06/01/2023 - "The Batfather" (Lucid)

"The Batfather"

06/01/2023

(Lucid)

I was Bruce Wayne, in this dream, and the first thing I remember is being attending a seedy, Mafia-style meeting in a penthouse, discussing the political side of crime in the city. Apparently married to Selina Kyle aka Catwoman (as they are, now, in the comics), who was in the meeting with me, she and I had a daughter together, who was waiting for us outside of the building. During the meeting, which seemed to comprise more of the city's gangsters than lawmakers, Selina and I had received a phone call from our daughter, urging us to come downstairs, seemingly due to some kind of emergency. There was an enormous window, on one side of the room, out of which we could see a large gothic cemetery that was directly across the street from the building. Our daughter - probably in her early 20's - was sitting solemnly on top of a grave with her phone in hand. It didn't really look like she was in any danger, so we figured she probably just wanted to talk about something pressing, but we couldn't get her to tell us what it was.

Excusing ourselves from the meeting, momentarily, Selina and I went downstairs to find out what was going on. We were dressed in all black, and walking over to the cemetery felt more like we were attending a funeral than a business meeting. When we got to our daughter, it was obvious that she was just beside herself with grievance, as if she was actually mourning someone buried beneath her. What she told us, though, in the most entitled and melodramatic way possible, was that she was lamenting over some feud with her "social rival," wherein her rival, somehow, taken away our daughter's ability to purchase her favorite bread. It was literally in the context of the other girl having had our daughter's favorite sandwich shop shut down, or something like that, and our daughter was just in the deepest throws of depression about it. At one point, during her overemotional rant, she even started singing some sort of popular emo song, practically in tears, while changing the lyrics on the fly, into an improvised solemn ballad about the loss of her favorite comfort food. (It was actually kind of hilarious, how over the top she was being. Lol). 

 At first, I tried to give her some fatherly advice, about just "letting it go" (and I was genuinely surprised at the sound of my own voice, when I talked to her, because I actually sounded like Kevin Conroy's Batman, instead having a more mundane "Bruce Wayne" voice), but she wasn't trying to hear any of it. Despite my attempts to make her feel better, or more accepting, she simply scoffed, disappointedly, and gave me a sort of "so...what are we going to do about this?" gesture. It was clear, she wanted retribution.

Even though Selina and I thought she was being excessively dramatic...we were not about to let our "little girl" down. We just kind of looked at each other and Selina just shrugged her shoulders, with a grin, and nodded her head as if to say "well...that settles it." As if the grave the younger woman was sitting on was intimately connected to our family, Selina pressed a hidden button on the large, ornate headstone, and a secret compartment opened up before us, revealing a massive cache of high-end firearms and other weaponry. The three of us took a few moments stocking up on enough weapons to invade a town, and making sure our ammunition was fully stocked. I remember having a hard time pulling the slide back on one of my semi-auto handguns. After a bit of effort, I was finally able to chamber around. However, the moment I did, the entire gun just fell apart in my hands, like it was a LEGO model.

Laughing at the frustrating time I was having, Selina cracked a joke about how we were all going to have to "fight naked," if I didn't hurry up and get my gear in order. Just as she said this, as if on cue, a black luxury car came speeding onto the cemetery lawn, from the nearby street. It slid to a stop, not far from us, and a man and woman jumped out of the front seats. It was, apparently, our daughter's rival and her rival's boyfriend, and they were already looking for trouble. Immediately, and with devilishly delighted expressions on their faces, they both took up their own weapons - the young woman wielding machine pistols while the guy dropped down to one knee and held up a full-sized RPG launcher. Wasting no time, he fired the weapon and a single rocket streamed into across the street, almost parallel to us, and slammed into the large upper-floor window of the building we had just come out of, setting off a massive explosion and, presumably, killing everyone attending the meeting inside. The woman, herself, just started firing away at us, with her machine pistols, and the three of us had to dive for cover behind the decorative grave. I was still having no luck in getting my guns in working order, while Selina and our daughter started returning shots of their own.

Feeling the impending danger of having these massive firearm malfunctions, I began to deduce that I might be dreaming, but I wasn't 100% sure, just yet. I took a peek around the side of the grave, that I was using for cover, and saw the man loading another RPG into the launcher and take aim at the window again, apparently attempting to "double-tap" the meeting room with another explosion. Knowing he was too far for me to attack him any other way, and banking on my suspicion that I might be dreaming, I lifted my hand at the moment when he fired the weapon, trying to cause the rocket to veer off-course with telekinesis.

I was both shocked and relieved, when the rocket quickly changed direction and crashed down to a spot on the far end of the cemetery. Immediately, I became lucid without any doubt I was dreaming. With newfound confidence, I jumped up and hopped over the grave, watching the man pull out his own set of sub-machine guns and aim them at me. The last thing I remember from the dream is rushing toward him in a full sprint, holding a hand out in front of me and deflecting his hail of gunfire with more telekinesis and closing the distance between us. I woke up before being able to reach him, though.

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"Temple of the Calhoun" - 07/21/2008

"Temple of the Calhoun"

07/21/2008

Dream Two:

At a school graduation. Everyone there was dressed up in suits, dresses or costumes with props, just to be silly. Some huge guy was walking around dressed as Hellboy, and he was pretty much leading us to wherever we had to go, within this huge school with like 10 floors. I can’t remember exactly what I was wearing, but I know I had my Daywalker sword, and Cloud Strife’s seven-piece sword that I was carrying around with me. My friend, B, was trying to get out of coming with us to the graduation, for some reason, and we had to practically drag him around because he was trying to keep from participating.

Later (my notes say something about “Indian Cloth” here, but I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean), huge bugs appeared outside the building. They were flying around by the thousands, and swarming in front of all the windows, hovering and looking in. They began crashing in through the windows. It was only one at first, and I watched disembodied as it transformed into some slimy creature that looked like it was straight out of Cloverfield, chased down some kid, and pinned him down. It traced a “finger” (if you could really call it that) around the kids eyeball, and then it reached in. My perspective looked away from the scene and, though I couldn’t see it, I heard the young guy screaming as the eye was pulled out.

More of these things came crashing through the windows, first, seemingly as pods with wings, but then transforming, as the first did, into more of those legged creatures. I started running, and they soon had many of the floors blocked off, including the way out. I remember racing from floor to floor, up and down the now slime-coated (and stopped) escalators, dodging these things all over the place. After some time, it seemed like I was the only human still left in the building. I began stabbing and slashing my way through these things with the two swords that I was carrying, though all the details of that are gone.

I also remember some sort of voice talking about how the school had turned into the “Temple of the Calhoun,” (“Calhoun” being the name of the bug-things, apparently) but I don’t remember much of the context of that either.

"Hancock's Powers" - 07/20/2008

”Hancock’s Powers”

07/20/2008

Dream One:

 

(I don’t remember very much of this one at all – just going off of my notes, and even those don’t really bring most of the beginning of the dream back into memory.)

I started off this dream with Hancock’s powers (was watching the movie when I went to sleep). Apparently, I started off by going around and helping people, at times. I ended up with a group of friends, including C., who used to hang out in my old neighborhood. Another girl in the group turned out to be my “opposite,” like Charlize’s character in the movie. 

We were, then, at someone’s house. The unfamiliar girl had been crying, for some reason, and I spent a large part of the dream consoling her, hugging and kissing her while our group was waiting around for C. while she was busy with something. We were told that we had to go meet C. at “Covington” something-or-other. I knew where it was, so we all left the house. The mystery girl slipped up to me to hold my hand and, after walking for some time, her expression changed, and she immediately seemed really apprehensive about something. Without disclosing why, she decided that she was going to split from the group and walk a separate way. I asked if she knew something that she wasn’t telling us, and she just refused to answer. She went the opposite way, and the rest of us continued walking to the neighborhood where we were supposed to meet C.

Shortly afterward, I found myself walking through a strange house, alone. All of a sudden, some kid in his late-teens jumped out from around a corner, slashing at me with a knife. He caught me by surprise, so I instinctively reacted and grabbed him. I noticed, though, how strong he was. Holding him back, as best I could, I was still suffering glazing cuts and scratches from the knife proving that, along with having lost my super-strength, I was, also, no longer invulnerable to attack.

We struggled on our feet, for a short while, and ended up crashing through a nearby window. When we hit the ground, on the outside, I felt the boy's head ended up cracking on something. Blood began pouring out of it, profusely. Having merely been defending myself, I never meant to kill this kid. I had, apparently, lost my powers after having been around my "opposite," for quite a while, and I was pretty sliced up, but I picked the stranger up and carried him down the street, where there just happened to be some medics in an ambulance. It turned out that the kid has lost too much blood, though, and it was too late to save him.

"Dirty Deeds" - 03/22/2008

"Dirty Deeds" 

03/22/2008

(This dream started with some weird H.I. that kept flashing in and out, about the movie Van Helsing. It was the part where Anna and Van Helsing were talking in the rain and drinking absynthe, then they fall into the shaft where the Frankenstein monster lived. The actual, heavy dreaming didn't start until after that.)

It was the day after the cave-in (from the H.I.), and I was with a group of guys that had come to the site. The cave-in was much more exaggerated than it had previously been, and there were huge tree stumps and boulders and whatnot covering this giant hole. We weren't there because we'd heard about the monster, though. We were there because we heard there was gold there.

We began trying to clear away some of the debris, but were having a lot of trouble, because everything was just much bigger and heavier than we expected. Out of nowhere, some of the guys in the group turned guns on the rest of us, and some more of their friends drove up. The leader of their part of the group said that we're going to help him and his boys get the gold, and then they are going to keep it for themselves, or they would shoot us all. We were forced to work some more and some stuff proved to just be too big to move. One guy, with this smug look on his face, said something like: "At least I came prepared," and he lit a stick of dynamite and threw it on the pile, ignoring the fact that we were still standing on it, working. We all ran for our lives and I jumped behind the heavy door of one of their trucks, just as the dynamite exploded and sent debris flying everywhere, one huge, splintered log flying right passed where I was hiding.

Happy with the effectiveness of the dynamite, they started using more and more of it, until we finally exposed some crates. Opening the crates, there was nothing but paper inside, folded and stacked up on top of each other. At first, everyone was like "What the f*ck?" and the guys with the guns were beginning to get irate. Then they started going through the papers and discovered that they were unsigned deeds to some kind of building complexes that had a total value of millions of dollars. The mood changed pretty quickly and, for a while, there was a lot of celebrating on the side of the hijackers. However, from the looks of the guys in my side of the group, I could tell that there was a pretty intense power-struggle that was about to go down..

"Politic.....tick.....ticks" 03/14/2022

"Politic.....tick.....ticks"

03/14/2022

The first thing I can remember is that I was lying in bed, in my old Lake Mary home. My bedroom light was on, and I couldn't tell whether I was drifting off to sleep or just waking up, but I had that sort of "in between states" feeling that tends to come when right on the cusp of sleep. Suddenly, the bedroom door slammed open, and a group of what I can only describe as "prominent far-right pundits and politicians" came trudging in. Apparently, they were being ushered in by someone who I'd identified as a "rival from work" (though I don't think this person represented anyone in waking life), and they all began ransacking the room, supposedly looking for something of value. By their hurried and almost cartoonishly-sinister demeanor, I could tell that they were right on the verge of some gargantuan plan coming into fruition and, for some reason, they needed something in my room to make it happen.

As they searched, I tried to pull myself out of the bed, in order to confront them. I found, though, that I could not move. I was pinned to the bed by some unseen force and, no matter how I tried, I could not come to move any of my limbs, or even raise my head far from my pillow. (It felt very much like sleep paralysis, though I couldn't make the connection, at the time.) All I could figure, was that these intruders had some apparatus of control over me, that was making me unable to move. I struggled against it, for the entire time they were in the room, and it wasn't until they all filed back out of it - leaving me unsure of whether or not they'd gotten what they were searching for - that I broke free. Now, able to throw myself out of bed, I ran to the door, to go after them. The moment that I opened the door, however, the scene completely changed.

I was, now, in what looked to be a hotel room. My fiancé and I were making the bed, and I was telling her about the events that had happened, as if they'd happened the night before. As I explained the events to her, she seemed to be familiar with the person that I'd supposedly worked with, from the story, and it was then that I realized the events I was describing to her never happened, because she doesn't really know any of my old coworkers. Because of this, I realized I was describing a dream to her, rather than a memory (though it wasn't enough to realize that I was still, in fact, dreaming as I told her this story). We hurriedly tidied the rest of the room, knowing that we were, apparently, running late to get to some important show or function, within the hotel, and that we had to leave as soon as possible.

My recollection of the dream skipped ahead, and we were coming back from whatever gathering had taken place. My daughter was with us (though she was younger than in waking life), this time, as we returned to the hotel room. Before bed, I'd noticed that she was writing something in her binders, quite intently, but I was unsure of whatever it was that had her so wrapped up in it.

Flash-forward, once again, and I was waking up in the hotel bed. (It wasn't  a full-on 'false awakening,' because it was still continuing the narrative of the current dream.) Just as the first time I'd 'awoken,' though, I found myself caught in paralysis and unable to raise myself from the bed. My fiancé and daughter were nowhere to be found. Suddenly, as before, the hotel room door burst open, and in flooded the same group of far-right provocateurs from earlier. The ransacked the room with the same fervor as they had in the first scenario, and one of them went digging ferociously through my daughter's papers. I kept trying to look over this one's shoulder, to see what might have been so important that could be found in a child's notes. However, I was still pinned to the bed, by an unseen force, and couldn't get a good vantage point.

Before long, the intruders gestured that they'd found what they were looking for, and that they were ready to "begin" whatever it was they were looking to set in motion. As if prepping for some sort of cult-like ritual, they all took up various positions, around the room - one of which was right next to the side of my bed - and laid down on the floor. They closed their eyes in unison, as if preparing to fall asleep, and remained completely still. Still pressed to the bed, I had no idea what they were doing, but I could not shake the feeling of dread creeping over me.

Abruptly, I 'woke up' again, still in the hotel bed. Though I was no longer paralyzed, I immediately knew that something was terribly wrong. My fiancé was nowhere to be found, but my daughter was asleep on her own bed. Fearful that something big was going on, I hopped out of bed and woke my daughter, taking her by the hand and rushing out of the bedroom to find my fiancé.

The moment we opened the door, though, everything 'stopped.' Rather, I should say that everything 'slowed to a crawl,' in terms of time, itself. No matter how hard we ran through the hotel hallways, we were objectively moving in slow motion. It wasn't just us, though. Everything in the hotel was happening in slow motion. People were rushing out of their hotel rooms with the same degree of urgency as we were, yet everyone was observably trapped in the same bit of temporal distortion as the two of us. Still able to think in real time, despite my limbs not following suit, I immediately knew that this was a part of whatever political masterplan was being put into effect. I noticed that the hotel architecture was changing, as we rushed through the corridors at a snail's pace. Normal hotel room doors were suddenly transforming into heavy, riveted metal doors with no handles or knobs. It was as if some entity was changing the landscape in order to try to either trap us or funnel our escape in one direction.

Up ahead, I could see the hallway opening that led to the central courtyard of the hotel. We were a few stories up, and I was pushing my legs as hard as I could, fighting through the debilitating sluggishness that we were somehow locked in, preparing to start a painfully-slow descent through the staircase. It was then that I noticed wave after wave of other hotel patrons leaping from their respective balconies within the courtyard - generally plummeting to their deaths as they fell in completely submissive positions as impacted the ground with the full force of gravity, despite their slow motion freefalling. Still in a belabored sprint, panic washed over me. I only had a moment to ponder what was happening, before I reached the threshold of the open staircase. Since I was still able to think in real-time, I felt confident that I had enough control of myself to take a leap of faith and, clutching my daughter's hand tighter, I took one leap, to clear the first section of stairway, landing with one foot on the pivotal railing before launching off of that one and descending the full four or five stories in a single bound. We touched down, softly, in the grass of the open courtyard and continued our slow-mo sprint toward the nearest exit, which would take us back through the corridors but, instead, on the ground level.

It was around this time - running into the closest covered hallway - that I began to notice the music that was permeating the environment, as if it were being pumped directly into my brain. (This dream took place in the middle of a Wake-Back-to-Bed attempt to induce a lucid dream, and I had meditative binaural music playing in my headphones as I slept. I believe that it was the slow, ambient tone of the music in the waking world that prompted the time distortion in the dream. It was very "Inception"-like.) Ahead of us, a young boy was standing outside of what seemed to have been his hotel room. Running in slow motion gave me a moment to take in his expression, and I could see that he was frantically confused, almost to the point of sobbing. In a manner that sounded like an audio tape played at a fraction of normal speed, I could hear the boy talking to himself about how he "had been in one position," and then found himself instantly shifted to "another position," as if he had witnessed a time-jump or teleportation of some kind, and could not figure out what was happening. It was in hearing this boy's bewilderment, that it solidified in my mind that this was some sort of time-loop or time-manipulation plot that was coming to pass. This was not real life. I had to be trapped in sort of "pocket dimension" or something (ala "Dr. Strange").

Continuing passed the boy, my daughter and I ran through subsequent hallways, unsure of exactly where we were going, at this point, but just running and trying to escape this horrible, surreal, situation. The further we ran, and through each subsequent room that we passed, everything seemed to be getting darker and darker, until we finally barged into one room that caused my vision to go completely black. The feeling of being in an enclosed area faded away, and all I could feel was a dark, empty void. I felt disembodied. Then, I remembered being paralyzed on the hotel bed. I remembered the invaders who came in and did their strange ritual of laying down and seeming to lose consciousness. I remembered that one of them had laid down right beside my bed.

With that logic, I had the feeling that this was a dream. However, I thought it was a dream that I was having while rendered unconscious by the political terrorists who might still be asleep, next to me, in the hotel. Still in the black void, I felt that wave of paralysis wash back over me. I could no longer feel my limbs moving, and I was surrounded by darkness. As last-ditch idea came to me: I figured that, if I could just break free of the paralysis, and roll out of bed, I might be able to land on top of one of the sleeping assailants and break whatever ritual they had going on. 

Fighting against the full-body paralysis, I started trying to rock myself over onto my left side, straining against the invisible force pinning me to the bed. Finally, with one desperate push, I jerked myself off of the bed that I could, now, sense beneath me in the void, and I got the brief sensation of falling before bringing an elbow down and feeling it smash down upon the body of the personal lying unconscious on the floor.

Immediately, I awoke from the dream, and back into waking life, still in darkness before removing my sleep mask from my eyes.

(When I awoke, I was somewhat relieved that I didn't actually act out that final gesture, which - even though she sleeps on the other side of me - would have a real problem, if I'd have accidentally rolled over and dropped an elbow on my fiancé, while she slept. LOL.)

"Tap Worms" - 09/17/2021

"Tap Worms"

09/17/2021

Some friends and I were hanging out in my old home. We had been casually drinking glasses of tap water from the sink, and really thinking nothing of it, for most of the day. (For context: the water quality where I live, now, isn't great.) At some point, though, we'd begun to notice that there was quite a lot of "trash" floating about in our glasses. Upon closer inspection, we found that there were the tiny, brown worms hanging about, in the water. We immediately dumped whatever we had left in our glasses, disgusted.

Shortly after our discovery, the odd behavior started. First, it was just within my group of friends, with people becoming erratic and frenzied. After dispersing everyone from the home, though, I'd come to find that this had begun affecting other folks in my neighborhood, and beyond. These worms, it was revealed, were part of a hive-mind of parasitic creatures, which bored their way through people's bodies and into their brains, causing them to become infected with treacherous, murderous tendencies. As more of these cases amassed, the worms began growing - and growing - to the point where they were breaking out of the bodies of their hosts and just continuing to expand like pasta noodles from a pressurized grate. Before long, it wasn't safe to be anywhere in town, and those of us who seemed unaffected had resolved to finding a hideaway, far away from town.

We came upon a small church, out in the sticks, and set up a spot to rest and plan our next move. This was a short-lived refuge, though, as more of the worms, already enlarged, began streaming up out of the floor around us. Then, the floor, itself, began cracking open, and what was proven to be an enormous, Lovecraftian mass of tentacles - the apparent base of this superorganism of worms - came breaking its way up from beneath the building. (It reminded me of the monster from Deep Rising.) I had no choice but to jump out of a window, as the creature overwhelmed the church and, soon, began expanding outward until it overtook the entire region, mutilating and consuming everyone caught in its ever-inflating path. Eventually, I, too, was swept up by the creature, and I remember being fed to the toothy, cavernous base within the mass of tendrils. Everything went black.

Suddenly, there was a transition in the dream, and I was back at my old home. Things had, seemingly, returned to normal, though I still had memory of what had happened, before. Immediately after recalling past events, the tentacled monster broke in through the halls of the home, forcing me out of the front door. I ran through the neighborhood, looking back to see the mass of tendrils completely overtaking my house, billowing up through the roof like gigantic strands of hair, undulating in an underwater current.

Panicked, I ran around the corner, passing my older neighbor, F's, home. She saw me passing and came out as if to help me. I gave her the abridged rundown of what was happening, and her face quickly turned stern and serious. She something like: "Run, all you want. You'll never escape. Surrender, now. You'll be dead within 20 minutes, anyway." Her sinister tone was unmistakable, and I could tell that she was possessed. The worms had already begun burrowing through her brain and twisting her thoughts to that of the hivemind. Immediately, I was struck by a sense of hopelessness and defeat. I felt trapped in this, practically circular, series of events. Somewhat apathetically, I submitted to the demand, and said that I was going to go along without a struggle, and my neighbor told me that she was going to take me to meet the source of this monstrous presence, face-to-face. I knew, instinctively, that this was a case of demonic influence, and not something specifically alien. For whatever reason, I agreed to go with her, and got into her car.

Already sitting in her backseat, was another woman - around my age. Apparently, she was another person who had "surrendered," and she was also being taken to the source. We arrived at a towering, high-rise building in the city, and followed F into the elevator. A creeping dread came over me, as we ascended, and I could tell that the other captive was doing the same. We both knew that, no matter what happened during his meeting, we would soon be meeting our demise. Panic, once again, began to take hold.

Shortly after the elevator doors open, the other woman made a break for it, sprinting, full-tilt, toward the large window at the end of the hall, crashing through the glass and plummeting to her death, obviously preferring to face death upon her own terms. Shocked, F turned and looked at me, as if to gauge my reaction. Immediately, I blurted out to her that "That's what I'm going to do, too!" As promised, a dashed down the hallway, sailing through the open window and careening toward the street, far below.

The last thing I remember was a feeling of all-encompassing calm and acceptance, knowing that I was going to die upon smacking into the pavement, but relieved that I would not become a mindless drone of this ravenous demon that we'd just abandoned. Everything went black, during the fall, and I don't remember ever hitting the ground.

"Space Rebels" - 11/30/2021

"Space Rebels"

11/30/2021

I was in a small squad of about three or four rebels from the Star Wars universe, and we were scouring a desert planet, looking for items and supplies. We'd come across a truck-like vehicle, with a large, locked box sitting in the bed area. Upon prying the box open, we found that it was full of some high-value weaponry, which we knew came from the, now, nearly-ancient order of the Jedi. One of the weapons was an actual, bladed sword, but the blade ignited like a lightsaber, once activated, and it stayed red-hot for a few, lingering seconds, after being powered down. It was quite beautiful to look at, and was a pretty bad ass weapon, overall.

Eventually, we wound up getting ambushed by an Imperial officer and his goons. The officer, himself, looked a lot like Hitler - mustache and all - and I made a comment that he looked "familiar," which got a chuckle out of my squad. The officer didn't seem to take too kindly to my remarks (though, I'm not really sure if the Hitler thing was ever actually recognized by him, or if he just disapproved of my tone, in general), as a firefight immediately broke out, and we all had to scramble. During the fray, we were able to pick up some of the heavy weapons from the cache, and took to some intense fighting around this small, clay building close to where the "truck" was sitting. At some point, I remember some of my squad members and I would cross the lasers from our blasters (much like "crossing the streams" in Ghostbusters), and it would produce more powerful beams that would dramatically increase damage. 

In the chaos, I'd wound up getting separated from my team, and had to move cautiously around the building, to try and find them. I began to notice that random women and children were being positioned around individual, Imperial soldiers, to use a shields, and I had to fight around them, careful not to hit any bystanders while taking down the enemy. Rounding back to the front of the building, there was now a massive crowd of women and children, all looking absolutely terrified, yet seemingly unable to bring themselves to leave the area. I knew that they had been rounded up, here, as a distraction and as cover by the Imperials - who knew that our ability to fight them would be diminished by the potential of so much collateral damage. Their level of cowardice infuriated me, and I slowly made my way through the crowd, keeping a careful eye on my surroundings while searching for my team, so as to avoid another ambush by an Imperial hiding amongst the innocent. The closest "hostages," for lack of a better term, would always reach out to me, as I passed them, trying - as if they had been coached to do so - to make it seem like everything was fine with them, and they were simply there to welcome me, as if this had been a friendly gathering. I knew that this wasn't the case.

Eventually, I noticed a figure hiding beneath a shroud or cover. I could tell that the body was tensing up, as I approached, and I prepared to have to fire upon an Imperial waiting for the right time to strike. When I crept silently upon the shroud and yanked it away, raising my blaster, I saw that it was just another small child. He looked up at me in a panic, and when I assured him that I wasn't going to hurt him, he mad the smallest of gestures - almost unperceivable - over to one side. I knew, instantly, that he was showing me where I could find my teammates, and I continued my search in that direction.

That's all I remember.

"Darkseid is Coming" - 11/26/2021

"Darkseid is Coming..."

11/26/2021

I was part of a group of young-adult superheroes, and we were based on an oil rig, out at sea. Apparently, my power was that of super strength, and I'm not sure if all of the others in my group were DC Comics heroes, but I know that we were a world where Superman had been long-since considered dead. We had received word that the supervillain Darkseid was preparing to invade the planet, and we were doing everything we could to prepare for the inevitable attack.

The initial encounter, though, would prove to be a psychological one.

While his ships were approaching the Earth from beyond the stars, Darkseid, himself, was already far ahead, unleashing strong, telepathic attacks on each of us, at random time intervals. Every now and then, we would hear our voice in our heads, or see his visage looming in the shadowy corners of our compound. There was one point, where I was walking through a tight corridor, and when I looked over to one side, I could see a gigantic projection of Darkseid, standing in a far corner with his arms folded behind him. He was so large and imposing that this telepathic manifestation had to hunch over, in order to keep from being stifled by the ceiling. Despite his size, the thing that left the greatest impression was the haunting, crimson glow of his eyes against the darkness within the room.

This psychic torment was running rampant over my team, sending most of us to the borderline of complete breakdown, because there was no way of getting him out of our heads. There was an early, physical attack on the compound, by his underlings (though I don't know if they were his parademons). We made light work of them, but during the skirmish, one of our members went murderously savage and began taking on the rest of the team. Almost simultaneously, we'd gotten the alarm that the full-scale invasion was kicking off, on the other side of the island off of which we were stationed. The leader (and strongest) of our team was a lightning-based character who seemed very Thor-inspired, in terms of physicality. He decided to have us split up, so that a group of us could work on taking down our formidable, brainwashed ally, while he and the others went to engage with the invasion. There were at least a dozen of us, in total, and it took nearly half of us to subdue our teammate and to, then, talk him down from his rampage by appealing to his emotional side and reminding him of the strong bond that we all had within our group. 

After he was free of Darkseid's mental influence, we all dashed off of the rig and to the island, to join the rest of our group in battle.

We made our way over the water, by various means, and approached a large, unfamiliar temple that was settled on the coast. Upon our arrival, and after searching desperately for our team, we began to find the liquified remains of some of them, scattered around the temple grounds - one of them, after I'd tripped down an embankment and landed, on my hands and knees, in what I initially thought was a puddle of mud but turned out to be an ankle-deep pile of entrails and excrement.

After moments of sheer terror, I became completely enraged at this discovery. 

We continued our search for any of the others who were left, and made our way into the temple, which seemed more like the inside of a theme park attraction in its set up. I believe there was, actually, a coaster-type ride that snaked through the halls of the temple, as well, but I don't remember much of it.

Finally, we found Darkseid. He was standing, motionless and unbothered, with his back to us, apparently having just been waiting for us to show up. He began to make it clear that the mental attack on our teammate upon the oil rig was a rouse, in order to split up our forces so that he could more easily have access to our strongest, Thor-like member, who he'd planned to take under his control, as well. We, then, saw a platform being lowered, nearby, showing our leader being bombarded with rays of energy, as he struggled against them, obviously trying his hardest to resist the psychic onslaught from taking him over. 

Initially unsuccessful, though, our leader launched himself off of the platform and brought down a vicious attack on what remained of our team. An absolutely insane battle ensued (of which I can't remember many of the details), and it spilled out of the temple and into the city streets of the developed, modernized island. We were toppling buildings and causing unimaginable damage while fighting the head of our team, with Darksied just tagging along and watching the fray, for the most part. 

Eventually, though, we were able to break the psychic hold, just as we did with our earlier ally, focusing on the bond between us and the damage that Darkseid had already caused to our unit. Through no small feat of willpower, our leader was able to break free of the enhanced brainwashing from the interstellar villain...and he was pissed at having been made a vessel for Darkseid's dark power.

Instantly forgiven - by myself and the rest of our crew - for anything that might have transpired, leading up to this point, our head guy joined forces with us, once again, and we rushed Darkseid with everything we had. Again, the battle was epic. Darkseid was just beastly, in his power and character. Enraged, himself, at our 'daring' to thwart his plan, he fought against us ruthlessly, taking on a sort of 'street slang' in his dialect, as if he had been from New York, or something, instead of from outer space. It was really jarring but, for some reason, just made him all the more scary.

In time, though, we had begun to overpower him. The last part of the battle, that I can remember, was Darkseid having been pinned on his back, in the middle of a destroyed city street. Our leader and I were raining down tandem attacks on the invader. I was standing over top of his downed body, and the other hero would blast him with a maxed-out surge of energy. Then, in the moments between blasts, just as Darkseid finished screaming in electrified agony and began to try to lift himself from the ground, I would drop the hardest punches I could muster down upon his chest and face, smashing him over and over and driving him further into the shattering concrete beneath him, with every blow. The chorus of Darkseid's screams, the repetitive cracks of thunder and the shockwave-inducing booms from each of my ground-and-pound punches were echoing all throughout the city, and it's the last thing I can remember from the fight.

The last thing I remember from the dream, itself, though, was a "stinger-type" of clip - as if it were a post-credit scene, after a movie - of some random, industrial rubble being lifted high into the air. (Maybe the oil rig, from before?) The further it was raised, the more clearly I could see the red and blue figure that was holding it up over his head, proving to us that Superman was, in fact, not dead, and he was back to help us defeat Darkseid, once at for all.

(Just an all-out incredible battle. This dream was both psychologically terrifying, and so satisfyingly action-packed. The kind of dream after-which you wake up and just say...."whoa." I had a blend of mugwart and ginkgo before bed, that night, which I'd been experimenting with, periodically, for the last few weeks, and my dream activity has been pretty much off the charts. Lots more dream entries to come, from over the last couple of months. Just been a little too busy, over the holiday system, to write them all out, in full!)

"Bad Moon" - 04/14/2008 (Lucid)

”Bad Moon”

04/14/2008  

(Lucid)

(I swear, it’s fun to experiment with B6 and dreams, but sometimes it’s just not worth the consequences. This was, easily, the most brutal, intense, violent dream I’ve had in a while. I’d taken some B6 and melatonin before bed, making the dream incredibly vivid (and painful). It also didn’t help that the last thing on my t.v., last night, was a werewolf flick called 'Bad Moon'. I was hardly even watching it. It was just on, and I caught a few glimpses of it, here and there.)

I was dreaming about an old coworker, Jane*. Her boyfriend had broken up with her, and we happened to start getting really close. At first, we were lying around, watching abstract visualizations on a huge screen - kind of like the Windows Media Player visualizations, but much more complex and engaging - along with the orchestra music, and it was very relaxing. We were settled against each other and beginning to fall asleep. Moments later, we were in bed, still listening to the music and just talking softly to each other. (This would have been a very unlikely pairing, in waking life, so it was actually kind of uncomfortable to me that we were this close, in the dream.) Nothing really happened, between us, though. We just lay there in bed, together, drifting off.

The dream switched to a third-person view, and I could see that I didn’t look like myself. I looked like someone else. I then saw this same guy - who had previously been me - with Jane*, in different camera shots, like a trailer for some dark movie. He was moving through the woods, and I could see that he had a strange shape to his face. Eventually, he came upon a large house, into which, he soon found himself abducted. Upon his entrapment, some sort of situation went down, and I caught an image of the heat from some kind of intricate furnace being pumped throughout this house, seeping through the walls and everything. Apparently, any contact with the smoke in the air made all of the people that already lived at the house transform into werewolves – the intelligently-speaking, but ultimately f*cking badass kind. The newcomer didn’t stand a chance. He was immediately cornered and torn apart.

I remember something about telling Jane* what I had seen, after the dream switched back to first person. (I never got another look at myself to see if I still looked like that guy or not.) She was immediately terrified, and struck with an ominous sense of recognition. She wound up confessing something about how the werewolves were real, and that they were apart of her family lineage. I don’t recall exactly how that explanation transpired, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it equated to.

The dream skipped ahead and, for some reason, I was actually entering that same house from the vision, earlier. It was still in first-person, and I seemed to be my normal "self," this time. I didn’t recognize the house, at first, though, so I wasn’t really alarmed. I had my daughter with me, and I think we were looking for a place to stay the night. Initially, things went alright. We met the owner of the manor, who had a bit of a creepy air about him – something like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, maybe - but, still, nothing set off any bells. It wasn’t until we were getting situated in our room, that I got another vision. I saw the network of pipes and tunnels; the orange light of a burner furnace, and the thick, glowing smoke being pumped through the shafts. Everything came rushing back to me, and I immediately knew what was about to happen.

I knew it would be impossible for my daughter and I to get out of the house in time, so I snatched her up from her bed and darted to another room. Miraculously finding some secret compartment in a wall, just big enough for her, I rushed her inside and told her to stay there, and to keep quiet, no matter what she heard from outside. Then, I pushed the huge brass(?) block back in the way of the hole. I ran as fast as I could, as far as I could from that room, knowing that, if I was going to be caught, I definitely didn’t want the werewolves knowing where I'd hid her. Passing the most unsecured hiding spots, I came to a room at the end of a hallway. It had a closed door across from me and a closet door in the corner. As a last ditch effort, I headed straight for the closet door. Just before reaching it, I’d gotten a really bad feeling that I’d chosen the wrong direction to run.

The very instant that thought entered my head, the door that was across from the hallway I came in through burst open. Inward stalked three huge werewolves, standing upright. I instantly turned around and ran back the other way, crossing in front of them and hauling ass back down the hallway. I heard one of them order the others to get me, and I could hear them sprinting down the hall after me. It didn’t take long for them to catch up to me, and they began mauling me, slashing and biting at me while I tried my hardest to stay on my feet. The dream was was so vivid that I could feel their bristles of hair on their bodies, and their teeth felt like sandpaper grinding my flesh. Suddenly, out of sheer desperation and panic, I came to a welcomed realization. I yelled out “This is a dream!! I’M DREAMING!!” ‘Elated’ doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt, just then!! After having been completely overpowered by these werewolves, I now began to take them on, no longer afraid of them. I’d noticed that, now, they had shrunk in size – to about that of Rottweilers, and now walking on all fours like dogs, but they were still incredibly vicious. My lucidity was still low, and I didn’t really have time to think, at all. These things were all over me, and they were just so damn fast, but I didn’t shy away from them anymore. They would tear painfully at my arms and legs, and I would pick one up and grab both its jaws, ripping it open and snapping its head backward onto itself. More of them came running into the room and, at one point, there were at least four or five of these dog/wolves on me, simultaneously.

The room we were fighting in had shifted into the joined living room and kitchen area of the place I used to share with my ex. Violently fighting off these wolves, I staggered to the kitchen and grabbed a butcher's knife. Things got really gory as I began slashing and stabbing as many of these damned things as I could get my hands on. They were still tearing me up, though – and make no mistake, when they bit me, it hurt. What made it worse was that these things JUST DIDN’T DIE. They were freaking indestructible. Obviously, the “silver” thing didn’t work with kitchenware because the knife wasn’t doing a damned thing. I would be tearing these things apart – cutting them practically to ribbons until I was soaked in both my blood and theirs, and they just kept attacking. In the middle of the fray, I picked one of them up by the front legs, and swung it down, back first, toward the back of a chair, folding its body over the chair back and breaking the wolf’s spine. I picked up another one and held a front leg in one hand, and a rear leg in another, and swung the beast down onto one of my knees, breaking its spine over my leg. Another one jumped me and I went to stabbing at it like crazy with the knife, finally breaking its skull by ripping its jaw apart, as I did with one of the first ones.

Finally, I realized that I had time to actually breathe (so to speak). The attack had lulled. I looked around the room and saw the more seriously injured werewolves still trying to get back on their feet. Now was the first chance I had to try to ground myself into the dream by looking at my hands. It didn’t really increase the vividness, though, because everything was already incredibly vivid. I looked up, across the dividing shelf, now that I was back in the living room, and I could see three figures standing in the kitchen. Three of the werewolves had changed back into human form…and they were women - very attractive women, actually. They were breathing heavily and they - especially one, in particular - looked absolutely terrified of me, which seemed to be the reason why they were hiding behind the divider that separated the kitchen and living room. The other - visibly mutilated – werewolves didn’t transform into humans, but they were definitely not in any hurry to attack me, neither. The woman in the middle began talking to me. I can’t remember what she said, but it was something about how I was like some kind of "monster," because I was able to take on all of them at one time. She had this sort of awe-struck look on her face, like she was standing in front of a god. The one standing on her right still looked scared shitless - as if, if I would have taken one step toward her, she would have broken through the wall just to get away from me.

The one that did the talking began giving me some sob story, obviously to keep me from killing them. She started going off about how it’s not their fault that they are what they are and do what they do. She told me about how werewolves killed her family before she became one, and yadda yadda. I don’t even remember if I was actually listening to her with any sort of pity, or wondering what I was going to do next with the rest of my dream time, but the dream faded in the middle of her monologue.

(I woke up covered in sweat, with only about 3 ½ hours of sleep, but I had to get up and write this dream out. It was already 8:30, though, because I didn’t go to sleep until late, so there’s no going back to sleep now.)

"She Was a Teenage Robot" - 11/25/2008

"She Was a Teenage Robot" 

11/25/2008 

I was with Tony* and a few others, seemingly from my old JROTC days. There was some sort of military procession going on, and we were all standing up to a huge mirror, getting decked out in some dress blues. There was this really sweet, mousy girl that we’d met, who had been really depressed, before meeting us, because she’d had a rough childhood and didn’t really have anybody that cared about her. We were all especially accepting of her, and she began warming up to us - especially to me. There was one particular time, after this military event, where we were all just hanging out in someone’s house, late at night, and watching T.V. The girl had curled up beside me, and she was practically in tears, telling us all how happy she was that we were all friends, and about how much she loved us.

Time passed, and something had happened, where the whole world had been turned upside down, so to speak. We were, now, out in some huge, deserted field, in the aftermath of what I believe it was some kind of alien attack. Whatever it had been, something had destroyed a large part of the planet, leaving nothing but desolation. Among the unfolding events, it turned out that the young girl had somehow been transformed into a giant robot, some 50-feet tall. She didn’t even look human, anymore – just a huge pile of scraps that just barely resembled a bipedal being. We were still able to talk to her and, initially, she was just absolutely devastated, because she could no longer fit in with people and considered herself even more of an outcast than she used to. However, we kept comforting her and letting her know that we still considered her a friend, even though she was a giant robot. Slowly, she began to come around, and we were able to get her help (we, being the human race, and she, being a giant weapon, such as in 'The Iron Giant') in fighting the remnants of the alien attack. I know there was a massive battle, but I can’t say that I remember any of it.

"Subterranean" - 07/28/2008

"Subterranean"

07/28/2008

(I believe this began in the DeLand area, off of [Redacted] Blvd.)

I remember spending some time in a Checkers burger joint with some friends, late at night, and finding out that there was an enormous hole to an underworld, somewhere down the street. The concrete had broken away, and there was this gash in the ground, maybe half a mile long and about  quarter-mile thick, at its widest point. We would stare down into this cavern, which seemed to be illuminated with green torches set against the rock formations that lined the walls of the trench.

Sooner or later, we got around to climbing down into this hole in the Earth. There were a bunch of pathway ledges and hand-holds upon which to scale the wall. (I usually don’t do all that much in non-lucids that I wouldn’t do in real life, but there is no way in hell I would have started scaling this trench.) We came across a bunch of creatures that looked like they might have been at home in the 'Lord of the Rings'. There were so many different species that we ended up seeing a computerized catalog of all the enemies we would come across, as we went deeper into the Earth. It became very video game-like.

There was some princess - or some kind of royal figure - that lived in this labyrinth of caves and rocky paths that stretched for miles and miles beneath the streets, branching out from the single hole that led to street level. The father of the (humanoid and quite-gorgeous) princess was a far-larger monster that reminded me of one of the colossi from the 'Shadow of the Colossus' game. Plenty of times, this colossus would splatter me all of the place, killing me, but I would, then, respawn - just like I was playing a game - and have to make my way back through the caverns again. I remember being at one of the exits, and two T-rexes coming straight toward me. I frantically retreated and was chased by them, ducking away into a hole that led me straight back into the catacombs. (My notes say something about becoming lucid here, but I really don’t remember that.)

Later, I was going back down into the tunnels, after having been killed numerous times (obviously, a glutton for punishment, at this point), and one of the entrances was blue and covered with ice and snow. As I descended lower, down the steps and into the cave, it became darker and more deeply blue around the walls. I was suddenly attacked by the ninja Sub-Zero from 'Mortal Kombat'. (Because of course. Lol.) I don’t remember much of the fight, and I think he, too, ended up killing me, but I’m not sure.

I also remember a moment when I was explaining to someone how the place in the huge gash in the Earth worked, and how you can die and just come back to life, and how much of a good adventure it was. I told them about my run-ins with the colossus, and how he’d killed me plenty of times, in the past. I can't recall anything more than this, though.

"They All Fall Down" - 08/16/2021 (Lucid)

"They All Fall Down"

08/16/2021

(Lucid)

(I have been taking in a little mugwort, melatonin and valerian root, before bed, lately, and I've been having far more vivid and lucid dreams. This was one in a trend of clear and stable lucids I've had, recently, and seemed to stretch on for a noticeable while.)

The earliest thing I remember, in this dream, is that I was watching the movie "Little Monsters," in someone's crowded home, and that people kept trying to sit down in the same chair I was in - a chair that was obviously not meant for more than one person. Random people would constantly sit themselves down on one side of me, and then keep scooting over, more and more, until I was practically falling off of the chair. After a while, I just got irritated with it and got up from where I was sitting.

I walked outside, to the patio, where there were more people scattered about. This was obviously a party or cookout, or something, and folks were just hanging around in the yard and on the patio furniture. The dream was very realistic, and I spent quite a while just talking to some of the others - whom seemed familiar, but I could not tell if they were friends or family. Eventually, though, during the idle chit-chat, I started to realize that this was all a dream. Testing the suspicion, I brought a hand up over the wooden picnic table and focused on a mug, levitating it with telekinesis. A young girl, nearby, marveled at the trick, so I kept doing more, flourishing with my lucid powers as if I was a stage magician. A few of the others stopped to watch, before I eventually went back inside the house, to find something else to do.

Finding my way to the kitchen, I noticed something on the floor, practically wedged behind the door. It was about the size of a basketball, and it took me a moment to figure out that it was a human head. It belonged to a blonde woman who seemed to be, maybe, in her 50's, and the weirdest thing was that it didn't seem like it was a decapitated head. It was still attached to the body which, apparently, continued down through the floor, as if she was stuck in the ground, up to her neck, like a "clipping" issue, in a video game. What's more, is that she didn't really seemed to be bothered by this. Though she just kind of stared, idly, at the back side of the kitchen door, I could tell that she was very much alive, and she looked  more bored with her situation than distressed. Using my telekinetic control, I "pulled" her upward and out of the ground, revealing the rest of her body.

Her body, though, didn't seem to be in the same condition. When I phased her up and out of the floor, it was as if I had pulled a rotting corpse from a vertical grave. I could see that, when I looked back at her face, it had began to bruise and wither, as if it, too, was starting to rot. Just slightly disturbed by this, I gave another wave of my hand and "willed" her to return to a more normal appearance, which worked, almost effortlessly. With an arguably-flirtatious smile, she said "oh, you're good," and I just smiled in return and opened the fridge, beside her, to see what was inside. I pulled out a translucent bin that was filled with the rotting remains of half-eaten fruits and vegetables. Feeling a little "Dr. Strange" inspired, I waved my hand again, and willed the fruits and veggies to refresh themselves, and the bin began to replenish itself as the food items started regenerating as if they were being 3D printed.

Leaving the kitchen, I remember spending some time walking around the house, doing more idle tricks, here and there. I began to remark at how vivid the dream was, and how grounded I felt to it, even without having to do any stabilization gestures. Out of curiosity, though, I decided to look at my hands, just to see how they would appear, in a dream that was already this detailed. As expected, they looked just like they would in waking life - all fingers were present, and in perfect shape. The only difference, though, is that I had single strands of bright green light strung between each of my fingers. I also recall picking up an ink pen from an end table, and flicking it through a nearby window pane, as if it were a bullet from a gun. At one point, I told some of the house occupants about this being a dream and about them being characters within it, but I don't remember their reactions. 

I made my way out of the front side of the house and started walking down the sidewalk, meandering about and interacting with the neighbors, still feeling rather explorative and allowing the dreamscape to take me wherever it might. The longer I walked through the neighborhood, the more I could see that the neighbors were kind of "gathering." There was a palpable tension in the air, and all of the neighbors seemed to be streaming in one direction, as if the entire crowd was being led to some sort of event. I could hear a few of them talking, and there was, apparently, about to be some sort of clash with either another neighborhood, or some other kind of faction that these people were all united against. Curious, still, I decided to follow along with the crowd, to see what was going on.

The group began to file into a narrow, slum-esque alleyway, and I could see that there was another large group of people that was approach the front of our crowd. The tension was steadily rising, and I could tell that - for whatever reasons - these people were about to absolutely lay into each other. Close to the front of my group, I could see the two sides beginning to aggressively converge, and the moment the two crowds collided, all hell broke loose. Fists began flying, and gunfire filled the air. Military vehicles could be seen, speeding toward my group, from the other side. This was quickly turning into a major battle, and the vehicles coming in did not seem like they were going to stop, and they were set on mowing down our group, which was already firing back with everything they had. 

Feeling like I was now at the epicenter of this intensifying collision, I suddenly threw both arms out - one in the direction of either crowd - and sent out a forceful, telekinetic "push" - a wave of force that threw the people of each faction back, away from each other, and crushed the oncoming vehicles to a stop, as if they'd hit a concrete wall.

Quite satisfied with this move, I smiled as the bewildered dream characters, from both sides, gathered around in wonder, at what I'd just done. They were absolutely astonished at this "power," that I had, and I started to show off a bit, picking a few random people up with telekinesis and setting them back down gently. I talked to them about how this was all a dream, in order to gauge their reactions, which was pretty much the standard level of disbelief that I normally get when having this conversation with dream characters.

It was then, though, that I began to notice people falling down.

I would glance from one person to another, confused to see their eyes roll back in their heads, and they would simply drop to the ground, as if all of the life had been instantly ripped from them. Each direction I turned, another person would "go white" and then drop. The dream was still so vivid, that I could even see the redness in the bloodshot corners of their eyes, even after all of the color had rolled back into their skulls. I started to walk forward, wondering what was going on, and the bodies continue dropping, in a wave formation, as if being within a certain range of me simply flipped a switch and turned them into lifeless husks. It got to the point where, seemingly, with every step I took, another dozen people in front of me would, instantly, go white in the eyes and then drop to the ground.

Before long, I was the only one still standing in the alley.

(There was little else that I could remember, after that point. I vaguely recall their being mention, somewhere, of some entity being behind this phenomenon, but I don't remember whether I was still lucid, when I heard that, or from where I heard it, exactly. It was just a hazy fragment that stuck with me, after I woke.)