A Lesser Nightmare

I don't quite remember what led up to it, but I remember being out in front of my grandparent's house, either along the street or in a parked car, perhaps behind a car. A police car went past with its lights flashing, though no siren. It seemed to be in pursuit of another car, but neither were going particularly fast. There were several hispanic men in a car behind us, a red volkswagen bug, and they pulled out and started following the police car. They appeared to be armed. I noticed the street seemed different. It was wider, and looked more inner-city-ish. There were cars parked all along both sides of the street, and there were a lot more buildings, apartments, and hotels. The policeman had stopped his car and gotten out, pistol drawn. He was a black man of medium build with a mustache, and in full uniform. There were more young hispanic men coming up the street towards him, seemed to be a large gang, or a perhaps the start of a riot. They mostly carried sticks, clubs, and such, but a few of them had guns.

My dad had me take my mother, sister, and brother-in-law into our hotel (apparently we were at the shore on vacation now rather than at my grandparents' place), while he and my brother, both armed as well, were going to give back-up for the policeman, along with a few other upright men of varying race. I was frantically running through the hotel, looking desperately for our room, which overlooked this particular street. I entered one room that I thought was it, but an older woman was in it whom i did not recognize. "Sorry, wrong room," I said, and quickly ran out to continue my search. I entered another room at the end of the hallway, but found an unfamiliar older couple in it. "Your room's over there," the man said, pointing to an adjacent door. My sister unlocked the door and we went inside, and there found my mother in a bathing suit, apparently getting ready for the beach. It was understood / implied in my mind at this point that she was not present earlier. I ran to the window and grabbed a rifle, in hopes of offering sniper support, but when I got there it was already over. People were cheering, the gang had been defeated, though how, I do not know.

Time passed, and things began to settle down. I was about to go to bed, but I stopped to look out the window in my bedroom. It had started to storm, and and I could see the ocean. Suddenly an enormous wave rose high above the horizon. That's a big wave, I thought. Then it came crashing down, and the water came rushing toward the hotel, and filled up all the way to my window, which was on one of the upper floors. It continued to flow until the bottom two-thirds of the window was covered in water. I feared that the glass might break and that the water would come pouring in, trapping us in a completely flooded hotel room. I ran to my sister's room, and she was sitting on the edge of her bed, consoling herself by hugging her little dog tightly. All of the windows I saw were now completely covered with water. "We have to go up!" I shouted, and we started to gather the rest of the family. But that must have been enough of it, for the threat of the flood completely disappeared from my mind.

Everyone else had left, or was waiting out in the hallway. I was walking to the bathroom, and suddenly realized I could place my tongue under and inside of one of my teeth, into an impossibly large cavity. In the bathroom, I took a hold of the tooth, and with a light tug, I pulled it out, and dropped it in the trash can. I looked in the mirror at the gaping, bloody hole along the right side of my mouth where the tooth had been. Then I became aware that there were more teeth that had to come out, and tin gripping another tooth and pulling, something resembling a dental retainer came out along with both of my canines. "Oh no, those were my favorite!" I lamented. I looked again, and saw what appeared to be a metal wire around them, as though I'd had some preparative dental work done for a night brace, or some other bizarre apparatus. I gazed into the mirror again, and although these had been from the upper row of teeth, my whole bottom row were gone, and my lips hung kind of loose at first, then receded into the deformity of a toothless lower jaw.

I awoke after that, and earnestly thanked the Lord I still had all of my teeth..

A Visit Down Under

In a recent travel dream, I some how wound up in Australia, along with several members of my family. We were at a summer camp of sorts, hosted/run by a man who was both simultaneously Steve Irwin, and Gordon Ramsay, though predominantly the former. It was getting late, and we were either getting ready to leave, or return to our cabins, i'm not sure which, and we had to cross an enormous rope bridge. It was impossibly wide, and near entirely composed of ordinary brown rope, and spanned / arched over a pond. Due to circumstances I no longer remember, I wound up in the water, though at least in part it was intentional. The water was a very pretty shade of blue. There were water lilies closer to the banks, and towards a cave further back along one of the walls. I started toward the cave, but a large, black, and partly transparent tadpole started coming towards me. It had no eyes, or any other features except a wide gaping mouth and a long, finned tail. I would estimate it between eight inches to a foot in length, and the head roughly two inches in diameter. I shooed my hand at it in the water, and it swam away. The Steve Irwin man had gathered everyone up at the edge of the bridge and was preparing to do something with a bunch of barrels that were right by the edge. But then everything fades at this point.

Back to School (Again..)

I was in a classroom, my classroom, resembling a cross between my "home room" of high school, and my jr high / middle school science class. It leaned more toward the latter. The teacher, an older, slender man with graying black hair, had given an assignment, that I do not believe I had completed, if I remember correctly. Other students turned in papers. It was at the end of the class period, the bell rang (it was more of an electronic beeper over the loud speaker, which was standard during my high school year), but before I left, I met with three or four other teachers by the door, who were reading / reviewing the story I am currently in the process of writing. They were not thrilled with it, but did offer some words of encouragement. Particularly though, two or three of them began asking me questions in tandem, and I remember answering that I loved writing, and started back in the third grade. I'm not completely clear if I was deliberately lying, or just dreamfully forgetting that it was the sixth grade that I actually began to take a greater interest in imaginative compositions. They started offering tips and suggestions, but my attention began to drift out the door, I regret I did not mark their words, but instead I only remember my own, which was "practice?" I think they may have asked me what the three most important things are for becoming a good writer. Alas.

Then I was out in the hall, walking presumably to my next class. The left stem of my glasses had come loose in class apparently, and as i was walking, i become aware that the screw holding together the right had come loose as well. My brother was a little ways behind me, and I called to him to ask if he saw my glasses' stem and the screw to it. He must not have heard me clearly, for he cried, "what?" And it was then I felt the screw still in position, though completely apart, yet some how resting on a surface, though in fact they were still on my face. I pinched it together with my right hand and said, "nevermind." I walked on, my brother must have gone to another class, for I found myself alone and wandering around only semi-familiar territory of the school. I became less and less aware of where I was actually headed, and soon I was all but lost. But I kept on going, figuring it would eventually become familiar again. All the while I was thinking to myself, why am I still going to school? I'm 25 years old, I should have graduated by now. Funny thing is, in reality I'm actually around 33-34. But I digress.

I marched on, and as i was ascending a flight of stairs, I suddenly realized I was outside, it was summer time, and I was at the swimming pool to which we used to belong. A large number of my family members were there sitting by their towels and chairs on the grass around the baby pool.

I vaguely remember there was more to it than just this, but unfortunately this is the greatest of my recollections at present.

Curious though.

Fireworks, Croquet, and a Fox in my Bed

I don't quite remember how it began, perhaps it reflected some of the annoyance at waking up at 3:30 this morning to a double tap of something, on something across my room.

I was in a field, or perhaps outside of a stadium or arena, along with several of my family members, and a bunch of random children. It was decided that we would set off some fireworks. There was some concern as to whether we had the appropriate forms filled out, but I selected a plastic bag containing mine, and got in a pickup truck, where I awaited my brother and either my dad or my maternal grandfather, whichever of the two decided to take us to our expected destination, known familiarly as simply "The Land".

The trip never happened though, for I found myself somehow in charge of activities for all of the children, and I set about preparing for a number of different games, one of which particularly interested me, though I can't remember what it entailed. Then I gave one boy, who was wearing a red and white horizontally striped shirt, and blue and white horizontally striped pants, a croquet set, since it was his birthday apparently, and he also happened to resemble one of the children depicted on the box. But then he wanted me to play croquet with him, and since it was implied that he looked up to me (even though now in conscious reflection I have no idea who he was), so I conceded and left the others continue on their way to play the game I'd wanted to play, to set up croquet to play with this little boy.

I'm not sure at this point if anything more occurred, if there was a span of emptiness, or if it transitioned immediately, but I felt myself awaken, and began to notice something crawling around on my blankets. Each second brought an increasing sensation of dread; I realized it wasn't the dog, it felt too small to be him, plus I knew my door was shut. Was it the cat? But we didn't have a cat. In a burst of fear, I shoved the thing from under the covers, and then I felt it start to move back to where it was. My heart was pounding, and in all this I failed to fully realize I wasn't in my present bedroom, but rather one from the house we lived in during my high school years. I must have briefly dozed off, and suddenly became aware of something warm, soft, and furry lying against my right arm. Very, very slowly, I reached out my left hand and touched it. It was an animal of some kind, curled up in a ball, apparently asleep. Though it was too dark to see, I suddenly became aware that it was in fact a fox, and that it had some how come into my room, and decided to warm up next to me for the night. I remember having read long ago how foxes sometimes snuggle up against hibernating bears if it gets really cold. At this thought, I found myself start to relax, and to drift off to sleep, still in a dream, albeit rather lucid. Some people think that when you fall asleep in a dream, you wake up in reality; but my experience has been that it only depends and expands the subconscious realm, and often brings a piece of the conscious mind along with it. It was quite the endearing moment, my fox and I, but sadly it was to be short-lived.

A fragment of nightmare drifted in, as my subconscious began to ponder some unpleasant "what-if's". What if it's really a rat? It's not a rat. What if it's some unearthly parasite feeding off of me while I sleep? Wait, what? I reached over and lifted the creature up in the palm of my hand, and saw what resembled a tiny, brown tiger-striped kitten, with what appeared to be a line of yellow-brown vomit down its chest and around its mouth. It just sort of looked at me and mewled. Then my subconscious spoke, "blow some carbon dioxide on it." I blew softly on its face, and two large, spider-like fangs appeared, and began to move in ready of piercing my flesh. In disgust, I quickly threw it down along the gap between the wall and my bed, and woke up shortly afterward.

dinner and work

my family and i were at a restaurant of some sort, i think it may have been understood to be Viva. I've never been there for true, but i understand it to be a touch on the fancier side as restaurants go. not as high class as fine dining, but a step up from Red Lobster, and the like.

anyway, we were seated, had ordered, and were waiting the arrival of our entrees. one of the wait staff walked by, muttered something in French involving "garçon" and "avec," but i really don't remember his exact words, and considering my own limited knowledge of the French language, I somewhat doubt it was anything actually intelligible. my grandfather asked, "Was that French? Ask what he said." I thought about suggesting he ask my sister, as she was the one who'd studied French, whereas my brother had studied Spanish. But then something happened, and the french waiter became offended at something my brother had said (though as far as the dream went, he hadn't said anything at all), and absconded with a bacon dish, which rather disappointed me, as i was looking forward to it. Later on, the same waiter placed a vegetable dish I'd also been interested in, but left with that as well. I decided it wasn't my brother's fault anymore, this was just a very poor waiter.

Transitions later, another time and place, I found myself walking through a large corporate office, presumably the new location of my department (as we are scheduled to relocate somewhere in the relatively near future). after waiting in line behind a lot of people, and stopping in various "classrooms" (go figure), I eventually teamed up with two other "co-workers," a dark haired man, and a brown haired woman, neither of whom I recognized, but understood we were in the same department and were looking for the same place. we got away from the lines and wandered around the building more, which had become something more like a shopping mall. we stopped at a large overlook where multiple stair cases met, where below and in the middle stood an attraction like structure that resembled something of a "santa's workshop". But it wasn't Santa, rather it was "Bob's Workshop" or something along those lines. We all knew Bob, or at least of Bob, how he had done great things for the company, but had fallen under both ill health and disapproval of his superiors some how. we pitied Bob. Truth be told, I have no idea who Bob was, or was supposed to be. then we went looking for our own department again, and we came to a very small crawl-space, ridiculously small, probably something like six or seven inches square. We had to go through in order to find our place, and the man had already gone through and was beckoning us on. The woman was next, and I felt uncomfortable with the idea of her going through head-first, considering she was wearing a skirt and i would be behind her. But then she was on her back, and was suddenly pulled through rather abruptly. i started in, and a thin spectacled young man appeared to take my hand and pull me through. then he stopped and looked at me, and as a growing realizing of familiarity, said, "David?" I had never seen this man before, yet I also knew his name. "Marlin?" I said, "hey, how's it going, buddy?" He pulled me through and I arrived in a small, secret room, where my two other co-workers were, along with a handful of others, preoccupied with various tasks, scientific study and research, and a couple others over by a television playing something on a x-box.

it fades at that.

Werewolves Again

Normally I try to mark these occurrences down while at work, but for the past several months I just haven't had the time to do so, so now much later I'm going to try to recall what I can from last night:

I was in the house we stayed at for the majority of my high school and infant college years, up in my third-floor bedroom. I had realized the door was opened to the attached bedroom. The door was always kept shut, mostly because the room was a bit cluttered with a mix of our junk and things once belonging to my departed paternal great grandmother. I didn't like being in there, the room was always cold in the winter and hot in the summer due to poor insulation and cracks in the window frames. In my mind i sort of thought it was haunted. I was surprised and a little annoyed at my mother, who was now in my bedroom as i entered the other room, but at the same time i was impressed at how well she'd tidied it, made it livable, with bed, nightstands and lamps, and even little pink and white doilies underneath. curtains, and a dresser, too.

then either a lapse of nothing, or a shift, but then I was inside of a warehouse kind of building, or perhaps a factory with conveyor-belts, toting along little metal boxes that resembled small car engines that were labeled "explosive". my sister was following me, and i was trying to lead her around them, down a bit of a tunnel, and opposite to their flow. slowly it was creeping through my mind that i was not human, but in fact i was a werewolf. we were intending to use one of the explosive motors against either an individual or the factory itself, perhaps to shut it down. i'm not entirely sure which. but then it shifts and i am mostly human, and a woman is next to me, presumably a werewolf as well, and also presumably my wife. i didn't really see her face, but i remember she had long black hair. we were sitting on a pair of make-shift thrones, and at my feet was a younger man, maybe 20-ish, with black spiked hair and i think he might have been wearing leather. he was lying on his back at my feet, and i thought it very strange, but my "wife" informed me that he was showing submission to me. apparently i was becoming the leader of a pack. i noticed i had something like a clawed scepter. then another shift, and we were in a different room with a dirty wooden table, and lots of metal and perhaps some iron bars about. i was for some reason suspicious of my "wife," and had somehow assumed the form of someone else. she was talking to a small group of others as i slowly approached, when suddenly she stopped and commanded me (and suddenly it was no longer assumed it was me anymore), and another woman to "take the claw." the other woman sort of resembled "storm" from x-men, in complexion at least, though her hair was brown and cut short. As she lifted the "claw," it began to glow, and my "wife" said something like, it seems we have a couple more werewolves here, to which the other lady replied something along the lines of, "yes, it is true, at night i become a demon and .." something i no longer remember. to demonstrate, she clenched her fists and transformed into something that wasn't a werewolf, though it was presumed it was just a different kind of werewolf. She arose upon a ball of earth, and a very large yellow and brown scarab beetle, about the size of a small dog, came up with the ball, and the word "dung beetle" floated through my mind. then the beetle kind of fell off, and it was assumed to be her sidekick or something while she was like that. she was prepared to do battle against a powerful enemy, but while en route i awoke, so i never really knew who or what the enemy was.

so chalk up another odd one, i guess.

Orangutan

I have no idea how or why this came about, but last night I dreamt I was an orangutan. I was in a field, not dissimilar from my grandparent's front yard, and I knew I had to get to a refuge in Borneo. I was pulling myself along a three-wired, non-electrified fence, grasping the middle wire, when suddenly I was spotted and some scientist / keeper woman with red hair spotted me. Two or three men took hold of me, and she approached with a syringe of tranquilizer to put me under. However, I decided the serum would have no affect on me, that I was no ordinary orangutan and had an immunity to it. She stuck me in the behind, and it barely hurt. I went limp and someone said, "he's asleep," and they proceeded to carry me inside, where they gave me an examination, and then put me in a cage. Later I got out, and I was making my way through a house, trying to find the way out. The lady appeared and asked me something (i forget what, exactly), to which I replied, "no." She did not react surprised, but with imagery of planet-of-the-apes running through my mind, she said something to the effect that I shouldn't speak, lest someone come to take me away, or something like that. After that, I went into a mostly empty room with a splintery wooden floor, and two matching wooden beams supporting the ceiling. I was puffed up, strutting through and intimidating the smaller primates that were there. Then there were two babies, tiny, tiny things I could hold in the palm of my hand, and I did in fact. I kept having an urge to kill them for some reason, but I managed to resist it. Then one of the babies disappeared. I closed the main door to keep it from getting out and possibly getting hurt, and started to look for it. I saw it hiding in what I can only describe as a large metal drawer-slat. The lady was there, also looking for it, and i pointed repeatedly, grunting, "uh uh uh." It seemed a little more familiar, the baby monkey disappeared again, and apparently went around the corner of what had once been my brother's bedroom during my high school years, and up the stairs into what was my own bedroom. I followed, and found a curious device, almost something like an iphone. The tiny monkey was inside of it, and with an electronic buzzing sound and a flash of light, it disappeared. I knew I had to go after it, as it had been set to.. drat, I no longer remember, but it was an area in from the game "Everquest" called "The Grey," a lifeless, and airless zone where things died pretty quickly without special means of breathing. The teleporter pad was apparently on some sort of a cycle, not unlike some from a couple star-trek episodes, original and next gen., and for some reason it bore football helmet icons. The lady started coming up the stairs, so i ended up just pressing it, and i wound up teleported to a football stadium, on the field, in the middle of a game. But I was an ape, and I quickly bowled over the other other team, scoring three touchdowns. Then I must have found a large glass punch bowl, which I wore as a helmet. Some how sensing the finale, the sequence changed so I would also have a defensive play, and I think I sacked the quarterback before waking up and thinking what a weird dream that was..

High School Agent

I had entered my old High School building, or at least what was understood to be such. I walked down a brown/gold tiled hallway among the students passing to their classes, but I was not one of them. I felt a disconnection toward the populace, and an odd sense of purpose. I was no mere child-teen-ager, but an agent of a higher power, and my relatively shorter stature allowed me to blend in somewhat. I wore a gray hood and a backpack, in addition to my unremarkable clothing, and I watched the passers-by in the peripheral, unsure of what I was searching for exactly. Then something led me to a particular classroom. Upon entering, I saw many youths, primarily of African descent, and was confronted by a female who brandished a large hand gun, pointing it at my head. Aware of my abilities, I quickly outstretched my hand and clasped the barrel with my palm. She pulled the trigger, but the bullets fell dead from my hand to the floor. I suppose there was a sudden kinetic discharge, and she suddenly lay sprawled upon the ground. I narrowed my eyes and gestured with my hands to telekinetically fling her across the room, but for some reason it didn't work, so I grabbed her by the throat, lifted her into the air and brought her swiftly down upon her head. Then a hole appeared in the wall, and the true enemy appeared, a white man, appearing to be in his 20's, with jet black hair, a gaunt face, and jagged teeth which he grinned at me wickedly. There was a battle between us, and I remember savagely punching a flat-panel computer monitor twice for some reason. Unfortunately the details become rather fuzzy at this point.

My dreams are not typically this violent..

A "Lion" at Grandma's

I was at my grandparent's house standing in the living room waiting to go somewhere. Someone, either my mother or my grandmother, said there had been reports of a lion loose in the area, and we all needed to be extra careful going out anywhere. I then remembered seeing one walking up the street towards the now-defunct car tunnel under the railroad tracks. Then I remembered trying to look up more information online, but "lion in pa" only turned up results for MOUNTAIN lions. It occurred to me to do a search for AFRICAN lion in pa, but I didn't have access to a computer at the time.

Next, I was in their bathroom, getting ready to either go to work or school. My stomach felt a little ill and I had a notion to ask someone to call me off from school. Then I realized I was old enough to call myself off, and then it dawned on me I was going to work, and that I'd been out of school for quite some time. I started fixing my hair, wetting my fingers and coming them through it, trying to get it to look nice. My brother was standing next to me talking about something, but I don't remember exactly what. As I looked at myself in the mirror I found my hair was an ashen black, and was down to my shoulders in length. Furthermore, while I assumed the face was mine, in truth it didn't really look much like me at all. I remember the hair itself settled very nicely, and I bore the resemblance to a rugged action-hero type.

I had become irritated at someone or something, so I went out to the back yard to be by myself. As I was walking down the pavement towards the back gate, I heard a light splashing sound coming from the neighbor's yard to my left. Looking over, I saw what at first I thought was the lion that had been reported, only it was much smaller, younger looking, and was all white except for a bit of black from it's left shoulder all the way down to it's left forepaw, and black spots down its back. I studied it curiously, and wasn't quite sure if it was a tiger or leopard of some sort, or if it were instead a siberian husky, and subconsciously I must have decided it was something in-between. It looked at me with light-blue eyes and I started talking to it plainly, as you would to another person. I think I may have been more talking to myself, or perhaps for my own sake, as I felt a touch of nervousness.

The neighbor came out and starting talking about his "pet." It began to approach me in a friendly manor, and I felt myself smiling at the prospect of making friends with it. Then the sentiment shifted to another creature, an ugly, alien thing with a narrow, pointed head, a large round body and skinny little arms. "You're a neat little Chimera," I said, to which the neighbor replied, "Yes, it's mostly wind," implying it's elemental attribute / composition. Suddenly my alarm went off, and I awoke with the smile still on my lips, though it faded rather quickly.

A Premonition?

Early this morning I remember but one rather short, though very specific dream I had.

I was walking the dog around the bend of the road we usually take. As we're walking he stops and sits down, then lies down. I find this strange, so I approach to encourage him to continue, and realize his back legs have tensed up, and he is in the middle of a seizure. Fearing traffic, as we were in the middle of the street, I lifted him up and started to carry him. But then I awoke, so I'm not sure where I took him. If i were conscious, I'd probably just take him off to the side of the road until the seizure passed.

I am thankful to say he has not to date had a seizure during a walk. I am equally thankful that his seizures seem to have lessened a bit, as more recently they had seemed to have increased. Perhaps my father was right in buying a different kind of food for him. Although it may yet be too early to say.

Apparent Water Theme

I was visiting a pal of mine whom I'll simply call "Scooter." I was at his house, though it wasn't his real house but an imagined facsimile. His sister was there, and seemed mopey and rude, so I avoided her. He and his wife were playing a console game in front of a television. Their kids were only partially present, and were understood to be in another room of the house. I remember there were a couple other details, but unfortunately I've since lost them all but very faint hints of what they once were.

Then Scoot was driving me somewhere, and as we rode along, a white tow truck with a rusty crane comes barreling through an intersection, apparently loses control, and rolls side-ways for a while before going off a cliff or something and into a body of water. I thought to myself, aw, great, and we got out and ran after it, hoping to get the driver out before he drowned. We must have gotten separated though, and I ended up by myself where I thought the tow truck had stopped. There was an older man, with thick glasses and a graying black beard standing in what looked to be a large, concrete water basin, rectangular in shape. There was a large, almost water-wheel looking contraption, with a wooden bucket attached on one end, and perhaps a stone weight at the other. The man was somehow pumping a wheel mechanism by the stone weight, at first seemingly in order to get the water out from where the tow truck was. But then there was no tow truck, and the man looked at me puzzled, seeming to wonder why I was there.

Then for some reason I went into a house, or maybe an apartment, and Scooter was in another room. We were looking for something, I'm not sure what, though it wasn't the truck anymore. I don't remember the details very clearly, but something happened, Scooter either left or just plain disappeared. I went back to the door and found it'd been locked. The lights went dim, and a formless, whitish apparition appeared and started towards me. Something told me it was an electric or lightning demon, and I knew I had to get away from it. Then I was outside, running away. I rounded the corner of a brick building, and saw and grabbed a weird, leather-yet-clay pot, or water vessel or something, and lay in wait for the thing to come, presumably to hurl this thing at it and hence defeat or destroy it. While I waited, from somewhere out of view and around the other side of the corner, smaller versions of the water pot fell into view in an arc, as though thrown, one after another. Where they hit the ground, they turned into weird looking long-legged, brown-orange, clawless crabs that once fully formed, simply wandered away.

A Chop to the Gut

This isn't so much a dream as an odd occurrence. Last night I was all but asleep, when suddenly I felt my own hand slap against my stomach, and with a decent amount of force, I'll add. It was not a mere shifting of position or what have you, but a genuine strike -- swift contact with immediate withdrawal. I had taken a position on my back this night, with my hands folded upon my chest. Previously I'd been on my side or stomach, especially since I've had a cold and didn't want the gunk running down my throat so readily.

It was something like a spasm, yet not completely. I knew I'd been hit, though just barely realized it due to the fact I was practically unconscious. I knew it was my own hand, I felt the impact and the immediate pull-away. But it was an involuntary act, I had no control over it when it happened, and for all I was aware it was still at rest on my chest. A most curious sensation.

Maybe my subconscious just wants to beat me up.

(no title)

There was no introduction or lead in. I was with my brother within a Team Fortress 2 setting, except to a certain extent it was real. But not entirely, still perceived in the back of my mind as but a game. My brother and I, and possibly a couple others had literally cornered an pair of enemy demo men, and while he held them at bay, I repeatedly and rapidly fired off grenades, bouncing them off of the ceiling, yet somehow from around another corner so I did not even have them in my own view (mind's eye made visible the ceiling ricochet, I suppose), until a count of five grenades from me, during which one foe fell, and at the end of the count, the other did likewise.

Next we were running through a large, winding stairwell. I was a pyro class now somehow, and had ignited a dark haired "Russian" woman with slightly large eyes and wearing a long red dress who somehow bore the mantle of medic and spy simultaneously, though not being both. We rounded a flight of stairs and another such woman stood at the top, and I either struck, or perhaps simply pushed her over the railing. (Such violence..) These particular stairs were vaguely familiar to me.

Past where the woman stood was a brown wooden door, above which a sign read "Mom Mom's House." I entered in along with a very large group of other people, though no longer in Team Fortress guise, and proceeded to mingle and look around at a party-spectacle in apparently my Godmother's former apartment, within my second-cousins' home. I remember there being two sets of bunk-beds, each comprised of large, polished, square wooden boards.
Something else had started, though I had faded into an intermittent state of sleep and consciousness. Suddenly my cell phone rang and I immediately leapt out of bed to check it, lest there be some emergency that required my immediate attention. I then found with great annoyance that the number displayed did not match any with which I was familiar, so I hit one of my volume buttons to make it stop ringing and just ignored it. They did not leave a message. Crawling back into bed I realized it only to be around 12:30 AM. I could have strangled the idiot who dialed the wrong number and woke me up for no good reason.

One Not so Long

This was either Late Friday, or perhaps early Saturday:

I was but an observer. I saw my supervisor (team leader, I suppose) from work, and she was serving coffee in very small cups to presumably poor children laborers. Somehow it was inferred that this was how espresso began, by serving old, concentrated coffee to the Jews during Hitler-occupied Germany (in ridiculously small coffee cups). Then it faded.

I later saw Andrew Zimmerman, host of Bizarre Foods, watching a man "prepare" a very large eel for cooking. Truth be told, the eel was practically the length of an anaconda. The man was a plump, caucasian fellow of medium height, graying hair, balding, and bearing a mustache. He held the eel lengthwise along what appeared to be a horizontal, polished wooden pole that was a good three or four feet longer than the eel itself, and supported on two wooden "Y" shaped posts that stood at least five feet from the ground, and proceeded to pull it back and forth (a physical impossibility, when viewed from the conscious perspective) along the pole, not unlike how "The Gods Must be Crazy" portrayed the Kalahari Bushman curing a snake skin. The man rubbed it with butter and flour, and suggested Zimmerman put a little flour on his own face, which he delightfully did, saying it was the second time he'd done so that day.

Dreams

(Original Post Below):

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Dreams

Dreams come and go, most times with naught but a trace recollection of mood or imagery. But sometimes more remains behind, a lingering remnant of what the subconscious portrayed while the conscious mind slumbered. This marks my first recording of such in this forum, at least as much as I remember.

There was an ocean; which particular, I've no idea. I swam in the ocean with others, but then my vision became a distant perspective, looking down upon it. There was a ladder, a red ladder, dipping down into the water where I'd swum, leading up and out from that water, that darker blue water, into the slightly lighter blue water of the ocean beyond the boundaries thereof. The boundaries were as a still amoeba, and but a mere contrast of the lighter and darker shades of blue. I became aware, through no prompting, that the swimming area was some how "fresh" water, and it donned an almost plastic, board game appearance. The vision faded, and the sequence ended.

A new sequence began, and water is still present, though somewhat distant from me. I stood near a relative's beach house in Maryland, near the Chesapeake Bay. Not far from me, perhaps 10-15 feet away and besides the tall tree on the left border of the grass-lined parking space stood two girls, anywhere from 15-25 years in age. I did not recognize them, but they seemed in some way familiar to me, and I gained the impression that we shared an affection for one another. But before I could learn who they were, I found myself in an underground cavern of sorts just below the surface. Someone spoke to me about something I no longer remember, and there was an understanding that we were parting company out of necessity of a mission of some sort perhaps, and I was left on my own to breach the surface and escape. I reached my hand through a small opening in the earthen ceiling, and began to wonder that if someone were to see it, they might think the dead were rising from their graves. As I pulled myself up and out, I began to fear that I'd best run and hide quickly, lest any observer take me for a zombie and try to shoot me. Then this sequence faded, and little else remained.

In the third dream sequence, I found myself in an implied "fancy" restaurant, presumably while on vacation I think. The owner, or perhaps hostess was a woman of 40-50 years who wore a blue puffy gown and on her head was something like a blue turban with a single pink feather on the left side. There may have been a silver clasped blue jewel as well, but i do not remember clearly. We, that is my extended family and I -- around 10-12 people, were seated at a single long table, parallel to three large windows on the left, with smaller tables with other patrons seated at them. I've no idea what was to my right, as once I became seated it was to my back, and the dream did not reveal any of those particulars. For some reason I kept getting out of my seat, or maybe just suddenly appearing out of my seat, and at least twice I found myself seated at the wrong table and a little groggy.

At the last recollected instance of such, I rose and started to return to my proper place, and as I passed by my grandmother I noticed she had been served a rather enormous bit of charred meat, roughly the length of a large turkey, but no where near as high off of the dish, and from the position of the leg sections (four in total) I knew it was not turkey. [In reflection as of this writing, I want to point out that in no sense did I even remotely suspect it to be canid or any other animal of Earth for that matter. What came later is an interesting coincidence]. In peripheral I only partially noticed my grandfather had received nearly a full sized 9" by 14" casserole dish (if I remember the dimensions correctly, which I may very well not) of lasagna-like pasta, although it was not lasagna. As I sat down my mother informed me that she had ordered for me, apparently since I was out of my chair so often. It appeared to me that those at my table seemed to be receiving their food one person at a time and of poor quality, which reminded me of something from "Kitchen Nightmares".

Then a waiter arrived. He was an asian man of average height, wearing perhaps a tuxedo, and carried a pad of paper and a pencil. Oddly he spoke in French, or with a french accent, and asked me what meat I preferred for the main entree: fox or "strip steak," and he recommended the "strip steak". Moments later he spoke again in French, and my sister, who was seated across the table from me and a chair to the left, translated that he recommended the fox. I looked at her with an expression of shock and grief, and emphatically stated that I would never eat fox; and yet, a small part of me considered ordering it anyway, as it was "exotic," and had been recommended as the superior choice of meat (even though moments earlier the opposite was true). So I looked at a menu I apparently had, and realized it was not actually fox meat, but rather the dishes were apparently named after "famous explorers," Martain Fox, Desmond Wolves, and possibly one or two other I either do not remember, or were never clear to me.

After that, I found myself once more returning to my seat, and discovered a "salad" had been set for me, which consisted of an array of spinach leaves lining a plate. Next to it was a conical bottle of vinegar, and a cylindrical bottle of oil -- both covered in an "edible" lettuce-like (but not lettuce) greenish sheath. I picked up the vinegar, but then a server appeared and dressed my salad for me. But then it wasn't a salad anymore, as there were green grapes, peeled green grapes on my immediate left, and suddenly I noticed a machine on my right that resembles something like a soft-ice cream dispenser, from which my server spigotted out a pale-green substance into my bowl (formerly a plate). I got a better look at my server, who is a mildly plump hispanic gentleman, somewhat on the short side, and resembling a former pal of mine from Elementary School.

He offered a suggestion, indicated it to be somewhat unusual, but recommended I add banana to my "yogurt," which was now the implication of what he was serving. I began to say that I would like banana slices in my yogurt, but suddenly there was a deafening pounding of someone very loudly banging on drums. Presumably, a band had started playing, but the drums drowned out all other sound. He quickly steps away, and returned with a microphone that had a decaying black wind screen, and I started again to say that I would like banana slices in my yogurt, but my first word erupted from the speakers with such amplitude it knocked over several things and caused everyone to hold their ears in pain. The volume was adjusted without notification or cue, and I said once again, rather self-consciously and for all to hear, that I would like banana slices in my yogurt.

The owner or hostess appeared, apparently rather displeased with the server, and made him stand on her right as she stood on the opposite side of the table. She made him look in my direction, but not directly at me, and instructed him to keep looking. Suddenly the room glows red for two or three seconds, and as it returns to normal, the server is gone. The memory fades at this point, and I do not recall anything beyond it.