"Strollin'" - 11/30/2018 (Lucid)

“Strollin'"
11/30/2018

(Lucid)

(I awoke at about 10:00am, used the bathroom, and talked briefly with my mom about it being my Aunt’s birthday. Figuring I had a short while longer to sleep, I lay back down in bed, on my stomach. The sun was coming in, behind my blinds, so I turned away from the rest of my room and faced the wall.)

Shifting in and out of consciousness, I’d heard my old friend M come into my room. He was just rambling on about something, and I – still facing the wall, laying on my stomach – could hear him pacing around the room beside me. It wasn’t until I felt him sit down on the bed, that the sensation actually startled me, and I lifted my head, to turn to look at him. He was no longer there. (At this moment, I’m not sure whether I actually awoke, fully, and turned to look at him, or if I only did so in the dream. In any case, I realized that I had simply been dreaming him, and I turned back around and lay my head back on my pillow.) Shortly after this, I heard my girlfriend walk into the room – much like M had done. She, too, was talking abstractly about something, and I could hear her pacing about the room. Now, somewhat aware that I had been slipping in and out of consciousness, and not bothering to look her way, I realized that she, too, was not really there. Now only very-slightly conscious, but still not quite in a full-blown dream, I continued to lay there, facing the wall of my softly-sunlit bedroom, allowing the hypnagogia to seep in.

Soon, the voices of my mom and aunt could be heard from the dining room, and for a moment, I thought that she’d stopped by for her birthday. Then, I heard a bunch of kids playing, and they were soon coming into my room as if I wasn’t even there. After just lying there a few more moments, listening to them play in my room, I got curious and finally got up and out of bed. I know that the kids were family members, but I don’t remember if they were my actual relatives or just vague representations. They were trying to play my PlayStation so I - still fuzzy and very lightly lucid - turned on the new Spider-Man game for them, and they began to play. While I watched, my perspective got partially sucked into the game, and I watched Spider-Man and Thanos (who isn’t in the actual game) have some epic battle. Eventually pulling myself away from the TV, I decided that I wanted to go explore, now that I was still “pretty sure” that I was dreaming.

I walked out of the room and into an apartment building stairwell (which I knew was odd, since I live in a one-story house). M was there, again, and I think he was continuing with whatever stream of idle talk he had been getting into, back in the room. Stepping over to the stairwell, and largely ignoring him, I decided to actively check my suspicion that I was dreaming, and I jumped up and attempted to hover in place. It wasn’t exactly hovering, but I descended back to the walkway much slower than the normal pull of gravity. With that, I had killed all doubt, and was 100% sure that I was dreaming. Wanting to do some exploring, I vaulted over the stairway railing and slowly floated down to the first floor. The bottom of the stairwell was a mix between a stairway and a living room – more “inside” than “outside,” as most apartment stairwells are. On the far side of this room, there was a front door with decorative glass paneling, and I began to walk toward it, wondering what I was going to do with my lucidity.

Moving closer to the door, I noticed, through the glass, that there was something crossing the walkway. It was a baby stroller – a lone baby stroller, with no one pushing it. It rolled right to the middle of the entryway, just on the other side of the door, and stopped on its own, as if waiting for me to come and investigate it. Of course, I knew where this was going. This was a horror setup, if I ever saw one, but I was not about to let the creepiness bother me. Defying my brain’s suspected attempt to start freaking me out, I walked straight to the door to check out this stroller situation. Instead of opening the door, though, I attempted to walk right through it. By now, the dream was very vivid, and instead of phasing effortlessly through the door, I had to *push* through it, as I sank into it, and it clung to my body like taffy when I emerged on the other side. Walking up to the stroller on the sidewalk, I looked inside and found it completely empty – a bit anti-climactic, but I figured it could have been worse.

Starting to walk down the street, now, I tried to think of something else to do. I thought about DreamViews, and what the task of the month might have been, but I realized it had been a while since I checked the site, and I had no idea what the latest lucid tasks were. Traffic was fairly busy, on the street beside me, with a line of parked cars separating myself from those rushing by.  Rather nonchalantly – looking for some way to use my lucid ability, while not thinking of anything particularly intriguing – I reached my hand out to a parked car and did a sharp upward gesture, flinging the car off the ground and flipping it toward traffic. It smashed down, upside-down, onto a passing car, which then smashed into another car and caused a pretty-intense pile-up in the street, as car after car crashed into the first two. I couldn’t help but marvel at the level of detail in the shattering glass and twisting metal. It was all too realistic. I’m very rarely the type of person that gets caught up in thinking of dream characters as real, sentient beings, but there was a moment where I started thinking about multiple-dimensions and consciousness-based realities, and part of me felt a little guilty for the wanton violence.

Continuing down the street, I came upon a highway on-ramp, and flew up onto the intersecting road. There was an 18-wheeler passing by, and I landed on top of the bed, hitching a ride while it rolled along – rather slowly, for a highway. Stepping toward the back of the bed, I looked down to see that – along with the cargo bed, itself – the truck was carrying a smaller trailer, behind it, which had a household A/C unit sitting atop it. The unit was running, as if it were fully functional, though it obviously wasn’t connected to anything. Watching the fan blades spinning around, beneath the wire grate, curiosity again took hold of me. For no real reason – other than simply wondering what would happen – I jumped off of the bed of the truck and aimed my feet at the A/C unit, smashing down through the grate and into the spinning blades of the fan, completely destroying the unit as sparks flew and the rotating fan blades broke apart on my skin as if I were made of steel. The central column continued to spin, broken blades flapping and sputtering against my body, but ultimately causing no pain. Sufficiently entertained, I pulled myself out of the broken unit and kept walking down the street.

The only other thing I remember about walking around was passing a lake where a small turtle was making its way onto the shore. Naturally, I became suspicious of whatever else might be living in that body of dream-water, and – right on cue – an alligator sprang out of the water, toward me. It startled me enough to make me scramble back from it, but I quickly remembered that none of this was real. I stepped back toward the gator and stuck out my hand, about to let it chomp down on my arm. The closer I got, though, and the more vicious it seemed – thrashing around and snapping its jaws at me – the more apprehensive I got. Opting out of testing the pain factor for a second time, I swung my hand to one side, picking up the gator with telekinesis and flinging it far out into the lake.

It wasn’t long after this, before the dream began unraveling. I found myself back in my bed, in much the same situation as before. M was there, once again, just as before. Getting momentarily caught up in the idea that I had awoken, I realized that the dream had been a long one, and that I was going to start losing my memories of what happened. I immediately grabbed a notepad; dropped back down on the bed, on my stomach, and began writing some notes about what I could remember, from the beginning of the dream. After writing a few words, I remembered that I generally don’t use a paper journal. Again, I realized that I was still dreaming, but I could definitely feel myself beginning to wake. I tried to use the last few moments of the dream to write a few more words on the notepad – trying to solidify as many of the previous events in my mind as I could, before waking. As I was doing this, I felt pressure on the bed, near my feet, and I could feel an ominous, very unwelcome pair of hands creeping their way across the bed and up my legs. Again, I knew that my subconscious was messing with me – looking for one, last scare. More annoyed than frightened, I kicked my feet and yelled at the creepy hands to “get the hell out of here!” and continued trying to jot down as many events from the dream as I could remember until the dream fully unraveled and I (actually) awoke in my bed.