A villainess-type character with a long violet
ponytail is confronting a hero, a blonde-haired woman clad in paladin
armor. The villainess enjoys a long, gloating monologue but as she speaks
the paladin seems more concerned than intimidated. The exchange between
them reveals a story before this point: the villainess was the right-hand
to an unspeakably evil, callous man. At some point she suffered extensive
magically-induced memory loss, losing most of her memories and even
aspects of her personality in the process.
The paladin tells the villainess straightforwardly that she is being used
and that her loss of memory offers an escape from her own past sins.
"Forgetting is freeing. If you don't remember, you
can make yourself whole and new."
It's early night in Keltokel, an hour where the city
springs to life. Kasumi does her best to enjoy the company and atmosphere
as she and Fryderyk walk the lamplight-bathed cobblestone streets,
stopping to look at street performers and storefronts, searching for a
place they can both agree to eat at - it seems they'd hastily planned to
meet in this district for a date without deciding on further details.
After a significant time of searching and deliberating, discarding option
after option, the two find themselves at a modest apkallu-style noodle
shop quite a distance away from where they originally started. They make
their way inside and settle themselves on the restaurant's rustic plain
wooden benches, the furnishings creaking somewhat beneath Fryderyk's
weight.
It is at this point that Kasumi notices a particular person she'd caught
sight of on the street at several points earlier - probably a human man,
but his face was partially obscured. He had slipped inside after them and
seated himself strategically at an empty table that seemed to offer a
vantage point to the two without being too apparent.
This does not escape Kasumi's notice and she realizes they are being
surveilled by someone. She tries to enjoy the dinner nevertheless. Partway
through the meal, she leans over to Fryderyk in order to sample some of
his food and takes the opportunity of closeness to warn him: "Hey,
whatever you do DON'T look around, but I need to tell you there's
definitely someone watching us right now." The rest of the dinner passes
without incident as Kasumi continues nattering to keep the scene intact,
but there is some mild tension apparent.
When they finish she's already paid and offered no space for him to
contribute or intervene. They leave the establishment. Once they're out
the door and step off the stoop back onto the street, Kasumi hangs off
Fryderyk's arm and walks close, once again for the purpose of whispering
to him inconspicuously. Unfortunately, it's difficult to look behind in
this configuration, but when she is able to she glimpses him again and her
suspicions are confirmed.
She half-explains, half-gripes to her ozrut date: "Damn, I really can't
have nice things or catch a break, can I? Just so you know, that guy's def
following us. We need to think up a clever way to lose him... Maybe we can
duck into a convenient alley and I can turn us both invisible?" as well as
giving instructions such as "If I pull you in a direction, follow me."
The pretense of the date is far from them at the moment as they walk and
Kasumi is surreptitiously looking around for something, any kind of
opportunity to present itself for them to lose him. She catches sight of a
few alleyways that might be appropriate for an escape but the ones they
pass have no throughway and she's searching for one that has more than one
exit.
They stray far, far north to the district of the House of Beauty. The area
has a distinct feeling as a nightlife district with semi-open-air hookah
lounges and houses of gambling. The area is defined by vast expanses of
smooth white stone, often a contrast to the activities going on within.
Kasumi and Fryderyk stop to dawdle at the foot of a wide set of stairs
leading up to a nondescript double door. A human woman descends and she's
smartly dressed, donning a white pressed shirt tucked into fitted pants
with a blazer and black silk tie. Her reddish hair is drawn back in a high
ponytail. She seems to be the doorperson for this establishment.
"Whoa, you two actually showed up!" She tells them. "You spoke to my
coworker yesterday. I've been keeping an eye out for you. Was starting to
think you weren't coming... wouldn't be the first time." She briefly
consults something in a small leather pocketbook, pulled out of her
blazer.
Almost on instinct, Kasumi immediately switches into full actress mode,
"Ha! Yeah! We're here, for the thing!"
She considers the ozrut beside her, who she'd recklessly thrown into the
situation, seeking his backup. "Yeah... the thing." He reiterates tensely.
The doorwoman leads the two up the stairs and is talking the whole way.
Kasumi tries to ask non-obvious leading questions to figure out what the
hell they're talking into. At one point she asks the open question "is
anyone else coming" and the doorwoman's response is that while they do
take walk-ins, they've been fully booked for this night. This date was a
particularly popular, perhaps auspicious time for whatever goes on here.
The doorwoman indicates that they're not going to be letting anyone
'without a reservation' through and Kasumi sees this as an
opportunity to lose their pursuer. Fryderyk has gone from looking
mildly concerned to miserable, almost ill. Kasumi is worried he's blowing
their cover but the doorwoman notices his discomfort and offers him a pat
on the bicep and a reassurance of "It's fine, it's normal to be nervous!"
Walking into the interior proper, it's quite spacious on the inside and
abundantly, warmly lit with numerous candles and lanterns, light bouncing
off the white walls. On the way in Kasumi noticed numerous doors and open
passageways - some probably did not belong to this structure but connected
adjacent venues.
They arrive at a chamber with a ceiling that's extremely high for what the
structure looked like from the outside. The place is lightly furnished
with dark wood pieces that pop out against the fill white stone of
everything else, painted over with some impossibly glossy lacquer. It
looks like it's made to hold a small audience of people with a few benches
and other fixtures but the only other person here is a bored-looking iaret
donning elaborate green-and-gold robes.
The doorwoman cheerfully urges us his way and says she'll duck out to "get
the paperwork ready" and she'll "be back soon". Kasumi laughs nervously
and agrees, Fryderyk looks like he wants to die.
The bored-looking iaret heaves a sigh and seems frustrated by something as
the pair mills near him. "What are you doing?" He barks. "Come over here
so we can get this done with. Didn't she tell you we're all booked out for
tonight?"
"Ha! Yeah! Sorry, you know how it is." Kasumi replies, pulling a
lightly-resisting, shock-frozen Fryderyk by the arm.
They must not be standing properly as they wait expectantly side-by-side
because the iaret, at the edge of his patience, reaches out to grab them,
turning them to face one another and making their hands join in the
middle. The pieces finally fall into place when he starts talking and it's
made clear that he's some sort of celebrant and this place is a
speed-wedding venue where one can legally marry in fifteen minutes.
There's an immediate sense of relief that this isn't some sacrificial cult
that's instantly replaced with a sense of 'is this really happening right
now'. The two go through saying their vows with a sense of unreality over
the scene. Soon enough, the doorwoman returns with a stack of forms to
complete and they move to a different part of the room with a low desk and
writing implements. They complete it and the doorwoman charges ten gold
pieces "for processing", which Kasumi tearfully parts with.
Kasumi then asks both if there's a back door or some other way they can
leave the building. The iaret rolls his eyes as if to say 'of course one
of you is having some kind of affair here' and indicates that there are
two entrances to this place and they're both "front" entrances, they can
leave out the other side of they wish.
The newlyweds exit through this other door onto the other side. There's no
clear, obvious way for their stalker to reach them on this side and this
lengthy maneuver has thwarted him. As they make a hasty retreat they pass
a couple heading the way they came - a rumiany ozrut man with a female
apkallu resembling a snakehead. At this point they realize what must have
happened was the doorwoman was told to watch for an "ozrut and apkallu"
couple. In the end, it didn't seem to matter that Kasumi and Fryderyk's
names must have been different from the ones on the original reservation -
nobody brought it up.
They glance at one another in a way that seems to say 'wow, what are the
odds?' and it's the thing that breaks the tension. Kasumi expresses relief
that they lost their pursuer, even if she's ten gold short. They continue
to talk as they make their way back and before they part, Kasumi parts
with a "see you around, husband" and elbows him lightly in the side as he
pales.
22/01/2022
A vague, short dream where I was myself and a university academic
pursuing some very strange topics in relation to human sexuality. A couple
agreed to meet with me for my research and we met at a fancy historical
library to conduct the interview. They were fraternal twin sisters that
were romantically and sexually involved with one another. Their answers
would be referenced in a paper I was writing which was basically a series
of interviews with people who were in "non-conventional" relationships,
mostly accounts of incest but also one woman who was in love with a
building.
Random other details I remember: one of them was some sort of
leatherworker and made handbags and wallets. The sisters were mixed-race
and one was significantly whiter than the other, but they definitely
resembled one another.
29/01/2022
In the conceit of this dream,
"Wordle" is a mobile game that's part word puzzle, part absurdly
expansive, unrealistically detailed text RPG. The game as I played it in
the dream functioned as such:
If you were a free player/non-subscriber, once per day you could attempt a
pretty tricky word game. The better you performed at this stage, the more
'energy' units you'd accrue that would be used in the text RPG portion
that followed. Units of energy were used to progress the story - virtually
any action taken consumes 1 unit, so the better one performs in the word
game section, the more the player can advance the story of the RPG
section.
The game had multiple choices of action for every scene it presented. The
use of inventory items could be attempted in any scene and the game had
unique outputs for each and every possible scene/item combination. There
were also "universal actions" in a menu that could be attempted at any
time, things like "ask 'why'" and "stand there and do nothing".
The plot of the game's story was that the player had been dropped into a
situation where they've become the infallible demigod leader of a
dwindling mixed-race tribe of people holding out in a cave together after
various hardships (attempted genocides, famine, escaping war etc) and the
point was to take this rag-tag group from survive to thrive, building a
community, then a village, then city and it was rumored you could go as
far as founding a nation.
The player could customize the character that acted as their
second-in-command, setting their name, sex and race. Race determined some
of their stats and since the character was always a barbarian-style class,
there were basically no-brainer "best" options and other gimped options. I
created mine as a male oni.
For whatever reason I was playing a run where I decided to be actively
hostile to all improvement, intentionally choosing the absolute worst,
most stupid decisions possible. The game reached a point where my group
was being attacked by trolls and managed to defeat most of them, whittling
their numbers down to 2. In my inventory I had an interesting magical item
that, for a single turn, would make whoever consumed it into a huge
devilman-like creature and target any other creature to eat them, after
which they'd revert back to normal. It's a rare and overpowered item
because as long as the other creature fits in your unit's mouth after it's
transformed, it's an assured instant kill.
I select this item and use it on my oni man. The second prompt appears,
asking me to select a target to eat. I scroll past the two remaining
options on the battlefield, all of the other friendly units in the area,
past every other option until I see his own name down the list and I
select that.
Instead of giving me a "you can't do that!" error message, the game's
story breaks. The two trolls still alive stop attacking and stand there
while all of our people/friendly units gather around and try to process
how on earth he was supposed to carry out the order to eat himself,
because the player character is an infallible demigod and their units
literally cannot question or go against the player's will. If they run up
against an impossibility, they're compelled to figure out
some way
to make good on it.
A female orc eventually comes up with a solution: she's going to lop off
his non-dominant arm, let him transform and then feed it to him in
accordance with my instruction. At this point the other NPCs argue whether
that's a good enough compromise and one of them suggests they should eat
him for failing to raise any cows (this was my decision as beef was too
intensive for our at the time limited land and resources).
06/02/2022
An extremely short fragment of a dream where Kasumi and Fryderyk are
preparing to take a swim in Keltokel's harbor. As the oni man undresses,
Kasumi considers his bulky, muscular body and suddenly wonders whether he
floats or sinks in the water like a rock. For some reason, he doesn't want
to answer this question.
11/02/2022
An artifact known as the "orc gem" is discovered by a team of
scientists. The "orc gem" isn't a gem as much as it is a semi-firm,
earthen ball about the size of a fist, from which a powder could be
extracted and synthesized into a medicine that, when taken, would turn a
person into some form of orc or goblin. Thus, it was a finite resource and
could only turn a certain number of people.
A person undergoing the transformation had no way of knowing what they
would look like or what they would become - "orc" and "goblin" are the
same creature on the opposite ends of a spectrum, with orcs gaining in
height and muscle mass and goblins tending to have shrunk but wide frames.
A person's underlying biology determined what they became.
The benefits of the transformation included greatly enhanced physical
strength, incredible health/vitality and the ability to eat almost
anything. An orc possessed a strong stomach able to consume raw foods
outside the range of tolerance for normal humans, as well as the ability
to tolerate food that was slightly rotten or toxic (e.g. fly agaric
mushrooms). Unfortunately, the transformation also carried with it the
very real possibility of permanent memory loss and also inevitably made
one's appetite and libido high, which needed to be planned for.
Many of my friends and I were invited to volunteer for the orc gem study,
led by a team of scientists and not widely publicized, taken as a
small-scale operation here in South Australia. I initially assumed my
husband would be interested, but he deigned to remain human and expressed
no desire to transform and expose himself to the possibility of
memory/personality loss. My best friend and boyfriend were fully
interested, and so I made the decision to go with them. We were
sequestered away from the rest of society on an island of our own.
My boyfriend's transformation was rapid, as if it was destined for him,
and he was turned within a week. Already a huge man of 6'4", he swelled in
size and became a handsome, fine orc, retaining his gingery beard.
Unfortunately he also suffered a degree of memory loss - he knew who I was
and recognized me as a friend, but seemed not to know that we were
ever romantic and could not feel love toward me in that way any longer. He
seemed sad that he'd forgotten me in that way and still cared for me, the
same as he did before we were in a relationship, but ultimately in the
course of the dream he would take a fellow female orc as his wife. He also
became one of our leaders.
My best friend's transformation was incredibly slow, taking such a long
time that the scientists wondered if she had some tolerance to the orc
gem. For a while this caused stress and grief as she was forced to remain,
still human and still in a lot of pain (the health and promise of escape
from chronic pain was her reasoning for joining the program) living among
people who were changing around her. Eventually, she did change into the
same type of creature that I became, something I colloquially called
"orc-lite" - neither grew in size or shrank, remaining the same size and
build but taking on more orcish features.
At first I was disappointed that I didn't shrink down and become a goblin,
becoming round and lusciously filled-out, but one day I considered myself
in the mirror and realized I was a very pretty orc - pleasing,
blemish-free pale skin, black hair and pouty black lips with petite tusks.
A significant portion of the story involved me trying - and failing - to
enact plans to make my boyfriend fall in love with me again, despite the
fact that he had a wife, and getting into petty squabbles with pugnacious
goblins.
19/02/2022
A wide cave contains a mound leading to a deeper, sprawling
network of caverns. By some mechanism the smooth cavern walls glow with
warm yellow light, like standing inside a giant salt lamp. I walk with a
curly-haired man wearing an enormous pack who is acting as my 'guide'.
When we reach the bottom, he produces a deck of tarot cards and asks me to
name a card before drawing one from the stack. My guess was just one of
the first major arcana that came to mind, something like 'the lovers' or
'the chariot', but what I actually pull is the nine of swords in the
upright position. The significance of this is never explained and when I
look up from the card, I find we've been neatly teleported back to the
beginning of the caverns.
20/02/2022
I obtain a Death Note-like device that could "rewrite stories" -
the actual effect of this was that it could be used on real people to
write details into their life that weren't there before or remove them.
Even minor changes triggered extensive ripple effects that couldn't be
predicted if applied to events that happened in the past. I used it to
edit someone's life and when I spoke to someone who was supposed to be
that person's friend, they had no idea who I was talking about, no memory
of them whatsoever, because somehow that tiny nudge rearranged their life
and the universe around it to the point that those two never met at all.
I descend a monumental, tiered skyscraper with cut-out areas placed
seemingly at random where one could look down at the lower tiers (or peer
up and see the one above). The floors are all connected by monumental
pillars reminiscent of spines, comprised of colorful vertebrae.
21/02/2022
Swimming in the ocean at twilight, taking on a piscine form and
moving freely and powerfully through the water. An attractive girl swims
up to me with interest and courts my attention. I thought she was like me
so as she swims past, I reach out to brush her leg but find skin, not
scales. It's difficult to understand how she's managing to swim so well
without fins.
She invites me to go with her, so I do. Getting out of the water, her
boyfriend is there and seems annoyed at me. He's similarly an object of
contempt for me almost immediately, a bland, conventionally attractive
young man who is emotionally checked out of his own relationship and the
type of person who entertains no complex thoughts.
We walk to the nearby town which seems like a place that should exist in
the real world. It's nightfall now and the streetlights are lit and
illuminating the scene with heavy yellow light. The woman's boyfriend is
dismissive of me, telling her things like "why don't we ditch the ugly
one, why'd you even bring her along anyway" in intentional earshot, but
this just seems to annoy her and she storms off with me instead.
We enter a store that I think was called "Aggie's" or something similar.
Surprisingly large, it's a gift shop run by some independent artist
collective with their designs on various goods - greeting cards, pins,
tote bags etc. It also contains larger pieces like one-of-a kind handmade
articles of clothing. Here, I start to tell her my thoughts: I can't
dictate how she lives, but even my momentary contact with her partner
convinces me that she would be better off without him and could do much
better. She doesn't attempt to defend him but I can also tell she has no
intention of leaving him, even as she probably realizes he's a poor person
and poor partner.
We forget about it and enjoy ourselves, looking around and showing each
other items. At one point a man nearby is looking at some of the handmade
clothes and remarks "oh, now this is my brand" and I can't help but
complain to her about how obnoxious it is when people refer to modes of
self expression as "brands", commodifying themselves and gaining identity
through consumption.
01/03/2022 - 31/03/2022
Empty, dreamless sleep each night of this month. Implicate a
highly busy, novel schedule and limited sleep.
02/04/2022
A tense and frightening dream where I didn't feel myself. Standing in a
strange, semi-lit simulacrum of my childhood bedroom, I push some
furniture around, trying to perfect the layout without much luck. In the
midst of my frustration, an unfamiliar dream entity allows himself in and
sits down on my bed, asking me what I'm trying to achieve. Instead of
answering I punch him in the jaw with as much force as my body and arm
allow, sending him reeling. His form is unstable and he changes his face a
few times before he asks me why I struck out at him. "Because none of this
is real and I can," I say before storming out in frustration.
Outside, another unfamiliar male dream entity is waiting. As I sit beside
him on the grass he asks if I want to 'see something I've never seen
before'. I tell him to show me and he crawls over, advancing to slowly
push me under him. As the weight of our bodies shift together, the earth
under my back isn't stable - it's like a fractured glass pane creaking and
straining, groaning and struggling to hold us until it gives way,
shattering. I fall through the ground into an open, empty sky.
04/04/2022
Writing this several weeks later, my notes on this dream are so scattered
(and in general my dream recall has been terrible lately), the only thing
I clearly remember is the dream ended when the first dream entity from
02/04 came running at me out of nowhere and clocked me in the face. The
pain woke me. I assume this was revenge for earlier.
08/04/2022
A dream centering on a beautiful, ruined old church with
interesting Gothic architecture. This historical building stands somewhere
in the countryside about a 1.5 drive from where I live. Notable for its
dark grey stone, elaborate carvings and almost entirely blue-and-purple
stained glass, which created a colorful cool filter on the interior when
the sun shone through during the day. Because it was only lightly guarded
and free to enter, somehow this mysterious church in the middle of nowhere
became an organic social scene and meeting spot.
I kept returning to this place because there was a clear community of
other oddballs doing the same thing, turning up to freely socialize with
strangers. One night I arrived there was an organized event - instead of
the usual crowd of weird fringe 25~35 year old musicians, artists and
other weirdos, it was full of older people dressed in fine clothes
drinking wine by moonlight. Nobody removes me (or even pays me much
attention at all) but I realize I don't belong, so I turn tail and leave.
Dilapidated wooden shacks of unknown purpose litter the largely unused
pastoral land around the church. In one such shack, I notice a person I've
met several times on this scene before - a young graffiti artist.
He's
carving something into the wood with a knife and we debate on whether
these shacks should be granted the same protection as the church itself.
17/04/2022
Eating the single most flawless, ambrosial crispy skin salmon
steak by a fire at a lakeside during dusk. Flesh cooked to perfection,
flavorful and juicy with salty, crumbly skin on the side of the fillet. It
was covered in a delightfully umami peanut/satay sauce, which must have
been added at the last moment just before serving to avoid spoiling the
crispiness of the skin with moisture. The meal was as real as real could
be, every sensation perfectly simulated. Woke with abundant drool on
pillow.
05/05/2022
Dreamed about a strange instrument/musical installation - one
part powered by a waterwheel mechanism with a reed that passed over a set
of strings like a hurdy-gurdy, the other part was a series of free-hanging
pipes that produced tones when caught in the wind.
08/05/2022
This dream had a strange quality - while I was very much
physically present, I was not directly addressed in any way, merely
watching events unfold.
I was attending a picnic with a group of people I did not recognize. The
location was a semi-grassy, semi-rocky spot at the foot of some cliffs. A
man falls off the precipice from above and hits the ground near us like a
sack of potatoes. His body makes a sickening 'pop' as it connects with the
earth. Everyone seems to know what this is a precursor to, and rather than
reeling about a man just dying suddenly and traumatically before their
very eyes, some begin to stand and wait wait for something to happen.
Barely a minute later a devil appears and is looking over the situation,
flipping through some paperwork on a clipboard held in his claws. He seems
troubled by something - as it turns out, the dead man's initial creation
was faulty. All humans have something of a 'character sheet' with
allocated stats and predestined events written upon it. This man's sheet
had not been correctly filled and there were several fields left blank,
which may have been why his life was so dismal that he killed himself.
Thus, the devil was obligated to offer an opportunity for a fix and
do-over, but only if the dead man's soul could win any gamble of his
choosing. It seemed to me that doing a coinflip was probably the easiest
option, but since it could be any game with an element of chance, he could
pick something that favored him if he'd give it enough thought.
Meanwhile the devil's cloaked assistant arrives on scene. He looks like an
ordinary human man with long inky black hair and a groomed beard, but
completely alabaster white skin hints at his inhuman nature. He apparates
a game to play in the meantime as the deceased man is still deciding and
calls it "Black Water".
Black Water consists of a series of transparent cylinders of water and a
collection of dyes that are numbered 1 through to 10. The idea is that he
picks a color (and tells it to one third-party adjudicator), then selects
three random people out of the crowd to give him a number from 1 - 10,
then he adds the corresponding dye. If any of the three guesses are
correct, he loses. I wake up before this diversion ends.
24/05/2022
Even more dreams about my characters and my D&D game.
Beginning in medias res somewhere in Ameryswald, the group has learned of
a sleeping, unstable power, different in nature to the one encountered in
the Stone, described as a splinter or thorn that demanded extraction
because it was beginning to rot.
It was Kasumi and the party, Bogumir and his daughter Bogumila. The
extraction was delicate and fumbled at every stage, violent magical energy
vomiting out from the earth and seeking somewhere to go like electricity
being yanked to the most conductive thing in the vicinity. It had two
immediate effects: one was that it awoke one completely random power in
every magically adept person present. The other was that it seemed to be
seeking out the person with the most "potential" (i.e. room to grow), so
it thrust itself straight into Bogumila, to incredibly detrimental effect.
It was an enormous and unstable power and she was unconsciously wrecking
everything with her lightning, like it'd quadrupled in size and output,
and even began attacking her allies (likely unintentionally) while trying
to cope with it. Under heat and pressed to make some quick decisions, the
party wonders how to stop this rampage without seriously hurting her,
because if they don't take decisive action soon it could kill her or them.
Kasumi was desperate enough to try anything and went ahead to use the
spell she'd just spontaneously obtained, only understanding that it was a
transformation of some kind. It turned out that it was a genderswap spell
and by aiming it Bogumila, she'd turned her into a man. It shocked her so
much it abruptly ended the rampage and expelled the energy, setting it
loose onto the world from its sleeping place.
Devastated, Bogumila begins to cry while her father stands aside
speechless, obviously relieved that the carnage was minimized but
similarly shocked by the price. Kasumi tries to comfort the crying oni,
pleading with her (him?) and saying that she (he?) can be turned back to
normal in three days time, and to bear with it for now. Just as Bogumila's
crying subsides, Kasumi jokingly refers to her as "Little Bogumir",
causing her to start crying again.
29/05/2022
Dreamed of seven doors with seven different paths/rewards beyond
them. Each had a specific challenge to overcome. My partner was
confronting one guarded by a robotic Virgin Mary statue who would sing a
quad in perfect iambic pentameter, and her challenger was required to
improvise a phrase to sing back to her. He breezes past the first three
verses like some kind of rap God, but is rejected on the fourth as the
metallic guardian refuses to recognize the word "gyre" (in a rhyming
couplet with "pyre").
07/06/2022
Blissful, I walk along a beach on a balmy night under the wing of
a handsome man. He has long black hair and a pretty face, with clear, big
round gentle eyes like a cow. His body burns next to mine and the
sensation of closeness is intoxicating, maddening. I'm so tuned into him
it takes me a while to notice that the beach is the exact same place that
appeared in the 21/02 dream.
09/06/2022
Dreamed I was experiencing a horrible overnight stay in a hotel. For some
reason the wall constructed between me and the neighboring room was shoddy
and incomplete with large gaps on both sides, allowing an abundance of
light to leak in from next door. Then despite having all of their lights
on at 4AM, they banged on the wall and got mad at me because my phone got
stuck on some virus jumpscare thing and was blaring a jokey song at full
volume and I couldn't get it to stop.
I forced it off and had to uninstall a bunch of apps, one of which was a
messenger replacement called "Society" and another involved handsome
goblin husbandos and it was very hesitant to allow itself to be
uninstalled and guilt tripped you.
The bedsheets were the usual nightmare hotel sheets, a rough linen sheet
with a horrible blanket on top, two layers constantly sliding apart, never
warm enough and always scratchy. At some point I was visited by someone
for reasons I don't remember. At another, a child was having a screaming
meltdown in the hallway outside my room as their mother was trying to
usher them outside, possibly since they were ambulance-siren loud.
14/06/2022
Somehow, I accidentally sent a somewhat sensitive item to an
incorrect postal address, so I went chasing after it.
The house I arrived at was unassuming on the outside but surprisingly
stylish on the inside, lavishly fitted in meticulously handpicked pieces
and artwork with a palette of white, dark blue and navy with only the
barest accents of gold. The construction of the house itself was
medium-dark wood all the way through, floors and walls and ceilings, like
the interior of a log cabin.
A man who looks extremely similar to my lover allows me inside and makes
coffee for us. I'm convinced he's a relative I've never heard about. Once
he starts speaking it's as if he's performing to an audience, a clear and
projected voice with flair. In conversation he is lively and quick-witted.
I develop the impression that he's a sort of lesser-known celebrity, maybe
an author I haven't heard of. He hands me my package unopened, as he
realized quickly it wasn't intended for him.
After talking for a while I make my move to leave. At the front door both
of us chance each other for an overly-familiar kiss on the cheek and
accidentally meet in the middle for a moment. He laughs it off and
apologizes. I say it's fine and I'd like to keep in touch.
15/06/2022
Dreamed I had a pet corn snake named Lor. That's it.
20/06/2022
I burn with a contempt for existing, and that contempt overflows
its bounds and scorches those around me, who I could not care for. Cities
and paths and buildings unfamiliar yet real surround me, places that I
know never really existed at all but felt so real in the moment I could
discern every small detail of their construction. They are mostly older
facades of decorative stone work, semi-pillars with coats of arms, framing
laurels, old carvings indicating what they must been in a different time
long ago.
I am aware the space I am in is not real and that I am beyond its rules.
The dream-people I encounter this time aren't faceless random generations,
most I recognize as people I have met in my life that I have some
grievance against. Some are potent, but some are worryingly petty. I would
mercilessly kill each and every one of them, sometimes in semi-public
spaces. When others tried to edge in closer for a look or escape, I would
kill them too and feel absolutely nothing about it.
By contrast there was a stray cat running past at one point, and various
birds and pigeons around. I have love in my heart for them and didn't want
to see them harmed. I did not feel the same way about the humans.
For all my bloodthirstiness, I also felt the sins accumulating on my
shoulders. Not an emotional guilt stemming from me, just a sense that my
humanity was slipping more and more, like my actions were corroding me,
even as I lacked any remorse for my snuffed-out victims.
There is an impossibly tall ladder on an impossibly tall building and I
knew it lead to "heaven" (oblivion) and so I start climbing with all the
desperation in the world. I have no idea how long it will take and
anticipate my energy will run out before I reach the top, but I had to. So
I start crawling skyward. Those are the words that repeat in my mind as I
make the climb: "crawling skyward".
Further up, I am hit with the terrifying sense that oblivion would not be
granted to me, that maybe I could reach the end but then I'd hit a wall
and not be permitted to pass through. On one of the upper floors, perhaps
the seventh or eighth, a woman in a retail space calls to me from an open
window and seems annoyed to see me. She asks what I am doing. I tell her I
am "crawling skyward, trying to achieve oblivion". She tuts and tells me
to come through the window to her and she will show me the way.
I oblige her and once inside, she leads me to a different corner of the
store where she begins to pitch various sale items at me. I do not know
know what this means and wake up at this point.
26/06/2022
Another D&D dream with my characters and others.
The party arrives in a strange place, a geodesic dome that once wholly or
partially enclosed a garden. It was no longer kept and looked in disarray
in every way possible. Some hardier plants that must have been planted by
their original owner grew out in all sorts of weird, irregular ways due to
the lack of pruning. Every bed of soil was overrun with different weeds -
some quite pretty, but the impression is that these used to host more
delicate plants and when something happened to their owner they withered
and got crowded out. There might have been some panels on parts of the
dome once, perhaps cloth covers or even very fine sheets of bone or horn,
but there was nothing there anymore, just a skeleton. There was also a
completely scummed-up water feature/pond.
The party was told that "The Beauty Eater" lived here and was a being who
had some unsettling omniscience, it could grant anything you wanted to see
(past, present or future) but only once, and only in exchange for a gift.
Nobody they spoke to before finding the place could provide anything more
about it, like what kind of gift it would require or what it was, so when
they arrived they were looking for some kind of person.
After extensive poking around they discover "The Beauty Eater" is an
overlarge frog capable of communicating telepathically living in the
aforementioned pond. It was definitely a frog rather than a toad, with
bright wet sticky skin instead of tough warty hide, but it was huge and
hefty and Govannon needed to hold it with both hands. It reiterated what
they were told, that it could show them any one thing requested of it (for
each person, presumably) in exchange for a gift - show it something
beautiful.
The party thinks this
is a marvelously easy request and
begins to confer among themselves, immediately suggesting that they
display Countess' decorative porcelain chassis. As Kasumi, Lamina,
Fishbones and Countess stand around theorizing, Govannon peels back a few
layers of his shroud and armor, revealing a gleaming hidden article. It's
an extremely delicate, thin bolt of silk like a vest or a wide scarf. The
base layer is a maroon red and it's covered in mind-bogglingly extensive
embroidery, twisting celtic knots interlocking in a huge matrix sewn in
all primary colors. On top of that, there are small figures, creatures and
people, and swirling tylwyth script sewn with glimmering gold thread. It
must have taken its creator years to complete and one could spend hours
getting lost in its details.
The Beauty Eater is immediately interested and the origin of its name is
made immediately apparent as the frog's long, sticky tongue whips out of
its mouth like a dart and attaches to the scarf. It seems to drain all of
the color and detail from the heirloom, all of the pictures and meanings,
leaving behind a dull grey piece of fabric.
Govannon wants to see his home, and this is something the Beauty Eater can
provide. The tylwyth receives a wash of stunningly clear images of things
and places long forgotten, now suddenly sharp and in focus. Childhood
memories bubble to the surface and it's like the smudgy filter that used
to smother them has been lifted. It's impossible to know if those glimpses
and returned memories persisted far beyond this incident - there's every
possibility they grew dark and degraded into obscurity once more with the
passage of time. The dream did not provide an answer.
29/06/2022
I think I only have D&D dreams now. When I woke I
wrote this in intentionally vague terms and will keep it that way even
though any stranger reading this wouldn't grasp the import anyway. I was
embarrassed by the strong emotional reaction it provoked (I write these
dreams in third person when I retell them usually, but I'm usually fully
embodying and experiencing the perspective of Kasumi/my character).
There was a plan, and we knew there would be danger involved but we had
time, manpower and planning on our side. The upper hand seemed to belong
to us. I understood what I was supposed to do: turn invisible, go ahead to
scout, then bring back a detailed report. Otherwise, I was tasked to stand
as far back as possible and only provide light support from afar.
Things were going according to design until they fell apart with not one,
but two unforeseen events: one was the presence of a group we had no
reason to believe would be way out here but they were, probably for some
purpose connected to the second unforeseen event, which was the awakening
of some malevolent entity that awoke when blood was spilled on its
consecrated ground.
It was a chaotic and bitter struggle to hold everything together but we
did, somehow, by the skin of our teeth. But two were grievously injured
and I could only save one. I had to make a split second battlefield
decision on who would live and who would die.
Even though I knew the other man's fate, I run over to him with that sort
of bone-breaking, full-tilt sprint one is only capable of in moments of
dire danger and nothing else. I did everything I could, poured everything
I had into him and kept calling his name over and over as if repeating it
could tether him to the mortal coil somehow. But there's nothing left in
me and I knew it already.
He tells me he knew what I did and that I made the right choice, and that
I should not cry for him. I could feel his warm blood running rivulets on
my scales in the cold winter air as I tried to hold him up, and then the
dead, heavy slump of his body as life left it. I buckle under the weight
and fall to the earth with his broken head in my arms. I'm too torn to do
anything but clutch him and cry myself sick.
10/07/2022
Complete confirmation I only have D&D dreams now. This was a long one
(nebulously spanning 1~2 weeks of time) with a lot of plot-relevant
information, I wrote it in only the broadest strokes and omitted most
detail.
On the heels of fact-finding mission (breaking into a place under the
cloak of invisibility to steal a large pile of documents and bound
handwritten books), Kasumi discovers something chilling: the mercenary
company had thorough, detailed contingencies written for a number of
deviations to the plan set in motion by their leader. One such contingency
imagined the possibility of Kasumi stealing Hozysh's dice, and in the
event this happened, they were instructed to locate and kill him as soon
as possible.
Feeling responsible for saddling him with this fate, Kasumi tears the
relevant pages out from the journals and provides them to Hozysh with a
hasty explanation. It's immediately clear to both of them that they have
no choice but to leave the city as soon as possible.
What follows is a dream full of drifting through increasingly empty,
desolated locations, never lingering in one place too long and always with
the persistent sense of danger - being discovered - hanging overhead.
At one point, the pair are almost captured as the hunting mercenaries are
able to pinpoint their exact location, even behind a false/illusory wall
that should not have been detectable. They only manage to escape with the
assistance of a pilfered teleportation scroll in Kasumi's possession. A
new sense of dread overcomes Kasumi as this incident makes her keenly
aware that they must be using scrying techniques to find them, and that
unless they could obtain an artifact to nullify such tracking, they would
be resigned to be on the move forever, only able to run and never hide.
Hozysh is far from the city he called home and Kasumi's dreams of being in
the spotlight are all but shattered as she's madly consumed with the
desire to continue protecting him. With nobody to turn to but each other,
their relationship takes on a new form, a burning romance fueled by
co-dependency and despair. In another life, it could have been healthy and
whole. But in the current grim circumstances, they seek comfort in one
another and tangle their bodies together in the dark until the sun rises
and they must pick up and move on again.
One day Hozysh leaves their temporary abode - it's been a while since
they'd been discovered and Kasumi figures he can venture a short walk away
without her continual supervision. She waits and waits for him, but he
never returns. A worrying amount of time has passed and Kasumi fears the
worst, venturing out the direction he left to seek him out, mentally
chastising herself for letting her guard down and failing him. The dream
ends without resolution.
23/07/2022
A dream-within-a-dream with the first layer consisting
of me as I am now wrapped up comfortably on a couch in my childhood home,
drifting in and out of sleep. I was thinly aware that my husband was
nearby and watching something on the big rear-projection TV we used to
have.
In the second layer of the dream, I enter a place through a window -
expansive green suburbs with a playground and a concrete canal flowing
with clean water. Manicured grass, new pathways and tidy pebbled gardens
with aloes and other succulents dominate the landscape. It looks like one
of those
full 3D visualizers for a new property development.
There are a few kids playing on the playground, but we don't acknowledge
each other. Instead, I am approached by an elderly woman who can't be any
taller than about 4'5". She tells me that I can see and experience
whatever I wish, and I am also free to leave at any time. I immediately
know what I want to see and tell her my request. She looks at me
incredulously. This makes me slightly defensive and I feel like I have to
justify myself to her: I know it's lowbrow, I know it's unimaginative, but
this fleeting place of limitless potential is the one and only time I can
experience such a thing.
The old woman is like "whatever" and tells me to dunk myself in the nearby
canal, but warns it might be uncomfortable. I throw myself in as
instructed and it is indeed uncomfortable - there's a moment of severe
vertigo as I struggle to swim downward and my sense of right-side-up
inverts as I break through the bottom and fall through the roof into a
room, having a hard landing.
This room also has a window with a canal running right under it, the same
as the one I just fell through. There's a boombox on the windowsill
playing a song that sounds like a weird mashup of some electroswing thing
and something from UNDERTALE's OST. It's a banger. There are a few other
people milling around and inspecting the only other notable feature of
this unfurnished room - big cork pinboards on the walls, colorful and
adorned in what look like stickers, postcards, bookmarks and so on. On
closer inspection, I realize they are little pieces of promotional merch
for various webcomics. I take a few for a closer look but don't really do
anything with them and put them back.
The old woman is still lingering in the corner, so I ask her what she
expects me to do here. She tells me, "This isn't a fucking puzzle. This
entire world just exists to be explored and contemplated."
My response is bizarre: "That's cool, but my time here is closing fast
because I'm not dead yet. Can you just let me see what I want to see?"
She radiates contempt and judgement, but tells me that I know what to do
and gestures at the canal outside. So I slide over the window's edge and
drop headfirst into the water once more. Again, my perspective is flipped
and suddenly I'm being pulled upright out of the body of water by someone
way, way bigger and stronger than me. The sight of a handsome oni greets
me and I only get to glimpse him for a few seconds before we kiss
fiercely. One of my arms is slung around his impossibly beefy shoulders to
stabilize myself, the other sneaks up to fondle one of his horns. In about
ten seconds I wake back up into the first layer of the dream, then a few
seconds later I wake up for real.
03/08/2022
Don't recall dream in detail. Packs of people were attempting to leave a
small shopping complex, banking at each exit and trying to get through,
only to find every exit blocked by heavily armed men preventing them from
leaving. Much further back, I sensed something was terribly wrong and I
needed to find a place to slip out. There was no sense in trying to argue
and push past the men with guns and body armor.
I developed the belief that a certain fire exit I knew of would be
unguarded, as most people would be trying to leave via the conventional
exits. While en route I was trying to call/text out to various contacts on
my phone, but nothing was getting through. My hands were developing
weeping, bleeding sores that were completely painless but psychologically
damaging to behold.
My guess about the fire exit turned out to be correct
but it wasn't long before I found someone on that face of the building. He
wasn't as armed as the others, but he told me I needed to go back inside
and I could go of my own volition or he would force me: either way, it
would happen. I felt like a trapped animal, lashing out. I had a short
knife with me in my sleeve and in my desperation, I lunged and stabbed him
in the eye. The shock of doing such horrific violence woke me with a
start.
12/08/2022
I walk up to a window display with a mannequin only to soon
realize the figure on the other side is an actual person. When I ask what
he's doing, he explains he was hired to be the actual store mannequin. I
asked him what he got paid - eighteen dollars an hour. When I asked him
why he'd do this as a job above just about anything else, his sincere
response was "I'm British".
In another part of the dream I managed to deal a strange folding Dolce and
Gabbana watch from someone.
20/08/2022
In the backseat of my parents car at nighttime, enjoying the
ride. In my waking life I'm almost always the one driving so it's a rare
treat (and relief) to be driven somewhere by someone else. My mother was
in the driver's seat and making me tense at times by taking her eyes off
the road for far longer than what felt comfortable. Both of my parents
consult a sheet for a moment and I admonish them, telling them they have
to pay more attention to the road.
At this moment I realize it's far, far, far too dark outside. There's no
fog but I can barely see outside beyond the car's headlights. I recall
there was a blackout earlier in the day and presume something had happened
to knock out the streetlights. A moonless night and thick, overcast sky
offers no light from above.
Realizing we're lost, we pull up on the roadside, take out my father's
phone and set directions on Google maps. We'd been driving a while, so I
decided to step out for a second to stretch. I wander a little away from
the car using the phone's flashlight and car headlights to see by and
notice there are other people around. Many people. Closing in on us with
intention. Then I realize they have no faces.
I shout a warning to my father that we've been cornered by 'dream-fiends'.
One advances on me until I'm backed against the car. It tries to lunge for
me, but I laugh at it. I think I literally said something to the effect of
"I think not. Later, motherfucker".
I let down my hood (it was a cold, wintry night and I was wrapped in a
hoodie) and started to force myself awake by sheer will. It felt like
bashing my skull through a window, rattling force through my head and
spidery cracks dominating my field of vision. I roused to consciousness,
my brain feeling torn between the waking world and dreamstate, dizzy with
rapid, blinking colors behind my eyes.
11/09/2022
Woke up with the absolute belief that what I had dreamed about
was a childhood cartoon I'd long forgotten about and spent half an hour
frantically Googling to confirm its existence.
As my dream presented it to me, it was a regional (i.e. produced and aired
in Australia only) cartoon that aired in the late 90s. It had an angular
style with thick outlines. The protagonist was a beanpole skinny tomboy
girl with a slightly bent posture, dressed in a plain white tee shirt and
baggy jeans. She had long red hair with blunt bangs that were usually
drawn covering her eyes, so normally only her nose and mouth are visible.
The show was about her daily life as this sort of unfeminine,
unconventional artsy girl. The supporting cast was made up of her all-male
friend group and older sister, who was portrayed with lavender hair and a
black hair bow. The series was titled "Forrest Whimsy" after the
protagonist herself.
Forrest Whimsy does not actually exist. But maybe it should.
17/09/2022
My lover tranquilized me without my consent, but I didn't really
mind it. When was with him I felt a painful pinch on my neck combined with
a slow, creeping sedation and realized he injected me with something. I
started to go slack in his arms, bodylocked but conscious of what was
going on. He told me I "seemed anxious lately" and said he wanted to help
me relax and "take care of me".
True to his word, he didn't really do anything except have me lay on him
while he pet my hair, face, neck. It felt like a warm, heavy blanket being
draped on me.
09/10/2022
It's the ninth of October as I backfill this journal with some
more notable dreams I've had. I've been dreaming a lot more again lately,
but too many of these dreams are too brief, disconnected, frightening or
inappropriate to catalogue. This is the wrong approach - I know that in
order to keep my dream recall high I should be writing down
everything,
even boring, mundane, nonsensical and shocking ones, but I'm just not
motivated to record anything that won't end up here.
As a case in point, I will write what I dreamed about last night here.
I dreamed that my husband was dead but his mother was still alive and
somehow outlived him. It was an inversion of reality: she was surviving
healthily late into life, his was cut short by cancer. There were two
conjoined master bedrooms, one that represented public-facing life and the
other representing his internal life. The former was what you'd expect, a
lived-in, serviceable bedroom. The latter was in horrific disarray,
carpeted with so much trash the floor was no longer visible. The air was
acrid with the stench of rotting food and decomposing rats. The white
linens of the bed were a disgusting yellow and marred with what looked
like browned bloodstains. Letters I'd written him and mementos of our
relationship had been shoved into a hole. I'm not sure what that means -
it wasn't in a bin or container, just a hole that'd been smashed into the
floor. They were dissolving in a soup of blackened water.
His mother caught me mourning over this (the memories of our relationship
stuffed in a hole and left to rot) and seemed unbothered, telling me I was
worrying about nothing. I felt an urge to clean, but didn't know what it
would achieve now that he was gone.
11/10/2022
Had a really short dream about my D&D character, Kasumi,
maybe about twenty years in the future with almost adult children. It was
a clutch of three and they were Kuroihire Kuro (male, matte black scales,
blue eyes), Kuroihire Shiro (female, all white scales, brown-gold eyes)
and Kuroihire Niji (female, boggle-eyed, tricolor/calico scales - white
and orange with many black speckles). The dream seemed to revolve around
longtime acquaintances of Kasumi's reuniting with her for the first time
in a while and being curious about who the father was, but tiptoeing
around the issue, finding it too awkward to ask outright. Besides being an
awesome premise I'd honestly love to make canon, it was also funny for the
following reasons:
> Kuro's name follows the K-name convention for the family, and his
name translates to "Black Blackfin".
> Shiro was notably taller than the other two, and easily stood almost
a head taller than any member of Kasumi's genetic family. Also "White
Blackfin" is almost as funny a name as the above.
> Crossbreeding (across race/species lines) is not possible in her
setting, implying she must have had a fellow apkallu mate at some point.
She does not currently have any kind of apkallu love interest (and in
fact, seems to have a specific interest in taking mates from other races),
so it's anyone's guess who must've knocked her up.
19/10/2022
One of the most lucid and vivid experiences of the year, lifelike
and simulated as can possibly be. I had the awareness that I was in a
different place and would slip away if I didn't keep my focus trained on
the dream at all times. "Focus" is an intentional word: the sensation was
like manually twisting the lens of a SLR camera to focus and defocus
objects, except I was doing it with my soul.
I find myself inside a cave of rough, rich black stone (granite? volcanic
rock?) and smoothed-out white walls. It was one part of a much larger cave
system people were living in, lit throughout with white LEDs and furnished
with minimalist, modern black-and-white pieces. This particular room I
occupied had children hanging around and they were dressed to suit the
surroundings, donning simple undecorated solid white or black smocks and
cork sandals.
For some reason I had the sense I was embodying something or someone else,
so I ask them "Who am I?" and they look at me as if surprised by
something, but otherwise make no move to turn away from me. They were
hesitant to answer the question and mutter among each other for a moment
before the one best at speaking tells me that I was "who I usually was". I
asked them if there was somewhere I could see myself, and they indicated
one of the chambers up ahead had a vanity, so I headed that way.
The layout is organic despite the cold modern interior. Rather than being
perfectly level, sometimes the walkways slope upward or descend into the
next chamber. They branch out in ways that feel like the inside of an
anthill. The room they mentioned wasn't far and was right next to an
entrance, with natural light pouring in from a large opening to my left as
I passed by it.
The next chamber ahead felt something like a 'reception' room, some sort
of front-facing common room, a room that was supposed to be the first one
people would see as they entered. I find the vanity easily and creep in
for a closer look. The mirror is smaller than I anticipated and awkwardly
positioned, so I have to lean in for a view of myself.
It's my own reflection but horrifically fucked up. My pupils are dilated
all the way, almost all black with only the faintest rim of iris still
visible. The whites of my eyes are both jaundiced and bloodshot, bulging
with red veins. My cheeks are covered in scabbing, weeping sores that are
basically holes bored into my face.
The feeling I experience is a wash of dread and horror, a stoic swallow,
and finally an 'OK'. Shocking as it was, it wasn't real, so there was no
cause for alarm. What breaks me from my spell of very purposefully looking
at the most grotesque version of myself imaginable is the 'thump' of
someone next to me hopping up to sit on the vanity.
When I look up to see who it is, it's me, but completely normal looking. I
stare at her for a while, trying to process the only thing weirder than
viewing your own botched reflection: seeing yourself in full 3D and
viewing angles of yourself that would never ordinarily be possible for you
to see. This other me tells me that I should probably be wearing something
to cover my face, and I tell her I will, but I need to know why I look
like this first.
Her answer is "because
she's unhappy with you". I tell her
she's going to have to be more specific about who she's talking about.
She's thinking through how to formulate her answer, but the reply is
taking too long. Now I begin to panic - not because of the situation, but
because I feel myself losing the connection. "Hey! Hey. Hurry it up! Who
is 'she'!" I insist as the world around us rapidly turns fuzzy. Everything
falls away before she can answer.
09/11/2022
Dreamed Elon Musk bought Discord and changed it into looking and
behaving exactly like MSN messenger.
26/11/2022
I fell in love with the ghost of a clock. Appropriately, time was
extremely strange and distorted in this dream, with some moments lingering
and others where weeks worth of time somehow passed in minutes.
I begin a brand new administration/records management job with a new
company. Their offices aren't located in a highrise or commercial
precinct, but within a partially-converted historic building. The interior
has been adapted to function as an office space but retained obvious
traits of its original design, especially the ceilings. It may have once
been part of a subway/train station.
At this new job, I am given inadequate training and conflicting
instructions. My superiors blame me for any shortcomings and my coworkers
avoid me. The job pays well and is not demanding, but I am stressed at all
times and considering quitting because the atmosphere is utterly toxic. My
situation suddenly improves as I start to hear the ticking of a clock and,
sometimes, a bell tolling.
Very quickly I am able to parse these sounds and understand them as
completely intelligible, straightforward speech. The sounds communicate to
me on a daily basis and give me advice on exactly what I should do. Before
long, they start to hold lengthy, thoughtful conversations with me. In
order to reply to it, I must speak outloud, so I am usually only able to
address it when I'm well out of earshot of other people.
As time passes I learn that the others in the office occasionally
experience the ghostly ticking sound as well, but they do not understand
it as speech and interpret it to be malevolent and cursed. My job
situation improves immensely with the sound telling me what I should say
to people, certain ways I should do my job, the best times to take my
breaks and so on. I become friendly with a kind man about five years
older. We become good friends but I am noticing him growing closer and
closer - I suspect I understand what this means, but I ignore it and
continue being friendly with him without acknowledging it.
Eventually, the day arrives. It's the last day of the contract, the final
day of this job. The man confesses his feelings to me, sincere and gently
trying to win me over when I'm not immediately receptive. I lie to him and
say I have to think about it. It's a lie because my heart aches not for
him, but for that disembodied ticking that followed me for the past month,
watching over me and my wellbeing.
I was ready to tell it I loved it. Somehow, I have the sense that its time
in this world is drawing to a close. I can't find any graceful way to end
the conversation with the man confessing to me, so I simply apologize and
hurry away, trying to find a private enough corner away from listening
ears where I could tell it how I felt. Wherever I look, there are still
people milling about. It occurs to me that I can find a moment of solitude
in one of the fire exits, so I hasten there.
As the door closes behind me and I draw in a breath to say those words
outloud, it finally departs from this world. I notice its absence and feel
a deep sense of loss.
The day has ended and I will not be returning here again. I linger about
the entrance of the building far too long, and another, different man
notices me and tells me that I seem sad. For some inexplicable reason, I
tell him everything that has happened and everything I'm feeling.
He is completely unperturbed by the story: he recognizes the presence I
described to him and tells me that it was actually the ghost of a big
clock that used to adorn this building. He has a personal interest in
historical buildings and landmarks and knows the story of this particular
site well.
He remains with me long after the workday is over and tells me the story
of this building: when it was constructed, its original purpose (train
station, as I suspected), every major event that happened here, the
gargantuan clock on the roof that lived through and watched it all. He
indicated the blank, jutting tower where the clock once stood before it
was taken apart.
Before we part ways, he says that now that I know its story, it'll live on
in my memory and carry it with me. It's only now that I feel some measure
of acceptance of the fact that it is gone.
29/11/2022
I come across
Aztrosist
at random while out and about. I flag him down for a short conversation
and apologize profusely for troubling him for a quick word and autograph.
He is very obliging, and kind of shocked about being recognized in public.
I tell him I've actually been a fan for just under a decade, and he seems
not to fully believe or register this until I reference a video from 2014
that is now completely scrubbed from the internet.
A friend who I am with at this time starts talking business on behalf of
someone else I know (but deeply dislike), letting him know that this other
girl is a Twitch streamer who is currently looking for someone interesting
and unknown to do collabs with. I begrudgingly admit that it would
probably be a good move, because she's an uber-attractive e-girl with a
large audience.
01/12/2022
Three dreams experienced in quick succession. I was successfully
walking the tightrope of lucidity for quite a while, so I kept going
under/inducing more dreams to see what would happen.
1) Sitting in a comfy trailer-sized room, lined with seating along three
walls and a large screen on the remainder. It was packed full of people
squeezing in to watch some extra exclusive game trailers. I was the only
girl there. I was waiting for my lover but he must have been running late.
I felt out-of-place and like I was getting some looks, so a mutual friend
of ours let me hold his hand so that people would stop bothering me.
2) A sparsely-furnished room with two doors. The walls are vintage wood
and painted blush pink to waist-height as an accent feature. Opening one
door led to a short corridor and the place seems labyrinthine. I figure
out where to go by following the sound of distant voices, running water
and clattering cutlery - as if people were busy cleaning up in a kitchen.
The network of rooms opens into a larger space with people, resembling a
lobby or reception area of some kind. The floor is grey stone and the
reception desk is an almost brutalist rectangle of concrete, but painted
an unsightly pastel lemon. Someone passing by tries to address me, but I
don't hear what they say and I tell them I need to maintain concentration.
My lover is here with a pull-along cart and handing some boxes to the
receptionist. He seems exasperated until he sees me and I join him for a
hug. He needs to move on to some other task, so we walk and talk together.
I tell him I miss him and that I wish I could be with the real him like
this.
3) Appeared in another lobby, this one evidently for a hotel and totally
different in character from the last. It was covered in maroon carpeting
with little gold squares, and lounges and armchairs arranged throughout
were upholstered with material that had the same colors and pattern. The
main feature of this lobby was an arcade machine with a bright red body.
There were a couple of people hanging out on either side of it. They were
there to see what I would do with it and explained I could give it a
prompt, any single-word request for the next dreamscape. I figure out what
I want to try and conjure and enter my prompt letter-by-letter via the
interface, focusing intention into each character selected. It prompted me
to finalize it by hitting submit and feeding it a coin.
A moment later I find myself in a dark cave lit by artificial lighting. I
didn't understand what I was seeing at first until I walked around and
noticed displays with accompanying plaques and other visitors examining
them. It was part of a museum, a basement/submerged floor that mostly held
fossils and prehistoric artifacts. I find the stairs to leave this
section, but I don't spend long touring the museum because I want to see
what exists beyond it.
Interestingly, the museum's entrance lets out directly into a mall.
Instead of pressing further in, I decide I want to see what lies beyond
the mall and what I think are the exit doors are nearby and in sight.
These doors are thick, heavy metal, almost a barricade. It takes some real
effort to shove it open and I'm surprised by what I find on the other
side. The door opens into a huge canyon, full of red, clumpy, iron-rich
sand and utterly devoid of plantlife. Re-examining where I came from, I
realize I didn't notice that I hadn't seen a single window. The museum and
mall were dug into the rock behind me, only one part of what was probably
a much larger cave system.
Looking around reveals that I'm somewhere in the middle of a crevasse.
Looking up, there's a plateau way up ahead and a crack of blue sky with
the sun overhead. There were also points I could look down off the flat I
was walking along and see a sheer drop way further down. Eventually I come
across a wide hole in the rock and wonder what could be inside. I expect
to find more signs of a concealed civilization, instead what I find is a
semi-dark cavern with clumping, hanging cobwebs and human-sized spiders. I
decide I am not interested in dealing with this and forcibly wake myself
from the dream, severing the connection intentionally.
None of what I saw had anything to do with the prompt I put into the
machine.
02/12/2022
Was walking through my neighborhood when someone's dog passed by
me on the sidewalk, turned its head, and chomped down on my hand. Its
teeth pierced my skin and it held on for dear life, but it wasn't pulling
or tearing. Its owners were trying to carefully coax it to release me, but
I woke up before it did. It looked like a black Labrador.
07/12/2022
At a company I work for, there is a targeted attack on the upper
management. The CEO, CFO and other major employees all received a meeting
request and entered one of the meeting spaces. These spaces were
essentially sealed boxes and, after the door automatically locked behind
them, some chemical was released into the room. Only one man (the IT
director) survived, but was emotionally robotic afterward. I overhear news
of how this tragedy occurred while I'm working at my workstation: a member
of the public figured out the workers typical patterns and how to enter
because one of the upper management women kept posting "my day at
work"-esque TikToks.
13/12/2022
Perusing stacks of curios and antiques inside a comfortable,
lived-in home. I have come to this place with a couple of my friends to
purchase antiques after seeing a listing on Gumtree (Australia's
equivalent to Craigslist). The house has all the hallmarks of an
interesting person who lived a full life and also picked up and then
discarded many hobbies. Shelves are full of knick-nacks, dog-eared books,
cassettes and sporting goods. The walls are adorned with framed photos,
newspaper clippings of interest, certificates of achievement. I take in
the atmosphere and enjoy the variety in the surroundings while I wait for
the seller to return from her shed with the items I was here to look at.
I soon begin to notice a recurring theme in the books, art, posters - a
sizable portion of it is female-sexuality oriented. Vintage lesbian pride
posters with handpainted artwork, dense feminist literature with names
you'd expect like Woolf, Dworkin, Attwood. Sculptures that prominently
display female anatomy, some of them straightforwardly anatomical and
others grisly in their depiction.
She returns at last with the collectibles. I am too distracted to examine
them like I should. In the end, I decide I have to think on the purchase.
She is perfectly comfortable with this answer but tells me that I should
accompany her to her shed to look at some other articles I might be
interested in. I go alone with her while my friends remain waiting in her
office.
The dream becomes lucid when I step out of her back door into an
under-cover outdoor area - I am suddenly aware this is a dream and not a
real situation, and that this woman is not really a person in her own
right but a representation of my feelings. We have a long back-and-forth
conversation, lengthy enough that I begin to wonder if my friends will
come looking for us. She speaks passionate and direct, and it is
impossible to ignore or deflect her. Her intensity frightens me but I'm
compelled to be agreeable and polite. Her personality overpowers mine.
The conversation takes a frightening turn when she wants some sort of
concrete assurance from me, a promise that I told my feelings to her
truthfully. From her big collection of stuff she picks up a dagger and I
realize what must follow when she slices her own palm open. I'm paralyzed
with the terror of rejecting her, more so than I am averse to the promise
of pain. I offer my hand willingly and tell her to do it "light and
quick".
To her credit, she does try her best to make the shallow cut. I flinch as
my skin is split apart. She takes my hand in hers and it stings when I
feel the squelch of her own bloody palm mashed against my fresh cut.
When we return to the others I shakily hobble over to her kitchen sink and
start cleaning my wound under cold running water. For some reason, her cut
had completely healed and there was none of her blood in sight. When my
friends ask what happened, I tell them she was showing me some antique
swords and I mishandled them and cut myself.
17/12/2022
In the dream, the N64 has motion control capability like a Wii. I
play an old low-poly golf game with unlockable characters and story modes.
Two of the playable characters are named Stella and Jenna, who are
actually the same person except Jenna has a big afro and is apparently
Stella's "golf persona" cause she has a split personality.
21/12/2022
Dreamed that one of my D&D groups had a real life meet-up and
were going to do a "special session" where instead of playing conventional
D&D, we would be in partial cosplay and LARPing as our characters. The
DM hired a venue
similar
to a real place I know, a "miniature castle" (normally used for
wedding photo shoots and honeymoons) with a tower, bedroom, kitchen/common
area and garden. The scenario was a murder mystery investigation with
clues and hidden objects throughout the area.
30/12/2022
Professor Gorr, one of my favorite NPCs from the game Guild Wars
2, returned to the story in modern-day with an updated look. I can't
actually remember the dream at all,
I was so distracted by what his new design looked like
that I had to draw it.