Weekends are awesome.
January 7, 2011
Singing with Neluna-Nicci and Family Time
When the dream began, I was with Nicole in my bedroom at my parents’ new house. A few things were different… Namely, I had a water fountain in one corner of the room, the house was two stories, and we were sharing a bathroom connected to Chelsea’s room with her. Nicole left the room, so I was alone by the water fountain. I had a vision of the whole world being poisoned and killed. I was one of the few people immune to the poison… I wasn’t sure if Nicole was also immune. While I was pondering what could cause something so devastating, Neluna came into the room in the form of Nicci. She seems to like that appearance (and it fits). Chelsea came in almost immediately after. Neluna warned me that the world’s water supply was about to be contaminated. I knew that also included the water fountain in my room, but for some reason, that didn’t stop me from getting myself a glass of water from the fountain. I stopped myself before I drank it, though.
“Ugh, this is going to be AIDS water,” I grumbled. Neluna laughed quietly to herself. She reminded me that she had already given me a warning. She showed me some song lyrics she had brought along and asked me to sing with her. I wasn’t all that interested. She sang a song for me first, but I don’t remember what it was. After she finished, she grabbed my hand and pulled me over to her side of the fountain. She picked out a song, and music started playing from somewhere… I didn’t know the song at all. I’m pretty sure a lot of the words were made up. I was singing in a really high-pitched voice for a good portion of the song, too. After we finished our duet, she went into what I thought was a closet. It was actually another bathroom – one that was only for my room! I realized how stupid I was for sharing a shower with people when I could just use my own. Even Chelsea had no idea there was a bathroom in there…
The dream jumped. I was walking along a shopping center with my dad. I remembered Chelsea saying something earlier about him imposing his religious beliefs on people. He fell a few paces behind, and soon I heard him asking a woman about her drinking problem. He told her that alcohol would mess up her circulation and eventually kill her. He added that it was God’s will for her to drink in moderation. She asked him for booze, and he told me to go buy her some… I didn’t understand why.
“Just get her a Miller or something,” he told me. We were right by a Jewel-Osco, so I started toward the door. I realized just before going inside that I was forgetting something important.
“Hey, you have to pay for it,” I called back to him. “I’m not twenty-one yet. I’ve still got a few months to go.”
“I know, I know,” he said. I turned away and went inside. As I entered, I saw that there was a long line in front of the guy who puts stickers on paid-for merchandise. He was putting stickers on someone’s bags after they paid for everything… I skipped to the front of the line and held out my arm for the guy to put a sticker on it. I didn’t want to have to pay for myself, I guess… I walked all over the store looking for beer, but I couldn’t find any. There was a sign at the back of the store that said “Alcohol Here” with an arrow pointing into an employees only door. I decided they wouldn’t have put the sign there unless they wanted customers to look there, so I went in. My path was immediately blocked by a robot that looked like a cross between a clannfear and a trash can. It shot a laser out of its mouth when I got close. Fortunately for me, I managed to dodge the laser… But it was able to swivel around in a circle, so no matter where I went, it could still shoot me. I tried to get it to spin fast enough to break, but that didn’t work.
“What do you want from me?!” I demanded.
“I must hunt Scooby Doo,” it said in a robotic voice. It turned into a metallic dog.
“But you are Scooby Doo, so therefore, you must destroy yourself.”
“That is correct.” The robot turned its laser on itself, bending the beam somehow so it bore into its skull. The whole thing exploded. Once the flying chunks of metal were all still, I ventured down the hall into the private electrical engineering offices behind the grocery store. There were messy desks everywhere, and apparently, I picked the best time to show up. They were all too busy with conference calls to tell me to leave. I roamed around the office area for a bit before I decided the sign must’ve been a mistake. I walked back into the main part of the grocery store and almost immediately found the alcoholic beverages. Since my dad said to buy Miller, I grabbed the first thing that met his criteria. I didn’t really care about the price… My dad was paying, after all. I called him to tell him I had found it, hoping he would come inside soon.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked after I explained everything.
“Uh… I can’t pay for it, remember? My license says ‘Under 21.’”
“Well, I don’t have my license with me.” It turns out he had left it at home… So we weren’t buying alcohol for the woman after all. I didn’t really care, but I wished he would’ve said something before I went searching through the whole store.
The dream jumped. I was sitting in the backseat of my dad’s car with Nicole on my left and Neluna on my right. Chelsea was in the middle seat, and my dad was driving. Austin and my mom weren’t present. As usual, Neluna was eager for attention. She slipped her arm around mine and asked where I’d been. I pointed out the Jewel-Osco right across the street (apparently, we lived just in front of the shopping center) and began telling the story. Chelsea got out part of the way through the story and came back, so I had to repeat myself. Nicole did the same thing twice near the end, but she didn’t come back the second time… I decided to just tell Neluna what my dad had done. She laughed at the end of the story. It was clear that Chelsea wasn’t really paying attention, either.
The dream jumped. Nicole, Neluna, Chelsea, Andrea, Eric G., and I were sitting on the carpet in front of the TV. We started playing some kind of crossover between Dance Dance Revolution and karaoke. Nicole went first, then Neluna… They wanted me to play, but I told them to skip my turn, so Chelsea was next. Nicole suggested doing three songs at a time before switching, but Andrea said Nicole and I would be on our laptops during everyone else’s turns if we had to wait that long. Chelsea agreed with Andrea. I saw Nicole tapping to the rhythm of the music and wondered how she was getting such a good score just for that before I remembered it was Chelsea’s turn. Chelsea wasn’t singing either, though. She had figured out how to use the controller to sing silently or something like that. Eric said something stupid to Andrea, and she told him to leave. When he wouldn’t, I agreed to escort him out. Andrea came along to make sure he left the house. We ended up in the kitchen… I guess that’s where the front door was supposed to be. When he walked out the door, she took off her fake Horcrux pendant and gave it to me. It was covered in dirt.
“I don’t want this,” she said. “Throw it away.” Although I questioned her about it at first, I eventually gave in and tossed it in the trash. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to be rid of her Christmas present or how it ended up so dirty… Andrea walked over to the sink and started crying. I tried to hug her to cheer her up, but I couldn’t because of a thick suit of glass armor she was wearing. When I hit my face against it, I smudged the armor a bit, so I apologized for obscuring her vision. She said she’d come into the living room after she calmed down a bit, so I went back in there. Neluna smiled when she saw me.
Luffy in the Underworld
I was reading a chapter of One Piece. In the latest chapter, Luffy and his crew had sailed into the underworld. It was a thick jungle full of shadow creatures. They took the form of people the Straw Hat pirates knew to deceive them, and once they managed to get Luffy alone while he was climbing a tree, a shadow took Luffy’s form and shot the base of the tree with a jet pistol. The shadow people were really easy to identify because their bodies were tinted purple, but no one seemed able to tell. Despite this being a manga chapter, it was fully colored and animated. The characters were even voiced, but they spoke in English. Robin’s voice actor was different… It sounded more like Lyra. Nicole and I agreed that the new voice was weird. I didn’t let her watch most of the animated chapter, though; she was still two chapters behind. I told her to catch up soon.
* * *
January 8, 2011
Threads of Fate and the White Blade
I was at some kind of shrine with my mom, Nicole, Chelsea, and Matthew. For some reason, Matthew was about four years younger than he is now, but the rest of us were our normal ages. He got upset about something and decided to run away from home. He had everything he needed at the shrine to do it, so he gathered up a pack of food and supplies before heading out the door. I thought out what I was going to do carefully… If I made a mistake, he would never listen to me. I told my mom I would be right back and followed him outside. He was standing at the top of a series of a few hundred steps leading down with a light blanket wrapped tightly around his body. I don’t know how he managed to do it by himself; his arms were trapped inside the blanket cocoon.
“Hey, where are you going?” I asked calmly.
“You know where…” he said. “You’re gonna tell my parents, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not going to tell anyone.” His eyes lit up. I could see my phone contacts floating in the space between us. If I wanted to call his parents, I wouldn’t even have to lift a finger. I said I wouldn’t, though.
“You promise?”
“Yep. I promise. So… Are you going to talk to your parents about this before you go?”
“No way.”
“You’re not even going to talk to them? They might be able to make things better if they know how you feel.”
“I guess so… I can try it, and if it doesn’t work, I can still run away.”
“Who else can you talk to? I’m sure my mom would listen.”
“Yeah… I could do that… Maybe a counselor at school…”
“See? Talk to all of them first, and if there’s still a problem, come talk to me in a few days when I get back. I’ll do everything I can to help.” I didn’t realize until then that the only contacts floating between us all this time were the ones we had mentioned – his mom, my mom, and his school. My phone number appeared in the swirling field of contacts, too. Whereas the original contacts were glowing orange and purple, mine was grayed out.
“Thanks, Nephanim,” he said with a smile. “I’ll go home now.” He hopped down the steps toward the town below. I wondered if I had given him the right time frame… It was Friday, and we were going to the beach for a couple of days – but that would mean I wouldn’t get back until Sunday night, and then I’d still have to go downtown so I could be ready for classes on Monday. Oh well. I shrugged and decided I’d figure it out later. My mom, Chelsea, Nicole, and Symphony came out of the shrine. Everyone but Symphony started walking along the length of the shrine toward the woods. The environment warped around me until it was the front of our old neighborhood in Texas. They were all walking toward my parents’ old house. Symphony asked me something. Her voice was scrambled, but I understood what she was saying. She wanted to know if I was going to be okay. I saw a bunch of ribbons winding together. They were accordion folded ribbons, and they came in red, orange, and yellow. I saw a ribbon which I knew was Matthew’s; it was bent in a lot of strange directions. I understood that the bends corresponded to suffering. As bent as his was, mine was a mess. I held the ball of tangled ribbon in my hand, saying nothing. As I focused in on the ribbon, I could see individual events. My dad dying, getting cancer, checking in at a mental hospital…
“Your experience is more challenging than his,” Symphony observed.
“Yes,” I said, “but that doesn’t give me any right to mope about it.” The black ribbons tying Symphony’s bells together represented her experience. Because she was a robot, she did not truly suffer; her ribbons would not bend. As soon as I managed to stop staring at the flawless ribbons, I started following the others. Walking was incredibly difficult… Every step made me more lethargic, and it eventually got so frustrating to take a single step that I no longer wanted to go to the beach. I thought I would just tell my mom I was going back home. I would bring Symphony with me, of course, and Nicole could come if she really wanted to. I just didn’t want to walk any more than necessary. We would be walking for hours. Symphony saw me standing in place with my hands on the sides of my head. She put her hand on the back of my neck and asked again if I was going to be okay. I didn’t have an answer.
The dream jumped. We were outside my parents’ garage. In order to get to the beach, we had to go through the garage first. The door was rigged to crush anyone who tried to enter, though… Chelsea managed to slip in first, and then I went in after her. The others (save for Symphony) weren’t sure they would be able to get in. I told them I would disable the garage door so they could get in. On my way over to the control panel for the garage door, I heard Austin calling me. I turned around and saw him holding up a white sword. It wasn’t Apheri, but I knew it well.
“Do you want this?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Oh, and throw Truth over here, too.” He pulled out a shorter blade plated in gold with several gems embedded in its surface. It didn’t look like the Sword of Truth as I pictured it. For that matter, it didn’t look practical. Austin threw them both at once… I figured he would at least go with one at a time. In any case, I swooped forward and caught them both in mid-air. With a swing of my wrists, I turned them around and carefully examined the swords. Truth was going to be useless, I decided. I planted it several feet in the ground beside me and passed the white sword into my right hand. It felt strange, yet comfortable… Familiar, yet uncomfortable… I decided to bear with the strange feelings emanating from the blade. We would be at the beach soon, and the others would need my protection.
Self-Destruction
I was in a small, white room. I didn’t have a body, so I was just floating in the air. Symphony was sitting with her back to me in the outfit I equipped her with on Oblivion. She slammed her head into the wall in front of her, shaking the whole room. Her head retracted, and she did it again. I watched in futility, unable to do anything about it.
* * *
January 9, 2011
Business Trip Opportunity
I was in my parents’ house, but it didn’t look like any they’ve owned. My dad was leaving on a two-day business trip.
He had to fly to Las Vegas early in the morning on the first day and then fly back late the second day. Nicole and I
didn’t have anything in particular planned for his absence, but it seems my mom did. It didn’t take long for me to
notice something was amiss. She kept getting phone calls throughout the first day, and her conversations were really
vague – almost like she wanted to say something without saying it. Nicole and I went for a walk around the
neighborhood (we ended up exploring an Ayleid ruin instead). While we took our walk, I suggested that my mom might be
planning to leave my dad for someone else. Nicole didn’t think so. When we got back to the house, however, there was
a red truck in the driveway that I didn’t recognize. I went inside and saw my mom talking with a tall, well-built
man. She said she had waited several weeks for this chance. Nicole and I stayed out of sight as they started pulling
off their clothes… Then my mom started for her bedroom. I lost my patience then; I ran out in front of them and
held out my fist.
“Hold on a second!” I shouted at her. “What do you think you’re doing?” She didn’t respond. The guy put his hand on
her shoulder and smiled at me. They tried to walk around me, but I moved to block the doorway again. “Don’t do
anything stupid, Mom!” I warned her. She brushed me aside, pulled the guy in after her, and closed the door. I tried
to open it, but it was locked. I heard the bed sag with their weight. I wasn’t going to stick around and listen for
the evidence. It was pretty obvious what was about to happen. Nicole and I went to my room in silence. Neither of us
knew what to say. I thought about calling my dad, but I didn’t know what to say to him, either. I decided I would
just go to sleep and deal with it in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, though. A while after Nicole went to sleep, I got
up and wandered the house. I found my dad sitting on a bench by the garage. His luggage was on the floor around the
bench. When I asked what he was doing back so early, my throat tightened. He was going to find out. This would easily
be the worst fight I’d ever witnessed between my parents. He said he missed his flight, and it had taken him all day
to get back. I asked if he’d told my mom. He said he hadn’t called her – so all those phone calls were from the other
guy. I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t muster the courage. He seemed distracted… He stood and picked up his
bags. We walked from there to the living room, and he set his stuff down in there. I thought it was weird that he
didn’t go straight to the bedroom.
“Dad, I need to tell you something…” I said. He didn’t even look up. “Mom’s sleeping with another guy.”
“I know, Josh.” When he said that, my anger returned. He knew, and he wasn’t doing anything about it? I almost
punched him. I couldn’t work past my anxiety to do it, though… So I just backed out of the room and crawled into
bed next to Nicole. My head was swimming, and I knew I wasn’t going to sleep at all that night.
Fake Autographs at ACen
Nicole and Andrea continued planning for Anime Central. Nicole called some of her friends and asked if they could come as certain people. Surprisingly, she wasn’t asking them to dress up as anime or video game characters; she wanted them to come as celebrities and sell fake autographs. I laughed when she asked one of her friends to be Amy Lee. Her friend refused, though. While she was planning what we would do at the convention, I could see it playing out before us – mainly lines of people waiting for forged autographs and people in rock star cosplays. In all of my visions of the coming convention, Nicole and Andrea were dressed as Beatrice and Ange, respectively, but I was never in costume.
Decorating the Christmas Tree
Nicole and Eric were decorating the Christmas tree in their living room. Instead of using the small Christmas lights on strings, they were using individual lights that were each about the size of my hand. Every time Nicole put a light up, Eric moved it somewhere else. I found myself agreeing more with Eric’s positioning; Nicole tended to clump the lights together or put them over ornaments. Nicole didn’t even realize what Eric was doing. Whenever she saw one that was “misplaced,” she picked it off the tree and put it back where she wanted it.
Tears for a Toaster
Symphony was sitting on the couch in Nicole’s living room. I was on the floor. She was wearing the white outfit her character has on Oblivion as she was the previous night (with the addition of her bells). She asked me something about my reason for existing. I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. She stared at me until a feeling of distant, cold sadness filled me. I started crying. I felt that she wanted to comfort me, but I couldn’t come any closer.
Turn That Thing Off
This dream has been omitted.
* * *
January 10, 2011
Sharing Thoughts About a Vulgar Mask
This dream has been omitted.
Kahlan's Love Potion
Kahlan was in a tent in the Wilds. She and a group of Mud People were on some kind of journey, but they had stopped for the night. Kahlan examined a potion she received from a sorceress as she sat at a circular table in the middle of the tent. The potion promised to return her lost love. Assuming that it would cause Richard to return to her, Kahlan chugged the potion, and immediately, her body felt unusual… She became lightheaded and giddy. She went to the front of the tent, pulled back the flap, and tried to call for help, but it was already too late. The first person she saw was Chandelin. A strange affection filled her… It was a love potion, she realized, and she could do nothing to stop its power. I saw Chandelin speaking with two of his men about keeping their ten-step poison well-supplied. He looked over at Kahlan every now and then with increasing frequency. He could sense her attraction to him when he met her gaze. Mostly to discuss what he felt were just silly thoughts, Chandelin approached the tent and greeted the Mother Confessor. A young boy approached from another direction to speak with both of them. Before Chandelin could address his concerns, Kahlan started to give him signs of her hunger for him. She smirked when she spoke to him, winked when their eyes met, and finally invited him to show her the ways of the Mud People – in her bed. Chandelin couldn’t resist the temptation. It was confounding; he knew that what he was doing was horribly wrong, perhaps even a fatal mistake (Richard would never spare him), and yet he couldn’t control himself. The boy who showed up went in with them to watch and learn. I had a strange feeling that Chandelin was somehow promoting incest by doing this…
Mario's 500 Stars
I was playing a remake of the original Super Mario Brothers. There were ten worlds, ten stages per world, and five stars to collect per stage for a total of 500 stars. Nicole and I played through the first couple of worlds, collecting a small portion of the stars along the way. Before going on, she urged me to collect more stars. I went back to the first castle and saw we had one of the stars there. I ran through most of the level without finding any of the remaining four… When I did find one, it was at the top of a barrel spinning counterclockwise into a vat of lava. Every time I tried to jump on top to get the star, the barrel rolled me down into the lava. Fortunately, I had the Ring of Happiness equipped (got that on Oblivion before I went to bed). Because of its water walking effect, I was able to walk on the lava instead of being consumed by it.
* * *
January 11, 2011
Alicia's Wedding and a Ghostly Encounter
I was at my grandparents’ house in Louisiana. Apparently, my cousin Jackie was getting married and wanted the whole family there. She neglected to mention that she was marrying herself. Anyway, my immediate family, my mom’s parents, Nicole, and a few of my cousins (Jay, Dusty, and Alicia) were present. The backyard had been extended to make room for a koi pond, a dog house, and a small parking lot. They didn’t have a dog; that was to be the site of the wedding. Nicole and I spent most of our time in the backyard. Cars were parked along the fence on one side of the pond, and there was a queen-sized bed on the other end of the yard for us to sleep in since the guest room inside was already taken. Omi and Opi arrived late in the day, and Opi enlisted my aid in repairing damage to the dog house. We wanted it to be in perfect condition for the wedding. He asked me to do something with a power tool that I didn’t recognize, so I didn’t understand what he meant. When I tried to explain, he got frustrated and took it away from me. I just helped him hammer in nails. When we were done, I went to bed. I slept at the foot of the bed so the girls could have the covers.
When we all got up on the day of the wedding, I asked Jackie what time the ceremony was scheduled for. She said it wasn’t scheduled at all. It was already 10 AM, and many of the guests inside the house were still asleep. No one told them to wake up early, after all… We gathered in the dog house a few hours later. Alicia asked me to get something out of her car. She said it was “the fourth one from the right.” I counted cars from the dog house. The fourth one was a red van. Unfortunately, the cars were packed together like sardines because the parking spaces were so small, so I didn’t know how we were going to get the doors open an inch, let alone wide enough for someone to get inside. It already looked like the side mirrors had been broken off. Jackie came over and told me I was looking at the wrong car. She pointed to the truck next to it – the “third” car. This posed the same problem; the car to the right of that one was parked too close. Jackie grabbed her car by the bumper and shook it until it popped out of gear and rolled backward. It made a scraping sound as it broke free from its automotive prison. She took an umbrella out of the truck and pushed it back between the cars. It started raining. Since I had failed to follow instructions, Jackie wouldn’t share her umbrella with me. I was drenched by the time I returned to the dog house.
The dream jumped. We were at some kind of water park… The lazy river wasn’t lazy at all; the current swept us along at ten or fifteen miles per hour. Nicole and I figured out a way to cheat the system. Basically, everyone got five laps around the river. We had to wear special shirts over our bathing suits to keep track of how many laps we had left. Near the end of the river, a small current connected one half to the other, so it was possible to cut past the starting point and float through half of the river again. Nicole and I found a way to do this consistently, so we were able to stay in the water much longer than everyone else. When most of the others were on their final lap around, we still had three each.
After leaving the water park, we all gathered in bed to talk about how the wedding went, the park, and where we would each be going next. Of course, no one said anything about the wedding. Nicole left to go to the bathroom. While she was gone, my grandma sat down on the edge of the bed and warned me that she didn’t like Nicole. I asked why, but she wouldn’t give me a reason. Nicole came back and started swearing heavily. She dropped several F-bombs.
“It would help if she would stop talking like that,” Grandma mumbled in a grouchy voice. I pulled Nicole aside and asked her to mind her manners around my family. She agreed to, but she continued to swear. My grandma gave up on accepting her and went into the house for a nap. I was suddenly attacked by a goblin, but I discovered I had the ability to fire energy beam attacks (much like in the Dragonball series). More goblins appeared, and Axis joined me in fighting them. I knew that the goblins and energy beams were imaginary, but that didn’t bother me. Jay showed up and tried to throw a spirit bomb at me. I focused all of my energy into one point and detonated it at a safe distance. No one was harmed. With my energy so focused, I was several times faster and stronger than before. I ran up and punched a goblin in the gut, rupturing organs inside its body. As it fell, I saw Symphony standing in the distance. She was watching me.
The dream jumped. I was on my way to the bathroom late at night. I discovered that none of the lights worked. In fact, when I flipped one switch, sparks flew out of the light bulb with a crackling pop. I looked around in alarm, wondering if anyone had heard it… I didn’t want to close the door and have to relieve myself in total darkness, so I left it open. As I did my business, I kept an eye on the open door. It was still dark in the bathroom, but this was the best I could manage… As it was, I already had to worry about someone walking by the door. I felt something on my back – pressure. Hands that weren’t there gripped my shoulders. It had to be a ghost, I decided. I tried not to think about it; maybe it would go away, I thought. It didn’t, so when I finished, I quickly washed my hands and bolted out of the bathroom.
The dream jumped. I was my cousin Jay. He had stacked bowls on top of six chairs around the dining room table. The room looked like an interior from the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Due to a problem with the game’s physics engine, he could use the bowls as stable platforms. He jumped around the table several times to prove it. Abruptly, I was myself again. I was with Nicole in my parents’ living room while I told her what Jay had done. I knew we were about to fly back home, but I couldn’t remember whether or not I had printed out our boarding passes… I checked my backpack and found them. We carried our luggage out to the car. My dad warned me that if Nicole made Grandma too angry, she might end up dead. I understood, somehow… I’m not sure I do anymore. I gave Omi a goodbye hug and thanked Opi for helping build the dog house. They had come back to my parents’ house with us, but they were about to drive home. Before she left, Omi pointed out that my hair didn’t look healthy. I agreed that it looked horrible. I reached up to feel it… It was like sliding my hand through knives made of ice.
A Hallway, Strangling, and Housing Arrangements (Lucid, but two false awakenings put a stop to that )
I was walking through a long hallway. There was a reason why I had gone there, but I can’t remember it anymore. Purely by coincidence, I wondered if I was dreaming. Sure enough, I was. My eyes widened. I looked at my hands and down my arms. Everything was so real, and yet it was only a dream. I didn’t waste time thinking about how long it had been since my last lucid dream. I started walking down the hall toward the glowing exit doors. Energy poured through me, and I was back in bed. I couldn’t move. My eyes were tightly shut, but I managed to open them a little… I saw that I was in a white, padded room. I wondered if I was just experiencing sleep paralysis, but I decided I was still dreaming. I tried to focus on controlling my apparently fabricated sleep paralysis. I was able to roll onto my stomach, but then I felt something tightening around my neck… Invisible hands were strangling me from behind. I tried to talk to the invisible being, but I couldn’t speak. I imagined that Neluna was the one doing it. My intent was to force the dream to represent it as her since I would then be able to get her to stop. Despite my efforts, I knew I couldn’t make it become her. I felt my body moving on its own. The invisible woman was using me to please herself. I wondered whether I should go along with it (I didn’t have much choice since I couldn’t move) or try to resist. I woke up again instead. This time, two guys from my high school shook me awake. I recognized one as Nathan Engel, but I didn’t know who the other one was. Nathan explained that I had agreed to switch rooms with his roommate. I glanced over and saw Till at his computer. He didn’t seem to hear us talking. I reluctantly followed them out of the room. I had lost my grip on the dream state.
The dream jumped. I was outside Nathan’s room at MSV. I knew I didn’t want to move all of my stuff again unless it was truly necessary… Before we even opened the door, I was pretty sure I would just apologize and cancel the arrangements. Nathan explained that he had spoken with the people he needed to already, so his roommate was going to start moving things that day. I frowned. His roommate scanned his ID card to open the door. I thought this was strange; usually, you need a door key to get into the rooms in that building. I decided they must have changed it over the winter holidays. When I stepped into the room, I forced myself to say it was smaller than mine. It was really about the same size. I thought it was weird that I only saw one bed in the room, but I didn’t want to ask any awkward questions. In any case, if I wasn’t going to get anything out of moving, I didn’t see why I would do it… I started toward the door, but Nathan showed me a side door that led to a small hallway.
“What’s this?” I asked him.
“The rest of the place, of course,” he laughed, shaking his head. He and his roommate went ahead, and I followed at a distance. There was a kitchen, a dining room, and a second bedroom. I examined the bedroom just to say I had. It was as large as the room at the front of the miniature apartment. Despite all of this, I still didn’t feel like moving my stuff… I kept wondering if the housing department would charge me the extra money to upgrade to such a big living space, too. I knew that was way beyond my budget. Interestingly, I saw my shoes as I left the main room – they were solid white tennis shoes. I haven’t owned white shoes since middle school, at least.
* * *
January 12, 2011
Across the Gate of Dimensionality
I was Ikari Shinji, but I was wearing Haseo’s black armor. Nicole was Asuka for some reason. We ran down a hallway with Elk (our Rei counterpart, I guess) toward what we called the throne room. The Gate of Dimensionality was all that separated us from the throne. Nicole and I burst through the doorway. Elk wasn’t quite fast enough… The doors of dimensionality began to close. Interestingly, the left side of the door closed from the top, but the right side closed from the bottom. I could hear the metal groaning as the two plates scraped against one another. Through the gap in the closing door, I saw a black ripple in the air behind Elk’s head. An Angel began to climb through it. The being was solid black, but it had a red ruby embedded in its forehead. Its fingers were like long claws.
“Elk!” I yelled. What were we going to do without a healer? The door closed. What was he going to do without someone to hold off the Angel? Nicole and I were ambushed by goombas. I started running up the surface of the door toward the ceiling. For some reason, I thought I would be able to get through an opening up there to help Elk. Naturally, I found myself face to face with the steel wall. The goombas began climbing up the wall after me at a steady marching pace. I kept trying to crawl through the wall until a goomba bumped me. I turned into a little version of Mario, indicating that I had taken damage. I realized this was all actually an application on my phone. Nicole touched one of the goombas with a finger, killing it. I sat next to her on the couch in her living room and watched in amazement. “You can kill them like that?” The screen started scrolling left as I controlled Mario with my mind. Nicole was responsible for poking the “?” blocks to release items from them. She hit a block way ahead of me, and it produced a green mushroom. I was excited when I saw it; we only had one life left, so this would give me a second chance if I made a mistake. Unfortunately, it slid into a chasm and disappeared.
“We needed that,” I sighed. I wasn’t really mad – I just didn’t know what would happen if we ran out of lives. I accidentally jumped into a koopa, and our only life was forfeit. I saw Elk shooting bursts of lightning at the Angel as it chased him down the hall. It pounced him and bit off his head. Blood sprayed everywhere. The Angel turned and stared right at me even though I wasn’t really there.
“You’re next,” it said.
Trying to Solve Umineko
I was trying to solve Umineko no Naku Koro ni’s core mystery by repeating each disaster scenario while watching a specific person – starting with Shannon, the person I suspected the most. I figured that if I repeated this a sufficient number of times, I would be able to solve the mystery. The character designs were similar to those in the Incredibles. Shannon, for example, looked like Violet Parr. I was watching Shannon standing in a stairwell as people walked up and down. I lost interest in watching all of this… A couple of days per person was a lot when I considered that I would be watching fourteen people. I figured I would just guess the culprit. I walked down a hallway to a door which prompted me for the name of the culprit. I typed “None” into a keyboard attached to the door. Bernkastel appeared when I submitted my answer and laughed at me. Turning back, I roamed the mansion until I came to a small office room. It wasn’t Kinzo’s study… I’m really not sure where I was. Windows lined the side of the room facing the hall, so I could see people standing outside. They tried to get in, but I locked the door. Suddenly, there were hundreds of people in the hallway, many of whom were trying to get into the office. They sneered at me and shouted threats that I could barely hear through the thick glass windows. I only had five minutes left until the end of the game… Since I had used my guess without eliminating any of the potential culprits, I was no better off than when I started.
Dad in Yellow
I was at my parents’ house. Austin wanted to buy a video game, so he asked for a ride to Best Buy. No one wanted to take him there because it was so late at night, but my mom insisted that someone needed to do it – and she wasn’t up to the task. My dad decided he would do it on one condition: Austin had to find one of his six yellow shirts. With one of his yellow shirts, he would gladly drive there and back. My mom was disgusted by this because she thought he looked horrible in yellow. I wasn’t sure he really owned any yellow shirts… It seemed like a sneaky way of saying no.
Andrea's Potential Feline Allergies
Nicole and I were taking care of Andrea at her house. She was having respiratory problems of some kind. While Nicole was at school, I talked to Andrea about what she wanted to do after recovering. She said she wanted to dream with us. I gave her a couple of “magic rocks” that were attracted to each other. It was obviously the result of magnetism, but I guess we didn’t know what that was. She said she had heard of the rocks, but she had never seen any in person. I gave her a white pill to take, too. Andrea’s mom came home to drop Nicole off. She went straight back to work after Nicole came inside. I noticed that our company improved Andrea’s health; she was able to walk around with both of us there. Whenever one of the cats came into the room, however, she had trouble breathing. I suggested it might be related to a cat allergy. Andrea was infuriated by the idea and refused to talk to me for the rest of the dream.
I am 30,000 Hz
I was in an abstract realm of letters and numbers. The characters swirling around me rearranged themselves to spell out a message.
“You were right.” They rearranged themselves again.
“The range is 10 Hz to 16,000 Hz.” Yet again, they reordered themselves.
“I am 30,000 Hz, so you cannot hear me.” The letters and numbers faded to darkness, leaving me alone. I saw a computer monitor. The information I obtained on the range of hearing of the human ear was recorded on a website open in my browser. There was no mention of the rest.
* * *
January 13, 2011
Adoption for Scamper
Andrea was talking to my parents about adopting Scamper since she wanted to get a dog. My parents were fine with it, but her mom didn’t like the idea.
Absence Plays a Game
I went to the mall with Nicole to buy presents for people. It was mid-April. We stopped at what looked like a fragrance store to buy something nice for my mom. It all turned out to be alcohol in fancy bottles… I didn’t realize I wasn’t old enough to buy it until I was about to approach the desk. I wondered… If I came back on my birthday, would we still have time to send it? I wondered if I could just buy it that day or if I needed to update my driver’s license first. There was a date and time printed on my license for my birthday. I thought it was the accurate time of my birth… It said 10:38, though. It didn’t occur to me that my mom wouldn’t really want bottles of alcohol. Nicole and I walked out of that store and into one that sold games. They had video games and related merchandise, roleplaying books, and board games. Nicole showed me a Bowser mask. I tried it on, and she laughed at how funny I looked. When I took it off, I saw something horrifying. I didn’t know why at the time, just that I wanted to rip my eyes out and run.
His appearance was very similar to mine… Except he was a little younger (I thought fifteen in the dream, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration), his hair was white, and his eyes were an eerie grayish-white. He held a Rubik’s cube in his hands. As he turned it over elegantly, the colored stickers matched up. He made it look effortless. Although his eyes were on the cube, I knew he wasn’t paying any attention to what his hands were doing. He was watching me in his peripheral vision. He knew I was staring. I grabbed Nicole’s hand to lead her out of the store. He predicted that, too.
“Hello,” he said in a calm voice. The sounds of most of the people in the store halted abruptly. By this point, everyone else had already disappeared. Nicole looked over. I didn’t really need to. “Wanna play chess with me?” he asked. Nicole gave me a weird look – as if he was obviously talking to me, and it was rude that I ignored him.
“I’ll play,” Nicole finally said. A small table and two chairs appeared. The chess board on top was already set up. As was our nature, he seated himself on the black side, allowing Nicole to make the first move. I barely watched their game. He did a pretty thorough job of beating Nicole. It was quite literally just a game, this match with Nicole. He was really after me. He wanted to see me play. When he snatched his victory, Nicole urged me to play against him.
“I don’t want to,” I said. My throat was drying out.
“Do it!” she said. “Just one game. Come on…”
“I would greatly appreciate it,” the boy said, folding his arms on the edge of the table. His expression didn’t change. He was always smiling.
“I really don’t feel like playing,” I argued. When they continued to stare at me, I just sighed and sat down. The table had turned itself around, putting me on the black side. I reached a finger over to the board and knocked a piece down. I thought it was the king, but it was actually the queen piece.
“That’s not the king,” he said in his usual voice. I glared at him and knocked the king over, too. I couldn’t figure out what kind of trick he had played, but I was making my surrender clear. The pieces had switched somehow the first time… “Why don’t you want to play?”
“Just one game,” Nicole repeated. “It’ll be fun.”
“I said I don’t want to…” I replied.
“Are you afraid you’ll lose?” Nicole asked me.
“Here’s what we’ll do, then…” the boy seemed to continue. It was like Nicole was only present for him to speak through. He grabbed the king and queen on my side and handed them to me. “Switch these with any of your pieces. That’ll be more fun.” Taking his suggestion, I swapped the queen with my rightmost pawn. I left the king where he was supposed to be. Putting it anywhere else would just put holes in my defense. Accepting this as verification that I would play chess with him, my opponent moved his first pawn. The game was a blur. I remember only that his offensive was brutal, but my defense was better. I trumped every attempt he made on my king. My knights took several kills. When he was down to just his king and pawns, he surrendered the game.
“You won!” Nicole exclaimed.
“Well done,” my opponent added, fiddling with a lock of hair. “Let’s play again.”
“No…” I insisted. “Nicole, we need to finish shopping.”
“Let’s play Monopoly.” I looked up. He wasn’t sitting across the table from me anymore, particularly because the table was gone. I was standing up. I saw him on my right with a Monopoly box. Nicole walked over and sat with him. I felt like vomiting.
“Do you have any idea how long that game takes?”
“It’ll be quick,” he said. “Don’t you want to?”
“No, I don’t! Monopoly takes like two hours to play. We’re busy right now.” In addition to that, I was uncomfortable because I’d forgotten some of the rules. The white-haired me took out a bunch of red models to show me the progression of properties. I looked down at his sincere smile. I felt like I was going to snap from the internal strain. For the first time in months, Absence had manifested himself.
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