Makyo in My Mind

2007-09-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

What's Left?
9-15-2007

It's nighttime. I'm outside my home, but it's a home I never had. The remains of a wooden swing hang from a shadowy tree in the yard. A tall wooden fence blocks my view. My dad is at a workbench in the darkness of the garage, messing with my computer, because he thinks he found viruses on it. If he did, it wasn't from me, and regardless, he shouldn't be touching my stuff.

My mom has been inside for a while, making a mess in the family room. Building me a new wife, since my other one left me earlier in the day. Was my previous wife a robot, too? I don't remember, anymore. After a while you can't tell the difference.

I step inside my home. The lights are out. I call out, and the robot responds. I can barely make out her figure sitting in my dad's old chair among the boxes and packing she came with. She sits a little to the side, her legs together and her hands clasped in her lap. Her head hanging down a bit.

"I'm not very good at talking yet," she says, "but I've been practicing the word 'Thursday' all day." Her speech is awkward, but still endearing, almost like a foreign accent. I kneel down by her and put my hand on her leg to feel how real it is. It's very real.

I think back to all those dreams I had where my parents did stupid things, and when I'd yell at them at the top of my lungs. Things like, "Get the fuck outta here!" Did those things really happen? I don't think so. They must've been dreams. Did I really have those dreams, or did I just think I did?

There isn't much familiar about this place.

Time passes and daylight comes. I pull into a parking lot. I see Jackie Chan, an old black guy from the gym, and my lunch friend Tim getting together under a tree. I'd forgotten that this was the place they met on this day every year, to fight. It was a way of commemorating their friendship, for as many long-standing friendships do, it started with a fight. I was fortunate to catch it last year, and it was quite something.

I get out my camera and turn on the video, but night falls instantly and I can't get a good picture. I run toward the site, but they disperse. I continue and find many college kids camping out at a good vantage point on the grass. I'm in a dorm courtyard. One group carries a piece of furniture from one building to the next as a practical joke. I take a seat on a comfortable patch of ground, but then wonder if it's an anthill and stand back up.

The Rock comes over and hands out hard, blue candy from a plastic bag. He also gives everyone a roll of tape and gets everyone's attention. He starts to peel the tape from the roll and says, "This roll of tape is you. It has many layers. On the surface is your personality, wrapped around your core." He and everyone else, including me, unravels his tape as he speaks. "Keep unraveling, and you find your hopes and dreams..." and so on, until everyone is left with an unraveled piece of tape. "What's left?" he asks.

"Nothing!" I shout, because there is no single part of a person that makes a person who they are. But he ignores me and talks about disabled children, bringing himself to tears before running off across a bridge. It's then that I realize he is disabled, his arms and legs in braces. Explains why I haven't seen him around lately.

I tell someone a story about how I broke out of prison in Antarctica, then took a small boat to France and fought ghouls. I don't remember the point of it, but I figured I'd pull their leg for a while. The previous night, I dreamt about breaking out of prison, so it was still on my mind.

2007-07-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

My Own Creation
7-14-2007

I find out I can go back to graduate school part-time for free. This sounds like a good idea, because I can work and just take one or two classes at a time. Only the brightest and best go to this school, which is out in a green and mountainous countryside.

I ride my skateboard to the school from where I live, because I live on top of a mountain and I have good momentum. I effortlessly and quickly glide down grassy slopes and trodden dith paths created by students and campus police. At the top of a slope, however, I lose the skateboard, which tumbles down into a security car and explodes. I'd forgotten about the forbidden explosive device attached to it. Rather than get into trouble, I walk as if I'm not the guilty one. The remains of the car transform into a jet-powered, sea-faring vessel, which takes off into the air to patrol the area. It takes my skateboard, too, which is undamaged.

I join a group of people headed to the school. We're all new. The school is hard to get to, so an old man and an old woman are showing us the way. They are two of the oldest faculty of the school, the Illuminated Ones, whose scientific knowledge is so great that it is indistinguishable from magic. They lead us through mountain passes and valleys of flowers. Walking. It's far, but somehow fast, and not tiring.

We come to a rock face, a dead end. I start to walk toward it, to touch it, because I know there must be an entrance here. The old man yells at me, "Stop! That's the easy way! It is perilous! Never take it!" He waves his staff and another portion of the wall vanishes, next to where I was standing. We enter.

Inside is like a mine shaft. There's no light, so we all carry lanterns. The illusion of antiquity is broken by big steel security doors and other modern pieces of equipment lying about, as if carelessly left in a dorm hallway. It's about this time I start to think this is a stupid movie, because I can't see anything, and we're just spending all our time getting to the action. And why is this school so hard to get to, anyway? What's the point of going to it if you risk death just by getting to class? And I'm part-time!

I flash my lantern down a side corridor and see my skateboard, which means the rent-a-cops must be near. I go to retrieve it at the behest of one of the other new students. When I return, everybody is gone, except for a crazy old guy who was stalking us. I see into his mind, and immediately know the secret of passing through this place, but I also get a blurry image that he once killed one of the Illuminated Ones. I leave him and rejoin the others, but our guides are gone.

A disembodied voice says we must find the rest of the way ourselves, but we're in a room with no doors. Suddenly, a door opens and shuts again, vanishes. There's another one, so I run into it and hold the door open. As I'm doing so, another elevator opens up in another wall, so I shout for someone else to grab that one. Three more open up. I tell everyone that each person needs to grab one, and then at the same time, we'll invoke the same command. I look behind myself and see that there's another elevator behind me, inside my own, and another within that one. The remaining two people--one of whom is a hammerhead shark flying through the air--occupy those.

On the count of three, I release my door. As it shuts, my room sways back like a pendulum. I say the command, but nobody else does. My room swings back and forth, and finally everybody else says it, but they're too late. I'm pissed at their incompetence. We're trapped. A voice tells me that the only way now is to invoke Jesus Christ. The notion is preposterous and I refuse.

Next thing I know, I'm in a limousine with several other people. We're all dead, being chaperoned to a house for dead people. I'm pissed. AA is sitting in front of me. She seems to know more than I do. I ask if we'll continue to age, and she says no. I ask if we'll be able to learn new things, and she says no. This sucks! At least I'll always look good, though.

The place is like a big ski lodge. I look for faces I know, and I see CL from AXE packing up some stuff. She says she's heading out because she goes to school part-time. I ask what the point is, how she can learn anything if she's dead, and she just smiles and shrugs. Something isn't right.

I go downstairs into a labyrinthine basement that's full of bedrooms, reminiscient of both my old church and the AXE house. At the end of one corridor, I find a hidden bedroom, and inside is an open window. With much difficulty, I squeeze through it to the outside, and fly away.

I fly over fields and mountains, back to where I started, and find the crazy guy. He's reading a book. "This is the only thing that keeps me sane," he says. "This book, written by the first Illuminated One, now dead. The others..." He dismissively waves his hand at first one mountain and then another, as if those were their creations, "...they are nothing. But this..." His hands contort into an impossible configuration, but I understand he means to suggest that this first Illuminated One understood time and space like nobody else before or after, and that nobody understands his creations.

I find the entrance to the school, and open the door to the so-called easy and perilous path. I instantly end up in a study. I'm also a child again. I sit down with pen and paper and start to draw something shaped like a crown. A female Illuminated One--the guide from before, but much younger--is astonished to see me. "Is that you?" she asks, then looks my drawing with horror and asks, "Why are you drawing that?!?" I put my head on the table and cry, "What else am I supposed to draw? That's how things are!" She consoles me and says, "A lot has changed since you left." I look around and point at objects. I say, "These things, they're all the same! I don't get it! They're all the same!" I cry uncontrollably, because I'm dead and unable to learn more about anything. The woman tells me, "Crying is not what you're to do." I stop crying, and think about how unfair it is--that I'm forever unable to understand my own creation.

2007-05-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

Conflict is born
5-9-2007

Everything is the same. Every person, place, and thing is contained in a single, dimensionless point floating in the void. There is no conflict; only serenity.

Something changes, and suddenly there is space, time, people, places, and things--separate entities fractured from the whole. Nobody remembers when they were one and the same and everything was good. I want to roll everything back together and make it whole again, but each fragment now has its own identity that wants to persist for its own sake.

Conflict is born.

2006-07-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

Taped Shut
7-9-2006

In a house. Slabs of putty chasing me. Shoot them with shotgun. They start dripping from my hand. I have a fungus infection on my finger. Can't close doors to keep the putty out; they can go under, and the doors don't latch anyway. Kitchen is small and scary. Nice day outside the window. Kids swingset and toy horse. Try to wash fungus off first with water and then with soap, but no good. Open all the appliances and drawers but find nothing useful. I'm told by a spectral future presence I need to wash a picture from the wall in the kitchen sink after all the windows get taped shut.

2006-06-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

Vanishes Again
6-15-2006

I'm in a house with a female companion. Clear plastic hang on the walls. A little girl with horrible grimace sits in a wheelchair on the other side of the plastic. Scares the shit out of us. A closer look reveals it's just a doll, but still very scary.

We set up a camera on video mode on a live girl who we think will go crazy. I think we're trying to do a re-enactment of an earlier event. We talk to her and I aggravate her a little on purpose to see how the re-enactment goes. She gets out a knife and casually comes at me, but I take it. She gets out another sharp object and I try to keep it away from me. An older man comes in and keeps giving her sharp objects. All very casual and frightening. We run away before anything bad happens. I hold the camera ahead of me to get video of them chasing us out.

We come to another big dark house with open courtyard. An older man comes out of nowhere and tries to hit me, but misses and vanishes again.

2006-06-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

Necks Would Snap
6-12-2006

I'm in Jakarta with RR, who is at the wheel. I demand to drive, since it's nighttime and she hasn't driven in so long. I make a bootleg turn and drive to an estate in the country where my supposed family is. Sure enough, many people are there having a picnic. I've never seen any of them, but they're supposedly my family. They hold a lottery-style draft. Every time someone's name is called, that person is subdued. Ropes are tied to their necks and then attached to large rocks. We all go to a large wall of jagged boulders. On the other side is a deep ravine. The unlucky ones are forced to toss their rocks over the boulders to whip themselves over and into the ravine. Either the fall would kill them, or their necks would snap.

2006-03-14T09:46:00.000-08:00

Brilliance, Ego, and Something Else
3-14-2006

I'm watching friends go into a hotel. I see a big wave behind it and want to take a picture. Then I realize it's a real wave and turn to run, but there is already another wave closing in behind me. Cops are Everywhere. I go to a cop car and grab on. I say I wish I had my camera. The cop says I'm stupid. I say I'm joking. The wave hits us and we "sink", as the car doesn't float. My hand is trapped in the window, but I manage to retrieve it.

I run to a flimsy tree, climb up, and hang down on a flimsy branch that then extends onto a wall. Some kid says he can go up there too, but it won't matter. He does. We run along on top of the wall as the waves get higher.

We find a way into a building as waves crash into it. I see Kevin going downstairs and tell him about the flood. He can barely walk; he's hurt. He leaves the door open that leads outside from the staircase. I run to shut it before waves crash in and flood the stairs. He barely stays ahead of the flooding water in the building.

We climb higher to the roof, which is barely big enough for ten people. One person backs up suddenly and almost knocks me off the building. I throw myself to the floor to stop from falling over, then stand up and brace myself against a concrete block. Nothing much to grab onto. We're 100 stories up but waves hit us anyway.

A crazy man screams "This building and everyone in it belongs to me! They belong to me! Me!" He bloats a little then disappears, reappearing at the bottom of the sea. I catch a view from outside the skyscraper that shows the rest of the world is fine, while the building is cloaked in glommy black water. The water thrashes up and down it like an ocean of its own.

Suddenly, I appear at a bar with a girl and a guy. The crazy guy is behind the counter. To his disbelief, we defeat his dark magic with science and anti-magic. Everything goes back to normal. We are commended for our brilliance (the guy), our ego (me), and something else (the girl).

2005-12-02T13:11:00.000-08:00

The Mute's Symphony
12-2-2005

I'm a contestant on a talent show. I hate everyone there. My competition cheats because he knows other people on the show. After the show there is a banquet. An old guy says he can get me in with an ID. I ask him if I look that young and get pissed at him. He threatens me. I tell him to fuck off.

I see a beautiful nerd girl using a photocopier to write a paper in a dark musty basement. There are two old pianos with large keys. She asks what I'm there for and I say it's because of her. I sit down and start to play a beautiful piece on the piano. After a moment I get perturbed and tell her to join me. I take the high end, she takes the low end. The music is awesome. Then she gets up and gets out a violin. I become her to play it, and again it's the most beautiful piece of music I've ever heard, moving me to tears. The piano sounds morph into sounds of something being scraped on concrete, but it still sounds great.

Mom picks me up and takes me home. We take a girl from the show home with us, who takes shotgun and squishes me into the back seat. She entertains my mom and I look at some pictures she brought. She tells a story about some genius who can no longer talk. I hear a buzzsaw and rush out to find it. I end up in an auditorium. From my right, I hear the type of sound only a mute could make, over and over, rhythmically. To my left I see SG holding something to her jaw. There's a train whistle, and strings enter the rhythm, followed by plucked instruments. A symphony started by a mute.

2005-07-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

Then There's Nothing
7-16-2005

I've just escaped from a massive corporate epicenter, an evil media juggernaught. It should be peaceful nighttime, but outside on the streets there is chaos. Police, emergency vehicles, rioters, news and even construction crews. Some there to do their job, others there to plunder and cause mayhem.

I choose my moment carefully. A corrupt corporate man I always hated is stealing a tank-like vehicle. He has the attention of the police. I jump onto another vehicle--which is out of control--and slip past everyone and into the building.

Armed with a sword, I make my way though the lower bowels of the complex. I see two people--a girl and a guy--floating around the base of a staircase. I run over and offer to cut them in half to make it easier. Memories of my escape invade me, memories of when I was cleaved. The girl, floating and holding onto the stairs above her, consents. "Okay, but I've never done this before." She moves back and forth in the air. "Keep still," I say. My first strike is weak, right on her abdomen, barely breaking the skin. The guy moves in to interfere, but I tell him to back off, I've got it. I hack again and saw my way through her body with the implement that was not meant to saw. She cringes and lets out a few yelps. Just a strand is keeping her together now. I run the sword through her again, but one piece of her will not come undone. A long strand is tearing up her side and into her shoulder. I try to hold her two halves apart while I cut at it with my sword. Eventually she comes free. The guy wants my sword, just a little while. I don't trust him. I run along.

At the back of the building, children are running outside as if going to wait at the bus stop. My sword is now a mere knife. I run through the sea of children to get to another entrance to the building.

Once inside, I dive beneath the floor into a sea of goo. Gadgets, weapons, junk can all be found here, lost or cast away from the world above. I find some blasters, capable ones at that, and resurface into the lobby.

Only a few employees remain in the building. It's supposed to be demolished by the construction crews outside in about thirty seconds, but apparently there's work that even now is so important that they have to cut it to the last second. One, a woman I trust, comes down the stairs. She sees me, knows my intention, and calls the attack.

I leap to the top of the building instantly. I am now a woman. The woman from below catches up. "You don't have time," she says. "He's been stomping." A powerful man, somewhere further above, using his powers to bring the place down. It's not just a building, it's a mountain, extending for miles further than I can see. She calls the shot. I'm hit by a thousand energy beams. I drop to the ground in smoke.

But I have a blaster, which means I am defiant; the closer to death I am, the more powerful I become. That was my plan all along. I rise up and fire at the mountain, this eden of mass media. A blue light infects it at the base and slowly consumes it as I hold the trigger. They fire at me but it doesn't matter now. Their objective will be complete in one second, but somehow the ticker doesn't move. My energy engulfs everything and then there's nothing.

2005-07-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

My Hero Woman
7-6-2005

I'm on a dropship with three people. We land on an island. One of us goes out for a drink with a friend who is on the enemy side and learns there are many more enemies here than we thought.

With our newfound information, we locate the underground enemy base. It has three entances, the easiest of which is through their medical supply depot. We know that we can find a profiler there, stashed away for us by one of our moles.

I obtain the portable profiler. As I'm scrolling through enemy profiles, I find one that describes me and has a blank message for me to fill in. I'm confused. Perhaps it's not really me.

Later, I'm descending an escalator with another guy. I wonder if he's the guy from the profile. He suddenly asks if I remember our purpose. He really doesn't know. Neither do I. He mentions Acitomyphentriphosphate. I ask, "Where does the Acito go?" None of my business. I figure he's lying and just doesn't know.

We meet up with a man missing two fingers. He's the main bad guy. I help them pack up a truck. I joke about ChemE waste products to try not go give away my interest in his waste.

Suddenly, there's an earthquake, and rocks spill through a window. I crawl out of a newly formed cack into daylight. The supply truck is outside already, so I steal it. I also suddenly twenty years younger; only a kid.

My dad is driving the truck with me over an ocean road. One lane each way over water for miles. A devilfish springs up in the middle of the road. I fumble for my camera but don't get a good picture; we're way past it. I don't have many photos left so I go through and delete some. I note a picture of children hugging by a tree.

We approach a roadside service building. Traffic stops. Helicopters close in. Bullets fly everywhere. I bail from the truck and duck behind behind a wall. Bullets come at me from both sides. The devilfish reappears and causes enough confusion among the enemy that I'm able to run and escape. My mom calls my name to give me my bag over a thin railing to the other side of the highway. I yell to never call my name, then take the bag and run. Many pedestrians move to let me by, and I worry someone will push me into the water.

I make it to a townhouse. A note on the fridge--written by me--says I like white cars with long seats. An old Jeep pulls up below, a man and woman in it. I go down. The Jeep is just one long seat and a steering wheel. The seat drops back for people to sleep on. It's awesome. The woman gets back in and drives us away. The man gives me a packed lunch. Nobody chases us. I want to bawl my eyeballs out but I hold it back.

The man picks up a porn mag and the woman chews him out. Says she doesn't want him impressing me and having me growing up like him. He puts it down.

We drive into the country. A huge black cloud rages past us. When it clears, we see a huge ugly castle in the middle of nowhere. A McDonalds hotel. I say I've been there. We go inside for ice water. An enemy agent is there looking for us. The soundtrack ends on a single note as I pan to my hero woman.

2005-06-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

Along the Bottom
6-25-2005

I'm at a tiny video store, the kind with all the movies you never heard of. Two titles catch my mind. THE ENDEVEROR or something similar. I catch the end of the second one in my mind: a brute human mutant in the top room of a house, which is being eaten side-by-side by a huge monster. To call the human an appetizer for this thing would be an exaggeration. The human has a curved metal rod that he swings golf-like up into the monster's lower jaw. Blood everywhere.

I lose my vision. I'm again staring at the two video boxes on the bottom shelf near the floor. It seemed so familiar. I look at the back of the first box and see some scenes I recognize. People living in some desert wasteland town, driving rusty old cars. Assumably from a low-budget film I once saw, but more likely from a previous dream. I can hear Matt's voice now, going "that's awesome" to some low budget scenes. The second one looks well-made, though, so I pick it up and start to watch it at his place.

I stay with the protagonists of the film for a while. They're obnoxious young guys, and the main mutant guy hasn't mutated yet. He's pretty reluctant to fill his role. I imitate his move from the movie by swinging a golf club into a television set, breaking it. Guess noone's watching any movies now.

Soaking wet, I enter a bedroom that should belong to grandma. Green everywhere. Dusty, uncomfortable linens. I sit down on the bed. I have to pee. I figure I'm already getting water everywhere that I'll just go here, so I do. I piss forever, and it starts to make a small river down the carpet past the doorway. I close it a little from where I'm sitting so noone will see.

The supersonic jet I'm in lands on an airfield in prehistoric Australia. There's a single human colony there, and I'm visiting. The settlers have forgotten their so-called past heritage and have adapted to prehistoric life--with the exception of supersonic jets passing through every now and then. The younger generation doesn't even know what technology is. They follow me around everywhere to hear my stories.

I run into MP. Don't know whether she lives here or is just visiting. We walk around. Everything is green for as far as I can see. Untouched. I explain how where I come from, all of this is populated with people, and how people keep cutting down all the forests even though we need them to breathe. She asks if I've ever been to Australia, and I admit no, I haven't, but I have friends there.

Walking along some trails, we come upon some fenced-off areas with yellow signs written in an alien language. Some sort of "keep out" deal. MP points to some shacks beyond one fence. A body rests in a casual sitting position, back turned to us, dead. I assume everything there is dead, but then I see some legs moving. I decide to leave.

I get back on the jet. Some kids come with me. Before I know it, I'm off into space staring at the Earth, Australia a green speck rotating off around the globe, the globe a translucent black pearl hanging in the void. I don't really want to go.

One of the kids starts to open a bottle of wine. I say no, but it's too late. Fortunately there is simulated gravity in the jet, and it all just empties into the swimming pool. I tell him it's a waste of oxygen. I hold my breath and go under the water for a bit. Some General comes by to evaluate us. I ignore him to take another dive into the pool, scraping the left side of my face along the bottom.

2005-06-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

Cannibal Mafia
6-23-2005

At a Saturday family barbeque. I have a pet dog living in my car and it's gotten the interior rather dirty. I accidentally kick over some dog food on the floor and the dog eats like crazy. That's when I remember I haven't fed it for five days.

I take all the seats out so I can clean it. Other kids take that to mean to take apart my entire car and take it to the store and then buy all sorts of accessories for it. No matter how much I yell and swear and scream that I just want a wash, they don't listen to me. They just push my exterior car parts around on a big shopping cart. Finally after I literally start slapping people around, they each listen and say, "Why didn't you just tell me."

Back at the barbeque in the middle of the desert. Eating some very good burritos. The father walks by and asks how I like the burrito skin. I say it's great. He shrugs and moves on. His son, still older, comes by and brags about how he made it out of the boss he just killed while running an errand. I take a couple more bites and then decide I don't want to eat human.

There are two ways out of the barbeque. One is through a night-time French town constructed entirely out of bricks, and the other is up a cliff that hadn't been scaled since 1935.

I sneak into the town first. The roads are a mess, being built of brick. Loose bricks everywhere. Buildings falling apart. Can't tell which roads lead through a ghetto or to salvation. Another man is with me, and he seems to know where he's going, except I think he's drunk. The son finds us and chases us. We find a firetruck and two firemen at the end of a fire scene. We start to explain when the son comes and shoots at everyone. My companion hands me a metal plate to shield myself with as he goes down. It blocks the bullet and I run.

I make for the cliff. I scale it. Looking up each step, it looks impossible, but I somehow find stuff to grab--a rock here, a root there--to pull myself up. He can't keep up with me and I get away to another town. I go into a store and talk to a little kid there, tell him about these lunatics. I sit down on a bench in the little novelty store. Just when I think everything's cool for a few moments, I shut my eyes and hear a click. The kid has fastened me to my bench. "It'll be okay, he says," and the son comes in the door. Everyone in this area is afraid of this family and do everything for them!

The man that was with me earlier, who got shot, he saves me. A bullet is sticking out of his forehead. We make it back to my car. My car is all rusty and has a recess in the front with watery sand and dirt and large rocks in it. Even huge chunks of chicken inside an exterior hood compartment. I didn't think the weather here was bad enough to wear it down like this.

I drive like a maniac, like someone who'd gotten any with too many crazy stunts in too many video games. I squeeze through cars inside tunnels and screech sideways past Mafia cars as my gun forward-mounte gun turrets fire. Mafia. Family. Some kind of Cannibal Mafia is what I'm dealing with and I'm going to end it.

With the enemy on our tail, we climb another mountain--just barely--and make it to some complex. My companion, he has super speed and can teleport every now and then, which is probably how he saved me before. He tires quickly, though, and falls to a volley of bullets. Me, I'm more normal, except I have a supercharged bomb. One shot to annihilate everything around me. I take a fall and use it to my advantage. I do what amounts to breakdancing on the ground as I fire bullets at my enemies. The boss draws closer. A green alien, lizard-like, with glowing orbs on his chest. I wear him down, waiting for him to attempt his self-heal, when he's most vulnerable. I see his blue charge, and I let my bomb go off. A moment before he vanishes into the ether, he congratulates me in a robotic voice.

Chilling in ER's place, watching Aliens on his TV with no sound. An alien starts to lick a woman, and I hear it. I look around the TV and ER is there with a record player and a candle, the hot wax of the candle being sliced by the turning record, generating a licking sound. How does he come up with this stuff?

2005-06-22T00:48:00.000-07:00

Swim There
6-21-2005

Once again in my childhood neighborhood, this time walking up Fern to the elementary school. Daytime. Grass is growing up through the concrete street. Half the parking lot of the school is gone, and the playground has been replaced by a steep slope with a dark forest at the bottom. A large tree with dark green leaves sits in the middle of a dark pond with turbulent waters. Probably connected to the creek further down.

GJ and EZ come up behind me. I'd gotten EZ's number earlier during a chance encounter in a cafeteria or something. I lean on a wooden fence that was never there before and overlook the pond. I hear a splash and suddenly there are half a dozen kids jumping into the water and playing. It's deep; everyone's swimming. "I can't believe people actually swim there!" I say as I point.

2005-04-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

Other Humans Inside
4-27-2005

I'm walking on a sidewalk, early evening. A girl is in my way, but not because she's slow; there's a guy in front of her walking slowly, too. I find myself keeping pace with them both, even after an opportunity to pass them comes. I don't know why. She finally stops and stares into the distance. I come up beside her and look to where she is. I notice it's a girl from dance class whom I've never talked to--nor any any interest in talking to.

"I'm remembering the old building," she says. Where she's looking is only the moon between two other buildings. "Ohhh, I remember now," I say, thinking back to a few years ago. We start walking again, the other guy joining us. He seems interested in her, but she's not paying him any attention. Nor me, either, but we seem headed along the same path for now.

We get onto a boat. The guy goes inside, expecting us to follow, but we don't. We sit on the front, next to each other on a bench facing the water. It's chilly and her legs are bare, so I lay my jacket out along both our legs. The boat cruises into town. "This city has such great public transportation," she says. "I never really used it," I remark. "Just the bus to and from north and central campus." I remember how I used to drive around town.

We end up in a boarded up house. Every door inside is shut, and other people are inside, too. It's being assaulted by the undead. I shuffle into one of the inner rooms, moving a barricade in doing so, totally freaking out the other humans inside.

2005-03-21T23:30:00.000-08:00

I'm Awake!
3-21-2005

Cruising around a fantastic landscape with large ancient buildings. I wake up from my dream, but I'm still "seeing" in REM, because I'm in my high school bedroom. I get out of bed and walk out into the wall toward the stairs. I know I'm awake, but I know I'm still dreaming. I go to the bathroom, which is in my childhood home. So detailed. It had to be a dream.

I wake up again. I go into a restaurant with some people and I tell them about my waking REM experience. Then they ask if I'm awake yet. I insist that I am, then wonder.

I wake up again, frustrated about my permanent REM. No matter what I do or think I see, it's just a dream.

2005-03-14T07:14:00.000-08:00

Perdi's Pigeon
3-14-2005

The time is 10 AM. I'm on a bus to one of my college classes, but get off at my elementary school by accident. I write a letter home to my dad to pick me up, but throw it out before mailing it. Then I notice that the school has turned into the Y, so I go in. Pam is there in a science lab with a nice kitchen. She's a cook now instead of a lab tech and doesn't know what she's doing with her life. Something about the setting reminds me of the burritos in LA.

I end up on a cliff in the mountains, somewhere I used to go a lot as a kid. I notice another path I'd never gone up--for no particular reason--on the other side of the ravine. I drive down to it with RM in his truck. The wooden steps to the path are all old and falling apart; noone comes here anymore; a rock-slide took out the path and gondola that used to go up to the top.

A bird finds me on my walk down through old abandoned apartment complexes and iron stairwells. It's Perdi's pigeon. It scouts the area before going back into its cage. It then comes out again so it can get a hug from each of us.

2005-02-20T09:12:00.000-08:00

Mind Control Mechanism
2-20-2005

On a familiar tropical island, a new sports stadium has been built. Every seat is really close to the action, and my colleague RF has tickets to the opening game. I hang out with my old roommate in a luxurious room. A kid and his father come in, and the kid brags about how his dad is going to get some tickets for the room. "Go ahead, watch the gave on TV from here!" I laugh. Dumb idea, coming to a stadium to watch a game on TV.

When night comes, the game starts. I'm starving, since the entire place only has cheese and crackers to eat. There's a loud noise that everyone else seems to think is part of the show. I leave and travel in the direction of the noise, first coming upon giant grooves in the earth, then steaming rubble, and finally a gleaming white spacecraft. I see a man hiding in a cardboard box with a shotgun, one of the local miners. He points to the five men approaching us. "Aliens," he says. This offends them, and they rush him, holding him down. "Shoot him on three," one of them says. "One...two..." and they all open fire with their fully-automatic handguns. They ignore me and turn around to go back to work salvaging their ship. I pick up the shotgun. "Fuckers," I mumble as I shoot one, then another, in the back. The other three whip around, but I just cock and fire, blast them away, too.

Five more shapes approach me from the wreckage. Alien women. They blow me up somehow, but I survive, unconscious. "It's a man," I hear them say. They explore my human body, my clothes nearly all burned off. One holds my penis. "A dominant one, too," another one says. Another, their leader, says, "Bring him with us."

I wake up with the alien woman in her bed. Her skin is completely white, and her hair is very luminous, but otherwise she looks completely human. Just...feels alien. Assumably I've already pleasured her, but I don't remember a thing. We're eating cheese and crackers; I'm still hungry. Granted, the cheese is better than at the stadium. I start to wonder whether this will become a regular service of mine, given being killed would be worse. As if reading my mind, she looks at me and says, "You will never see me again." "Will they kill me?" I ask. "You will leave."

Next thing I know, I'm walking through a fence past some security drones. Either the aliens work fast or I was out for some time. Sentries warily watch me leave, but surprisingly noone kills me. It's nighttime. I head toward the mines.

Everything seems normal at the mines, but the foreman ensures me the aliens are in control. I pick up a short shovel and start moving some clay. It's morning now, and I can see there are too many people working here now. One worker tells me, "The change is random. Happens every Tuesday and Thursday. I'm told there's something you can do right away--if you get it--to stop it from happening, but eh, I don't know what that is." Great, how long was I gone? And this guy wasn't paying attention or soemthing? Seemed pretty important to me. I don't have much time to think about it, because an instant later I hear a bell, and dozens of people instantly transform into Rikti. The same guy comments, "They've just stepped up in class." The foreman walks by. "Come with me," he says. Into his office.

His office is more like a laboratory. Bottles and gadgets and tools all over the place. On the wall is a clock with a record on it. It briefly plays some alien, yet familiar music. "They communicate with their minds," says the foreman, who I'm guessing is more than that. "We've intercepted their signals and this is what it sounds like." So that's why it's familiar. "This lab is also protected; we're immune to the change in here. Our problem now is how do we trasmit back to wreck their operation?" On a table is a bizarre contraption, a model of their mind control mechanism.

2004-09-30T05:58:00.000-07:00

One Last Time
9-24-2004

I'm driving my Dodge Dart through my childhood neighborhood at night. I'm standing up to turn the wheel and use the brakes at each stop sign. I notice the car is making a whistling sound and figure I should take it in soon. I head over to Wayne's parents' house, a dead-end street, but it's changed to a condo complex so I turn around.

I make it back to a brightly-lit, white little building that serves as a laundromat, video arcade, coffee shop, and copy center all rolled into one. Everything inside is white. It makes the rest of the surrounding territory look utterly dark. A guy and a girl stand outside, dressed in black, playing imaginary instruments as part of an arcade game I can't see. It's some guitar-jamming game that makes you feel like you really know how to play, even though you don't. Sounds good though. I watch the chick slap her imaginary strings in beat with some orchestra hits.

I hawk over a printer, awaiting a printout that I don't want anyone else to see. I didn't think I was long in the queue, but my printout doesn't turn up. I flip one of the others over and see it's a little comic written by an Asian girl sitting at a table nearby, sipping a cup of coffee. It's amusing in a way I hadn't expected, and includes the comment, "I am NOT going to pay for a single copy." Printing and copying are paid for here on the honor system, as is the coffee. I don't see her here often; she drives in from somewhere else, then leaves. Doesn't stay like the rest of us.

I go outside, around the back of the building, and she's there looking out into the dark forest. It's cold outside, and a barbed fence surrounds the yard, tilted away from us. A ditch lies beyond. It's all there to keep us in, for whose safety I'm not sure. I test it with my foot, confirming it wouldn't be possible to jump over it and the ditch to leave this place. The girl turns to me and says, "I want to go. Out of here." I explain that she comes and goes in her car all the time. She says, "I can't take the car. I need to leave it here." She faces me and puts her arms around my waist, yet keeping her distance as she talks to me. "I want to go with you," she says, and kisses me. I slip to the ground as I kiss her back, and she urges me to stand up, because the ground is cold and wet. I take her to a pond and we wade into it, leaning against a rock and staring over the water. The water is freezing, too, but we don't care anymore. She comments that running into me has changed everything for her.

We're out on a public street, under a gothic-style bridge. Still nighttime, but there's an old streetlamp here. Keefer Sutherland probes the wall under the bridge and disconnects the brige, moving it aside with superhuman ease to reveal a tunnel. "This is the only way out," he says, "this tunnel. It's dangerous." I thought we could come back and take it later if we wanted, but an old roadster pulls up and some men in burlap suits get out. A little girl with curly hair stands up from the car, points at us, and says, "There they are, get them." I urge everyone to take the tunnel right away.

Keefer goes first, then the girl, then me. Noone follows us. The tunnel is long, narrow, and full of water. I can't really feel anything with my feet, just amorphous goo and weeds and God knows what, so I have to pull myself along with my hands along the walls, which are made of white brick and thankfully aren't slippery. We come to a corner, passing a decayed, brown skeleton that none of us comment on. The water is dark, but the tunnel is well-lit. Keefer stops in front of a large room, wading in the muck. It's darker in there. Looking up, I see tons of spider webs, and I warn Keefer to watch out for the big purple spider over his head. He wacks it, sending it screaming. We swim into the big room. Bats attack us from above, but they leave as alone after we pass under.

We make it out of the muck and into some old service passageways. I take hold of the girl's hand in case the floor gives, and help her climb down some walls. There are no stairs anywhere. Everything is lit again, a sort of turquoise color, like a room lit by a pool's underwater lights. Turning a corner, I see a gleaming corridor that looks promising. I also notice a hole in the wall in front of me, leading into a darker passage. Upon reflection, the gleaming corridor looks too promising, like a trap, so I lead everyone into the dusty black passage.

We come out into more hallways. I see metal doors all over in the white concrete, locked shut, boarded and chained up. One I take to be the entrance to a movie theatre, and I wondered what it must've been like to come here for movies, or when it even used to be open.

We pass it and see a set of metal doors with reinforced windows. Lots of light coming from the outside, and not boarded up either. This is it, I think, but then two black men with hatchets enter from outside. They don't say anything, but they walk toward us. We duck into the movie theatre lobby, and they follow. "They're holding hands. It looks like they were about to do something," one of them comments. We walk out, past them, toward the doors. A thin black girl, holding a hatchet, opens one and comes in, walking towards us as she says, "Come on out." Just a blur in the windows, but I can see tons of people outside, all with hatchets. "Everyone's out there. Even the rescue person!"

I get the feeling I won't like their idea of rescue, so we turn around. As we do so, some chubby white kid swings his hatchet at the girl and gets her in the side of the neck. She screams. I pull it out of her, trying to ignore the blood, and stick it into his face. Two big white brutes run at me, but I chop into their heads quickly, then throw my hatchet into an older woman's head as she comes near the girl. The only thing going through my mind is that I have to kill these people quickly so that I can be with the girl in her final moments.

I lift gently off the ground a little to hold her in my arms. I try to keep the wound closed to prevent bleeding. We were so close, too. Almost out. Must've been the wrong exit. "Don't tell me," she says, "I don't want to know." Referring to her wound.

I run some analysis software, but it turns up red instead of green, indicating death will happen. Suddenly, though, I'm the one who's wounded, and I'm in her arms. "It's red," I say. "I'm going to die." Sad, beautiful piano music starts to play from somewhere. She starts to cry and says, "I told you not to tell me," and kisses me one last time.

2004-09-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

Naturally Buoyant
9-15-04

I have a crappy job in the supermarket. I'm not even real employee. Every time I walk by the front doors, I hear a microphone squeal. I notice a storm coming, and everyone comes outside into the courtyard. I go back for something when I feel a rumble and look up to see a tidal wave coming first over the mountain and then over the skyscrapers. I figure I'm a goner, but turn to run anyway. Some old man helps me over the wall and we all run back inside the store where we started. Nothing happens.

A big steel door in the basement keeps the water at bay. It's only a matter of time until it busts. I get into a fight with black kid and tell him he's gonna die. We climb to higher floors to escape the rising water. We all live there for a couple years, and I bring in some expert friends to help survive. At the top is a dark cave with hard floors, which we cut away to get to the foam underneath. Easier to sleep on it that way. We arrange a fancy dinner. A bum arrives at the door to the dinner, and I give him a quarter.

I get tired of the radio in the building and get into a gunfight in "town" with the radio speaker. I flee to the semi-flooded lower levels of the building and notice the water is starting to rise again. There are some people down there, foolishly trying to drag stuff up, like soaking sofas. Some people even get into a flooded elevator, hoping it will work. I figure they drowned. I make it up some steps and see the radio guy. I say our fights doesn't matter now since it's flooding again.

I go outside and see the rest of the world isn't flooded. I ride my bike through the city. I go to the roof of the tallest building and see the same bum there from before. I give him a quarter. A tidal wave hits and drowns everything but us. The water comes nearly to the top of our building. Other buildings pop up out of the water with survivors, as if they had been broken at the base and were naturally buoyant.

2004-09-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

Jerky, but Fun
9-12-04

AK found an Asian chick to marry and his mom, my mom, and me meet her. On the spot, however, he decided not to marry her because she was only twenty-one.

I also have a frankenstein project going with the red maple in my childhood front yard. I try to collect parts to hook up to the tree so I can animate it during the next lightning storm. I climb up the tree and wonder how it can still support me, since I weigh more now.

I go inside and find the mouse flooded with nice warm rain water. MG comes in to swim in it. She points into the distance, out the window, and I see that the clouds are on fire. I turn on my old television to find the news report of it, but I end up in a flying rowboat in Rome. A man and a woman are with me, news reporters, passing by some very large stone statues of people. It's nighttime so I can't make much out, though there is water somewhere beneath us. The woman and I both have umbrellas, which are used to steer the boat. I don't know what I'm doing, though, so I just mimic her. Later the man tells me I was supposed to just keep it pointed down.

I go to church with my parents, but people start throwing snowballs, since the service is outdoors. MG is there playing the guitar, yet it's still strapped to her back. My mom says she was skinny dipping in our hours, and shows me naked pictures of her, but I don't remember that happening. AK is there, too, apparently a Christian now.

I go to the grocery store with my mom and get pissed at some old woman who expects me to butter her bread and make her sandwiches while her groceries are being bagged. I then yell at my dad for not realizing that specialty stores have better quality items than grocery stores. I leave, finding I can fly by standing straight and pushing my arms back. It's kinda jerky, but fun.

2004-09-30T04:37:00.000-07:00

Powers Over Gravity
7-25-04

"Get him! He's translating the Qu'ran!" That's what I heard someone shout as I myself ran down the newly drizzed city streets. That's when I spotted the Muslim tearing at a building sign. I was in a hurry, doing my morning jog, and tried to keep going as I passed by, but the law enforcement nabbed me along with several other people--due to our proximity to the crime--and took me to the courthouse.

There I waited in a line so long it went out onto the street. There was some mud on the ground, but they made us hold our shoes in our hands anyway. One after another I watched each suspect go up to the judge, who read off a sheet of paper to confirm vital facts about the person before letting them go. I got bored and paced around a bit, losing my place in line.

One particular guy had a pistol-sized squirt gun on him. The judge pointed a gun at a girl in line and told him to prove his gun wasn't real or he'd kill the girl. He's like, "Nah," but the judge doesn't kill her anyway. The girl calls him a jerk, and he fires a stream of water out of it. The judge says, "Aren't you forgetting something?" I finally got a good view of him, a large fat Jabba-looking guy. That's when the guy squirted the judge with his water pistol and left.

When I finally stood in front of the judge, I was prepared to answer the simple questions regarding my name and so on, but when he read my name, it was wrong! I contested, and he said, "Oh really? Then why are you soaking wet?" I explained that it was raining earlier, and that they were making me stand outside in the mud. Translators cause rain, after all, so clearly I was guilty.

"Translation is a serious crime," the judge said. "We need to preserve our precious American culture." Others in the courtroom nodded seriously, patriotically. "It should only be performed by certified professionals. If we let just anyone translate anything, it would pollute our culture, and we need to remain pure." At this I saw a girl get giddy, glancing at her man, who was probably in school to obtain his prestigious translator's license. It wasn't just doctors and lawyers anymore. I wanted to defend myself, tell them it couldn't have been me since I just GOT here to this time. I was from the past, couldn't they see that? But no, they'd only think I was crazy.

As they escorted me outside, where they would take me to be jailed and/or excuted, some fellas in the courtroom saw me and wailed, "NO!!" It distracted my escorts just long enough for me to fling my shoes into their faces and run. I busted out the door and into the streets, taking a left and disregarding traffic. The city was like a huge building, all gleaming metal and clean, and yet at every other intersection it was raining.

Was I causing this? Heck if I knew. I wasn't from here. I only knew I had to make it back to what I thought was my apartment. Perdi was there, I was sure, and the authorities only had my face, not my name. They'd never catch me if I got away now.

I glanced back and so no signs of pursuit. I ducked into what turned out to be a gym, bounding up several flights of stairs to see people on exercise bikes. Others sat in bleacher-style seating, watching. A black girl--a personal trainer--asked me to please take my seat. I thought I heard her say my name, so I asked her if she knew me. She said, "No, but I'm sure somebody does," and followed it up with a wry smile. "No," I said. "NOBODY knows ME." I decided it was time to leave when she got a call on her call phone, in case it was the police calling around town, giving everyone my profile.

I went back down the stairs and saw two security men walk by the exit door just before I pushed it open. I took a right down the hall, passing another security guard who was walking into the building. He didn't notice me as I slipped outside.

I ran some more, holding a blue plastic binder over my head to help protect myself from the rain. "I need to disguise myself," I thought, "Change my posture or ditch this jacket or something. Why am I carrying this binder?" By now it was nighttime. Not sure where the day went.

I came out of an alley to the sounds of gunfire. I cringed but then saw noone was shooting at me. A bunch of punks in homes across the street were having a shootout with the homes on my side. I ran across the street into a back yard and stopped when I saw a Mexican with what looked like a flamethrower. He turned it on and a short but thick stream of electricity came out and buzzed around some bushes, trimming them. Ah, just the gardener.

I went to the hospital and talked to a doctor behind the counter there. I explained my situation and presented my evidence: a plastic bag containing a length of intestine, a foot, and a penis. A nurse stopped over out of morbid curiosity. "I'll call you in a couple days with the results. Can I get your number?" The doctor was treating me like just another patient. "No, I don't have a phone number. I don't have an address. I...do not...EXIST. With the exception of this precise moment, I am invisible."

"Well let us run your name through our database anyway," said the nurse. What came up was a third person image of a lawyer detective running down the sidewalk yelling, "I must save the clients!" I took his point of view and ran toward a group of people, pushing them and hurling them across the terrace with my mind. A force bubble grew out of my body and enveloped the surrounding area, obliterating everyone. The nurse was impressed, "That would be useful for getting Kevin out of bed." I guess she was making a joke. I said, "My life changed when I realized I had powers over gravity."

2004-09-30T01:18:00.000-07:00

Tolerance to Water
7-22-04

Racing down a mountain on rollerblades, I acquire a target in my reticle: an object stuck in the ground and buried by a helmet. I only have eight seconds to get it. There's an armoured chick there, so I shoot her in the face through her open visor. I lift the helmet and get the glass vial from the ground and stick it in my jacket. I run into a building, through corridors and doors and steps, basically a big maze, and get away from my pursuers. They're all over the building and outside, searching for me. I run into a bum in the staircase. Wwe find an old white t-shirt. He asks if it's mine. I ask the same, because I wanted to use it to disguise myself. Finally, I get outside.

I make it to a shopping mall. It's closing early. I look into a closet I rent there, but my stuff is gone. I start to crawl into it through the entrance to another part of the store, like I usually do, but I see a guard in there with a gun walking by.
This alerts other store workers and they want to make sure he's really a guard.

Later, I'm in a sleeping bag on the ground of the mall waiting for it to close or something. A black family is there. I take the black kid's jacket, saying it's mine. He leaves but his parents ask if it really was. I say oh maybe it isn't, but it was exactly like mine, and it was missing from the closet upstairs.

Suddenly a big being invades the mall. The mall transforms into a magestic fountain or swimming area, with layers and shelves of water all over the place. The water is warm. There are little rubber ball things with puss-filled openings, spewing little critters out of it. I get some statues to fight each other as a distraction, but they get wise and befriend each other again, which I find lame. I pour ethanol into the water to help kill the creature by lowering its tolerance to water.

2004-09-27T02:57:00.000-07:00

What's Your Name Little Girl?
3-28-2004

I'm working out on the street outside Gold's Gym. Another kid is doing pushups. People are always trying to get by while I do pull-ups, and it's annoying.

My friend is driving a car, and I'm riding with him along with someone else. I feel a rumble and know the end is coming. We're going down a coaster-like freeway with two lanes, and I see the road ending into the ocean after it twists down below. I buckle up to brace for impact. One guy goes through the windshield and gets crushed.

I swim underwater for a long time to avoid lava fumes. I surface to see other swimmers, part of my military, swimming from a fallen helicopter. I grab a yellow floatee thing from them that's more of a marker than a floating device. Several times they must pull me up from underwater when my limbs just don't work anymore. The commander yells at me to stay with the group but I don't care. I go off to check something out on land.

I don't find what I'm looking for, but the group is too far ahead to see. It's shallow and rocky, a wasteland up ahead. I find someone else, weak as me, and we crawl. I see movement up ahead and figure a base is nearby. I hear Spanish music and comment that at this time any culture is better than no culture.

Inside, I notice it's an Invid base, but we're using it. It has warm water. Lots of
children. I make a Goofy voice to cheer things up, asking "what's your name little girl" in his voice. I see pilots hooked up to these hoses to juice them up, many resisting but consenting once they are hooked up. Some Invid device. One of our own best, turns out, was a spy for the Invid and is hooked up to a lot of them to recharge.

Suddenly we're attacked. Both Autobots and Deceptacons are on our side, joining against the common enemy of all. Optimus prime runs and jumps to fire a giant cannon, disintegrating a giant evil dinobot thing.

2004-09-27T02:54:00.000-07:00

Story Straight
3-27-2004

I'm in a house with many people around. A video plays on tv featuring a kitten being put in a freezer and ice being poured on it. The next video is about someone tossing poop into vents. I refuse to watch.

There's a hedge maze outside with fences around the hedges. Some areas are fenced off, but mowed anyway. One is particularly reinforced, and I climb over it. From the bushes I hear a little girl ask my name. I get scared and go back to the house, reporting my finding. A girl confirms there are people that live over there, and how they will forever haunt our minds. I get visions in my mind of them in my mind, all smiling too large, the dad with three heads all grinning evilly at me.

I flash back to their origin. At one time they were a simple family who had a home out here and operated a car garage nearby. Over time they added a ramp inside the garage, then the ramp turned into railroad tracks.

I decide to see my sister off to the riviera. Phil's driving his new car. Too fast. It scares me. He rear-ends someone, blaming the guy in front of him, even though he was going way too fast. The guy in front of him is rich, but it doesn't matter since it's Phil's fault. He tells Phil he doesn't want to look at him. They sit on tree stumps to get their story straight.

2004-09-27T02:49:00.000-07:00

Lobotomy
3-4-2004

My friend Mike comes with me to get a lobotomy. It feels great not having frontal love function, like life is heaven. I climb into a truck and go to astronaut school.

2004-07-23T17:34:00.000-07:00

Manta Army
2-24-04

AK and KL pull up in a moving van. I'm simply astounded, thinking this is such a crazy coincidence, running into them out in the middle of nowhere. That's where I am, somewhere in the Heartland. KL stays chill in the passenger seat while AK and I go into the restaurant we're at. It's actually an old train converted into an eatery.

I look outside and realize the train is moving across the countryside. It's breautiful: the rolling green pastures on the left...a bag lady next to a fence on the right...the men in Mantas firing at us! Dozens of neon green energy blasts hit the train, and many more miss, obliterating the bag lady. Glass flies everywhere and people panic. I duck under the windows and yell for everyone to get down, but nonetheless many passengers are blown away. I wonder when I'll be next.

Daring a look, I see a bridge ahead. I jump out of the train and into the water. Staying underwater as long as possible, I come out onto a golf course. Enemies are still everywhere.

I run into a building to hide. While I'm in a kitchen closet, I notice a good hiding spot under the stove, so I hide there instead. A girl finds me, but she's not part of the Manta Army.

2004-07-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

My True Parents
1-22-04

I'm in my childhood neighboorhood at night. I have a mask on, and kids keep giong by saying trick or treat, but they going up to houses. I suggest we go up to one that has its lights off. Someone at the door answers and we each get a piece of candy. I put it in my my mouth and we go to the next house. A cat comes out of the door. I go, "aww," and pet it.

Still night. I'm bicycling through the old neighborhood. I'm still afraid of the trees, which always try to grab me when I get too close. I go to the elementary school. It's totally dark and nothing's there, but then I see some flares in the parking lot, which turn into headlights. I decide it's time to head back, but Fern has turned into a looooong bridge. I shift into gear and get over the bridge really fast, my companions on the other side telepathically telling me to hurry up or the car will catch me. I tell them, "I know."

My sister's headed to a dinner at the G's in AA and I can't figure out why. I go over to this house that's supposed to be theirs in the middle of a dark forest. Many people show up. We watch a movie about a small animated plastic doll. It rolls along the floor and hits stuff, and somehow it's the most hilarious thing I've seen in a long time. There are other animated plastic dolls, but they can only move their limbs in one direction each, unlike the main character. One is nailed to the floor like it's crucified, and it talks and complains about its condition. It's like a wolf. At the end, the doll dies and you see the world enclose into a circle and then zoom out, revealing something off to the side of the universe, which turns into a mushroom. Then the mushroom zooms out and there are green tendrils of energy reaching vertically about. The narrator says "The good doll was reincarnated in the mother universe by the evil designer to be a mushroom"...or something. I'm like, "No no that's not how it ended. There was supposed to be a giant spider there waiting for it in the next universe," which would be a horrific ending. Then I remember a few parts that weren't in the movie, and mention to P's dad how funny they were--those other parts we filmed--like the part where the guy comes up to the house and says he's come, then the baby doll is born.

I rewind it in my mind and I'm there. The guy walking up to the brick house on the second story, but things go wrong. There's an explosion inside and people fly everywhere. I go outside and jump down to the ground. Leaves everywhere. An undead walks toward me from the house. I walk in front of it, sort of following ahead of it through the forest toward another house...my childhood house, back yard. Some green light shines and a huge gaping orange maw of a fireplace or something opens in the side of the house, the undead guy just standing there. I find myself watching a window above, where a strange horse-like dog is cutely pushing its nose out a window and through some iron bars. Supposed to be a really smart kind of dog that learns things on its own. I laugh at it, and a guy nearby laughs too. He's trying to close a garage in the back of the house, but a cat runs out. The cat sees the dog above and decides to go up and join it. How cute. I try to help him shut the garage door, but there are too many bags of leaves on the ground and in the trunk of his car, so it won't shut. I move some leaves around to make it even, but then the cat runs out again. It's very important this door gets shut.

Skeletons rise up from everywhere. I have a bow and arrow, and other humans fight with me, but they're all in panic and they run all over the place. I run to another building and find a blue key, a red key, and a yellow key, all obvious with big rings on the ground as I run around and shoot with my bow. I see a skeleton with a white key ring, so I run and grab it, but it won't let it go. It screams and yells at me that it must have the key ring. I get it and run off. I look at the map in my mind and see that it goes to a library building to the south, so I take flight and soar over there, wary that there might be skeleton birds around. But there aren't.

I fly inside, and it's a normal library with people around. I recognize a thai-looking girl and accost her, gathering she was part of the skeleton crew (props to my unconscious mind for that pun). I urge her that we must follow the black cat--there it is! The black cat ducks into a plastic tube in the floor. I see another asian girl looking uncertain, so I figure she's with us. I have them both follow me into the tube.

It's very tight, and I can barely crawl through it. I turn right at a 'T', and then it's completely black. I ask for a flashlight since I left my jacket somewhere else, and the thai girl has one just like mine, gives it to me. Then I turn right again, knowing I can just wake up if something bad happens in here.

It opens up into a hallway. A bathroom to the left. Thai girl pulls ahead and sees some writing on the wall just past the bathroom, instructions. I say just do whatever it says, we must follow all instructions, and they say to keep going. I hold the other girl's hand while I flash my flashlight around, telling them both to watch for ghosts, and to scan all the paintings on the walls for instructions, rituals, and such.

There's a faint light far ahead, and when I scan with my flashlight, I can see zillions of zombie-like ghosts walking ahead past us. Harmless though. I bring it to their attention.The paintings are diverse, but mostly portraits of people in dresses. I finally get to one that has a half-decayed child on the right side, with a stump of an arm and a grimace on its face. "This is it!" I cry. In the middle is a levitating girl's head, mostly chopped apart, and to the left is a mostly full kid. They're someplace dark and sinister. The left kid thrusts a needle down into the ground, and the girl's head closes up, her tiara falling to a pile of dead leaves. The next painting has a flying beetle in it, and it transforms into something wooden or something, like a lock.

I finally get to the lit part of the place. The girls have vanished. There's an old woman there, sinister and evil, lying in a bed. She asks why I'm there, as if it's the last thing I'll ever get to say. I say, "I want your children!" and I thrust a sword into a glowing white spot in a brick on a table in front of the bed. I twist it around good. Her eyes are glowing the same, so I do the same to them. She shrieks. I hack at her with the sword.

A man-thing comes out from the dark. Its mouth is in its body, and it has flat but fish-like eyes. No ears, like a turnip or something. But strong. I hack at it and it hurts. The more I hack at them, the less I hurt them, until they're fine again. They laugh at my efforts, but I just keep hacking at them. I don't care what they say or do, I'm going to fight.

I finally tone down and open a chest by a wall and find a wedding dress she had once sewn. I say it's beautiful, and she thanks me. I'm about to hack at her again when the man-thing says welcome to the family, and calls me son. I ask why, and it's because I never gave up when most people would have. I ask how I know he won't kill me, and he gives the same answer. I somehow know these are my true parents.

2004-07-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

We Will Attack...YOU!
1-17-2004

I'm with some guys I hate, but will never see again. I get ahold of a white, basketball-sized, cushy ball and dribble it past them, jumping up toward the basket. One of them helps me do a slam-dunk, trying to make it look like I really did it. Nobody says anything about it though, and the gesture makes me want to cry. Later, while I'm talking to MP, I see the guy leaving. I don't expect him to say anything when he turns around at the last second and sees me there, but then he blurts out, "Haha, everyone would have noticed my handwas under the ball in a real game," before he leaves.

I'm in a house with many staircases. Two guys are with me, one of them Asian. I lead them down, then find an older-loooking staircase leading further downward. I see a stone in the wall that I know triggers an ancient mechanism. I urge one of them to push it. Something starts to happen, then stops, but then I notice a small, circular gold plate set in the wall. I have one of them push it. The wall curls up. Every piece of it bends and curlsback on itself to form many golden tubes, which combine to form elaborate devices. It's an ancient machine more advanced than any we have now. I examine a piece of it, which is four circles of metal surrounded by fields of energy, banging into each other until finally combining into a single circle.

I'm looking down upon a small house with a large yard. Several companions are hiding in the next yard over, watching a woman do some task in the yard. I descend upon them and explain how to accomplish our mission before carrying it out myself. I sneak into the yard and pet the dog to distract it from its little blue toy. Possession of the toy grants the wielder invisibility, which then allows me to sneak into the house without fear of the woman turning around to see me.

I'm standing around a table with others. We have an assignment that involves poking sticks at certain objects on the table to destroy them. RDT is there. Many monsters surround us, but RDT tells us to concentrate on our task, as if they are merely a distraction. I'm getting frustrated anyway, so I turn and wave my stick at the monsters. To my surprise, some of them die. I urge the others to help me, and together we destroy all the monsters around us. There are more in this building, I know, so I have everyone follow me to purge the place. Ryan S decides to help.

We make it to a hallway with a bunch of lockers. I wonder which one's mine, and whether the old combination works. 24-14-40. I try to open one and it opens, but then I realize there's no combination. Ryan finds his old locker, but it's locked. We start to venture further, but then monsters face us. "It was a nice trick," they say collectively,"but now we are immune, and we will attack.....YOU!" They pounce on Ryan and he's gone.

2004-07-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

Ass End of the Beach
12-06-03

I am the samurai protector of some chick. I'm at her home in the townhouse complex. Enemies come over, but they don't know who I am, because I'm not in my armour. Another young girl is playing in a play pit in the basement of the townhouse.

I'm back in Houston on my old motorcycle, taking it down the nighttime freeway. I see Heff and Beehan off one of the exits. I stop and join them. They're at an outdoor film festival and other people are around on the grass in sleeping bags. As I stand there, a friend of theirs seduces me. Another friend of hers joins in, too. I then notice an entrance to the sewer system. I'd been there before (in another dream), so I wanted to revist it.

Next thing I remember, I'm driving down one of Houston's main strips, running out of gas and oil. Bad time for it as I get a phophetic vision of giant buildings shimmering over New York, destroying it.

I end up in a truck, moving down to the "ass end of the beach".

2004-03-16T21:58:00.000-08:00

My Check
11-29-03

A piece of paper flies through city, the wind whisking it forever higher through the streets and between the buildings until it goes through a window and lands on a desk. A pretty woman stands in the window.

My vision moves through a maze of windows and fire escapes before centering in on me at the golf course with a mob boss. He kills me, then pulls a gun out and kills me again. The black and white flashback of my life is less glamorous than imagined, highlighting all the mundane and boring parts of my life.

I'm alive in the hospital. Someone tries to kill me again. I literally scream "bloody murder!", after which my attacker dies. He was being possessed. Someone comes in and certifies that I'm insane.

I get released from the hospital and walk around town, wishing I had sunglasses so that the mob guy wouldn't recognize me if he saw me. I go to the bank to get a check when some guy walks in and blows the place up.

A piece of paper--my check--flies through the city.

2004-03-16T21:39:00.000-08:00

Remember No More
11-28-03

I'm being chased by the cops, and I'm driving so fast my stomach feels like it's on a rollercoaster. Bullets fly around me everywhere, and eventually I crash into a building. I manage to escape into a nearby church. I wonder why I'm there, but I enjoy the sanctuary and the silence. People start making noise, however, so I leave. It's a shame, because the techno remix church music was actually pretty good.

Just as I'm leaving, though, I see it again. The thing with the honey silk voice. Terror rips through me as I realize I never did destroy it. Human legs dressed in jeans. A barren spine leading up to an empty void of a head. Bony arms that can peel the skin from your bones with no effort at all. Mercifully I black out and remember no more.

2004-03-16T21:31:00.000-08:00

Good Day for a Walk
11-27-03

I'm in what's supposed to be downtown SB, but the streets are so dark, I can't tell for sure, and I get lost trying to get back to De La Guerra. My euclidean sense of geometry fails me when I try to navigate in circles.

By morning I make it to a construction site north of town. It's a hilly region, mostly hard dirt with large patches of grass. Only the building's frame is up, but people are working on it. The path I'm following goes straight through the structure, so I follow it. Noone seems to notice.

My backpack starts to weigh me down, and I wonder how much further I need to go, when I see some tourists up ahead. Civilization can't be far. They're gathering at the top of the next hill. I make it over there and see a hotel in the next valley.

I make it down there and head into the hotel. I need a shower, and there is a public shower area, like in a gym. It's huge. Most of the showers are on, though noone is there. Even the benches and lockers are being sprayed by water. As I'm showering, Ted Turner shows up and tells a story about drinking and gives me instructions on how to shave my balls.

Outside in the lobby, I run into Shanner and MV. I can't believe it, and I exclaim to them how strange it is that I always run into the most unlikely people in the most unlikely of places. I feel refreshed. It's a good day for a walk.

2004-03-16T21:22:00.000-08:00

Xian
11-08-03

I've just finished reading a book about the bear people, who have a twisted view of the world that makes them see everything as good. I'm also some sort of supernatural creature, and since it's night out, I'm outside with another of my kind. We're up on a mountain, and vampires are fleeing toward us. We bound down with our swords and slaughter them. We see they were running from werewolves. We're about to go kill the werewolves, too, when more vampires come out and catch them, including the master vampire. They start to feed. I don't want to stick around. I see a little girl who was running, the original bait. I take her back to the mansion.

Back at the mansion is a locked courtyard with monsters inside. I fumble for the key to unlock the door to get in. Monsters surround me. Someone locks me in. Weaponless, I go for a file cabinet to grab my weapon. I kill everything and unlock the door again.

Afterwards I'm sitting inside, holding the little girl. Another guy comes up and slaps her, says she can't be one of us cuz she's a "Xian" (pronounced "shan"), not European. I yell that that's fine, call him inbred, that I'm the genetics guy around here. Then I yell at him some more. Monsters fill up the courtyard again. Someone's in there with a machinegun, holding them off. The guy next to me goes to help. I know I won't see him again for a while, and I'm relieved. I notice everyone has caught some disease. Some sort of slime is melting off them. It gets everywhere. I decide to leave.

Daytime. I'm driving a big blue truck through the middle of the desert. I find a country town and park in barn designated for parking. It's spacious like a parking structure, but only has a ground floor. I see some guy getting beat up badly. I know he's like me, but much weaker. I beat up his attackers. He's in bad shape and runs off to hide.

I stay in town and go to the pub that night. A woman joins me to play cards, but then tells me to hide the deck. I hide it under the table. Someone says we've already started our hourly card-playing rate. She calls out women's names, and they come forth (if there are a certain percentage of women there, it's a discounted rate). She also convinces the bartender that he needs to be more responsible serving people liquor, so we must say complicated sentences to get additional drinks.

I spend four days in town, drunk as I can be the entire time, which isn't very. I exhaust all the cash I have with me.

Daytime again. Some other supernatural guy finds me and decides he doesn't like me. He tries to torch my vehicle, but he gets the wrong one. I find him in the parking barn and beat him up, kick him in the back of the head. The guy I saved earlier comes out of a closet he'd been hiding in and helps me. The bad guy turns into a tin dusting pan, and I bust it apart with a pole.

Two normal people are there watching, and old man and wife. They helped me earlier, but now they're frightened of me. I give them each a hug, the man having stepped into a big cobweb.

2003-11-29T13:09:00.000-08:00

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.

2003-11-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

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.

2003-11-29T12:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:58:00.000-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:57:00.000-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:56:00.002-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:56:00.001-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:56:00.000-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:55:00.006-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:55:00.005-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:55:00.004-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:55:00.003-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:55:00.002-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:55:00.001-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:55:00.000-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:53:00.002-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:53:00.001-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:53:00.000-08:00

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".

2003-11-26T02:52:00.006-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:52:00.005-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:52:00.004-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:52:00.003-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:52:00.002-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:52:00.001-08:00

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."

2003-11-26T02:52:00.000-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.009-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.008-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.007-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.006-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.005-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.004-08:00

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.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.003-08:00

Tinge of Agoraphobia
3-31-2002

I was the newest--perhaps a guest--member of an elite team of combatants, who were assaulting an installation. Being new, I didn't even have a weapon. There were other teams with us, but they held back, waiting for us to clear the path. We started running up this turf-like bridge toward a looming structure. I couldn't tell if it was day or night. I was near the head of the group. Enemy humanoid monsters charged at us. I had no idea what I was going to do without a weapon, but one of them fell right in front of me by a single strike from the guy running ahead of me. He just slashed and kept running. I bent down and grabbed the knife from the monster, but in doing so, I lost the lead.

I hoped I could distinguish our team from the bad guys, since none of us wore uniforms, and I was still new, so I didn't know everyone's faces yet, either. Someone struck out at me with two knives at once. I somehow blocked the blow and held his weapons in check while someone in my team ran up and ran him through. I took something that functioned like a pair of tongs.

Someone behind me warned me about the birds. As they did so, one flew at me menacingly. I caught it around the neck with my tongs and cut its head off with the pair of large scissors I suddenly found in my right hand. Others ran past me in the process, and I found myself near the very back of the group now. I ran to catch up.

I made it to the installation, and followed someone into a sparse metal room. I found a key on the floor, the purpose of which never became clear. The guy was in another corner of the room, waiting for me to do something. I somehow triggered a mechanism that opened another door, and we continued. We entered an identical room, except this time the key on the floor was in a different place. I picked it up anyway. We moved on.

I new my team wasn't far ahead, because I came upon some inflatable bridges. I crossed them and found them on a pillar of land, preparing to make another bridge to the center of the installation. The other teams were closing in behind us, too, erecting square, yet rounded, barriers on the inflatable bridges. They moved from barrier to barrier, as if for cover. I figured we never bothered with those because we were so elite.

Next thing I knew, the next bridge was done and my team already gone. I overheard something about "the last time we flew through the fire ". I had no idea what they were talking about, but I ran after them, a couple others behind me. We entered the next structure, turned down a corridor, and stopped. Directly in front of us was a red, fiery hallway. I saw two of my teammates standing absolutely still in it, unable to move. Every other square tile of the hallway was covered in bones, save one. I now understood that one would either die or get suspended for years. Death was the correct choice, and someone had to die on the right tile to dispel the mechanism. Someone else jumped onto the last clear tile, screamed horribly, and collapsed into a pile of bones. Everyone (including him) was suddenly resurrected, and the suspended people became animated again. We charged through.

I left the planet, and traveled across the star system in a ship. I moved from planet to planet, creating a map in my head.

I landed into another battle situation, this time amongst marines. We were defending against enemy tanks. I had the job of targeting enemy tanks with my laser so that our shells could strike them. We took out several tanks this way, and they kept charging us in spite of the warnings we shouted over loudspeakers.

We pushed forward, taking out a couple troop carriers and a helicopter. Some troops started to crawl under a broken hangar door at us. I fired, but soon realized they were our troops. Where were the enemy? They ran past us, back toward our base. I couldn't find the enemy, so I went back, too, where I was teleported back into the mothership.

I didn't know where to go, so I traveled across the galaxy in the wrong direction. I was notified that I was supposed to take the warp right next to the planet, but I was nowhere near it now. I would take forever to get back, and I felt a tinge of agoraphobia.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.002-08:00

Assignment on Earth
4-02-2002

On another planet with three other Earthlings. Try not to speak to give away origins. Hide in bathroom outside. Discovered. Say nothing. Charge building. Use another entrance. Run up and around inside. Want to participate in some event to save Universe from extinction. Find out the aliens are on our side. See MO in alien disguise. Get yellow tape for disguise. Get medical tests. Blood type F, grade 2. Fill out sheet to fill in blanks in medical history. Must know I'm from Earth. Kill other aliens. Which military division to choose? Power armour mostly industrial. Possibly too old for air force. New life on a new planet. Better not hang with my guys or they'll get suspicious. Pointing to a map of Earth, calling things different names. Assignment on Earth.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.001-08:00

Stolen Car
4-20-2002

I saw someone from my past whom I never think about.

...A lot of complex plot I've forgotten...

When I got out of Starbucks, my car was gone. Apprarently, Kyle's brother "Devone" had stolen it. I got so furious, I took one of the two sets of keys out of my left pocket and threw them across the parking lot in the general direction of the now-forgotten girl I was with.

At some point I had my motorcycle again, having purchased it back from the guys I sold it to. I was having a hard time steering it, as if it were broken.

2003-11-26T02:51:00.000-08:00

Tape Measure
4-21-2002

I kept running into people from my life, ranging from middle school to college, mostly. People I never think of anymore, like fat Heather what's-her-name and A. Updike. I went into a hardware store to find a ruler. I saw Donald walk by, an employee. I tapped him as I walked by, said, "Hey Don." Then I saw a girl I used to know, who also worked there. I found a section with tape measures, which I figured was good enough.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.008-08:00

Billy
2-17-2001

Riding a bus through the snow. The driver swerves over to one stop. I complain how I hate this stop, and the driver does too. He tells me how the bus that goes through the subdivision on ThistleWood (some T-name) goes through the entire place instead of just stopping at the entrance like it's supposed to, and that's why he has to pick up the slack. I head toward that subdivision, because that's where my sister is with her boyfriend's family. They have an 18-year old daughter who takes a liking to me. I want to get her alone and explain that I'm engaged before she gets any ideas and makes a fool of herself in front of her family. But it never happens, and she publicly asks if I want to take a walk with her, like a date. I tell her I can't. She gets hurt and mad, and I try to show her my ring, but she just can't see it. Nonetheless, it's snowing really badly and supplies are low. Driving isn't feasible. She and I are sent off for supplies. We pack up and trek out across the land.

We stop at a townhouse on the way, which a middle-aged guy answers. He invites us in. She slips, as the floor is made of ice. He never uses his heat, and apologizes for the floor (but not the cold). We start to cook a meal, and seem to stay there for days. All I had intended to do was exit through his back entrance to save time.

I was driving on the snowy streets, trying to take them fast. My car started spinning in circles, but I felt in control. (A lot here I missed.)

Saw some kind of bill while talking to dad on the phone. He said he was in debt. I was at the supermarket with him, and he was returning a bunch of food...so much that it had to be restocked on the spot...to pay some bills. I saw a dollar lying in the chicken section, and a 20 dollar bill wrapped around a can. I picked it up, but it was fake, for on the back was a blurb about "The King" (Elvis) being finally dead. It was actually a book about Billy the Kid, claiming he died only recently. How he traveled cross country in a car with his friend, and famous carpenter, John Carpenter. Leslie showed me a book and said it's the same one shetold me about that they got me. I said then why are you showing it to me then if you already told me about it. My dad was talking how Billy was mentally ill, that a person like that could never survive. "He ain't all there is he." He said some people belived he took care of a cow for 4 years, and so on. I wondered how he and a guy like John may have met.

A old, stretched convertible car pulled up at a gas station in the middle of the desert. I appeared to greet them. John and Billy. Billy was really old, with gray hair and a mustache, dressed up like some old English colonel, only in brown. John came around to help him out of the back seat, calling him "sweetie". I thought it just a mistake, refusing to believe that all the great best buddies from history were gay. Billy had a magnificent pocketwatch. I pulled out mine and asked to see his. His came unclipped and he fumbled for it in the backseat.

Some bandit (me) on a horse rode into his hideout by the gas station, except it wasn't yet a gas station, but just a halfway house of some kind. His drunken pal was there. He had a drink of water and went over to the creek to take a piss. His pal got excited that he would humor him in a common pleasure, and they both pissed together, seeing who could piss the farthest. The drunken guy couldn't piss at all. He jumped in the water next to where the piss was falling to measure the distance or something. He turned and saw young Billy, very dirty and almost naked, watching, and started yelling and blaming his poor piss on stagefright. Billy just stood there like a retard. He had been imprisoned and forced to take care of the cow next door for the past 4 years. A woman wrapped in a blanket also arrived, and the drunk guy went into an uproar about stagefright while the other guy kept pissing. The drunk tried pissing again, but it went up like a little fountain spurt then got all over his hands. Everyone laughed.

There were three bandits and a woman, who belonged to the biggest bandit. The stole the blanket from the woman. I wanted to take it over to Billy, so I went over to his room at the rickety wooden hotel and stepped in his door. I saw a blur of something and stepped back, afraid he was going to attack me. The next thing I remember, I had acquired a better blanket and given it to the woman, saying, "There, now isn't that a better blanket?" as she snuggled into it and fell asleep. Billy came in, and he and I teamed up against the big bandit. Billy just taunted him while I threw all the punches and kicks. I had a hard time, getting blocked most of the time, but I got a lot of good shots in. Somehow he ended up rolling on the ground. I jumped up high and came down on his head with my foot. Hard. I was surprised there was no crunching sound, but then figured you never heard that stuff in cartoons, either. He now looked like a bald Asian monk.

We grappled on the ground. I hand-chopped his stomach over and over with minimal resistance. Finally a female voice cried for me to stop. I looked and it was a delicate Asian woman, almost crying. I tapped her lightly on the stomach again as a test, and she said it really hurt. She offered to nibble on my ear. I tried to draw away, but she grappled me. She was suddenly black, naked, and really buff, leaning on top of me, pinning me down. She apologized for fighting, but that was how she was used to it in her culture. I got away from her and took in my new surroundings.

It was a huge gym. Men and women, but only the women were working out, and they were really hardcore. I saw the black woman a few times, either lifting weights or getting fucked on the floor. Everyone else was clothed. All the men were sitting at a cafeteria-like area, eating. Someone came up to me and told me that Billy was going to get into another fight. I saw a scrawny kid stand up across a table, saying mean things to a retarded, pudgy, skinhead kid with fat glasses. The retard said something that made Billy laugh, and he said to join him outside. Some other dork said that that included us, and this dork led me out. It was dark out, and the place by the garages that was normally private had cops around it. We stood by a tree. I was fondling my pocket watch or some piece of metal. He asked if I had any LSD or marijuana. I said no. He seemed astounded that I spent all that time in Planetjam and not been involved in that lifestyle of drugs and women.

We started walking back. A cop looked at us and said that we should at least say hello, and the fact that we didn't say hello was enough to suspect us of illegal activity. We ended up chained together in the back of his golf cart.

In the morning, the three of us that were chained escaped thanks to our other dork friends. Some charges were laid on our chains, but only one went off, leaving two of us. we were connected by a metal box. The kid plugged a wire into two places on it. It looked like a tape player. We waited impatiently for the fuse to go off, and he was free. The cops were running toward us now. We didn't have time for another charge, so I picked up the case and stuffed it in my shirt and ran. I ran into a building and immediately saw an open maintenance door, the kind that lead into hallways between all the rooms inside. It had those metal grating floors and lots of pipes. There were men with blowtorhces working on my right, so I ducked left, jumping down a ledge and around a corner. I heard someone call out. I ran down some stairs, hoping to put more distance between me and whoever. They leveled out and then headed back up. A woman in a lab coat a passed me in the other direction. I reached the top to another hallway. I was about to follow it when i noticed plastic blinds in front of me, and some sort of office. I turned, and the other wall was like that, too. I tentatively poked them and they gave. I walked through. The floor was grey, but then became sea-blue marble. It smelled like paint thinner. It was like a big, under-construction school hall. There was a woman on her knees opposite me on the far wall, back turned, painting or something. I saw a really big red couch, except it had no back to it. I rushed over to it and pulled out my Billy the Kid book to read. As I sat, some oldish balding guy in a white coat approached with an entourage of a couple random people and said I had to come with him.

I entered a small classroom with little children sitting in small chairs at small tables. It looked like they had been coloring. The man said something to the effect that it was about time for them to leave. I saw someone I recognized from before as having disappeared. These people weren't coloring...these were cartoon likenesses of themselves, a mere mark of their existence. I saw tags for Harold, even Kateman. People who had vanished earlier. I tooked down at the little girl below me and touched her head. I started to cry. A picture was thrust in front me me, labeled "Hog." That was my name. After all this running, I'd finally found the secret place. I would finally be reuinted with all my friends. I cried. But where were they taking us? I wasn't sure I trusted this man.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.007-08:00

We Pulled Away
3-02-2001

A party hosted by my friend Mike in Houston. Some guys were cooking, talking to an attractive woman. "Typical" I thought to myself...they were just cooking so that she would think they're domestic, nice guys. I shook Mike's hand and ignored a bunch of other people.

There was an interior decorator woman who did a bad job with the swimming pool, and got all mad when the owner lady said so. Then the pool was dry, revealing a secret passage to this really hot girl's bedroom. I had to take a shower, so I went into the bathroom, but I accidentally stumbled into her bedroom instead. She was still asleep, and I got out of there before she saw me naked.

Then some guy ended up staying the night at her place, and they stayed up all night talking. I asked her later if she liked him, and she said she did. I asked if he burped around her yet, and he had.

Then I saw that girl talking to her female friend, both sitting/lying on her bed. She was talking about how this guy didn't expect all these typical things of her. She was starting to get annoyed as if he did, but it was just general angst against the world. Then she got off the bed and was suddenly very obese. Her arm seemed so long as she held a twinkie aloft and gorged upon it.

Then I was on a boat with two other guys, drifing along a creek in some jungle. There was a really fat guy in a wading pool alongside, and he started throwing rocks and mud at us. I threw a rock back and missed. I threw another one and missed. I jumped off the boat (SMALL boat) and found a huge rock in the stream. I tossed it at him and nailed him on the head. I felt cruel, but also like he deserved it. I got back on the boat, but the fat man was swimming after us. Blindly. Flailing his arm at our craft, always an inch away. He was literally blind, something I didn't realize before. I got the other two guys to paddle with me, and we pulled away.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.006-08:00

Lunch With Tom
3-06-2001

I might as well relate the earlier part of that dream. Tom Cruise got a job at my office. I went to lunch with him. I figured even he had to work. He lifted up a CD case in his car. I noticed it was "Computer World" by Kraftwerk. I verbally marveled that I had JUST taken that same CD out to MY car. We got to the intersection before the highway and parked. He took me to a table with a bunch of sack lunches and told me to give them out to the bums lining the street. I reluctantly did so, but in the process Tom vanished, skipping out on buying me lunch. Dick.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.005-08:00

No Limit to the Fall
3-08-2001

I was in a snowy landscape, sliding down really soft snow with custom-soundtracks cascading through my mind. It was kinda dark, but as it grew light, it got warmer, and the snow turned into very very very fine sand that just sifted over my body. I was almost falling, it was so fine, and the slope so steep. It twisted and turned like a tobaggen, and the music was very choral and peaceful. I fell like this for minutes on end, lucidly keeping myself from reaching a real destination, knowing there was no limit to the fall.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.004-08:00

Like Shit?
6-13-2001

Walking down a street with all these people marching down the opposite way, holding up signs and shouting about their right to see someone (had a clever name, too, dammit). Then a woman in a convertible drives up with a clone of this dog by the same name, saying they should at least see the real thing. I dunno. Then some long line that leads into this huge house. I bypass the line and go inside, but when I get to the host, he won't let me in because I'm not dressed well enough. I go down to eat at the bar and Eileen is there. I ask her a few questions to make conversation, and she only gives me assanine answers. In particular, I remember "So do you work now?" and she's like, "Yeah, duh, of COURSE I do" before going back to eating. At which point I lose it, take my spoon (was eating soup), and throw it at her back as I leave (her back was bare). I walk furiously outside. I see her chasing me in a window reflection from the corner of my eye, and turn around right before she touches me. I grab her arm and say, "Why does everyone from GB have to treat everyone else from GB like shit?" She kisses me cautiously. I embrace her and strengthen the kiss. To my surprise, she embraces me as well.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.003-08:00

13 Cent Fish
6-15-2001

Something about teaching someone's kid something profound, and it meant a lot to me since I didn't have my own kid, but I always wanted to pass on this tidbit of knowledge.

Apartment...house...lots of people...talking...go into a bathroom in the morning to find a goldfish lying on top of a miniature scale. I ask someone why, and they say it was more cost effective to let the fish die than to rescue it. But since the fish cost 13 cents and resucing it was free, that didn't make sense to me.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.002-08:00

Hit You in the Face
10-23-2001

I saw my ex somewhere, and we had a short, but pleasant conversation, which basically ended with "This is as far as I (her) want this relationship to go this time (friendship)." Then I went to my childhood home and got a call from her on my cell phone. I told her how I just had a dream about having a pleasant conversation with her. She sounded interested, and we proceeded to have another one, but my dad and sister kept barging in on me, and I kept yelling at them to leave...which worried me that I was giving her a bad impression that I hadn't really changed at all.

The house turned out to be a large spaceship, and I decided to get out. I fired up a jet and whooshed around, scaring a spaceborne aircraft carrier and pulling some risky stuff with neighboring spacecraft. Then some weird thing happened where I ended up unprotected in space, and I had to "hold" my breath (as in exhale) and somehow maneuver back into the main craft. I was kinda pissed, and everyone inside was really ashamed about the entire ordeal (that they let it happen and didn't do much to help me).

I went into a bathroom to wash up. At this point, the craft is more than just my house, but an enter school and lots of other stuff. So many people are around. The guy from Love Lines is there, and he hears me complain a little bit about my love situation. I go into an auditorium and sit down, and he's the host. He points at me to take the stand. I politely refuse, but he cajoles me into doing it. I first make sure my ex wasn't in the audience, though, and I'm determined not to answer any questions of sexual nature.

The audience...all students, some of which I know...ask questions. The host chooses who gets to ask it, though. The first question is "What do you do?" I answer, "What do I do...for a LIVING? I'm a Software Engineer." The kid's gets this face like, "Ouch". Some other kid pops up, "That's why he said for a 'living'". And the other is like, "I know, and that's when I say 'ouch'". I pipe in with "And that's when I hit you in the face." Everybody cheers. They ask me a bunch of questions, all trivial, disjointed, and nothing to do with my ex.

We all leave, but in a hurry. We've somehow ended up being rounded by some bandits in the building. I'm kind of running, and I see a large open room. Wondering why noone's there (it looked safe enough), I go for it. Others follow me. I see expressions of fear on other people's faces...those who saw us run that way. I figure out it's some kind of trap. A laser comes from down the hall and takes off a kid's head. I take cover behind an unsturdy, wooden fence-like door (this place is outside all of a sudden). Shitloads of lasers pour down the hallway, tearing tons of people around me apart. Only I survive. Finally, people in desert garb rush down the hall to come after the pieces. I vault the fence into some other hallway. They lob shit at me but I'm too fast. I barge into a room full of them and bolt out again. Through some sort of juke, I manage to close them into a room with some kind of nerve gas. After they're taken out, I lead a bunch more people through the room to a staircase. I bound down several flights of stairs until we get to the car garage. I kick a door open that leads outside. Some Asian guy tries to get me to go with him toward some bushes. I refuse, and as he does, I see snipers heading toward him. He doesn't last but a few seconds. I run back toward the garage.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.001-08:00

Rooftop Shortcut
12-13-2001

I was going to a relative's place. When I got to the street their house was on, there was a big barbed fence. I somehow got through. The street was totally jacked. Holes everywhere, growth. The houses were all dilapidated. It was night out. Then I noticed that it wasn't the houses that were fenced in, but the STREET was fenced in, and there were dogs in it. I'm not afraid of dogs, so even though they were ravenous for me, I just shrugged them off. I climbed the fence and got into my relatives' place. I couldn't believe they lived there. Some weirdo came into their home, a friend of theirs, and he wanted to cut me up and eat me. A dog came out of nowhere and jumped on my face, but I saw this in 3rd person. Apparently I was out cold or dead or whatever, and the weirdo said something to the effect that they might as well cook me up now. My relatives just kinda blankly looked at each other.

I was looking for Brandy, progressing through this city I often dream about. It starts out that I'm walking in the same direction as everyone else, but soon I find that everyone is moving against me. She was supposed to be walking toward me from the other end of town, but she could have take any path. There were also these kids playing on the rooftops, and I went up there, as if it were a shortcut. I eventually found her, but she didn't see me. She wasn't walking. She was waiting. but she was somehow occupied, too, so she wasn't being vigilant. She also had her glasses on.

2003-11-26T02:50:00.000-08:00

New Year's Apocalypse
12-30-2001

I was with my friend K (last person I saw in Michigan last week, getting to be an "old" friend) in some dark town at night. We met up with M somewhere, and we all walked around the streets for a bit.

We finally go into some lounge-type establishment. K walks off. M and I get to talking (unfortunately I rarely remember conversations from dreams verbatim...but they're always so clever/hilarious...sigh). Facing M, I put my hands on her waist, and she dies laughing, as if M were so ticklish that I didn't even have to do anything. This causes me to laugh, and we crash into a couch.

Men in blue uniforms, rifles, and visored helmets enter (not a SWAT team, though). We decide to leave. It's raining out, and the fire escape above us provides little cover. I remember the umbrella in my car and suggest we go get it. It's only parked a couple blocks down. Keeping to the shops (since the storefronts often provide cover), we head down the sidewalk, which slopes down a steep hill after a block. The block below is close to a body of water, and at first, I fear my car has been flooded, but I notice that the rushing waters are "only" a foot or so deep yet. We run down, and M cuts to the other side of the street (no idea why). I don't see my car. I replay our steps to/from the lounge in my head, and determine that I was actually parked in the other direction. There are tons of people running around in some sort of panic. I run across the intersection to find M, but I miss her. Luckily she sees me and calls out to me. We join up again, forging back up the hill on the sidewalk, this time on the other side of the street.

Orange sparks fly at us from up ahead, far in the distance. Can't see anything, really, it's so dark and rainy. We shield ourselves with our arms as we make progress. The sparks become more like bottle rockets, and thus more of a threat. She moves onto the street, for they only seem to be coming down the sidewalk. I step onto the grass, and beckon M to join me over there. Many sparkley streaks of light whizz by with assumed purpose. The hill gets steeper and steeper, almost vertical and impossible to climb, but we somehow continue. A tree gets in my way (but not M's?!?), and I climb it...but it's more like struggling to get through a bush than climbing. I realize I have a 2-liter in my left hand (clear liquid), and another liquid container in the other...so no wonder it's difficult to "climb". I "drop" the 2-liter down to M (and she's also carrying something in her left hand), and I make it through.

I feel like a war has just begun, and we're in the middle of it. We try to navigate back to a familiar place, but it simply doesn't happen. With utterly no knowledge of the alleged conflict at hand, my mind wanders to what my role in it will be. In a twisted way, I'm looking forward to it with a sense of concrete purpose.

Get ride with two guys to a house. Takes turns too far, ends up in a yard once. Snowy. Some party. Right on time (early). Some good spicy celery. "I'm not even gonna make a side dish for this!" Don't know them that well. Start to show a video on hand-held camera of knocking some place over, but it has kids being shot and shit in it, so I cover it up. Shows parents hiding under bed and stuff, but kids going to investigate to get killed.

In jail, sitting at a bench, people around in cages. Basketball, throw it back up many times. Some other white guy coming in to pull something, people think I'm his partner. Such BS. Two girls/convicts supposedly know me. Watching me. All dressed up, dancing with a guard or something. See me take a digital picture and are like "oh shit". Don't know them, though.

Mom driving me to mall, gives me a handgun. I know how to use it, dammit. I cock it. Disagreement on the time, say I'll check in every 15 minutes (but don't). 12:28. Avoid security cars to get into protected area. Rest of mall still open. Get to a hole in a barb fence, but don't go into it cuz of a cop car. See some tourists, so I mosey over to them to blend in. See a robot (human), ask him how to get in. Says to shake this guy's hand coming out. I do, saying my name is Jeff. His name is Jake. I'm their man, he says, and I just go along, follow him in. Get into a room where I'm supposed to wire some video clips from my cell phone. I want them to take me to their main guy so I can get some vigilante justice. Girl shows up and says "I'm Kim-CHANG chun" again and again, until I get the hint that that's somehow a cue for me, so I shoot all these guys. Two still alive on the floor, saying about how I'm a dead man, need them for into, etc. "Shut up" I say, and shoot them both in the head. Two good guys with me now. I rummage through a wallet to find some ID, write down the guy's name whom I killed (for proof). His real name was something english, and his fake ID said "Uter Emmen-somethingGerman". The two guys got bulletproof jackets from these guys. I complain and continue to rely on my leather jacket.

Go through some cop checkpoint, but I set off the alarm cuz I have an envelope of some volatile compound in my pocket. We run through some rooms, then through a hotel and outside. I'm safe again. Go back into hotel lobby. Some family of one of my comrades are there, don't know his job. I just act cool. Other people who know me from some unknown past. I just nod at them. I look around, try to find the entrance to the level I need to get to to waste those guys, but I can't find it.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.008-08:00

Clay Face
9-23-2000

AP and I have discovered a hitherfore unknown talent...we have the ability to change our faces at will. We sit down at dinner with some mutual friends, and he forges his face to look like mine, trying to imitate my mannerisms and what not. Later we both enter a small coffee shop, using our new talent to disguise ourselves as girls. I don't recall the reason. We're wearing pastel blue dresses with bows in the back. We take seats at a small table in the corner by a window. I can see everyone coming in. I see two girls come in and not notice us, and that somehow registers that our ruse is not good enough. I get up and walk outside, trying to morph back to myself, but I'm stuck. My clothes won't change...and I guess that makes sense. I eventually make it into a reddish, musty old hallway on an upper floor somewhere. The walls and are lined with a cloth-like material, similar to the thin carpet. I get a drink of water from a drinking fountain, then look at myself in the mirror above it in the wall. I'm myself. I stare into the mirror, concentrating on making my face look like AP's. Slowly, the tissue on my face starts to rearrange itself, but I can't complete the transformation. I give up, and go back downstairs to entertain my friends.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.007-08:00

Throwing Silverware
10-01-2000

Many people from high school are around, but not the people I normally hung out with. Moreso they are people who rode my bus, or who were around, but not in my classes. The one execption is this guy Jason, whom I worked with one summer. I never liked him. He ends up wanting to play some game that will legally allow him to beat me up. I am more than eager to do the same. However, to make him afraid of me, I snap and yell at him, throwing knives and silverware in his face. It weirds him out and he leaves. Everyone cheers, saying how they were just going along with me the entire time.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.006-08:00

Fireplace Fireplace Fireplace
10-21-2000

I hardly remember any of this dream now, but throughout the dream I keep on hearing my grandmother's voice, shouting out random things as if she were talking in her sleep. I've ventured into the guest room of my childhood home. My childhood kitten is there. I pick it up, standing in the shadows of the room. It's nighttime, and only the hall light is on. I hear my grandma's voice again. This time she's shouting the word "fireplace". I laugh it off, thinking it's pretty funny, though not as funny as some of the other random stuff she's been shouting out all night. The kitten jumps from my arms at her shout, though, landing in the funnel of light in the doorway. I grab the kitten back up, somehow afraid of the light now. Then I hear my grandma's voice again. "Fireplace!" Again the kitten jumps to the floor, and again I struggle to get it back. "Fireplace!" It gets harder and harder to control the kitten, because he's scared. Now she's shouting it with more urgency. "FIREPLACE! FIREPLACE! FIREPLACE!" Faster and faster. I start to think maybe something IS wrong. Maybe something's happening to my grandma? Maybe something's coming out of the fireplace? Maybe she's so scared she can't articulate anything else? It starts to freak me out. "FIREPLACE FIREPLACE FIREPLACE!!!!!!!!!" More and faster. "FIREPLACEFIREPLACEFIREPLACE" as if it's a cassette tape being played at high speed. It starts to cut out. "FIREPLACE PLACE ACE ACE CE CE CE CE E E E" as if she's choking on the words, saying it so fast she can't even say the entire thing anymore. I totally wig out and wake up. I'm driving one of my sister's male friends to work at the golf course. Upon dropping him off, I see a kid I remember from high school, Anthony. Not that I ever talked to the guy, but I get out of my car and greet him anyway. He remembers me, asks me how I'm doing, but I turn around to see someone else. Mark from my old youth group. He says it's good to see me, but I turn around and see "Hool". We exchange greetings, but I'm already off again, strolling down a sidewalk, thinking how unlikely it is to see all these people I know around. Then I hear a retarded-sounding greeting come from a nearby table. There's a guy there that looks like Harlequin, but more emaciated. A woman is sitting with him, telling him to behave, but I go over to talk to him. After I confirm his identity, I ask him, "What happened to you?" He responds, "Tumor necrosis". I understand his condition. I start to break down and cry.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.005-08:00

The Shaft
10-22-2000

For a long time now I've been chasing an evil-doer through a complex not unlike others I've explored in other 3D-shooter-type dreams. Lots of twisting passages, windows to a beautiful outdoors waterfall, and lots of ledges and stairs to jump around on. I fire some explosives at a fountain or something in the floor, revealing a hidden passage. I know that's where my victim went. I jump down, hearing my fiance's voice in my head as I descend. She's talking about a girl she dislikes. I hit the bottom of a mine shaft and jump onto a ledge to get to the entrance of another one. Bats fly out at me. I have a bow and arrow, so I use my three arrows to kill them all. They each go up in a flash of light. I turn around to see more bats after me. I take out a long knife and cut them as they close in, but more appear. I realize there's too many of them and turn into the shaft, only to find more opposing me. I have no choice, so I charge in, cutting my way through. Then very large bugs block my footsteps. So large I can only jump over a dozen or so at a time. Too many to kill. I continue, noticing larger and scarier bugs crawling at me now, and more bats. I sense I'm only halfway to my destination, so I use a special power of mine...I send a powerful energy surge in a radius around my body, disintegrating everything in my immediate surroundings. I move on, but even more bugs and bats close in on me. The shaft opens up into a massive hall. There are other humanoids on some uplifted ground, like a stage. The man I'm looking for is there, surrounded by a legion of protective bugs. I leap at him. From a 3rd person view, I see myself literally leap into his body, disappearing somewhere inside. Somehow I've captured him. Somehow I end up myself again, looking at him. He's still frozen in place, holding a large sword. I plant a device on him. I'm going to take him in (wherever that is), but I notice my surroundings change. Lights in the walls blur into windows. Walls become more smooth and change color. Everything looks more futuristic, and I'm no longer looking at a man, but a blond-haired child, still holding a large sword. By force of will, I cause us to end up back in the shaft, him a man again, and to prvent him from pulling that trick again, I grab his two front fingers and crack them. It happens again anyway, though, and I grab the sword from the child. This frees him from my control and he vanishes. Someone else asks me, "You went through all that trouble. How do you expect to catch him again?" I reply with confidence, "I can find him again, especially now that I have the sword." It's suddenly daytime, and I'm on top of a very tall hill. There's nothing for miles around, and hardly any grass. There's an old building nearby, possibly my home, and a long road, lined with small white rocks, winds up around the hill, passing by a short distance below. An old man, a farmer perhaps, comes up beside me. I express utter contempt as a small school bus winds its way up. It's only got a short distance to go when it tips over, almost falling over the edge. I grunt in disgust as the driver climbs out, glad I wasn't in the death twinkie myself. He's a young man. I yell at him, insulting him in numerous ways and using lots of profanity, with a focus on his incompetence as a bus driver. The old man by me comments that he's only got two weeks of experience, but I don't let up. I get so fed up by the time he limps up to us and I turn and walk over to a pond, staring out over it, holding my hand out to a tree. I hear the two talking. One of them gets out a football. I turn around, but I'm staring at the ground. The football hits me in the head. I'm not even phazed. I barely notice as it drops to the ground near me. They say, "Weren't you paying attention? Can you even catch a football?" Trying to pin something on me after I insulted his intelligence and skill. "Why should I want to throw around a fucking football? What kind of useless skill is that?" is my retort. "Pick it up yourself, you simpleton!" So one of them does, and they throw it around some more. Then they kick a soccer ball around. It eventually hits my feet, and the resulting exchange is about the same. My fiance arrives to back me up, basically giving her own, as of yet unheard (and unremembered now) point of view on why these people were idiots.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.004-08:00

Laugh Our Brains Out
10-24-2000

I'm walking through an old neighborhood, supposedly some place I grew up in, but I hardly recognize anything. There are people I know, however, and I stop off in a run-down school to say hello to someone. A kid named Pawlik pulls into the hallway, barely fitting his beat-up formula-One car up to a gasoline well. I get the impression he's out of gas, but when he unscrews the gas cap, his tank is overflowing. Nonetheless, he tops it off. I comment on the studipity as gas overflows and spills when he recaps it (a hose had to be inserted inside, which displaced fuel).

I enter a locker room. Aside from lockers and a tile floor, there's an old-fashioned tub with a clear screen. The showerhead is running water, and there are lots of guys around. Someone is somehow wrapped up and suspended horizontally in the shower screen, being dowsed with water, and for some reason it's the most hilarious thing I've seen in a long time. I laugh so hard, I'm surprised I didn't wake up. Gaver the class clown is there with a video camera, showing a tape of a similar event pulled back in the day. We watch the tape, which basically consists of someone being pushed around and sprayed with water or something. We laugh our brains out.

Evan is there, interacting with everyone like a normal person, and I marvel at how far he's come since his first day in the autistic classroom.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.003-08:00

Zombie World
11-08-2000

I'm in a house with P, and there's a party going on. Everyone from lab is there, including Dr. Byrne. I say "I don't give a damn about him. He's a fucking idiot." I end up in the basement. I hear zombies eating bones behind a closed door. Airport full of women trying to buy used books. More zombies. Dark parking lot. Limo. Get P inside. Drive. Man comes to window. Punch him in stomach.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.002-08:00

Skateboard Freeway
11-15-2000

Skateboarding down a freeway. Motorcycle goes past in the parking lot.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.001-08:00

Pulling Wagon
11-16-2000

Brom. Golf course. Wolfgram. Cold beach. Movement toward animals. Sea plant thing. "I come here in my dreams" in golf cart. Old building with box. Dew rag. $50. Pulling wagon.

2003-11-26T02:49:00.000-08:00

Four Arms
circa January, 2001

Traffic. Abduction. Glass roofs. Grandma. Four arms.

2003-11-25T02:53:00.003-08:00

Ready For Action
12-06-1999

Pump a bunch of water into a pool. Accidentally lock the key to the pump room inside. I want some little kid to swim through a tunnel to retrieve it, but noone will. The pumped water turns out to be slurry.

In a shopping mall hallway. Bunch of guys with laser guns firing at me. A midget gets on a stool and jumps up and down, firing back. Every other shot veers to the left to hit some guy. More keep coming. The midget walks into the middle of them and puts down his weapon. Then draws an uzi and wastes them all in a circle at close range. I pat him on the back and say, "I DO know to shoot, ya know." At the disgust of a couple of downsider girls, I take two energy guns from the dead guys. I hold up the group while I salvage ammo from a couple of other guns. I put two more guns in my inside leather jacket pocket, and the nitrous-looking ammo cartridges in my right pants pocket. To unload a gun, I smack it vertically on the ground, rip the side off, and slide a cylindrical casing away to peel out the cartridge. I put the original two guns in my two hands, ready for some action.

I walk into a bedroom, guns drawn. Someone puts me in a bearhug from behind. I somehow twist around in the bear hug and see it's Diasinou. I drop through to the floor, going between the legs. I fire upwards and kill my attacker. Someone else attacks me from under the bed. I nail them right away. I know there's two more attackers in this room, but they aren't coming out at me. I think I see one hanging on the wall, pretending to be a mannequin, but when I fire, just water comes out of my gun and squirts it in the face. When I leave, they both jump out. I turn around and blast them both through the head. I go back in and there's a snuggly girl lying completely naked on the bed. I don't remember what we talk about, but I lie close to her and ask her if she wants to get it on real quick. She's like "sure" as if it's no big deal, so I carry her across the hall to a comfy couch. I get her a pillow, then ask if she would like me to bring a sheet, too. She says she doesn't mind, that she's used to this, but I tell her I usually use one, so I get one anyway and lay it out underneath her. I don't want my nice couch to get messy. The moment I get on top of her, to my surprise, she's already guiding me in, but it slips and I miss the mark. Nonetheless, she orgasms right away, pushes me away, and sits up to recover for some reason. We decide to drive to a park and do it there, so we get into my car and drive. I turn into the park area down very narrow streets, cross a very large puddle, go up a ramp, and turn a corner. Other vehicles are taking up too much road, and a few times I'm almost run off of it. I also realize my brakes still aren't working because I never got them fixed after my trip to the airport.

I end up on a beach at night. In the water, wearing swim goggles.

2003-11-25T02:53:00.002-08:00

Complete the Conversion
12-11-1999

I rescue a bunch of people and bring them into a large warehouse to escape the harsh weather. Most of them are magic-users, and I debate on whether or not to kill them all on general principle, even the women.

I get into the passenger seat of a car. Tasneem gets into the driver's seat and takes off. I ask why Aziz isn't coming, and she says he's staying the night for some reason. She turns on the radio, asking me which station is the house music station. I find it, but it's playing some drum 'n bass type of stuff.

I look up at there's an antique black car right in front of us, head-on collision, not even a meter away. I flinch for collision, but then it's gone. Tasneem never even swerved. I marvel at this, saying how we should be in a major wreck now. Then there's another car headed toward us, and I notice a long line of cars in the opposing lane, with cars coming into ours to pass other people. The strange thing is that it's as if they're all going in the same direction as us, just slightly slower, and that they're going backwards. Someone pulls out in front of us to let someone pass by on our left.

We travel to a hut in the yard of a relative I met several dreams ago. I can't remember the combination on the door, though, so I go up to his house. It's nighttime. There's a little lapso whatever dog leashed up on the porch. It gets tangled around some posts. I help it out, but the leash breaks. It eats the leash until it's hanging in the air, its teeth touching my fingers. I ring the doorbell. Some people I've never seen answer, supposedly cousins. I give them the dog. They set it on the ground, and then it attacks my leg, clamping its mouth around my ankle. I can't seem to shake it off. Finally I manage to fling it across the porch and get inside, wiping my feet.

I end up playing a computer game with some other people. It's deathmatch, and I pick some chick character with two knives who can turn invisible. I get creamed a lot at first, but then I turn invisible and end up knifing a lot of them from behind, racking up the frags. I kill someone attacking a semi truck, which then fires heat-seeking missiles at me. I dodge them and fire some missiles back. Others join the battle against it. It's almost destroyed, but it suddenly regenerates all its damage.

I find myself standing in a driveway with a gun strapped to my chest. I reach into the holster and whip it out, firing at all my competitors. Things get blown up, people go down, and so on. I hear someone say how we'll be ready when the apocalypse comes with all this training. I jump onto the side of a semi truck. It whips around and goes over some curbs in an attempt to throw me off, but I stick onto it, yelling triumphantly. I fire a mini- missile from somewhere on my arm into the side of the truck, but it does little damage. An older couple in a car come to a stop nearby and gape at us. As the truck crashes into something, I climb onto the top. A car crashes into the other side of the truck. Taking advantage of these shifts in momentum, I leap down onto the hood of the car, run along its top, and jump off the trunk back onto the driveway, gloating to myself about how good I am. Then a white car comes speeding into the driveway, headed straight for me. I draw two pistols and fire at the windshield even though I know the glass is bulletproof. I roll to the left and the car goes speeding by.

I meet some guy with a lot of rings on his left hand in the garage. I put away my pistols and give him five. Good game. The bunch of us mercenary types go to a room with a large pool. Some guy is sitting in a throne at the opposite end, his foot resting on a large lever. The water in the pool is circling clockwise, and warm. Someone disturbs the guy and moves the lever in the other direction, changing the motion of the water to counter-clockwise, and the temperature to cool. I get in and let the water take me, relaxing after our training exercise. I realize I still have my pistol on, so I take it off and hand it to someone with their legs dangling in the pool. I'm kind of ashamed I let my gun get wet. He comments on what a unique item it is, that it could double as a snorkel. Someone else holds up a rubber stopper or something, as if that was the piece that could complete the conversion.

2003-11-25T02:53:00.001-08:00

Think You Went Somewhere
12-13-1999

With a group of people robbing banks during the daytime. Already robbed two. I brought a bunch of t-shirts for everyone to wear. I was short by one, though, and one Asian guy didn't get one. I told him I'd give him mine later. We set to work outside some building, doing something to uncover some concrete slab. Hugh Q. was our stakeout inside. A female security guard went by a couple times, and we tried to look inconspicuous. The 2nd time she went by, she was giggling. We uncovered the artifact. I grabbed a shovel and started digging, as if the very dirt was worth something. Then I figured the guard was giggling cuz the cops were on the way. I started taking my t-shirt off as I ran for the back exit when a cop car drove in. I went through the hallway and out the back door. No cop cars there. Then I had a vision of the rest of my group getting arrested, and it was such a shame because they were all students. One of them was even a mother. Hugh Q. was talking his way out of it since he didn't have a t-shirt on, either, and was away from the main scene. Bastard. I had my leather jacket on, and black pants. My shirt was black, but I took it off to reveal a red one. That should throw off the cops. It was suddenly nighttime.

I tried to keep to the shadows, but the skylights on top of the building were so bright. There were empty fields of grass and trees on all sides. I made my way around to the side of the building where I was confronted by two guys playing frisbee. They tossed it to me. I tossed it back. They followed me and tossed it again. Each time I tried to throw it further and further away to shake them, because they kept following me, and eventually I got away, meeting up with Andrew. Apparently he'd escaped, too.

Daytime again, we went back to his house, even though it's not his real house. We walked by his mom. Then we opened the door to his room. The second we walked in, a bunch of red sticky marks sprung down upon us, and I immediately knew that the room had been rigged by the cops to catch us. I made this opinion known and we booked it out of there, except the cops were already pulling up. Just one, though, with a dog. We ran for the forest, and came to a creek. The cop was right behind me, a kinda old and overweight guy. But it was the dog that pissed me off. Andrew suddenly vanished, and I wondered if he'd crawled into one of those drainage pipes in the side of the creek. The cop told me that he'd catch me with a bunch of red fibers that would cut into my skin. He pulled out a knife and sliced up his arm to demonstrate how my entire body would look. I backup up against some powdery limestone deposits, grabbed a bunch, and threw it on him. He howled in pain. I took the lead, crossed over a hill, and came to the side of an abandoned elementary school. There were doors every few meters, all ajar, and normally unopenable from the outside. I went in and closed the door behind me, knowing that the cop would still enter from another door. I ran up the steps, figuring he'd never keep up since I was in such better shape. I pulled a fast one and tricked him into going all the way to the top while I made my way back down to the exit. I got outside and he confronted me from behind a bush. "How the..." I asked, and he said, "It's all about making the other guy think you went somewhere" or something like that.

Then I get a call on a payphone from Iceblink, saying how he's been hanging out in all these places. In describing his latest adventures, I notice he's describing my home town. He talks about the Raquetball Club. I hang up and run down the street. I see him crossing some railroad tracks. I call out his name. I get it wrong at first, but I finally yell "Keith!"

I found myself in "my" basement. There was someone on a platform firing rockets at me. I couldn't seem to return fire with a direct hit. I finally made it up to the platform and realized that it was a cardboard box thrown over a shopping cart. I pressed it against and wall and tossed a bunch of grenades between it and the wall, busting a spoke out of the front end. I opened the freezer and grabbed a little icecream cup, started eating it.

I went upstairs and called Aziz, who said John would be over soon. Then the door opened, and it was John, followed by Kim and some other people. I told them I didn't have any Coke, but there was icecream downstairs. I complained about how all my cardboard boxes and shopping carts were turning against me.

I also remember some part of the dream where I was shaving, and some girl said that more guys should shave at night.

2003-11-25T02:53:00.000-08:00

Anniversary of What?
12-14-1999

Sitting on the arm of a couch, talking to P. She says, "It's our one month anniversary!" Confused, I ask, "Anniversary? Of what?" She responds, "You know, of our..." "Of our what?" She gestures for me to fill in the blank, as if she can't say it. I figure she wants me to say the word "relationship" and then wonder why she would say this, since we weren't really in one to begin with.

2003-11-25T02:49:00.000-08:00

Noone Said Anything
9-17-2000

I'm in a dungeon with some other adventurers. I hack at a corner in the wall with my sword. The wall breaks and a bunch of beetles come out. We know they'll devour everything in their path, so we run, hoping our previous pursuers will run into them.

I go to a picnic with a bunch of people from my old youth group. It's a nice summer day and we're near the beach. We play some soccer, and I go off into the grass by the dirt road. A van comes up the wrong path, and some bags on the top get caught in a huge branch. Men get out of the van. I told them they should have taken the other fork. Then we notice the rock where I'm standing is strange, and find some gold there. A woman in a jeep comes by and gives the men $2000 for their gold, much less than market value, but an instant trade. Some other youth see what's going on, but I manage to hoard most of the gold for myself, including a few branches that had gold lining somehow. I took a large metal rod and went off down the bank, in search of more.

I came to a railroad track. I stepped on a metal disc, which moved me across the track. It caught me off balance, but I managed to stay on. A similar mechanism got me down the hill on the other side. I made my way over a metal ramp, which passed over a large dozer-type machine, embedded in a bunch of dirt. I climbed down onto it, gold and rod still in my hands, thinking I'd find gold down there, but I didn't. I had a hard time climbing back out, since the dirt would have sucked me in. Construction people started coming back from their breaks, but noone said anything to me.

2003-11-25T02:48:00.006-08:00

Voice of Honey
2-24-2000

I went to a beach in a faraway land. It was a small beach, enclosed by a very small outcropping of rock. Pam was sitting underneath an umbrella. It was a very pleasant, warm day. There was oil leaking from a hole in the ground right by her, marking her territory. I sat down at the edge and made some conversation. She said she was planning on settling here for a long time.

I came back, years later, and she was still there. The oil had spread to cover a larger area, so I had to sit farther away to talk to her. I knew she wasn't making any money by staying here, so I told he she could come crash at my place...when I got one...should she ever need to.

So I followed Rin up north into the woods, where there was a subdivision of very large cabins...mansions actually...larger and more lavish than any homes I've ever lived in. They were all made of logs, though, and still maintained an authentic, natural, almost rustic feel, even though all the doors opened automatically and the televisions were always on. It was nighttime.

We toured several units. Noone was home at any of them, being only vacation homes. All the doors were glass, unlocked, and slid open when we approached. Apparently everything was free reign up here. Somewhere along the way, Rin turned into Xena, and my perspective shifted between hers and mine often.

We entered one home that was darker than the rest. Xena had a hunch that it held some sort of secret. Indeed, the staircase to the second floor just continued into the ceiling of the first floor. From Xena's perspective, I noticed a piece of paper wedged into a crack in the banister. I pushed on the wood and it gave way. Nothing happened. The camera angle rotated all around the banister as I examined it, taking arduously long, and I remember thinking how this TV series better have a good reason for drawing it out so long and wasting precious airtime. Finally the letters 'LTP' were revealed on the opposite site of the banister. I somehow knew that this meant I had to press on the other side. I did, but it didn't give until I performed some type of rubic's cube operation on it, after which some mechanism clicked into place and it fell into my hand.

The ceiling above opened up, revealing the 2nd story. On the immediate right was a bedroom. The door was open a crack, with light coming through it, and I could hear a voice behind it. Across from it was another bedroom, open and dark. Beyond these rooms was darkness. I was about to examine the lit room when a tall bald man dressed in a tuxedo came from the dark one, startling us. I somehow recognized him from 'before', however, and wondered how he got here and where he got the suit. "I was glad you made it," he said, and motioned us downstairs. He seemed to take no notice of the muffled voices coming from the lit room.

At the kitchen table, he went on, "I wanted to make it challenging, but not impossible, to make it upstairs. Any comments? I'm so glad you didn't give up. This is the sort of attraction I want." I guess we had a couple comments that satisfied him.

We followed him back upstairs, where he seemed to notice the lit room and cracked doorway for the first time. He opened the door, but only the top half of the door opened. I wondered if its purpose was to keep some small animal from jumping out of the room. I peered inside. It was a large, empty room with wooden floors. A humanoid creature moved very quickly and smoothly toward the doorway. It was only wearing a pear of blue jeans, and instead of a body, it was just a flesh-covered spinal cord with bony arms. It didn't even have a head. I immediately felt a sense of sinisterness. As I moved past, myself behind me (I'm at Xena's perspective, remember), toward the darker side of the 2nd floor, the bald man asked it a question I didn't quite catch. With an entrancing, honey-like voice, the creature said something like, "I don't know," or "Let me show you," as it casually pruned the bald man's upper half with one bony hand, leaving only his spinal cord above the waist. I dashed by, hoping to escape to the downstairs level, when I noticed the creature now had an inhuman skull. I found a rock in my hand and bashed at the skull, but didn't even make a scratch. It grabbed me and I changed perspectives to myself, letting Xena fend for herself. Xena escaped its grasp and ran with me out of the cabin.

Outside, the creature caught up with us, jumping Xena, who tried to smash its head with a plastic soda bottle. I joined in the fray with a plastic bottle of my own, neither of us doing any good. Somehow I ended up several meters away, and I saw Xena climbing up a green, slimy tree. At first, the creature couldn't follow, so I started climing a tree, too. Xena went out on a limb and the creature somehow managed to pull her down, grappling her once more. I jumped down, grabbed a rock, and threw it, hitting the thing in the back. The tree was covered in moss. Xena grabbed for some to get a hold, but it broke. Dozens of tarantulas came out, engulfing the base of the tree, including Xena and the creature. The ground rose up, and vines slithered up from the ground, entangling them both. The creature shouted, "That's not fair, I can't fight spiders! Don't leave me! You'll never rescue Xena in time!" and so on, his voice losing its sweet, hypnotic quality in its anguish. Rats started climbing around, too, and I jumped into the mound to pull Xena out of the entanglement before it all became swallowed up into the ground. She was covered in fur for some reason, but I managed to lift her out and bound down the slope. The creature was still complaining as the vines, spiders, rats, and garbage dragged him into the earth. Xena kicked a log that was somehow anchoring the entire mass to the surface, and it got sucked up into the earth, gone forever.

We got into a car and rode home to the city. We pulled into the garage, which was underground. The stairs that led up out of the garage to the foyer, I noticed, were just like the stairs in that house we explored. I also thought about how the bad guy in horror movies is never really dead. It was very dark, and I fooled myself into thinking there was someone else in the garage, but when I checked it out with a flashlight, there was nothing. We opened the "ceiling" at the top of the steps to get to the foyer upstairs. Underneath the door to the foyer, however, I noticed a very small door built into the actual steps, and I got another sense that something sinister was afoot. I commented, "Why put a medium-sized knob on such a small door?" That question seemed to say it all. I made sure it was locked, and someone else opened the door upstairs for us. We closed the "floor" back over the steps, granting access to yet another door that led to yet another garage. I guessed that was locked, too.

There were several people living there, all congregated in the main foyer area for some reason. It was dark inside, too, with phantom light coming in from street lamps through various windows. Suddenly there was a loud knock at the back porch door. Two really loud raps would echo on the left side of the door, followed immediately by two really loud raps on the right side...but shining a flashlight out through the vertical window in the middle of the door, we couldn't see anyone. I knew that the creature had somehow survived and followed us.

I heard some kid crying and screaming. I turned my head to the left and saw a little Indian kid staring at something beyond my vision (behind a counter or a wall). I yelled something to alert the others, and instead of helping him, some girl closed and locked the kitchen door in panic. Panic-stricken myself, I fumbled with the door, opened it, and thankfully saw the kid still standing there, frozen. I grabbed him and pulled him out of the kitchen. When I did so, I got a good look at what he was crying at. His shadow on the wall wasn't standing still like he was. It was animated, being eaten alive by the shadow of some lizard creature.

As I held the kid, comforting him, and as the rapping at the back door persisted, the same girl reclosed and locked the kitchen door. That was when I saw the same lizard shadow projecting on the door, and it dawned on me that it was coming from BEHIND me. How could I have forgotten about the front door?!? I jerked around to the right to face the front door, which was thankfully also locked, and through the window I saw the lizard-like creature, banging its head against the window, its crazy, blood-thirsty eyes focused intently on me. Very slowly, for I was literally scared stiff, I lifted my right arm to point at the door, and barely managed, after several hyperactive breaths, to say, "H...hey...g...guys...ov...over..er...here..." to warn my friends. With each bash, its face morphed into a better likeness of Pierette...except with much more angular, decimated features, eyes glossed over and zombie-like.

2003-11-25T02:48:00.005-08:00

Slime Pool
6-02-2000

I enter some underground art exhibit with Kusanim David and a bunch of other. he tells me to lock the door, but someone could still squeeze through the rock. The exhibit is made of trash. Bananas, garbage cans, etc. In the middle is a pool of oily much. People wade into it. Someone is bathing in it.

Some guy gets out of the "pool". He's completely black and shiny. Only his eyes are visible. Someone else in the pool screams as a blackish-green piece of slime latches onto him and pulls him down. He steps up to his full height, revealing a big patch of slime covering his body. He peels it off, in bigtime pain, and it leaves bleeding patches on his back and side. People wade into the pool to examine the now harmless piece of slime up close.

Some girl is tired and leans against me. I don't recognize her, but she seems familiar, as if I knew her when she was younger.

I have a huge party as my house, a big cabin in the woods. Tons of people are there. It's on a hill, overlooking a grassy slope and a creek. Two girls are talking animatedly at a table. I walk around with a black bra over my eyes, like sunglasses, but I have to peel them away to observe details sometimes.

Something about a caro r truck, riding it barefoot someplace. Lab people. Leave. I take another toute back to the cabin. They never show.

People standing at the creek, not daring to jump over it. Waiting for boat or something. I run down the slope and jump it. People go "ahh" in revelation. Derek does the same, better than me, but only gets my attention for doing so.

2003-11-25T02:48:00.004-08:00

Into the Night
circa August, 2000

A bunch of people and myself use a big truck with a ramp to get onto the roof of someone's house by my old subdivision. Lights go on, but we don't run. Cops come, and I decide to run away from them. I run across the street, over the ditch, through the fields, and into the night.

2003-11-25T02:48:00.003-08:00

Everlaster
9-13-2000

I go to a theatre performance. There's a man there who's trying to woo his ex-wife, who is there with another man. I hear the song "Silent Night" and look into a performance room. Real snow comes down from the rafters, which look like a real sky. I comment to my girlfriend about what a fine job they did.

Later, I'm crawling on the frozen ground, using only my hands. Another man is somewhere near me. Every inch is utterly freezing, and my body is very numb. My name...is Everlaster.

2003-11-25T02:48:00.002-08:00

Disinterestedly Watching
9-14-2000

Driving my car down to Ann Arbor, I found myself almost out of gas at a light. Next thing I knew, I was on my motorcycle. It was damn hot out. I made a left turn and made my way to the AXE house, thinking it was pretty amazing how I still had my cycle even after I sold it a few days before. I yelled up to my old room at the house, and some girl appeared. I didn't know her, but she recognized me and threw me a key. There was a wall between the parking lot and the front yard, and a strange double door with some steps built into the side of the house. My dad came along from someplace. Then I noticed we were both in our underwear. I was very thirsty, so I found a sink and drank a long drought of water from the tap. No matter how much I drank, it didn't satisfy me. We went outside, still in our underwear. My dad ran down the sidewalk and around another house. I tried to follow. Some people were on the porch, disinterestedly watching us go by.

2003-11-25T02:48:00.001-08:00

Seat in Front
9-15-2000

I was swimming in the ocean when a shark surfaced by me. I made it to shore, but many sharks had spawned legs and followed me, devouring other people on the beach as they came. I climbed a wall, meaning to hurl stones down at them, but they retaliated with rocket launchers. They blew up a car before I made my escape.

The beach empty, I returned with reinforcements. We had military gear and were coming in on a plane. We were supposed to crash on a particular sand dune, but my dad, the pilot, missed and we hit closer to the water. The sharks, which now even had premature wings, came out at us with their launchers. I ran back to our wreckage to get my sniper rifle, but it wasn't there. I yelled at my dad for not packing it, then climbed up onto the roof of a building, watching the sharks blow things up and wreak turmoil while I stood there.

I went out with a bunch of people to a movie. It was supposed to be "Scary Movie", but I've never seen it. As we stood there looking for seats, the movie started. Walls closed down around the theatre for effect, and it started out with people pounding against the screen, trying to escape their own movie theatre, which was being destroyed or something. Some girl started coming on to me. I told her I wasn't interested, and that I was taken besides. She said that didn't matter. I told her it mattered to me, and she sat down. Then my girlfriend found me. She pressed up against me and licked my face. We found a seat in front.

2003-11-25T02:48:00.000-08:00

Never Flown Public
9-16-2000

It was a bright sunny day, perfect for riding my motorcycle across the land. I didn't even need a road. I just went along with other scarce travelers over grassy fields and low hills. No civilization in sight. I came upon another motorcyclist, and we stopped before a very steep, muddy hill. It had recently rained, and we both dumped our bikes as we tried to climb it. I looked at him and said, "Oh well, such things are bound to happen." We pondered the ability of our cycles to climb it without slipping and falling again. His cycle was more like a little dirt bike. "We'll never make it," he said. I was thinking I could help push his cycle up, and then he could help push mine, but instead he suggested, "We'll have to dismantle them," which was possible for his little bike, but not mine. I figured there had to be another way around.

I entered some sort of daycare center. It was nap time, and noone was supposed to be walking around. The daycare ladies were mean, but only doing their job. Everyone in their care had color-coded pajamas on to indicate age, division, and so on. I particularly remember pastel green and purple. My clothes were white, however, and did not fall into any particular group, so I knew the nurses would spot me. I avoided them for a while, seeing other people around who were trying to excape their tyranny. At one point I hid underneath a big purple sheet that was forming a tent around a chair. When the nurse walked by, she said, "Now now, you know you're not supposed to sleep under large sheets like this," and tried to take it off me, but I grabbed onto it. She discovered me, though, and I fled.

We couldn't get rid of the nurses because they were such nice people underneath. Nonetheless, we had to in order to escape. To justify our plight, somehow they merged into a large disgusting violent creature, which we somehow destroyed. One woman commented, "They turned them into a monster just so they could kill them. They never did anything wrong." I agreed, but it was too late now.

We were getting ready to leave, but there was unrest. Apparently there were some unsolved issues among the inmates. One woman said to a man, "You want to know where your parents vanished off to?" He nodded. "I'll show you." We went inside some complex. It felt ancient and eerie, as if it were a world within a world and it hadn't been explored or bothered in a long time. We stopped in a green yard outside of a building with a semi-circular entrance. There was a sign that read "Toy Room." Everyone (there were a lot of people) smiled and nodded, as if it made sense that all the missing people should be in the Toy Room, playing with toys. I unnoticably recoiled, commenting to noone in particular, "Don't these people see? They aren't playing with toys...they ARE the toys!" That same noone in particular, a disembodied female voice, replied, "Yes, but they don't know that." The entrance stared spinning like a carousel. Some people stepped up to it, and wind picked up due to a vacuum mounting up inside the building. Everyone was excited and waiting with anticipation. I walked backwards away from it, watching a couple people who were too close get sucked inside. I turned and walked across the yard, against the wind, which thankfully wasn't too strong yet. There was an overturned wooden box, and beyond that some iron posts, like a big snake-like ladder stuck sideways in the ground, lots of wood stacked up around it. I grabbed a post, then decided I might not be able to hold on strongly enough, so I got on the other side and pushed my body orthogonal to the bars, watching the scene through them. Everyone was instantly sucked away into the vortex. The wood all around me flew through the air toward the building, some of it crashing into the wooden box out there. Then it was over.

I knew it was safe when the wind stopped and a small puppy came walking over. Behind it, three baby foxes were chasing and stalking it. I grabbed a nice thick stick and clubbed one of the foxes after it got its mouth around the puppy, leaving a flat smear on the grass. Then I saw a bigger wolf, the father, who was merely watching for now. I came out of my spot and followed the puppy and foxes, who worked their way around a garden. I eventually clubbed the other two. The father fox somehow saw that having a puppy was more worthwhile and took to raising it as its own.

I grabbed my luggage and went through a turnstyle, then up an escalator into an airplane. I was stopped while they inspected my luggage or took care of my ticket or something. Some computer geek guy I supposedly knew came up after me, complaining, "I've never flown public before." The line was stalled. The person in front of me was taking forever. Another associate of ours arrived and started complaining that this was the result of work that didn't get done at his company, Network Instances (or something). He went on and on about computer integration, and the attendant by me rolled her eyes.

I imagined building an army of hard-shelled insects, using them to do battle with my associate's own breed. He attacked me before I was ready, and I sent them out in different formations to retaliate.

2003-11-25T02:47:00.003-08:00

Restore the Land
2-06-2000

I was traveling through some woods when I came upon a creek. A middle-aged man and woman were tending to a garden there. They told me the story behind it. The land here was once bare, literally worked to death. There were many bones all over the place, the last remnants of all the people who used to toil over the land. Here by the creek was a building, an old church. Sitting on a stone bed inside the church, propped up against a dripping, slimy wall so that he could drink, was the same man. He was hardly a man, though. He was literally a skeleton with a few brown fibers holding him together. He didn't even have eyes. It was a miracle he was still alive. One day a very old woman stumbled inside and gave him a bone. It was all she could find. He took it and she left. He started gnawing on it with the intention of sharpening it enough to stab himself through the throat with it. But when it broke at the end, he tasted something. Bone marrow. He licked it, ate what little there was, and it gave him strength.

Later, when he was strong enough, he searched the banks of the creek for bones, eating the marrow. It was his only nutrition. Other people survived this way, too, and they all started working together again, for all they could, to restore the land.

Then one day a man named David came. He was young and healthy. They asked if he would stay and help them, so he did. With his help, the land became fruitful again. Everyone became healthy again, and more people were drawn to the newly prosperous land.

I looked around and saw crops everywhere. The ground was so dense, particularly with peaches (yes, I know peaches grow on trees). I stayed on with them for many years. David died, and others came and went as well, but the three of us lived a very long time.

I left to visit my friend Cary, who was a manager at McDonald's. The line was very long, so it took me a while to see him. Eventually I was let inside, through the back, where I visited with another friend. The phone rang, and I answered it. It was my old friend Rachael, crying about how she'd lost her man and everyone else in her life. I said, "So now you've decided to come running back to me, huh?" I knew full well that if that were true, I'd have to turn her down anyway, since I'd already found someone. She came to the McD's and met Cary. I overheard her say she never felt anything for me, then Cary announced that he was going to leave and show Rachael around the city. I was furious, because I didn't know my way around the McD's kitchen to serve the customers, and I didn't want anyone I knew to see me working there. So the other guy and I just shut down the windows after Cary left and watched TV.

When Cary returned, without Rachael, he didn't find it odd that we weren't open. He watched some TV with us. He finally noticed, and upon opening the windows, a very long line was revealed, even though the franchise right next door was open. I left them to their work.

I went to my old church gym to play a game involving an oversized, elastic softball. One had to throw it hard enough to make it to the basketball backboard and bounce back. I was wearing gloves that made it hard to throw, though, so I always came up short. Barbeque was served, too, and it got everywhere. Since we were all suddenly wearing all white, that was a problem. I ended up spilling something on a girl's dress. She got very upset, and her boyfriend carried her out of the gym. I made a snide remark about how she'd always acted that way.

I went back to the creek, which was still flourishing. I saw people there I hadn't seen in a long time (fake dream people), or hadn't expected to be there, but I guess I'd been gone a while and things had changed. There was so much fruit that it was falling into the creek and being carried downstream. I saw a deposit of large green fruit that was floating in from upstream, and the middle-aged woman explained that two fruits had combined during their transit here and formed a new one. I found that amazing, but maintained my doubts.

It was night. There was a man in a sled, holding some reigns meant for dogs, but instead they were attached to a vacant motorcycle. He skillfully navigated himself through the snow this way into a snow-sports competition. His kind was rare, as most people had skis or other vehicles, and every time someone like him made the last death-defying jump into the inner ranks of the complex, they cheered wildly. I watched a large truck try one of the jumps into the parking lot, but it couldn't get enough speed and collided into a wall in a ball of flame. The driver was flung out, burnt to a crisp. I figured it was a plastic dummy, especially when someone tossed it away.

Disembodied somehow, I made my way to the top of a slope and watched someone snowboard down a course. At first they went through the slolem poles, but then they started screwing around, passing people who didn't know what they were doing, and at the end, got a 7.1 score, which was still one of the better scores. I thought about how the people at the X Games were so much better. One smiling man in red made it to the bottom. He got the highest score, and when the announcer announced his name, he repeated it, saying, "That's right." Some women flocked over to him and I hated him immediately. At the ski lift, he made some comment, and I deduced that he was bisexual, and I made this observation known.

On the chair lift, I decided I wanted to put jet boosters on the back of my skis, and instead of skiiing downhill, I wanted to ski cross-country, controlling these boosters by wiggling my toes or something.

There was a cave at the bottom of the slope, and guarding it was some large giant humanoid monster. We didn't exactly know what it was, but we threw a boulder down at it anyway.

2003-11-25T02:47:00.002-08:00

Desert Railroad
2-17-2000

Underground railroad. Paul. Fighting. Desert cult. Lots of desert stairs.