The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
Free Ticket
9-13-2003

I arrive at a mansion in the middle of nowhere. The yard reminds me of my childhood front yard. Some other people are also stranded there. One woman has a gun, and another guy wields a spear as I approach. Someone says, "The guy with the gun wins." I'm not quite sure what that means. I learn than an old woman lives there.

Out in the front yard are lots of old classic cars in good condition. Almost too good. It makes me suspicious. There's also some kind of garden consisting of rows of concrete blocks covered with moss. There is deep water in-between and beneath the concrete blocks. I jump into the garden water and dive under, finding huge avocados there. This strikes me as especially strange.

The woman comes out and cocks her gun, but a part of it flies into the water. I get the sense that this is foreshadowing our future vulnerability. She directs me to a place called Dangerous Dave's to get parts for my car, but I get a nail in my tire. It goes flat and I have to pull over in the forest.

I rollerblade down a street and come to a stop light, so I veer off and come to the back door of a restaurant. I remove my socks and pants. I notice that I'm disturbing a woman and her little girl, so I try to put my clothes back on, but my socks won't cooperate. Becky calls and tells me how she had just met "O", who never wanted to hear from me again. I ponder telling her about Julia, too, since O had also met her. "Stacy doesn't like me either," whoever that is.

I go outside to go to a movie. I notice that although I'm not Black, I'm wearing a slave bracelet. The woman at the ticket counter asks if I've been to church. I say I don't go, but I'd like to make a donation. I was going to donate two bucks, but instead I donate five. I STILL don't even get a free ticket.

posted by Phlegm at 11/29/2003  (0) comments

 
Incoming!
8-16-2003

In a book store with my mom, I find an old book I wrote on free will. Another woman wants to buy it, but I take it from her and skim it. I tell her I don't 100% agree with it and give her some contact information where she can learn more. Both my mom and sister leave the store. I go outside, but this is a major metropoli;, the crowds are heavy and I don't see them.

Walking down the street, someone yells "Incoming!" as pancakes fall from the sky. I duck into an alley and out onto another street, finding my mom and sister among a group of people. They say I took too long in the store. In the streets, people are throwing pancake goop at the buildings for fun.

A task force descends in hovering balls of water, shooting the pancakes like skeet. The members of the task force are announced, one by one, each in the spotlight, as if this were some kind of show. Some receive cheers while others do not. Each pilots a special car or cycle. Nobody knows, but I'm actually better than all these people.

I walk through the midst of all these announcements. Nobody stops me. An official car, like an army jeep, comes by and stops right in front of me. A hot chick in the seat stops one of the pilots from approaching the vehicle, and instead says she wants me to sit there. I sit in the vehicle. She touches me knee and undoes my undershirt. It sure feels cooler now.

I'm sitting at a restaurant with my mom, dad, and sister. I meet KM there as well, but I forget her name and sit on the other side of the table, ignoring her. There's a TV playing in the restaurant, but we can't hear it. I make my mom tell my dad to turn it up.

As a member of the elite military, I'm working out in a training facility. We must rank how much we challenge ourselves by jumping great height and distance with weights in our hands. I do poorly and thus rank myself badly. I try again, however, and soar, almost as if I were flying. I try one-handed, but don't do so great. Bremer calls me on my cell phone. I tell him I could've gotten him a job here, but it's too late now.

Months go by, and I'm in my childhood street at night with the force. People are getting shot from guns in all the surrounding houses. Hiding in one of the side yards, I tell Bremer I probably won't live through the night. I figure I'll come back to my old house to get more stuff later, like food, but for now I just have one white bag.

I make my way through the side yards, away from the guns. Nobody follows me. I make it to behind an apartment complex. I climb a narrow wooden stairway. I see an old man who doesn't care about me. As I go up more stairs, I wonder if this is going to turn into a zombie movie.

There are two thin doors at the top, both locked, because they're apartments. I turn right and arrive onto a balcony that spans the entire complex. I walk more. I can see into the windows of the apartments. Many are inhabited, people non-violently watching TV.

I turn a left corner and see three girls walk by, talking about stretching or something. An old woman runs by and falls. I help her up. The girls come back from the other way, and the old woman comes back because she wants me to show her how I made a bracelet. I try to put it on her, but it's made of licorice and keeps breaking. Another old woman sprays water from above. I move out of the way, but the other old woman shouts at her and lets herself get wet.

posted by Phlegm at 11/29/2003  (0) comments

 
Ceiling in the Sky
6-19-2003

It's dark out. I'm on the plains, and I've arrived at some fields littered with telephone wires. I see Reese by go overhead in a ballooon plane, which continues on to carry him over the ocean. I run through the downed wires and find a bunch of hotels. My room is very complex, consisting of several rooms each with several doors. Even the bathroom. I sit on the toilet to think a while.

My thoughts turn to a girl running through the desert. I take up her vantage point as she bumps into an older man. It turns out she's not in the desert, but in an underground world. Demons rise up from the ground accompanied by a drum and bass beat that the three main demons pass around to each other like a hot potato. There are three soul-charged weapons. The older man has one. The girl has another. I guess I have the last one, because I'm on the scene now, and I kill all the non-music demons with a gun-like weapon powered by my soul. I find a book and open it.

The scene changes back to the fields, and there are tornados everywhere. Leaves spiral about. Rain falls. An evil slime pours in from one direction, which we try to fend off with our soul-weapons. We hide in a building with large garage doors so we can watch the disaster. I get a call on my cell phone from someone in the air who can't see the ground. I realize my grandpa was in a trailer that's been up in the air this entire time. Other earthbound trailers open up their roofs to air out, even though it's still raining.

I see a barrier up above, where the tornados are going. I see past and catch a glimpse of the moon. The moon is eclipsed but shines a bright yellow light. To confirm whether it's the Light of God, my vision heads toward the moon, where I can see solar flares. The moon is on fire. I look back and see the Earth consumed in flames. Everything is annihilated by evil forces.

In my limbo, it's bright daylight. I show MG my childhood playground.

Being dead, and the Earth gone, I fly through the cosmos. I see millions of other ghosts, but I just fly through them towards a ceiling in the sky.

posted by Phlegm at 11/29/2003  (0) comments

 
Getting Stuck
8-07-2003

I'm in a run-down old city at night, outside a building with some other people. There are chain-link fences everywhere. We enter some club. EM from FL is there. After some dancing, a tall Asian girl (from earlier in the dream somewhere) gives me a hug and whispers in my ear, "I love you. You can have me if you want." This is unexpected, as I thought she was married. I nod silently to acknowledge I understand. I caress her hair, and her head falls to rest on my shoulder. I hold her for a while before she tells me I should stop or people will suspect something.

Next I'm riding a motorcycle on the freeway, chasing someone. A few other cars join in the chase, thinking it's a race. When I stop, one of the cars opens up from the top, and there's a black chick inside, talking on the phone. I give her some sass about how she shouldn't listen to this other dude. She gives me some lip back about my racing skills, as if I were hitting on her. I let her have the win and take off, later regretting I didn't have a comeback.

I find myself on a tropical island overrun with tiny, mechanized aliens. I run barefoot, up and down various slopes, trying to make it to a human hideout from another decades-old dream. Instead I run into my boss, who says we need to make a few runs to make some quick cash. I grab the wheel of a huge tanker and we "Mad Max" it through some depot. I give my boss the wheel and go out onto the truck bed to scope out our tail, expecting an army of purple, mechanized, flying aliens in pursuit. I see nothing. I shout up front that it would be cool if we had some sort of anti-air weapon on this thing, just in case.

At top speed, we screech to a halt in a narrow cargo-loading zone of some old auto plant. The proprietor looks at us funny, as if he expects us to pay a fine, but bossman quips there's not a new scratch on the thing. We jump out and walk inside, following the old sailor-like guy in. I'm expecting to make another run, but a female cop busts in with her gun out, waving it everywhere. She doesn't see me, though, so I get her in a full nelson. I reassure everyone I have her incapacitated, but they're not consoled...and neither am I once they point out that we're surrounded. I let her go, and she's actually quite friendly about it. I think I'm off the hook.

But I'm not. I'm in a jail cell that's more like a locker room. It's painted maize and blue--ceiling, floor, everything--and "Detroit Pistons" is painted on the wall. There's a number painted on the ground, too, but in a font such that I can't tell which way I'm supposed to read it. I finally conclude it's the number 1805, whatever that means.

I have two cell-mates. Some fat black dude and my friend ND. "Fat" by Wierd Al started playing, and we all hip-hop danced to it, all around the cell. The song, however, once I paid attention to it, had homosexual lyrics, instead, and some rather bizarre interpretations of the original lyrics. When the song and dance were over, I deciddeI have to go to the bathroom, so I open up the cell door--which is just a regular door--and go out into a normal house and into the bathroom. Apparently we were under some sort of unsupervised, low-security holding.

An icy apparition appears back in the cell when I return, making threats. It closes us in somehow. I crawl into a claustrophobic duct, blocked every few inches by a sheet of ice. I remove or break the ice sheets systematically as I crawl through it. The tunnel gets tighter and tighter as I continue, and the exit never appears any closer, though I'm never afraid of getting stuck.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
The Panel
4-20-2003

I'm a small child in a dark basement with three other people -- an older man, a little girl, and a slightly older boy. I find an old copper coin on the floor and hold it high, as if it's some treasure that I'll find use for later. The other three decide to explore elsewhere and quickly run from the basement. I wonder why they left, because there's so much to do down here. I kick one of two practically flat soccer balls against a wall.

I enter a side room with a wooden panel in the wall. There's a sign on it that says "NEVER OPEN" followed by someone's name. Naturally, I open it, and inside is a fat man's head sitting next to a fat woman's head. I hear a voice coming from somewhere. The more it talks, the more it seems the world becomes less real. The two heads mutate, melt, and fizzle. Their eyeballs loll out of their sockets and their flesh drips down their faces. I'm find myself holding them on a stick, a big clump of hair protecting the man's head from a beam of sunlight that's breaking through into the cellar. I feel like I'm cursed to have this image in my head the rest of my life if I don't do something about it.

I shut the wooden panel. All returns to normal. I'm also myself again, a grown man.

Later, a construction crew comes down. The head of the crew is the man who put the sign on that panel. We're going to lay a new foundation for this building. He warns everyone not to open that box. I reinforce his warning. We chip away at the floor and such, lifting up huge pieces of concrete to replace. I find myself calling him out about the heads in the panel, saying they reek and have been there for seven years. Unsure what to do at first, the foreman decides the best thing to do is to kill everyone there by hanging them from some wire and melting them, starting with my son.

My son seems eager, and he jumps onto a cable as if he's going to ride it. Everyone cheers him on, and nothing bad happens.

The foreman gets a better plan to go to the campsite above and kill all the children there first by suffocating them. He finds many women to help him with this, by convincing both them and the children that it's all just a game, though a lethal one. He has them simply suffocate all the babies while they run around and slap some sticky substance on all the children. I make a break for my building, knowing that my children are temporarily safe for some reason. I wondered what kind of sicko would put that abomination in that panel, and then try to kill anyone who might find out about it.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
What Can Not Be Seen
9-25-2002

I was staying in a dorm room out by the sea. My parents were always snooping around. My mom got mad at me for sleeping for 24 hours. I told her it was none of her business, and to get the fuck out. My dad left the back door open because he accidentally triggered some laserbeam security system (as in, it kills you) right outside my front door in the hallway. I exit through the back door, and it's right on the water. Looking down the waterline, I see tons of buildings with the same setup. Some even have heated swimming pools right outside their door, emptying out right into the ocean. I just have a small terrace. It's totally nighttime out.

I travel via motorcycle with my adventuring troupe for this dream. We're heading off some enemies, who remind me of Native Americans. They all speed up this dirt path through the forest, up a hill, to head them off, while I scout on ahead. I see a black police car, and shout, but not too loudly, "Cop!" I spin around the street to see my fellows being chansed down the hill with spears and such. I have a cape on with a black hood. I ditch my motorcycle and prop myself up against a tree, pretending to be asleep or meditating. The cops come up and pester me, but I don't budge. I have visions of someone fighting them off with a large sword. They eventually leave, and I get the feeling that 12 hours have gone by.

I'd taken off my hood. Everyone in our group has a special skill. I say to myself, "Vision shows you what you can see," and as I put my hood back on, "and I see what can not be seen."

I find myself in a dark castle-like room with orange lighting. A tall humanoid with tough armor stands before me, my enemy. I'm wielding a very, very large sword. My enemy wields nothing, for his right leg is itself a very large sword. I swing and swing at him, hitting him all over, but I never do any damage. I know this is how it has to be, and I'm just waiting for the perfect strike.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
White Trash Destination
12-16-2002

I'm riding my rollerblades to work, along with a large group of people. It's a two-lane road along the beach, and the sun hasn't come out yet. We speed down some hills, probably going about 30 mph. Cars speed past us coming the other direction. I catch up with a largish black guy, who's in the lead. I grab onto him and he flings me forward for some extra speed.

Everyone else falls way behind. It's just myself and Michael (the black guy) now. I guess we're somehow breaking the law by rollerblading this fast. A hump in the road comes up where there are railroad tracks. Michael beats me to it, getting some air along the way. I end up flying way up in the air, getting a bird's eye view of everything for miles around, landing only barely on the other side of the tracks before continuing on.

Our destination is coming up, and I wonder how we're going to stop. Michael pulls over onto the shoulder where the road is rougher, and I do the same to slow down.

Our destination is a very white trash place on the beach. Apparently my office is moreso in the back of it. Michael goes into an open garage where some trash heap is parked. A small white MG squeezes past us and a woman steps out. Michael introduces her as his fiance.

Some other people come out of the woodwork, including a white man with hard plastic for hair. I hear a kid come out of another trailer and say hello to me. Everyone freezes, not looking or responding, as he leaves into a truck or something. They ask me if I know him. I say yes, but then when they tell me his name, I don't recognize it; I only know him as Wolfenhex.

There are some other houses, all with tons of stuff strewn all over the yards, which are a combination of grass and sand. I pick my way through, just trying to travel by.

I get to my office, and everyone's outside, lying in the sand. I lie down on the sand and pull my way through a circle of sunbathers. M's not out, so I guess she's still inside. I tell her I'm going to be late because I need to go back home and get the car. Somehow she ends up following me into a warehouse, which is a maze of rooms, doors, and staircases, helping me with a shopping cart.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
The Sun is Shining Brightly
12-19-2002

I'm at a university building or something, on a concrete patio with steps descending down into a green area. It's past midnight, but there are people about. The sun is shining brightly. No wonder it's dark in the mornings, I think to myself.

I decide to walk home, since it's been since childhood that I traveled this town on foot. Nonetheless, I follow some main roads at an alarming pace. I get off an exit ramp that empties right out into a dangerous intersection (which happens to be an on-ramp), but then veer left into a dirt valley, where there's a smaller road for bicycles only. One goes by, with rider. I mentally note that I haven't been here since I rode my bike here with my dad when I was a kid.

It's forest here, but it's also winter, for all the leaves are long gone, even from the ground. There's a small rise in the ground surrounded by a wooden fence. A small path leads around it. I see a woman down it, stretching or something. I have a flashback of falling on the other side of that fence and calling to my dad for help, as if I couldn't get back over it or around it. I wonder why I might have acted that way, and decide to walk around to see.

I run into a steep hill, though, with dry bush-like trees growing out of it, and lots of tree roots sticking out of the dry dirt. I feel like I climbed up here just a few seconds ago. Maybe I did. A little kid, scuttles down my left side, riding the steep slope with the heels of his tennis shoes, grabbing onto twigs on his way down. Same age as I would've been when I would've played here. I'm actually amazed that children still play here, that it's still a safe neighborhood.

I try to climb up, but I'm too big, and the bushes are in my way. I head to the right a little, where there are fewer bushes are more roots to grab onto. My hands find the top, corner-like ledge, and I hoist myself up.

A little girl is there, poking at a turtle. The turtle doesn't have a shell, however. Instead, it's in a soft tube that it can roll into a ball. Nearby is a larger tube that the turtle apparently wants to make its home, but a hamster is inside of it. The turtle keeps rolling into the tube, and the hamster keeps wrestling with it until the turtle rolls out. I'm unsure of who I should be rooting for in this battle, and so I leave it.

It's still the middle of the night, and yet still the sun is shining brightly. I go to a party store, the only thing that's open, someplace back on that campus. It's a small store, and I walk around it a few times before I pick something up. I don't remember what it is, but it's not even food. I'm next in line at the counter when three girls pull up behind me. One of them makes a comment to the effect that they're about to get hit on, because the man behind the counter is Mexican.

I get to the counter and the guy starts asking me all sorts of random questions...and here I was planning on just giving him my $3.13 (for that's what my item cost) and getting out of there. The questions were of the telemarketing type...invasive and impertinent. Finally he rings up my $3.13 item. He wants me to count the money out on the counter, so I confidently put the bills down one at a time. However, when I put the first bill down, it's a 5-dollar bill, not a 1-dollar bill. Nonetheless, I put the rest down, counting, "1, 2, 3, 4...times 5...is 20. So you owe me $1.69 in change." That's what I say as my mind somehow goes from 20 bucks to 5 bucks, and incorrectly subtracts $3.13 from $5.00. I realize this and try to correct myself, however, to "No, $1.67." The guy happily rings it up. I know it's not right, but I don't care anymore.

He gets out an application-type sheet of paper, wanting me to sign it. It has all the questions he asked me on it, with my answers, all in pencil. I didn't even notice him writing this all down, either. Pretty well done, too. He asks me a question about food, to which my answer ends in the word, "Mexican," but since it was at the end of my sentence, it's moreso muttered. He takes slight offense, mocking the verbal tone I gave the word "Mexican." It doesn't phase me, however, and I don't feel like explaining myself. Instead I just perk up my tone and say, "I like Indian, Mexican..." and leave with my item.

It's the middle of the night. I should be sleeping. But the sun is shining brightly.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Skin Them and Kill Them
7-21-2002

The apocalypse is near. I'm living in a subdivision in the mountains. In two weeks, the air will be filled with dust so thick that it will darken the sky and destroy all life (I saw DEEP IMPACT last night).

I'm riding my bike around, and I see Hagred on the street. I stop and tell him that soon we're all going to be leaving, and that he should come. I tell him where to go, on this street off another street that I'm sure he knows.

I go to my home, where my dad is making preparations, packing things, and so on. We have a huge base here with tons of vehicles parked in a lot and an airstrip. We're going to travel someplace even more safe soon, using our huge planes. Someone is controlling our main plane by remote control, like a toy. It has military enhancements, and it's larger than a 757. The remote pilot loses control of it, though, and it spins and crashes into the mountain. I wail in despair, very frustrated and pissed off. Sure, we have other planes, but that other one was going to be one of our main weapons against bandits and raiders in this new almost post-apocalyptic world. Smoke rises, and some people get scared that the end is here early, but we explain it's just the fumes from the plane.

My dad says it's time go get moving, so we go to the lot where our pink RV is supposed to be parked, but we can't find it. Someone saw on the supplies on it and stole it. I'm even more pissed and frustrated. Noone can seem to do anything right. The armed guards we had posted everywhere in the lot were useless.

We run into a tunnel, which leads to our airstrip. Hagred is behind us. My mom asks him how he expects to get on the plane. "I bought a ticket" he replies. Though a bum, he somehow afforded one.

Some other man breaks me off as everyone else heads for the planes, says he wants to show me the project. We climb up an iron ladder in the caves and come to a large body of water. Some iron bars separate us from it. Some gears and a ship harbor are within. We remove two of the bars to get a better look. The gears move. I don't know why we're here, but we hide when a ship goes by.

Somehow the man with me ends up almost dead, badly hurt, says it's up to me to rescue everyone. There are enemies about, and I somehow have the ability to pummel them, though I watch this happen in third person, and everything looks like a cartoon. All the enemies are disguised as children. Evil children. So, I disguise myself as one, too, and then I skin them and kill them.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
There is no Hand
7-31-2002

It is autumn, and dead leaves cover the ground. I'm staying in my childhood home, which is much more expansive than I remember it. There's a labyrinth-like cellar in it, for instance, and gothic iron gates out front. Every once in a while, I hear a voice in my head, an aggressive whisper, say one word. Often it's the last word I just said, as if it's some psychic palilalia.

At some point, I swim/fly barely above the ground, digging up some leaves with my arms, talking to a phantasmic woman on the other side of the gate, who's sitting at a table with another woman. Again the voice in my head, echoing my final word or thought. It bothers, even frightens me deeply.

I go up to my sister's old bedroom. It's changed now. Much more dark and gothic. The entire house seems old, with no electricity, just darkness illuminated by the light of the moon through the windows, or by my imagination. I feel my sister's presence. It seems like she's there, but I don't recall actually seeing her. She tells me she hears the voice, too.

A phone rings, but it's a phone that's not supposed to ring. It's old, with an antique handset that comes off the base. There's not even anything to dial on it with. I thought it was broken. I didn't even know it was connected, nor who would know the number if it were. I answer it, and it's a boy on the other end. I have a vision of him staying in a remote room in the house. "I wanted to thank you for letting me stay the past two days," he says, "and I wanted to pay you for my time here." "That's not necessary," I say, and continue with a few more words, the last of which are again echoed by the increasingly sinister voice in my head. It is really starting to frighten me.

I encounter my sister again, moreso in my head than in person, and she says, " nineteen ninety-five." It's a date, obviously, and it's accompanied by a vision of someone else, some shadowy figure, standing in the very spot I'm standing in by the bedroom window. I suspect the voice in my head is connected to this person, but whether male or female, stalker or victim, I cannot tell who this person is.

I find another presence, an unknown parental figure, and ask them who lived here eight years ago. Somehow, in my mind, while 1995 was 8 years ago (7 actually), it was also 8 years before I was born, and thus 8 years (10 years, actually) before I lived in my childhood home. In any case, I had the impression that my entire childhood was spent in the presence of a dead person, a spirit, and I was only now, after returning to this home, that I noticed it. With a quiver in my voice, I ask, "What lived here before us?" but receive no answer...none aside from the echolalia in my mind, that is, taunting me.

I leave to find the neighbors sitting on their driveway. I intuitively know that they can hear the voice, and that they avoid going into their own home, because out here they can't hear it as well. I ask them for help, and they take me into their home. They have a nice foyer just inside their garage, with a black and white tile floor, a nice couch-thing by the wall under a mirror, a tall wooden antique table by a railing in the middle of the room, and an odd music-stand-like bookshelf on top of the table, displaying a few large tomes. I can tell it takes effort for them to be here, listening to the voices.

I ask them about the voice, and with a sob, I ask the man, "What happened in 1995?" I can barely speak it. His expression indicates, "I think you already know," but I don't know. He takes out a mettalic box, some sort of old cooking appliance, and shows it to me. "See these numbers..." he says, and points to some serial numbers on a little piece of it. I can't believe I never thought to look at my own appliance for the answer, for I had the exact same thing back home.

As I read the numbers, which read like a metaphysical SQL statement, my mind sort of clicks, and darkness descends. I can feel my mind being tugged away by some other force. Frightened, I fight it off, and then I can see again. It all happens almost instantaneously. "Something was trying to take me away," I say. The woman laughs, as if it were a preposterous thing to think. The man doesn't laugh, however, and says, "You'll hear them soon."

I don't want to hear them. I don't want my mind to be opened up to these supernatural forces. I run from the room, and I make it to the open doorway before I hear millions of shrieks inside my head, like a harsh wind with a miscreant personality. It shocks me, and I grab onto the door frame with my left hand, maybe for balance, but maybe to make sure it's real. An ethereal hand grabs it from the void and holds it there. It seems very real, but I know it's not. I yell in panic, and then yell, "Let go of me! There is no hand! THERE IS NO HAND!" It simultaneously lets go and vanishes, and I stumble back into the room with the two other people, who stand there calmly. The voices continue to shriek in my head, but nothing I can understand. The room seems to ebb and swirl in a way that reality itself is but a flimsy fabric.

Abstract forces grab at me, and some rat-like things scurry around my feet. I know none of it is real. It's all in my mind. It can't hurt me. Yet I'm very scared. I decide it's my fear that's turning them all on me, so I discard my fear and turn it to anger, shouting something along the lines of, "Get out of here!" while I stomped after the ghostly rats and boldly stormed about the room. The voices got quieter.

It was then that I noticed that the room I was in was exactly like the same room in my own childhood home. How was this possible? I didn't understand it. I didn't understand any of what had happened so far. I decided I didn't want to, so I left the house and woke up, before the voices returned again.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Since I Left
8-02-2002

I spawn on a dark, bleak beach during early nightfall. The sun is down, but there's still a lot of light, perhaps from the stars or the moon. I'm right on the shore, and directly to my left, just inside the shoreline, is a long wall the length of the beach.

I immediately break into a run, as if I have a purpose. I find a doorway in the wall and enter a thin hallway, only large enough for one person to walk in. To my left (I'm now facing the other direction), toward the beach, the wall is transparent like glass, and I can see a previously hidden room (it's still on the other side of the wall I saw on the beach). The room has a strange shape, like a rhombus, and at the two foci of it, as if it were an ellipsoid, are two pedestals, each with some treasure on top. The treasure is encased in a glass ball.

I find a slit in the wall, barely big enough for my skinny self to fit sideways into. I run up to the pedestal on the left and shoot the glass, getting a white text message in my vision that I can't carry the "crf" or whatever until I have a "crf".

As I approach the other pedestal, I see through a window on that side of the room, a stocky pitch black creature with long arms and no legs. It walks on its arms, and it's walking toward me. I instinctively know its name is Thromboid, or Thrombus, or similar. There's a tripod-like, tentacled spider creature with it, too, and a tiny ball of energy hovers by its shoulder. I get the impression I'm in deep shit.

I scramble back into the hallway and pull out a grenade just as I stumble face-to-face with the creature. I drop the grenade right on the thing, but then realize with dismay that my pack was somehow attached to the grenade, and that I'd just lost all my weapons. I get some sort of telepathic transmisson from Thrombus that says my attack was useless. Without moving its massive arms, it hurls an ethereal skull-like-blob-thing at me. It silently glides past me, assumably landing several feet behind me. I figure it's because I'm so close to it, that it can't attack me with its ranged weapon so close. Just then, it starts draining me somehow, with little sparks of energy. I'm about to resign that I'm done for this round, but then it snaps in my mind that I don't have to settle for this, that I can escape, so I run.

I run back to the beach, then through a hallway up to the central building. It reminds me of the Waterstreet Pavilion from when I was a kid, except it's all outdoors. I see two little girls romping around while their mom eats at a table by an empty vendor. I easily climb up the wall, aiming to get to the roof to hide from Thrombus, but then I see the two girls follow me by way of some stairs a few feet away, and realize that the roof I aimed for was just another floor. I look up and see that the building goes up a few more levels. I opt for the stairs this time, and run up another level.

It occurs to me at this time that I'm going about this all wrong, that I can never outrun this creature, no matter how slow it is, and that I have to be clever and somehow hunt it instead.

I find a clothing store with people inside, so I go inside. I go to the back. It's just clothing hanging around. I hide underneath a table that has suits lying on it, and shoes underneath. I figure my sneakers won't match well, but then notice I'm actually wearing a pair of nice socks instead. Might work. I get someone to lay a suit over my head to conceal it, then I hear Thrombus' silent advance into the store. It doesn't bother anyone else, but does wander by me. It doesn't see me, so it leaves. Then some pesky customer with curly hair removes the suit from my head with a "ha ha look what I did, I spoiled your fun" look on his stupid grinning happy face. Thrombus comes over, and does a good job of looking surprised for a creature with virtually no external features. Its head kinda jerks back and up in surprise as I leap out of my hiding place and run from the store.

Running up another level, I see a meatball store or something, but it's closed. This level is narrow, with an outer walkway that overlooks the lower levels, and shops in the center. I pass another eatery. It's closed, too, but the door is open to air is out while the two remaining employees inside clean up. One's behind the grill while another wipes down tables when I rush in, look around, and see that it's too bare to hide in. It's connected to another shop, so I run into there. It's an art vendor or something, very bare, so I continue out the open doorway (except this time it's huge, and there's no door) to the walkway again. I skillfully skid down to the ground level, faster than any elevator or staircase, and notice that Thrombus is walking around on the top level, looking for me. I figure I can get away now.

I run down the beach again, this time with the water on my left, toward the pier. I think they have putt-putt golfing there. Not open anyway, since it's night. Beyond is a taller building. I follow a man and a woman toward it. I look over my shoulder to see Thrombus leaving a vantage point at the old building, its fairy-like familiar following it. "Good thing I paused for a bit back there," I think to myself, "or else it would've seen me." We're supposedly at the airport, but it looks abandoned to me. "Why's noone inside?" the woman asks her man, who comments that it's after hours. "It's odd that the escalator isn't going," she says. The escalator is outside the building. We start climbing the escalator, and when we almost reach the first floor, it starts moving in reverse, sending us back down toward some people who are, paradoxially, standing on the very same escalator, moving up towards us!

It hits me that something this nonsensical like this could only happen if it facilitates the an event, the importance of which supercedes the laws of physics. I figure that the event is my death, that I somehow cheated it back in that hallway, and that Thrombus is going to hunt me down until I'm dead. I communicate this to the man and woman, and start to descent the escalator of my own will, when it shifts into moving upward for us instead. "Or not," I think to myself. Looking up/forward, I see Thrombus on another escalator, coming down toward us.

I'm in my roommate's car, in the driver's seat, but somehow he's driving. It's ultra-early pitch black morning, like 4 AM. We're driving through my childhood neighborhood. I comment how we could check out my old house, and he pulls up to some other house. We go inside, and he and some girl to into the kitchen to putz around. I can hear the residents upstairs. A furry little puppy dog runs up to me and wants to play. I ruffle its head, and it paws at me. A claw gets stuck in my leather jacket, and that's when I've had enough. A woman calls down if anyone's there. "Someone's here!" I shout back. She calls down, asking what I'm there for. "Hold on," I yell as I go back into the kitchen. I ask R why we're there. "Well, you wanted to see your old place," he says. "This isn't my old place!" He's like, oh. The couple comes down from upstairs as we're leaving. From her voice, I imagined a jolly fat black woman, but it's two gangly hippie white folk. We get back in the car, which has been parked horribly diagonally in the driveway entrance, backwards, by the way, but not before taking their cat and putting it in the driver's seat.

The cat hangs one arm out the window like a cool frood, the other paw on the steering wheel, looking about with that collected self-assuredness and assumed territorial ownership that cats have. In reality, R is using the gas pedal and steering with his left foot and hand from the passenger's seat. And yet I'm in the driver's seat, too, superimposed on the cat, I guess.

"Where to?" R asks me. "Straight. No, left." I instruct him through my old subdivision, temporarily torn between showing him my elementary school or my old house. I opt for the house for now, turning left onto Rollins (I think?) from Fern.

We pass a flaming, skinny humanoid thing that's walking down the street. I think nothing of it, but then figure that R's never seen that before. "Did you see that?" I ask. He didn't. "We get that around here. There, another one." We come up on another flaming ghost and ram it with the car, obliterating it. Kinda scary, actually. "It's worse than when I was a kid, though. Back then there were only these screaming skull things on the curb, but now..." Two little egg-like things with tentacles speed toward the car, exploding when they hit it. I seem to remember them from when I was a kid, but they seem mutated now. "It sucks if you're riding a bike. They can really screw up your brakes. The explosion will rattle up through your bike and crush this mechanism..." I muse that kids must not play outside at night much here anymore, and remember how the trees used to grab at me as I rode my bike around here at night.

I forget about the next left turn onto my street while these monsters assault the car. Another explosion from the mini things. Then I'm on a bicycle at the corner. Two girls are there, too, on their bikes. They seem new to the area, as if they're there for college. "Can you believe the monsters here?" I ask her. "They're pretty bad," she agrees. "Nothing like when I was a kid," I comment. The light changes green and we turn right. I think about going down through that one trail, the one down the rocky slope by the bridge that goes through the forest and comes out by the old elementary school...from another dream...but instead I end up stopping in some dusty part of the neighborhood when the two girls stop.

The one I talked to is white, and the other one is some unknown exotic, yet plainly American, ethnicity. From far away she looks cute, but the closer you get, the more imperfect she is. It's daytime now, and she's getting a box from a table and taking it inside some building. I look at the other boxes on the table, and they're all the same, and all contain some sort of transceiver. I get the feeling that hers is an old one, and she's pulling an old switcheroo.

I see CF by a car parked by. The ground floor of the building he's parked at is upraised, as if for parking. The road and ground here is all dirt. I call out to him, and he can't believe I'm there. Some other kid I know is there, too, and we all talk. CF pulls out a sheet of paper and puts it on a table, asking if I was interested in so-and-so. I ask what it is, and get the impression he's doing it for his mom's failing welfare. There are eight names on it, "...and it's forever," he assures me. Apparently it's some idea that I give X amount money and get one of these street names changed to be named after me. Novel, but I can't afford it. "I have loans to pay," I explain. "But you have your whole life to pay those," he retorts. "Yeah but I also don't have a car, so I'm saving up for that right now." He looks very defeated and sad.

I'm ready to leave, and my SB friends are suddenly there. The Ps both say they like the atmosphere here. They have to be joking, but then, they did come from backwater places. Looking to my right, the ground is just mud, and there are three tents set up, each with some witch-looking person in them doing lame goth-like things. To my left the dust continues toward a pier and a putt-putt golf course.

I head over to the course, and make small talk with a fat man in line there about how so much has changed here since I left.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Icy Mountainside
8-12-2002

I'm in a winter landscape I've been to before. It's basically a snow-covered version of my twisted golf course terrain. There are caves in the hills to the right, and I tobaggen into them with a friend.

I ride a bus up into the mountains, but the road ends. The driver wants to drive on the mountainside, but I don't feel right about it, so I climb up the slippery, icy mountainside myself.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Gooping Humanoids
8-16-2002

Back in grad school, except it's more like a top-secret government facility. I see Doug pass by as I enter an indoor tram.

A barren, mountainous landscape. A family climbs up a hill, only to have it erupt a cloud of black smoke and a haze of misty lava. They scramble for a nearby hill to escape it. The kids are last, barely making their way down. I see a little girl and a little boy trying to climb down, as I'm on the neighboring hill. I figure they'll die soon.

Travel to The Barrens with some skater-like kids who go there for fun. It's illegal, but they like to do their downhill sports there. I careen almost out of control down the mountainside in some wheeled contraption...could be a bicycle, or rollerblades, not sure. Turning at a fast velocity is the hardest, but I manage.

Visiting at a female friend's house. Some small kangaroo-like creatures form a community circle on her patio, as if they're talking. I wish I had my camera with me to take a picture for CJ. My friend informs me they're not kangaroos, but Karngas or something. Very cute creatures.

Think about going back to The Barrens alone, but then I see, through a TV monitor, a bunch of violent creatures fighting with some war machines, and decide it may not be a good idea. I go anyway, and enter one of the war machines, which is tubular and shoots green goop at enemies. I push the pilot aside and take control, strafing around and gooping humanoids creatures.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Natural Phenomenon
8-26-2002

I'm a soldier among soldiers, tossing grenades around a town. Charging down an alley, I jump onto some wooden crates to reach the roof. It's not a roof, though, it's the hold of a cargo plane, and I climb inside. Crawling on my belly, I find the head to a screwdriver. I tell my companion before putting it into my chest pocket.

The plane is in flight, and I point to a star, saying, "Look! It's coming at us!" But then I don't see it, as I was only imagining it. I do it again, but again it's not really there. Then I see a HUGE white star and there's no mistaking it. The plane takes a nose-dive. The star passes us. I watch it turn around to seek us out.

"It's changing course," my companion says. "You know what that means?"

"Yeah," I say, "It's not a natural phenomenon." In other words, it wasn't a star, but a heat-seeking weapon of possibly alien origin.

I see the tops of some buildings we're about to crash into before everything goes blank.

Text covers my vision, briefly explaining how the pilot crashed the plane, how I was crippled in the crash, and that three days had passed.

I see a 3rd-persion view of myself, all bandaged up, except it doesn't even look at me. I'm outside, at some nighttime dinner party in England. Two ugly girls have just been assigned to me, and they introduce themselves. I wonder why they got into the military.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
It Just Floats
8-27-2002

I'm in a suburban town I've supposedly been living in for a long time, and I supposedly know everyone there. One of my friends expresses a paranoid concern about some common everyday activities, thinking they're merely serving to provide information to alien beings, who control us without our knowledge.

I go into my childhood bedroom. It's ultra-early morning, and quiet. My comforter has a lot of white stains on it. I wonder how long it's been dirty, and whether my mom ever noticed. I haven't slept here in a long time, and my bed is on the left-hand wall now.

I go to a medical class in a bunker. The teacher makes everyone line up. The first person in line gets to fight the person at the head of the class. I'm at the end of the line. Most people aren't very good, but some have obviously taken some Jiu Jitsu before. My chest is in pain from my chest injury, so I inform the teacher I can't participate.

I go outside and wander among some buildings. Some are just broken shells. I go inside one and a guy runs out of it, carrying toilet paper rolls with dispensers. He hands me one, as if he's a delivery man, and runs off. I roll the paper along the ground through the building to get the attention of two others.

This entire time, large semi-transparent buildings have been floating through the sky, as if they had previously been damaged, been taken away to do construction on, and now were being returned to their locations. A common occurance.

The delivery man runs by again, musing how it's odd that the buildings can float like that. I think about it for the first time, and it hits me...it's impossible. I think it's funny how the delivery guy is the first person to notice, since he's not very educated.

I run over to my two friends, who are by a fence, and try to explain this to them. I practically shout, "How much thrust would you need to hold that building up like that? More than the space shuttle uses just to GET it that high, but to sustain it? We don't even HAVE that much fuel! Plus there're not even any thrusters on it! It just floats!"

The teenagers were out on the street on their rollerblades, wearing blue t-shirts. Tim Allen, with his shirt off and a hairy chest, seemed to be their ringleader.

It was obvious now that an alien force was at work here. I felt the impending doom. I knew they now knew that we knew, and that they'd attack soon. I felt like my entire life up until now had been an illusion.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Back on the Concrete
7-18-2002

After the usual series of fighting adventures, I come to a beach. I walk out into the water and a huge wave springs out suddenly, getting me wet and washing me to shore. I grab at my cell phone, which I had in my hand but dropped when the wave hit me, hoping it's still functional.

I get a vision of a friend of mine setting up a computer desk on the shore by the waves. He suffers the same fate as me, except for him it's a computer at risk. I experience his trauma in first person.

I approach my friend away from the water and comment about the tide. A middle-aged woman is there, too, to my left (she's facing the sea, but I'm facing the shoreline and my friend). She says, "The tide's always like that." I try to explain that earlier in the day, for the previous few waves, it wasn't.

Walking away toward a snack stand or something, where people are in line, I see an Asian girl lying out in the sun on a cot. She's on her stomach, and her hair is so long it completely covers her body, including her head. What skin I can see is rather tan. I find it curious, but move along.

I enter a building with a few flights of theatre seating. I take a seat, one of the first people there. Apparently a movie's being made right here, so I watch the production. More people pack into the room as the actors play out their lines and the director gets pissed. I see the same Asian girl. So she's an actress. I idly wish I would have talked to her, if only that it'd be harder to approach her now, because of her fame.

After a bit, when it's crowded, someone comes and asks for passes. I don't have one, so I'm shooed out. Outside, there's a thin layer on water on the ground, so I swim in it somehow, just gliding on the surface of the water. Some Latino guy (I think), standing with a girl in line, nudges me with his foot, and I end up on concrete. He says he thought I wanted to get back on the concrete.

posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Enjoying the Flight
7-10-2002

I'm at a busy restaurant--feels like a steakhouse in retrospect--waiting to be seated, when I get a phone call from a Desi chick I went on a single date with some months ago (not in real life, though). My mental image of her is very skinny, unsymmetrical, and crusty. Not someone I feel like talking to. She makes some small talk with me while I head into the bathroom and sit on the toilet. I'm just sitting there, though, like it's a place to sit, and not because I have to go.

Something distracts me and I turn off the phone. I go outside to see Rahul and someone else lounging about. After some talk with them, which I don't recall, I grasp for my phone, but it's not there. I go back to the bathroom and look everywhere. Rahul suggests looking deep inside the toilet, but I don't see anything there, either. Finally I reach into my coat pocket for something else and find it.

I find myself in a little kids' classroom, located in a huge steel building with mazes for hallways and windows in unpredictable places. I go off somewhere, up into some maintenance hallway, and hear a call to return to class. Two other kids converge to the same location as me, looking down a shaft into the classroom. Some steam comes out of it. Two adults walk by the hallway and see us crouching there, and begin to scold us for being somewhere we're not supposed to be. Then a door opens into the hallway and a little kid comes out, dragging a computer on a cart. Another passing adult comments that it's okay, we're part of the Computer Architects or something like that. The little kid starts to laugh his brains out, because he knows that the other three of us are just troublemakers and NOT CAs, but he holds it in, ready to explode at any moment. I get the feeling he only covers for us because he finds it so hilarious.

We get back to class, and I take the cart and push it to my table, opposite my two buds. The tables are like the tables in shop class, except there's nothing holding them up. I start to fill some ambrosia-like substance from the cart into the vise-like mechanism at my seat, but I mess up and it all falls on the floor. The little kid throws a tantrum, yelling about how he covered for me and so on, and goes to tell one of the other teachers, even though there's a teacher's aid right by us. I follow him to make sure he doesn't spill the beans, then return to my seat, where the aid has cleaned up the mess and filled the vise. We assure the little kid that everything's okay, and he doesn't taddle.

I go back into the maze of the building, crawling through tight, angular passageways, ending up in a larger, totally bare room with some other people, supposedly my companions. There's one bad person in there, or at least a bad presence, and it informs us of some mechanism that was triggered in the room that will destroy the room (and us). I don't remember what the mechanism is, but I seem to remember it having to do with heat emnating from the walls, building up enough to trigger some explosion, like gas.

I leave the room by some measure of heroics I don't remember, and take some envelope with me. There's a window I need to get to, but I can only squeeze my arm through a nook and crevice to almost reach it.

I end up outside the building anyway. It's daytime. It was daytime for the entire dream, and the light coming into the windows was always bright. I can see for miles from the top of the monstrous building. Rolling hills, mountains, and forests. I spread my arms and jump, swooping just a bit before soaring through the sky, flying over the landscape. Track 39 from Rockman Dash soars along with me, a piano soundtrack to my flight.

I think about how I'll show this to CJ later, have her fly with me here over the weekend. I swoop extremely close to the ground to get a sense of speed. I see some people passing on the right, by some trees. I try to get their attention, to say hey, look, I'm flying, but they miss me. A bit further down I see two guys floating in the air by a tree, holding golf clubs. I guess it's no big deal that I'm flying then, since other people in this part of the country can, too. I just keep going and going, enjoying the flight.

posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Shorten My Name
7-08-2002

After many events surrounding my usual drive around the recursive city highway system of my dreams, I find myself on a beach at night. The coast has a concave shape and extends as far as I can see. Mountains steeply end a mere hundred feet before the water.

A swarm of giant flying insects descends from the sky, accompanied by a thundering voice that explains its new dominion over the planet. Looking into the distant sea, I see a row of giant purple platforms, stretching from end of the beach to the other. In the center is a larger building with a cross-like symbol on it. The voice explains that since the God of this planet never does anything, it decided to take it over and attack everyone on it, and that he could only be stopped by fighting back.

I bend down and grab a rock, the only weapon around. A bat-like bug flies at me, and I nail it as it swoops by. Dozens of other pests fly at me, trying to collide with me, but I either dodge them or peg them with a stone or piece of scrap metal. I know I'm having little effect on this apocalytpic turn of events.

I run down the beach and find a section protected by an old wall on one side and the mountains on the other. There are little kids there, fighting back in their futile way. There's an iron gate in the mountain, with hundreds of new cars parked behind it. The tunnel seems to open up into a new domain. I ponder shoving a gas barrel in there and exploding them all, but then surmise that we could put them to better use later. Then I notice a bunch of snails and slugs on the wall and on the ground here, and figure they could be used against the enemy, because they all secrete toxic liquids. I mention this, and we somehow use them all up to fight off the attack.

Everyone leaves, to where I don't know, except a couple of us. I find some chalk and start to write my name on the wall with some contact information, hoping others will do the same, for we must start some resistance movement. I have to erase and re-write the header "Contact Info" on the wall a few times to get the sizing right, and then I shorten my name to "Avis".


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Deadliest Opponent Yet
5-08-2002

Part of a superhero team, fighting against the evil superheroes. The bad guys have a guy like Spiderman who can meld into stuff like a chameleon, except he really does meld, and a guy who's like Iceman, except he can cling to the ceiling, turn invisible, and fire kinetic blasts. During battle, I ask what my power is, and a voice tells me, "The conscious dream." I concentrate, and can suddenly see the enemy, so we can, uh...escape.

Glide through sound studio's wood floors. Didn't even audition for that part, nor know the script.

Clunker truck. Return it to hick owner.

Reese. Skis. Bus. Middle of nowhere in some city. Some "living Bible" red.

Exit bus. Go through empty city. So barren. Truck loading area with graffiti. Find goon on our side. Go around. Find kid. We all meet up. Something about a kitten?

Childhood home. Middle of the night. Meet IP downstairs on couch. She turns to me with tears in her eyes.

Back in city. Splintered doors everywhere. Someone been blowing them up. I follow the trail through a bunch of buildings to find my friends blowing up locked doors.

IP again, waking me up from a long sleep in the middle of the night, making love to me.

A supply store. All my adventuring friends there with me. Big party of adventurers now. Looking for a good knife. Evil birds. Kitchen knife no good...black jagged knife. Ration/light pack. Use it in cave. Party finds me. Big battle. I die, lose xp. Someone takes my stuff. I get mad, try to find it, but people are eating my food.

IP again, waking me up to make love to me, in the same room in the old house.

Go back in time, kinda. Find my stuff, kill the monsters myself. See guy and girl enter, all decked out in armour and weapons. I kill them cuz noone's around. Cave dome cracks. Huge oversized humanoid form rises up from ground. My mental narrator comments that this creature doesn't even have the decency (used a different word) to take on a full human form. I know that underneath the rock, it's all spidery demonic legs about to reach up and crush me. I jump up into the sky, just as a big heat energy blast comes up from it. A shot of the entire planet from space, the blast engulfing the top half of it, reaching far out into space, and a speck that is me, still jumping higher and higher to avoid it. I reach the event horizon, which is my only escape, because there time stops, and the blast can't get me if it can't move through time. The blast subsides, and I careen back down to the planet surface to take on my deadliest opponent yet.

posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Her Second Choice
4-24-2002

After a series of scenes with people I'd forgotten all about, I ended up at some sort of reunion. In a dark room with some sparse chairs, Ian said, "But you liked Erica T, right?" I answered something to the effect of "No way."

Everyone got into a single file line and walked around, one line passing another as if in a show. I saw people I used to know. Suddenly N. Dawson grabs me from out of line and hugs me, gives me a huge kiss on the cheek, and says, "I've missed you so much!" I hug her back and reflexively say, "I've missed you, too." She then says, "You remind me of Darren." Then her friend Megan, behind her, says, "So you're actually her 2nd choice," or something to that effect. I kept walking, and saw Chad F. We grasped hands, and he asked if I was going to some dome or theatre or something that Saturday. I asked about it, and he said something about Robotech, to which I responded I'd definitely make it.

I continued through a glass hallway, outside of which in all directions (including down), it appeared like outer space. I jogged into a room ahead of my line (which had fallen behind cuz of my interactions) with a couple banks of machines. I saw John W. pass by, and I shouted hello. I turned a corner and saw Mike H. from grad school and some long-haired fat blond guy I supposedly recognized. We exchanged greetings, he said something stupid, and somehow April appeared and announced she was pregnant.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Quite Tasty
6-25-2002

I see LD for the first time since high school. What's she doing here? She doesn't even really remember me, and we don't even really talk, but she keeps intersecting with my agenda, coincidentally. I think about how I should find my old senior yearbook and show her what she wrote, to jog her memory, but I don't.

I need to get groceries, but someone has to go with me, by law. Some service gives me a random girl's phone number, and she accompanies me there, where I lose her to do my own thing. It's more like a mall.

I end up in a movie theatre, watching a movie. It's about an old man, some kind of necromancer with a big demon familiar. He's in an underground lab made of stone. I understand that the underworld demons don't come after him because of an agreement; if he doesn't dig into the ground, where they live, they'll leave him alone. But he wants some artifact underneath the surface, and orders his demon familiar to defend him while he digs. Before he can, however, an oblong, amorphous shape careens up out of the earth--in another room, for this one is protected--and charges down a hallway toward the room. The familiar braces itself against the big wooden door, as if to stop it. It works, and the necromancer is safe--for now.

My cell phone rings, and it's that girl I came to the grocery store with. I leave the theatre to talk. Apparently she's ready to go. She says she had a delightful time and wants to see me again. I'm like, uh, this wasn't a date, and we didn't even spend time together, you desperate weirdo.

I go to a different grocery store--one less crowded. I can't find anything, though, and I walk around it a few times. Then the cashiers all look at me and get my attention. It's then I notice it's the Dickie family, who I haven't seen in forever and couldn't possibly care about. I apologize, saying I was just out of it, not paying attention.

The mom takes me around back to show me some cake. I have a bite, and I almost spit it out it's so bad, but then by the time I swallow it, I find it quite tasty.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Playground in the Sky
6-26-2002

I'm in a very large school building, entering the library. A female teacher is telling me to take a community college course instead of the standard english class. It sounds promising. SG arrives, and I mention it to her, that we should take it together. She explains how this other guy thought the english class was very hard, so it's a good idea.

I go to my room, which is located in the same building. The building is huge, like the Pentagon, except it's shaped like a square. There's music playing in my room--"At One With You" by Mars Lasar.

By my room, there's some contruction equipment lying around. Some holes in the floor, planks, paint buckets, and various tools. A half-finished cement wall is standing there, shorter than me. I touch it, and a white cement-like substance sticks to my finger. I wipe it on the wall, wondering how long ago this was laid down.

I go upstairs to the roof, where the playground is. It's daytime. I look out over the courtyard, but nothing is visible from this towering height, and the other side of the building seems so far away. There's a tower on it, and I know there's a similar tower on my side, too, but I never turn around to look at it.

I walk over to a swingset, which sits in the sand. It's just like when I was a kid, with the chains hanging down and the metal posts. The seats are wooden, though. They're also small and cracked, and I wonder how fragile they are. The chains stretch all the way down into the sand, so that the swing is barely resting in it. The ground was also flat underneath the swings, as if noone had ever used them. I stepped on one, then off again.

I turned around to view the rest of the playground (I was on the right-hand side, if you were looking at this part of the roof from the courtyard), and I saw there were children swinging on another swingset on the left-hand side. In the center-back section, a couple adults were playing with their children. Everyone was sort of watching me, but I felt comfortable there, not ashamed that I hadn't known what the deal was...if there was one, that is.

Then I noticed that the music from my room could be heard up here. So loud, in fact, that it drowned out all other noise...but it didn't sound loud, or hurt the ears; it just eliminated the other noise somehow. I reasoned that this was why I didn't notice the others here before. I wondered if they knew where the music came from. It definitely added a nice ambience to this playground in the sky.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Execute Him
6-27-2002

I'm in a lush hotel room with a few other people. I have the lingering sense that I've been here before (never in another dream, though...you'll see...), but I don't think about it much as I follow everyone into the elevator. At the 10th floor, the elevator ends, and we have to enter another one to take us the rest of the way down, except it's not really down, for the bottom elevator goes sideways like a tram. An underground tram.

We get all the way to the lobby when I realize I don't have any bags with me. Surely I at least packed some clothes before I came to this hotel. I go into another hotel room on the ground floor, where the leader of my group had supposedly been staying. I see some slacks hanging on a chair that look just like mine, and then a shirt, and then another pair of slacks. I start to pick them up when the guy comes out of the bathroom. "What are you doing with my clothes?" he asks. "I was looking for my clothes," I try to explain. "Those are mine," he says. Then I look at the clothes more carefully and notice they aren't mine after all. The slacks have a different stitch, for instance, and the shirt has a subtle, gay pattern on it. I leave to find someone who can get me back into my room.

I see the hotel owner, a big fat, but clean man, dressed rather Shakespearian. I ask, "Excuse me, Sir, but I left some stuff in my room. Can someone please let me back in so I can get it?" He responds, "Sure, just go on up. It's open." Apparently, the system at this hotel was that every free room was unlocked, and to get the key to it, you had to register.

I start for the elevator, but then remember that I don't know which room I'd stayed in. I turn the corner again to ask the owner, who had been talking to someone else this entier time. "Sir?" He turns around. "Excuse me, but...what was your name?" The man he's talking to tells me, but it's long and complicated. I couldn't remember it or pronounce it then, no less now in memory. I ignore the response and continue, "Which floor was I on?" I know that if I had the right floor, I'd remember the room. The owner says, "Well, you can only stay on the 1st, 2nd, 10th, 12th, and 23rd floors, and the 12th is for maintenance personnel only." I must have been on the 23rd floor then.

I get in the elevator and take it to the 10th floor, where I change elevators again. Before the door closes, however, a skinny black guy sticks his foot in it to keep the door open. I figure he just wanted to catch the elevator, but he doesn't enter. I'm almost relieved, cuz I don't feel like talking to anyone, but then he sticks his foot in again. This time he enters. As the door's closing, I stick my foot in it and ask, "Are you waiting for anyone else?" Suddenly, he's a poor white farmer-lookin' kid, and he says he's not. He has overalls and a baseball cap on. I'm a little frightened of him, because he looks like the sort of imbecile who'd hurt you and not know any better, and we have a long trip to the 23rd floor"I wanted to ask you something," the white kid says. Great, I think, he's going to mug me and be nice about it, but instead he says, "I've been seeing this girl, and I don't know what to do for..." and so on. I don't really remember, but he was having relationship problems. Rather, not really problems, but he just wanted to be a good boyfriend. I don't remember my advice, either, but it was very half-assed and non-committal, since I didn't care.

He follows me to the 23rd floor. Other people are in my room already, including this kid. I still don't see any baggage of mine. In fact, I don't have any possessions on my person at all, which is very odd. I try to remember what I'm even doing there, and I can't think of why or how I got to that hotel in the first place. I have to go to the bathroom, so I go inside it and try to sort things out while I relieve myself.

I have amnesia. There's no other explanation. I can't remember a single thing about my life. It seems so strange, not remembering anything, but there's nothing before the hotel. Nothing. It's as if my life just began. I wonder what could have possibly happened here to make me forget it all. It seems far-fetched, being that I'm not even injured (to my knowledge). While I can't remember any events, I do remember some of my beliefs and attitudes, and I start to wonder whether I did this to myself, somehow...somehow fullfilled that silly romantic fantasy of mine to have amnesia...the fantasy of rediscovering yourself. If that's the case, then I must have prepared for it. I must have thought of a way to communicate with my future self, to help him/me out. I pull up my sock, and a key falls out of it. Aha! I must have put this here to tell me something, but what? Surely I was more prepared than this, but for now I can only trust my intuition.

I out into the main room, where the people are chatting it away. I sit down with them and make conversation. I don't remember any of it, for I was busy thinking about my condition. Then it suddenly hits me that I'm effectively a new person. My heart begins to race as the full implications of my condition fill my mind. A sort of panic, but mostly excitement.

I find myself in a college computer lab. It's empty except for a girl at a computer, playing Return to Wolfenstein multi-player. She must work here. She's guarding, so to speak, a long glass hallway entrance to an amusement park. I'm carrying a backpack, and some sort of hat is sort of clouding my eyes. I approach her from behind, but she senses my presence, asking me if I needed assistance. "Yeah, but I'm waiting for my friend, so there's no rush. I want to see you play, anyway." "Well I'm not playing right now, this is just the warmup period." I go, "Yeah." I notice she's in a 64-player game. I comment, "I stopped playing the huge games...I mostly play with only 18 or so people now." She says, "This isn't a huge game. I'm just screwing around." I figure she doesn't really know what she's talking about.

My roommate comes by, but announces he has to go to the bathroom before we move on. The girl gets up and leaves, too. I decide I had to go anyway, so I go in. It's just one big white room with two stalls and an uplifted urinal. The urinal is so high that there's about 6 steps up to it, and it overlooks the stalls. I feel rather exposed as I relieve myself in it. While I'm doing so, someone walks by and closes the bathroom door. Whoops. Finished, I put myself back in my pants.

Outside, back at the girl's computer desk, are suddenly many people. Some girl introduces me to some Chinese girl, who's only going to school off-time, whatever that means. Leaning at the main desk, some other girl starts talking to me, too, but I didn't care. I didn't care about any of these people. I just wanted to get on with things. She then says, "That blond girl over there has been checking you out." I glance through the crowd and immediately know who she's talking about, except she's not blond, she's red. It's RO of all people. She wasn't checking me out, she just knows me, and we haven't seen each other in a long time.

I walk over to her, but she gets lost in the crowd. Maybe there WAS a blond girl she was talking about, because RO doesn't seem to know I'm there. I finally make it to her, and she turns around and sees me. She's a lot shorter than I remember, but otherwise unchanged. I give her a big hug, and she hugs me back. She asks, "How have you been?" Millions of images from the past couple years scan through my mind, and in spite of all the stuff I've been through lately, and perhaps because of where my life's at right now, I say, "Great. You?" She doesn't answer. I wonder how much of my answer has to do with CJ.

We hug for a long time, and people start to filter out of the area. Every time I try to ease the tension in my muscles to let her go, she clings to me, though I don't mind giving comfort to an old friend. She doesn't respond to anything I say, either, as if she doesn't have the strength to respond. I say, "It's been what, 4, 5 years?" (In reality, it's been over 8 years.) "So what are you up to?" "What brings you here?" Nothing elicits anything further from her. I get the feeling she's been through a lot of pain since I last saw her, and I'm some sort of refuge.

I start to feel a little embarrassed, because I know people are watching. I move my feet around, carrying her with me, as if we're dancing, but then feel even more silly. I see her parents sitting in rockers, watching us. Her mom cautiously approaches us. From behind me, she lightly embraces both of us, then asks RO, "Under whom was this boy born?" RO makes an upward motion with her eyes. "God?" her mom asks. I nod.

Her mom starts talking about marriage, and escorts us to sit with them. RO and I give one another confused glances, and her dad says that if we got married, she'd have to mine. "But I've never mined!" she wails. Apprently mining is the family business (not, not really). She suddenly seems defeated by it, and her dad says, "But not on the Ish-something (river)...but on the Alta Moreno!" which I figured was another river somewhere (the Ish-place, I somehow knew, was in Oregon). He gets out a map of the Alta Moreno, which is in another country, and traces the river path with his hand. I think to myself that I wouldn't be a good miner because I didn't grow up with it...that you're only the best at things you grow up doing.

Suddenly we're all there, walking in the river bed. It's all dried up during this season. I'm walking with RO and her mom, and her dad's way behind. Then, from his perspective, I see water crashing down the river. He shouts a warning, and we all run. We can't climb out, because it's very deep, but we can climb up enough, perhaps. We find a nook where we put our bags and such. RO and her little sister get onto a shelf, and I squeeze in. Her dad gets the edge of the ledge, hanging onto me, as if it's my responsibility to keep him from getting washed away.

The water comes, and goes up to our ankles. Boats go by, but each one turns into kindling. Finally, a larger wooden boat comes by. It had been sinking the other boats with a kind of lubricant. We exchange harsh words, and try to kick them off, but it won't happen. It looks like a fight will happen, but then the water goes away, everyone gets a strange look on their face, and they all just walk off-set, off-dream, whatever. As it were all a movie. Only me and RO are still there.

We get up and walk to a small iron table in the outdoor seating of a nice restaurant. I say something, but I don't remember; I'm too busy thinking about CJ, feeling bad that I wasn't able to tell her where I was going, that she's probably worried about me.

We've been living in a complex when one day four men in blue uniforms show up, demanding asylum. They remind me of the guys from the boat. They have weapons, so RO's dad lets them in. I find a gun (the imaginary one in my index finger) and kill all but three of them, however. I chase the fourth one down. Someone else in the complex tries to stop me from killing him. He's one of their recruits, I guess. I quickly explain that the're all bad and mostly dead. He watches as I put my finger to the guy's forehead, pull my thumb trigger, and execute him.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
In the Heart of Mexico
6-28-2002

Nighttime on the rooftop of some city. There's a line of people wrapping around a building on the roof. I'm standing at the end with two male companions. We're going to pull a job together.

Somehow we end up falling through a hole, landing in a basement that hasn't been disturbed for a long time. Some old desks and chairs, and strange dirt mounds to step over. After a while, I notice one wall is made of glass, and we can see outside. It's like a zoo exhibit; baby panda bears are playing outside. I bang on the glass, and a little panda comes, crashing into the glass and breaking through. Now we have an escape route, except the mother panda will come looking for its child. I can hear my sister's voice in my head, "Just jump on a chair when she comes in." I look around, but the chairs are gone, and her advice made no sense anyway. The mother panda comes in, but doesn't molest us, and soon they're gone.

I end up back on that roof, and one of my partners says that BR is going to team up with us next time. I'm like, "Uh oh...I've worked with him before. A lot, back in high school, college even. We don't get along anymore." Suddenly my other partner is KBrns, and he concurs. Nonetheless, BR comes along, and he's not so bad. I don't remember what we accomplished together, though.

Something about some girl supposed to be giving me a ride somewhere, but instead takes me to her place. I don't go inside, but instead just get out of her car and start walking back to wherever. It's in a dark, wooded area, but the roads are paved. I get the feeling not many people live there.

I know I return to that place later in the dream, but I don't remember when.

I find myself at the corner of a large fence. There's a military-like commander there, and a younger, stocky guy. There's a pole like a telephone pole there at the corner, too, and the younger guy is supposed to knock it over, as a test. He goes, "Whoouh" and kicks it, but it doesn't budge.

I'm someplace else again, like a hallway outside a classroom or something, meeting other people. There's a Korean guy, an old man in a jumpsuit, two preppy girls, another girl, a Black girl, and one or two other guys. We've all just apparently passed some aptitude test.

Someone takes us to that fence, and we watch that guy kick the pole down, breaking a hole in the fence. We all applaud him, and one guy gives him a clap on the shoulder. It occurs to me to personally congratulate him, but I refrain, thinking it might be overkill. I mumble "Whoouh" to myself, as if it's a sort of key-ap, and one of the guys in our group hears me. He goes, "Cmon everybody, let's hear it. 'Whooouh!'" So we all give it a go, like it's our cheer.

I knew this was an elite organization, but I was unsure how I became a part of it. I thought it a strange coincidence that I'd just passed that other aptitude test.

One by one we enter a room, which is like a bar, because there's, well, a bar there, except it's two stories, very small, and the stools are behind the bar. I find a spot in a corner. The normal girl is next to me, and one of the guys is, too. She's talking about the Black girl, who happens to be going up top to find a seat. She says how the Black girl used to be stupid and not talk right (not as in talk like a Black person, but just get things WRONG), but she was determined, and improved enough to make it here.

I decide I'd rather be someplace else, so I leave the room, ending up at the front of the most kickass bus I've even seen. The two commanders are up there, prepping our pilot (bus driver) on our mission. They don't mind my presence. I guess I'm free to do what I want, since I'm now a member of the organization. I hang out by the pilot, to keep him company, but then I forget what I was going to talk about. He's like, "What?". I tell him, "I had a question, but nevermind. Sorry." I go to the back of the bus and look out the left-side window. The bar-like room is below this floor on the bus, down the steps at the back. The others remain down there.

It's still nighttime, and as I look out the window at the dreary city, I muse about how I'll tell people that I went on a secret mission tonight. I think about how I would've never gotten this job if I'd told my mom about it, and sure am glad I didn't.

I look out the back window, which is steamed up, but someone has already smeared a smaller window through the steam. I see we're on a winding, hilly, stone bridge, crossing over the sea. It's as if the bridge were hilly to conform to the rolling waves of the ocean. Then I notice other bridges like it surrounding us, all over the place. Many are broken, and they're like man-made islands. I figure it means we're going into Mexico.

There are other cars on this road, and the ones near us. A woman stands up in an old convertible and wildly fires her machinegun, bullets going in every direction. I figure we're okay, since the bus is bulletproof, but I see a little hole in the seat in front of me. The old man is looking out the window with me. I go, "Isn't this bus supposed to be bulletproof?" He agrees, and I wonder what the heck kinda bullets those must be. She fires again, wildly hitting us. I sort of duck under the seat as some come through the window, though microscopically. Then I see a white glow, and I know it means bad news. I start wriggling down the compartment to get downstairs. The old man looks at me as if to say, "That's a good idea; too bad I'm not going to do it." The moment I'm down there, there's a huge explosion up there, and his body ends up at the bottom of the stairs. I know he's dead, but then I flash forward...

And I'm on a city sidewalk, and he's standing in front of me on the street, badly injured, but somehow recuperated. I narrate the scene. "I told him I could call [the ambulance], but he said he was okay. I watched him leave, knowing he wouldn't last long. I think he wanted to die alone, but it didn't have to be that way." I watch him turn a corner, knowing it's the last I'll see of him.

The two preppy girls pass by me, talking as usual. The Korean guy comes running from across the street, yelling something. I thought it was the old man's name, but when he arrives, he says, "I said '1st zipper'", as if to cover it up. He picks a case up off the ground. It seems our party has split into two factions now.

I get a vision of a bubble floating in darkness. The narrator in my mind says something to the effect of, "They started off on the old Ohio roads...". On the lower-left quadrant of the image, glowing gold/blue tentacles and stuff manifest at the edges of the bubble. The bubble starts to bulge out toward them, pushing them back, but not mingling. "But then the came...". Suddenly the bubble opened up, and all the slimey things end up closed up inside of it, as it to take it over. Then they all concentrate in a shooting star-like pattern toward the lower-left quadrant again, as if they're trying to poke out of it, and the narrator says, "...and they knew they were in the heart of Mexico."


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
After Me
7-01-2002

I'm in some sort of military training. A fellow trainee, who reminds me of BR, makes fun of my fighting style, says I hurry too much. I beat him up slowly, and someone else grins about it.

Walking toward another part of training, I step on my toenail wrong and it bends back painfully. I see people lined up on the floor in the hall, next to small green sacks. A midget is lying at my feet. A man comes and pulls a string by him, and the sack inflates, carrying the midget up into the air. I limp by, glad I'm going to get to miss this parachuting exercise. I have a momentary flashforward into the future of me telling someone else how I never had to undergo parachute training.

I catch up with CJ and a little girl. We're all going to go to another world. To get there, we have to go through an intermediate dimension of sorts--a forest with a single path through it. Only one person can pass through it at a time.

I step on the path and imagine that the little girl made it through just fine, having gone ahead of me. I imagine her telling me later, "I ran, just like you said." So I start to run, and I run for a while. It's a straight path, covered with dead leaves. All the trees are dead, like autumn. I get the feeling I've done this many times.

I see a green glow up ahead. Someone in a Tron-like outfit up ahead where the path finally curves. I glance to the left and see another, newer, path. I take it, hoping to flank this person--I know he's bad. I find two glowing orange rods in my hands, each about three feet long and bent in the middle at 120 degrees. I try to hide them behind my back, but I can't.

I see more enemies walking in a line ahead of me, and they see me. The leader comes right up to me, faster than I expected. I throw one of the boomerang-like rods at him, and it bounces off. I bash at him with the other rod, but it seems useless. I know that if I don't incapacitate all these men, then CJ won't able to make it through after me.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Missed the Silence
3-11-2002

After a series of adventures (which I have forgotten), I found myself on the beach, playing with a stick in the wet sand. I drew squares of equal size, linked together, different patches of them, as if drawing up a plan. I was remotely aware of my companions some distance off, but I couldn't hear them. I thought how odd it was that I was sitting in such total silence. I didn't even hear the ocean. I glanced up a little bit from the ground and saw that the ocean was perfectly still. Not calm, but stopped; frozen in time. I then realized what had happened, and noticed that nothing else was moving besides myself, and it was totally silent. I started to consider the implications of this, but then everything went back to normal, and I could overhear people talking loudly and moving about. I immediately missed the silence.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Darkness Forever
03-14-2002

I was in my childhood back yard. My dad was tending the garden. It was daytime, the sun shining brightly. Immediately to the right of the yard (facing away from the house) was a huge thorn-cloud-like barrier, which ran along the border of the yard as far as I could see in either direction. I took a bird's eye view of the property to confirm this. I noticed that on the other side of the barrier, the land was dark and cloudy, with no sunlight bursting through at all. I somehow put something into the sky, which caused it to open up and let the light shine in. That land then became prosperous.

Then I was at some college. Allegedly mine, but...not. Some deal with being in what seemed like my 4th grade classroom. I ran down a hall with some people, made some crack comment about something as we went outside. I ended up in a room with three glass walls, a few stories up, snow everywhere. I set some dumbells down, intending to work out a little bit. Aslum appeared, and I tried to clear some space for him by wiping the snow off the benches and the ground. The surface beneath was cracked tan plastic. I also noticed a bunch of pint-size, black-robed humanoids on brooms hovering about outside, facing away from the windows.

The sky was dark and snowy out the windows, and in the distance I could see (possibly really far away) a huge building/machine, like a giant snowblower. The media said it was built by the Russians, and that they were blowing it all over the Earth to confuse us, or jam us, before mounting a major strike. I knew, however, that only the Japanese could build such a thing. I saw some objects jet at it and vanish in brilliant displays of yellow light, within its mouth, but it kept on blowing.

I shouted at the witches outside, who were just hovering around, watching. I swore at them, told them to go do something useful (forgotten the quotes since this morning, unfortunately). One of them got angry and came up to the glass door, landing his broom and walking up to it from a balcony outside. It was suddenly open, and he lunged forward toward me. I was startled, but before I could react, he had relocated to the other side of the room. I heard him dart around, but then he was gone.

I went back home to find our sky darkened, our land dwindling. The other side, beyond the barrier, was still flourishing. I could not convince, whatever powers they were, to share that light with our side, in the same way that I did earlier. I knew it wouldn't be long before both sides, and thus everything, plunged into darkness forever.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Bloody Water
3-19-2002

I was in some twisted vacation resort. Many people from my past (and past dreams) were there, enjoying themselves. I entered one of the game rooms, where a very dangerous-looking game was about to begin. Somehow we were all treading water in this room. My feet started bleeding, tainting the water red. Other peoples' feet started bleeding, too. Then my legs. Blood just rushing out of them, mingling with the water. Then suddenly everything was normal again, and the game was about to begin.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Pyrotechnics
3-23-2002

I was on the outskirts of a town I'd never been to before, yet I was a soldier or defender for this town, and I was with my comrades on the field. I was facing some hills and mountains, and I saw dark shapes running over them. I pulled out my sniper rifle and zoomed in. I took out dozens of enemy troops, who were all just dark spots in my field of view. As they neared, I pulled out my pistol, instead. Somehow they couldn't see me, as I was in the shadow of the mountain, though in plain view. I shot another in the back of the head before the cavalry came in. I wasn't going to surrender, but my comrades weren't doing much good. The cavalry seemed impervious to my pistol.

Turned out they were Columbian drug lords, and they forced their way into our mansion. Then I realized we didn't have a mansion, and this wasn't our property, nor town. I guessed that we have previously taken all this land from them, and this was our retribution. Nonetheless, I made my way into the mansion before they did, to defend it, and squatted down in one of the main hallways. I popped off several rounds as the big bosses came around the corner, escorted by my own men, who had surrendered. My rounds were ineffective. I ran out of ammo. An old man grabbed my gun from me as if I were a child.

Noone pestered me, and I walked about freely, though I was supposedly an underling. One of the bosses hated the food that the cook served, so I took it and ate it...tasty lamb morsels on spicy mashed potatoes.

I went to the basement where the remaining resistance was holding out. I found myself on my cell phone with a girl, someone I was supposed to meet up with soon. As I explained what was going on, I overheard some guys saying they'd just finished planting all the explosives. They were going to leave without me! Still on the phone, I followed my comrades out into the front parking circle, where we had a single car. Someone opened the trunk, and I dove into it. It slammed shut and the car screeched off.

Bullets crashed through the windows, and I found myself slouched down in the back seat. I still had the phone to one ear with my left hand, and in my right, I had a pistol. There was a detonator on some sort of shelf in front of me, right above my head, and a bullet hit it. I thought the car was going to explode. Then another one hit it, but it still didn't go off. I told the girl on the phone that we were probably going to die. Although it was immensely premature in terms of our relationship, I told her I loved her, because I figured it was something I might have had the chance to feel for her someday anyway. I turned off the phone so she wouldn't hear it all end. My hand was by the back window, and I was afraid it would got shot. I dared a peek out the side window, and it was a cop car. I couldn't get any shots off. There were three cop cars around us, one swerving in front of us to cause an accident. More were ahead in the distance, and I knew more were behind, too. We crashed into the police car barricade with a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. I imagined myself holding that girl, and we all died.

I was pissed. Pissed about everything that had just happened, including the death. I got up, screamed, and kicked a bunch of cans and stuff against a wall. I went back into town to see if the explosives had gone off in the mansion. Under normal circumstances it would have been dangerous to go back, but since I was dead, I didn't think anyone would recognize me. I made my way up a road that wound up a hill, and out onto a cliff with houses on it. This wasn't the right way. I went back down and took another branching street and found the mansion. There were tons of tourists there. The place had totally blown up. I walked along an old wall ledge above the property to scope it out. I saw some people I knew, so I jumped down off the ledge to meet them. I don't remember what was said.

I went inside the home, and it has been completely remodeled already. I remembered that this home had belonged to my relatives, but I guessed my cousin was killed in the explosion, so his wife had sold it already in her grief. Instead of the nice traditional furnishings, the walls were white with intermittent vertical stripes of yellow and blue. The furniture was likewise white, hard, and very uninviting. In the immediate room to the left, someone was peddling useless junk. I went straight ahead into the kitchen, took a right through the hallway, then right again into the living room. There was crappy 10" TV in the corner on the floor and some meager tables and chairs. One of the walls had been patched up to separate this room from the foyer. A salesman came in, giving a tour for some other people. I mentioned this wall. He took a look at it and seemed astounded, even though it was obvious.

I went to my relatives' new house, and they were actually both alive. Some other guy was there, my age, whom I didn't know. We had dinner. I was expected to stay for a moment of silence, and then for an hour to play some stupid game, all of which would have taken the rest of the night. I skipped out to run around town. It was night now. I don't remember what I did, but when I came back, they were waiting for me. Now they could begin the game, so all I'd done was prolong the evening. They were only paying me minimum wage for this, so I stuffed it.

Something about getting a ride to karate class, being late, getting mad at the driver.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Living a Dream
3-24-2002

I was in an underground compound, in a large square pit. High walls made it impossible to get out, and a third large wall divided the pit into two equal halves. There were others with me, part of my team. We were all wielding baseball bats. Nazi soldiers were on the opposing team, but we couldn't see them beyond the wall. Every now and then a small object would get hurled over the wall, and we would have to bat it over before it hit the ground.

The same complex, but outside the pit. I led some people, by manner of some fancy footwork and jumping, outside the confined permiter of the complex.

I was talking to P, and she said that things didn't work out because I had been living in a dream. She said that our "event" on September 11th was when my dream began. I corrected her that it was August 11th, trying not to sound argumentative. I wondered if I was still living a dream.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments

 
Juggling Lives
3-28-2002

It was wartime, and I led a squad of soldiers through an underground complex into enemy territory. There were allied civilians there. There was a crowd gathered round a boxing ring, with a little 3-or-so year-old girl and her mom in it. They were doing a mind-control demonstration. The little girl, with her special punching glove, punched her mom. Her mom stood behind her and said, "Okay, now she can tell me two things, and I must believe them." The little girl said, "First, forget that you've been under mind control. Second, you're not my mommy anymore." She jumped up into my arms and asked me, "Will you be my daddy?" I instantly said sure, it would be okay.

I carried her with me as I led the troops through some corridors. There were mines all over the ground, which I easily avoided. I pulled out a machine-shotgun just as over a dozen enemies dropped down from above. I railed them all in an instant. There was one huge guy left, and he charged into our squad with a chaingun. I unloaded all my ammo on him, but he was still standing. Pulling out another machinegun, I finished him off.

We made it to our destination, where the dream is fuzzy. Some guy got his hands on a diamond from someone else. We left through some secret tunnels. I was still carrying the little girl. I started to wonder if I'd made the wrong decision, how I would take care of her, or make time to do so. I disappointedly figured I wouldn't be able to go out on Friday, but then I was reminded of some other spies I'd known who had daughters, and juggled their lives just fine.

After fighting through more enemies, we ended up in a jewelry store. Kinda underground. That guy tried to pawn off that diamond, but it was fake. I told him he shouldn't have trusted the source in the first place. I let the little girl down to look around a bit before we took off again.

I vaguely remember a classroom.


posted by Phlegm at 11/26/2003  (0) comments