So I've been thinking about this ever since I spotted this sub forum whilst poking around. I've had these old dreams, a series of dreams in middle school about a place called Steam City. In it I ended up going to a recurring location of a darkened warehouse and turning on a light to find myself entrapped by monsters, after which I would wake up. Eventually I stopped because I became accustomed to it, almost like I knew the dream would be ending soon.

I always had the feeling the deeper part of my mind was trying to communicate something to me through this...whatever it was, I have no idea. Maybe something to do with confidence, I dunno? I have a detailed synopsis of the dream...I'll post it below. Its the first one in my DJ, but I'll post it here anyways for easy access.

I'm not sure I expect much of an answer from this... but I thought it would be an interesting thing to try discussing, and maybe some of you might come up with some intriguing interpretations as to what the heck my mind was telling me. I seemed to have learned the lesson, but I'll be darned if I can figure out conciously what it was...

Steam City Detective
Approximately 1998 - 2000

One of the oldest dreams I can remember is one that repeated itself quite frequently in my middle school years and has not yet returned since, though the experience remains in my mind. I'm a girl, but whenever I dream about myself I am in one of two bodies: a version of me, usually with my reddish-brown hair reaching my middle back (I keep my hair short nowadays, but I still dream of myself with long hair more often than not) and a boy version of myself with dark brown eyes and reddish blond hair layered about my ears.

In this dream, I am always the boy version of myself at about 11-13 years of age. The setting is an overcrowded cement city constantly coated in its own artificial steam generated by all the steam powered technology it uses. Cold, cement surfaces with minimal windows make up the majority of the constructs. Many-jointed pipes emerge from the walls and sink down into the city's underbelly. There are no parks, and few open spaces, even in the richer parts of town. Crime is rampant in the city, though besides a steady hissing from nearby pipes and a regular thrumming coming through the cement ground very few sounds can be heard unless you are very near where something is happening.

It seems a forbidding place, but despite it all I am very comfortable, confident, and at home here. I am apparently an orphan, as I have no home but a single room office full of dingy file cabinets, and have become known as a successful private detective despite my young age. Its a rough city; I imagine children grow up very fast there. I commonly dress in a huge, adult sized brown overcoat and matching child-sized hat. The coat drags on the ground behind me. When I'm awake, I call this place Steam City, though when I dream of it it has a more realistic name I never choose to reveal to myself; it is an unimportant detail.

The dream always begins after I am on a case. I never dream through the process of getting assigned the case, and while I'm usually aware of what the case is about during the dream it always fades after waking. The case isn't important; the journey to solve the case is. Those details of where I go and what I do while on the case remain. It differs each dream. I recall at one time I became frustrated with no leads and found myself on the edge of a cement canal full of dirty, oily green water, where I would often go to think. The steam cleared above me and I saw the moon and a misty-blue sky. It didn't help my case, but it was interesting. Another time I was facing off against a woman of perhaps thirty who liked to dress in gaudy red coats and matching hats, who was somehow connected to the case I was working on. We climbed a half-constructed building as I chased her around, and we were standing on some of the metal support beams, above the cloying steam of the city below with a cloudy sky above us. I don't recall what happened after that, but that scene is distinctly imprinted in my mind.

No matter what happens on a case, I always end in the same location: A low warehouse somewhere along the canal. It has some small, slit windows at the top of the walls, but otherwise possesses only one entrance: a door facing the canal. I enter the warehouse, searching for something or someone relating to the case I'm working at the time. It's dark, and as far as I can tell, empty. I walk confidently to the center, where I can barely make out a hanging light bulb, and pull the chain to turn it on. As the warehouse fills with the dim light I discover that I am now surrounded by a collection of monstrous beasts or heavily muscled mafia-men. That's when I wake up.

When I first started dreaming this, at the end of my dream my face paled and I cringed away from the surrounding horrors. However, as my dream went on I would come to expect what lay on the other side of the door and in the darkness yet to be illuminated. I would enter fearfully and trembling (I should not here, for the sake of interpretation, that I was always compelled to enter, even when I didn't want to...) Then even that would fade. I recall that one time I gained a bit of lucidity during the dream. I realized I was waking up, and so instead of providing myself with an in-dream reason to show up there, I simply appeared before the steam-shrouded door. Knowing what lay on the other side, I stepped in confidently and turned on the light, I suppose knowing I would wake up upon sight of the beasts within. After that, Lucid or not, my dream self began to take to the warehouse with the easy confidence I showed elsewhere in my escapades in Steam City. Shortly thereafter I stopped dreaming about it. I do recall now that I dreamed it once again in high school several years later. The details of the dream adventure were unclear this time, where before I would remember every action I took upon waking. This time it was just that I was back in Steam City on a case, I did stuff, and I ended up confidently back at the warehouse at the end. I'm not sure what the dream was teaching me, but maybe I needed to be reminded of the lesson?