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Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #159: Bears

I’m in a restaurant fashioned like a log cabin, talking on the phone with my friend “Dragon”. He’s telling me about the new job that our friend “AJ” just got and he’s chiding me because I know so little about it. We finish talking and I wander outside to find myself on a wooden deck high up in the mountains.

Now I feel like I’m part of a video game and I’d forgotten to do something important. Three pale bald men in dark trench coats (sort of like the guys in Dark City) come floating toward me. I turn to run, but one crashes into me, pushing me off the side of the mountain. I fall, unharmed, to some rocks far below. I want to get the hell away from these guys, so I duck into a little cave and wind up in some kind of white-walled room that looks like a lab. I wonder whether I’m actually playing a video game or just dreaming and realize that yes, I’m dreaming.

There’s a bed in the room that I’m in and a few other people milling around. Their identities don’t seem to be all that stable, but for much of the dream, one of them appears to be Anna Kendrick. I feel like they’re all trapped here, so I say, “This is all a dream. You don’t have to stay here!” I head for the doorway and they all follow.

When I get close to the door I remember my goal of cranking my dream vividness up before anything else. I decide not to let myself get in too much of a hurry. There’s a weird section of carpet by the door so I kneel down to touch it, telling everyone with me to do the same. “This is my lucid dream. None of us have to believe that this is real.” (I’m addressing them, but mostly reminding myself.)

There’s a box of toys on a shelf to my left, and I rummage through it, intending to bring myself even more into the scene. I’m surprised to find a stuffed bear that I gave to Wife when we were teenagers! I pull it out and take it with me, sort of hugging it to me the way a little kid would.

We emerge from the lab into a chamber with hallways in four different directions. I try to remember my goals, but all I can remember is the Great Pyramid. I know there’s another one I’m not remembering but I can’t figure it out. I start to feel pretty stressed about my memory and get worried I’ll wake myself up if I get too wrapped up in this. (I was forgetting Great Barrier Reef!)

I walk down one of the halls until we step out into an amphitheater filled with apparent worshippers. They're performing some kind of sinister chant and at the bottom of the amphitheater, a huge crackling ball of dark purple energy is taking shape. Everyone’s participating in the chanting except me now, including Anna Kendrick and the rest of the companions from the lab.

I become sure that they’re summoning some kind of dark god. I know that I shouldn’t worry about stuff like this, but I just want to get away before this causes me a problem. I turn around and decide to ignore their evil ritual before it becomes a nuisance for me. Slightly annoyed by my own fear, I clutch the stuffed bear to me again, hugging it roughly as I flee up a set of stairs..

There are a couple of guys sitting near the top of the stairs as I emerge into daylight. One of them, a black guy in a checkered shirt, asks me, “What’s with the teddy bear?” I explain that I’m using the bear to help keep myself anchored into this dream. I hand him the bear just as a crush of people come trampling down the stairs like it’s rush hour. Pretty soon I can’t see the guy anymore through the crowd.

Rather than get frustrated trying to recover the bear, I move on. At the top of the steps, I see my son’s green Beanie Baby bear, so I scoop it up and hold it as a replacement. I walk onward, passing by the front entrance of a hotel. A couple of guys come up to me and offer me a $1200 discount on a Hawaiian Airlines flight. I think that this sounds like a great deal but I tell them, “Sorry, I’m having a lucid dream, though. So maybe offer that to someone who can use it.”

I lose the dream, wake up, and hold on for DEILD. The DEILD works and I emerge back into a second-story bedroom. I grab onto the bedding, kneading it with my hands, focusing on making the scene super vivid. It works, and I keep doing this for a while until I realize I’m sort of afraid to let go. Stop being a weenie! I force myself to let go and take a flying leap at the window, intending to phase through.

The phase gets stopped cold, though, and I bounce right off the window. I will the window to come down, which it immediately does… and behind it is another pane of glass! I lower that one as well, seeing a third pane. I’m starting to feel slightly irritated by this, and fortunately when I lower this pane, it’s a clear shot to the outside.

I scramble through the window, catching my reflection on the outside of an office building across the street. Even though I’m crawling through the window, my reflection is walking upright like there’s nothing in the way. My reflection and I both laugh at the error.

When I drop down to the street below, I feel the sun bright to my left side, which I believe is west. I feel slightly nervous about heading into such bright light, so I turn eastward. I know that the Pyramid is somewhere ahead of me. There’s a slight wobble in the dreamworld, but it stabilizes as I walk on. I take to the sky, and with one final wobble, the dream collapses for good.

These were the most realistic non-SSILD false awakenings I think that I've ever had. Made for a fun series!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #121: Barefoot

I'm dimly aware that I'm dreaming in some scene that I can't remember, and as I become lucid, I'm thrown straight into the void. I hang on for dear life and start rubbing my hands together like crazy. It feels solid and realistic and pretty soon I feel comfortable that I'm anchored pretty well into the dream.

Right away I remember that I want to get to the Colosseum. Like the previous dream, I want to build the Colosseum scene from the void. This time I choose to do so by constructing the Colosseum's inner stone wall. I reach my left hand out and yes, it feels like it's dragging along stone. I walk along this wall, dragging my fingers upward until they reach a... ceiling? No, that's wrong. I deny the ceiling's existence and after a bit my fingers keep climbing until they reach the wall's top.

Now I'm feeling the top and side of the wall with both hands. It feels very realistic now, and the scene comes sharply into focus. I see that I'm rubbing some isolated piece of stone that's standing in a modern-looking, well-lit library. It's very cleanly decorated and only sparsely populated with bookshelves, and two spiral staircases lead up to a second floor. I see a couple of friends standing around. Near a table is "AJ", and standing across from her is "LS". Neither notice me. Further away I spot an extremely attractive female stranger (Asian, mid-20s, long hair). I suppress a strong impulse to approach her for "that thing" and instead turn toward the glass door, phasing through to the outside.

Outside is a plaza with a broad set of bricked steps leading down to a grassy area. At the top of the stairs to my right, two teenage girls are seated at a white metal table having a meal (lunch?) "Which way to the Colosseum?" I ask them, and one girl points immediately across the plaza, swallowing like she has a mouthful of food she wants to down before speaking. "Thanks!" I say, and start flying in that direction. I get high enough to spot a distant tower and a tree-lined street nearby, but the sound of a wet sneeze over the baby monitor sends me into the black. I keep my eyes closed, trying to DEILD, but I hear Wife groan unhappily, and now I don't think I can get back to sleep.

I open my eyes and find myself lying in bed in our darkened bedroom. (False awakening.) I get out of bed and reach over to grab my journal, expecting my Kindle Fire to be on top, but it's missing. Where the hell did it go? I step into the master bathroom, close the door so I don't disturb Wife, and try to flip the light switch on. Instead the fan comes on. I try the other switch. Fan again. Come on, what the hell? I'm going to forget everything. Both switches at once, and still no light, just the fan. I hit the nose pinch and blow through. Amazing.

I go back to the bedroom and it's brighter now. Wife's missing, and the shutters are open. I leap up, phase through the window, and perch on a dream balcony that's outside. The balcony overlooks a courtyard far below, very much unlike the geography of our real house. I fly out over the courtyard, soon coming to a forest of extremely tall trees. The trees are like pines that stretch far into the sky, coming close to touching the cloud cover. I think that if I can just get over these trees, I'll be able to look down at a huge chunk of the landscape, spot the Colosseum, and fly there for Europe Task of the Year.

I fly higher and higher, trying to crest just over the treetops. I get close to the top but keep feeling resistance. I know that it's mental, so I keep shrugging it off, insisting to myself that I am flying higher each time. I approach a cloud and do this flailing little grasp for it. For some reason, I briefly see stars and get the sensation of my heartrate increasing. This takes me straight into...

A false awakening in our bedroom. I look at the clock and see that the screen's completely dark. I nose pinch and blow through. I approach the window, phase through, and hop out onto a ledge. I'm over another courtyard (this one with a pool), and about 3 stories up, suddenly feeling very nervous about attempting flight. I just became lucid. Am I sure? I hit a secondary nose pinch and make sure that this feels vaguely like "dream gravity". I think about the phase and the multiple nose pinches, and decide that I should be okay.

I'm still nervous, though, and when I jump, I float to the ground rather than fly. The landing's soft, and I'm sure that I'm dreaming, but I decide not to push it with the flying just now. I walk around the pool, scanning the crowd for a while, seeing many familiar faces -- my friend "The Dragon" and his wife, my father-in-law, and a couple of other friends that I can no longer recall. I walk past the shallow end of the pool, past where some kids are playing some game with a ball. At the edge of the courtyard is an ivy-covered archway that I'm planning on walking through, maybe turning it into a gateway to the Colosseum.

I remember to try to summon NewArtemis. As I pass by the stairway out of the pool, without stopping, I extend my hand toward the pool, and say, "[NewArtemis], are you ready to go?" It works! Art emerges from the water, walks up the stairs, and hops out of the pool.

Her voice is faint, but as she walks along she says, "Don't want to wear shoes. Don't like to wear shoes."

I don't know what to make of this, so I just go back to my stuff: "The Colosseum's right through here. You ready?"

"Yeah!" Her voice is still faint, but much more enthusiastic. As we approach the doorway, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #114: The Vampire Apocalypse

Wife has opened a restaurant and somehow all of the recipes have been lost. She and I are in some place that looks like a choir room, desperately searching through a pile of hundreds of envelopes for the one that contains them. Suddenly I become lucid, but it's a very low level of lucidity. I grasp that I'm dreaming and I understand that this gives me awesome powers, but I have no idea that I could just ignore this whole recipe thing.

I point at the pile of envelopes, willing the recipes to emerge. One of the envelopes floats a couple of feet in the air and opens, freeing a few sheets of paper that I know have the recipes on them. I grab them out of the air and hand them to Wife. She starts talking excitedly and waving her hands in these grand gestures, but I soon wake up.

I hold still for DEILD, but after a brief wait emerge non-lucid sitting in a small, boxy room that's shaped vaguely like a confessional booth. My friend "Dragon" and I are laughing and swapping stories of all the stupid stuff we did when we were kids. From outside my friend "RF" knocks on the booth and then sort of phases or melts through the wall. I realize that this has to be a dream but immediately wake up.

Back down for DEILD, again winding up in a non-lucid, this time in the hallway of my childhood home. Our neighbor "Mr. G" from when I was a kid is wandering around in our backyard, holding a bag of lawn clippings. I know that he's helping me try to find a 4-leaf clover in this bag of clippings. He becomes angry that I'm not helping and starts throwing the lawn clippings everywhere. I suddenly remember trying to DEILD and become lucid again. There's a door at the back of the house that's not usually there and I walk toward it, preparing to phase. The door swings open just as I approach, though, and again, the dream ends.

I look for another DEILD and again come up non-lucid. I'm at home with Wife now and she's telling me a story of how someone was attacked by a vampire downtown today. We worry about what this means and whether she's safe going to work.

Time advances, and now it's early morning. The sun's just coming up and I'm at the back door, looking out over our back yard toward the horizon. I see a swarm of bats approaching and I know that overnight vampirism has become a plague that's spread throughout the world. I tell Wife that we have to hide, and we run upstairs to the bedroom to bunker ourselves in.

Once upstairs I peer out of a tiny window to the street below. About a dozen vampires are congregating on the street with a handful of human prisoners. The leader of the vampires, blonde and dressed completely in black, shouts bizarre warnings and threats to those of us holed up in our homes. He kicks one of the prisoners, a middle-aged man, to the ground, sprays him with liquid from some kind of squeeze bottle, and lights him on fire.

I duck down from the window, shaken and frightened. "They're killing everyone," I say to Wife. "Is this like what happens in The Passage? I haven't read that far yet." (The Passage is a book that I'm slowly reading.)

Wife nods. "It's exactly the same."

"Okay," I say. "What did they do? How do we fight these things?"

She shakes her head gravely. "I can't give spoilers."

I think this makes complete sense. "You're right. Maybe if we shoot them in the head...?" I now have the AR-15 in my hands.

"That won't work," she says. Then from out of nowhere, she very graphically and directly demands that we have sex. This is so completely out of character (particularly in a vampire apocalypse) that I realize it's all a dream.

"Don't worry," I say. "It's just a dream." I kiss her for a moment. In spite of her earlier insistences, the mood is completely non-sexual. I stand up, thinking about phasing outside.

"What are you doing?" she says. "Stay down!"

"This is a dream. There's nothing to worry about." But I can see that she doesn't believe me. I know that she's just a DC, but at this point I'm really attached. I decide that I'll just carry her out of this scene, change locations, and hopefully this nasty dream plot will die off. I kneel down to scoop her up as the dream fades...