The Body

Type: dream imagery (non-lucid)

This dream was... probably one of the worst I've ever had in my entire life. Normally when I am terribly afraid in dreams, something will wake me up. My defense mechanisms kick in and they bring me out of it. But this time, I don't know; something just kept me sleeping, and so I had to endure it. It's been almost twenty-four hours since I woke up from this dream, so the details are a bit sketchy. I'll write what little I can remember.

My best friend's old house. Grannie was still alive. Andi had died somehow. We were having to endure the trauma of her passing and deal with selling her things, her part of the house. Two people paced about in business suits. They were going to go through the belongings and get the place ready to sell. Her room was full of garbage bags and a sickening stench permeated it. And yet only I knew why, and feared their discovery of the truth, which could have been at any moment.

She had committed suicide, and yet somehow had also been murdered. Her body had been desecrated, dismembered, her head severed. The rest of her was bound in garbage bags sitting next to the bed, on a dresser, at the bed's level. Her head, inexplicably healthy yet no longer animated, eyes open, mouth agape, seemed to stare at me no matter where I turned. I had had nothing to do with this; it had been some terrible person. And yet I could not let Grannie or these two people find her this way.

They were complaining of the stench. Funny how in dreams people are so oblivious to what is right in front of them, and only you seem to be able to see the obvious. I paced. I was terrified to go in that room, but someone had to keep them out.

She was with me, then, her spirit. As a ghost, she was with me. We were both terrified. We had to shut ourselves into that room so that they couldn't get in.

God, this is so fucking frightening.

They wouldn't leave, so we had to sleep there. We crawled into the bed. She was too afraid to sleep next to her own body, so I had to do it. Not a foot away from the crumpled, stinking heap of garbage bags, I slowly eased myself into the bed. My arms were trembling. I was so, so scared. Her face, her real face, stared blankly into space. I turned it away. I turned my back to her and closed my eyes, tried to pretend I was somewhere else, this all wasn't real. But the smell of the room made me sick to my stomach and I couldn't forget where I was.

We tried to sleep. The TV was on and we couldn't turn it off. The glow from the set cast a terrifying light on the room, on the bags. Andi's ghost had fallen asleep because I was there to make her feel safe, but I felt alone and petrified. Any moment I almost managed to fall asleep, a commercial on the TV—for a horror movie? Something scary with a piercing, terrifying scream—would come on and make me jump and squeak. This happened repeatedly until I realized that I could go into my head and block the commercial (like a webpage).

Something about an antique-style chocolate shop inside a lonely mall that had belonged to her and was now mine. I went there, glad to temporarily escape that room, but still felt an incredible weight on my spirit as if reminding me that I would eventually have to return and deal with her body.

I think I ended up burying it... perhaps with the person who dismembered her. When we did, she was completely gone. THAT fear, the fear of not even having her spirit around, is what finally scared me enough to wake up.

I fucking hate my dreams. I want this to stop.

The Gift

Type: dream imagery (non-lucid)

I haven't really remembered much in a long time. But last night's dream was just too vivid, too epic, too horrible.

A run-down building... secret tunnels, passageways boarded up. I am a member of a large collective of youth, possibly orphans. We are hiding from something terribly evil. The evil has been in stasis, and now suddenly it has broken free.

The building, on its surface levels, is like a hotel. It even has a vast auditorium with rich, red velvet curtains and beautiful seats. My father, my stepmother, on some retreat with a lot of people their age. And we, the nobodies, know that the Evil is coming for them. And it is behind us, all around us. We are dropping like flies as we rush to their rescue, but no one can save us.

We make our way through the secret passageways, bursting through boarded-up doors in a panic, splintering wood and hearing our own fall behind. The screams bounce and thud on every narrow wall. Every new room we enter marks another of our people dead. But there is no time to waste, and we have to keep moving.

To kill this Evil requires a skill that I don't think that I possess, myself. One has to make visible their secret, the yellow glowing stars that make every vertex of the being, and eliminate the stars one by one so that the Evil falls apart in a bundle of ripped threads. But in the panic, in the hurry, I have no way to learn this means of survival. So we fall, one by one, struggling to reach the surface and save those waiting in the wings, unsuspecting.

We arrive in the auditorium. My father is happy to see me. I leap into his arms, relieved. I feel small, like a little girl, though I am not. I am glad to see him alive. We share a brief moment of rest before I hear one of the resort-goers fall, screaming. There they are, a pack of the Evil, and my people are strangely missing from the room.

What else can I do? I beg them all to run. My father slips away safely, and I only manage to save a few before I must escape, too. Back down into the tunnels, the Evil loping behind us, hungry and relentless.

I feel helpless. Usually in dreams, in a desperate situation, I am some sort of heroine, not super, but strong enough to handle myself. But here I am fearful. The Evil is just so strong, and I've seen so many die horribly, that I can't tell myself that I'm capable of defeating it. I think placing my father into danger is what has crippled me for the whole of this dream. I've forgotten my strength because of fear.

In my hurry, I lose the others. It seems I have temporarily shaken the creatures off my tail, as well. I am in a white bedroom, furnished with a small girl's bed with pink comforters and teddy bear pictures on the walls. My room from childhood. The closet is open slightly. A black cat leaps from wall to wall, trying to get away from me.

I have an axe.

The black cat is barely an adult. It is not afraid of me, it just refuses to sit still. I grab it by the scruff of the neck and bring the axe up to its back, and am horrified to feel myself yank it across its hide. Over and over and over. It does not struggle.

Now I have medical gloves on. I fear the blood but there is none, really, other than the large, even gashes in the cat's back. I cradle it in my arms and am outside in my back yard. Tears run down my face.

A girl lopes around the back yard on all fours. She is a member of my crew, a dog that looks like a beautiful girl. She is stalking a bird and pays me no mind. I fall to my knees in the grass, still holding the black cat in my arms.

It does not fear me, it is not angry. I feel the life seeping out of it and I am crying. I lower my face to the cat's, and it rubs its nose against my cheeks. Its fur is soft and perfect. We rub faces for minutes that feel like an eternity. It cannot make a sound; it is too weak. I am petting its soft fur, feeling the breaths grow more and more shallow. I want to take it all back, but somehow it was for the good of the world that I did this. The cat understands, and somehow I still can't forgive myself. I can't forgive myself. I am losing a dear, old friend. He isn't angry with me. I miss him, I panic, I can't lose him. All this is too horrible, and I wake up.

A series of episodes

Type: dream imagery (non-lucid)

So much to say... and at the end of the dream I had last night, I thought I had awakened, and was struggling to remember everything that happened and write it down, only to find out afterwards that I had been asleep then, and lost most of it regardless.

This dream took the form of a series of episodes. It seems that these episodes were part of a variety show, though while each one played I was a part of them and there was no huge studio or audience or stage. Also, the majority of these scenes frightened me or put me in danger.

They'll be all out of chronological order; I can't remember what came first.

The country club -- a snobby young man complains to me that the room and closet he has been given in his lodgings is a slave quarters and not worthy of his high and mightiness. I spent a while trying to convince him that it wasn't a big deal, but he seemed quite offended at the idea. At some point... something terrible happened. I don't remember what, but I remember that we left and were running to the golf course. I was secretly glad he was forced to put his stuff up. I was irritated by his attitude.

The serial killer -- most disturbing. I believe I was watching this on a monitor in a dark classroom. A man brings another man, who looks young and nerdy and somewhat like a teacher, to a classroom (odd to be staring at a TV and seem like I was staring into another classroom) and puts a video camera on a tripod and turns it on. The teacher is crying. The man, a somewhat attractive fellow, is forcing him to talk. The teacher seems to know he's in danger but does not realize just how much. After many minutes of emotional torture the camera pans around and, to my horror, I see a square of carpet pinned to the wall behind the teacher and understand what is to happen. Within a split second of my realization, I see blood splatter, and the teacher, tears running down his face, crumples to the ground. Oddly I recall being confused at never seeing a gun pulled. My class, uncomfortable, turns off the tape.

The walk -- a boy walks with a scraggly dog down my street in the middle of the night. The dog speaks to him, the dog is the lost soul of his former protector. The boy is too young to really understand. They walk for hours. At long last the dog and boy are separated by a car. The dog's voice says "John... a... than. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you." But Johnathan is the dog. The dog disappears and looking across the street (I am not here, but I see) I see the trees part and a cow glows as if illuminated by the headlights of a car, but as the car passes the cow continues to glow dimly until it is no longer illuminated. Glowing cow. Hm. Next.

Obligatory ex cameo -- I don't know what was happening. Him, someone else, a bed, he was controlling me, the other person was controlling me, there may have been someone else. I was uncomfortable and wanted to leave.

A lot more. I can't remember. I'm sorry, I tried.

-M.

Phone Call

Type: dream imagery (non-lucid)

In last night's dream, I spoke at length with Azelyn on the phone. My cell would blink either "Azelyn" when she was on her cell, or "Farm" when she was at home. Don't ask me why. X3 I was with a huge family which was apparently mine, though in reality I have no such thing. We had come to a large restaurant with a sizeable buffet because we had been hungry for hours. For some reason I was dying for something sweet and I headed for the dessert rack while I was on the phone with her. I don't know. The whole dream consisted of my either speaking with her on the phone as I walked, or waiting desperately for her to call back. Once again, she seemed out of character for herself. Mostly cheerful.

I don't know what it means. If I remember anything else, I'll transcribe it.

-M.

The Convention

Type: dream imagery (non-lucid)

I was at some sort of convention (a trade convention?) with my best friend. My old friend Jackie was there briefly, but Andi and I had a hotel room which housekeeping never came to clean up (I remember that much). I was wandering the hallways alone, ran into Jackie, and we walked together.

We ended up in a classroom of sorts, with booths... somehow understood to be a private chat room to which we had been invited, in spite of the fact that this was real life, and we expected a whole group of people to meet here. We were going to find out we'd been tricked. A large man who I suspected to be a nice tourist—he looked very innocent and sweet. I spoke with him at length about something, but the conversation began to turn quite creepy. Jackie ignored us. The tourist man got way too close and started talking in a hushed whisper. He reached for me. I was wearing something like Rikku's outfit from FF X-2. He asked what we were doing. Jackie said she was "Wanting to know why you've got your eyes on my girlfriend's chest when she's wearing a skimpy blue bikini top. You need to back off." At this point I was afraid. We were panicking. No one else was showing up. Finally the door opened and a guy we did not know—who I recognize now as my friend Asher, though this person was completely different and not him, even if he was wearing his face—came into the room.

The scary older man was too close, now. When he started molesting me and I asked him to stop, my voice now quivering, he only became more blatant in his actions. ...and now suddenly Jackie was gone, my last line of defense against these men—and acting out of her character, for she probably would have already been on top of the man beating the hell out of him, And the guy who looked like my friend Asher but in dreamsense was my old friend Rich from FFXI (I am not sure why my dream merged these two good friends into such a bad individual in my dream)—I realized was called by three names (thus knowing that I had been fooled)—Tobias (which is the name of a new friend on FFXI, explaining that), Rich (explaining how I know who he was supposed to be), and ...one other name, possibly the name he was going by at this convention/event. He stood and I thought perhaps he was going to defend me from this disgusting madman. I was being abused in the worst way, now. And I saw Tobias/Rich/whoever push the guy away... and take his place!

They exchanged a look. I now knew they'd set this up, and no one could get into this room. No one knew I was here, and no one would save me.

...Tobias/Rich/Whoever had been reading a newspaper article... the headline glared up at me from the table of the booth in which he had been sitting. "Young Murderer/Rapist Free": ...a cocky grin spread across his face as I met eyes with him after seeing the headline, and I knew I was done for.

And the larger man had busied himself with something. Now suddenly the door was half open, though I was in no way able to just sprint and leave. I felt around in my pocket and found a ballpoint pen. Could I really do it?

Thankfully, this guy proved to be a serious wuss. Either that or I was relentless. The first time was incredibly hard but as I drew near I had to force myself knowing that he would kill me if I didn't. I jammed the pen into his stomach. He doubled over and I was disgusted at the feeling of it sliding into him.

He fell to the ground holding his stomach. I stood near him, prepared to do it several more times if I had to, to kill him. I had an understanding that if I did not do this now, he would kill me at some point, somewhere, later. The open door came into play. My old friend Laurie from high school walked past and I leapt forward, calling out to her. "RUN! Run! I'll meet you in the board room in a couple of hours, but run now and stay out of this room!" She at first seemed happy to see me, but upon seeing the pen in my hand and the stricken man on the floor, her face sparked with understanding and panic, and she ran.

I had an understanding that there would be no way for me to meet her at the chosen place and time, though I am not sure why.

He started to get up, now. I have no idea how I was able to hold onto the pen long enough to stab him several more times, it never seemed to be coated in blood; sometimes it would barely go in at all, other times I almost lost it. He had a knife in his hand at one point; I wrenched it away and stabbed him once with that. All the while the larger man is watching a projector or something, as if he was never a part of this scene at all. In spite of his previously disgusting assault on me, it is as if he is a different person and oblivious to the scene going on in the room.

Finally I sat down. He was laying in the booth. I was trying to breathe. I had stabbed him countless times now, finding the effort easy now that I was used to it. There seemed to be no blood. I was waiting slowly for him to die. At one point during my reprieve he peeked an eye open and I launched on him, stabbing him several more times. He lay quietly again. In spite of the previous closeness during my attacks I was now afraid to get close enough to check his breathing.

I went to the door, still clutching the pen, feeling ashamed and confused about what the larger man had done to me, what this younger man had tried to do, and what I had done to him. Looking back after a moment, I realized they both were gone!

Disaster.

I dashed into the packed halls of the convention, just catching a glimpse of my "victim" running certainly faster than a man who has been stabbed as many times as he had been. I was praying that Laurie wasn't somewhere in this hallway. I chased and I chased, but I lost him. Eventually I was hungry and I went to the grocery store with my father.

(Yes. I know. It only makes dream-sense.)

We were now in a giant grocery store, dimly lit, the incredibly tall, sturdy shelves made of thick oak wood. We were searching for a box of a certain kind of cracker (think Wheat Thins!). Went to an aisle. Had to adjust the shelf to get to the box (which was huge—and the detail image had blue sprinkles all over the crackers. o.o). When I got it down, it was empty. Behind where it had been was a leather pouch combined with a scabbard for a small, razor-sharp knife. The second I touched it I knew someone had been killed with it—by someone who worked at this grocery store. And I knew that they now knew from the cameras that I had discovered it. In an effort to stay alive after all that I had been through in the hotel, I put the cracker box back where I had found it, looked for the security camera, and shook my head calmly with my hands up to show that I wanted nothing to do do with this and wasn't going to tell.

I went back to the convention, apparently no longer hungry and having bought no crackers (as far as I know). My best friend Andi was in our hotel room. We had some sort of falling out that took up a large portion of the dream. We had both taken planes to get here, so wherever we were was far from our homes. Something had happened to her and I wouldn't listen, and she wouldn't listen to what had happened to me, so we were fighting. She ended up angrily packing her things and leaving to catch her plane. I recall being extremely sad at first, but finally becoming angry that she hadn't cared about my having had to STAB a murderer/rapist to death with a ballpoint pen... so I gave up and chose to be angry at her, though our falling-out bothered me and kept resurfacing reminders throughout the rest of the dream.

And now come the fragments. I think this last part was at the end of the dream. There was a giant cannon/hose aimed far away at a garden in a prison. I, along with two prison inmates (who were in the room with the cannon and not in prison? Perhaps good behavior), fired it. Gallons and gallons of water shot through the air and I was suddenly on the destination end, at a small patch of already-growing plants and a bunch of very pretty, black seeds that had been placed on the surface of the soil. I looked up and saw the mass of water flying through the air. It did not splash when it hit the ground, but rather fell and seeped directly into the soil at the very speed it had been flying. The plants began to spring up immediately and I, along with the prison inmates, cared for them. While caring for them I found a slick snail's shell and a polished stone, and these somehow were mementos of someone I had lost, so I began to cry. All through this flowerbed were seashells and polished stones. The inmates tried to comfort me.

I remember nothing else.

-M.

Surprise Holiday visit?

Type: dream imagery (non-lucid)

My dream last night -- Azelyn was in it. There was so much more to it but the entire time I was just trying to get back to her. She had a huge family. It was Christmastime. I had to leave... to get something, maybe. It was snowing, the lights were up. I ended up elsewhere for a while. I may have been doing a school project. I know I had to use my GPS to pinpoint locations on a map, then go to the exact places on the street and lay down markers until an entire circle had been selected. I'm not sure what the space I marked was for, but I know it was very important. Possibly tracking the criminal from yesterday's dream. It's worth nothing that this was done downtown in a city, and the city seemed conveniently abandoned while my classmates and I laid out our pins to mark these spots.

We got back to Azelyn's home; someone was with me, but I wasn't paying much attention to them because I wanted to see her. At long last -- it felt like it had been hours -- she emerged. She was smiling. (I think I almost went lucid at this point just because seeing her genuinely smiling was a new concept.) She held onto my arm and we walked.

I don't know what happened. There was so much, but I can remember nothing. I just know that I was happy.

-M.

The Chase

I've had at least six dreams since my last recording, but was unable to remember enough of them worth writing down.

Type: dream imagery (non-lucid)

There is a girl, possibly some sort of supercriminal -- she always seems to get away. Her endless supply of lackeys makes things difficult for Tsukiyono Omi, who is at least in his mid-twenties, an investigator (and a minister, if I recall correctly). He sits down with a map. We are trying to plot her next move. She is likely to be somewhere in the streets of New York, he says, where they play a game called "towing the car."

This game, made illegal fifty years ago but still played by the elderly who are confined to their porches, involves the use of large, heavy coins for chips, which most of these elderly people seem to have in huge supply. They shout from their porches to the young lady leading the game. Her eyes dart down the street two blocks away, where a policeman has pulled over a man for an expired registration. She has five minutes, maybe eight. She keeps leading the game. It is important to these elderly; it is all that they have left of their old life.

We don't find the criminal on the streets. Yet somehow I end up imprisoned by her lackeys, in a dark interrogation room similar to the one Omikun and I were looking into clues in. There is an old car in the interrogation room with us. The girl we were looking for is cackling. Something about a race of ghosts, demons, shadows. They take a feline form. They leap to the walls and stick there in shadow form, never moving. They are the souls of the lost.

I must know one of them; a shadow leaps to the wall and sticks and I press my face to its cold surface, stroking the darkness, begging it/him/her to come back to me.

Something about... another game... something about a song. "Bye Bye Love" by the Everly Brothers. Just before I woke up, I checked my y!gallery and had no messages.

-M.