01/01/2017

Warm, dreamy, comfortable atmosphere. Being princess carried through a dense crowd along a beach at night by a tall, handsome man with shoulder-length brown hair and soft eyes. The crowd is made up of of black, faceless humanoids, chattering and whispering among themselves incomprehensibly. They offer us all sorts of glowing trinkets in a rainbow of colors, standing out against the darkness of night. It feels like acceptance.

02/01/2017

A man in tattered, moth-eaten clothes stands before a jury of his peers. In his hands he holds the object of the case: a document he was accused of stealing. The judge presiding orders him to read it before the court. Complying, the man struggles to read its contents aloud, each word leaving his lips causing him unimaginable physical agony. His voice staggers and his breath heaves and by the time the incantation is complete, he’s a writhing mass on the ground, howling and begging for absolution.

Elsewhere, a stranger speaks to the man’s two young sons at the edge of a murky graveyard. The stranger instructs them to venture out to obtain a highly valuable white powder that would be processed to create a material like fine marble. Being of a poorer family, the sons ask the stranger why they’re being trusted with such a task. The stranger offers only that it is necessary to absolve their guilty father. The sons accept this explanation and leave.

Once out of sight, the stranger’s disguise falls away. He is revealed to be an angel, perhaps seven feet tall and skinny, body covered in earth-colored bony plates and a thin layer of dust. His monstrous face is obscured by an elaborate stone mask. A voluminous golden veil cascades down his back. Producing a half-finished object of some sort from somewhere in his robe, he drops it on the ground before his feet and explains its purpose to me: a holy weapon that would be capable of ending the man’s life once the forbidden knowledge had taken hold of his body.

No longer simply a passive observer to events, I ask him if such a course is necessary. He laments that in this situation, it is indeed the only option, and the weight of his sadness is palpable. Though a part of him understands my desire to seek alternatives, he seems somewhat hurt by my question, interpreting it as doubt and asking if I trust him.

I tell him that I trust him completely and I know he’s protected me at various junctures in my life, circling my arms around his narrow waist. I soon feel a long-fingered hand rest against back, gently drawing me closer to complete the embrace. For the first time in my life I have no fear of the inevitability of death and all I feel is the complete, genuine love that this creature holds for me and the gratitude I have in return.

02/01/2017

A hit Spring anime, “Duck or Cake?” releases. Each episode runs for 3 minutes (1 minute of which is an opening theme) and contains various shots of objects along with a narrator indicating whether the articles are a duck, a cake, or something else entirely. At the end of the series finale, a duck cake is shown.

04/01/2017

A handsome black-haired man with sculpted features lays on a beach where the sand meets the sea, unclothed. The tides slowly pull in and out with a hypnotic rhythm, the surf rising just a little bit higher each time. His features are fixed in a state of pure bliss as the water gradually consumes him, eroding away his body. Eventually, there is nothing of him left. There is a melody playing from somewhere in the distance.

07/01/2017

In a typical highschool classroom, a boy settles himself beside his friends, clustered around somebody’s desk. They chatter excitedly about their plans for the upcoming summer break.

We later see that he appears to reside in the center display of a large greenhouse. It’s a geodesic dome, the planted sections overgrown with a combination of mixed plant species and weeds, wild and unchecked after years of abandonment. His “quarters” at the center consist of a small circular grass clearing with an old tree, dozens of smaller plants in individual planters and access to a tap.

There is a hole dug out of the soil to create a sort of basin. He fills it with water and slips off his lumpy canvas shoes, bulging at strange points and alluding to something inhuman beneath. It appears that his feet have the characteristics of roots. He stands in the newly formed puddle-ankle deep, and drinks deeply from it.

He smiles and looks around at the potted plants, starting to recount his day to them. Were they his family, or at least others of his kind?

15/01/2017

In a bright neon future, an organization known as “The Tomorrowers” exists, primarily comprised of adults between the ages of 25 and 35. The Tomorrowers are short-term time travelers, slipping into a phased reality taking place exactly 24 hours forward at 6AM every morning, returning to their present time at midnight for five allocated hours of sleep. It is their job to keep the progression of certain events on track and to warn the “ordinary reality” of any foreseen calamities.

A young female agent awakens at 5AM as all agents do. Their quarters are in a darkened high-rise towering over a bustling city. The sky is still pitch with no evidence of sunrise any time soon, the red-and-orange city lights glowing against the darkness. A sleepy-looking man in a dark grey robe allows himself into her room, walks over to her kitchenette and starts making himself a coffee.

27/01/2017

(A series of open-eye hallucinations (accidentally) experienced under the effect of a heavy dose of doxylamine succinate:)

- Being transported into an alternate dimension (different planet?) where the inhabitants appear to speak a language similar to English, but not quite. The location on arrival is a huge supermarket type place with bright, blaring lights. The outside is dark and desolate. The inside is semi-busy. I wrack my brain trying to read a magazine: it’s possible to comprehend the language if one stared and thought hard enough, “bct mxxt ov tha txt z wrte smitng lke thib”. After a while, a cashier notices me thumbing through dozens of tabloid magazines, trying to get a handle on the language and where I was. When she speaks, her speech is garbled just like the text. I stare at her dumbfounded. She seems to parse that I can’t understand her at all once I try to answer her back, so she pulls apart the magazine and starts pointing to celebrities, and after a while I realize she’s saying something like “Do you know who this is?”.

- Suddenly developing the belief that in order to catch my flight out to the US, I had to fill my car with explosives and fireworks. For some reason.

- At one point, legitimately believed I was cuddling with my favorite character, who was slumped heavy on top of me, using my body as a mattress. It was uncomfortable but I’m not going to complain. When I came to my senses I found that I had walked to my home gym and I was laying on a pilates machine.

- Looking around my room in the semi-dark and seeing the “menacing” text from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure overlaid on certain objects, like my book shelf.

02/02/2017

For once, I’m myself and not another character or an omniscient observer to events. I sit with my mother in a secluded location.

She’s dressed in a navy coat with a striped shirt underneath, a common ensemble for going out, and a matching navy cap, often worn to conceal extensive hair loss after years of intense drug therapy. She tells me seriously that her “time” is coming in the near future and I have to be prepared to deal with it and she wants to see me settled so she can pass away in peace. The conversation is frank, but it’s also uncomfortably verging on a guilt trip.

I tell her that everything will be fine and I’ll steel myself and carry on, as I always have. She’s unhappy with my response and admonishes me, telling me that she believes I probably won’t care when she dies (and in fact, that I may be happy about it), citing my stoic demeanor when Theodore died. “You didn’t even cry,” she says.

It feels fruitless to explain that my lack of tears doesn’t indicate an absence of love, so I just settle for telling her that she’s wrong, that I spent my entire Christmas season just wishing he’d come back and that I still miss him now.

I leave the scene. The dreamscape outside is reminiscent of a university campus with lots of gardens, open spaces and the occasional building. For some reason I’m very aware of how dusty the pathways are, kicking pebbles as I walk along idly, anticipating nothing else interesting was likely to happen and waiting for the dream to end. I felt somewhat emotionally drained after wrestling with that strange part of my subconscious.

I soon catch sight of a familiar figure standing by a detached building near a field, suggesting it may have been a sports center of some sort. It’s the same entity that’s been recurring in my dreams for approximately the past two years. This time he’s wearing a white suit with purple accents and he seems happy to see me after all this time, as it’s been at least a month since we last met.

I wrap my arms around him and squeeze, telling him that I missed him and it’s good to see him again. He reciprocates and informs me that he’s essentially just here to hang out with me until my dream ends.

We talk easily among ourselves, walking in a kind of side-hug formation down the street and taking in the nice weather and atmosphere. The solidity and warmth of his body pressed to my side is a welcome comfort after the tense encounter earlier. We eventually happen upon a street with cafes and boutiques, and stop to inspect the wares at a cafe.

The glass cabinet is filled with small cakes and gourmet handmade chocolates, most of them pretty expensive. My friend empties his coin purse into my hand, giving me everything of what little he had and telling me I could buy whatever I wanted for myself. The coins are silver coins of various sizes with a square-shaped hole in the center, similar to yen coins. I look at the coins, then to the prices listed in the cabinet, and then to him. “It’s dream currency,” he explains simply, as though it were the most obvious thing ever.

I only have enough DC for some of the cheaper confections. Somewhere in my mind I decide, “fuck it, this is my dream, I want one of those handmade chocolates, I’m just going to grab it”. I press my knuckles against the glass and start to concentrate on phasing my hand through the solid surface, because it’s a dream and I know I can do that. But the cashier notices what I’m doing and scolds me.

In the end, I have a small cup full of “chocolate drops”. The taste and texture are identical to Mini M&Ms. I feel the dream about to unravel, I thank everyone for their company and soon I’m gone.

19/02/2017

I convincingly fake my own death in order to start a completely new life elsewhere, taking up a new identity. In this new life I’m essentially homeless and live with a few other homeless people (regarded as “travelers” or “campers”) in the wilderness outside of the fringes of town, in a sort of tent city situation. It’s an easy and carefree life but there are few creature comforts and no real access to electricity or technology. My solitary regret is leaving behind my husband.

I briefly return to my old life to get a glimpse at how the people I left behind are doing, and check my abandoned social media accounts when I finally manage to use a phone again. There are a great number of people who indicate that they’re happy I’m gone and that things are better this way.

24/02/2017

The setting is a green, lush forest with distinctly European foliage in the midst of spring, early in the morning and tinged with mist. I see a place far off in the distance that I can’t get to. No matter which way I walk, I end up hitting towering chainlink fences. There’s a sense that the boundaries of where I can and can’t traverse are clearly defined, and that defying that natural order of things would have consequences.

As I weave my fingers through the chain links and gaze out across the way, a stranger passing by stops to ask what I’m doing. I tell him that I want to go to the place far beyond the limit, and that where I come from, there aren’t so many walls and you can mostly go where you please. He disagrees with the notion, advising that far beyond the limits “isn’t a place you want to go”.

Heedless of his warning, I summon my physical strength and jump the fence once he’s out of sight. Time passes irregularly, but I walk for what feels like six hours by the time I happen upon a lake that seems far too crystal clear and untainted to possibly be real. A man who looks to be in his 50's or 60's with greying hair but a capable-looking body sits on the bank with a fishing rod in hand. I call out to him and he invites me to sit with him.

He introduces himself as Gustav and claims to be the owner of this parcel of land and everything on it. He explains that it’s the remnants of an inn and several lodges that were condemned and abandoned. There are about 12 other people who live in this small community, almost completely sequestered away from the rest of the world except for the occasional journey out to buy and trade supplies.

He indicates surprise that I managed to find this place, and that I had the conviction to cross the barrier at all. Seeming serious for a moment, he asks me how I arrived here and why I came. I’m frank with him and explain that I simply followed an almost magnetic draw, and that more than anything I want to leave my life behind and begin again.

I stay in this place for a long, long time. I can’t determine the passage of time because it’s always weird in a dream state. I live in a single bedroom single bathroom lodge, gradually meet the other inhabitants (though the only other one I remember in any detail is Gustav’s vastly younger wife, Auburn), swim, learn to fish, garden and use crab traps properly and generally enjoy an uneventful life.

Every so often another curious wanderer happens across the little closed-off community. Unlike me, they never choose to stay. Gustav and Auburn host a farewell dinner for each one at their lodge and invite everyone, but it always seems like they’ve already left and they never show up.

It takes me a while to realize that the reason the wanderers never show up is because Gustav and Auburn trap, kill and serve their meat at the “farewell dinners”, and that I hadn’t been eating pork this whole time. The discovery makes this life feel far less idyllic and more like a hostage situation, as I realize I can never leave and I’ve just found myself trapped all over again. I begin to notice a look of fear in some of the other inhabitants eyes and I realize a lot of them know, too. The realization that Gustav only allowed me to live because he was pleased with my answer the first time we met dawns on me. I’m powerless to do anything.