same LED keychain from earlier. The small flashlight doesn't actually create light, though. When I click it once, the lights go on. When I click it again, the lights go off. Every second time I click it, something scary happens in the hallway, and if I'm in the hallway when it happens... who knows?

Holly, from high school, shows up, talking about Sailor Moon. I'm at the top of the staircase, and I think she's one of my enemies. When she's almost at the top, I telekinetically blast her down the stairs.

She gets up and informs me that it wasn't very nice to do that. I shrug and apologize, sheepish. Apparently she actually is on my side.

---

I'm watching clips of a cartoon. It's about animals running farms. I think this is ironic, and the cows suddenly start acting strange.

There's a little yellow chick trapped in a flipped-over bus that's about to explode. The other animals are trying to figure out how to rescue him.

One of the adults holds up a diagram of a kite, which the people inside the bus can hold onto and fly out the door with.

I'm flying with the kite over a sea-side city. I'm just over power lines, and I don't want to hit them. I'm on top of a marina. I have to make it past the cruise ships, out to sea so I can fall into the water.

The Devil You Don't. Scare Factor: 4.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

A note to our teenage adventure protagonist: we're totally messing with you.

Our surroundings are bright, a world of clear glass windows surrounded by sunlight. My footfalls are light and airy, bearing none of the gravity that this situation should require. I am calm, cool, and collected as I approach the dark-haired man at the top of the dias.

"You should know, Amon," I say, "That you can't possibly win."

Amon surveys the horizon, his back turned to me. "We don't have to do this," he says quietly. "You could give up the girl..."

"That's not going to happen."

Amon turns to face me, dark energy forming in a globe between his hands. He's still young. I barely have time to process the thought. I'm dodging. Blackness swallows up the staircase I was standing on a moment ago.

I bring my hands together, pull them apart in a quick motion. A lance of energy surges toward Amon, aiming for the heart.

I'm sitting at a four-person booth in a restaurant, nursing a cup of coffee. I hold it up and breathe in the warm scent, before setting it back down with a clink on the table. I glance up at Amon, who's sitting across from me at the table. The corner of his mouth is twitching up into a smile, though he's trying to suppress it.

Beside me is the girl I was talking about before, our protagonist, Sasha. I love playing a supporting character. She's glancing up at Amon and back at the table, trying to look for all the world like she's not about to bolt at the first sign of hostility.

I have to chuckle. "So. Do you think this counts as an anti-climax?"

Amon's about to point out the double-entendre, but Sasha cuts him off.

"What the hell, ---?" she says, twisting to face me directly. "He was trying to kill you!"

"Nah," I say, leaning back in my seat, "Amon and I aren't enemies. Are we, Amon?"

"Nope," he says, barely keeping a straight face.

"Tell him about your problem." I say, my expression far too earnest.

"I can't remember my parents' eye colours, okay? They keep changing!" Sasha springs up from her seat and stomps away to the restroom.

"Who pays attention to their parents' eye colours?" asks Amon.

"Weird people. Or very observant ones?" I wonder. "Anyway, I took a look at her memories, and they have been tampered with."

"And you just got rid of her. Am I thinking what you're thinking?"

I nod, gleefully. "We should investigate."

We slip away from the diner and back into the mall we just destroyed. I press a few random buttons on a keypad and the door opens with a hiss. I walk right in, Amon following close behind. We're in the clothing department, where a couple missing parents should be frozen as mannequins.

"If we have all of the permutations right," I muse, wandering over to a control panel disguised as a jewellery counter, "We should just be able to enter them here."

Amon presses a few places on a blank wall. As he touches them, the spots light up in squares. He finishes the combination and steps back. I hear a low hum permeate the air around us.

"I have a bad feeling about this." I mutter.

Amon shoots me a glare. "I don't like your bad feelings," says Amon. "They make bad things happen."

The mannequins in the display near us, half a dozen at least, start to twitch.

Mind Games. Scare Factor: 2.

Game. Tree. Spy. Babysitting.

It feels like I might be playing a video game. There are two characters: the main character is following a mentor archtype through a forest filled with ruins and caves leading deep below the surface. I'm not sure if I'm the mentor or the MC; I might be both. We're searching for a series of gemstones or charms, consulting witches on the way. On some level, I know the MC won't go for the mentor's final goal. It's far too diabolical.

There are something like four dimensional levels of this tree, and we're exploring them all. I recall at least two characters (though I'm sure there were more): the theoretical expert, and the practical one. Again, I think I'm both characters. Somehow, climbing the tree leads to different dimensional gateways, though I don't remember where they were all located. Dimensions below the surface still had branches and a fall that would probably kill you. I remember that TE is very well protected via anchors and harnesses and carabiners, presumably because the various dimensions can be so disorienting. I remember being the TE, and being left on one of the explored levels, then being the PE and actually exploring a deeper one. When we get to the final level, we find another gateway. We go back to the surface to recoup.

Spying is involved. A guy of about my age may have information that our organization desperately needs. Me and another female friend get ourselves invited to... watch movies or something in a group. We're sitting in a basement on a bunch of couches. Then everything is flooding. I stay behind to grab all of my things that are scattered below the water (seems to be my swimming stuff and a coil-bound notebook containing instructions). An older man, maybe the other guy's dad, is back for me, scolding me for not evacuating and leaving my stuff behind - is it really worth my life? Considering how incriminating that notebook is, it very well could be.

I think I'm found out later, anyway.

"If we're babysitting tonight, why are we here in the morning?" Apparently the parents don't actually need us until 9PM. I resolve to put the brats to bed VERY early, and enjoy the party in the meantime.

Third Person Narration. Scare Factor: 2. It's annoying for dream recall.

March 12, 2010

Damian is a semi-immortal thief from the "real world". While evading his current batch of pursuers, he is granted a wish from the devil, who introduces herself as Sam. After sending Damian home, for a price, She proceeds to wreak havoc at the christening of the princess, by giving her the gift of infinite will. This backfires spectacularly, when Sam (the devil) is drawn into the plight of a teenaged runaway several years later.

I think it could make a very interesting series of short stories.

Also, I was three separate characters during the course of this dream. I've been Damian, Sam, and The Reader of the story at various points, while reading emotions off of everyone else present. It was all very third person omniscient. Also, not the first time I've been the devil.

Can you tell that I'm not religious at all? Protip: Satan is the good guy.

The Narrator. Scare Factor: 2. Omniscience is so much fun.