Amurehna

Liam and Jack are recurring dream characters of mine. Liam always leaves me in a state of awe, like seeing a deceased loved one. When Jack appears, it's like...seeing a friend you haven't seen in a long time. Sometimes he's an ass. With Liam I'm always vividly aware, I can hear his voice. Feel textures. It's like becoming lucid. Jack is always more about emotions or situations.
Saja is a facet of my personality. Sometimes I become her when I dream. She belongs to Liam.

I find myself walking down the hall in my new apartment. I see a man kneeling at the foot of my bed, he's strikingly familiar. Dark-haired, wearing a plaid shirt and black jeans. This should immediately make me think of Jack, but I can't seem to think of his name. I go into my room, which is larger. The closet doors are open and there's a large alcove at the foot of the bed. I regard him with some fascination, as I always do. There's a random person hanging out by one of the windows, and also a man laying before him. My ex? This is important, my time to explain. Because when I step up beside him I am not myself. I am Saja. I want to tell my ex, and Jack about how there's this whole other person hiding in my subconscious, that takes over when I'm dreaming. When I step up beside him he addresses me, though he continues to stare forward into the alcove.
"I've...come a long way to find you." He sounds strained and a little hesitant, "Do you...know who I am?"
I never get a clear look at his face, only his mouth. Everything feels slow and perfect as I drop to my knees in front of him, uncertain. He is familiar, for sure. No one could have come further than Liam, though. And because I am so firmly Saja right now, and not myself. I breathe Liam's name with a sad kind of reverence.
Jack hesitates. His stark, angry disbelief ripples through the air, striking me like a slap. My mistake leaves me cold and a little ashamed.
Jack's mouth twists into a slight sneer. "Liam. Always Liam. He isn't even real. Just a fantasy you've built into a man." He's trying to shame me because I've hurt him. I'm embarrassed and I want to counter his statement. Liam is just as real to me as he is. What about all the times of I've seen him? With his fire-like hair and crooked smile?
I don't speak, just convey my recognition. I KNOW him, but I'm afraid to call him Jack, just in case I am wrong.
A moment later Jack gives lie to his pronouncement of Liam being a fabrication.
His voice is low and intense, "Do you think he would have done the things I've done for you?" He wants to show me what he's done, and rips his shirt off. Because of the drama behind the action I expect to see some sort of scar to represent his sacrifice. There is nothing, though. His skin is pale and smooth. That doesn't mean it isn't there, only that I can't see it. I regard him silently and give him a small smile, pressing my mouth to his by way of apology.
There's a confusing sequence, in which I am doing things but also not doing them at the same time. My sister arrives to make fun of me for my actions. I make excuses for my behavior but my shame sharp. I leave the room instead, hoping she will forget. I go out into the living room, I suddenly have a grey cat. I've had him for a week, I realize. I frown...realizing there isn't a litter box. How could I have forgotten? I find my sister in my room, except now it's her son's room. She's cuddling with her own cat, a long haired grey female.
I tell her I somehow forgot she had a cat. I initially felt like a jerk for forgetting a litter box for my cat, then relieved that there was one in the house.


There was also some weird thing about being in a bar, and the drunken masses choosing sober people to 'ride the wave'. They would pick us at random, swinging us into the air with wild abandon, like crowd surfing. Then buy us a drink afterward.
I meet a man who looks a little like Neil Patrick Harris, who endured the swinging, just for the drunken people to offer him a drink. Just like they did for me moments before. He introduces himself as Jack. I smile a little, knowing he isn't my jack but wishing he was.

There was more before this point, but I only have a vague idea what it entailed. Anyway. When it picks up I'm sitting in a dark gray van, right behind the driver's seat. The doors are all open. I have a friend who adores me, but has just left. Because she loves me her family adopts me. It is strange and touching, to have people I just met call me 'sister' like I've always been around. I have been stood up by a man I care about and I'm wallowing a little. One of her brothers ducks into the front passenger seat. He's wearing a blue-gray t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He's very pale with ice blue eyes and blond hair. He looks familiar and in retrospect he reminds me of the DC with pale green eyes from the Quelling dream.
He asks me what's wrong and I don't feel like I can tell him, since I hardly know him but it's clear that I'm sad. He leans over, resting one knee on the seat and lifts my chin with one cool hand. Whereas before, the dream felt slightly third person, for this moment I am fully myself, such that I can feel the texture and weight of his fingers.This is a gesture of brotherly kindness. He smiles at me and says "It's alright, sister. Everything will be okay. You'll see."
And just like that, I feel better. This is nothing like the weight that lifted off me in similar dreams but it always amazes me when my subconscious is kind and offers comfort instead of horror.

We all pile into the van, and the kind brother offers to take us out and says he knows the perfect place. My friend seems a little doubtful and cautions me about her brother's choices, saying that he is a little off kilter and we may not enjoy the place. Sure enough, we drive past outrageous night clubs obsessed with aesthetic, one place had a ring of billowing, multi-colored clouds around the sign. It was pretty but excessive and seemed like we would enjoy it if we were drunk or drugged.
We get out at an old house that has become a tourist attraction. I become lucid with my friend as we walk through the front door. We exclaim about how we knew what the tile would look like before we even entered because the outside was so familiar. It was white with a blue design, but where the tile met the walls, the design was edged in black. It's hard to describe. We are allowed to wander around, so I go outside into a little courtyard. In the dirt are pretty stones, I call them geodes, but the outsides of them are polished gemstones, while the insides are the typical sharp crystal. They are beautiful, emerald green and ruby red, the insides are pale blue. I take pictures with my phone knowing my friend will want to see them.

I am making out with a man at work, he is beautiful and I might even love him. I lead him somewhere so that we might have sex, but even though I am naked he remains clothed. After a time, someone calls him away and he just goes like I don't mean anything. There is a mirror, it is hammered bronze and I can hardly see myself. I ask someone nearby if they have seen the man I was with. She smiles, and says, "Oh, honey. He doesn't want you."
As she says it I lean closer to the dull metal surface. I see that I am ugly. "Oh." I say. "I suppose he wouldn't."

Jack and the House

I am at the MA house. I am lucid but I don't really remember the dream. There is something awful in the house, and because I am lucid I warn my DCs that something bad is going to happen so they can void it. The house is dark, it's the deep hours the night where everything is quiet, and so very still. There's something that forces them to act outside their nature and I try to save them from that violation by warning them. It doesn't always work. There are several cycles of the same dream where I am trying to save the other people in the house but I don't always succeed.

I am in a jungle. Before me stands a riverbed, the banks are choked with vividly green vegetation. A woman tells me that she saw Jack travel downstream, and even the rumor of Him is enough to make me follow. I wade into the cool gray water. I stare down the dark stone tunnel, I can see the end, but I know that once I enter, the current will take me and I will not be able to turn back. I duck under the opening. I have to find him. The water takes me. What I thought was the end, is actually a moss covered support beam. I easily pass underneath it. The tunnel becomes more narrow the longer I traverse it, and each 'end' is actually a mossy support beam. So there is no end. The tunnel narrows, causing me to panic. Each support is further under water so that I have no idea if there will be air on the other side. So, then, there is only the rushing water, the harrowing scrape of the stone walls pressing in around me, and knowing that if only I could get to the other end of the tunnel, everything would be okay.

I am on an old, achingly familiar road. There are tall, vividly green trees on either side. The pavement is cracked and dusty, giving way to pockets of dirt and loose stone. Initially I am in my car, but it is difficult to gain momentum. When I finally do, two teenage boys on bicycles ride recklessly out into the road. I swerve to avoid them, and in doing so I realize I am not so much in my car, as riding on top of something, which topples over. The boys do not apologize for getting in the way, and I right my vehicle...finding it is no longer a car, but an awkward bicycle made entirely of wood. It is painted ivory and dull red, with a wide, long seat. It is too tall for me to easily mount, so that I run alongside it trying to gain momentum so I can lever myself onto the odd seat. As soon as I have gathered enough speed, I am interrupted again, this time it is a stream of young boar followed by a grubby farmer.
In my haste to get out of the way, I strike and stun a piglet. I go to make sure it is okay, and when I turn back, my awkward bicycle has become...a massive riding pig. It is over four feet tall at the shoulder, which connects with a steep-sloped spine. Its skin is mottled pink and brown, dirty and hairy, it has oily leather reins. I climb onto its back but it is hard to control, and before I go too far down the road, I spot two foxes in the trees. One is white, one is red. We make eye contact and they go out of their way to attack me. I kick away the white, and the red briefly latches onto my wrist before I hurl it into the trees. Before I can go more than a few more feet, I am waylaid again, this time by two dogs circling my ridiculous pig mount. One is black, one is white. They are large, and have long, square muzzles and golden eyes. They leap to attack, each latching onto one of my ankles, once again stopping me. Somehow the bow of the pig's rib cage prevents them from getting a good grip on the first lunge, and though they worry at my legs and is almost hard enough to hurt, I feel like it is a warning. I dislodge the white by vigorously shaking my leg, but I have to pry apart the jaws of the black, and in the process I am pulled from the pig's back.
Before I can be attacked again, I decide to run up the street to my sister's house. It turns out to be a spare apartment with pale blue walls and blue commercial carpet. I breathlessly try to tell her what happened on the road, but she is distracted and doesn't really hear me. I climb up onto a bunk bed and lay down. It isn't long before a human attacker that only I can see closes in on me, striking me with a leather strap. They only hit me hard enough to make me flinch. After the sixth or seventh strike I catch the leather strap and yank it from their hands.
After a couple of minutes a pure white cat with golden eyes walks in through the front door and hisses at me before leaping onto my back. I flail around, wrenching it from me and casting the hissing thing away.

I then witness a very odd conversation about my dad selling his house and moving into an apartment with a male roommate, something he is very unlikely to do. He talks about the roommate's payment going through and I try to find a way to ask him why he's moving into an apartment.

The man navigated a cavernous subterranean maze, a confusing warren of suffocating tunnels leading to an abyss which true heights and depths were shrouded by its inky darkness. The tunnels in the cavern walls might lead upward but to reach them he had to cross great expanses on narrow and rickety wooden bridges. Even then, tunnels were treacherous and often deceptive, seeming to lead upward and outward only to lead deeper into the maze.

He could only see a few feet in front of himself and if he paused too long to consider his course of action the sentient, seeking darkness would become aware of his presence and destroy the bridge where he stood, for it could sense the light he emanated and sought only to eradicate it.

He had no idea how long he’d been underground, but it finally happened!
He clawed his way up through a chimney-like tunnel and found the ground floor!
There were windows!
He could see the sky! All wondrous and bright blue and beautiful over an evergreen forest.
Two doorways stood before him and he didn't have long to choose, so he chose the one nearest the window, thinking it would lead out into the glorious OPEN.
Oh, it did, but not how he had hoped, for on the other side there was a balcony. The door snapped shut and locked behind him. I could feel his tremulous, keening panic. As a ghostly bystander, I tried to reassure him that all hope was not lost. He could still jump, that the drop was no more than 8 feet from the balcony to the forest floor. Although he sensed me there, he shook his head to himself and remained convinced he couldn't make the jump because he had injured his leg in the climb.
After an eternity in the dark there was no retreat and no advance.
His despair was immediate and exquisite, he berated himself harshly. How could he be so stupid? He couldn’t even choose the right door! Especially now when it mattered most.

So, exhausted beyond all measure, he leaned against the railing and wept silently into his hands, knowing that now there would only be view of the open and no real escape.

Ahvi huddled in the forge next to her cursed husband. The witch who cast the spell to immolate him intended that he would remain on fire for many days, undying and in agony. Each day, the heat radiating from his writhing form became more intense, unbearable, but Ahvi refused to leave. She only retreated as far as the door, speaking the counterspell that would allow him to die. I could see her through the cracks, one brilliantly emerald eye wide open, the other sealed shut with char. The only spot of color to her otherwise blackened body.
Finally her husband burned out. I waited uncertainly, knowing Ahvi was dead.
Then she moved, wrenching herself from the door, weeping. Fate had spared her because of her sacrifice. The witch would be coming for Ahvi as soon as she got wind of her survival. I worried for her and could feel the witch's roving eye, it wouldn't be long now. Maybe I could distract her while Ahvi escaped?

I am at work, all the lights are out. I'm standing in front of the paint desk when I start to feel faint and I fall first to my knees, then back on my heels. I tell someone that I don't feel well, and all they can say is "Yeah, your face looks strange." Then they move away without any further concern.
I knock on the door of Red's duplex, I have never been to such a place. He opens the door and I sway, again feeling faint. I ask if I can come in and he allows it, I said I didn't want to drive back home like this and ask if I can sleep here. He says it's fine if I don't mind sharing the bed.
We stand in the living room, behind him is the bedroom. I have such trouble keeping my eyes open, and when I do manage it, I can't lift my eyes to his face.
Only so far as his chest. My breath becomes uneven and sadness creeps over me, swaying on my feet. I want him to comfort me, I feel so strange, and know that if he just let me lean on him I'd feel much better. He leaves the room and I black out.
I awake in bed with his puppy laying on my chest. He leaves the room, and sleep paralysis settles over me in the dream (is it weird to have a dream that you're having sleep paralysis?)
The puppy and I are not alone, though. Something grips my hands beneath the covers and I can't quite withdraw them. This happens three or four more times, one time the puppy growls at the spirit hiding under the covers and gripping my hands. The ghost huddles close to me, delighting in my immobility.
I manage to break my paralysis, but when I try to tell Red about it, he says it isn't possible. I say that the puppy was growling and he counters that she never does that without reason. I try to rile the spirit and make the puppy growl again so that he might believe me.

Something about being on a camping trip and zipping up the tiny personal tent around me. o.O

I liked that the twists were surprises. I usually have a tiny thread of lucidity that makes me meta the hell out of my dreams.

Anyway. My starting point was a little confusing. First I see a wounded Damon Salvatore, on the phone with Elena. It's night, he's crusted with blood and looks ten kinds of awful. The camera pans over and I see a white figure standing at the corner of the frame. I' m worried because the thing looks like a threat. But then Damon says something about running into a Sarvati (the white figure, now wringing his hands). Elena asks if he's alright, because apparently Sarvati are dangerous.
"It's fine." Damon says with his trademark smirk. "I persuaded him to help." he pauses. "What about you?"
"Getting a little help of my own. Maybe." She says, and I finally see her. She's in a barn, the moonlight shining through the open door. "I have a plan, I'll let you know if it works." She seemed hurt, too, but it isn't apparent how. Hanging up the phone, opens her mouth wide and lifts her wrist. I assume she's going to feed on herself to heal...and I'm doubtful that would even work.
The camera pans out and I recognize the setting.

In this version of the story, Stefan became like Michael and only fed on vampires. Also being a ripper meant he hurt many people before his friends were able to subdue him. Weary of fighting his hunger, he allowed himself to desiccate and made a deal: he would sleep until they found a cure.
There he lay, under a bare foot of soil, in a weathered wooden crate. Elena meant to feed Stefan. Of course.
For a moment I am irrationally angry with Elena. They had promised him! And here she was, at the first sign of trouble, waking Stefan to his torment. It seems so selfish and, only for a moment, I hate her.

They will need him, though. He is a definite ally in a sea of mistrust. There's a new creature in Mystic Falls. They are vampire/zombie hybrids. In the early days of their Turning they drink the blood of humans, but then require flesh to survive. They can walk in the daylight and may subsist on human food for a time, if they are disciplined. Though the first was the result of a spell cast by a powerful sorcerer, it could be spread via saliva. So, naturally, the first Turned would be a whore of a football player.
A girl named Sandra who looked like the actress Annalynne Mccord is the only one who really notices that the school is slowly slipping into chaos. The faculty are nowhere to be found and sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, certain people have ashen skin. She used to be a cheerleader but has since lost her taste for it. No one knows that the hiatus she took from school wasn't a vacation, she actually went to a care facility for anorexia. There are students milling around, crowding the halls, and debris on the floor. Sandra walks into the locker room, uncertain, arms crossed over her abdomen. She spots Stacy who looks gray, talking to a chubby, blond, blue-eyed Davina Claire. Stacy asks her if she's thrown in her lot for the party food, that they were thinking about ordering pizza, but she has a better idea. In her hands is an advertisement for a company known as Meal A day. Sandra knows it well. Upon release from the hospital, Meal A Day had delivered healthy meals to her door three times a day, she checked her progress after every meal and they took the plates. Each seemed a small victory over the illness.
"So have you signed yet?" Stacy asks.
"You know me." Davina says, "Always hungry."
Sandra intuits that Davina is bulimic. She isn't sure if she can trust a near stranger with her secret, but it would be worth the risk if she could help.
The students don't realize that they are signing up to be the food and their dietary preferences will determine who will be consuming them.
Their hunger is a quiet, fervent energy, a slowly building frenzy. They are cunning in their design.
"I put a spell on you. You're mine now." A male voice says.

I return to the barn where Stefan shakes dirt from his hair. His eyes are an unnatural golden brown, he wipes Elena's blood from his mouth. Still disoriented, he asks how long it has been.
I loathe Elena's sheepish look, wishing she'd just left him alone.
"You've been down for a little over a day."
His expression twists in wry amusement, tinged with pain. "What's happened now?" He asks as she helps him stand.
"I'll explain on the way, we don't have a lot of time." Elena replies. She hopes Damon won't be too angry, he wanted to honor Stefan's wishes.
"I'm assuming you didn't bring a car?" He says this with an air of contained amusement that is achingly familiar. She smiles, casting her eyes to the dirt floor and dipping her head. He grins suddenly. "You always did love to run."
They had always loved to run together.
Yet, this is not a reunion of lovers, just friends who were lovers once upon a time. Their love has since mellowed into fondness. They exit the barn into the soft summer night. Lucidity here is a sweet thread that pulls me through Elena and then back out to observe. They are so happy to be together. Their hasty separation, though it seemed longer to him, had worn on them. This reunion is like the giddy absence of pain amidst torture. For a time, they don't think about what they will face when they arrive at town, or that Stefan will return to the ground when this new threat is stamped out, only that they are here again, running together.

The moon's cloak of clouds pulls apart to reveal swathes of landscape. The grass is deep blue-green, knee high and soft against my legs and bare feet, Elena is wearing a flowered dress. They run almost human slow. Then I am her, smiling as he draws up next to me. His silhouette is immensely comforting. I trip, tumbling into the sweet grass. I fall and roll, we laugh at my clumsiness. And like a dance, he is there to take my arm and help me up. I have been explaining the threat. This fits seamlessly with the male voice speaking at the end of the last segment. Elena tells him about what the sorcerer said.
"He didn't." Stefan says, smiling.
"He didn't even get it!" Elena laughs, then they share a joke, singing "I put a spell on you, and now you're mine." and express their disbelief that their new villain said it in all seriousness. I separate from Elena and pull back as they reach the river and leap across, as graceful as deer.

There existed a demon in the form of a house, it lured women inside and then corrupted their souls over the course of a thousand-thousand years, making them sacrifice everything in the hope of solving the puzzle of its interior while also insisting that if they had played their cards right...maybe they could have kept their bodies. I watch as the woman reaches the bowels of the structure, the walls are bleached bone, with pits in the floor that squat demon head jump from. She is only a head now, lacking even hair, and her skin is deathly pale. Eagerly she rolls onto a switch in the floor, which triggers a sort of mousehole/slide in the wall to open. Sickened, I observe her dogged journey and departure down the slide. I understand that the house is a liar, and though it would like her to think she could have kept her body, even a small woman would not have fit through that hole in the wall.

I pull myself back to a less unpleasant arena, struggling for something normal. This place feels like it is both inside and outside, but there are many rows of Whirlpool refrigerators, all identical and white. Myself, two managers and a stranger rush over to one of them. I am panicky, as though my life depends on this action. The filters in these refrigerators signify purity, and I drop to my knees before one of them and pop open the casing in the bottom. The filter falls into my hand. It is blue and translucent, filled with water. There are dark particles in the water.
"Is it okay?" Someone whispers, leaning down beside me.
"No, it's corrupted." My voice comes out a whisper. Then IT is there, at the end of the aisle. It is so dark here that I only see the suggestion of ITs form, a two-legged, winged monster. In the space of a breath, it is behind us and the world is consumed by the suffocating dark.. My panic and terror spike, I feel its hot breath on my neck in a ragged gust, and I force myself into a less threatening layer of sleep.

There is a rest stop on a highway in Japan, all the roads that look like they lead out have signs saying NO EXIT. The true road is hidden, only me and my manager M can see it. We tried to mark it with a sapling, but the road became a river, and we marked its edge with colored rocks. We try to gather the others, letting them know we will leave at first light. Dusk here is strange and uncomfortable, smoky and ill-lit.
I'm walking on a golden dirt road, I round a bend...and standing there is a small white house. I immediately don't like the look of it, something about its whiteness. There is a distant pulling at my mind, but I understand that whatever fate this thing is promising will never be mine. Then my best friend Denni is there. She is wearing a deep red 1800's dress. It looks almost satiny, but has a low, unpleasant luster. There's a...matching cape from neck to elbow. There's a gold pattern, outlined in dusky purple. She is fascinated by the house, beginning to be in its thrall, wondering what is inside.
"We should leave." I say.
"We'll leave at first light." She says, waving a hand dismissively.
"You don't understand." I reply, finding it difficult to speak past the tightness in my throat. She takes a step toward the house. "The sun doesn't rise here, Denni. It never rises." She doesn't believe me. Since I am behind her, I take her shoulders in my hands and start to drag her away. It's hard because she won't turn around and it's even darker now, and her backwards walking is seriously creeping me out. There's a dark flash and she twists in my hands. Her shoulders collapse backward as though she is facing me, and her head snaps between her shoulder blades, forehead becoming a chin that dips to her chest, then rises, teeth bared. The cloak is now a veil, obscuring all but her chin and teeth. I try to snatch my hands away but her arms are tangled in mine. I divorce myself forcefully from this awful place, trying to wake.

Because I'm me, I have a false awakening. I believe for a moment that I am safe. Then I feel the weight of sleep paralysis and notice a shape in the blankets next to me. It is the witch, she has followed me from the dream. She is like a bundle of sticks wrapped in leather, her skin is sooty grey, her mouth wet and oily, lips nonexistent. She whispers to me, asking if I want to taste her rotting mouth. I struggle to wake myself up and fail for several long, terrible minutes. When I finally do wake up, I cannot get out from under the weight of the SP and find myself next to her in bed again. Sigh.

I went on a date with someone I met at work, I couldn't concentrate on anything he said because every time I looked at his face there was a different insect crawling across it. He wouldn't listen to me when I told him there was something on his face. We look at the menu and order, some time later the waiter comes back and tells me he needs to take our order again. When I look at the menu it makes even less sense than before so I just point at something to get it over with. Later, I leave without so much as a goodbye and after the fact I wonder if I maybe should have said something to him...then I wonder what I was even doing on a date with someone else while I still have a boyfriend.
The restaurant was a part of my workplace, I find myself heading back to the breakroom, feeling slightly panicky and sad. When I round the corner I find my friend's husband DM standing there. I stop to chat with him.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
"Not really."
"Does it have to do with (boyfriend)? Because when I saw you earlier I asked you how he was doing and you didn't seem to know." He replies. I notice that he has one bright blue eye and one brown.
"It's just...we don't really talk anymore."
"How's that? I mean, you live together."
"I know...I just don't see him." I hesitate. "Things have been pretty bad lately."
He asks me why, sounding faintly curious. I glance away, there's a lump in my throat.
"Um...it's like there's this giant chasm between us." I use my hands to gesture, not sure why I'm telling him. We're not even close friends and my co-workers are everywhere eavesdropping. "It's so wide I can hardly see him anymore."
"You'll find a way to cross it." He says. I know he's trying to help, but it just makes me feel like I have to explain that there is no crossing this gap.
"You don't understand." I say, nearly shouting now. "It's not just a chasm, but a cliff. He's at the top and I'm all the way at the bottom and---"
"Then climb up." he suggests with a faintly gung-ho gesture.
"I have been climbing!" My voice issues from my throat in a whispering, grieving shout. "I've been climbing for years and there's no getting to the top, the cliff wall just keeps on going and I'm so very tired of climbing." I stop suddenly, hands in fists at my sides.
"Surely if you tell him this, he'll find a way down to you."
What a useless thing to say. I know him so much better than that.
"But he won't, he'll just stand there at the top, watching me climb, pretending all the while that he's trying to find a way down me. But really there is no way down and I don't have the strength to keep climbing."|


That wasn't at all depressing. Thanks, subconscious.

What is this thing with my subconscious and criminals. I mean, really?

So I don't remember much. With this thick blanket of apathy I've been living under, my dream recall has become dismal. In this one I am a consultant working with a team of law enforcement trying to sway a prisoner to help us figure out who is murdering people in the prison. He looks like an actor whose name I can't remember. It's really bugging me. Anyway. He's not terribly tall, wiry, with prominent cheekbones and sort of sunken eyes. Greying hair. He spends most of his time being irritated with me, and doesn't want the other inmates to know he's considering the deal we're offering. I do something I shouldn't because I'm worried the other inmates will kill him...I smuggle his killing tool of choice back to his cell, it's a scalpel with a curved blue handle. After I've given it to him, I wonder if I've made a mistake. What's to stop him from killing us all? Can I really believe he won't?

I vaguely remember having the scalpel in a large leather purse, and opening it so the guards could look inside, but it was hidden in a secret pocket? Meh.

Initially the dream centered around Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, how they slowly circled each other with their intricate and subtle webbing of manipulation, keeping each influence small so they would not tip the other off. I saw Hannibal standing in a cavernous dining hall, the walls all carved dark grey stone, with a long table in front of a hearth. He carefully measured out two quarter sized drops of a clear liquid drug, then pulled them into a syringe, smirking all the while.
Then I became a player in this game, a young man in the employ of Will Graham, tasked with infiltrating Hannibal's compound and gathering intel. Over the course of the dream I managed to elude capture every single time, evading the one guard who saw me exiting the building. To my enemy's frustration, I would lock the inner door of the vestibule just as he reached it. He would pull at the door in a useless show of rage, I would grin at him and laugh over my shoulder as I exited the outer door. This time, I proved too slow. He got his hand in between the door and jamb, it never occurred to me to crush his hand. I just released my hold on the handle and began to back away. I shrank from him as he advanced on me with a fist raised over his head in a silent promise of violence. I very much didn't want to be attacked and I couldn't run. He drew back his fist---and I whispered, pleading. "Wait!"
I figured he would ignore me.
But he didn't. He waited. Something behind him distracted me. Absurdly, this something turned out to be an old black woman with grey-white hair sliding between the appliances and the wall in her own escape attempt. It didn't occur to me to call his attention to her so that I might run. Hastily I looked back at him.
"I...don't fancy being beaten to a bloody pulp right now." I said nervously.
He frowned a little. It was like he had waited so long for an opportunity like this and now finding it within his grasp, he no longer cared. His hand dropped to his side. "Fine. Go. I don't want to see you here again."
He wouldn't, Will promised I would not have to be used in this capacity after today. Giddy with relief, I fled. The outside was warm and bright. I wondered at my luck, asking for mercy had stayed his hand. Asking never hurt anything, right?

I took a nap and had sleep paralysis for most of it, I attempted to become lucid but didn't quite make it.
As with most sleep paralysis, dreaming and waking were blended together, so that for the dream I was laying in my bed, but the room around me was slightly different. For one, there was a very tall man in a black suit, with a dark blue dress shirt standing beside my bed. I only got a glimpse at part of his scalp, since he covered his face with one hand. The other hand knocked against my knee, startling me anew ever few seconds. It was very unpleasant, trying very hard to become creepy. Then I realized he used the tapping for emphasis while speaking.
"Mother has died. Mother is dead. Mother is dead."
My voice came out sluggish, "I'm sorry." He tapped my knee again. "Please stop that."
The man paused and then repeated, obviously grief stricken, "She's dead."
I managed to lift my hand to catch his pale grey-white fingers before they tapped again. He ripped his hands from my feeble grip, seeming wild and angry.
"I asked you to stop that."

There was also something about finding the head of a doll in my blankets. I picked it up and smoothed down the hair, it had those eyes that blink when you tilt it. I was waiting for it to blink on its own.
Then I saw a tangle of thread that became a spider, crawling under my blanket.

I got out of bed, my feet heavy. I made it to the patio door and stepped outside onto the rough, wet concrete. It felt so real, but my vision remained dim. I walked out to the front gate, waiting for something to tip me off that I continued to dream, nothing did. One of my eyes remained closed. I put my hand over it, worried that the neighbor I could see standing across the street would think me odd, with one eye stuck shut.

I 'woke' in bed, and made my way out to the patio door. This time it looked different. There was a 3ft, red wooden door where the doggy door usually sits. I opened it and tried to go outside, but I was too big to fit. Of course.

I'm really only posting this because I found it interesting.

I don't recall ever having a more gentle transition from waking to dreaming than what I experienced during my nap yesterday. I was drifting between fragments, constantly shifting, but not restless. I turned over and closed my eyes. In closing my eyes, a new scene became visible on the back of my eyelids. I knew at once I was staring at a wall, and that I was laying on a floor. My hold seemed tenuous like I was at risk of losing lucidity, but the dream was odd that way too. I had many lapses in which I found myself back in bed, and when I closed my eyes the dream reappeared in the same gentle way, but my dream self was confused and worried that I was 'blacking out again' and that if I was blacking out I wouldn't be able to hunt packs of fury when they raged through town. We called zombies Fury. O.o

I don't remember much, I remember quite a few lapses. I know the room I woke in had three fireplaces and there were many small indicators that would have allowed me to become lucid, but I never pursued them. Like, thinking that this house had two kitchens just like my grandparent's house when I was a kid. I realized that wasn't true and experienced a panicked moment of vertigo and a fading to the clarity of the dream, which my dream self took as the edge of a blackout, so I backed off. Or thinking that the man in the room with three fireplaces was my grandfather, and then wondering how he could be my grandfather since both of mine are dead.
And the fact that there were bears hanging out on the deck.

Anyway, many times when I began to lose focus and 'black out' someone would offer me their hand and it would ground me in the dream. I also remember a disturbing conversation with a childhood friend, who I shared the house with in which she points out that I've been suicidal for a while, and she noticed because when I would go out to hunt Fury, if I stepped into the pack I would look left, then look right, and then look right again. She explained that I did this so that if an attack came from the left, I would not be forced to defend myself and I could die.
"Would that be so terrible though? Maybe I shouldn't come back." I reply.


Sometimes, when I am in a dark mental space, my subconscious will save me from it by giving me a soothing dream. I have talked about them before. They instill in me a sense of well being, and even if they don't make me feel good, I no longer feel as bad as I did before I slept.
This one was lovely but very short.
I found myself running along a familiar road, like I was coming off the highway. It was crowded with trees. At the start of the bend, there is a guard rail and a sign marking the merging of the lanes from two on the left side, to one. So it will be a regular two-lane road. I'm confused when I see a car coming at me in the lane that should be going the other way. I jump off the road into the brush and it is only three quick hops before I take to the sky. I rarely have big lucid epiphanies they are subtle realizations. I will notice something is off, or I will look at the sky and think that I want to be there, and then I am.
Anyway. I take to the sky, which is a sweet, green-tinged blue. Many feet of the ground I find rain that is waiting to fall. There are hundreds of individual droplets. I rise, softly turning through the suspended rain. I can feel a cool breeze on my skin, easing the stitch from my brow, and the kiss of rain on my face and arms. I take a deep, slow breath. It's so beautiful here.

I would like to know why I have so many false awakenings. I've grown used to it but it seems...unusual.

Non-Lucid
Actual Waking
False Awakening
Lucid

I left work early today and took a nap before my guitar lesson. I slept from 2:30pm to 3:58p, waking myself up two minutes before my alarm. I spent 10 minutes after that just laying there, waiting for the world to feel less strange and my blood to stop pounding in my ears. I had...11 short dreams? I can't decide if I like the false awakenings because they allow me to practice lucid skills, or if I hate them because they're creepy. And I never have one.

_____I'm in my room, it looks just as it should, but I can hear music playing somewhere in the house. When I turn over to listen, there's a deepening of sorts and I realize that there can't be music playing because I'm home alone. I see movement out of the corner of my eye, through the open door and it startles me into a lighter layer of dreaming. I'm confused, thinking I'm awake. I can't find my phone to check the time, it feels like I've been asleep for hours...
________I find myself out in the cul-de-sac. I take the sidewalk, walking along the curve, the image dims and intermittently is replaced with darkness, I know I'm close to waking and try to stabilize the dream. I once told myself that I should keep moving to give my brain something to work at, if I stop then the images stop and I'll wake up. I don't follow my own advice, and close my eyes to concentrate. It doesn't work.
_____I hear music again.
_____I'm pulled back under and when I leave my duplex, my control is steadfast. The world is bright and it's warm outside. I cross the street, curious about the open door in the duplex on the other side. I try to ignore the creepy man in a black fedora and trench coat eyeing me from one of the inside-curve driveways. He disapproves of my actions. I smile at him and continue on.
Going into the other house supplies a new storyline for me to walk. [B]Immediately inside there is a set of raw-wood riser-less stairs leading to the upper level. There are young girls everywhere, showing up for a party. I know I'm not invited, the two girls are best friends and they're popular, I'm not. I feel a spike of shame for inviting myself, but continue up the stairs. I can see them on the upper level, one is blond with blue eyes, the other has brown-black hair. They look familiar but I can't figure out why. I don't want them to see me, I'm certain they'll be mean. There are other girls everywhere participating in different activities. A smaller girl storms up the stairs, surprising me. I stand there, unsure what to do. Worse, the Birthday Girls appear, and tell the smaller girl they want to play a trust game. She's enthusiastic about participating. The game is stand on a higher step and lean back onto the hands of someone lower down. Then you walk up the stairs that way. Their eyes meet mine only for a moment and I'm so worried about what they'll do. I get out of the way for the blond to push the smaller girl up the stairs, but trip and fall backward. The brunette catches me and walks me up the stairs, giggling. I start laughing too, relieved that they have decided to be kind.
_____Drawn back to my room, there are other people in the house. I consider them family but they aren't people I know. There's a tall man with black hair and a bushy beard, an older man with steel grey hair pulled back into a tail, and two women. I don't recall much about this one. I realize they shouldn't be here and decide to go outside. This time I turn left, I see a cheetah running through the neighborhood and I can tell people are afraid of it, so I tell it to run away. It starts to but, I change my mind. It would be fun to run with a cheetah, I think. So I yell for it to come back, then immediately regret commanding it to do anything. I would rather it had chosen to be at my side.
_____I desperately try to check the time but my phone isn't working right. I'm at it for a while before I realize I'm still dreaming. I attempt to still my panicked heart and instead close my eyes, focusing my mind back and down. I open my eyes when I hear music. The song has clapping at the beginning. The room is...different. I'm laying not on the bed, but on a green chaise lounge set very close to the floor. The curtains are open now making the room very bright. The bed is under the window, the foot of it very close to the open door. I realize it isn't a song playing, but a man singing. The familiarity of his voice draws my eyes to the doorway, he's coming down the hall. He will be here soon. Liam.
Saja lays on the bed dressed how I often see her when I become her in my dreams, in an ivory ankle-length shift. She isn't resting, but she isn't awake either. She's paralyzed. I see her briefly from above, her head tilted back, lips parted, eyes slightly open but rolled up. She has one arm pinned to her chest like she's suffered a stroke. Liam appears in the doorway, just like I remember him, though he actually seems...happy. He's singing a song to Saja, I know it's a message, to correct the awful thing he said to me before, about wishing I/she had died with the others. The lyrics: "I'm here with my beautiful wife, in our wonderful life together." Liam is carrying a tray with tea and a bowl of water with a washcloth on rim. His eyes shift briefly to me before alighting on Saja.
"Are you Walking again, dear?" It indicates he's aware of my presence. Meaning that I have dreamwalked to this scene, and I am myself and Saja as well.
It is difficult to move, my mouth feels so stiff. I groan a reply, loathing the spit that runs from the corner of my mouth. "Noooooo." I manage to sound playful in my denial, slightly sarcastic. I don't want him to scold me for dreamwalking here to see him. He smiles down at her contorted form, one knee is bent, her right foot is up by her hip. He sets the tray down and draws her body out straight, covering her with a blanket, she's broken into a cold sweat. He takes the damp cloth and gently wipes the corner of her mouth, humming to her all the while.
____The previous scene slips away and I am back in bed. I know I'm still dreaming because everything feels heavy...and also because one of my friends from work is sitting by the bed using my nightstand as a table, her back to the wall. She is writing on a yellow legal pad, I can only make out one section that is all X's and 0's, but she pressed down so hard on the paper, obviously in a state of distress. I'm not sure she knows I'm there yet I'm certain I can comfort her anyway. I stroke her hair and tell her it will be alright.
"You're right, you're right. M's the dead one. I'm still here." She says, referring to her husband who passed away a few years ago. I continue soothing her. Eventually she pivots to look at me, becoming an old woman with her white hair back in a short ponytail.
She begins to tell me about what will happen next, but in the past tense like she's lived through it herself and wants to spare me the confusion. "Then the storm swept in from the sea. Everything changed after it obliterated New York City...and he arrived. The_____." I lean closer to hear her better but it doesn't help. I don't understand a single word she says to me, it's all gibberish.
"Wait, I can't understand you."
"Of course not, dear. It's here." Her watery eyes fix on something over my shoulder as terror steals over her features.
Very slowly, I turn. Behind me, looking like a terrifying mix of Mrs. Trunchbull from Matilda and the police sketch of Penelope from her suitor who saw her and flipped the hell out. The woman is thick but tall, with her hair in a bun, wearing Trunchbull's uniform...her eyes are black with no sclera under a rage-contorted brow. Her mouth is perpetually open, showing sharp needle sharp teeth...this thing leers down at me and starts to reach her hand out.
Nope.
I force myself into another layer of sleep and for a moment I think I'm awake. But my body is so very heavy. I can't even turn my head and for a moment I worry that something burst in my brain and I'm as paralyzed as Saja now. I struggle to move and when I see my deformed hand, I come to the relieving conclusion that I am in fact still dreaming.
____I find myself in a room like mine, but all the furniture is gone. There are long windows running the length of the room, very close to the floor. The whole room is painted dark purple. I can feel it looming behind me. I run at the mesh covered window, thinking I'm lucid enough to push through it but I am inhibited by my panic. Instead, I use the door. I think I hear the door open and call for my boyfriend to help me, but I realize that he isn't home. (Progress!) The apartment is laid out like my duplex but it feels higher off the ground, when I escape out the front door there is a black porch and awning, all modern lines, set against the purple building. In the distance I see a massive storm brewing and know that it is what my friend was talking about. I stand with 5 others, watching the horizon.
____I'm standing in front of the family from earlier. I'm trying to explain what's happening to me, but they just think I'm crazy. Behind them, the wall has disappeared and I see a train.
"There's a train."
"A train in our kitchen? You're hallucinating.."
"No I'm NOT. I'm...lucid."
"Obviously you're not lucid."
"I mean I'm dreaming."
They just look at me.
_____More music.
_____I rise to what I think is waking, but quickly realize I'm still dreaming. I'm starting to panic again, this round of dreams is extremely disorienting. I close my eyes and focus, putting my hands together against my chest, fingertips pressing together. I focus back again. There's a deepening and when I open my eyes I am sitting on a wooden examination table. The room is cluttered, tables against every wall and all surfaces covered with tools and stacks of books and papers. There's a frameless doorway at the top of two narrow steps. A creepy old man with round spectacles puts a q-tip with a long stem in my ear. It freaks me out and I cringe.
He picks up another one. I realize then that I'm a child. "Raise your arm, now." When I don't, he pulls my arm out straight and presses the q-tip to my armpit. It feels so weird, almost real. It gets weirder.
Liam appears in the doorway. While he isn't the cruel-faced man I've become acquainted with, neither is he quite the man who spent the morning singing to Saja. I still love him though. All versions of him. His outfit should have looked ridiculous...instead it was...eh, fantastic. The garb was vaguely...Musketeer? A capotain with a wider brim, his copper hair hanging to his shoulders. The material of his clothing is multicolored but by large these many colors suggest purple with threads of gold, green and blue. It's a long doublet.
His mouth set in a grim line, he looks so tired. I wonder if the person I have become in this scene is his child.
He confirms this by saying, "Hop down from there, son. It's time to go."
The kid hops down from the table, leaving me there to stare at the old man and watch Liam and 7 year old son leave the shop.
The old man looks at me. "You know you can't be here alone, you've gotta leave too."
He's right.
I jump down off the table, running to the window just in time to see Liam turn a corner. I press my hands to the glass but I cannot slip through it. The shopkeeper suggests I use the door, I run to it and pull it open, I can feel the metal frame against my hand as I rush out into the alley. The streets here are confusing and narrow inlaid with dark grey cobblestones. I go to where I last saw Liam but it's a dead end, he must have gone a different way. I stop a familiar looking woman who has her hair pulled back, wearing a white tank top, a long bronze necklace, and a leather satchel over her shoulder.
"Have you seen a tall, red haired man?"
She blinks slowly at me and resumes walking.
"Hey, wait."
"No."
"He'd have a child with him?"
"Haven't seen him. Stop talking to me."
____I think again that I am awake, just to find that I am not. I am worried I slept through my alarm and have missed my class. I feel like I've been asleep a very long time. I can't do this anymore. I lay there, the room doesn't feel right at the edges, so I know I'm still sleeping...but I'm so close to waking, I know it. I fight through several layers of fragments, where I look at my phone or can't find it or can't move. The dream is like a pool of tar, refusing to let me go, continually trying to drag me under. I protest violently, mentally wrenching my arm out from under the pillow. It takes too long for it to really happen. I force my eyes to remain open. I'm laying on my stomach, I raise my head and sluggishly toss the blanket aside.
I manage to final wake up, roll onto my back, resisting the draw of sleep and finally check my phone. It's 3:58pm.