Zora's Dream Journal

An attempt at starting to keep a journal again, I've got a nice start with a kickass dream. :D

--

ND - Nap - The Circus

This is Thomas Reed.

The dream opened like a movie, showing flashes of a man with dark hair and glasses facing a pair of lions. They both stared at him hungrily.

He's in deep trouble.

Like a film afraid to be gorey, flashes happened - flashes of his glasses askew on his blood covered face, a diving paw, a pair of jaws tearing meat off.

This is his wife Diane.

--

The dream jumped from the sunny forest clearing to a mansion. I sat in the dark contemplating the visitors we were getting, and thinking about mysterious disappearances that had been going on.

People of all kinds - mainly larger people - had been going missing by the dozens. It was causing panic to spread across the city.

The doorbell rang. I answered it. People dressed in black to blend with the darkness came in. We went to a small auditorium. The ones behind me couldn't see the screen, so my mum described what was going on in the screen to them. On the screen, a man with dark hair and glasses fought a pair of lions in a pit of sand, instead of the clearing.

"Oooh!" my mum said to the people in the back. "His glasses just flew off."

Then on the screen appeared three elven women. A red head, a blonde and a black haired one. The black haired one vanished out from the frame as she walked underneath the camera - the red head fixed the camera with a steel eye. My teachers, I knew it. "Can you let us in?" she said.

"Oh!" said Mum. "Sure!"

The teachers sat in the back, near the window, with the others. The dream went to third person as a hand touched the blonde teacher's shoulder and pulled her back. In a flash she was gone - kidnapped. The girl who used to be me pressed herself against the window as a bus absolutely crammed tight with people - quite literally - drove away.

"Kidnapped," she breathed. She described everything to the others. They knew that the teacher had been taken by the same people who took everyone else - and that the bus was no doubt crammed with victims.

But it seemed they could do nothing but stare at the place the bus had been.

--

We went back in time. I stood on top of the stairs, near the auditorium, and beside me a man scanned the walls with a blue laser. We were going to catch the kidnapper in the act, or even better - rescue the teacher. I answered the door as it rung. It was the first person who came to watch the movie.

"Where are your parents?" she asked. She was an Asian woman this time.

"The parking lot," behind her, another guest appeared. They muttered together about how my parents didn't tell them they were going to be there, then walked up to the auditorium. I resumed my position above the front door.

Then I had a vision, as an adult woman far away.

--

This is Diane Reed, his wife.

A woman shook at the rusted bars seperating the backstage from the pit. It was like a colosseum, a small one, and the lions had already injured her husband. The bars broke away in her hands and she rushed to his side. He was bleeding horribly, but not too badly injured. She looked up at the lions.

They say that when passion takes you, when adrenaline pumps through your veins and the blood pounds in your ears, that you can do the unthinkable.

She threw a punch at a lion's eye, and it was sent reeling with the miraculous strength she achieved. She had a wild look on her face, shrieking at the lions, yelling and roaring herself, and she was like a cornered animal herself - standing before the collapsed figure of her husband, losing all regard for her own life as she just fought and fought and fought.

The audience saw her passion. When once they had been cheering the lions, they cheered her. They helped her. They took rocks and bricks and threw them at the lions. They took knives and threw those too. Even a drug addict threw in a syringe, and got a lion square in the eye!

Finally the lions collapsed of exhaustion. Diane let out a shuddering breath. The crowd's own roar overwhelmed her, but she crawled to her husband's side, resting his head on her legs. He smiled up at her.

"It's going to be alright," she said. "It'll be alright."

---

Random notes:

- At one point the auditorium was a mountain or something and I found a tauren from WoW digging at it telling me the kidnappers were up the mountain and I had to look for them. This was before the "real" dream, when instead of a kidnapping someone had been murdered.

- My brother had a pet bird at some point which he showed all the guests, and my own had a really tiny cage that was barely bigger than her.

- I was dressed in white at the showing originally but went to get changed, and somehow it happened magically.

- Turns out the people were being kidnapped to be used in a circus in another country or something where they were used as food for the lions like Thomas and Diane were.

Of course, I'm not getting in the way of a good story! :P Everything was in the dream, even the italics, just the extra notes above I just didn't know the timing of, with the exception of the first which I didn't know how to include so I just stuck it here.

I rarely get dreams with plots like these, so I was eager to tell it like this.

Some random notes about last night -

- Comic Book Guy tried to kill Lisa with a shotgun, then gave up.
- A counselor who lived in a tent had white frankenstein's bride hair, and asked if I was going to visit Mum for some strokes.
- I had a whole bunch of ferrets, who were standing guard because another ferret was trying to get through the wall.
- Nadim's boyfriend, Ceydale, got his ghost seperated from his body even though his body was alive (though in a coma). Nadim swam to this shipwreck to see if he was OK and watched over him while Ceydale's ghosts made stupid remarks behind him.

Last night I dreamed we drove home from my grandparents' place, and that for some reason there was a dead kangeroo in the car, but nobody would move it. O.o

Also, we had a secret room behind a bookcase in my house, which kicked ass.

Random notes about last night:

- Jaina Proudmoore from WoW was getting married to someone, but it was faked for some reason or other. And there was this little flash game of a canyon I kept playing where I rolled around huge boulders with the mouse. And I asked her when the "warchief is coming back" because Thrall took off somewhere or other.

- I wrote an article for deviantART about writing.

- We'd finished playing sport and had to put away the equipment, and used a kind of portal to put 'em in. O_o

What I said to a friend in MSN:

Quote:

---

I dreamed that this guy was friends with this 4/5/6 year old girl, and she had decided she was going to marry him when she grew up, but for some reason I married him instead and she got really angry XD

And we got divorced/seperated/had a huge fight or something because we lived in this fantasy universe, and I often didn't come home from work because I'd get eaten by metal monsters if I did.

There was this whole fricken video game universe, it was so fucking awesome.

Like there was this campaign level, which started out as you swimming in the ocean with a companion and a dragon flying ahead, and the land would be created when the volcanos erupted, but I got too close to the volcanos when I was trying not to drown and died so I gave up and played multiplayer (The one with the other guy). XD

But I saw screenshots of what would've happened if I survived - apparently the dragon would've used ice breath on the sea and made a layer of ice for me to walk on if I lived.

---

Kicked ass, even if I didn't like getting eaten by those metal monsters. :P

Notes -

- Meeting old teacher. Telling her she treated me like crap. We talked about it. Began to forgave each other. She gave me a present. A little picture made out of thread sewn to cloth. It was a heart. Came with a little frame.
- Strip club.
- Playing in the waves.
- Time slowing down. Everyone waiting for the wave to come. Me screaming, "It's a tsunami."
- Cobra in the tree.
- Going uphill. Saying I was safe from new waves.
- This stadium of water exploding. Shimmying up a tree as fast as I can. Darkness.

- Regaining conciousness.
- Floating boards of lots of people. Bandaged. Wounded. In the shell of a huge building. Not feeling sick or hurt, surprisingly. Sea levels having raised -heaps-.
- Paddling away when everyone's better. Being advised to drink our own urine. Being careful of the sun. Going north. Getting chased by murlocs. Got away safely.
- Saw some rapids in the high land. Some people talked about begging for money near the rapids. I felt my board drifting towards them, but managed to steer it away. Someone said the rapids were going north. Since I was in Sydney at the time of the tsunami, I knew I had to go north to find home.
- Managed to get onto land. Went into a cafe. There, an innkeeper (looking like Rene Artois :P ) stood with the customers. There was a whole bunch of people. Waiting for the missing. Waiting for their family to come collect them. Victims and family. The innkeeper came over to me, asked me my name. I told him it, he said no one was waiting for me, but wrote my name down anyway. I moved on, telling him my home was up north.
- A lot of the victims had made it to land at that point. I abandoned my board. Kept walking north. Started singing my favourite song. Some people joined in, even though they didn't know the words. Went through the enormous shell of what had been a tunnel. Passed the remains of some apartments.
- Came to an intersection which was surprisingly intact. No cars around. I realised I reckonised it. Saw that I was in south Sydney, so I turned into the street that I knew led to the Harbour Bridge.
- I saw a group of people just south of the Bridge, near the entrance to it. I decided to keep going north if I could, but first I'd search out my family. I kept calling my mother's name. I glimpsed her, but she didn't hear me. Called out again. She was talking to someone else. Then she turned and saw me.
- Then we crossed the bridge together.

--

Going to write it in full, then I'll update again. :D God, that was an awesome dream.

Meeting old teacher. Telling her she treated me like crap. We talked about it. Went for a walk just before dawn, she chased me, we had a walk around the neighbourhood. Began to forgave each other. She gave me a present. A little picture made out of thread sewn to cloth. It was a heart. Came with a little frame. Went back to the building.

Strip club. I was part of one. Didn’t know the dances, but did it anyway. We danced on these narrow sort of metal planks (OR GIRDERS, WHATEVER). Wore black and red. Knew several people from there. The planks/girders were suspended above the actual club. At one point a dance failed so badly that most of the club left.

Playing in the waves. I was back with my old teacher, and the class from ’03. The waves were small and weak, but at one point some guy managed to surf one without a board, using only his feet. After that I had more fun diving in and out of the waves.

Suddenly the waves receded. On the horizon I could see a single, wall of water. It was massive. The kids around me screamed in delight and stood braced. “This’ll be awesome!” they said. “Best surfed wave ever!” They thought the wave would shrink before it reached them. But I knew the truth. I knew that the closer a wave got to the shore, the bigger it would get because of water displaced.

Time literally seemed to slow down. I was running (in slow motion) towards a sturdy palm tree. Everyone was still by the “water’s edge” – rather, the edge of where the water used to be. I screamed at them, “Tsunami! It’s a tsunami!”

I grabbed the tree. The water was almost upon us, and everyone was scattering in all directions. Time still went slow. I managed to climb up the tree further than I could ever imagine. I encountered a cobra – at least, the person on the tree below me said it was a cobra, though it didn’t look like one. I tried to catch it and gave up. The water was here.

The water crashed onto the shore, and I was hit by spray – luckily, I had climbed just above where it had hit. The water receded. I climbed down.
No one was hurt. A classmate was pulling on a rope, pulling in a life boat.

An ex friend was in there, and came out boasting about everything she’d done. I told her to shove it and looked around. A boy came in with a board above his head. Everyone was safe. The teacher looked a little stunned. The water level was lower than usual, but not low enough to be in danger of another tsunami.

We decided to migrate uphill just in case. Our feet squelched on green, half-drowned grass as we went higher. To our right, stood a huge aquarium – the biggest in record. It had a single tank of water, holding an enormous amount I couldn’t even comprehend.

“We’re safe now,” I said. An explosion sounded to our right. I looked over there to see a huge fire roaring at the aquarium. “Well,” I said. “At least we’re high up enough to protect us from future waves.”

The teacher agreed, saying that being near fire was probably a good idea at the moment if we wanted to get dry. We continued up the hill. I looked back at the aquarium.

Just in time to see another wall of water surge towards us. The aquarium had exploded, and all the water was coming out. This time I ran as fast as I could. The water coming out seemed to have more than the tsunami had. Absolute millions of gallons just flowed out, and I rushed up a tree. This time I went higher than before, higher, and higher –

Then a wave overtook me. I clung on for dear life, holding my breath. I remember the wave – it dwarfed me. Nothing but blue surrounding me. I clung on with all my strength as the water surrounded me.

Darkness.



I saw a brief image – of a hook coming into the water, pulling me out of it. Above, people floated on boards, the crane beside them pulling me to the air. “Wow,” said someone. “Fifty feet down, and she’s still alive.”



I regained consciousness. Surprisingly, I wasn’t in pain. I was on this giant skateboard floating above the water. It was like a bed. Around me, people were on similar things, standing up on them and chatting. It was like a gathering. Seeing I was awake, several people came to greet me. We played games while the time passed. Most people had healed of their injuries, but some still hadn’t. We were in the shell of this enormous building – it had been gutted, but the outside walls, the eternally stretching upwards panes of glass remained.

We decided to stay around in the building – the support, if you will – until everyone healed. We played games while they healed. Talked. Played. It was fun.

I looked around us. The sea level had risen tremendously. As if heaps of water had been dumped into the sea from outer space. No –way- could it raise this much – but it had.

Everyone grew better. We gathered for an assembly. They told us it was time to go home. To paddle home using our boards. They gave us advice – if you could find extra clothes to protect you from the sun, use it, as the sun would be reflected from the waves and that there’d be no shelter from the sun in the water. To drink our own urine if we were still stranded in the sea, since the water was contaminated thanks to the damage and that salt water’d drive us mad.

We went to these gates in the water. They pointed us on our way – east, west, north or south. I found the north gate and went that way. Before the disaster, I had been south of Sydney, so I knew going north would lead me home.

I came into this sort of bay area. I was around a group of other people of around twenty, and slowly they trickled their way as they made their way home. Me and three others sat on our boards as we drew steadily inland.
There were these rapids in the land that went north, apparently, said one of the girls. Another said that begging at the side of the rapids was a good way to make money. “Really?” said the third. They went into a discussion, but I didn’t want to drift into the rapids – they were going faster than cars, and they were actually going south. In the rapids, I glimpsed a lion from the zoo struggling for air. Once I was in them, it’d be impossible to get out. I managed to get out of the current.

I made it to land. A cobbled street – one side of the street had been destroyed, and that’s the side I landed on. The road was devoid of cars. I saw a café on the other side of the road. I abandoned my board, walking over. It looked like it had been raining. The blue sky was gone, replaced by a cover of grey.

I walked in. The café was absolutely crowded. I saw sobbing clutches of people. The innkeeper just watched impassively. Some people I saw looked half drowned. Others looked dry. I realised that these were families and victims alike, waiting for loved ones to come home safe.
The innkeeper came over to me with a clipboard. “Name?”

I told him. His eyes scanned the list. Flipped a few pages. “I’m afraid there’s no one here waiting for you,” he said. “I can add your name to the list and you can wait for loved ones here.”

I shook my head. Told him my family was up north. Besides, the café was crowded as it was. He nodded, clicking his pen. I left the café.

I continued walking. By then, a lot of the people I’d been with in the building’s shell had made it to the shore. I roamed down the street. Some dragged their boards behind them. They all had the same, blank look on their face. They kept going because they had to. They had no other choice.

I went into this huge cave. I realised it had once been a tunnel, but the way it had been damaged it had changed dramatically. The water was ankle deep here. Other survivors finally began to abandon their boards as well and kept going.

I started to sing. Face of Fact, by Kotoko. A Japanese song, but somehow I got the Japanese right. Other people joined in. We smiled. We sang. We kept going. As the song ended, we began to feel renewed hope, and exited the cave.

I passed some apartments. By now, the buildings were less damaged – we were on high ground now, after all, but the streets were still soaked. I reached an intersection. Still no cars in sight. I’d lost my way by now. Which way was north?

Then I realised I knew where I was. Still in Sydney. The Harbour Bridge wasn’t far – all I had to do was cross it and keep going north. The Harbour Bridge was… I looked to my left. That way.

I quickened my pace. I did some calculations in my head. If what took a minute to drive in a car took twenty for me to walk, then, well, a twenty five minute drive should be… I decided not to think about it, telling myself I’d keep going regardless. I had to keep going. Home was on high ground. It should still be there.

I reached the Harbour Bridge at last, but there was a huge crowd of people just below the entrance. I suddenly realised – it was people from the north, waiting for their loved ones.

Then I glimpsed something. A familiar dark coat. I widened my eyes and craned my neck to look for it. “Mum!” I called.

No one responded, though some people turned their heads. It was an enormous crowd. Some people were being reunited with their loved ones, with victims. Some mothers looked around in vain for their own children as I called for my mum, but after seeing me they looked away, resigning themselves to more hours of waiting, perhaps even days. I saw the coat again. “Mum!”

I saw her. She was talking to a victim and laughing. “MUM!”

She finally turned to me. We were reunited at last, laughing and smiling. Suddenly, it was all over for me. No longer did I have to search for home, have to struggle to survive. I had her with me.

“I was on the bridge when the tsunami came,” We walked onto it, and as mother spoke she looked to the south – to the beach I’d been playing on when it came. “I saw you there. Then I lost sight of you.”

Then we crossed the bridge together.

--ND: The Gobblers--

I was in this small valley clearing that was no bigger than a living room, and around me lay the scattered corpses of demons (looking rather like the blood elves from World of Warcraft). I approached a female dwarf.

"Quickly!" she said. "Search for brown baby clothes!"

I looked back and the demons had all vanished, replaced by piles and piles of clothes. There was now a door leading to the clearing, which slammed shut.

"I'll keep the coppers occupied!" she went on.

I started digging through all the clothes, but couldn't find the baby clothes she wanted, until a giant hand (which somehow was the dwarf's) plucked down from the sky and picked up some brown, baby-sized underwear.

"This what you're looking for?"

I said yes, and the dwarf happily took it.

Suddenly, the door burst open and inside came this woman. She dragged me out into the grass, and showed me a stack of two mattresses.

"I'm going to put you in between," she said. "With tens of other children, then we'll cart you off."

Was she crazy? A few dozen children wouldn't fit in there! I realised, however, that it was going to be like Jews towed off to the death camps and I didn't have much choice, so I raised a more concerning issue.

"Uh," I said. "Those mattresses will suffocate us!"

"We'll put another mattress in between to hold them apart," she said.

I facepalmed, then started struggling - joy! I managed to get out of her grip! I bolted into a shopping center, into the food court, where a middle aged man got up from his food and started chasing me. I ran with a girl who was my best friend in the dream, but we got separated - the man quickly caught up with me and grabbed me, and she got away safely.

I struggled as much as I could, but his grip was like iron, and the strength like a lion's. Around me, children ran everywhere, scattered as other kidnappers went after them. Parents were nowhere to be found. I finally managed to twist myself out of his grip and went in a direction I knew he didn't expect me to go in.

He followed me a certain way, then a random man dropped his wallet, looked at me, and said "Take as much as you want."

The middle aged man - the Gobbler - stopped as well, and looked quizzical.

"Are you sure?" I said.

The young man nodded, and I took about fifty dollars from his wallet - three tens and a twenty. The Gobbler took out his own wallet. "I'll pay you back," he assured the young man.

"Wow," I remember thinking. "He has some morality after all."

I took advantage of the distraction and bolted as fast as my legs would carry me to the front of an art gallery. A really tiny one - it was about the size of a normal shop. Without glancing behind me I knew he wouldn't catch up - I had at least five seconds to pay the ten dollars and rush in, but I knew that it would take at least twice as long to get out the money, pay, and walk in naturally - so I just ran in anyway. Besides, I noticed, there was no one to pay at the door.

The place was deserted. It wasn't an art gallery after all - a deserted, occult shop, full of small Wiccan trinkets. It was unmanned, and I dived behind the counter, instantly regretting this decision and thinking I could've snagged a better place by the door. Knowing that the room was deserted, I formed a plan - wait a few hours until the fuss was over.

Two girls came in - red headed twins, hurrying to hide beside me. I made sure to crouch low enough (Since the counter was half a glass display) so that I couldn't be seen. They did the same.

But, too late - someone had seen them and came in. A woman identical to the first that tried to catch me, but she wasn't the same one. "Come on, my sweeties," she opened her arms to the twins. "Let's go."

They looked at her as if she'd just asked them to strip and dance on the countertop. "Hell no," those expressions said.

She lunged at them, and in the kerfuffle I bolted again - I knew she'd just try to capture me too, or check back later. In the hurry to get out I crashed into my Gobbler again, and the chase restarted itself.

Then I thought, "Maybe I'm meant to learn something by all this."

I knew we were going to be taken to a place we didn't like. I knew we'd be worked as slaves. That we'd be traumatised. But I also knew that running, no matter how fast, wouldn't get me anywhere.

I looked at the ground. In the panic, the place was a mess. Things lay on the ground everywhere. I picked up some things discreetly and slipped them into my pocket - things like straws and napkins.

Who knew? They might aid to escape.

It didn't occur to me until the Gobbler caught me and was towing me off that maybe I was meant to escape. I cursed.

The "institution" turned out to be a part of the shopping center. I was taken in by the Gobbler and left there as he went to seek other children. A Gobbler was spooning rice and sauce into some children's plates. They were almost all dressed in identical, white uniform quite like those of a mental patient's. Some weren't changed - they hadn't time to.

When I was ordered to change into the pocketless uniforms, I knew the things I'd picked up would be useless - it'd be hell to keep them without being detected. Another girl changing told me to sit on a group of chairs and eavesdrop. Find out ways to help us escape.

I sat on the chairs. Around me, children were being reunited with their parents - but only temporarily. Their parents couldn't take them out. They promised to remain in contact. I wondered if my parents would come and pick me up, then remembered how I'd been on my own a while, leaving home to become an explorer. But I kept up the hope they would visit, and continued to eavesdrop. Some Gobblers talked to the parents, stating that they hadn't the power to take them out.

Some sort of conspiracy was in the process here, I knew. Before I could find anything out, however, mum fucked everything up and woke me up. :P