sanity is relative

I don't remember the name of the guy who the dream cast with Leonardo DiCaprio, so we'll call him Leo. He's a rising star business mogul who lands a pretty, blonde trophy wife and is making money hand over fist. They have two kids (one boy, one girl). One day when Leo is off at work, the wife is teaching the kids to cook while someone is visiting (it felt like an interview almost but I'm not sure on that detail now). The kids are using sharp knives but the wife insists she's taught them well.

The little girl goes, "Ouch mommy, I cut myself!" and has a bleeding finger but it's not super-bad. The mom starts looking at it but suddenly her own nose is bleeding and she's getting kind of out of it. I have no idea where the visitor went but the mother ends up sitting on the floor leaning against the fridge with her two kids sitting with her and she's half out of it saying weird stuff (I don't remember what she said anymore). The kids just seemed to be sitting there listening to her quietly.

Later on, Leo is writing a love letter of some sort about how he feels like he hasn't spent enough time with his wife lately and he wants to make that right. She comes in while he's writing and finds a half-finished, rejected version of the letter on the desk where he was initially writing (he's moved to another part of the room and hasn't noticed her come in). She goes over to him and seduces him, not like that wasn't kinda the whole idea anyways. But it really felt more like she was seducing him than responding to his written overtures.

The next scene is the family on a four-person swing (each person sitting side-by-side) that is set up to have a really nice view at a place like a botanical gardens. I think Leo and his wife were talking about something but I don't remember what anymore. The only thing I really remember thinking was wondering if that chain would snap. But it didn't, so I think the scene was mostly there to imply things were supposed to be going somewhat properly with the family again, but it still had a sense of foreboding.

The next part is years later, the little girl is now a teenager going to the beach with her mother. Everyone is in bathing suits and the daughter is smokin' hot. The dream perspective switches to her, so I'm the daughter now. We spot someone we know who sells makeup, and rush up to her excitedly. The lady sets out things on the sandy/rocky ground where she is. I see a couple of just-released sample boxes and pick one up, asking if I can have it and the lady says yes. I say I'll definitely be placing an order but I'll be right back.

I hurry off along the beach on my own. I think the idea was I was going to talk to some friends further along, but I end up finding a few guys my age who I sort of know. They're hanging out in a rockier area with my uncle Nick (who is Nicolas Cage). While I'm talking to the other boys, Nick asks me if I'm still dating that one guy and I say something like, "No, we broke up." He goes, "Awww, maaan!" with a tone that doesn't mean he's sad about the breakup but that he's wishing we weren't related because now I'm available. Way to be obvious about it, Uncle. xP

Anyways I'm still talking to the other guys and they're telling me about an incident I vaguely remember hearing about, where a boat got wrecked in a storm a while back. I remember mentioning during the conversation that I had a boat myself, and couldn't understand why someone would leave theirs unmoored to get trashed like that. Turns out the boys had been in that storm and something had attacked the boat. And my mother had subpoena'd the boys for the chunk of the creature they'd managed to keep. This made me double-take, that my mother had anything to do with it, and what the heck do they mean by creature? I was trying to ask them more about this creature, and got the impression of a goopy purple thing with a few tentacles. It didn't sound like an octopus, but the sort of thing that suddenly made me think there was something supernatural going on.

Here dream logic really messes with things because I'm trying to hear what the guys are saying but they're all suddenly very tiny and wet sand is almost covering them up. I call to them and say I can't hear them, and then I say something like, "My mother must be blocking you!" I look down the beach and I think she was down that way somewhere, probably coming my way, but that's kinda fuzzy. I decide to head out into the water to swim away and find somewhere further around some rocky outcroppings where I can stop and try to think about what the heck is going on.

The makeup sample thing I had has vanished to forgotten-plot-element-land, but hey, it's cool, I have a huge crab pet now magically, who seems to understand when I talk to him and squeaks back all cute-like. I tell him we're gonna go for a swim, and while the actual swimming part makes very little sense, the crab also decides to have a piggy-back ride on my shoulders while I'm swimming. He's heavy, but I keep going anyways.

Then I woke up.

I was Jet (from Cowboy Bebop) for the first part of the dream, and while Spike went off to do something else, I was tracking something down with a picture. I showed the picture to someone and they said it was Whidby Island. So I went to Whidbey Island and matched the picture up to the Seattle skyline (pretend that makes sense... nevermind that Seattle looked just fine and this is supposedly Cowboy Bebop era of post-apocalyptic Earth). I remember the sky being close to dark, and night fell as the plot continued.

Somehow I deduced that the place I was looking for was under the water. So I started swimming, only to see Spike up ahead on a small rowboat. Apparently he was following the same trail and didn't want to tell me about it. So I caught up and we decided to solve this thing together.

The dream plot now insisted we were trying to rescue some lady from inside an underwater lair. We put on breathing helmets and dove down where we could see something below and the place ended up being a huge rounded tower thing with a lot of stuff sticking out the sides of it. There was something about getting too close to the windows being a bad thing, related to explosives in the water around the tower... but memory is fuzzy there. There were a few windows in the side of the tower as well.

My point of view changed to Spike now, and as Spike I found an interface device further down the tower's surface which was obviously the way to get in. It looked like I had to put my hand inside a hole next to it, and I could feel a hypodermic needle device get very close to my thumb. So, if I screwed up the code, it would inject me with something nasty. The code screen ended up being a game of tic-tac-toe. While I was stressing out trying to remember how to beat the game via the usual trick, three moves into the game, the x's and o's rearranged themselves... and there were more squares to fill in around the edges of the usual 3x3 grid.

I said, "F*$# this," and pulled my hand out. If they were going to make it so complicated, why didn't they just use a regular number keycode? I vaguely remember being able to communicate with the girl inside the tower somehow, and we were going to use the explosives to blow a hole in the windows and get her out...

Then I woke up.

I was an Asian woman (possibly in Korea?) somewhere before the Industrial Revolution, in the town square of the small village where I lived. I was holding a young boy who couldn't have been more than two years old, who I think was a friend's child I was watching for the day while they were away. A European-style carriage came into town and stopped in the square, and everyone getting out of it seemed very nervous. Also, people around the village were now also acting scared, but I didn't understand why. It was like they all "got it," and I didn't. And yet, they weren't doing anything but standing around worriedly.

I asked the people near me what was going on, and they gave me wary looks for even asking. One lady came closer and whispered very quietly in my ear, "Shao Li." I knew then that this was a fearsome warlord who was known to leave no survivors. I think everyone around me didn't expect to get away, and were thus waiting to hope for mercy or a quick death. Uhh, whatever! I turned around and booked it for the far edge of town, keeping a tight hold on the little boy.

There were some trees beyond that and then a deep valley with hills afterwards, and as I started crossing the valley I heard gunshots ring out from the village. So much for mercy. I was worried that maybe the warlord used dogs to find any stragglers, but would they pick up my trail or just be confused by all the scents in town? If I could remain unseen, nobody would know I was out here. I followed just to the left of a creek cutting its way up the far side of the valley, and could see some encroaching shrubbery that made a nice tunnel along that waterway with room to walk on the side I was on. This also led into deeper forest.

Logic was breaking down by now. I remember looking back and seeing a modern-day freeway with a few cars going by, on the back-left side of the valley behind me. I reached the sheltering overhang and kept running along the waterway, and eventually out into some more grass broken up by rocky outcroppings and more bits of forest. Things started to fall apart worse when I tried to feed the little boy something, and I know in the meantime it did seem like there were enemy scouts out looking for us, or guessing there was someone who had escaped.

Although I woke up before any sort of resolution, we at least stayed free for the duration of the nonsense.

A lot of the major details of this dream are fuzzy, but I do remember the animals. At first I found a black rat in a dark room that had a big unmade bed in it (mine? not sure), it was moving really fast and seemed scared of me. I know that as pets, rats are very sociable, and I kept thinking I could convince it to be friends with me somehow. I just talked to it as if it were already a pet, hoping it would think everything was fine and warm up to me.

Then the rat changed to a ferret (as if it always had been one) that was pretty much all very dark fur... I would say black, but my brain kept telling me that all-black wasn't possible, or endangered and thus not really available as a pet. And he was very loving and friendly and I was holding him, and for some reason I was now in a basement room where the ferret's cage was. Then he had a pure white buddy, not even sure where the second one came from, but I knew they were both mine. I was having trouble remembering the dark one's name, but finally remembered it was Riddick. The light one I think had a really short name like "Cho" and possibly later it got changed to "Aster" (as that's my albino original character).

There was some nonsense about the house flooding and me trying to get out of it without the ferrets getting wet. I couldn't remember if they could swim or not. I stuck one ferret on each of my shoulders and managed to get out, since I was currently taller than the water was deep. I think there was something about a car ride... the ferrets disappeared into dream logic plot holes... and then I was in a parking lot by a large open parkland with a playground in one area near a bunch of picnic benches, and some forest and open grass with walking trails. There was a dog in the parking lot, some kids were petting it.

This dog is probably the weirdest combination of breeds I have ever seen. I believe what it was supposed to be was a rottweiler, pit bull, and corgi mix. It had the coloration and muscles of a rottweiler, it's face was also mostly that breed but I could see some pit bull there, and then it had the shape and general size of a corgi. Cute and hilarious all at once.

The kids said the dog was a stray or something, but as I was petting it I noticed that its fur was clean and looked like it had been taken care of; it didn't have a collar. The dog was super-friendly and really liked me (and I liked it, I was kinda hoping it needed a home) so I picked it up and said, "Let's go see if you belong to someone." I started carting this dog around the park, specifically the picnic area where a large group seemed to be having a gathering, and I kept asking random people if it was theirs.

I wasn't having any luck (yay! new doggy all mine?) but strangely enough the dog seemed to keep changing into a fluffier, curlier-haired dog, like cute-overkill, kinda like something Paris Hilton might have except it was still a chubby thing, not skinny.

I can't remember any more.

There was a family with a mother and two kids, one being a teenage boy and the other a preteen girl. They were on vacation from up north and arriving at a desert hotel in Texas; the place was set up like a bunch of disconnected buildings over a wide area. It was still afternoon, very hot and sunny.

The hotel office was the first building as the mother pulled the car past it, but there was no obvious parking lot right there. She said she'd find it and went to the left along the road, there were more buildings and stuff to the right. They passed a pool, and the son mentioned it though he also said perhaps the water wasn't so promising after all, as from the angle he was looking at it, it looked like it might have been a murky green. It was hard to tell, though, and there was another bigger pool after that with even less-promising water.

The further they went, the more obvious it was they were getting too far away, and the son mentioned this but the mother refused to go back, still convinced the parking lot was out here somewhere. He said it was too far to walk back, and then as they seemed to leave the complex entirely and approach a large warehouse and other buildings, he said, "Look, we're in a whole other township now!"

The mother pulled over and the son got out, tired of dealing with the stupidity. He knew where the hotel office was, even if it was quite a walk back. There was a place to get drinks and he went inside, asking the guy behind the counter how much a Cherry Coke was. On the answer, the teenager put a coin on the counter and said, "I'll take 20, then."

The coin had the denomination "10000" on one side, along with the word "Canada", and on the other side it had the word "GOLD". The guy behind the bar stayed where he was, leaning up against another counter along the back wall; he could see the coin from there.

Some older guy chuckled at the kid and said, "That's worth about two bucks, son."

It still wasn't gonna fly even for a soda, so the kid finally dug a quarter out of his pocket, which was apparently the price of the drink. Still the guy behind the bar didn't move, and the teen asked why that wasn't enough.

"Sales tax."

"Geez, you guys charge sales tax on food here?" Digging around in his pocket again, he pulled out a penny and added it, and he really didn't have any more so he was about to ask how much sales tax could possibly be on a quarter.

A woman came up, she was probably late 20's at least and pretty, with short blonde hair and wearing jeans and a denim leather jacket over a t-shirt of some sort. She added random coins to the little pile and told the guy behind the counter to keep the change. The kid couldn't believe someone so pretty was helping him out, and then it seemed she wanted to actually sit by him at the counter and talk to him.

Now there seemed to be some kind of plot developing, to do with the woman needing to get some information out of the kid. Meanwhile about all he was thinking was that if this kept up and she stuck around even when he would have to walk back to the hotel eventually, he was suddenly glad it was a very long walk back. In the meantime, the soda came in bottles as she had also ordered a regular Coke for herself, and it seemed to keep nicely cold even when they refilled the glasses later.

I had the visuals of the glasses being refilled, but made a comment to someone nearby as if I were watching a movie. I said I could really go for a rootbeer float, regular flavor (the concept of Cherry Coke versus regular Coke was confusing things). I don't know who it was I was talking to, I was still paying attention to the... movie?

Then I woke up.

(This dream happened on December 2nd but I didn't get around to posting it till today. It's very much inspired by the TV show Fringe.)


This started out with three of the Observers (odd almost FBI-agent or G-men looking characters from Fringe) coming up to a guy sitting by an indoor swimming pool. The guy was in a reclining plastic chair, and one of the Observers touched him and he started dissolving into the air as he screamed. The dissolving seemed contagious, spreading first to the Observer who had made the initial touch and then to the other two as well. All of the dust-like stuff dissolving away into the air fused into an odd big floating white thing that reminded me of a parade balloon gone wrong.

The scene changed, and it was outdoors now, a big college campus type place with lots of grass. I was standing in a park-like area there, and I knew Earth was getting taken over by aliens or whatever the inhabitants of the "other dimension" were. There was something odd happening to the sky, it was filled with dark clouds in odd colors like red and purple (I think, sooo much if this wasn't in my notes). I was with a girl who was my friend, I think just someone random created by the dream.

Suddenly, most of the other people who had been standing around the campus turned into other people who were wearing preppy-ish white t-shirts with green and blue sporty stripes on the sleeves and the bottom hem. There might have been some kind of logo on the shirt but I don't remember now. A few people hadn't been "converted" and were running screaming while these other people seemed to just be moving very slowly and seemed a bit out of it. Possibly the transition had an effect on them and they weren't up to speed yet. Either way, I could tell they were quite evil.

My friend was freaking out but I grabbed her arm and decided to run towards the side of a building that was near the edge of where the land went down to meet a big body of water. That route seemed more promising for surviving this for longer (it really felt like doom was imminent). Maybe we could find some kind of sewer outlet to escape into. As I ran, I noticed the girl become less responsive, and looked over and it was a different girl in one of those creepy t-shirts.

I let go of her and kept running, she stopped as it was my speed that had kept her going that fast. I passed some more of the creepy people who did at least still seem out of it, then I was running along the side of the building near the water. I could see an odd, huge floating alien-squid thing in the sky in the distance, and had this odd feeling that I knew if it went from where it was (kind of ahead of me) to the far right side of the sky before I could get out from under open sky, it would somehow kill me.

I could see an inlet up ahead and it looked like the sort of thing that would have a drainage pipe. I could also hear barking dogs there though as I got closer, and decided that was probably not a safe idea. The dogs looked sort of wild and quite angry. I backtracked and ran across a creepy girl but managed to lose her. I was trying to find some way into the side of the building.

There were no doors, but on closer inspection of part of the wall I realized the bricks were loose there. Pulling them out I saw there was a hole I could get into, and at first I intended to try and rebuild the wall quickly behind me but logic was failing badly and it became apparent I couldn't block it properly again. So I just went into the crawlspace I found, that opened into a bigger storage area.

There were skylight-windows in this area, and as I crept around in the more protected areas I saw some creepy butterfly-bug-alien thing fluttering around outside. I tried at first to block off some of the visibility to outside by spraying foaming bug spray on the windows, but that failed and was wasting too much time. I heard something make noise back the way I had come from, and my imagination showed me an almost xenomorph type alien (from the Alien movie series).

I found another crawl space on the far side of the storage area and tried to hide or find a way further. I realized underneath me the flooring seemed very weak, and messing with it proved I was actually in a ceiling above a wide empty space below. I decided to go through it and I vaguely remember finding a way to lower myself into the big room below. It was an auditorium for a theater type room.

I really don't remember enough of the rest to make sense of it and logic pretty much gave up at this point anyways. Eventually I woke up.

There was more to this, but the relevent part started with me as the little girl in Aliens, and Ripley and I were headed to an elevator on a high floor of a tall building. We knew we needed to get out. (I think this was supposed to be after that movie's timeline at some later point.)

Then I changed perspectives to either myself or another female character who was with the two already there. I had the only flashlight, and although I don't remember lighting issues on the floor we were on, when the elevator arrived it was dark in there. I threw the flashlight in there on the floor, as if it was important I do so (and I think dream logic had intended it to be, then went "wtf?"). So, suddenly I'm realizing that wasn't the smartest idea as the flashlight fell apart and I knew it was broken. For some reason it had 4 batteries in it when it was fallen apart, though I knew it'd only take two (they were C or D cells, and the flashlight was black and kinda heavy-duty).

So anyways we got on the elevator and apparently there were blue glow sticks on the floor as well, so at least there was a little bit of light. It seemed like that was important for more reasons than just being able to see. Some freakish unknown thing creeping around killing people? Possibly. The elevator itself was partly messed up, missing one door, and as it started going down floors we tried to put the half of the door in the center so it blocked off as much as possible. (It was moveable like a sliding closet door since it was broken. Like that makes any sense.)

Some of the floors we passed had an odd, dim blue light. Ripley and the girl were crouched down against the door with their backs to it, and I was on the far side watching the floors go by. Suddenly I saw a small version of one of the face-hugger aliens creep around the top edge of the door. There were more on the floors we were going by as well, but so far only this one had caught the elevator. Ripley was trying to stay still and keep the girl still, covering the little one's mouth so she wouldn't make noise. They were both very scared, and I think we knew that these things shouldn't be there and not only was it a bad sign that they were, but it was entirely possible we might not live through this.

I started slowly putting the flash light back together, adding in the batteries for weight. Then I stood up and mashed the top of it onto the alien as hard as I could. This apparently killed it... and it stuck to the door in all its goey deathness. Ripley pulled part of it off and chucked it into one of the floors we were passing (reeeally fucking tall building I guess), and apparently after the thing was dead or because it was so young/small, the acid didn't bother her (or dream logic sorta went "meh, don't care"). She pulled the other part off and threw that out too.

Now two more were crawling around about the same area, and I smooshed those as well. I think Ripley also threw those out... and then we got to the bottom floor and it was really well-lit, reminded me of an airport terminal. Nobody seemed to know anything was wrong. A security guard in a white uniform showed up to like... tell us we didn't have authorization to be where we were... and it gets fuzzy around here, but I think we were supposed to get taken to see the big boss guy of the building.

Then it got utterly psychotic. The three of us were made to get on this almost Disney Land kinda ride, a hanging moving thing that we could sit in with seats on both side of a small enclosed space with an open top. It was taking us through some kind of displays, like a weird mixture of the company's history and a collection of total "wtf" items. And then we passed this odd fan that was blowing really hard and realized it was blowing bits of broken glass with the air. We tried ducking to get away but it still hit us and it hurt. I had a wide collar on my coat apparently, and I was able to pull it up high enough to at least avoid some of that.

Now I knew for sure we were still in obvious danger, and being as I wasn't sure what would be at the end of the ride, I reached out to grab various things that might be handy from the displays (some of it was close enough to touch). I broke a possibly-fiberglass oversized pencil off a statue and stuck it into my right pocket near my knee on black cargo pants I apparently was wearing. It wasn't the best weapon but it'd be better than nothing (I guess). I also managed to snag a large paperclip (the big odd-shaped X-square kind you can use to hold lots of paper) and stuck it in the left knee pocket. If they didn't search us and locked us up or something, I might be able to pick a lock with it.

We passed at least two more of the glass-blowing fan things of doom, and eventually the ride ended. We got off it in this big, posh office, with large floor-length windows to the left, an expensive table ahead of us, and lots of spendy furnishings elsewhere. There was a man to the right, well-dressed in I think a maroon suit, and we knew he was the boss. He was acting like this was just some cordial visit or something, and didn't seem antagonistic or worried about what we might think of being put through the amusement park ride from hell.

Ripley seemed a little out of it. On the table were pictures of her new line of jewelry she was apparently trying to get into as her new career. This seemed kinda stalkerish to me. There were other pictures too, of her jewelry but more of it on massive displays that looked way more fancy than where they were currently being sold. The boss guy said that this was what he wanted to offer Ripley, a bigger and much better venue with his company where she could be rich and famous and make a ton of dough.

Not only did that sound weird after all we'd been through, but then he mentioned a new kind of drug his company was producing, and said it would help her feel all better. Apparently she was already on something for post-alien-trauma-stress-stuffs. It seemed like she was kinda buying the guy's salespitch. I switched perspectives to the little girl for a moment and told her that she was fine the way she was, and that the drug was a bad idea and I didn't trust this guy. I switched back to myself, and said something like, "He's probably going to say you need just one to make it all better... and then another tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, because you'll never be able to get off it."

Ripley seemed to be getting the picture, and I moved to stand by the windows. There was a guy next to me dressed in sorta black-ops gear, and the dream just sorta decided he'd been with us the whole time, was part of our team. He looked and acted a bit like FBI Agent Charlie Francis from Fringe. Both of us were looking outside, and really close by was the waterline of a lake or very large, calm river. There was a lot of very colorful pollution in the water, and it had formed into very recognizable and artistic images along the water's edge. There were cartoon characters and other things, stuff that seemed familiar in the dream but I can't really remember what now. The pictures rippled somewhat from distortion in the water.

I wondered out loud, "I wonder if there's something sentient in there. Something creative. Possibly on the drug." The drug the guy had just mentioned... something that'd keep whatever it was trapped under the water. I don't know if anyone took me seriously or wanted to do anything about it, as the dream shifted to something elsewhere with other people and mostly unrelated.

Eventually I woke up.

(Old dream notes are old. I just found this again, it was written November 4th, 2008. I'm going to transcribe it pretty much the way it was originally written.)

Movie like Lethal Weapon on TV, two cops find a girl witness, drive in bad weather. (Then I was the girl in the "movie" which was now reality.) There is deep water ahead, think they can cross but it looks so deep it's blue. Car is an old large convertible with the top down. They try, and even paddle the car with hands which sorta works but the deep water just seems to keep on going.

Get near an odd obstacle and a lady appears like a vision and says we are the chosen ones, and must help her world. She summons magic into her hand (warp stuff) that coalesces into three small teardrop stones. She gives them to us, then shows putting another on her forehead and vanishes.

I do what she did and it sticks like it won't come off. The others do it too; one of the guys puts it in a spot more like where an actual teardrop might go. He did it that way so it would seem less gay (AHAHAHA!! fail). My "marker" starts burning and it hurts, and then we're transported to the new world instantaneously and together. We're standing and it's dark. We're on grounds near a forest.

The evil bad guy has seen our entry in a crystal ball (or mirror?). Tells his three-headed dog and three wolves to go destroy the intruders. What he doesn't seem to know is that I can't be harmed by animals due to being the chosen one with the right combination of inner powers and the crystal. So the dogs cower and cannot follow their master's order, though they would have instantly otherwise. The protection the girl has extends to anyone she is near. Animals who intend to harm her or anyone near her can't get anywhere near her.

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.

I am Riddick. I wake up, finding myself in a mental hospital. Ah. Yeah. Familiar, but I'm new here. I've just been drugged after a fight with a patient. My only thought now is "I want out" and it is not nighttime yet. But no nurses or orderlies, just me in the room. I am able to leave through the door (did I break it? I think it was unlocked) and walk quickly down a hall into a room I shouldn't be allowed into. Hell, I shouldn't be allowed out of my room without supervision. They'll be looking for me any second now. This new room is all white and not unlike looking through the inside of a bunch of subway train cabins connected together somehow and there are also large bits of semi-transparent sheet plastic hanging from things. I don't like this area, the way it feels; sense danger but can't see it. Another door, move on to the next room.

This room is bigger, much bigger and all white as well. Big-time feeling of imminent doom. Something coming? Climb up on something (thought this room was mostly empty but reached the ceiling somehow... large bookshelf?). Thin pipes running along ceiling, just enough space to grab them but they don't really go convenient places. Keep trying, out of options. Can't give up now. Able to move along ceiling some, and there are emergency sprinklers here and there. Monster released into room; minotaur perhaps. Too busy trying to unscrew bits of sprinklers. Success, water all over now, careful not to slip please... able to keep grip on pipes. Ceiling getting wet too and weak enough to pull chunks out of.

Drop the refuse on the floor, hanging there by one arm and still pulling layers down. Able to pull up into crawlspace between floors; very little room. Try to find weak spot above, know I need to keep moving even though safer now. Every second counts. Succeed in finding new place to yank flooring out of; work through it only to find large stable and exercise area for mean-ass bull. It doesn't notice me at first, or it smells me but is coming towards me slow enough I can duck quickly back in hole and move along crawlspace to rip up through the floor somewhere else.

Outside now, somehow, must have found the right spot and Kyra is here. Got out a different way? Yes, Kyra's been here for a while or something; doesn't occur to me this isn't really right. No time to catch up (though we do talk, maybe others trying to escape but don't seem to have made it?)... let's move. Thought everything was okay now but then spot a sniper on a complicated fire escape; guy is one of (female) slam boss's top dogs. Run like hell across trashed-out area, dive for cover past a building but one of the shots hits me... follow Kyra over barbed-wire fence, hurting bad and pretty much fall over other side. She's trying to talk to me, seems superficial words, but now trying to help me along. Here we go, another open area between buildings and beyond that is freedom, yes? I'm suddenly dressed in leather and metal straps, and she's wearing even less (looks like chains). She has a whip I think. We are congratulating each other on escaping, she's not helping me anymore, I'm walking fine. She goes over the wall or fence here first and I follow.

Now where the hell am I? War. Everywhere. I'm in the middle of very open ground and people are dying. Not my fight, but taking fire as the enemy notices me. They don't know which side I'm on. Are some of these involved in the mental hospital? I think one side is, but this is all something much bigger now. Not what the patients are supposed to see. (Duh?) Nobody can tell who I am or what my story is. I'm just a living target on a battlefield...

Dive into a hole in the ground barely big enough for cover but it will work. Beats getting shot. Then someone is looking in the hole. It is the "good guys," they are fighting the evil that owns the mental hospital (do they even know?). They are at first cautious knowing I might not trust them. But they point out, what choice do I have? My injuries are present again, or I am noticing them again now, or I got shot again, I don't know. There is a girl, important to the leader or someone high-up, his daughter maybe? She is assigned to take me to a tent in their camp to see to my wounds. Place reminds me of desert nomads in a movie or something.

I sit on a cot and she does her thing. Bandaged now... my arm? Side? Leg? Don't really know. Just know I feel better. Much better. Woman is hot, but I want out of here. Out of all of it. I leave through the back of the tent and she doesn't stop me. Seems to understand. But now, I'm not sure what to do. In return for their services they are expecting me to do something for them? Or give them information on the place I escaped from? Do they even know a mental hospital is involved in all this? I don't care, I'm not staying here.

Then I woke up.


( dream symbol analysis and thoughts )