sanity is relative

I was sitting in a dream-randomized apartment that was supposed to be mine, on a couch (that I don't actually own) with my computer in front of me on an Ikea desk-table (that I do actually own). I was playing Torchlight while talking to my friend on the phone. I had her on speakerphone and the phone was sitting next to me on the couch, and she was busy doing something else that wasn't a video game (can't remember what).

We were talking about MMOs specifically, and I said, "You know what I'd really like to see? An MMO that doesn't come out with an expansion every ten seconds. Doesn't Call Of Cthulhu only have like, one still?" And then I thought about it a little harder and said, "Was there some reason why we couldn't play Call of Cthulhu?" My crappy memory was vaguely hinting that either it hadn't liked her computer or mine, or there was some distinct issue that had made us stop playing pretty much right off, like mechanics or general aesthetics (Neverwinter, I'm looking at you).

She said, "No, no reason I can think of. We should try that sometime." Ah, so we hadn't even played it yet! I was starting to get excited.

Then the dream shifted into something that I think was supposed to be the trailer to the Call of Cthulhu MMO (which does not exist, for anyone wondering and reading this... but man if it was done right, I'd want to play that sooo hard). A man and his maybe pre-teen daughter were going to New England on vacation, but for some reason the small house they showed up at was very definitely of Japanese architecture. It was daytime, and I only remember trees in the distance behind the house.

The idea was that if the characters put on special red-colored glasses with thick black frames that looked extremely dorky, they could see things related to the area being haunted. I remember a shot out of a high window that showed the edge of the porch roof above, and the heads of several people all hung off the same rope by the neck, in the corner of the roof.

Now the game had something much more like a single-player feel, ala Silent Hill meets Fatal Frame. And it was becoming reality, and I was the father character. I was thinking we should get used to wearing the red glasses, even if we might see shocking things, because clearly there was a mystery going on here and it would be a shame to miss any clues. I was inside, looking at a simple, low table with various objects on it, while my daughter was wandering outside nearby.

We both ended up looking onto this weird little side-porch thing at the same time, me from inside via a window right by the porch, and her from out on the grass (the side porch did not meet the front porch, it almost looked like an empty wood pallet set right next to the house but I think it was supposed to be legit construction). On that little porch a girl was lying, in what I would call cutesy anime winter-wear. I remember specifically that the fairly-short skirt was pink and had a band of white fluffy trim around the bottom hem. She was just sprawled lying there, no blood or anything, but I had the distinct impression she was dead.

I heard my daughter gasp, and I felt fear creep into my heart as I lifted the lower-left edge of my glasses just enough to realize it wasn't a vision of the past. I said, "She's real! Come inside, quickly!" and my daughter rushed inside. I had crouched down because I was too afraid of the scene outside, and said something about calling the police. Suddenly I heard movement outside, like someone scuffling around a bit on that porch thing.

I got up and looked out the window again, and the body was gone. I yelled something like, "Bring her back, we're going to find you!"

I heard a very quiet, gruff male voice hiss, "We'd love to see you."

I think I kept yelling stuff for a moment, but there wasn't anyone visible outside still. It now seemed like whatever had been there had gone away, and now my daughter and I were left with this cryptic and disturbing piece of information. I asked her if she had heard the voice. She said no.

Then I woke up.

I was outside at night, near a house where I lived with some other people. I had the impression that nobody else was outside. Maybe something major on television that I wasn't interested in for some reason. And this wasn't just in my area, but everywhere. I looked up at the stars, and saw an opening in the sky, somewhat wide and rectangular with rounded edges. It was set up with the longer length going from left to right as I was viewing it (as opposed to up-down or diagonal).

It was so high up in the sky, it about broke my brain looking at it. I realized it had to be on the very edge of the atmosphere, which meant it had to be huge. There were tiny lights spaced around the inside edge of it, the opening having enough of a thickness that it was part of a wall, maybe a wall that went all the way around the earth; the lights blinked in slow unison. Through the opening I could see blueish swirling mists, and then what looked like randomly-designed alien spacecraft flying by on the other side.

The door began to open wider just by slowly making itself bigger upwards and downwards. I found this really strange, because surely I wasn't supposed to be seeing this and who knows how long it had been hidden by whoever was behind this. Maybe they still had no idea their door/portal/whatever it was, was visible and still very much so. I could see a huge ship looming beyond as the door opened to a square. The ship looked something like the Enterprise from Star Trek but darker and I could only really see the disk portion.

Then suddenly the door began to close really quickly, and when it closed completely I couldn't see it anymore. Hmm, somebody figured out the thing was visible finally. I vaguely remember being really dizzy, then I went inside and started telling everybody about it. I think there was more interest from some people than others (I forget as this was one of many dreams in a row), and then I noticed that there was morning sunshine outside, and I vaguely remembered that it was growing light out when I came inside.

I said something like, "And it's light out, I've lost some time." This meant the aliens had noticed exactly who had seen their door, and probably done something to me, since I was standing outside in the dead of night. I could still remember what I'd seen, though, so... either they'd failed to make me forget, or were keeping tabs on me. I suddenly wondered if they could hear everything I said, if they'd maybe put some kind of monitoring device in me.

Then I woke up.

This started with other stuff but got interesting as I was standing in a parking lot outside of a tall building in the daytime. I saw a dog flying through the air like it was swimming happily through it, about ten feet off the ground. It was a golden retriever type of dog. Meanwhile, buh? I kept watching, knowing something incredible was going on, and as the dog got further away there appeared just above it a kind of black mist in a tight swirl. Jagged black lines or black lightning came down from the mist and totally disintegrated the dog, and the whole thing vanished. It gave me the impression that something had just deleted an anomaly, and I wasn't supposed to see any of it.

I remember seeing a gentleman in Victorian-era clothing off on a sidewalk a moment later, and I think there was something else odd about it but I can't remember what now. The black mist stuff appeared above him too and POOF bye mister whoever you were. There was something else too that made no sense and then black-mist-vanished, can't remember what it was, but at this point I looked up at the sky and noticed there were very dark clouds that were parting in a wide circle above the tall building near me. I could see the side of a building with a whole bunch of windows in kinda dated apartment style, and that was falling very slowly downwards.

I realized there must be some kind of instability between our dimension and one nearby, and that I probably had very little time to find somewhere safe from the impending crash of that building up above. I had no idea how big the thing even was, and had a feeling that running away wouldn't suffice. So I ran into the big building because I (somehow) knew it had a deep basement system. I ran inside and started yelling for anyone to hear that they had to get down under the ground as far as possible. Even if we ended up buried but alive we might have a chance to get out or get dug out, in the meantime I just yelled at random people to go downstairs as far as they could.

I found some people having a church service in one room as I was trying to find the stairs down, and they were having trouble believing me. Whatever, sucks to be them, I kept going until I found a way down. The dream setting started to shift to where I was now only in a house and there was a downstairs that was still unfortunately half-open to open ground (large windows filled one wall, it was like the house was built on the side of uneven ground so the front door upstairs was on one level of ground and the bottom opened out onto the lower ground).

I was now trying to get a bunch of kids to hide, and I remember ducking down almost behind one couch and then thinking as I sat there that this wasn't going to help. I ran back upstairs and found a closet that had a laundry machine in it and enough room for someone to be in there. Several someone's technically, another girl arrived and wanted to hide with me while a third thought she could find somewhere better. I tried to tell her otherwise but she ran off so we shut the door.

Then the crash hit, and logic went all to heck. It felt like the closet had somehow been separated from the house and catapulted straight upwards. The explosion outside was something now like a nuke going off, and as the other girl and I kept our feet against the door while sitting on the floor with our backs to the washing machine, the floor started getting really hot. There were random sheets of metal like extra-large cookie sheets and possibly a flat plywood section or something, I tried sticking one or two of those under us to keep from being fried as the floor took on a look that it was burning straight through (reminded me a bit of partly-cooled lava texture in video games).

I remember thinking that if we were flying through the air, at some point we'd come back down and I had no idea how we were supposed to survive the impact. The logic fell apart so much though that the dream began to change entirely, to the point that I think I was telling someone else about it in a new house in a new location that I thought was actually not a dream, knowing at that point that the other part was a dream. I think I believed it was a warning, though, and that something really bad was about to happen.

I remember the idea that something tipped me off, but I'm not sure what. I ran to the windows and looked out, and saw a whole bunch of ridiculously large metal cubes (like Borg ships but smoother) arriving in the sky very high up and hovering there. I said, "They're here," and I told everyone to hide. There were random children of various ages and one or two adults in this house that my dream-self knew, and one person from real life which was my little sister who the dream decided was about thirteen again.

So yes, I told everyone to hide and I told them not to move, no to try and run away. Just find a good place to hide inside the house and stay there. I grabbed my white down comforter (that I actually own in real life) and found a closet that was painted white inside with fairly large shelves, like you could stack three or four rolls of toilet paper on each one. There was actually packages of toilet paper in there and not much else, and there were really only about two of them though they were some of the bigger packages (12 rolls, 24 rolls). I scooted under the bottom shelf with the comforter, toilet paper, and a random box of a half-decent size. Right at that moment my sister showed up to stand outside the door.

She seemed unsure this was going to work but I told her again to go hide, it was our only chance. She disappeared and I finished making a fairly decent hiding spot if nobody pulled the stuff out of the way. I lay there perfectly still and closed my eyes, and for some reason by this point the dream had decided there hadn't been a door on the closet in the first place. The house got very quiet and I started feeling very sleepy. So sleepy that it was like I could fall asleep right there even knowing we were about to or quite possibly now currently being invaded by aliens. I remember thinking I hoped if I fell asleep I would remain still and would survive simply because I remained hidden even while sleeping.

Light started to grow brighter, but my eyes were still closed. There wasn't any sound. I kept my eyes shut, and the light got brighter and brighter. I had a bad feeling there was one of the aliens standing outside the closet door right now, quite possibly staring straight at my hideout. I'm not sure if it was my imagination or a sorta movie-like dream info bit that showed a smooth, slender humanoid figure of a very light cream color standing out in the hall with a very bright light thing in its hands that just sort of glowed from some kind of central point.

I hoped that it couldn't literally see through the stuff I had in the way, and I was very aware for a very long moment of trying not to move, of trying to breathe without moving as much as possible. Then the light went away finally, and fairly quickly, and I realized the thing hadn't found me after all. I waited a bit longer and then peeked out from my hiding spot, saw nothing, and crept out further. One of the children came up to me whimpering and I asked if some of the others had try to run away from the house itself and she said yes. It was the two other adults, they'd been taken by the aliens and only the kids who had hidden stayed free for now.

While everyone seemed to think that for the moment we were safe, I knew better. I told them I had a bad feeling this was just a preliminary check, something fast to get the majority of people who didn't see it coming or weren't smart enough to hide right off the bat. I told them the aliens probably had some kind of device that would detect us but was clunkier to haul around or whatever, and now we needed to get out of the house. I think I was trying to figure out where to go, I have vague memories of some kind of Army base being nearby (maybe not very close but worth trying to travel to on foot) or possibly another structure with some kind of underground that was abandoned or not used much, and would serve as a better place to hole up and figure out what the heck to do, meet and/or gather others who had stayed free thus far.

I don't know what my solution was in the end, though, because then I woke up.

I was standing on a sidewalk in a city somewhere, but the area I was in was really wide open. I looked up at the sky, and saw a huge flock of seagulls going by. I remember thinking that was bizarre, as we don't get seagulls here like ever. (So apparently, the city was local to me in Maryland.)

Then suddenly it was like every beak in that flock turned directly towards me, and all I could really see was a whole lot of pointy things lining up and I knew they were going to come after me. There was something next to me... a baby stroller or a shopping cart? Can't remember what exactly, but it had a blanket over part of it and I pulled the blanket off and hid under it.

This didn't work as well as it could have, as the birds arrived and started trying to jab at me through it. Owwww! I think someone else showed up and scared them off more by accident than actually trying, and I told them about the weirdness of the attack and that now I was paranoid all the birds were out to get me. They seemed to sort of half believe me.

The next part I remember was going to a warehouse by the water, a huge lake or river. I went inside and started preparing like 80's montage getting-dressed-in-super-hero-outfit style. Mind you, the end result was sort of steampunk anime goth and my weapon was a broom that had a broken part near the bristle end, yet still remained attached somehow almost like there was a rope inside it. This let the end of the broom swing around at the point where it was broken. And the finishing touch: a pair of dark sunglasses. Because nobody is truly cool without shades, man.

I went back outside and could see a ridiculous amount of birds flocking far over the water. I yelled some sort of challenge at them (probably something totally stellar, like, "Come get me, you assholes!"), and the flock started looking severely agitated and almost boiling with energy. Weirdly enough, the birds seemed to start almost melting together, merging into this weird almost digital-looking sphere-ish shape with white and purple 8-bit triangle patterns on it, that didn't really keep its shape very well but came flying over the water towards me.

Batter up! I swung my broom right into it as it arrived and... the broom kinda got stuck in it, like the thing was sticky. Trying to pull it out just made it suck in further... and then somehow the whole thing transformed into a short gay fashion-designer guy in a black suit and trendy short black haircut. He said he was sorry for the trouble and that things had been taken care of. So... I walked back towards the nearby house with him (that was apparently mine) and offered for him to come in and have drinks.

Then I woke up.

I'm already forgetting a lot of this, but it started somewhere in trying to find a movie theater I was supposed to be going to with my randomly dream created friends. I'd gotten separated from them and was trying to find them again in an area like an outdoor shopping mall. It was starting to get dark as I neared the movie theater itself, and then something huge and flaming crashed down from out of the sky. Logic didn''t handle this very well, I'm not exactly sure where the thing landed but I do know it killed a lot of people in the shopping area. Also it seemed this death-from-space was a preliminary attack for aliens invading, but the dream plot didn't really do anything with that detail and I never saw the aliens (as if they stayed in orbit waiting).

I survived, and saw that the people who were left seemed to be turning into zombies. Some of them actually looked like zombies while others were normal looking people acting all "Braaaains"-ish without actually going far enough into cheesy horror tropes to say that. They also didn't talk, whereas the few non-zombie survivors were pretty much screaming their heads off (and making nice targets for getting eaten with all that noise).

Some of the dream seemed to happen out of order, and I also woke up in the middle of it and went back to sleep, straight into the same dream though it seemed to have backed up some. I am fairly sure that before I woke up the first time, I and a couple of guys who were possible military types managed to secure an old mansion and created a home base in the basement. There was a radio broadcast that helped me find them, one that was dangerous to produce but they did it every day just in case there were more survivors. It would also seem that the meteorite and zombie infection thing was more widespread than just our area.

There was also a kid who was maybe fifteenish at the most who had holed up in his family's van down by the beach, and had no idea anyone had survived that was not a zombie. I had his point of view for a little bit. There was a character who was basically Hurley from ABC's Lost who drove around looking for survivors during the daytime, and missed the kid because he hid thinking everyone was dangerous.

Meanwhile, one of the military-esque guys and I were going to go do the daily radio broadcast and I think that was the point where I woke up. Back to sleep again, and the plot had returned to previous to actually gaining the house stronghold (which sucked, that was a nice place and had taken some work). So we had to do that again, and it was noticeable now that there was nobody around on the surface during the day. Apparently the zombies didn't like sun (heh my subconscious was ripping off I Am Legend and this logic-broken version is still better than that POS Will Smith movie xP ).

We were trying to actually locate the mansion, a lot of the city and surrounding town was wrecked and a mess and we were still careful of zombies whether there were any showing or not. We ended up underground for some reason, I think raiding a weapons stash the guy with me knew was there, and we found a zombie lady who didn't actually try and kill us. She could talk, and I think we might have asked her if there was any way she could help us, if she wanted to, maybe like by spying on the zombies or something. She wasn't really sure what she could do but she wandered off to try.

My point of view switched to Hurley who was back out at the beach a second time, and he saw the kid who tried to run away. But Hurley convinced him via the usual overly-honest humor that he wasn't a zombie and told him about the rest of us and the hideout we were going to make, and that it was going to be much safer there. So the kid hopped in whatever vehicle it was Hurley had and they drove off.

Then I woke up.

This dream was long and complex, involving an alien invasion of some sort at night and part of it I saw from the ground. I remember running around a building complex trying to find something, and seeing the goings-on from other's points of view, including a guy who was on a bus that crashed. He knew it wasn't safe to go outside the bus, but he did anyways and watched a strange alien form (that looked a bit like a dark red-brown werewolf without fur) go loping away along a street.

He saw another guy heading his way with a shotgun and a hunting dog, and got the distinct impression this older man was going to kill him, maybe thinking he was an alien or had been infected by something the aliens were spreading. That didn't happen though, and the hunter let the guy tag along as he went looking for something in half-looted stores. He didn't go into the stores, just kept running by them, and one of them that looked like a jewelry store he swore vehemently at because what he was looking for had been there before the attack: a detonator for a nuke. The other guy asked if stores actually kept stuff like that and the hunter said it had been on display. Meanwhile the tag-along was wondering exactly how crazy and dangerous this dude was.

Then the setting switched to the space station humankind had apparently set up in orbit around the planet. A modified version of myself was there, and that's the point of view I had for the rest of the dream (earlier had been split between the two chars and also some movie-like moments). Vin Diesel was a character there was well named Vin (how original, at least it was easy to remember). He was some kind of soldier who was also one of very few trained to do spacewalks. I had some sort of physical relationship with him but of course it wasn't supposed to come into play while we were on duty (...rats).

Something was wrong outside the space station, an air conduit had come loose (looked like a dryer hose with a sealing gasket on the end) and it affected some other major defense ability (I don't remember what... and if it had something to do with life-support, it doesn't seem like that was the only thing it affected). My commanding officer wanted one of the skinny tech guys to do it (he looked and acted like Jessie from The Fast & The Furious and I think had that name in the dream). Jessie was cleared for space walks but technically the hose/gasket issue wasn't his specialty. Vin was good at it.

I went with my orders, though, and once Jessie was out there he was having major problems and couldn't seem to do it. He was also getting flustered by the back-and-forth trade of energy beams between us and the bad guys. I asked Vin if he remembered a bunch of us back in training camp doing a mission that required this exact thing to be fixed and how long it took us to finish and how it'd made one of the girls cry, but he could do it perfectly every time. He did remember quite well, but meanwhile Jessie still wasn't getting anywhere. We were running out of time.

I walked over to Vin and told him to get out there and do it, regardless of the fact that I hadn't received that order and he knew it too. He got pissed and stormed off, angry that I hadn't let him go out in the first place. I followed him, begging him to stop and please not leave, and ended up chasing him around a short circular route through dark closets full of clothing and hallways and I couldn't catch up with him, he always stayed ahead of me.

I stopped, I was crying by now and crouched on the floor in one of the closets. I said I was sorry, that I should have ignored my orders and that I didn't want to lose him. I told him I loved him... and I don't think I'd done that before. I didn't want it to sound like a last-ditch effort to keep him from leaving completely... I meant every word. I didn't want to lose him. I hoped he'd stopped ahead of me to listen but I didn't know for sure, I was looking at the floor and wiping my eyes and wondering if it was really over and I'd lost him thanks to my bad decision. A few moments later he appeared behind me, having gone around the circuit again, and he stood there looking thoughtful and a touch wistful. He said, "Maybe I've been going about things the wrong way all this time. I always take off, make an impression..." I don't remember what else he said, but it was obvious he was going to stick around and we now had to find him his space suit.

The problem was that apparently if they weren't clean or had been worn by someone else, they got horribly dirty and smelly even in one use. If it had been Vin's from a previous run it wouldn't be quite so bad, but we couldn't seem to find any suits or even pieces of them. The area we were searching looked like an upper-class home, with several bathrooms and various other rooms. I finally found what the dream said was part of the suit, and I noticed that it looked cleaner than normal. What it was was a shirt, combat vest, and cargo pants in shades of khaki all set up nicely on a hangar held up on something on the wall. Vin grabbed it and said something like, "I'll see you on the flip side," and I knew he was heading for the showers which was apparently a necessary step in spacewalking.

Meanwhile I had to find the rest of the suit, y'know, like gloves, boots, and a helmet. This was failing miserably, as the space station still looked like an upper-class home and all I was finding in various closets were normal boots, shoes, gloves... eventually I heard Vin taping himself in preparation, post-shower, and wondered if he had any clothes on yet. Nevermind that it's really absurd to think that he was using masking tape on various parts of his body as another necessary pre-walk step. I kept looking for the suit pieces, getting frazzled at my total lack of finding them and knowing we were badly running out of time.

Then I woke up.

I was standing on a beach somewhere. There was a city off in the distance, in a valley created by surrounding mountains with a lot of snow on them. I don't think anybody I know was there with me, and I really am not sure what city that was supposed to be, or even what country I was supposed to be in (kinda thinking I was on vacation somewhere exotic, but not really sure). It was getting late in the day.

Either someone was listening to a radio or the dream imposed the voice of Dubya announcing war on another country. The country I was visiting. A couple fighter jets were flying overhead towards the city, and a moment later a nuclear bomb went off in the enclosed valley. The ensuing explosion pushed the snow off the top of the mountains ringing the city, so it just looked like a great big mushroom-cloud-in-progress poofing snow before it around the edges of the city's valley.

The explosion continued mercilessly towards those of us on the beach; almost everyone turned and ran straight into the ocean. I'm not sure about the ones who weren't smart enough to do that, I was too busy trying to swim under the water away from the cloud of death. The first heat wave went over and everybody under the water avoided injury. For some reason there were suddenly a bunch of medieval swords and daggers in the water, some partly destroyed, so I think the explosion had dropped stuff on us. I grabbed two sturdy short swords and used them to help pull me through the water faster by stabbing my way along the sand below me.

The water became too shallow, so now I was running through it and there were a few other people near me. We were ahead of what was left of the main crowd. I think there might have been one adult and two children, all male, nobody I knew. The older of the two kids had an ARMY-style walkie talkie, and he was talking to someone in the military strike force who was asking questions about who had survived and if anyone was injured. (I'm pretty sure either the kid found the thing moments before or it was something he had for a hobby, and the military guy was surprised to get a signal from where we were.) The kid asked me if I was hurt and I said no, the only thing I could really feel at the moment was that my back extremely warm thanks to the destruction behind us, but it wasn't worth mentioning as the kid was busy enough talking to the guy on the other end.

Around this point in the dream we were definitely in America somewhere, even though we didn't actually change locations (yay dream logic). I don't remember if the military guy gave the kid instructions, but we were pretty much making a bee-line away from the bombed city. The walkie talkie either stopped working or it was off or the guy on the other end had stopped talking. Our trajectory took us off the beach and into a housing area. We ran straight into the first house which was partially collapsed on the side we hit, and the structure was so weakened (and I was so strong? lol) that I could pry the first layer of sheet rock out of the back wall of the house, pull the planking in the way out as well, and kick down the back part of the wall. Apparently this was faster or safer than trying to go around buildings.

The next house we went through, I recognized my bedroom in somewhat of a messy shambles even as I started tearing into the back wall like the previous house. (This was a random bedroom, as if I had been living with parents or something.) I said to the kid, "You know what's ironic?" and the kid with the walkie talkie said, "What?" and I answered, "This is my house." I didn't stop for anything in my room, I was too busy busting through the back wall (I seriously pretty much didn't care, knowing we had to move fast and were leaving this place far behind as soon as possible). It didn't break as cleanly as the last one, and I warned the people behind me of some splintered timbers sticking up where they might cause injury if someone wasn't paying attention.

The people behind me and the kid were starting to fall behind just a little; there was an older gypsy lady among them, and not really all that many people to our little haphazard group, but we weren't gonna leave them behind just yet. This gave me a moment to look around and see if there was anything worth grabbing in my immediate vicinity... something useful, I wasn't gonna carry junk around for nothing. There were clothes and bags strewn about a partly-collapsed picnic table by me. I grabbed a bag made mostly of black mesh with handles and what looked like a baby bonnet made of white mesh with a big black satin frill and I figured that would work for a hat for now in case I needed shade from the sun. I stuffed the "hat" and whatever else I was carrying into the bag (not sure if the dream logic had figured out I'd still have the swords if I possibly could). It was time to run again.

Then I woke up.

(Definitely inspired by reading The Exorcist cover-to-cover yesterday.)

I know there was more to this dream, but I remember looking up the stairs (at what I imagined the house in The Exorcist book looked like) and saw twin girls who I knew were demon possessed. I remember being afraid because they were loose, not trapped in their room. They both looked like Alessa from Silent Hill, and they talked and moved in unison. I ran out the front door and so did two other people, a couple who I think might have been the parents of the girls, or housekeepers. We all got in the car and drove off, and I remember feeling so glad we had escaped. As we left the area we felt better and better, as if the evil was centered in the house and we'd thoroughly escaped it.

We came back some time later, I'm not really sure how long it had been (not all that long but probably more than a day or two). The house had burned to the ground and it seemed like the evil had been destroyed. There was a deep pit where the house had been, apparently there had been a major basement area when the house was still standing. There were some bits of wall left and a couple of stone chimney remains that went all the way down to the basement floor which was now dirt.

I was thinking everything else had been destroyed, then I saw people down by the chimneys. I thought at first they were looking for evidence or something, then I realized there were tall bookshelves down there that looked undamaged, and books in the shelves. Big tomes, philosophy or encyclopedia type hardbacks. I realized someone was selling them in an impromptu yard sale... and I think I went down there and looked at one of the books...

I don't remember the rest.

(This dream comes off best when written from the point of view of the dream character that I lived through for the following surreality. So yeah, enjoy the psychoticness lol.)


I am a girl, a child of 10 or 12 and my mind is a mess. I'm in a house. Or... a school? Both maybe. I think I killed someone. A teacher. They were being mean to a student. I don't know why I killed them... it's not my fault! Something inside me made me do it. But I do feel happy that they died. And I know I'm going to get in big trouble, the police are coming.

I run up through the house until I find a way into the attic and onto the roof. I hide there while the police look around the house. They can't find me... one stays behind just in case I show up again. Time passes, I don't remember what I did, did I just lay here on the roof? It's dark now. The cop is still in the house. I jump off the roof and run down the sidewalk. I stop running and walk so I'm less noticeable. Someone might still think it's weird a girl is walking alone at night, even though this seems like a nice neighborhood.

I realize something. I... I can fly! I know this! I don't know how I know this or why I can fly but suddenly I don't care anymore. I fly upwards into the night sky oh so fast and light. And I know something else now... I'm invincible. I think. I know I can fly through outer space though and it won't hurt me. I can even breathe just fine. I'm so happy, I fly through space past planets and then... then I know that I know my way home. Yes, I'm going home. I know it's out there, I have a home! I know nothing about it except where it is. I fly towards it.

The planet is a shifting mass of lava and cooling crust that bursts here and there from the swirling volcanic action underneath. I'm afraid... what happened to my home? Something horrible... and I'm afraid I'm not quite tough enough to go down there. It will hurt and I'll die. I get a little closer, trying to see if there is any place on the surface that has survived. Yes, there's somewhere... it looks okay, there are just some active volcanoes in the distance. I'll go down there and see if I can find anyone. Find out anything about my home and did I have a family here?

I touch down in a large meandering garden. There are two people here, they are dressed simply in white clothing that looks almost medieval-peasant-like, with hoods over their hair. I walk slowly towards them, I don't want to scare them, they have probably been through a lot and just now they saw me fly down out of the sky. Are they scared of me? They are looking at me. I ask them who they are and what happened here, what happened to my home? They don't say anything, they just look at me and they're looking at each other in quick glances. Do they not understand me? Do they speak some other language here? Wait... something doesn't feel right...

Then something happens, I don't know what happened, my mind hurts. There are a lot of these people all around me and I can't run, I'm so weak. Did they do something to me? Shoot me with something? I... I...... I realize too late I should not have come back here. They... they are bad. I don't remember why, but I know that now as I enter dark unconsciousness.

I wake up. I'm in a hallway under guard. There's a room nearby with glass doors and someone is inside but I can't see who because the room is filled with steam. My brain is fighting to get a hold on thoughts that fly past. This is familiar... this is familiar? I've been here. The steam-filled room doors open and a girl comes out wearing nothing. It's my turn now, says the guards. Time for my shower.

I'm in the shower now and have no clothes on. This doesn't really bother me because it's familiar. Something in my mind says I know this all too well. This is normal. But I'm afraid. As the water turns on, the guard in the control room makes it too hot. He's doing this on purpose. They do that sometimes. I... remember... I... it's so hot it hurts. I... remember it was always like this... someone would be unlucky... and they'd just take it. It was life.

No! I'm not going to let this happen. I'm going to fight! I don't even know for sure if I can, this room should be sealed so that someone like me can't get out. But I see metal things on the wall behind the shower heads. I'm strong, I can do this! I pull them out, I don't even know if this will do any good but I pull all the metal things out. Some are just some sort of metal button, a rivet maybe, and some have long metal wires attached to the back that come out as I pull. There are a couple small metal plates above this, I pull them off too. I know the guard room must be going crazy, I don't have much time before they come make me stop. I'm surprised they're not here yet, in fact.

Behind where the metal plates were are two smaller metal things that shock me a little when I touch them. I take some of the metal things I pulled out of the walls and touch them to the current. I can feel it going through my body, it's a little bit painful but more annoying than anything. I look behind me to see the glass doors opening very slowly.

I don't give up, I keep holding the wires until the doors are wide enough to get through. I run fast, they try to shut on me but I get through. I hear people yelling. I run out a big entryway in the hall and... I'm in what looks like an earth shopping mall? I don't have time to wonder what's going on. There is a store ahead of me across the large mall hallway but if I go in there they will surely catch me. I can't depend on luck to put a backdoor in that place. It's a dead end in my mind. I run to the right, but see guards running towards me. They look almost like earth mall security officers with blue shirts and police hats. I know I can only run, they have drugged me somehow and I can't fight or fly or anything special. I have a feeling I'm lucky I'm still able to run.

I run the other way along the mall hallway and find an intersection that branches again. I run one way but guards are coming that way too. I run the other way and there are more guards. They're going to catch me. I don't want them to hurt me. I lay down on the floor, I give up. I'm still wet and naked and I feel like I want to die. They reach me and do something that makes me very weak again and as I pass out I know that they will be watching me very carefully now. I have lost my chance to escape. They will probably even erase my memory.

I dream, my tortured mind conjures memories from before. From when I was here and knew this place as my only reality...

* * *

(At this point, the dream does a massive flashback to back when I was living in this place that had recaptured me, previous to whatever events brought me to the planet earth.)


I am standing among several rows of girls my age, and we are all wearing the same strange white or light-yellow uniforms of a simple yet futuristic cut. We are singing a song, it's a song about the company or organization that's running life for us and we're supposed to be diligently loyal to it. But some of the girls have figured out something is wrong with this setup. We're being used, brainwashed, they say. I believe it. We've made up different words to the song that are almost indistinguishable from the real ones, and we sing them extra quiet just to be sure. Oh we are such bad, subversive girls. We'll surely be punished if we're caught. But it's all we can do... right? They control all. One of them is a woman at the front of the group, she's leading us on in the song and cheering and acting like this is the greatest thing in the world. But every time we get to the word "great!" as in "such and such company is great!" those of us who know better whisper "hate!"

(At this point in the dream I had a moment of lucidity, just long enough to realize I had to get out of there, that it was very wrong and I should get the heck out as soon as possible. I lost the lucid moment but my mindset had gotten a sufficient shock to actively want me to escape, as opposed to singing subversive song lyrics.)

The song ends and it's shower time. I don't have the opportunity to run on the way into the shower, but once it is over and the shower doors open I run straight past the guard, he wasn't expecting that at all and I completely bowl him over. Ahead I see the shopping mall... wait... have I been here before? Strange, a thought that I've seen this before, but I've never... never... I think I have a memory that shouldn't be there... from the future? But the fragment is lost again and I just know I have to run. I'm wet and I have no clothes but I don't care, I run straight into the shopping mall place and across the hall into the store right in front of me. It has clothes, I thought I would take some but now realize I don't have time as I hear shouting behind me. I find a lucky backdoor and run through it.

I'm in a service passage now and then what looks like an earth Wal-Mart. How do I know that? Where's this information coming from? Yes, I know I'm getting some sort of feedback from the future now... but I keep running. I have to find some clothes, the people here don't seem to know about my escape but they'll know something is up if they see me like this. This looks like the lawn and garden section of the store. I'm looking for clothes as I sneak fast through the aisles... and then I'm wearing an oversized gardening apron. It'll work for clothing if nobody looks at me too closely.

I stop running and just stride purposefully through the place. If someone sees me they will think I'm working here or belong here, I'm on my way to do something important don't bother me. It works, nobody stops me and I see doors in the back of this place. I enter them as if I totally know what I'm doing. Here is a large shipping or storage room that's mostly empty. There are more doors in the back, large doors like a truck might pull up here. I can't get them open... I walk up a long plank to an opening to another area like the last but it's darker. Here I see more doors and there is dim light coming through the cracks underneath. It's natural light! A way out!

These doors open and I shut them behind me. It's very late evening outside, the twilight is fading even now. And I see immediately... kobolds. Kobolds like in EverQuest, the short humanoid creatures from the online Earth game (they look vaguely like werewolves if you've never seen them). These things must be some kind of last defense against the possibility of escape... I get the feeling the company probably kills them off periodically, finding them annoying but slightly useful. There are several of them here and they move towards me looking hungry.

I can't turn back. I'll die here if I must. But no, I look into their eyes and I remain calm. I stretch my hands out... one of them bites me lightly on the fingers but it decides it doesn't want to eat me. They think I am strange to be unafraid. They decide I'm their friend and they can tell I am weak and they want to take care of me. They like me. There are two now holding my hands and leading me somewhere. Away. This is fine, I will go with them. They take me down a hill and away from the evil place I never want to see again. They take me to their home, a strange set of passages and outdoor ruins of some building so long decayed that only basic foundations and the slightest hint of walls remain.

I'll stay here with the kobolds until I am strong. Until I can fly and be invincible again. Yes, I know I can be those things because... I'm not sure why. My mind, what's wrong with my mind? It's so... fragmented. I have trouble remembering five minutes ago, but I've seen things I can't possibly have experience yet... but... will? Oh, it hurts. I am just going to rest here in the kobold lair and leave when I can. I'll be safe enough here for now. The evil people will think I got eaten. They know I am weak, that I have been under the influence of their weird drugs, that I can't be my full potential until it wears off. And surely the kobolds would have had a lovely dinner of me by now. I creep a little ways into a kobold tunnel and lay down. I go to sleep.

Then I woke up.

I was captured by some bad guy that I knew had been behind the deaths of my parents (obviously this dream came with a pre-made past, I don't think I recognized anyone in the dream after I woke up... and in the dream I really cared about these made-up parents). Anyways, this bad guy was being overconfident so I took advantage of that by acting all scared yet keeping an eye open for an escape. But I was also looking for answers. I was in his house at this point, or a hideout of his, and it was daytime. He seemed to want to gloat over his evildoings and showed me this video of people working on a half-built house. He said it was my parents (and some other people, maybe old friends). As they were starting to run around and then began fighting each other with whatever was closest (including a staple gun), he said, "Look at them, they're already dead."

I could see that there was something wrong with their eyes. Their pupils and irises seemed to be just one grey color. I realized that maybe they were dead even tho they were obviously still moving and acting alive, if crazy. I tried to act like I was all scared and unhappy about what I was seeing, but I was really trying to see if there were any clues in this video. There was an orange tabby kitten on top of a pile of boxes that the crazy people were running around and bumping into. I had a feeling the cat wasn't "dead" like everyone else. Was this a clue? But cats would only live a few years, and I had a feeling the video I was watching was older than that. Right?

And then I saw it: spray painted on an unfinished stairway were the words "Hawaii Homes" in red. It looked like it had been done with a stencil, and now I had a name of a building company that I could maybe trace my parents through.

Then I woke up.