Dream Journal of Julian Ahlquist

1998

The Galactic Oil Tanker

This dream took place in the future where my 8th grade class was on a field trip to a so-called "Galactic Oil Tanker," a starship used for transporting petroleum from planet to planet. As we neared the vessel on one of our interstellar "buses," one of the teachers asked if anyone knew the person in charge of it. For some reason, I "remembered" and answered that Mr. Beskar (my 8th grade earth science teacher who would incidentally become my boss many years later in real life) was the captain.

Eventually, we came aboard, where I found myself sitting on a chair in a room resembling my basement. I began debating with my classmate Jacob about something I couldn't quite understand. Another classmate was watching our debate suspiciously. The argument involved complex equations which we drew on a large chalk-board. I finally realized that Jacob, with all his intricate calculations, was trying to persuade me to kill myself. He failed. Tired of words, he lunged at me with a knife. I dodged him, making him accidentally run his blade into the chest of another classmate.

The dream switched scenes to the main bridge of the Oil Tanker, which had since crash-landed into an ocean. The bridge was a very large, stainless-steel room with ceiling-high windows, which now had suddenly begun to crack under the growing deep-sea pressure. I made a run for it using the back exit. As I did so, I noticed Patrick Stewart (the actor who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation) running alongside me. I don't think Mr. Beskar made it.

A Mission to the Dark Side

Turning the corner of some hallway, I found a room with curious objects in glass cases, including a stone with a knife through it, as well as a Dark Jedi named Jerec (a character from a Star Wars video game). I had a mission to stop him, having heard that he had stolen a "force-absorbing device," that is, something that could turn off the Force from the surrounding area, making nearby Jedi powers useless. I figured out the knife in the stone was this very thing. I quickly opened the case and tore the weapon from the stone, restoring the Force in the area, allowing me to use my own Force abilities once more. Jerec, who unfortunately was a Jedi himself, engaged with me in a mighty force battle.

"Come on, Jerec. Let's see what you got!" I mocked, whereupon the Dark Jedi laughed and monologued about his greatness. Being a Jedi of the Light Side, I shielded myself from his attacks, one of which consisted of four blue heat-seeking missiles. With the Force as my ally, I telekinetically flung these missiles harmlessly into the walls beside me.

After a few more blows, I managed to sit down with Jerec and have a little chat. I asked, "Do you believe that there's a God?" and the Dark Jedi responded courteously, "Yes, of course." To which I questioned, "Do you wish to go to heaven?" and he simply replied, "Yes." However, my efforts to convert him were foiled by a dream-absorbing device called an alarm clock.

Nazi Titanic

In the start of the dream, I had fallen in love with some blonde girl. I asked her out, but she refused, claiming that she had a situation that made a relationship dangerous to her right now. Though I was heartbroken, she changed her mind when she nearly lost her life at the hands of a Nazi organization against which Mr. Beskar (again, my 8th grade science teacher who would later become my boss) and I were fighting and from which we rescued her.

I discovered it was 1910 AD or so and recalled that it was the day the Titanic would plummet to the depths of the ocean, and this time, in the middle of Baltic Sea instead of the Northern Atlantic. My friends and I boarded a boat, sped toward the Titanic, but found that other ships had come to the rescue to evacuate survivors. Seeing no need to interfere, we sailed away, suddenly coming against a large gust of furious wind that nearly overturned the boat. The woman driving claimed to detect another oncoming blast, at which point I commanded everyone to hang on. We all fell overboard, and a black fin immediately protruded from the water. "Shark!" I yelled ... but it was fortunately just an amiable Killer Whale.

The Undreamable Molly Brown

After a skirmish with Mr. Freeze (one of Batman's enemies), I and few others were sent back in time to save the life of Molly Brown (a real historical figure famous for having survived the sinking of the Titanic). The agency gave us a picture of her, which was taken back when she was Trick-or-Treating in Mexico as a little girl. Soon I found myself in the crowded streets of Mexico City on a bicycle, where I met another biker who needed directions to Minneapolis (my real home city). We also found a guy selling high-priced tacos right outside Taco Bell. I complained to him about his prices as I surreptitiously pocketed one or two of his products.

After some forgettable events, I encountered three girls trick-or-treating, and to my fortune, one of them was the Molly Brown. Before I revealed to her my mission, time ran out and I was thrown back into the conscious present.

1999

Prison Code

A police force arrested my friends and I in some kind of sting operation, accusing us of a crime that I can't remember. As the cops were spilling into the room, I quickly broke out into conversation with a nearby girl about Chinese Newspapers in an attempt to appear inconspicuous. I recall a police officer reassuring me, "You're just a suspect." And then I responded, "Oh ... good."

From there, we were unescorted through the Mall of America to a police station that looked very much like an ordinary store. I saw many of my friends incarcerated for the same crime. I also discovered Mark Hamill (the actor who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars) imprisoned there for the same infraction. I introduced Steve, one of my friends, to him.

For our punishment, we (including Mark Hamill) were taught Morse Code. With it, one of my friends somehow discovered a faraway airplane with a busted wing flap, which the pilot was unaware of. After my friend had failed to find a radio with which to contact him, I told him to ask Mr. Beskar (my 8th grade science teacher and later my boss in real life) for a radio, because he was overseer of the prison. But then I woke up.

Going Postal

At my high school, I came to a room full of lockers with signs on them reading "Ship to New York" or "Ship to Boston." I figured that if one were to put anything in them, the contents would thus be shipped to those cities accordingly. I carefully avoided doing such things, as I desired to keep my school supplies in the school.

When I later returned to my locker, I discovered that one of my classmates had taken my stuff and placed them in the postal locker labelled "Ship to Boston." I grew exceedingly angry at him, but to my huge luck, Andrew, another classmate, had just come from Boston, discovered my misplaced possessions, and had considerately returned them to me upon his return. It was a delightfully providential coincidence and a strange if worthless dream.

Teenage Warfare

My friends and I (among them being Emmett and Kevin) set out to infiltrate an enemy installation, which looked like a set of hotels at a Mexican resort (one which I had recently been at in real life). Kevin was the commander and ordered me to do recon before the other troopers charged in. I was carrying a hefty back-pack, from which I retrieved a rocket launcher and then began sneaking into the area. Looking to my right and to my left, I saw no one. I signaled to the other troops to proceed in but remembered that I had forgotten my backpack, which no one bothered to retrieve for me. After going back and picking up my bag and catching up with the rest, two teenaged enemy soldiers jumped from behind a corner and opened fire. Our side, however, had superior numbers. We concentrated our fire on them, flat-lined them, and impressively took no casualties of our own.

However, Kevin as well as others eventually flat-lined as well. I found a place of safety on a building to snipe off enemy soldiers with my rocket launcher. I saw Emmett and another friendly trooper retreating into the woods from two enemy combatants. I tried to use my rocket launcher to give them cover but couldn't get my hands out of my suddenly long and constrictive sleeves. Emmett decided to turn around and engage the enemy himself. I knew he wouldn't stand a chance so I tried to take my hand gun out of the holster but was inhibited by the very same problem. I looked up and saw Emmett get mowed down. Alas. He was a good friend. My only comfort was that it didn't happen.

2001

The Death of Alex (Part 1)

I realized I could shift to other universes and dimensions at my leisure. For some reason, I travelled to a universe based on the movie "Prayer of the Roller Boys" (a real but stupid 80's movie about a roller-blading gang who were trying to take over the world that I had watched on TV some dreary Saturday night).

I materialized in a warehouse appearing to be the headquarters of this vicious skating mob. Trying to keep my cool, I tried to get out of there but found the entrance guarded by a heavy squad of these wheeling hoodlums. I casually walked by them saying, "Hey, wassup?" And they replied, "Hey, how's it goin'?" and successfully blended in and slipped by. Right when I got out, however, the group of the gangsters I had left with all suddenly removed their disguises and revealed themselves to be the FBI, who were trying surreptitiously to put an end to the Roller Boy phenomenon. I realized, for some reason, that one of the bags they were carrying had a bomb in it, planted by the Roller Boys themselves, which was going to go off any second. I informed the FBI agents of this and we all scurried out of there with apparent success.

I then encountered my friends Paul and Doug. They drove me somewhere while I explained the nature of the Roller Boy Gang. They dropped me off at a place where I was supposed to give a speech about the "Kaphoozle" (a painfully annoying martial/tickling technique my friends and I developed in real life that basically consisted of jabbing people's kidneys). As I prepared for this presentation, I gained another unexplained insight into the future, namely, a great flood of water would be soon pouring down the stairs and drowning everyone in the room. With this in mind, I frantically busted the windows open and motioned people to evacuate. The water began rushing down the steps as I had foreseen, and I scurried to check if anyone was being left behind. I saw my friend Alex talking casually to some people when suddenly someone shot him. I wailed in misery at the sight. I tried to save the others and managed to dodge in front of one to protect them with my invincibility. The shooter turned out to be some random girl with a laser rifle. The lasers bounced off me painlessly, and I grabbed the gun, killed her, and realized that the firearm was yet another bomb which then exploded in my face.

The Death of Alex (Part 2)

In my real conscious life, I told my friend Alex that I had dreamed of his death. In response, he accused me of having the subconscious desire of wanting him dead for real. I assured him that I would make an effort in my next dream to utilize my omnipotence to travel back in time and change history if I remembered to do so. The next night, this dream came to pass ...

I, along with two other people, were trapped in a small submarine being attacked by a giant squid on the verge of devouring us. I called upon my dimension-shifting skills and ejected myself and the others from that undesirable situation. In this transdimensional stage of dreaming, I remembered and intended to place myself in a spot in time to rescue my friend Alex from dying finally. But then, mysteriously -- or out of humorous malice -- I decided, "No, never mind. Let's not save Alex." (I informed my friend of this later on in real life, and he found support for his belief that I indeed subconsciously wanted him dead ... it was most humorous)

My two comrades and I shifted into a place at night which contained tall buildings. We all knew that we had a mission to find "The Hendrix." I told them to split up and search the different structures. I ran up the side of one of the buildings with anti-gravitational effortlessness. On top, I saw a man holding something which I recognized to be the Hendrix. I sped toward him, but the man threw the object toward the edge of the building to prevent its capture, but it didn't quite make it. I scooped it up and proceeded to jump from the ledge in Matrix-like fashion. It was most entertaining.

Finally, I regrouped with one of the comrades and examined the Hendrix. We discovered that it was a kind of Binoculars through which one could see the near future. Peering through its lenses, I saw the terrain around us engulfed in lava and volcanic eruptions. My interpretation of this vision was that this planet was on the verge of collapse and that evacuation was strongly advisable. I told one of my comrades to find a space shuttle, while I went back to search for our other companion. Tragically I never found him, as the dream suffered an inconvenient apocalypse of its own.

The Divine Wrong of Kings

I found myself near the shores of a lake during the night crowded with people who were throwing plastic donuts in the water. Occasionally if one aligned their throw correctly, a crocodile-like monster would emerge from the lake, consume the plastic donut, and resubmerge without a trace.

Eventually, the monster transfigured into some glorious divine form. It panned its eyes over the people and said that all were unworthy. Then it looked at me and spoke, "Ah, yes. I remember you. Some time ago I took the form of a human and talked to you. I found you quite worthy." It then said, "I proclaim you the New King of England!" The crowd applauded at this, and I approached the being with a great many tears, thinking myself to be really unworthy (but not really). When I had come in reasonable proximity to it, I bowed in supposed humility and was crowned. It didn't feel right, however, and I didn't desire this kingship, so I approached the podium (wherever that came from) intending to announce my immediate public abdication.

Before I did this, the actor Samuel L. Jackson stood up in the audience and said, "If anyone has any sort of musical talent or enjoys singing, you should join the Chamber Singers. If you have any interest at all, I really encourage you to try out." This oration lagged on for some time, and I finally became impatient and thought, "Screw it. I'll just stay King."

I entered a crowded palace with some friends, making our way to a room with many ornamental tables and chairs. After this procession, we began casual conversation. I noticed that no one in the hall seemed to recognize me as King. I hoped that this would remain so, lest it make things awkward.

Suddenly, two processing lines of people came in dancing with loud blaring music. I figured that this was the King's entertainment, but I preferred them not to bother. Nonetheless, everyone joined in and started dancing. My dance partner looked identical to Princess Diana. She eventually pointed out a man about my age who looked incredibly hostile and bitter at the whole event. The Princess Diana clone said that he had originally been the successor for the throne. Then, one of my friends mocked him to his face, teasing him that he had lost the crown. The former-successor began a vehement verbal retaliation as he slowly closed in on my friend in a menacing stare. I asked my dance partner, "I'm King, right?" And she confirmed, "Uh, yeah, I think so." With this, I stepped confidently in between my friend and the angry noble and, with my face right up to that of the former heir screamed, "I am King! If you do not back-off then you shall die!" I delivered this exclamation with a confident and triumphant British accent. Applause broke out.

Then, someone opened a sewer-hole in the middle of the room and big bees with TIE-Fighter wings swarmed out. I ran to the bathroom. In there, I saw a drunkard stagger up to a boy who was reading a book. The intoxicated man asked what the boy was reading, and the boy answered, "It's about Wally. He solves his own mysteries." Grunting with disinterest, the drunkard staggered away.

In this same bathroom, I came upon Sherlock Holmes and an army of rampaging animals that belonged to him. I managed to dodge a wolf, but the moose offered a greater challenge. I ran out of the bathroom, and the moose ended up smashing into another animal, both of which died. I started removing the moose's antlers for some reason but then stopped to examine that the other dead beast appeared to be a dragon with funny teeth. I asked my dad, who was now in proximity, if it was indeed a dragon. My father shrugged.

2003

The Voices from Heaven

The setting of this dream was a kind of Arthurian and Tolkien-esque fantasy universe in which I played different characters at different times, both good and evil. I tragically can't remember most of it.

In one part, I was a wizard or a kind of priest who was secretly evil. I entered in a monastery-like building of great architectural majesty. It was a priory, as I remember, lavishly constructed in white marble shining with every altar and pillar. I went over to a corner where I planned to conjure an evil curse. I made sure no one was watching by means of a magic oval mirror which rapidly showed different rooms in building like a security monitor. At this time, voices of women (probably nuns) were singing beautifully in some far off chamber, but whose sacred song resonated all throughout the church. Their voices were so angelic and heavenly that they moved my heart and I repented of my evil designs. Never have I experienced sound being so real and inspiring in just a dream.

Our Lady of the Highways

I was driving in Corsica (the real island in the Mediterranean where Napoleon was born) where I came upon a particular intersection of streetlights which I heard was famous for having apparitions of the Virgin Mary appear to drivers. With my car being stopped at this very stoplight, I saw the Blessed Virgin approach me on the sidewalk. I scrambled to roll down my window, and after I did, she handed to me some kind of elaborately decorated faberge Easter egg. The next thing I knew, I was at a gas station, telling someone about the event, and then realizing that I didn't know where the egg was anymore.

Napoleon's Divine Plan

I was in a room with Napoleon, who was rattling on about his demands for absolute obedience from everyone so as to amass as much power as possible. He said he wanted to become as powerful as God, but then caught himself, corrected himself, and said, "Well, perhaps not as powerful as God." I put the question to him, "What if God is against you in all of this?" The war general then immediately told me to close the door to prevent eavesdroppers from listening in. After I shut the door to the room, Napoleon leaned over his desk and whispered to me, "God will not be against me in this because I'm attacking Moors." To this, I replied, "Uh, yeah. I don't think that's necessarily going to work."

Sesame Street Fighter

I was driving north on Highway 100 with my grandmother in the passenger seat, and when I tried to signal a turn, the signal stick snapped off and fell out the window. I pulled the car over, bringing with me a large sword that was laying between the driver's seat and the passenger's seat. As I made way on foot to where the stick had fallen, I found Big Bird (from Sesame Street) who had taken the object and was now shouting random verbal offenses at me, being quite unwilling to give it back. Also, the signal stick had somehow turned into an umbrella. I then engaged Big Bird in combat with my sword against his umbrella. The duel was short, but in the end, I was triumphant.

Hostage to the Sultan

Muslims from Iraq took me and a group of Americans hostage in an Arabian desert ruled by a Sultan who prohibited us from celebrating a Catholic Mass. I, however, moved by what felt like God, made a bet with the Islamic King that he would allow us to celebrate the it if a Eucharistic host miraculously appeared out of nowhere. An Arabian Sorcerer named Matikin (perhaps based off "Rasputin" maybe?), advised him not to enter into this gamble but the Sultan went along, and to our graces, a Eucharistic host appeared in a previously empty tabernacle of a nearby church.

Later, Matikin summoned demons to re-animate corpses buried underneath the desert sand. Bony hands emerged from the ground and started clutching at our ankles. One skeleton that fully emerged brandished a saber and advanced upon me, but bearing a number of weapons myself, I threw a sword at it, which, unfortunately, travelled right through the gaps of its ribcage and into the wall behind him. I threw another sword which caught the skeleton's hand, pinning it to the wall for a second until the undead creature detached itself from it and stalked me still. The dream ended when I started chopping at it with figure-eight swings.

Atheism in Bath

A noble-born old lady from the town of Bath, England (a real place that had I had just visited) was explaining to me and some others the different engravings on English coinage. Engraved on one such coin was the figure of a man whom she personally disliked and who, as she reported, "Raised money to build Cathedrals." Catching the hint of distaste for cathedrals, I asked for an explanation. She said simply that cathedrals imply a belief in God, but God doesn't exist, for if He did, he would reveal Himself to us more obviously. I argued it was an act of mercy that God's existence isn't that obvious. The lady, as well as everyone around me, began laughing. I tried explaining that when someone sees, for example, a miracle, and the obviousness of the miracle is overwhelming, the person, even an unbeliever, would recognize it to be a miracle, saying to himself, "Oh my! That's a miracle." And then the person is confronted with a choice: to accept and continue to believe the miracle's obvious existence or not, despite that he knows, against his will perhaps, that what he saw was a miracle. He still has a choice to reject it, however. If he accepts it, he is good, even though his faith would have been greater and more commendable if he had believed in God beforehand without the need of such proof. If he chooses to reject what he saw, however, he commits a great sin, for he knows he has seen and yet refuses to believe in heinous self-deception. He was less sinful to have not believed before the miracle, but now that he has beheld the undeniable, he cannot deny it without grave offense.Seeing a miracle thus can does not necessarily have an overall beneficial effect, as it might occasion one to sin even more. To this day, I don't know if my dream logic holds up on this, but it was the first extended philosophical discussion I ever had in a dream.

Too Late for Pythagoras

I taught an old lady the pythagorean theorem so that she could get by financially as a math teacher. I forgot all the details probably on purpose.

Masonic Family Connection

My sister and her best friend became freemasons after I got back from college during my fall break. I forgot all the details probably on purpose.

Illegal Action-Figures

We were trying to make a begrudging alliance with a regiment of Nazis, some of whom were only six years old. This took place in a repulsive modern-looking chapel with lots of tacky wood panelling. I, however, jeopardized the mission when I exposed them of possessing "illegal action figures" in one of their backpacks. When I realized the imprudence of my action, I corrected my blunder by conjuring my time-traveling abilities in order to go back in time and change what I had just done. In this time-warping process, I actually saw myself put back the action figures back into the Nazi backpack, after which, time proceeded normally, except this time, I made sure I didn't insult the fascists by pointing out their playful contraband. Nonetheless, I don't think our partnership lasted, given they were evil and whatnot.

Latin Road Rage

I watched my father drive away down a highway cloverleaf and accidentally drop a Latin text book out his side window. I ran down the road to pick it back up, but before I got there, a large burly man exited his car, picked it up, and, out of sheer and spontaneous malice, shoved it into a nearby drainage ditch. I became enraged at this irrationality and yelled in venomous sarcasm, "Good job! That was a great idea! I mean, like, when someone's dropped something out their car and someone's going to pick it up for them, you grab before they get it and say, 'I know I'll shove it into a this drainage ditch!' Wow. How stupid can you get?" The man then attacked me, and I was afeared, but then also awoke.

Dorm Room Visitation

Adam (my roommate at college) and I were in a building, hiding away from a Satanic cult. In a white corridor, a man walked by us; we asked him a question, but he ignored us, and then broke into a sprint toward an alarm switch. I stopped him before he reached it and gagged his mouth with my hand to muffle his cries for help. Under questioning, he told us he belonged to the cult. We pushed him further, but he merely started spouting random words like "stone" and "rock." I made fun of him by calling him, "Mr. Rock Stone," which I thought supremely clever at the time. Gradually, in a horrific and unexplained fashion, his whole body changed and simplified in a way where all his organs now occupied no more space than that of a styrofoam cup. Adam took him from me and surgically opened him up like a taco. It was an eerie sight. Adam pointed out various organs and parts, like the spinal cord and the digestive track. He also observed an additional spine. He deduced from this that two people were existing at the same time in this freakish organism. He also claimed that the second person was Marlyn Manson. I was shocked, needless to note, and asked for confirmation, pointing at the thing, saying, "So, Marlyn Manson is right here?" Then, a demonic presence entered the scene. Adam replied in a deep, diabolic tone, "I am Marlyn Manson." I thought he was joking, and I nudged him cordially. But then, with supernatural strength, he pushed me back. He held out his hand while he began speaking foreign incantations that made me levitate in the air and get pinned high up against the wall.

Suddenly, I woke up for real in a state where I couldn't move my body, except my eyes. This was my first ever case of sleep paralysis. I sat there looking at one part of the dorm room for a long time. At one point, I thought I could feel myself move when I tried, but my eyes told a different story. I thought my brain had malfunctioned such that it had become stuck on a single mental snapshot and was not updating it with new optical data. I began saying Hail Mary's and other prayers. I could hear music from another room of the dorm (which was still playing after I fully woke up). I was tempted to despair but resigned myself to the fact that God willed this to happen so it was probably fine. I prayed that someone would walk into the room and break me from this prison. I seamlessly began dreaming again without realizing it, perceiving two people, a man and a woman, coming into the room to offer help. They said they would watch me as I tried to move to see if I was really moving or if I was just imagining it. So I tried, and whatever they did worked, apparently, because I was now no longer looking at the same spot in the room but seeing where I actually appeared to be standing. Then I realized that these two people were complete strangers who had no natural reason to know of this problem. One at a time, I dragged them out of my room screaming, "In the name of Jesus Christ, be gone Satan!" As soon as I slammed the door to lock them both out, I woke up for real (fortunately, with no more sleep paralysis).

Exterminator: Judgment Dream

I was Spider-Man, and an advanced Terminator from the future (from the Terminator movies) was out to get me. He was designed to look like Peter Parker (and therefore, me). Somehow, I accessed his memory files from the internet, and found a file titled, "The Enemy." I opened it, and it showed a video clip of me when I was younger. This somehow was what tipped me off to his intents. I tried to explain this to my father, but he couldn't understand what I was talking about. Suddenly, the Terminator attacked me, but I avoided him by artful web-slinging. The Terminator lost its skin at one point, revealing a gold mechanical skeleton. We eventually both broke character and dueled with swords.

Thespian Persecution

Someone said to me, "So, you're going to be in the Our Town play tomorrow, eh?" (and at this time in my real life, I was actually practicing for the play "Our Town" by Thorton Wilder). I was taken aback, thinking it had been scheduled several weeks from now, and, in truth, we still needed a lot of practice. Apparently, Mike, our stage director, got fed up with us for not memorizing our lines, and so, for our punishment, he scheduled the play for the next day without telling us. When the big day came, I stepped onto the stage, waiting for my queue, as they were playing theatrical music that never seemed to stop. My queue never came ... fortunately.

The Haunted Basement

Some friends and I were roaming around in the creepy basement of a strange house. Adam, my roommate, was messing with a computer, and every time he did a certain task on it, eerie music would start to play and invisible footsteps sounded around us. The footsteps would cease along with the music when I'd say, "Be gone, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ." The first time I said that, I was quite taken with myself at such an effective exorcism, and I became arrogant, which made the sounds start up again. We proceeded out of the basement and found smeared on the walls a slew of Satanic symbols inscribed in blood. The owner of the house said that the previous owners had been part of a Satanic heresy. I asked them why he still lived here, and he said that he'd been occupying the house to prevent the cult from returning. He said that he had exorcists try to exorcise the basement, but they were unable to do anything because the evil presence was so great.

Web-Swinging with the Wrong Crowd

I was Spider-Man at my college in the middle of performing a play. The audience, with profound aesthetic dissatisfaction, started shooting at me with guns from their seats. I web-swung to the balcony opposite the stage, but continued being the target of their violent disapproval. Bullets popped through the balcony floor, nearly murdering me. Nonetheless, I hid there for a decent amount of time, until finally, they tried to force me down by shining a high-powered searchlight from the stage, which I somehow knew had been donated by Ave Maria College for some reason. It was annoying, and it forced me to change locations constantly to evade detection. I took sanctuary in a room of people who were sympathetic to my cause. Two of them, however, turned out to be spies, and I had to render them unconscious by means of hand-to-hand combat. I went back to my dorm and took to the bed, hoping that, by chance, they would somehow not look for me there. I woke up in my bed eventually ... and knew I was safe.

Boat-Loads of Liturgical Abuse

I was at the Pope's 25th Anniversary. A group of people and I found ourselves in front of a cathedral-like place where we were supposed to serve Mass, but no priest was available. They started improvising while I went backstage to turn on some more "stage lights." When I came back, they were all partner-dancing. I went to the front of the stage, bowed my head, and slowly lifted my arms up to the heavens, and began to levitate before the music stopped and we did something else. The vast audience was cheering loudly. Toward the end, a shadowy figure approached me with a fake gun. I came near him, and he pretended to shoot me. I staggered over in front of the audience, struggled to do the peace-sign and said, "I love you all. It is finished." It was supposed to be symbolic of Christ's sacrifice. The crowd cheered loudly and desired an encore, so we did it three more times. On the third time, I noticed that there was a huge ocean bay where the audience used to be, who were now distributed in a variety of sea-faring vessels. Suddenly, boats of ridiculously large proportions made of inflatable plastic zoomed past us, making tidal waves that almost destroyed us all.

I ran away backstage and found myself amongst a thick thorny forest. Slowly I made my way through it until I found that some of is branches were actually the arms of Ents (the talking tree things in Lord of the Rings). However, these Ents were dead but still stood upright like dead trees. I brushed past them until I came to a clearing. This clearing had been a meeting place for the Ents. Suddenly I heard someone coming. I hid in a corner of the clearing and saw 2 lizard-like demonic winged people enter the clearing, look around, and leave. One of the dead Ents started to move, and soon they were all alive again. They gave me one of their children which they called a "sapling," but the sapling said that it didn't want to become an Ent. I replied, "Well, some Ents have decided not to take root in the ground but roam free." I didn't know what I was talking about.

Dream-to-Reality Transmission

I was strolling around a mansion, populated by people who sported an extra face on the back of their heads. Furthermore, the mansion was haunted. I found the owner of the place dressed lavishly and drinking draughts of expensive wine. I asked him why the mansion became haunted, and he replied that a goblin who practiced witchcraft had once lived there. The man then began to describe himself and his life, which caused me to become him in a flashback. He narrated as I experienced it 1st Person: He (or I) eventually became a King in royal knightly armor, driving a chariot, accompanied by one of my advisors. I was intending to purge the land (especially the mansion) of evil, but the advisor thought me too harsh and not truly concerned for the common man. I knew I was dreaming at this point, and I thought this dream was pretty interesting and thought it gained merit for future remembrance. Thus I proceeded to wake up to write it down right away. I almost did, but rather experienced sleep paralysis instead. I remembered that I had fallen asleep when my roommate Adam was studying in the room, so I began trying to make groaning noises so as to make him rouse me from this state. Nothing happened despite my efforts, even after trying to groan in Morse code to spell SOS. To my great relief, the sleep paralysis finally wore off and I fully woke. I asked Adam if he had heard me making noises, and he said ... yes (this was in real life, to be clear). I encouraged him to wake me up next time that happens.

Bat-Man: The Dream

My dad and I were talking to a movie producer to get funds for the production of a new Bat-Man movie. The producer agreed under the provision that we adhere to a list of regulations, such as: making it in the style of the old, cheesy Adam West Bat-Man shows, as well as following certain random plot restrictions. So my dad dressed up as Bat-Man and I as sidekick Robin. At one point, we were walking in a hall with windows to the night sky. We saw and heard something hovering back and forth outside the windows. When the sun rose, we saw the thing was a hostile smart-missile. It detected us, launched itself at us, and nearly destroyed us, as we ran away as fast as we could. Later on, we found ourselves in a field, with some scattered trees here and there, and tried in vain to find a hiding place. Suddenly, three more smart-missiles began homing in on us. Fortunately, they overshot and collided into each other. Unfortunately, the explosion shot shrapnel everywhere, some of which got lodged in us.

Jurassic Tree Matrix

I was trapped in a Matrix-like world and eventually was taken hostage by velociraptor-like creatures as well as Ent-like ones (Ents being the walking and talking trees from The Lord of the Rings). Eventually, when some of them were leaving, I found and grabbed a large axe and cleaved one of the raptors into three distinct pieces. The others were alerted to my actions, at which point I ran for it. The Ents began to summon vines and roots from the ground that tried to entangle me. I, however, cut the vines asunder with my axe and jumped on the tables to avoid giving them more opportunities. Later on, I found this world was indeed all a computer simulation, and the real world had raptors, ents, and humans all living together in harmony.

The Cursed College

I was at my college where Joe Crowell (a character from the play Our Town by Thorton Wilder, for, at this time, I was in this play in real life) was staying up late. I told him he should go to bed because he had to get up early in the morning to deliver newspapers. Then I woke up with sleep paralysis and was under the impression that my friend Stewart was somewhere in the room and was suffering the same kind of paralysis. I tried to call out to him. Then I thought I was under the influence of witchcraft and started dreaming that Stewart and I were talking to Dr. Fahey (our Latin teacher in real life) about how we thought there were witches on campus who had us under a curse. In the middle of the talk, I felt an evil presence and informed Dr. Fahey, who didn't quite believe me. I was then certain that Dr. Fahey, as well as most everyone on campus, was a witch.

I then wandered around the campus in despair. Eventually, I saw a very tall, white, ghostly, transparent curtain hanging from a tree. The sight of it inspired horror, and I again felt an evil presence. The feeling increased when I got closer to it where I saw small stone slabs on the ground, which I immediately knew somehow to be the graves of sacrificed babies. I then entered a dorm to find a container to fill with holy water. I also wanted to find Adam, my roommate, to tell him about the witches. I found him but every time I was about to tell him, someone came near us. I thus had to keep dragging him elsewhere to find a secluded area, devoid of potential eavesdropping. Finally, Adam became impatient and walked away into a room, shutting the door behind him. Then, two large bullies entered the scene, and one of them started to spit on Adam's door. One of loogies hit Adam's face right when he opened it back up to see what was going on. Adam grew irate, but I peacefully tried to prevent a conflict. As a result, the bullies sent both Adam and me flying through a window and into the sea, where we had to swim back quickly to avoid sharks. I knew this to be a regular occurrence with these bullies.

Plastic Justice

My cousin Christian and I were at my grandmother's house, when all of a sudden, black-hooded creatures resembling Dementors and Ringwraiths attacked us. This was the second attack, I remembered, and I wasn't afraid. I don't remember how we got out of it (maybe I shouted, "Begone, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ"). Then, there was a Nazi with a hidden sniper under his command that shot anyone who tried to attack him. I saw the sniper on the stairs and pulled out a handgun and started shooting. I missed him completely and retreated to my grandfather's study and asked him for some more bullets for my "standard-issued Marine handgun." From his drawer, he gave me some more bullets, which were merely white plastic pellets. I reloaded, charged at the adversary, and successfully pumped him full of plastic.

The Invisible Werewolf

I saw Mary Magdalen run into a dark alley, desperately trying to escape the Prophet Nathan from the Old Testament. Shortly afterward, my headmaster from my old high school called me up onto a stage in front of a sizable audience so that I could do a little dance. I did a little shindig and received a standing ovation, to my surprise, at least in retrospect. In this same auditorium, a fat guy got shot, prompting us all to evacuate to elsewhere.

We exited the room in single file. A guard, however, was checking people's IDs. I found that I had no ID on me and was about to go to jail because of it, right before I found it with more thorough foraging of the pockets. It was an "ID credit card," which, as they said, will be charged as long as I remain in this new place which we were all going to, which turned out to be some sort of backyard.

A lot of friends were there having a cook-out. I quickly discovered that I could transform into an invisible werewolf. With this, I began spying on people. Greg, however, one of my friends from high school, had a pet monkey with him who could detect me. The monkey started to chase me and consequently drew public attention to my presence. In addition, dogs started chasing me. I ascended some stairs that led to the inside of a house, and, while no one was looking, I turned visible again, as well as human. I returned to the social gathering, and my friend, Jessica, with a smile, told me that she knew of my invisible werewolf shenanigans, but she was courteous enough to abstain from upgrading this knowledge to public access.

2004

Hunger for Souls

After seeping in and out of consciousness, I fell into sleep paralysis again. I started to dream about Dr. Keats (a real professor from my college), who was talking to a female student, and I asked him to help me with this paralysis problem (it felt like it made sense at the time). I started reciting some Hail Mary's to revive myself, but the student he was talking to became annoyed at me for doing that. I looked the student straight in the eyes and boldly said to her, "Be gone, in the name of Jesus Christ." She became very angry, and everything suddenly went black. Then, I felt this ferocious, ravenous gnawing at the back of my neck as if an insane dog was trying to kill me. It felt very real. I fended it off with Hail Mary's along with the knowledge that it really couldn't hurt me. Then I woke up peacefully and was no longer paralyzed.

Government Omnipotence Department

The TV show "The Practice" (a real show of fictitious courtroom drama) had an episode (a fake one that I dreamed up) about a client who had committed some ingenious crime involving airport luggage. This televised crime had inspired someone to actually commit that very crime at an airport (in my dream). This resulted in very inconvenient nation-wide airport security upgrades. When I was at the airport, some of my friends had taken stuff out of my bags and thrown them around so as to vex me. When it was time to pass through security with my luggage, I fortunately had all the correct "luggage ID" cards, each of varying shapes and sizes. After I went through the metal detectors, however, I realized I didn't have all my stuff, due to the practical joke of my mischievous associates. This revelation happened after I got past the security, which did not allow for people to back through it for any reason. My mom and I looked from afar at the place where my lost luggage now sat. My mom insisted that she sneakily "teleport" over there, but I said that I should do it instead. So I harnessed my preternatural powers of teleportation and beamed over there. This, at first, didn't work entirely as I became disoriented in the translocative process. I tried it again but only successfully accomplished it by becoming invisible and flying over there, and then reappearing, rather than a purely instantaneous site-to-site relocation. It felt cheap but it got the job done.

After I did this, I started wandering outside the airport and found myself at a road junction with Adam, my roommate. A car started driving toward us. I began instructing my roommate how to redirect incoming cars by the tricky art of telekinesis. I extended my hand forward and, with wizardly concentration, bumped the automotive vehicle to the right without touching it, causing it to turn to the intersecting road and thus thwarting its attempt to run us over. The car, however, backed up and tried to ram us again for spite. I performed the same supernatural feat but made it swerve to the left road this time. Afterwards, the car still persisted to kill us. I therefore lifted the car up into the air with my mind and flung it miles away to my left, sending it to the distant hills. The car, however, mysteriously flew back, but before it touched the road again, I threw it again miles away to a chain of hills on my right. Still, the car returned. It settled back on the road where it once was and floored at us again. I showed my roommate how, in this case, when mercy has been tried, the thing to do now was to plant yourself firmly on the ground with your right foot forward, leaning in strongly, and brace for impact. As I expected, the car totaled into me, with the automobile's front getting crushed like an accordion. At most, I experienced a moderate push. I said to Adam that the driver had his chance.

Knowing for certain that I was dreaming and dreaming an exceptionally cool dream, I made mental notes to remember the details for precise and accurate recollection. I composed a mental list of keywords that highlighted the major events that had taken place thus far but took care not to think too hard, lest I should regain consciousness under the mental strain. The list I composed, as far as I can remember now, was "The watch, Sherlock Holmes, ... and something else ..." but as I found out later, the list was nonsense, and had nothing to do with what I dreamed at all.

After the composition of this superlatively unhelpful grocery list, I moved on from the crossroad to find a wandering nun wanting to go to New York. Also, I found an emotionally unstable woman claiming to have many children but no job and that the only place for her to find work was in New York. In conclusion, I said, "All right. Let's go to New York." With one arm grasping Adam, and the other grasping the nun, I told the woman to hold onto my feet. I began flying quite rapidly carrying the passengers toward the big city. Over a shimmering ocean, I soon beheld tall buildings and eventually landed at a hotel, into which we entered.

This building also functioned as a secret federal base, which turned out to be my headquarters, as I turned out to be an elite officer who had been "given omnipotence" by the state for national security (I now call it the G.O.D. -- Government Omnipotence Department). I was passing through security, about to insert my keycard into an identification machine allowing me access past a pair of bullet-proof doors, when two of my less-than-friendly co-workers approached me, brandishing officially signed paperwork that issued my ejection from Federal Omnipotence on account of some accused sexual misconduct. I told them that I had been granted my office from higher authorities than what they could claim, but my unemployment was irreversible. I left the government building, stripped of my unlimited control of space and time. I saw two little kids, one in an orange shirt and the other blue, who were being stoned to death by black soccer balls cast by a gang of inconsiderate bullies. I stepped between them, opened my arms out in a cruciform fashion and took the projectiles sacrificially ... for I was but a mortal now.

Dinosaur Fallout Shelter

I was in a world where dinosaur-like creatures were roaming the land and taking the liberty to eat lots of people. I was trying to seek safety and encountered a man who knew of an underground hideout. We went through a secret door to a room made predominately of concrete, filled with pipes and various furnaces like a vast boiler room. We went into a further secret door that descended deeper underground, leading to another chamber and then another below that. As we descended to lower and lower boiler rooms, I saw families there, hiding from the Jurassic dangers outside. As we walked, the man leading me was talking about a man on the bottommost level, who had been hiding there for so long that he had gone insane. When we descended to that section, I was very cautious, ready for the notorious lunatic to jump out and attack me. But the crazy man simply came out with a disposition of friendliness. He offered to shake my hand, but when I tried, my guide slapped my hand away and said that I shouldn't touch him for hygienic reasons. Admittedly, the man was covered thick with grime. I suppose it was understandable.

The Yellow-Milk Cow and the Crocodiles

I was at my cabin, in which I drank a glass that appeared to be orange juice but which tasted like a most delectable eggnog. I inquired to the people around me as to the cause of this beverage, and they replied that it was crafted from a special milk from a very special cow. The animal lived nearby and was free-ranging, which somehow resulted in its production of very tasty lactose. I found the bovine right outside the cabin, sitting in the driver's seat of a car parked beside a lake. I recall exchanging words with the animal, but suddenly two extremely large crocodiles emerged from the water in an attempt to consume the helpless cow within the automobile. Seeing all the doors of the car ajar, I, with frantic heroism, shut the doors, disabling the large reptiles from stealing their prey. This, however, caused the two reptilian predators to acquire a new target for their cuisine (i.e. me). They slowly advanced on me, and I turned to flee, but found myself unable to move for no reason. Being increasingly terrified at the approaching river beasts, I recognized my irrational inability to move as a common occurrence in nightmares. Frustrated at this, wondering why such things so often happen in dreams at the worst moments, I finally resigned myself, though quite reluctantly, to omnipotence. I felt cheap, tapping into my almighty faculties to solve this predicament, but I had to do something, and I would not have these carnivores devour me so unsportingly. Thus, I performed a superhuman backflip with startling elegance and grace onto the hood of the car. With each hand pointing to one of the crocodiles, I lifted my arms up into the air, telekinetically making the reptiles to levitate skyward. Following this, I somehow caused them to explode in midair. Don't mess with my cow.

The Beatific Garage

About a half-dozen or so of my friends were, by chance, in heaven, which resembled a kind of garage and more like a shop as the dream progressed. We were designing advertisements and products for encouraging people to go to heaven. I was showing a friend of mine how to use a kind of complicated printing press that I somehow knew how to operate. In the midst of all this, the devil was wandering around the area in the form it had taken in the movie, The Passion of the Christ (a creepy bald woman in a black cloak). The devil was murmuring strange words around us, and my friend was getting distracted and wasn't listening to my tutorial. I told him to listen up and pay no attention to the devil. Satan began getting angry and started bothering us even more. So I gathered everyone in a group, and told them to say the following words after I counted to three: "Begone, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ." As a result of this, the devil was blown away by a powerful stampede of wind.

More people eventually got to heaven on account of the success of our heavenly business. I looked around, browsing around all the merchandise, and found it to promote too much commercialism and consumerism for paradise. Thus, I cleared off the tables and started rearranging them in a seminar fashion, so that heaven was no longer a store but a war-room, a place where the Church Triumphant could discuss tactical strategies for the war against the forces of hell. I soon found that the room was too small to accommodate everyone with this table arrangement, now that more people were with us in glory. God, a bearded fellow, came into the room and, by his omnipotence, enlarged the room. I laughed and said, "Oh yeah, I forgot that you were-" and God interrupted me, saying, "Yes, you forgot that I was God and that I could enlarge the room." To which I replied, "Oh, yeah. I also forgot that you always know what I'm going to say because, well, you know, you're God ... outside of time and all." With God sitting at the most prominent seat, we sat down at the tables, which were arranged in a medieval banquet style, and proceeded to eat a large feast.

A Ghost in the Garden

I was in the backyard of my house at night where I would start to see a transparent ghostly shape of a man appear off and on. It would disappear when I looked away. I was thoroughly freaking out and told my mom that something strange was going on in the backyard. I finally gathered up courage and stared at that spot for it to fully take shape and find out what was going on. I thought it might be an optical illusion but it wasn't. I said to it, "Be gone, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ." But nothing happened, even after a second try. I then prayed some Hail Mary's, which made the ghost smile, who then informed me that he was a soul in purgatory who needed prayers. I prayed, therefore, some more Hail Mary's for it, and it immediately told me that he had finally been released. I said, "Don't go to heaven yet. I want to introduce you to my mom." So I took the ghost into the house and told my mom, "Mom, this is what I was seeing in the backyard. It was a soul in purgatory, but now it's been freed because I prayed for it." My mom and the ghost exchanged some cordial words and then we all said our goodbyes. The soul disappeared and presumably went off to enjoy eternal bliss.

Palestrina is Freud

I got into an argument with someone regarding the nationality of Palestrina (a real music composer of the European Renaissance). I argued that he was native to Italy, but my opponent insisted he was from Germany. I accused him of mixing Palestrina up with Sigmund Freud (the real and very famous psychologist of the early 20th century). Then, I got confused and forgot who we were talking about.

Dominican Shopping Mall

We went to a Dominican monastery which was known to be the last orthodox religious community in existence. There were, however, only five or so monks/nuns left in it. The way they supported themselves was by selling hand-crafted figurines of pewter, wood, and porcelain. I saw that they had some figurines of Jesus as well as some saints, but predominantly, they had gargoyles and very creepy, disturbing, and demonically shaped ones. This suggested that even this monastery had been overthrown. I found also that there were several other shops in it. The temple had been transformed into a marketplace. In addition to figurines, this monastic mall also sold video equipment and medieval costumes ... some of which I was very tempted to buy.

The Obi-Wan Testament

I was the actor Ewan McGreggor (famous for playing Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels) playing the role of Abraham of the Old Testament. I eventually came upon a house in the middle of the desert and had dinner with the family. The husband and his wife had a son and daughter around the ages of eight and ten. They acted very unusual and disturbingly friendly. They told me that the only other signs of civilization in the area was a gas station, which had a notorious history of murder for people who stopped there. I asked them why that was, and the two children replied that they themselves had slaughtered everyone they've ever met. Keeping an open mind and not jumping to conclusions, I asked why the children then hadn't yet murdered their parents. Upon that very moment, the two kids each grabbed their dinner forks and simultaneously jammed them into both their parents. On this note, I got up from the table and proceeded to depart with some haste. I found the boy to possess commendable agility and strength when he effectively tackled my body to ground. As he held me, his sister ran at me with a spear. I decided to be done with that dream.

Witch Neighbors?

My family and I were living in an apartment, and the room next to us had witches living there. We knew that the witches wanted to curse us simply because we were Catholic. Since, however, we frequented the sacraments, we weren't too worried about being affected by diabolic influences. Nonetheless, I randomly found hundreds of bees crawling on the left part of my chest one day. When I grabbed them off with my hand, they stung me. I was nevertheless relieved that I wasn't swelling up, indicating I wasn't allergic to bee stings. At this point, I figured that this insect attack was of supernatural origin. Then, I started to go blind randomly. Knowing what was causing this, I began pouring holy water in my eyes and saying, "In the name of Jesus Christ, begone, Satan!" My eyesight returned ... as well as my consciousness.

Bouwees

A large human bat (most likely derived subconsciously from a Bat-Man episode) was trying to kill me. The police force arrived for my deliverance, bringing along with them about a dozen large brain-like creatures (resembling Crane from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) that they called, "Bouwees." These alien beings, for some reason, were the human bat's only weakness. The human bat, as soon as he laid eyes on them promptly departed in fear. My dad came onto the scene and told me that the Bouwees were telepathic aliens that could easily engage any rational being in unspoken mental discourse. Somehow, however, Bouwees have a natural difficulty with telepathically connecting to the human mind, but, through rigorous training, their minds could become adapted to accommodate human dialogue. It never happened though.

Time-Traveling Wonderland

I was sitting at a picnic table on my college campus with two of my friends, Stewart and Adam, when I heard a faint helicopter hum in the air, belonging to a black helicopter hovering close above us. It made no more than a whispering buzz. I drew attention to this, but immediately afterwards, the helicopter rendered me unconscious by means of some kind of knock-out gas or something. I regained consciousness (even though, in reality, I was still sleeping) in a room with Adam, and we both suspected that we had been abducted. As we composed a plan of escape, another one of my friends, Zach, entered the room and told us to come with him. We demanded to know what was going on, and he replied, "Come on, guys, don't you think that if we're using black helicopters that this whole operation is top secret? We can't tell you ... yet." This logic somehow satisfied us completely and we agreed to follow him.

Zach led us to a secret base, in which numerous resistance fighters in The Matrix movies (with characters similar to Neo and Trinity and Morpheus) were discussing strategies. They somehow discovered that Alice in Wonderland, the Disney movie, under close inspection, revealed how one could travel through time. We utilized this information to jump back into the Middle Ages because it aided our secret mission somehow. We traversed through battlefields of fighting crusaders, while one of the men from the Matrix resistance ranted on about his disgust for Christianity. I defended the Church with various arguments (I don't remember what I said) and my conversationalist seemed to give ground, albeit immediately prior to waking up in the real world.

Black Power-Puff

I don't recollect this with great clarity, but, somehow, I was simultaneously all three characters from The Powerpuff Girls (a real cartoon from the early 2000's). Gradually, I assumed the likeness of an African American man. I saw another African American and shouted to him, "Hey, negro brother!" In response, the black guy looked strangely at me, which brought me then to ask him, "Wait, am I black?" to which he replied, "No." Realizing I was no longer black, apparently, I apologized profusely for my remark.

Brocomancy

I was back at my old high school taking classes for the summer. I had trouble finding the right classroom and getting all my supplies from my locker, but when I finally got to class, with many of my college friends there too, I was late and had missed a bunch of notes. The class was being taught by Dr. O'Hanley (a real science teacher who had been there) but the course was some kind of History class called "Ewal" History. I had no idea what "Ewal" meant, but hoped to find out during class. I sat down next to Becca from college and asked if I could see her notes. She, however, merely gave me a notebook filled with elaborate pencil doodles. I looked closely at these drawings, in an attempt to discern whether they might not actually be notes, however unreadable and embellished. I concluded that they were utterly unlinguistic and blatantly irrelevant artwork. At this point in the lecture, the teacher had described a particular historical figure (whose named might have been "Ewal") who had, at one point in his life, made an influential choice that went against his principles. Danielle, another college friend of mine, became volcanic with rage, denouncing that man for his action and demanding the teacher explain how he could have done that. The teacher, a bit taken aback by the student's strident behavior, tried peacefully to give an answer but was interrupted multiple times by the ripping and wrathful remarks of Danielle (in real life, Danielle was the completely opposite of that). Becca and I looked at each other with confused, shocked faces that expressed, "What's her problem?" Clint, another college friend who was sitting in front of Danielle, respectfully told Danielle that she was out of line and should chill out.

Eventually, the whole school departed to the Mall of America (which was only a few blocks away from my high school in real life). The students began bustling everywhere into the different stores. One of my friends found a real-looking plastic battle-axe that I envied as soon as I saw it. Some of us began tossing around a large rubber ball for fun. I did some fancy tricks with it using my telekinesis.

A group of people, including my roommate Adam, my friend Stewart, and a completely made-up guy, and some other nondescript persons, gathered around in some kind of room. The aforementioned made-up guy took out some kind of occult-looking board. He began messing with it, and most everyone present went along with him. My friend Christina played along with some wicked delight. Greatly perturbed, I mentioned that messing with the occult was bad, but Christina merely shrugged. With a fit of boldness, I destroyed the divination instrument with my hand, much to the anger of many present. I retold them that dabbling in the occult is evil. Adam, apparently with an effort to subdue their rage, noted that the Church allows broccoli to be used for divination. The made-up guy rolled his eyes and said that in his experience and research, broccoli was a very poor and ineffective means for predicting the future. Adam replied, nonetheless, that if one wants to foretell the future, broccoli is a Church-sanctioned form of divination and any other kind is condemned. This, of course, is not true in real life, and I have no idea what I ate to dream up this "brocomancy" idea except ... maybe ... surely not.

Spiritual Craftsmanship

I was walking through my college campus with some friend when we suddenly heard some strange noises from a bush. They sounded like spooky voices. My friend Bree started to freak out and ask what it was. Nonchalantly, I replied, "Oh, don't worry about that. This happens a lot around here. In the name of Jesus Christ, be gone, Satan." The noises then stopped. We proceeded to a place with five life-size statues. The statues started to move and talk. We all began to freak out again, and I looked at the main statue and exclaimed, "In the name of Jesus Christ, be gone, Satan" many times and also recited a Hail Mary, but nothing happened. The statue then reassured me that it wasn't being demonically controlled, but "angelically" controlled. I was relieved and made friends with the statues. We proceeded to the chapel, and one of the gargoyles on it (even though the chapel doesn't have gargoyles in real life), started throwing rocks at us. I shouted, "In the name of Jesus Christ, be gone, Satan" many times, and each time I did, the gargoyle grew smaller, eventually being reduced to a puddle of green slime. Each pronouncement I made was more effective when I really meant it and contemplated its words. When I got to the chapel, I was very perturbed to see that it was no longer a place of worship but a very large luxurious bathroom with very big complicated toilets and jacuzzi-like bathtubs. I found out that sometimes when the chapel wasn't being used, it was transformed into a bathroom. I made a mental note to avoid bringing visitors to the chapel unless I'm absolutely sure that it's not in bathroom mode.

Frankenstein's Pirate

I was in a video store with some pirates whom I knew to be villainous criminals and in need of death by means of my pistol and the bullets residing therein. I shot at one of the pirates, which attracted the attention of the head pirate, whom I began firing upon as well, though apparently to no effect. I stood my ground, conjured my trusty dream-exclusive god-like immortality, and told the brigand to take his best shot. He began shooting me with his own two firearms, but, as thankfully expected, they didn't affect me either. We continued to battle down into the basement of the video store.

I received a revelation that I was becoming the same kind of immortal being as this pirate, but that I could choose to become good instead of evil. Then, he led me to a room where Frankenstein's monster sat in the corner. The pirate told me that I wouldn't be able to endure this particular trial. He gave the monster a signal, whereupon it launched a grenade that became embedded into the pirate's forehead which promptly exploded. The pirate nonetheless survived this. I fearlessly stepped up to match his strength. Before the monster launched a grenade into my forehead, however, he explained that the grenade-launcher was malfunctioning. So, the monster began operating on himself, saying that the grenade launcher was intimately connected with his body, triggered by his thoughts. He told me how this grenade-launching process caused the victim to have his mind and heart united (that is, I guess, one's abilities are used with complete submission to one's heartfelt desires). The monster then went on to talk about Christian theology, touching on the nature of free will and how it works in relationship to scientific laws. I don't remember the exact details of this lecture nor how much of it made any sense. When the monster finally completed his self-repair, he aimed it at me, and I boldly received the grenade in my face. It exploded, and I felt my heart and mind become one. This part of the dream felt very mystical, and although it seemed to make sense at the time, I'm pretty sure it actually didn't.

I found myself on a rooftop in a rainstorm, shouting at the sky with words like, "I shall be good!" and "I shall be true!" and then I reaffirmed some of the commandments like: "I will not steal!" and "I will not lie!" and I think I might have said, "I will not be a hypocrite, but live the truth!" Apparently, I woke up from a dream (but really had just started a new dream), and I was a father who hadn't been genuinely living his vocation, which had consequently hurt his family. This aforementioned "vision," however, had changed his life. All this turned out to be a movie, and Mel Gibson was playing my character.

Condemned Teachings

I was attending a school, in which three of the teachers were demons. They pushed me through this maze of perplexing constructions that were supposed to be clues to some sort of riddle, but as I thought about it and tried to make sense of it, I finally resolved that the whole thing was complete nonsense. The teacher-demons would draw near to me occasionally, but I would hold out my hand at them, shouting, "Begone, Satan! In the name of Jesus Christ!" Like previous dreams, the more I meant what I said, the more effective it was. The demons would say mysterious and disorienting things. Eventually, one of them became quite sad and said in a sigh something like, "I've been eternally thrown out of heaven. No matter what I do, God is not going to let me back in, even though I want to go back." I was almost moved to pity and wondered how it could be in the mercy of God to continue to exile a demon who desires reconciliation. Then, with a heavenly inspiration, I replied, "You don't really want to go to heaven! You're lying!" And with that, the demon threw off his contrite mask and laughed, "You're right! I don't! I want everybody to go to hell!"

Fardel the Frog

My college had an electric power outage during the night, at which time, students conducted pranks of various sorts. My sister Ashley had broken into the science lab and stolen a special rare frog, which the school had affectionately named "Fardel" (I think I got that name from Hamlet's "To Be, or Not To Be" speech, in which he says, "Who would fardels bear?"). During the daytime, after the night of mass mischief, my sister gave the frog to me in a box that resembled a white FedEx package. I and a group of other people decided to go outside and play with it. Some girl, however, then told me to return it to the science lab. She moved my conscience and persuaded me. I went back into the school and told the lady at the front desk that I've found "Fardel." She didn't know what the heck I was talking about, so I told the math teacher (one I had in High School). He also didn't know what the heck I was talking about either. Finally I found a science teacher, and he understood, returning poor sweet Fardel back to where he belonged.

Monetary Transubstantiation

I was in a mall during closing time, and someone wanted to get into a Barnes & Noble bookstore, but the glass doors were shut. I reassured the person that I could get into the store and then unlock the door. So what did I do? Well, I assumed god-like omnipotence and walked through the glass barrier without breaking it. I also had a sense that such an ability was granted to people who belonged to a special Barnes & Noble member's bookclub, which had the privilege of accessing the bookstore after store hours via supernatural transphasic power.

The next thing I remember was that I was an altar server at mass at my college along with a dozen or more other altar servers. I tried my best to mimic the other altar boys because I didn't know what I was doing. On this feast day, each altar boy was to take a handful of Eucharistic hosts from the tabernacle and bring it ... somewhere. When that time of the mass came to pass, the priest went up to the tabernacle and, seeing that we were all apprehensive about this unusual practice, he spoke to us slowly and reassuringly, giving us instruction on what to do. As he motioned to the tabernacle, he said (roughly), "Okay, this is called the tabernacle. When it's open, each one of you, one-by-one, is going to take some out. Who wants to open it and start?" None of us volunteered, as each one saw themselves unworthy to do so. Finally, the priest chose someone, a made-up person but nonetheless one I supported for his personal holiness and worthiness to open the tabernacle. So this person went up and opened it, gathered some hosts into his hand, and made way for the next person. When it was my turn, I found the eucharistic hosts to be chaotically scattered around in the tabernacle without ciboriums. As the other altar servers had done, I scooped a cluster of the hosts into my hand. The next altar boy haphazardly slid some hosts to the edge of the tabernacle to scoop them up. I gasped to see how carelessly he proceeded to do this, seeing how some of the hosts nearly fell on the ground. I verbally informed this altar boy with great vehemence for his need of more reverence. Finally, he dropped one of the hosts, and I dived to save it from touching the ground while still holding two handfuls of other hosts. I failed to catch it in time, but immediately retrieved it from off the floor. When I looked back into the tabernacle, I found that all the remaining Eucharistic hosts had taken on the appearance of coins. The clumsy altar boy began to freak out at this phenomenon. I concluded that his irreverence sprang from his inordinate attachment to money, and that God was sending a message to him by bringing about this miracle, showing him what he truly worshipped.

The Poison of the Spider Monkey

Some kind of friend and I were constantly being harassed in a rather violent way by a particular blond-haired man of apparently 20 years of age. Finally, out of self-defense and anger, we knocked him unconscious onto a hospital bed. My friend proceeded to stick a needle in him, the kind used for I.V.'s. I didn't understand the precise reason for this medical practice at the moment, but, if I had to guess, it was out of sheer malice fomented by his victim's inexcusably annoying behavior. I considered the action, nonetheless, to be a bit extreme (if not unnecessary) and would no doubt have inspired the man to homicidal vengeance after regaining consciousness.

Taking cautious measures, I locked myself in my room. Soon, as I feared, the blond-haired man was up and about and pursuing my life. He tried to break through the door, but I pushed it shut as best I could. From the other side of the door, I beseeched him with emotional pleas to forgive us and to arrive at an agreement of peace, so that both sides would suffer no more wrongdoing. The man seemed to relent, and I opened the door with hopeful expectations. When the door opened a little less than halfway, I felt something brush past my legs, and after that, the blond-haired man made an offensive effort to gain entrance again. I managed to seal the door shut once more. Then the man from behind the door said he had just let in a "spider monkey" whose bite delivers a potent poison (spider monkeys are real, but they're definitely not poisonous). I knew now that the little critter had taken sanctuary under my bed and also discovered that when it had past by my leg, it had nipped me with its little venomous fangs.

I exited the room with haste (the blond man being no longer there) and I ran to my parents to tell them to drive me posthaste to the hospital, lest the deadly spider monkey toxin get the best of me. So they did so. The doctor found nothing wrong with me.

The Emperor's Stomach Acid

I was in a kitchen with various sorts of alcoholic beverages contained in different ornately-shaped glass bottles. Two guys there, presumably the owners of the place, showed me what they said to be the most exotic and delectable drink there. The glass that contained the beverage resembled an unusually large glass mug (a foot or so high) with a brown, Amaretto-colored liquid sitting inside it unsuspisciously. They claimed that Emperor Otto (a real historical ruler of early medieval Germany) brewed it himself, and it had been enjoying fermentation for hundreds of years since. Prior to my consumption of the brew, one of the guys dumped some powder stuff that looked like a mixture of sugar and oatmeal. They claimed that it was an essential part of the drink when you're just about to drink it. I thus took a sip or two from the over-sized mug. The taste was interesting but pretty good, and I told them, "Yeah, this is pretty good." At that moment, they bore mysterious grins, but, ignoring it casually, I inquired if they wished to share the drink. "Do you want some?" I asked. They replied, "No way, man." With this, I expected foul play and demanded, "Wait a second! What is this stuff! What have you made me drink?" Then I speculated aloud, "It's urine isn't it? You sickos." They denied this, but then confessed, much to my lack of relief, that is was a large sample of stomach acids. Apparently, by inputting the sugar/oatmeal stuff, it had caused the drink to be somewhat acceptable to the palette. I then asked, "Am I going to die now?" But they assured me I would not. It had just been a practical joke. I naturally contemplated vengeance anyway.

Hijacking a Flight Simulator

I was Spider-Man once again. This time, I was crawling with great haste upon a woody forest among the regions of my college campus. I eventually came upon a large lake or river with at least a mile of water between me and the opposite shoreline. I shot out my web toward the other shore and prepared to swing across, knowing full well that I would plunge directly into the water halfway if I tried. This pessimistic knowledge was so certain that I, aware that I was dreaming, pre-authored the events for some masochistic reason, such that it happened no matter what. I apparently overlooked the transition scene of swinging into the water and simply inputted myself into said water immediately. Four people resembling fire-fighters that thought they were life-guards came to my assistance at once. I, out of mysterious malice, used my Spider strength to submerge them under the water. Following that, I started swimming to the shore and arrived with great speed. Touching the shore, a large inflatable raft thing was bobbing in the water, upon which I climbed. The object seemed quite normal, except for a curious protruding shape of a face positioned on a random part of it. Disturbed at this, I made haste onto the shore. I found a kind of deck featuring a table with playing cards, a fan on the ceiling (was there a ceiling?), and a kitchen of some sort. I determined that this place was the chill-out center for the fire-fighter lifeguard dudes that I probably killed. I found a door leading to a room that resembled the cockpit of a commercial airliner, in which two pilots sat. Looking out the windows, I saw that the commercial jet was in flight. I walked up to the main pilot (on the left) and, as far as I remember, explained that I was hijacking the plane. He resisted until I grabbed one of his hands and squeezed it painfully. The co-pilot challenged me and got out of his seat to engage me in combat. He kept telling me of his superior melee skills while I denied any chances of his success against me. He gave two or three punches, each of which I dodged or stopped, and I responded with punches of my own. He surrendered and sat back down in defeat. As I glanced out the window again, admiring the aerial sights, I looked back and realized that it didn't make any sense that this could be an airplane in flight, considering I just walked in from a room that wasn't in flight. I then justified this continuity error by proving to myself that this was actually a flight simulator and not an actual airborne vessel. I proceeded with the hijacking anyway.

Stupid Spectral Clerics

I was at my college praying the rosary with a bunch of other people in the Chapel. Two visiting priests were going to lead us in prayer. Before they began, one priest said, "If you would allow me, we're going to do something kinda funny." He then put a gold circular thing around the other's priest's head such that it covered his mouth and muffled his Hail Mary's. Before that, he took it off and showed it to the people. Everybody was awkwardly laughing at this bizarre and non-humorous sense of humor. When the priest came near me, I wrestled the ring thing out of his hand and said, "This is going to be distracting! Don't do this!" The priests got angry and went away.

After the rosary, I proceeded walking out of the Chapel but found the little green lights on above the confessionals, indicating that a priest was available to hear confessions. Having tried numerous times throughout the week to go to confession (in real life), I entered the confessional (in my dream) and began to recite the Our Father. Halfway through the prayer, I realized that the Our Father was not customary to recite to the priest during a confession, at which point I quickly sped through the rest, told him how long it's been since my last confession, and then started to go down the list of sins I had committed. The priest interrupted me eventually and noted that I had sinned by disrupting the rosary prayer by taking that ring-thing from the priest. At this point, I recognized this confessor to be one of those stupid priests with the gold ring thing. I became thoroughly enraged and began shouting offensively against him as a person and his stupid ideas of humor. I used certain four-letter words, while thinking, in the back of my mind, that I may be bordering on disrespect and in need of confessing to another priest. At the end of my tirade, the priest said that he and the other priest were actually ghosts who, in life, used to live at the college. Because I offended them, they amassed other ghosts of other late college graduates and set out to haunt the school. One effect of this was that half the mailboxes in the postal room disappeared, including mine, of course.

Circus of Heterodoxy

A new semester was starting at my college in which two new questionable professors were introduced into the faculty. Initially, I thought one was a Cardinal, but I later found out he was only a priest. Nonetheless, when I attended his class, a Catholic doctrine class of sorts, the professor was fully decorated in liturgical vestments resembling a Cardinal's. These vestments, however, in their very pinkish colors and flamboyant designs looked suspicious. I kept an open mind and listened to the lecture. The cleric's speech resonated with homosexual inflections, but I charitably assumed that the priest was simply naturally -- and innocently -- a bit effeminate or something. As I looked past the fruity religious attire and subtle lisp, the professor started lecturing on various introductory points of Catholic doctrine and eventually commented, "You will see that Catholic Doctrine has a lot of problems." This one was hard to endure and I failed to assume anything good about it. As the lecture continued, the rest of the content of which I cannot remember, two things happened: the cleric gradually changed clothes somehow and eventually donned a very casual black hooded sweatshirt and bluejeans, and, secondly, everyone began to suspect that this priest had substantial unorthodox inclinations. I suspected that my otherwise orthodox college had failed to find any other teachers of theology who were better.

This new professor disturbed me, and I found that the other new professor, a layman, was also questionable at best. I eventually found myself walking into a random room in which I beheld a horrific, but at the same time, hopeful scene. I saw those two professors, the cleric and the layman, asleep in bed and on top of each other. I ran to my father, whom I knew to be the President of the College (even though he really wasn't) and I told him to go into that room and behold the scandalous sodomy between these two professors who must now surely be fired forthwith. My dad went, as I prayed the teachers remained asleep so as not to hide. Sure enough, my father found and fired them, but my mother was disappointed, having wanted them to remain in the college so that they might be converted by the strong religious atmosphere of the school.

Next, I found myself in a house of some geographically ambiguous location (perhaps Italy). A cat had meandered into the house, which I picked up and put outside again. As I was shutting the glass sliding door, a large, pig-like beast emerged from the bushes that sought to eat the cat. I called to my dad in the house, saying, "Dad! There's a warthog! It's going to eat the cat!" The creature looked more like a mutated alien warthog, but the danger to the cat was all the same. My father cried out, "Well do something about it! Grab it! It's not that heavy!" I looked back at the two animals and found that the cat curled up into a little ball out of fear as the predator was going to devour it. I jumped outside and grabbed the warthog's neck with one hand and its back with the other. I lifted it up and found it wasn't heavy at all. Nonetheless, it wiggled and squirmed in a wormy fashion to get free. I quickly brought the ferocious animal inside and asked people in desperation what to do. Finally, I went to a fireplace and saw one of those metal stands for placing firewood. It had a sharp point on one end of it, into which I impaled the warthog by pressing it into it. It died.

I looked outside again and saw a large ravine with trees, where I could see a roaming lion. The lion turned out to be fake -- a costumed person from the circus. The warthog thing perhaps had escaped from this circus. Other characters from the circus, such as clowns, began encroaching into our backyard and demanded entry to our house. I called 911, and asked the cops to sort out this freak show.

Cabin-Within-A-Cabin

I, as well as my mother and my siblings, were at our cabin in a living room. Strange things began to happen, and I suspected a demonic presence. A candle flame became detached from its stem and fell on a table, lighting its wooden surface aflame. I tried stomping it out as I informed my family that the devil was doing this. My hand finally caught on fire, and as a final proof of my theory, I faced my family with my lighted hand and said, "Be gone, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ," whereupon the flames were immediately snuffed out. Their reactions were that of amazement. I determined that we were all asleep and having the same demonic nightmare.

We all woke up and found ourselves in the cabin again (I was still dreaming though, to be clear). All of this made perfect sense at the time. The demonic presence, however, had travelled from our unconscious minds to our conscious reality, and thus the cabin was truly haunted now. We went outside to the backyard and saw some of our cousins arrive by boat. We told them of the supernatural happenings. I looked back inside and saw an open laundry dryer with some clothes in it. Amongst the clothes, I could see a pair of baby's feet sticking out. I brought my mother's attention to this strange image. I didn't know what it meant exactly but had a strange feeling that it related to abortion. I pronounced, "Be gone, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ," and the baby's feet disappeared.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Brain

I was in a computer store, asking one of the workers where I could find some good C++ Programming software.

Eventually, I found myself accompanying Harry Potter through the hallways of Hogwarts. In conscious retrospect, I couldn't figure out what character I was. I had an understanding that I was at least a year older than him and tried to be a good, courageous example to Harry, though I knew how superior Harry was to me already. Harry and I had our wands outstretched like guns as we cautiously went through different chambers in the school. While we did this, I frantically tried to recall incantations that would be useful against anything that attacked us but nothing came to mind. Eventually, we entered a room where we heard something slimy crawling around on the floor. Suddenly, I heard Ron scream and saw that a crawling disembodied brain had leapt and attached itself onto him. I pointed my wand at the brain and finally remembered the spell "Flippendo" (appearing in Harry Potter video games but I can't remember if it actually exists in the books). Harry, however, advised that I shouldn't do it because it might hurt Ron, but it was too late. I pronounced, "Flippendo" and a surge of energy erupted from my wand and charged into the brain. Ron got pushed back by the magic and thrown into a bookshelf. The brain fell off Ron's head, and I continued to shoot the Flippendo spell at the brain but it kept eluding the shots with its maneuverable crawling. Finally, I stepped on it with my foot, and then stepped on it with the other foot so that the middle of it was squishing out. I then stuck my wand right up close to the brain and then shot a Flippendo point-blank. It exploded and I went flying. When Harry and I came to our senses and commented how cool that was, I said, "Head's up," to Harry and gestured that the room was now being "flooded" by a bunch of smaller, browner brains (which I later figured out were inspired by the little critters of the "Flood" race in the computer game Halo).

The Jewish Apple Tree

I was in a very large intricate apple tree, whose apples were green and the size of pumpkins. Apparently, this tree was reserved for Jewish religious-use only. Jews would eat one of these large apples on their birthday, so I was told. Gradually, when I sitting in it, the apples gradually turned into green pumpkins, and the whole tree began to move its branches in a violent manner (like the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter). One large green apple/pumpkin thing fell down from its branch, turned into a red ball, and started flying away through a rocky canyon. I knew, for some reason, that it was a "magic probe" of a some enemy mastermind, and I sought to shoot it down with a bow and arrow. I armed a special red arrow and didn't take the trouble to aim it, for I knew the magic projectile would fly after its target by itself. I shot the bow with embarrassingly bad aim, but the shaft quickly took off in the direction of the apple/pumpkin probe as expected. The arrow pinned the sphere to the canyon wall ... and something weird and interesting happened ... but it escapes my memory.

At this point, I was the character Legolas (the archer elf from The Lord of the Rings). I entered some sort of royal court in a majestic robe and intended to take over the duties that Gandalf used to have. It didn't quite ever happen though.

Catholic Fairy Folk

I was being incarcerated by three fairies in some sort of garden shed. These mythical creatures were being ruled by an evil witch, despite, as I looked closely at them, that the fairies apparently were Christians, judging by the crucifixes they wore. I used this to persuade them to release me, pointing out that this witch practiced black arts that were objectionable to Christ. I successfully won them over and they released me. We plotted to destroy the witch, and I recommended that we drench her with holy water. The fairies agreed, telling me that she had once come in contact with a drop of holy water on her hand, which caused her a lot of pain nearly to the point of death. In our pursuit for the witch, I found that the fairies could turn themselves into small points of light that could fly very fast and fit through key holes. I don't remember if we ever found the witch.

The Hidden Rebel Base and the Water Buffalo

I was in the Star Wars universe in some planetary base of the Galactic Empire. In this installation, I found a small metal staircase, beneath which was a hidden door to a secret base of the Rebel Alliance. This base was created by some rebel spies a few years ago by a stroke of luck, and they found a way to consistently avoid Imperial detection. Gradually, the rebels gathered more equipment and spies to create a vast underground base of operations right in the midst of an Imperial base. I entered the base and beheld a bunch of computers and whatnot. One of the rebels showed me the entrance to an outdoor balcony that looked over the Imperial town. On the balcony, we were in clear sight of everyone, but the rebel assured me that if anyone saw us, they would just assume we were Imperials.

Next, I was asked by a water buffalo to help him safely cross the street into the woods. I cordially agreed and was excited to help out this rational animal. When the other side of the road was reached, the water buffalo froze suddenly in fear, and I noticed a wolf in proximity, which began attacking the animal. I tried waving my hands around while making noise to get it away. The wolf, after taking a chunk of flesh out of the creature, began advancing on me. Fortunately, I had a stick with me and artfully jabbed it into the wolf's nose as it lunged. It yelped and retreated but began attacking the water buffalo again, until I made it attack me again. We went back and forth until consciousness broke it up.

2005

What a Tangled Web We Dream

Once again, I was Spider-Man and, this time, battling Dr. Octopus. When defeated, he pleaded for his life and freedom by bribing me with Tridium (the rare material he needed for his experiment as seen in Spider-Man 2). Recalling the events of the movie in fine detail, I inquired why he stole more Tridium from Oscorp when he already had some in his possession. He gave a vague, unsatisfying answer, and I pushed the question on him again but he never gave a satisfactory answer.

I switched out of costume and wandered around my college for awhile, until I grew bored and desired to put it back on. I failed to find a secure place to change, until my roommate Adam, one of the few who knew my secret, tried to veil me from the public but found no success. He also asked me if I ever worried about the possibility that someone one day might see me changing into Spider-Man. I was always confident that my Spider Sense would kick in if anyone happened to be peeping.

Nonetheless, my friend Sheela came up in scandalized shock and told me that she had seen me. I assured her that what she had seen was not the real Spider-Man but just me wearing a Spider-Man costume that I had purchased for private amusement. I even took off my pedestrian shirt to reveal to her my Spider-Man costume explaining casually that it was designed to look exactly like the real thing. Sheela seemed to believe me, and henceforth I wore it around unmasked and in public without people ever considering that I was, in fact, Spider-Man.

I then found myself living in a house in New York City with a brother close to my age (though I don't have such a brother in real life), who also knew my identity. Both of us owned stylish cars, his being the better. He, however, on account of my line of business, thought that I should also have his car and thus in his great generosity, gave it to me.

My brother and I then decided to take a drive around the city. He assumed the driver's seat while I finally changed into my Spider-Man costume. We traversed along the highway and came upon some suspicious-looking individuals in the car next to us. I shielded myself from their view, but they saw me, and having gotten behind us, began launching missiles from their car. In a panic, I stuck out my arm through the window and shot my web out to fling the missiles away from the car. Some of the redirected warheads ended up exploding upon other vehicles.

The chase ended up in a highway tunnel, one which, as I recall, a relative of mine owned for some reason, which distressed us because this explosive battle might bring it crashing down. We got out of the car, and the enemies charged at us on foot. My brother said that these villains were formidable in hand-to-hand combat, especially their leader whom he thought that not even I could overthrow. A henchman approached; I deliver him a blow to the head, casting him to the ground. As the other was approaching, I kicked the fallen one in the head to assure unconsciousness, and grabbed the other by the collar and flung him to the wall. Finally, the dreaded boss approached. We duked it out with punches, holding both our ground, but I was ultimately the victor. I couldn't knock him out, but he retreated back to van, while telling me that he was Catholic priest. His villainous objective was to spread anti-Catholicism by his hypocritical and apostatized example. I, Spider-Man, proclaimed that even though he was a bad example of the priesthood, I was going to convert to Catholicism ... if only to spite him.

Vatican Vandals and Hotel Hobos

The Basilica of St. Peter came crashing down in ruins by an act of Islamic terrorism. I found safeguard in a hidden bomb shelter of the church and met the Pope John Paul II and Mother Theresa who had the same idea. We pooled our knowledge together from the recent events and determined that Rome was now crawling with Muslims out to destroy every Catholic they saw. We planned our strategy for survival, which involved me sneaking out onto the streets at one point while dressed like Catholic priest but keeping a dagger ready for immediate defense. It didn't make much sense.

I eventually saw in the distance a large hotel moving across the horizon mysteriously as if on wheels and learned that it was the product of my college President's weird plan for raising money. It was a hotel on wheels designed to be innovative and attract attention ... and money. I took up residence there for awhile, and became harassed by a fraudulent pan-handler, who kept entering my room. I chased him out and grabbed an airsoft gun that I modified to look real, while putting on multiple overcoats to bear a larger and more powerful appearance. My gun eventually turned into a video camera for some reason, no longer passing convincingly for a firearm. Nonetheless, I had high hopes for warding off this dishonest beggar who kept coming back. On the camera, I found footage of an actor being interviewed about his movie which no one seemed to like. Anyway, I entered the room which I believed to house the pan-handler and only found two twin redheads who were perturbed by my unwarranted entry. I apologized and left them alone.

A Hollywood Dream

I entered a building that hosted a large celebrity get-together, whereupon I met the actor Jim Carrey, who claimed to know my dad, despite how he referred to him as John (when in real life my father's name is Dale). I tried to figure out why Jim Carrey would have called him that and figured out that if Jim Carrey's own first name was John, he would be "John Carrey." Upon telling him this, he found a mirror and set out to perform humorous impressions of 2008 US Presidential candidate "John Kerry" (who was indeed the candidate at this time in real life).

I then met the actor Morgan Freeman, who seemed to know me pretty well. I asked him if he'd been in any more movies since the last one he co-starred in with Jim Carrey (namely, Bruce Almighty which really exists). He said no but that he'd been a gaffer for other productions (I don't know what a gaffer is, but it's a thing I often see in movie credits).

Then I encountered James Earl Jones and his family. I praised especially him for his work on Star Wars (since he played the voice of Darth Vader in real life) and asked him his thoughts about it. He said how he first didn't think the movies would be effective and didn't think his voice would work with Darth Vader's appearance. He said that when voices are put to characters that one wouldn't expect to have, the voice acting doesn't work. Adam, my roommate who stood alongside me at the time, disagreed with him and stated how the complete opposite is true. I rushed to Jones' defense and said, "Hey, you're talking to James Earl Jones here!" After that, the prestigious actor said goodbye and withdrew money from an ATM.

Amateur Espionage

I was a spy either for the Russians or against the Russians. I had been given a firearm but had to buy ammunition at a local bank within enemy territory. After doing that successfully, I found myself behind a bush next to a river, spying a small boat with three soldiers, whom I perceived to be my designated targets. My furtive tactics failed, however, and they spotted me through the vegetation. The next thing I knew, my roommate Adam, yelled "Grenade!" which suggested to me that the enemy, upon detecting us, had thrown a grenade at us. I found the explosive and threw it into the river. Following this, I began shooting the targets in a frenzy and only grazed the Captain's face, who took it personally, and docked the boat and headed toward us on foot. He led his men in a charge, yelling, "You're going to wish you've never been born!" in a very terrifying and somehow non-cliched way. As I failed to pick them off, I also realized my firearm was just a BB-gun. I became frightened and despair-ridden and fled back to the real world.

Church of the Water Park Spies

I gave the public appearance of submitting myself to the Mormon religion. This, however, was a deception, as I was acting as a sort of Catholic spy in order to undermine the cult of the Latter Day Saints. The ritual that I underwent upon entering this organization was zipping down a long dark waterslide that curved around halfway down to a lower level of their temple. It was a kind of Mormon baptism that I later realized was rather strange.

Hyperspace Theology

I beheld a vision of green spherical marble-like spaceships launching out of the earth's atmosphere, trying to escape the solar system but always being intercepted by an alien mothership that would throw them back down to earth. In the dream itself, I was told by someone that these green balls were souls (disembodied souls probably?). Someone eventually equipped one of these small soul ships with a specialized hyperdrive that could escape the snares of the tyrannic alien spacecraft. This ship zipped past it and reached another galaxy. The hyperdrive inspired me with enthusiasm and hope.

Within the dream itself, I came up with an eccentric theological interpretation of what this all supposedly was. The liberating hyperdrive was divine grace aiding a soul to break through the gravity of sin, which we are born into the moment our mother conceives us, and which we cannot get past with merely our own faculties. With grace, however, we can then quit the earth and go to our eternal home, which is not of this world.

Escape from Mount Ararat

I was on Mount Ararat (the mountain that Noah's Ark ended up after the Great Flood, according to the Bible) and found myself in a room of stainless steel. I tried to get out of there and came upon a room full of doors. One of them was a door that opened and closed at different erratic speeds as one got near it. Another one only opened if you successfully explained a passage of St. Augustine to some kid that had a learning disorder. I tried that one, but found it impossible, as I could scarcely understand the passage myself. Thus, I tried the other door, and with this, I had to push a large square metal button that had inscribed on it "gib" or "gem" or something random like that. When I would get near it, it would shut. But I could set different velocity settings with the button like "slow," "slow-like," "fast," etc. Finally I pressed the button and ran, but it closed right away before it fully opened and caught me right in the middle of my body. I felt pain but wiggled out eventually and escaped the mountain ... and the dream for that matter.

Breaking into the Law

An old middle-school classmate of mine told a Mexican gang to hunt me down. I was rescued by an eccentric artist, who was passing by in his car and knew of my plight and offered me help. We drove to the police station while a Hispanic gang chased us down. We smashed right through the police chief's garage but found the doors of the house locked. The artist gave me a flimsy pickaxe to hack open the lock, which surprisingly worked, though the door was still hard to get through for some reason. The artist selflessly impeded the progress of the Mexicans by throwing his body into them. Upon a closer look, however, I found the Latinos merely to be the police chief himself, who was angry at me for trying to break into his house, though I explained my situation with some success. I then tried to remain awake until dawn to leave the city because the mob actually turned out to be orcs who turned into stone during the day.

Close Encounters of the Unkind

A priest at my college claimed to have pulled out a human fetus from the carnivorous jaws of a bug-like alien. This news put everyone on alert. During a fire drill, instead of everyone running outside their dorms, everyone stayed inside, as the alarm systems were now being used to practice taking shelter from potential alien invasions. During these tense times, my friend Christina turned out to be an android designed to keep us from finding out more about the vast alien conspiracy. Upon learning her true identity, many of us tried running away from her, but she detached her hand, which was now tied to her wrist by a long chain which she whipped around and threw like a grappling hook to grab us from afar to foil our escape. I eventually escaped ... from the dream at least.

A Burning Loss

I found myself down south in my college's alternate campus (which doesn't exist), which was much larger and more secular. With this in mind, I made a conscious effort, despite my unconsciousness, to try to keep track of my belongings, especially my laptop and my new external DVD-burner (which, in reality, I had just bought). I packed up these supplies and went over to the library, whereupon I found my sudden lack of said external DVD-burner. I cursed my absent-mindedness and frantically announced to everyone that I had lost it. I passed by various janitors and pondered whether or not they might have taken possession of it. I fell upon the classroom I had last been at and discovered a course in session, which I intruded upon with apology and said to the professor, "Sorry, I think I left an external DVD-burner in here. Did you see anything like it? Did anyone pick it up?" The professor, a middle-aged graying man with a mustache and subtle Einstein-like features, asked his students for any input, but no one spoke up, after which he told me to investigate the next classroom.

The adjacent room was a large auditorium with a low ceiling which turned into a grocery-store later on. A philosophy teacher was lecturing, to whom I told my predicament. Demonstrating a willingness to help, he addressed the students, saying in these exact words, "All right, class, he needs to find his DVD-burner and one of you has it. Now, you're going to look deep into your bags and backpacks until you find it, or if no one gives it back, you're going to look even deeper and pull out something to give this guy anyway." I found this to be bold and rather strange, and I said to him, "Uh, you know, it's very possible they might not actually have it because I did actually lose it in the other room." The professor responded, "Yeah, but this is a pretty good tactic anyway, eh?" I then agreed with him with confused gratitude.

To my fortune, the external DVD-burner was unearthed somehow. I didn't know whether it had disappeared by foul play or otherwise, but a group of students had uncovered it and handed it to me. I embraced one of them with rejoicing, while his girlfriend went around and vacated my backpocket of my wallet as a joke, as if to say in jest, "Well, we didn't get your DVD-burner, but we got your wallet." It didn't make any sense. Nonetheless, I interpreted the motion clearly as one in jest and responded in good humor, though interiorly, I brought into question everyone's moral character. The class laughed at the whole interplay, and I was pleased that they were so pleased, but moreover, pleased that I, once again, had my stupid external DVD-burner.

I woke up dumbfounded that one of my dreams actually got resolved for once. It felt strange. It felt ... good.

The Balloon Cult

I was up north at my cabin, boating on a lake, when suddenly, I noticed a series of large, dark, gray rubber balloons strung to nearly every cabin and dock. Someone explained to me that this was an enigmatic ritual of a Protestant cult that originated in London.

The Archnemesis

I donned the nature of a powerful superhero who prided himself for being unmatched by all evil-doers. One day, however, a villain took control of a department store. He appeared to be an anti-social, geek-like fellow who had nevertheless demonstrated a keen and deadly know-how of fighting. He was sour and cynical and out to destroy and conquer, and we found each other at a combative standstill and agreed to fight later on in a more organized competition.

Later we did, but I was not present ... in some way. I saw myself and him come back at "half-time" and asked my sister, who was one of the audience members, how the match was going ... as if I had not been there the whole time ... yet also afraid I was losing with a great deal of humiliation. My sister reported that I was, in fact, winning the rounds ... 7 to 2 or something. I was surprised and relieved, but I suspected that this villain, whoever he was, was planning something insidious. He was convincing me that he was weaker while truly being the mightier. I wondered how many rounds we had to run until a victor was declared. I assumed there was no limit until a knock-out or a death. When would that be? Sure, I was winning, but I was probably pouring out all my energy, while my adversary perhaps was just wearing me down, waiting to strike back and eliminate me in my exhaustion. I was filled with anxiety and felt helpless, for I had always been victor over all my opponents with near effortlessness. Fortunately, the second half of the match never happened. I worried about it too much and forgot to dream a conclusion.

Liquid Assets

My grandfather was an owner of a bank (not for real) and was passing the business on to me as he was retiring. I was overwhelmed by the responsibility and the great wealth that would soon be mine. I tried thinking what to do with it. I needed to learn all this business and money lingo, something throughout my whole life I really never cared for. I also was co-working with Tom Redmund (a real multi-millionaire, whom my dad used to work for) and was traveling with him somewhere to make the inheritance all official or something. Our hotel had a large shower the size of a gym shower room, which I employed all to my leisurely solitude.

Somehow, I next found myself on a large lake littered with water skiers, boats, and swimmers of all traditions. My friends and I were swimming amongst them as well. A boat passed by with an intertube in tow. I grabbed onto their connecting rope as did one of my female friends and hitched a ride. I found it rather exciting, but my friend seemed to be drowning beneath the water while she hung on. I eventually pulled her to shore and found her not breathing. I screamed to ask if anyone knew mouth-to-mouth. A funny little man of some exotic tribal heritage stood next to me and calmly, with a very sure and pedagogical and perhaps slightly condescending ethos, assured me I was perfectly capable of doing it myself. So I gave her mouth-to-mouth ... and she was revived. I felt that this man had either been a guardian angel or some kind of morally ambiguous witch doctor.

The Multiproblem Dream Coat

I was in a movie theater, guarding Queen Amidala (the character played by Natalie Portman from the Star Wars prequels) from two large assassination robots and a handful of battle droids. This ambush was being headed by some vile woman of sorts. In my own arsenal, I had only a modern day handgun for defense. They ambushed us, and I pretended to die while reloading my gun down in between some theater seats. Adam, my roommate, was there too. I sprung back up and opened fire. The bullets I unleashed were just make-believe, but my targets seemed to fall down out of pity for my embarrassingly inconvenient circumstance. I took the female leader hostage, who then became completely limp and turned into a red coat. While it made it easier to drag her out of the room, I did hope she would soon turn back to her normal self so as to remain a viable hostage, though I had a pesky feeling she probably wouldn't. I was a bit angry at this utterly irrational transmutation. In the meantime, the two death robots began throwing razor-sharp disks at us as Adam and I continued backing toward the exit. Adam kept getting hit in the head, making no effort whatsoever to dodge. I got scraped in the leg, which turned out to be vastly unpleasant. We went upstairs and found ourselves in our college's library. I crept out unto the balcony, still dragging along the red coat, when more enemies spotted us. This pushed my stress levels over the limit, so I decided just to wake up.

Amphibious Carnivorous Rhinoceros

My family was at a lake sitting in a yellow life raft, under which a submerged rhinoceros was stealthily swimming. The animal suddenly attacked, trying to gore us with its horn through the boat's rubbery bottom. I abandoned ship and swam quickly to the shoreline. When I looked back I saw the rhino move with great speed around the other side of the island. I suspected it wanted to surprise attack me once more, but I knew what it was up to. I got right back onto the boat, as my sister Ashley got onto a nearby log floating on the water. I warned her to keep an eye out for that pesky rhino as I felt it was about to charge back into view. In the meantime, my grandfather also got onto this floating log. Instead of charging, the rhino snuck back underwater and emerged suddenly, stabbing my grandfather. I tried to save him, and in the end ... he was all right.

The area transformed into the living room of my old house. The water was no longer there. Additionally, the rhino started to talk intelligibly. He let me live, but he was interested in eating my 3-year-old sister Sophia as well as my even younger cousin Francesca. Just as he was about to chomp on Sophia's neck, I stepped in and, with these exact words, interjected, "Wait! You're not going to eat her without salt, are you!?" The rhino became confused and hesitated for a moment. Sophia, who had apparently been asleep this whole time, suddenly woke up because her alarm clock went off, stretched, and calmly said, "Oh, I forgot to wake up." The carnivorous horned beast became so perplexed and annoyed that it left the room out of frustration. Upon his departure, Sophia as well as my other cousin Isabella (Francesca was gone now) then began spoon-feeding each other some soup.

My Dream Heist

I planned to steal a large diamond from a high-security museum. In preparation, my sidekick and I were in a dreary basement inventing a special kind of soap that, when applied to water, would release a scent into the air that would make the people who smell it submit their will to my commands. The purpose was facilitate the recruitment of more people for the operation. I readied the soap in a long line of sinks, but my sister and friend happened to come down the stairs. They were discovering my plot so I turned on the sinks in a frenzied madness and splashed the soapy water in their faces with a mad scientist cackle. My sister and friend looked insulted and perturbed and walked away. I started to question my sanity and motives ... and everything. I reassured myself, though, that the chemical reaction would soon be taking place and they wouldn't be a problem. I made a note that we should use more soap in the future for faster results.

My sidekick, however, did not look so optimistic. His conscience began gnawing, asking the big questions: "Are we sure we're doing the right thing?" and "Is there a God?" True to my supervillain role, though at first with a small show of humanity and character complexity, I responded, "I'm not quite sure we're doing the right thing. I don't think there's a God but I could be wrong." He then asked, "Then what's the meaning of life?" I responded in these exact words, "Well, all men strive for happiness, and happiness, I think, is the maximization of one's pleasure." And then I went on, "Sometimes other people have to suffer to satisfy your own desires." I said this rather downcast but with some heartfelt conviction. This egoistically hedonist perspective seemed to sway my skeptical, conscience-oppressed sidekick back to our nefarious designs.

I went upstairs and found my sister and friend there and apologized for my strange behavior. I explained to them, nonetheless, that they would soon lose their free will. They voiced some doubts about this claim. As proof of my power, I motioned to my younger siblings whom I had also subjected to soapy brainwashing some time earlier. They were being a bit rowdy, and I told them to stop, and they immediately stopped. Such a thing never happens with the younger generation, but it did. They obeyed. My sister and friend were convinced that they no longer had free will and thus naturally joined us in the crafting of our upcoming heist.

I, along with a promising company of followers, had personal cloaking devices that would make us invisible. We got into the palatial museum where this diamond was. I was partnered with a fellow thief named "Marshal." Marshal and I were creeping up to the auditorium where the diamond was kept. Today, the diamond was being displayed to the public, and crowds were sometimes a trial to maneuver. If we were touched when enshrouded, the guards could likely detect us. The row of doors to the room were being shut and numerous guards in suits were blocking the remaining entrances. Furthermore, they kept ambling back and forth, so I had to tip-toe discreetly out of their way several times. There was no safe place to breathe. Sometimes, I would impact the floor too loudly and a guard would snap a glance over to me with suspicious eyes. They didn't see me though. It was immensely exciting.

Marshal finally crept his way into position. I followed and barely made it before the last door shut. The treasure room resembled my college library. Scads of people filled the upper level balcony which circled all around the structure. We made quick work to avoid making physical contact with the crowds. Fancy acrobatics were employed. At one point, I jumped off the balcony and adhered to the wall using my suit's special surface-sticking gloves.

Something strange began happening. I started seeing myself in third person perspective, and, moreover, I resembled a large ant (as I was still adhering to the wall). A woman from my troop said she could see me too. I was no longer invisible. I got onto the balcony again and met Marshal amongst the crowds, who told me that the cloaking devices had malfunctioned, and we were no longer invisible (albeit the ant transformation was unexplained and also quickly forgotten). He insisted on aborting the mission. He strongly urged to get out of the room as soon as possible and go past the guards inconspicuously. I wanted to carry on the operation and urged that we try to re-engage our invisibility. Besides, I told him, the guards would check us and discover our advanced equipment and arrest us (though all of it was hidden pretty well under the suits we were wearing). He complied, but then I changed my mind soon after and went along with his original plan, thinking that if they see us disappear suddenly, that would be bad (it was lucky enough they didn't see us reappear in the first place ... or did they?).

To our "luck", three or four security personnel walked up to us and said they were conducting random security checks, and, from their voices and faces, they were out for blood wherever they could get it. They asked to see Marshal's camera that he was holding. In truth, the camera was a far more complex multi-purpose device than that, but it did function as a camera too. I didn't know what kind of incriminating footage Marshal had on it, but I had a very bad feeling. It had video footage too, not just still images. All the video on it consisted of clips of different people having a good time while they seemed to levitate. Marshal had apparently introduced this cloaking technology to some friends and had filmed it for fun, making it look like they were flying but were really just being supported by a cloaked and very silly Marshal. I leapt in to explain what the guards were seeing. First I said very casually, "Hey, I bet you don't know how we did that?" as if I had nothing to fear. They concurred, and I said, "Yeah, it works the same way how David Copperfield the magician managed to do it. It's pretty cool isn't it?" They agreed and even seemed to buy it until one of them asked, "How does it work?" And I smiled, "Well, David Copperfield told us under the condition we wouldn't tell anybody else. I'd like to tell you, but I can't."

Miraculously, we got past the security checkpoint. Maybe there was a fight or maybe it was a big continuity gap. We exited the auditorium and made way up a dirty metal staircase. Marshal seemed pretty depressed and suddenly walked back downstairs. I followed him, wondering what he was doing, but he disappeared. The floor of the room that was just outside the auditorium was now covered with a vast array of laser detection beams. Conveniently, I wanted to get across it to go through a door. I activated a semi-levitation device on my shoes that were designed to walk just a few inches off the ground, which was perfect for avoiding these lasers. And so I got out of there finally ... all the way out of there.

Perchance to Dream

At college, we were about to perform a Shakespeare play. Backstage, the director was testing me on lines, and I found I needed much improvement. I rationalized my incompetence with the excuse that the script had been heavily edited from the original. I didn't worry too much because I thought the play was weeks away ... except, of course, it was actually today. Rather than scramble for lines, I scrambled for my costume.

I scavenged the backstage to find some kind of Elizabethan-style cape. The costume room eventually evolved into a full-fledged costume store and yet it still managed to offer a sorry selection. Eventually, I came across a boy who had just purchased a rather fine furry black cape and asked to borrow it until I found a better one. Out of amazing generosity, he agreed.

I exited the shop into a larger shopping mall with the intent to get back to the theater, or where I thought the theater was going to be. This was a catastrophic mistake, for I became hopelessly lost. I tried making sense of a mall directory, nearly waking myself up in feverish mental exertion to decipher it. I knew I was dreaming and managed not only to force myself to stay unconscious but force myself to conceive of clear, articulate, readable text upon the directory's display. I was desperate ... but the play must go on!

The next thing I knew, the play was over, and I was hanging out with the rest of the cast and crew outside the theater. Someone asked me how I thought it went. In honesty, I responded, "Actually, I have no idea. Truthfully, I don't remember a thing about it. It was as if I wasn't even there. What happened? What do you think? Do you remember? I don't remember anything. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm pretty worried." I never got a straight answer from anyone nor did anyone seem to be care about my worrisome amnesia. Finally, someone directed me to some kind of amorphously interactive three-dimensional magazine/video/both, which showed what happened at our curtain call which was somehow being narrated by the actor Johnathan Frakes (the actor who played Commander Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation). There was also a picture of me on my back as I held up a blade without a handle with both my hands. I don't remember doing this. It was a dramatic pose though. From the evidence, I surmised that the play went ... fine.

Wine and Die

I possessed superhuman abilities, particularly immortality and Spider-Man-like wall-climbing. I lived in a large mansion, and in celebration of my birthday, my friend challenged me to a duel with wine bottles. We played in a very large warehouse (a storage room of the mansion, I think) where shelves upon shelves of finely crafted wine were racked the ceiling. We would take these wine bottles and sacrilegiously hack each other with them. Sometimes we would throw them and cause shard-filled explosions. Both of us were so materially well-off that the passing of these great vintages didn't matter, and since we were both immune to death apparently, we had nothing to fear. Sometimes when a wine would explode in a splash and we would get what we could into our open mouths with the utmost and unapologetic decadence.

I grasped a cylindrical bottle that turned out to be "Spider-Man 'Practical Joke' Chocolates." Apparently, they were chocolates in the shape of Spider-Man that would explode in a yellow goo when chewed or subjected to sudden impact. From a distance, I slung one of these prank delights at my friend and hit him squarely with a brilliant yellow splat. He complimented my triumph.

I dropped down from the very tall wine racks eventually, and found the warehouse to be a large department store with a great variety merchandise. Plastic Samurai swords populated one particular aisle, and decided to switch to these implements for our battle. My friend unsheathed a plastic blade too fast from its box and snapped it in twain at the cross-guard. I, however, recalled that I was proficient in miraculous healing touches and thought I could employ it to mend the plastic as well. I put the two broken pieces back together and laid my finger over the crack and concentrated on fusing them together, but I discovered healing polymer was nearly impossible. So I gave up. I remember thinking in these exact words, "Polymer doesn't work. I can only heal organic cells." Later on in the dream, I mended someone's finger with much greater success.

Then, a girl in her early twenties came into the store with anxious and fearful expressions. Our family knew her for some reason, and we knew she was constantly being followed by someone who wanted to kill her. We hid her, just as the Mafia charged in. The godfather was a strongly built character of small stature, accompanied by two goons of exact dimensions, all vested in fashionable Italian tuxedos. I stepped in front of this Italian force to impede their progress into the shop. I acted like an absent-minded shopper who didn't know how annoying he was. I tried drawing their attention to the various items on the clerk's desk and with surprising success. The bodyguards gathered around, and one of them casually put his hand on the table. As executed in the Godfather movie, I swiftly drilled a knife down into his hand and through the table. I missed though. It nicked the side of his hand a bit, but nothing to be proud of. There was a cry of pain at least.

Because of this, a gunfight broke out. The shop all of a sudden was now a store that almost exclusively sold firearms, so it was particularly insane. The clerk, a good friend of mine, dodged beneath the counter, and I took the mafia leader hostage by bringing my knife up to his neck and using him as a human shield, despite my invincibility. Regiments of German, Russian, and French soldiers suddenly joined fray though with ambiguous allegiances. A German trooper trained his sniper rifle at me from across the aisle. I thought he had been on my side or just wanted to shoot the godfather whom I was holding. I didn't want to die, however, so I retreated behind a rack of merchandise. He came around at point-blank and pointed again with his barrel. He announced that he was betraying me and apologized with a sarcastic sneer. I didn't sweat it, recalling my immortal nature. Further, the trigger clicked but no ammunition flowed out. His face dropped with fright. I threw aside the godfather and scurried over to the soldier, while saying how disappointed I was in his treachery and how sorry I was now that I had "to do this." I inserted my knife into the guy's neck and slit it cleanly over to the other side. It was gross. He began falling over, but I eased him down with my arms, as I told him in heartfelt sincerity, "I forgive you. God Bless you. God save you. God have mercy on you." With little capability of voice left, he thanked me and quit the mortal realm.

The mansion was now a strict boarding school run by nuns which was intended to be only for girls but had many boys enrolled as well for uncontinuitous reasons. I was walking outside on the green lawn during an overcast day, when a woman halted her car on the road next to us and, with an impressive arm, cast a softball-like object onto the high roof of our scholastic institution. Promptly she began driving away. I was about to leap in front of the car and stop her via special powers and ask her what she was doing. I suspected it was a bomb or listening device originated from our many enemies. I woke up instead.

Reincarnation of the Jedi

A couple of friends and I were Jedi Knights dueling each other for practice, occasionally searing the hems of each other's Jedi cloaks with our lightsabers. I wasn't too terribly worried about accidental dismemberment because I trusted in the guidance of the Force as well as mechanical limb replacement. We were doing this at a resort with motel-like lodging. I eventually departed from the rest of the group and saw a red lightsaber glowing under a tree during the night. I walked over and discovered that the saber-bearer was a friend from college. I greeted him kindly, but he didn't answer. He just stood there shaking and sweating like a mad man. I asked what was wrong, but he didn't make a single move until, of course, he raised his lightsaber to kill me. He did so very slowly and psychotically like he didn't know what he was doing, so it was easy to suppress his blow with my own saber (which was a blue one, by the way). My Jedi sense told me he was suffering from extreme jealousy since he was expecting to be the Valedictorian but wasn't ... and perhaps because he envied the Jedi for their power but didn't have it. He certainly wasn't wielding a lightsaber very well. Apparently he had simply gone completely and angrily insane. Poor guy. He had such intellectual promise.

The dream somehow switched to a totally different storyline. Apparently, my dad had received visions that I was to die and be reincarnated as my brother Gabriel (who, at this point in real life, was only a couple months old). There was an understanding, however, that this was to happen before Gabriel's birth, indicating perhaps this dream's setting took place before that ... that at least would make sense but it didn't. Eventually, I was under the honest suspicion that I was about to die in my sleep somehow by natural means (probably heart failure). I think I knew or suspected I was dreaming, but I was convinced that I would really die in my sleep. I felt what I thought was death ... my heart slowly stopping as I tried to get in the right mindset for eternal judgment. I remember invoking the angels to aid my soul to be in a worthy state. I said, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner," and simply, "I'm sorry." My death came a few times throughout the dream in this fashion. At one point, I think, I thought I was dead but still walking and talking to people about what had happened. I recall saying to my mother, who had Gabriel in her arms, "Dad's vision says that I'm suppose to change into Gabriel." Whether a ghost or just some kind of narrator, that's what I said.

I recall trying to see how reincarnation could be justified in accordance to philosophic and theological truth. I knew that the Church condemned the belief, so it puzzled me how this could happen. I thought that maybe this would be a rare exception. Nonetheless, I thought there were major difficulties with this in terms of Aristotelian metaphysics. I thought, how could my soul replace Gabriel's soul in his body? The basis for this question was that after my soul would be separated from my body, it couldn't assume a different body ... could it? Then I speculated that perhaps Gabriel's body would be identical to mine, which was possible but unlikely, for we both had the same parents and the fertilization process could be such that the genetical material could be the same. This, I determined ... made sense.

Faelosophy

I was at my college pursuing a philosophy degree (as in real life), and upon entering my junior year, I came upon the course titled "Faelosophy" (or it could have been called Laocosophy, Laeconsophy, Phaedosophy, or something), which was a discipline of philosophical study that enabled philosophers to walk through walls.

This got me excited and all the more intrigued by the Liberal Arts tradition. As I understood, Faelosophy was a highly advanced field of classical philosophy that logically flowed out of the writings of Aristotle and Aquinas. There were "Faelosophs" here and there throughout ancient Greece and the Middle Ages who had achieved this level of transcendent natural reason. I understood that Thomas Aquinas was one (as well as Plotinus, I think). Aristotle was the first real "Faelosoph" to have successfully walked through a wall, while Socrates and Plato had manifested some limited Faelosophic traits as well.

Faelosophy did not tend to do well in modern philosophy, and I got the impression it had been especially neglected or corrupted during the last half-century. The moderns didn't so much deny that Faelosophs existed, they simply just ignored them. At best, they thought it was philosophical decadence. Perhaps some medieval philosophers got too carried away with it and later gave the moderns the occasion to look down upon it with vague dismissive excuses. But current day Thomistic academics going against the stream still upheld it as a beautifully intellectual facet of traditional wisdom, though only taught or even known about in small corners of the earth ... like my college.

I was simply ecstatic about learning this philosophy. I thought that something like this, if it were given another chance, would be outrageously popular in today's world. Surprisingly, I found an unimaginable lack of wonder planted even in the hearts of some of the Catholic students around me who had studied it. I walked alongside a senior philosophy major who had taken Faelosophy and told him how cool I thought it was and how I knew nothing about it. I eagerly interrogated him with a gripping wonder, trying to get from him at least a tiny hint into these awe-inspiring truths, since I was still taking prerequisites for the course and had to wait another year. The senior said something like, "Oh, yeah, Faelosophy is really awesome. I'm really thankful I took the class." But his tone was lackluster ... as if he was talking about a slightly above-average course on logic. I asked him what were the depths of his Faelosophic practices, and he replied to his satisfaction that, although not able to walk bodily through walls, he could project his hearing through a wall and listen in to conversations on the other side. It was only at this point when I realized Faelosophy could be used for evil, like breaking into banks ... but perhaps I was thinking too hard.

The guy I was talking to seemed like an average student, and judging by his words, I thought that perhaps Faelosophy was too demanding for the average person to experience. Needless to say, it seemed like advanced philosophy, and someone without a real drive for learning would ultimately dismiss it as too demanding. I thought that maybe this was why it was so obscure and unknown, except among reclusive philosophers who did not publicly show it off in fantastical display.

I remember walking around and waiting the class to learn it, wondering how on earth did all this make sense. How did doing metaphysics and reasoning engage the mind to the point of allowing the body to travel through solid blocks of matter? In some way, it made sense. I feared, however, that this was only a dream, and the class would never come, and I would never know. Alas, I had it all figured out.

For Tall Diet

I was analyzing a detailed chart that reconstructed the events of another man's dream. I found it particularly interesting and was jealous that I hadn't dreamed it myself (later when I woke up, however, I realized somewhat to my delight that I had ... or something). I remember the chart specified the areas of the dream that were induced by certain influences the day before, the last portion of which apparently being sparked by alcoholic consumption.

Eventually, I started dreaming the dream I was dreaming about reading about (yes, that sentence is technically correct). It began with me down in the streets of a large city (probably New York or something), where Godzilla suddenly erupted out the side of a building and chomped its way down the street, smashing brick and street-light like negligible vegetation. The shrapnel nearly cut me in twain. I ascended a building through a stairwell, got to the rooftop, and looked the monster level in the eye. Now, it wasn't an overgrown dinosaur but an overgrown man. This metamorphosis went unnoticed by me. I screamed at him with a volume he'd listen to, demanding him to explain why he was so tall. He gave an explanation ... but I can't remember what it was.

Next thing I knew, he had shrunk to normal levels and we fought hand-to-hand, violently tussling through some random apartment. We broke through a room with lavish furniture and a grand piano, whose music stand had two golden hands that clenched shut to grab us as we came close.

A witch entered the room. She looked reasonable and friendly enough, dressed in black with a typical witch hat and asked us kindly to please stop beating each other up. She encouraged us to use our gifts for constructive enterprises. She also celebrated our lack of beards, saying, "Oh, and I'm so glad you don't have beards. My uncle had a beard, and I detested it." She then called in one of her butlers. The servant entered, standing only half the size of a normal person, possibly some kind of elf, and ironically sporting an impressively well-trimmed beard. The witch issued some instructions to him, whereupon the dream transitioned to the next scene.

The next thing I knew was that the giant (my former nemesis ... who could apparently change his height at will) was standing in the middle of the road with a sign that advertised, "For Tall Diet," and an arrow pointing toward the witch's apartment, now converted into a restaurant, which was packed full of costumers being served portions of a very generous size. I walked amongst the tables, and Ted (a random person my parents knew in real life) offered me a share of his giant salmon. I said no thanks, because I could already receive as much salmon as I pleased here.

I then "realized" how the labor ought to be divided. Obviously, the giant had the task of advertising, but as for me and the witch that had yet to be fine-tuned. I suggested that I (though I was talking about myself in the third person as if I was two different people and yet maybe not) be assigned to the entertainment, namely conduct skits of standup comedy. I noted, however, that I or "he" was a horrible standup comedian, but I didn't care. I or "he" had to do something. I then figured that the witch should be the manager and her elves the table waiters. The elves, in their butler-esque personalities and manners, would be ideal for the job, and I found it amusing to think of the witch, in her eccentric clothes, coming up to the costumers periodically and ask them, "Is everything to your satisfaction?" This entrepreneurial masterpiece was laid waste by my sudden consciousness.

Hospital Bureaucracy

A large hospital wing was donated to my college and named the "Donato"-something, with "something" being the name of the donor whoever it was (the whole naming style was some kind of Latin contrivance). I found this exceptionally dim-witted, especially in contrast to the college's other buildings which were named after saints. Anyway, someone committed some crime which involved the new building, and at the trial, a witness suddenly became ill and started foaming at the mouth. Some random girl and I picked him up and rushed him to the hospital, but the medical facility could not admit any more patients, as it was unusually packed that day. I demanded to see someone of authority, so they led me through a room packed full of bureaucrats, one of whom was assigned to plead my case. I explained the nature of the emergency, but he simply apologized and said there was nothing he could do. I finally busted into a room filled with medical beds and sought out one that was empty. Upon finding one, I put the dying man down, whose condition worsened to the point of suffocation. I requested some breathing-aid from a nearby nurse, but the nurse said all such devices were being used at the moment. I then requested anything that could work in a pinch. There seemed to be an instrument resembling a large ziplock back with tiny holes in it that could assist one's breathing when put over one's mouth. I demanded one of those things, and despite some hesitation, they finally rendered one to me. I threw it over the person's mouth, and they began breathing normally again. I scolded the nurses for having put up needless resistance, and cried, "Geese! I tell you! Gosh!" and other disapproving utterances that were far too merciful for their kind. More or else, however, I appreciated the sense of resolution seldom found at the end of a frantic dream.

Magic: The Dreaming

I was playing a game of Magic: The Gathering (a real trading card game) with my old art teacher from high school. I thought I had won the day until, suddenly, he drew 3 more cards from his deck for some questionable reason and played them, countering my last attack. We kept on playing, and it started looking grim. The fictional imaginative components of the game started to become real, where I eventually found my art teacher sailing on a ship toward an underwater minefield. He thought to navigate it safely and that I would die if I pursued him. We sailed for awhile, but nothing happened. Finally, he docked the boat and jumped on to the shoreline. The tree next to him transformed and became a giant walking tree (like an Ent from Lord of the Rings) which appeared to be under his complete control. I docked my boat further down on the coast, where there were a greater number of trees, and upon my landing, all the trees likewise came to life under my control. My teacher told his one tree to throw large boulder at me. I commanded my battalion to do likewise at him. I remembered vividly how the enemy rocks were tumbling down through the air in swirling violence, but I dodged them artfully. Suddenly, after a few moments of this, all the trees sought to destroy both of us. Their allegiance had been a mere fad. I managed to engage one of the trees in brief diplomacy, telling him that my enemy, the art teacher, was notorious and hostile toward the environment (a lie that I just made up on the spot) and that with my help, we could easily destroy him. The tree seemed to give way into my persuasion, but I was suddenly uprooted from unconsciousness.

The Mystery of Alan Brunswick

I was attending a large intricately architecturally amazing school, which was a hodgepodge of my college and other things, complete with secret passages and adventures of all species which I enjoyed for the better part of this very long and epic dream ... but I can't remember most of it. The surviving details are rather disappointing.

I was sitting with one of the staff members in an office with my father, talking to them about a guy named Alan Brunswick (no idea where that name came from). Alan Brunswick apparently was a famous historical figure at some time, and the staff member graciously handed over some of his precious personal letters. He told us to take good care of them ... and not lose them. A few seconds later, my dad lost them, and I brought that to his attention, but no one remembered what I was talking about, so I dropped the subject. Another staff member in the room had a suspicious glare yet treated me with some respect, addressing me as if I was a minor celebrity, though under his skin, I detected some ulterior motive as well as animosity. He took me to a wall and lifted up a section of it, revealing nothing but a small screw on a deeper layer of wall. He showed me that if the screw was pushed and held down like a button, a small trap door would open. He beckoned me to enter. So I did. A nearby trapdoor opened. With great apprehension, I gathered the courage and jumped down into the dark abyss.

I believe I woke up but fell right back to sleep and the same dream picked up. In any case, I found myself in the school cafeteria and wondered how I got there. I had no memory since I had jumped in the hole. I walked over to my friend John (from my real college) and asked him, "Remember that time when I jumped down that hole?" And he said, "Yes." I replied, "How long ago was that?" He replied, "About a week." This to my mind indicated something nefarious was afoot. I spotted the suspicious staff member and marched up to him, saying, "Do you know what happened when I jumped down the hole? ... nothing!" He merely acted mysterious and didn't reply.

Eventually, a new student with a muscular build entered the scene. He challenged anyone to a little hand-to-hand combat. Mr. Wurtz (the real dean of student life from my college) suddenly tackled him to the ground, but the student fought his way up, despite Mr. Wurtz's firm hold (Mr. Wurtz himself was also ripped). When, however, they stopped wrestling and began boxing, Mr. Wurtz proved to be the superior and vanquished him with a series of uppercuts that were too fast to block.

Sadly, that's all I can recall. I assure you the lost portions of the dream were better.

Mount Doonesbury

It was dark times, and aliens were trying to take over the earth again. I belonged to an elite task force that formed the last resistance. We disguised ourselves in pedestrian garments to avoid detection in the night by the alien spies. The general of the resistance disguised himself as a fireman and drove a firetruck.

Eventually, I got into a violent melee with old high school friends. First, it was just for fun but became mortally serious. We battled in a large warehouse-like arena, where four items were floating around that we each took turn using against each other, namely, the Sword Shard of Narcil (from Lord of the Rings, specifically the weapon that killed Sauron), the One Ring of Invisibility (also from Lord of the Rings too), a nondescript shield, and a locket that magically healed the wearer's wounds. Right when I would inflict damage on one of my opponents, they managed to find the locket and revive themselves completely. One of them found the Ring and dared to put it on, so I scrambled up onto some tall boxes in hope to be out of reach of their incoming invisible assaults. At this point I became angry and I grabbed the Sword Shard, completely butchering one of them, leaving behind a bloody mess. I then departed in haste, but his friend came to his aid and healed him with the meddlesome locket.

Later on, I learned that the comic strip "Doonesbury" (a real newspaper comic strip back in the day that I read a couple times) was authored by the brother of one of my high school friends. I then read an old episode made in 1997 (in the dream), finding it had striking resemblance to Calvin and Hobbes (a real comic strip that I did read), specifically involving, in this case, a lion of sorts jumping into a fridge and eating a large portion of honeydew melon. The main character picked the remnants of the honeydew up and took it over to the porch to show the family what the naughty lion had done, but then he tripped and smashed his face into the melon. The family then accused him of eating all the honeydew. I found this odd comic to be most humorous and most unlike the other Doonesbury episodes I had read in real life. This dream was really stupid.

The Titanosaurus Hex

First part I can remember involved a giant Titan-like god casting down thunderbolts upon my friends and me, while we were trying to talk innocently and in no way that would merit divine displeasure. Finally, I became enraged by this supernatural annoyance and counterattacked with a sample of my own god-like ordnance. I projected my hand forward and made the mountains behind him shake with violent earthquakes, until the deity lost his balance and toppled down. He was surprised by my impressive display of retaliatory omnipotence and yielded the war to me for now.

I made efforts to sort out my bedroom, though under a severe depression caused by some inexplicable sense of darkness. I opened my file cabinet and chanced to see a folded piece of paper, which I at once knew was evil. I opened it up and found pages stapled together with mysterious satanic drawings that I didn't care to look at for too long. I deduced this to be the source of my spiritual persecution. I handed it off to my father and told him to burn it, which he did.

I then suspected one of my high school friends to be behind this witchcraft, one, in particular, who had apparently fallen to the dark arts of neo-pagan and diabolical magic. I told my friends about the object and demanded to know where it came from. The friend in question claimed that same paper had previously been owned by another friend who had since become very involved with questionable spiritualistic practices. In the midst of the interrogation, the Titan god came down from the heavens once again, this time in the form of a gargantuan Tyrannosaurus Rex. His large, scaly head overflowed the frame of the large window he looked through. I told him nonchalantly to go away and reminded him of our last encounter. He, however, said he had equipped special armor for this second visit. Upon further inspection, I could see each of his scales plated with a rough, gold texture, which I assumed to be the mystical and Hephastian armor of which he spoke. I had great confidence that I could defeat him still but worried that this armor might make the difference this time around. Anyways, we never rematched, because I anticlimactically woke up.

Byzantine Rabbits

I was attending an Eastern-Rite Russian Liturgy with a few of my friends. The congregation stood in a long rectangular line while the priests, deacons, and altar servers marched up and down with incense and chanting. Furthermore, at one end of this rectangle, a chorister stood chanting strange eastern rhythms and tones while he held a large wooden crate above his head, which was filled with a maracas and tambourines. Though the net effect of the sound resembled something jarringly tribal, I figured that their tradition, so foreign to my own, was old enough to have this pass as legitimate liturigical music.

At one point, the priest directed the people's attention to a projector that was showing various paintings of landscapes. The quality of the artwork was a bit amateur but admirable. The priest told us that they were painted by one of the parishioners. The people clapped in support. The priest then informed us that the artist was named ... Julian! I turned around and said, "What? No. I didn't paint those." Apparently, there was another Julian in our midst ... one who was a killer-rabbit (like the one from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail). Julian the Rabbit ran out of his little hole as people applauded in praise. Strangely, however, Julian began to offend me. He shouted vicious things and desired my blood. I squashed him neatly underfoot before he did this. This bloodshed, however, brought about the vengeance of his family. Dozens of killer rabbits started swarming out of burrows and into my body. They failed as well. Their little furry bodies were easy to squish in my hands, though incredibly disgusting. I plastered one on top of the other in horrific gore. I knew I was dreaming at this point and became concerned about what this meant for my subconscious.

Keys to the Kingdom

My friend, Clint, and I were unfallen, sinless human beings living peacefully in the Garden of Eden. We weren't exactly Adam and Eve because we were both male and both clothed (and it was notably not gay, to be clear). It was also unclear whether or not other humans existed at this point. In any case, we had full knowledge of history, about the Fall of Man, and everything, though a bit confused at the present timeline. We found the gate which caged the garden in from the outside world and opened it up. In contrast to the fruitful greenness of the garden, the outside was a colorless desert. Since we had not sinned yet, we thought it safe to explore the outside without fear of never returning. We both had keys about our necks given to us by God to unlock the gate, though I was still concerned we might lose them in a symbolic act of sin or innocent absent-mindedness. When I was about to shut the gate, a large white, shaggy lama/dog thing passed by and sauntered over to where we were. It looked like a friendly animal, but I got a bad feeling, though I didn't know why. It wanted to go into the garden, and Clint seemed to favor the idea. I felt uneasy letting outside creatures inside, but I gave into Clint's sympathetic demands and allowed the dog/lama in. When we shut the gate and began crossing the desert, I realized that the creature had obviously been the devil. I remembered that Adam had been the protector of the garden but had allowed Satan to enter and therefore tempt Eve. Clint bore an expression of guilt and fear when I told him this. We thought about going back in to find the lama/dog demon, but we knew at this point, it had probably changed shape to elude us. So we just shrugged our shoulders and continued on our way. What's the worse that could happen?

Somehow I became a time-traveller and journeyed to England some time after the Protestant Reformation and befriended an old sea captain with a curly beard. I told him that I had come from the future but he thought me crazy. One day we were sitting on a coastline, along with some sailors and lords, smoking pipes and watching the sea mist. The sea captain casually commented how he was the only Catholic in the port. His liege lord made some short remark in disgust. The sea captain laughed and said in a kind of Irish humor, "Well, that's how I was raised up." The Protestant lord began pontificating on how one's environment shouldn't affect the way one ought to be. I stood up to object to his silly overconfidence in free will, and while I talked, I noticed that the water was very shallow near the coast. I walked on the puddle-deep water and continued my tirade, "Of course one's environment is important for people growing up. How can you deny it? You think any environment is okay? Oh, look!" I said sarcastically pointing to the illusion of my water-walking. "I'm walking on the water! It's not drowning me! Yes, even the ocean is a good place to raise children!" I'm pretty sure it didn't make sense. Then I changed the subject a bit but still maintained a strong tone of sarcasm, "I'm Jesus Christ! Oh ... but I'm not Peter. Peter couldn't walk on water. Only Jesus could." I then came back to the sea captain who looked at me with a great stare. "Do you get it?" I asked, and then explained after a pause, "The Protestants only care about Jesus and not about Peter or anyone else, even though Peter did walk on water with Christ's help. You know, Protestants deny Petrine authority, even though the authority was given to him by Christ." The captain finally understood but wasn't particularly impressed. I personally thought it was brilliant, though in retrospect, very dumb. I then said to him in secrecy, "Remember when I told you I was from the future?" The captain's face became even more unimpressed, "Yes," he said drearily. I then set out to prove my reputation by predicting future events. I had with me a large number of keys about my neck, ones that I had acquired in the future that would unlock doors and treasures in the past. I then remembered that one of these keys could open the Garden of Eden. I "understood" now how to show men back into paradise.

Then I woke up, because maids were knocking on the door of my Italian hotel room (it was my college Rome semester ... in real life).

Misconciliation

I believed myself to be a priest and entered a confessional booth to hear confessions. When I sat down, I heard two people talking from behind the screen and asked them jokingly if they were possessed by multiple demons. They laughed, followed by an awkward silence. The first guy confessed how angry he was at people trying to fuse religion with contemporary art forms, citing an example of some religious poster that employed pictures of Marilyn Monroe. I explained how using contemporary art is not intrinsically evil. I explained how the mythological creature of the phoenix in the Early Church was an example for the symbol of the resurrection, despite originally being from pagan mythology.

Then my mother suddenly opened the confessional door, and I quickly absolved the guy, muttering "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," and left with haste. Then I remembered that I was, in fact, not a priest, and consequently not equipped with the supernatural faculties of forgiving sins, but since the man thought I was such a person, his confession was, according to canon law, still valid. Furthermore, since I had honestly forgotten that was not a priest, I was not culpable for it and, furthermore, hopefully not excommunicated.

Ninja Beer

I was a ninja, ordering two Italian beers on a train. The beers were both "Nastro Azzurro" (a real Italian brand that means "Nasty Blue") which I opened and guzzled vivaciously, after which I left without paying ... by accident. Because of this, the police tried to gun me down as I ninja-hopped from car to car. Finally, when they looked more diplomatic, I gave them their money.

The Head of the Church

I was onlooking with some tourists at a famous historical papal assassination that had already taken place. By means of some unexplained time-traveling technique, we were brought back to witness the event as if we were actually there. In fact, I think we were actually there for all practical concerns.

On the other side of the road, the Pope was riding in a car, which looked to be a 1930's model, when all of a sudden, a Muslim terrorist ran past and dropped a land mine in front of it. The two Swiss Guards driving saw this, halted the car just in time, and immediately helped the Pope abandon the automobile. This Pope had a walking disability, so they hoisted him out on his wheel-chair, but then a tragic miscalculation was made. They accidentally set the wheel chair right on the land mine. A dramatic explosion erupted. The bodies of the guards were flung in opposite directions, and as the smoke cleared, the wreckage of the car was all but completely incinerated. There was no sign of the Pope at all ... either disintegrated, or, we speculated, perhaps because he had sat directly on the mine, his body had been rocketed skyward and had yet to land. Just as we thought this, a charred, mostly skinless skull with a miter fell directly beside us. A girl screamed.

For some reason, we somehow got the bright idea that we would take the head and hide it, for otherwise, the Muslims behind this murder might desecrate it. So my friends and I began lugging around this papal remnant, which had, I only realized later, now included the torso as well as the head. Upon reaching a large garbage pit, my friends decided to go insane and begin chucking the pontiff's head and torso into it, retrieving it, and then doing it again. Scandalized, I promptly put a stop to this. As I was climbing out of the pit with the remains, one of my friends, once again, grabbed it and threw it back in. One female laughed a hearty cackle at that act, and I turned to her and called her a "b*tch!" The group went silent and then grew angry at my language. I stared them down defiantly, and they seemed to regain some sanity and repented their act.

The police had begun to pursue us on account of our macabre luggage, so we climbed a large tree. They surrounded us and started to open fire. One of my friends turned out to be Wolverine (the superhero from X-Men), and I, as always, turned out to be Spider-Man. We changed into costume, and pounced on the police, and mauled them up real good.

Soda Pope

Pope Benedict XVI was visiting my old high school. There was a long procession into our gym, and I was amongst them. John Paul II was there too, dressed in honorary cardinal-like vestments, though it never struck me that he was supposed to be dead. Instead, he simply looked retired, and stood at the right-hand of the new Pope. Benedict sat down and said that he was really tired and wanting some caffeine. I offered to buy a can of soda for him. He agreed, and I left with haste, eager to serve the Vicar of Christ. Simultaneously, I was thirsty for a bottle of water. I approached the vending machine in the hall but had no coins. I pleaded for a dollar-worth from the person next to me for the sake of the Roman Pontiff, and I got it. The first few coins went in real nice, but the next one got stuck in the slot. I tried to push it in with the next coin, but no good. Finally I managed to get it out with my fingers and try again. First, I thought I bought a Pepsi, and next, I tried for a bottle of water. The coins got stuck again, and I began shaking the machine violently from side to side in desperation. I felt that I was taking an unusually long amount of time. It showed disrespect for the Holy Father. Finally the water bottle came out, but to my horror, I then saw I had two bottles of water in my hands but no Pepsi. Apparently, I forgot to get Pepsi in the first place, and I was down on money. Luckily, I found a stack of warm Pepsi's next to the vending machine. Though not cold, these were better than nothing and still had the necessary caffeine, and I prayed Benedict would understand. But, alas, when I returned to the gym, the papal procession had disappeared. I had taken too long, and failed in my duties to Rome.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Mire

My Rome semester of college had come to an end, and our dean told me to inform the other students where the last meeting was scheduled to take place. I forgot immediately what he had told me and asked the other dean to fill me in again, but he reassured me that he'd just give me Professor Dumbledore's phone number (indeed, the character from Harry Potter), who apparently was the headmaster of my college, so that I could find out everything I needed.

Suddenly, I was looking around Hogwarts (the school in Harry Potter) and found a Catholic Chapel. I also came upon a congregation of students around an Irish priest who was talking about saints, particularly Padre Pio, and how he was finding miraculous artifacts that provide proof of their sainthoods. While they were all looking at one such particular miraculous artifact, I had a toothpick, with a melting piece of butter on the end, into which I began impaling matches, like candles on a cake. I found that I could light them on fire when I assumed a humble outlook and allowed the will of God to work through me. Only one person saw this while the priest busied himself with another miracle. I waited patiently and hoped my miracle happened again when I showed him.

When the priest finished inspecting a potential artifact having belonged to some saint, he started to leave, saying, "I have to show this to someone because I'm quite sure this is miraculous." I interrupted him and asked him to investigate the miracle I discovered. He agreed, and I did it again. At this point, however, escaping my notice, the toothpick with butter turned out to be a chalice of dirt but with the matches still sticking out of. Suddenly, the matches (though I think they were candles now) had sunk into the dirt of the chalice, which began vibrating like an earthquake. The dirt formed cracks that resembled a miniature grand canyon, and when it quaked again, the tip of a blade (like a swordpoint) jutted out for a few seconds and then sank back in. Then, after a third vibration, the whole chalice grew and became resized to now accommodate the size of its new content: an decorative easter egg. At this point, I was under the impression that this phenomenon paralleled exactly the miracles experienced by a current group of Catholic seers, ones comparable to the saints of Fatima. I "remembered" that these supposed seers possessed these egg-like things that would talk and prophesy the future. The priest said that these eggs were proven authentic when one of their prophecies had a "theatrical pause" in its voice, which was, at first, thought to be a glitch and therefore a fake, but it really was so ingeniously placed, symbolizing something so profound, that no one could have made it up except divine creativity itself. I examined my own egg and saw a button on it. I pressed it to hear what it had to say, but it first rang out a synthetic-sounding beep, before it began prophesying in a radio-quality voice. This sound convinced the priest that my artifact, though masterfully made, was a piece of charlatanry. I was a bit disappointed and not entirely convinced. I investigated further and unearthed from the cup a silly cartoon drawn very badly and featuring some demonic imagery. I surrendered to the truth that it was fake and probably evil. I handed it over to the priest to be blessed and destroyed.

The Blizzard

At a Dairy Queen in Italy, I ordered a "Medium Double-Stuffed Oreo Blizzard with Chocolate Syrup." I paid with a credit card, and during the transaction, the cashier withdrew an old receipt of mine from a previous week and showed it to me, asking if the signature on it was authentic. I looked at it and noticed that it just read, "Julia" and omitted my last name completely. I told him that I was quite certain that it was fake.

While I was waiting for my cool treat, I stepped outside for a minute for some air and then re-entered, finding the cashier to have vanished, replaced by unknown co-workers. I budged in line and tried to explain with great care, closing my eyes, and making very delicate but firm hand gestures, that I never received my "Medium Double-Stuffed Oreo Blizzard with Chocolate Syrup." But when I opened my eyes to stare the manager in the eye, I found myself on a school bus, which was on its way back to our hotel. Vexed and perturbed, I tried to think what in the world had just happened to make me suddenly change locations. I tentatively assigned blame to the Dairy Queen staff for perhaps knocking me unconscious and putting me on this bus to get rid of me. It sounded reasonable. I climbed to the back of the bus to the emergency hatch, where I found a group of my friends, to whom I then explained the situation and asked whether or not I might get into trouble if I should open this emergency hatch. They said most certainly yes. "Very well," I said, without worry, and said in these exact words: "I'll just have to pass through it preternaturally." I then proceeded to pass through the hatch like a ghost. I dipped my head in first and slowly moved the rest of me through. It worked quite smoothly, like walking through a thick waterfall of ... chocolate syrup. I was quite proud of myself for having walked through a solid metal wall for the first time in a dream.

I sped toward the Dairy Queen in rapid, road-runner-like fashion and found a new array of cashiers to argue with. I explained again my situation with the "Medium Double-Stuffed Oreo Blizzard" that I never received and also, for good measure, about the credit card fraud in hope that it might remind them of who I am. The cashier left to talk to the manager, and the others followed. I waited too long and finally gave up. No worries though, for I knew my stay at Italy would not be long, and I would never have to endure their bad service again. I met two girls whom I drove back with and started talking about Duluth (a real city in northern Minnesota). They hung on every word I said as I expounded in fascinating detail how Lake Superior looked like an ocean and how great big freighters could ship iron ore and taconite from Duluth through channels into the Atlantic Ocean and all the way to Europe (this is all true by the way). We also complained about the poor Italian service at Dairy Queen and vowed never to return there again.

Homestar's Home

I met the guy who made the animations for Homestar Runner (a sensational internet cartoon originally at homestarrunner.com). He appeared as a very tall, but in no way gangly, nerdish fellow. I shook his hand, praising him for his work, to which I (in reality) have had long vigils of devotions. He invited me to his house: a large warehouse poorly decorated to look slightly habitable. To my delight, I learned that they lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, near where I lived (in reality). In the living room, there were four guys sitting around a TV, one of whom I suspected to be the guy who played the voices for the Homestar Runner cartoon characters. He eventually stepped up and revealed himself: a much more sleek fellow of subtle Asian features. I was equally honored to meet him but noticed many of his fingers had been bitten off. He explained somberly that he had recently gotten into a fight at a high school where his opponent had monstrously munched off some of his fingers. I didn't know what to say, except give him my sympathies. I also desired from him a vocal sample of his characters, but I failed to gather up the courage to actually ask him.

I eventually asked the animator what his favorite character was. He said "Peter" (or something), one that I didn't recognize. His second favorite was also unknown to me. He showed me a clip of this obscure Homestar character, resembling a large gray bear or something, and I found it most impressive though utterly unfamiliar, despite my frequent attendance to viewing all their episodes.

Then, I walked into their kitchen and found my mom and my friend Karen sitting there. I was a bit taken aback by their presence and the coincidence that they should be here too. Apparently, they knew the Homestar Runner producers as well. To top it off, Father Altier (a priest from our diocese whom I admire) walked into the residence and casually grabbed something out of their refrigerator. This, too, was weird. I supposed the priest was close friends with these guys too. I was freaking out though. It was like a dream come true ... even though it most certainly was not. It wasn't even that spectacular of a dream in retrospect, though it seemed incredible at the time. I was pretty sure that this was really happening, but, I must admit, I had that gnawing feeling that this was another tragic illusion which reality would soon shatter.

The Altar Girl

I dreamt that an incredibly attractive barbie doll-like girl was visiting my college and was attending mass at our chapel (that part was entirely based off something that actually happened). There was a spirit of experimentation and rebellion in the air, partially incited by the strange conglomeration of exotic feast days and rare consecutive liturgical exceptions that found its way into our otherwise harmlessly traditional Catholic celebration. I also had an understanding that we might be celebrating a whole different rite than the one to which we were accustomed. One of the sacristans, a noted stickler for liturgical norms and hardcore traditionalist, was walking from pew to pew whispering to everyone, "All rules are off." Eventually, he got tired of this slow inefficient messaging system and just announced it to all the faithful, who responded with a series of nervous laughs. The sacristan wasn't rebellious-sounding nor somber but just submissive to the fact that this was a unique day in liturgical life. He laughed a bit himself, not knowing what to expect, and laughing too because he was somehow okay with it. The man most brutally moved in roguish behavior by these turns of events was the priest himself, an old Irish man by the name of Fr. O'Kielty (the real priest at our college). The altar boys were not showing up, and for some reason, the barbie-doll girl did and put on the surplice and cassock that the altar boys should have been wearing. This was a most dramatic and scandalous spectacle, for this college had always been characterized by its traditional religious qualities that never, ever, allowed women to serve at mass. But Fr. O'Kielty, in his impatience but more in his mischievous Irish spirit augmented by the peculiar circumstances, began celebrating mass with her at his side.

When the mass was over, a very complex and unfamiliar hymn was horrendously sung by the congregation, and it was a horrible affair, one that I hopelessly tried to save by my own singing. While this sonic travesty was unfolding, a freshman was boisterously chatting very casually over the noise, explicating in great and unnecessary detail about how he can't sing this hymn. Even when the song died, he kept talking in tremendous volume, seemingly unaware of the people trying to pray after this religious train wreck ... and I simply lost it. I turned around to where he was monologuing and I said, "Hey you, shut the f*ck up!" Needlessly to say, scandalous faces emerged all around me. One of them said, "It's a sin to cuss in Church." Shamelessly, I responded, "I don't give a f*cking d*mn!" She responded with her own cuss words and smiled afterwards, as we both mutually understood that cussing paled in comparison to the sacrilege that had already happened that day.

The Fellowship of the Alligator

I was in a room, in a fake boat, amongst a sea of simulated waves, made of tacky card-board cut-outs bobbing up and down thanks to unseen motors. I was pretending to fish and having a very uneventful time of it. Somehow, I lowered my fake boat down beneath two of rows of fake waves and was now "underneath the water." There I beheld many schools of card-board fish suspended by wire moving about in a humorously unconvincing manner. As I drifted about this suffocatingly silly place, another boat casually passed by me, and I noticed that the fisherman was not a man at all but an alligator dressed up like a fisherman (complete with a life jacket and hat) and fishing not for fish ... but men. He noticed me eventually and began chasing me with his boat (all of this was still "underwater"). Laughing as well as fearing for my life, I ducked below the surface of the ocean floor and somehow passed through it to another level, in which real water occupied the space, and people underneath it were attempting to run an underwater foot race spectated by an underwater audience. No one had air-tanks, and I asked the nearest person next to me what was going on. Though speaking underwater proved difficult, the man was accustomed to receiving questions of these natures. I couldn't understand his reply however. Fearing for my life again, I swam up for air and exited this aquatic conundrum.

I then was given the One Ring (from Lord of the Rings, forged by Sauron) by a fellow college student and was told to keep it safe until the wizard Gandalf returned. I felt greatly afraid and insecure with it and wondered why Gandalf was taking so long. Fiddling with the ring in my pocket, I started to slip it on the end part of my finger and heard a very faint eerie noise that probably queued the Ringwraiths into the ring's location, but I forced myself to be more optimistic and hoped that was not the case.

I then encountered the alligator at a department store which specialized in lawn furniture. We sampled two of the chairs and talked about various ponderings. I continuously put on a facade of being interested in what he had to say, and whenever he stopped talking I immediately asked an interesting question about himself in a very kind and caring tone, just so that he would like me enough to continue letting me live.

CoFlex!

Shuffling through a bunch of garbage in a thrift store, I chanced to come upon a large cheap and mostly white plastic bottle of vitamins titled "CoFlex." Apparently, they were a late 80's early 90's brand of multi-vitamins geared toward athletes as an unharmful and more natural alternative to steroids. Unfortunately, the brand turned out to be a monumental failure and had crawled its dying way somehow into this thrift store for a discouraging retirement. I found them extremely hilarious, like a bad sci-fi movie, and told other people about it. Some of my friends knew about it already and showed me a website that was devoted to making fun of it and treated it as a kind of cult classic in the world of health products.

Phony Bills

I was helping my friend Tom to stop committing cell phone fraud. Apparently, he had rigged his cell phone to get free service somehow. He said that he was dirt poor and had no choice. I asked him how much money he needed to support himself and stop committing crime and he replied, $300. I gave him a "$500 bill" and asked him to find change and break it up into those standard $100 bills. Perhaps not too surprisingly, he never quite gave me back the change.

American Idleness

I was watching a modified but equivalent show to "American Idol" where two contestants were trying to draw the best picture in a period of five minutes or so. When the start timer buzzed, I saw a female artist draw the outline of a tombstone and began writing its long epitaph in calligraphy at a pace that was inhuman. This was her speciality. However, as she progressed and I watched her fill out the tombstone, I suddenly became the person drawing the picture. It made sense at the time. I sketched random decorative details around the drawing, filling in the grass, the shading on the stone, and maybe some objects in the sky. They were quick strokes but well-aimed and intuitively placed. The game show host told me that was sufficient for this round. He even congratulated me on my work. I felt pretty good about it so far. The man against whom I was competing had drawn a very dynamic portrait of an Arab with a turban, using the color black and orange. It looked pretty cool, and I felt rather feeble then with my simple pencil-drawn tombstone. As we prepared for the next round, the original artist who was no longer drawing was standing beside me and coaching me on what artistic creation should be conjured next. She had a prefabricated box of strange symbolic shapes and explained to me about how to use them in the next round of the show. I didn't really know what she was talking about, and I didn't understand why she was making me do this for her. Finally, I asked, "Sorry, but can you explain again why you're making me do this instead of you?" She kind of sighed and said, "Oh, many, many reasons." Okay. Anyway, the dream fortunately ended, and I felt stupider when I woke up.

FBI Bathroom Supplies

I was in a conference room sitting across from a rather heavy-weight pre-teen that specialized in annoying the hell out of everyone. He was horsing around with one of the FBI officers sitting next to him and trying to ease the gun out of his hand. As they were both holding on to the gun, its barrel was wandering in different directions, worrying everybody in the room. Finally it was pointing at me, and subtly knowing that I was invincible and the only one who couldn't die, I spread myself in more squarely in front of it to make sure the gun would only hit me if it finally discharged. It fired and nailed me right on the opposite side of my right elbow. Surprisingly, it stung a bit, and I rolled up my sleeve to reveal a slight bruise and some blood. Everyone gasped at the gunshot wound and began scolding the careless kid, who apologized superficially like all annoying, self-centered, attention-hungry kids and quickly asked if he was going to get in trouble with a tone that expected that he probably wouldn't. I said sternly, "You're very lucky that I was the only one wearing bullet-proof sleeves!" I stressed "sleeves" because what were the chances that my sleeves were bullet-proof? The reason was because I was an FBI agent. It didn't quite make sense since I actually wasn't wearing any. Anyway, we all told him that he needed to be arrested, but he resisted saying that he wasn't going to go to jail. "Oh, yes you are," I said, pulling out my own gun and fumbling in my pockets for some ammunition. I got the horrible feeling that I didn't have any magazines to put into the gun. I partially knew this was a dream, so I tried to will the bullets into existence, but conjuring things from nowhere has never been my forte in dream omnipotence. Nonetheless, I kept searching my pockets. I felt what seemed like a magazine but it turned out to be my cheap Swiss army knife (that I always carry in my pocket for real). I thought about trying to load it into my gun anyway, just to see what would happened. Instead, I settled on a USB Jump-Drive and slammed it into the handle of the gun. When I tried to cock the gun, it didn't cock at all. This gun wasn't going to be fooled, despite its technical lack of existence. The boy wasn't getting fooled either. He was an observant one and all the more annoying because of it. He still rebelled and said he wasn't going anywhere. Then, without a moment's hesitation, I pistol-whipped the boy on the back of his neck several times, first with the handle then again with jabbing motions with the barrel, finally grabbing the barrel and then hammering him some more with the handle. It seemed to work at first but then nothing was happening. The kid, this invincible hulk of nuisance-mongering, merely sat there in full disrespectful consciousness. I exited the room in the great fumes of defeat.

Finding myself in a large public school-like setting, I knew it was the headquarters for my FBI agency. I phoned my boss on the cell I was carrying and asked him if there were any secret stores of ammunition housed in the nearby bathroom for emergencies. He responded affirmatively, saying, "The first bathroom stall has a round of bullets taped to the bottom of its toilet." I went into the lavatory in question and entered the first bathroom stall, and reached under the toilet bowl, feeling the smooth ceramic for any foreign object. Alas, my hand only kept brushing past smooth ceramic. I cursed and got even more frustrated. You see, when I was asking my boss over the cell phone, I was, at the same time, planning out in my head where the ammo would be before I actually asked. But since I just made it up, I figured that my dream, once again, wouldn't obey me in this artificial manner. I kept searching the bathrooms and luckily found another set of stalls. I went into the first one, reached under the bowl and behold! A magazine of ammunition was taped under it! I yanked it off and put it in my pocket. I also saw a bucket of batteries that someone was selling in the bathroom, and I decided to pocket a few of those, just in case. Unfortunately, I never fired a single shot because my annoying alarm clock shot me up back to consciousness.

The George Lucas Menace

I almost quite literally had a dream come true. The only difference was, it wasn't true ... it was just a dream.

I met George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars. I was visiting his main super-tall office building where all the main exciting stuff happens or whatever, and for some reason, I had an appointment with him. He was just as phlegmatic as I've seen him on TV, but he was great. On a walk outside, I asked what his childhood inspirations were. What books had he read that ultimately filtered into Star Wars? He asked me if I had any particular work in mind. I brought up The Lord of the Rings, and he replied must enthusiastically yes. I always suspected it. I also asked about The Silmarillion (Tolkien's account of how Middle-Earth came to be and whatnot), and again he said most definitely. This made me happy too. Then I popped the real question: "Have you read any G.K. Chesterton?" He laughed but replied yes ... a little. He said he specifically had read "Crime and Prejudice." I asked if he meant "Pride and Prejudice" and he answered affirmatively, but I pointed out, "You know, that wasn't written by G.K. Chesterton. It was written by Jane Austen." He disagreed and said something enigmatic which I decided not to argue with. Then I asked how his kids were doing, and he looked a bit insulted and didn't answer. I had seen on TV that he had some adopted kids that he has taken care of (which is true in real life), but he looked at me as if that wasn't true or else he had recently disowned them or something. I apologized and changed the subject.

When we re-entered the building, he went over to his secretary's desk, and began writing checks to the American Chesterton Society (my dad's organization). It seemed sizable amounts of money, but when I got up close, they seemed like only a few dollars each ... though there were many of them. I thanked him anyway for his support. I went up to take a close look at the checks and read over the comments he put down. On one check, which had about 4 dollars on it, he instructed that 1 dollar should be given to a beggar on the street. On a check with 43 dollars, he said that 42 dollars should be donated to manufacture "astroturf" or any other environmentally conscious resource (at the time, I thought "astroturf" might be recycled sneakers turned into gym mats ... but in real life, nope).

Before he left, I asked him one last question, and at this point, I couldn't help but feel I was a nuisance, as he no doubt had to suffer inquisitive fans all the time. However, he was still being very patient with me. I asked him if he might offer me a job or give me a recommendation for his company if I wish to someday join. He agreed he would do that.

Then a bunch of other guys my age started following George down the hall. A guy named K.C. (a real student at my college) turned the corner into view, though George had called out to him before he had seen him. How did George Lucas do that? Did he have the force? Everyone marveled at his precognitive skills. George merely replied that some people, like K.C., give off a certain presence that is detectable to people who are sensitive to that phenomenon. George Lucas was actually a Jedi.

Berlin Wall in the Bedroom

My family members and I caught wind of an international plot by communists to take over the world by one sudden military stroke. Apparently, a good portion of the world had been closet communists, preparing for a violent overthrow with rifles and bombs, though I didn't encounter any bombs this time. I stuffed everyone into a bedroom, while I myself and some other person went into another bedroom, closed the door, and loaded a rifle that I prayed to God would work, though I didn't expect much in light of past experiences with firearms (see "FBI Bathroom Supplies"). The gun did feel a little flimsy and ... plastic. I beheld the mobs of communist overthrowers deluging the streets like a fast-moving glacier, and spill into our house. One tried to open the door to the bedroom, but I held it closed with a firm application of force with my hand. I finally let the door open, clumsily aimed my questionable gun at the commie, and opened fire. I hit him (or maybe it was a "she"), who uttered a cry that confirmed pain but no more than that. I think I may have whipped out the butt of the gun for some cudgeling that may have brought more success. At one point, I recall mowing down lots of communists down with a couple of nasty chain-guns.

It gets a little hazy here. For some purpose, I was told to rescue my baby brother from another bedroom and give him to someone else. I exited the bedroom as we were still holding strong, and hustled down the halls to the other place. When I acquired the baby, on my way back, I was amongst a rich bureaucracy of communists, marching soldiers, and loiters. Apparently, they had managed to make themselves at home already and already had done a fair job in converting the place into a lifeless outpost. I passed by the person whom I was to give the baby, and without thinking too much about it, I gave him to her, and left back to the bedroom, relieved that no one recognized me. But then, I recalled to my horror, that the communists had recently put forth a special technology that, in retrospect, was entirely unclear but allowed them to morph into other people ... a disguising device that made you never trust anyone anymore. I recalled that the person I gave my brother to must have been someone under such a guise because she was peaceably among the communists. I was a bit horrified, nervous, and very unhappy. I was equally emotional about the sudden resurgence of communism, which I thought was very dead. Fortunately, I woke up and found no commies in my bedroom.

The Silence of the Courts

I had set up this historical research exhibition displaying evidence for the crimes of a particular murderer who had not yet been convicted of any of his crimes. This guy turned out to be a sort of Hannibal Lector (a character from the movie Silence of the Lambs), responsible for the death of O.J. Simpson's wife and Princess Diana. Each room of the exhibit had various bits of historical information either in poster form or in little audio recordings on podium-like stands. Every possible thing you could think of involving this criminal was here, even relevant psychological studies on similar cases. It was set up for the purpose of exposing and proving his foul deeds to the world. It was a dark labyrinthine place, artificially wooden and musty, maybe dating back to the late 70's or 80's. Anyway, I was touring around a police investigator and showed him the most convicting article in the whole exhibit. It was a recording of the suspect from one of his private audio journals in which he himself admitted he shouldn't be recording this due to its incriminating nature. He talked very much like Hannibal Lector and was saying some psychopathic things. Anyway, I think it did the job, and they set out to arrest this bum.

Metaphysical Melee

I found myself as special operations officer of the government with unusual powers. The first event I remember was attending a laboratory where an exploding whale was frozen in time and somehow phased into a long thick cylindrical piece of lead ... or something (that's the best description I could hope to give). The scientist who was describing it said that this was an effort to disprove the immateriality of thought. He claimed that thoughts, unlike physical objects, could penetrate each other in such a way that physical objects could not. Physical objects could not be so united and connected as thoughts could be, according to Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophers. But this lead-whale demonstration was a step toward disproving that, or at least an effort to, for two very ostentatious physical objects now seemed be interpenetrate each other, much like two thoughts or ideas could. If this project's aim was successful, and physical objects could be proved to act like thoughts, thoughts could not be proven to be immaterial, and the whole idea of immateriality in philosophy might go out the window and thus forward materialist agendas. The scientist explaining this to me and the others congregated around it were not convinced that this broke any metaphysical laws. He was certain that a close inspection of it would reveal that these two objects were indeed not penetrating each other in the way that was problematic to long-standing philosophy.

Anyway, I left that place, probably out of boredom, or maybe out of a desire to not waste my dream on such pseudointellectual poppycock. I chanced to encounter these two ladies who turned out to be attractive, exotic, amazon-like alien queens. One was entirely green and the other blue, each garbed in ornate clothing that matched their skin. They had a sinister air about them and ended up trying to take over the science facility, starting with the laboratory's large tank of water designed to look like the natural habitat for some lake-dwelling creature. The two alien queens summoned down a brigade of henchmen, as my special ops comrades and I assembled in close proximity to plan countermeasures. The captain of the troop pointed to me and asked, "What's your speciality?" I replied in military-like manner, "Unarmed combat, sir." This was not just your everyday, run-of-the-mill unarmed combat though ... I had really wicked awesome ninja skills apparently. I was so specially trained that I could take out a dozen armed men with my bare hands and kicks. We commenced the attack. The henchmen were wearing scuba-gear and brandishing rifles. A couple of them were bobbing in the water, training their guns at us, but I, with superhuman agility, ran on the surface of the water, and just as one of them was bearing his gun on me as fast as he could, I kicked him in head and brought him to his death.

Later on, I was strutting down the street, pumped about my unvanquishable unarmed combat skills. I didn't even carry a gun. I liked the thrill of it. As this was going on, a hostile, out of a three story window, took aim at me with his handgun and shot off a couple rounds. I sprinted toward the building and ascended the wall in a superhuman vertical run, grabbed the guy's hand with one hand and his shoulder with the other and threw him out of the window to his neck-breaking death. Just because I could, I stayed adhered to the wall with my feet for a couple more seconds as I saw him die, and then I backflipped onto the ground in perfect form.

I then reported back to headquarters where my comrades were undergoing various training excerises. They challenged me to one. The captain said, "See if you can figure out how to dodge this." Then, five or six guys, one stacked on top of the other, charged at me with swords swinging in a horizontal fashion. Slightly to the left of this mesh of sharpened death was a single man wielding another sword in artistic, free-styling jabs and swings. They both rushed at me at once. I had to think quickly to disarm one of them and protect myself. However, it was too tricky and complex, and they sliced me good. Fortunately, I healed instantly, though felt the pain. I laughed at my sorry failure and complimented their talents. They then started throwing steel javelins at me, but they missed every time. They also did something else that I failed to parry that I forgot. It was fun, in a sick sort of way.

Later in the same facility, a girl (I forget whom) wanted to get a closer look at a very tall and rather creepy merry-go-round. Specifically, she wanted to look at the clown's head rotating on top of it. It turned out to be kind of a turbaned blue genie's head that I claimed was the wizard Merlin in djinn form, and that he was responsible for preventing mortal wounds in our combat training. I grabbed hold of the girl and teleported over there. In previous dreams, my teleportations merely consisted of becoming invisible and transitioning to another place and then reappearing. This time, however, I instantly zapped over to the desired location without any intermediate contiguous movements. I almost woke up, though, I think, but I forced myself asleep. So, dream teleportation still isn't the most reliable unconscious way to travel.

Anyway, Merlin's genie head took on normal wizardly form because some more hostile henchmen began flooding into the place. I don't really remember what happened next. Something to do with Olympian gods ... yeah, we went to Mount Olympus and saw Zeus and Hermes in all their glory but I can't really remember with much detail.

Last and definitely least, a retired rabbi came to our house and accidentally knocked my laptop over and screwed up the hard drive, erasing everything. I had never been so depressed in my life because I had forgotten to back it up. When I woke up, I was still sad and kept forgetting it was just a dream and then rejoicing that it was just a dream. I was sure that I was screwed. Wow. I had never been so depressed by a stupid dream for ages. Pathetic.

All Action and No Plot

I was in the Vatican beholding a battle where Swiss guards with jet-packs were fighting a bald guy who had a pony-tail and a black leather jacket. This guy was running around, shooting a rifle with a silencer at the Swiss guards. He would shoot a shot very quickly at all of them one at a time, who would then slowly fall down dead. There also came a female villain who could fly due to these blue stripes on her clothes that produced levitation for some reason.

Eventually, I stole my friend's car, a kind of awesome red corvette. The button that would turn the car on and off was a big red button that was labelled "Restoration" for some reason. Three little joysticks on the side of the seat were the controls for steering. First time I tried using them, the automobile's windshield changed appearance to a mode designed to take high-resolution spy photographs (I can't remember how exactly). Then I figured out how to drive and did so like a maniac, veering around a parking lot and almost bashing into other cars.

Eventually, now on foot, I entered into a building and found myself being chased up a case of stairs by someone. I got to an elevator and managed to have its doors close before the pursuer got there. Unfortunately, the man began to force the doors open.

There were two other people in the elevator with me, one of whom was an old man. This old man somehow got in the gap between the elevator booth and the building floor and fell down the elevator shaft and out of his clothes at the same time. We didn't see it happen, so we start shouting, "Old Man? Where are you? Did you fall down the elevator shaft?" The old man's distant voice replied, "Yes!" We followed with the question, "And are you naked?" To which he replied, "Yes!" Poor old man. "Don't worry, we'll get you out!"

But as the bad guy was breaking through and monologuing and threatening us, I was getting worried about where this story was going, for I thought I was writing it as it was unfolding. Even though I thought it was really cool, I was concerned that it would go nowhere, and so, as soon as possible, I thought I needed to sort this out. So, in the elevator, I said to the bad guy and my friend, "Hey, guys. Let's just sit down and think about this. We need to figure out what's going on here. Listen," and pointing to each of them, I said, "you don't exist, you don't really exist. I only sort of exist right now, because I'm dreaming or something. Let's try to figure out the plot of this story." To the bad guy, I said, "Like you, what's your motive for trying to kill us? Who do you work for? Why is he telling you to go after us?" The enemy calmed down and a realization of his ignorance came over his eyes, then he smiled and said unconvincingly, "Hey, I know what I'm doing." But it was clear he didn't.

Ultimately, we had a big party on the top of the roof of this building, causing the neighbors to complain.

The Zombie Apocalypse

I only remember a glorious fragment from this little dream. All I remember is me grabbing an extremely long high-powered shotgun, loaded to near infinity, and training it on a bunch of advancing zombies that were trying to destroy the entire city. I opened fire on those bastards like no tomorrow, shutting each one of them down with each violent round, busting up their carrion flesh with ease, enjoyment, and satisfaction. It was a good dream.

The Zombie Apocalypse (The Prequel)

This dream was not so good. It started out harmlessly enough but then spiraled deep into hell.

At first, my friends and I were on a spiritual retreat up in the woods, next to a lake, receiving instruction from monks, priests, and theologically educated laymen. After having talked about St. Thomas Aquinas for quite some time, one of the retreat masters announced that Thomas Aquinas himself was going to arrive here in a few minutes. We were all amazed, though there was an understanding that this would merely be an impersonator, an intern at the Vatican's theological department, getting his PhD or something, who had agreed to do this for the practice of teaching Thomistic thinking to younger people ... or something. "Thomas" arrived by boat, and we were all cheering. He was a fairly obese man, very fitted for the role. We paid extravagant homage by kneeling down and kissing his ring. I was excited to ask him bunch of crazy theological questions which only he could surely give satisfactory reply. However, before I could ask him, something strange started to happen.

At the retreat area, there was this kind of lodge near us where the kitchen was in, where two female cooks were violently arguing over something. We could hear them through the vents that led to the outside. We were all listening attentively and being very concerned about what was going on. One of the retreat masters said, "They should at least plug the vents before they scream like this." Eventually, we started hearing kitchen appliances being thrown and screams coming from both of the women. This queued the retreat master to rush in and finally figure out what's going on. I went in too (or perhaps I assumed the body of the retreat master as he went in ... I can't remember).

When the two of us arrived in the kitchen, we saw one woman trying to kill herself by sticking a fork into her neck, while there was another cook screaming with wild abandon. We tried to stop her from killing herself, but then the other cook lunged at her with two forks and jabbed both of them into her neck. After that, she attacked us, but we killed her somehow, either by smashing her with frying pan or else slicing her with a carving knife (I can't remember). Eerily, another pair of cooks, the same ones in fact, suddenly came out of nowhere and attacked us again ... which we killed likewise. Apparently, they had found a way to clone themselves accidentally. We reasoned they had stumbled upon a forbidden recipe or ingredient which could conveniently replicate any kind of food they needed. Unfortunately, the substance was so powerful and uncontrollable that they had started to multiply themselves by mistake and tried began an ongoing killing spree to contain the chaos. But this wasn't the whole story.

The retreat master noticed some gooey, sticky eyeballs placed throughout the floor and walls and tables of the kitchen, and told me to get rid of them as soon as possible. We figured they had something to do with what happened ... either it was a freakish spawn of the forbidden ingredient that the cooks had used, or else ... who knows? What I did was take some crackers and sandwich these eyeballs between them so I didn't have to touch them with my bare hands. After I did so, I wrapped them up into a newspaper, and pressed them down as hard as I could. Bad idea.

For some reason, something really terrible happened. I found that somehow the eyeballs had teleported into a now animated picture of a city (like Chicago or New York) on a nearby newspaper and was wreaking havoc in that scene. The eyeballs grew and transformed themselves into yet more copies of the psychotic cooks, only this time, not fully, but mere skeletons whose reddish flesh only thinly coated their bones in a horrifying manner. Their jaws seemed to jut forward like beaks giving them an unnatural visage that struck supernatural horror into anyone unfortunate enough to see it. They were infesting the streets, causing terror, killing and biting people to create more zombies. I watched all this on the newspaper, holding it with my two hands with great angst. I worried that they might jump from the newspaper back to our world, so I threw it down, but soon found that the zombie infestation was very much taking place in the real world (that is, in Chicago or New York). This was a problem ... one that, I guess, I had helped to create, though not purposefully, of course.

These demonic, reddish zombies proved much more versatile and difficult to kill than the ones in my previous dream. They were spreading themselves like an unstoppable ocean tsunami. People were getting zombified right and left, and there was increasingly less and less room to flee in the hopeless cityscape. Fortunately for me, I could engage in preternatural faculties, particularly one that allowed me gigantic leaps over buildings in a single bound. This made avoiding zombies a little easier than for most people. I also had the idea that I could charge my hand with energy and release it on a zombie to completely disintegrate it ... but unfortunately, I never carried this through in good form and missed every time.

I made a ridiculously long jump out from a group of converging zombie waves over to a skyway bridge, atop which were a couple master zombies that had it especially in for me. These zombies could imitate anything I did, particularly the long jump, so that avoiding them proved challenging. I had quite enough of this garbage and woke up.

The Achilles Drive

I entered a portal of sorts that transported me to an interstellar spaceport in the far reaches of the galaxy. Taking this experience very seriously, I inquired into the physics that made all this futuristic space phenomena possible. I approached an assortment of aliens and humans who were sitting, eating, and discussing around. I remember that someone else had travelled with me and was under the opinion that traveling to different solar systems was an easy venture. But I told him that to travel to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, it takes light about sextillion years to do (this, incidentally, is totally false ... it takes less than 4 and a half years). This put a damper on his spirits, which led me to ask these aliens and humans how it was possible to travel to different solar systems. I asked if it was a kind of "hypersleep" they used, or a kind of "jump drive", or "hyperspace", or "warp speed", or "wormhole technology" or "dimensional shift" or something to do with "string theory." They said no to all these things. I kept demanding what at least the name of their technology was. They responded the type of engine used was called "The Achilles Drive." This sounded interesting, but I never discovered the inner workings or even the general concept of how an Achilles Engine worked before I came out of hypersleep. Alas.

Incidentally, years later after this dream, I became pretty sure that my subconscious had been making reference to Zeno's Paradox, the philosophical puzzle where the mythological figure Achilles is running a race, but in order to get anywhere, he first needs to cross a halfway point, and before that, he has to cross another halfway point to that point, and so on to infinity. So how can he or anything go anywhere if an infinite amount of points in space have to be crossed to go anywhere? Whatever the answer, the Achilles Drive in my dream had apparently solved a similar problem regarding motion.

2007

Back to the End of the World

I went to a shop owned and run by the Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (the scientist from the Back to the Future movies). I came there under the impression that I had to buy a special device that both he and I knew was destined for me. The device was a peculiar gold pocket watch with unusual ornate designs. I think it was a small portable time-machine. It was about 110 dollars or something. When I pocketed it, Biff (the bully and bad guy from Back to the Future) came in with another friend. I pretended to just be browsing and not have the pocket watch because ... Biff and his pal were after it too, of course. In fact, this is why I had to take it before they could. They eventually started threatening the Doc if he didn't tell them where it was or who he sold it to. Right then, I made a run for it out the door. One of them grew suspicious and tried chasing after me, o I yelled for help, and eventually they broke off pursuit.

I found myself eventually in my room and started packing for a journey because I needed to get away with the device before they found me again. Right then, I think, I had a flashback or something of what the Doc told me about the watch. These were his exact words: "The Science of Time-Travel and the Fiction called Atheism: You see, if you go back in time ... it eventually stops. The world had a beginning. It proves God's existence. And also, if you go into the future, it eventually ends. And we only have about a week to go."

We only have about a week to go. The world was about to end. The Doc had used the device to peer into the future, and the apocalypse was on the horizon. This thoroughly depressed me.

Eventually I tried explaining things to my parents but my little siblings kept interrupting me. Then a green car pulled up, which I knew to be Biff's car. I panicked and tried to hide or escape through the back entrance, but then I woke up ... and started praying that the world would not end so soon. It seemed to work.

Solipsistic Lifeguard

I was about to give a large group of kids, aging around 6 or 7 years old, swimming lessons down at a seaport, when one over-ambitious kid decided to take a premature jump off the dock to give a show of his non-existent swimming skills. He instantly started drowning, and I jumped in after him, but he kept slipping from my grasp and ended up sinking way under. This was frightening and stressful, and I very much thought it was real. I prayed and dived under and finally caught a hold of him, yanking him back onto shore with a desperate hope that he could be revived. I pumped his chest once or so and he started breathing again, but he was shivering because the water had been really cold, I guess. So, for some reason, I took him inside and prepared to throw him in a bath of warm milk. It seemed to make sense at the time.

Anyway, I decided instead to just take him outside and let the sun do its job, though he did transform into an infant at this point, while I was carrying him. During this time, I walked through a battlefield of strangely armored knights but ended up miraculously unscathed.

I entered a tavern or a pub or something and met some friends from college there, notably my friend Siobhan. She was hanging outside and we talked a bit, and everything seemed very real, but I was growing suspicious. This dream, despite my inklings that it was a dream, was just so confoundingly realistic that I started to worry. In the middle of our conversation, I asked Siobhan, who was always a straightforward a helpful person, the honest question, "Is this a dream, Siobhan?" She looked at me and answered, "Well, yes, it is a dream," as if she was dispassionately giving information about some administrative inquiry. I replied, "No, you got to be kidding." I assumed if it was a dream, all the people must be experiencing the same dream ... since everything was so vivid and convincing. I couldn't bear to accept the fact that I was the only real person.

I started to head away from the pub, and someone passed me and asked, "Who are you?" I answered, "I'm Julian. You should know me because I'm the only one who exists here." It was so witty, I laughed myself awake.

2009

Gone Dark

I was a substitute patrol for a college who, on my watch, encountered a group of teenagers in one of the campus houses, whereupon I seamlessly morphed into a Catholic priest and heard their confessions. Two of them were boys (whom I knew in real life), and the rest were girls (who were just made up). The two boys were confessing their sins at the same time, while the girls were just sitting around listening. It was distracting, especially when one of the girls inconsiderately started hammering the keys on the nearby piano. I finally told all the girls to get out. They retreated into the adjacent room, out of earshot, but still sort of peaked at us through the open door. The boy on my right admitted he had lied to his parents, and the left boy said something (I can't remember), to which I responded with a very moving bit of spiritual direction. When I looked up at him, as I had been closing my eyes in the careful formulation of my words, I noticed he was gone. The boy on my right had a smile on his face, amused that I had been talking to no one. "Where did he go?" I asked. "I think he went over there, but I'm not sure," he responded, pointing somewhere. It was strange and when I focused my attention on the remaining penitent, he slowly and eerily disappeared as well ... faded away into non-existence. Now, I knew something was afoot. I ran to the next room, and I asked if any of the girls had seen what I'd seen. One of them said yes. The college ended up launching a full-fledged investigation into these disappearances, and since my story was so unbelievable, many considered me a suspect.

When one of the investigators approached me, I summoned the female witness and made her confirm my side of the story. While she was telling it, the balcony which she was leaning against crumbled away and she fell to her death (it was more complicated and incoherent that that, involving her turning into a surge protector and us trying to exorcise her out of it ... it didn't make sense).

We came under the firm impression that the devil was behind all this and thwarting our every attempt to solve it. The next few scenes had something to do with me caving into demands of some evil agents who threatened to destroy me and all the people I care about if I didn't cooperate (it's a blur though).

One evil agent led me into a store of a shopping mall surreptitiously to get some supplies. The agent accidentally dropped his glove, and the store manager recognized it to be a type of glove designed solely for the use of strangling people. He began to scold and accost us. This was drawing unwanted attention. The agent became surrounded by the other customers in the store and was put under an ad hoc interrogation. I, however, had some motivation to preserve his cover, despite my hatred of him, so we both tried to come up with a story, but we contradicted each other, and they didn't buy it. One of the workers, a woman, exited the store toward the security center to report us. For some reason, I was allowed to leave too and followed her in an attempt to change her mind.

As she reached the security station, the guard came out and unexpectedly and sternly instructed her to mind her own business, which indicated to me that the evil agency had pulled some strings to subdue this crisis. The woman, however, was adamant to do the right thing ... I could see it in her eyes ... so I decided to do something brash. I was suddenly under the impression that I was Augustus Caesar, and all this was the Roman Empire, despite its modern setting. Pulling off my glasses, I said, "All right, I have to tell you something. Take a good look at me. I am Augustus Caesar. All right? Are you satisfied now? Can you drop this? I am doing very important work here, and I don't want to be slowed down. Are you okay with all this now?" She was taken aback and seemed to relent.

Soon after, I left ones of the bases of the evil agents, namely, an entertainment outlet in the shopping mall called "Mirrors of Creation." I was met by one of my evil agent handlers, and I said to him, "I don't want to do this anymore!" even though they had made it clear I would be doing this for all eternity. He said, however, "Situations have changed. You have been doing good work, and we might not need you anymore. We might release you after the next few operations." I was overjoyed to hear this and gave him an amiably handshake like a naive idiot.

Next, I found myself in my basement, playing with my cousins and siblings, and I was increasingly aware that the devil was lurking around and subtly oppressing us. I then "realized" that before all this mess happened, I had attempted to practice some form of the occult in order to defeat a monstrous hydra from attacking our school. Moreover, it was clear that this was the catalyst for all the atrocities and horrors that everyone had been suffering. I told my siblings this, but they were dubious, unable to recall the monstrous hydra incident in question. At one point, my youngest brother wandered out of sight, and I shouted for him to be careful. I then heard some screams, a violent ruckus, and then he was gone. The lights went out, and the voice of my little brother returned to the room ... but I suspected it to be a demonic imitator and acted hostile toward it. I tried to turn on the lights but to no avail. I had a flashlight, shined it in his face, but could not get a clear view. It was darkness all around, and it was all-consuming. The only thing that made the situation better was waking up.

The Magic of Public School Romance

I was attending a sterile-looking maze-like public school, in which I was perpetually and hopelessly lost and late for class. Eventually, I got so lost that I missed lunch entirely, largely because there were two lunchroom gyms, and I had gone to the wrong one, and was told to go to the other ... but when I arrived, no one was there. I found one of the old lunchladies, initially very curt at first but whom I sweet-talked into giving me the key to the kitchen to pilfer some food. In exchange, I had to retrieve some items for her as well. She requested a "Spurt" and a "Wow," things I assumed to be cheap-brand sodas.

When I got to the kitchen, a female public student my age walked in and started talking to me. She was attractive and friendly, and without any fuss, we figured it was logical to make out. We decided to leave the kitchen to find a more appropriate room to do that. We never found one, of course, and returned to the kitchen to give back the key, and grabbed a couple pieces of pizza that existed now for some reason.

I reached my next Latin class that was being taught by my old 8th grade Latin teacher. Sitting down unpunctually, I began stuffing my face with pizza. The teacher stopped and looked at me, at which point I realized that eating pizza in class was probably bad. But then I protested, "Hey, wait a minute ... I've graduated from college ... I'm not even in high school ... can you let this slide? I think I've earned it." He conceded, "Yeah, okay," and continued with class. He had drawn a ridiculously elaborate drawing on the white board with several elements labelled with their Latin translations. It was boring overkill, and so I hurried over to the next phase of the dream.

A couple of my friends proceeded to our next class, asking if anyone knew where it was. One of them led us outside around a steep ravine to the other side of the school. I expressed skepticism that this was the quickest way. When we approached some trees, I leapt high into them, but my glasses kept fogging up in the misty weather, and each time I took them off and stuffed them into my pocket, another foggy pair would materialize on my face. It was inexcusable.

Eventually, the girl I almost made out with earlier, in a surprisingly nerdy move, bought a virtual reality game that centered around the politics of the late Roman Republic. Many other students joined, posing as their own Roman senator. I remember having a secret ally who resembled Grand Moff Tarkin (the bad guy in the Death Star from Star Wars: A New Hope). It was a shameful coalition, but one I shrugged at, thinking I could afford such alliances due to my lofty political position or something.

Soon, I was getting married ... not to the girl that I almost made out with but her slightly older sister. I had a sense this was not ideal, but I unexplainably went along without any objection. The ceremony had taken place, and then followed the dancing. I kept asking where "Miranda" or "Sarah" or "Meredith" or "Jacquelyn" was (the name of the girl I almost made out with ... let's just call her Jacquelyn). I went out and searched the other room, calling out her name. A small white bunny crawled out from beneath a desk. I picked it up and realized it was her. Through an incantation, I turned myself into a rabbit too so we could talk (eventually, we both seemed to turn back into humans). I had asked where she had been, and she made some forgettable but lamentable answer. The painful reality started to sink in that I had not married her ... but her sister. This news made Jacquelyn angry, and my response of "I don't know why I did it" did not console her. I suddenly thought, "Wait a minute, do you think it's possible that someone made a love potion and made me drink it? I think that might have been it. Because I can't remember anything about how I got here and why I agreed to marry her." This started to make sense to her, and it was relieving because our marriage on that ground could be annulled. I gradually began telling the family members, and they said my theory made sense and admitted they might also have been under a similar spell.

With the marriage annulled, I set out to find the culprit responsible for this mischievous enchantment. This resulted in me attending a Jedi Academy, where I kicked all the Jedi's asses in every field of combat. This proficiency in battle made me conclude in some kind of logic that I was Spider-Man.

Being Spider-Man, my archenemy showed up, namely, Dr. Octopus. It happened that Dr. Octopus had turned to madness partially because he had fallen in love with Jacquelyn who did not return his affections. This made him vigilant in trying to kill her. Thus, I was vigilant in trying to stop that. Unfortunately, he also gained super-regenerative abilities now. If I wounded him, he would heal instantly. This depressed me. Eventually, I strapped him to a power conductor and began electrocuting him, turning up the amps to full ... but he still wouldn't die. I managed to extract some kind of truce, making him agree to cease his attacks for a week. It soon turned out that he had been a friend of Jacquelyn's family, and they were unconvinced that he was trying to kill them all. This led to him and me being invited to dinner.

A few minutes before the party, a large spherical metallic machine with tentacles began marching toward Jacquelyn's house (just like the thing in The Incredibles). It got on top of her house, at which point, I leapt, tore it off the roof with super strength, and began tearing its metal hull with my bare hands, digging down to its core. I found the alleged "Driver's Seat" empty, in which I had expected to see Dr. Octopus. He, however, appeared behind me, lecturing how this device meant no harm but was an experimental submarine. I suspected him of treachery, but I let it slide.

At the dinner party, I was constantly guarding Jacquelyn with discretion whenever Dr. Octopus wandered near her, at the same time trying to hold pleasant conversation with the family. I apologized to Jacquelyn's sister for breaking off the marriage. She seemed hurt, but not too hurt, apparently having been under the influence of the witchcraft as well. Jacquelyn was commenting how watching me at the invalid wedding brought up all sorts of confused emotions. I tried veering the conversation away from touchy-feely stuff, afraid that Dr. Octopus might overhear it and emotionally be pushed over the edge or something. I woke up before the awkwardness could possibly get any worse.

2010

A Popular Conspiracy

I had taken part in exposing the corrupt dealings of a well-liked politician by stealing his diary and giving it to the cops. He was so adored that most people were angry at me for ruining his reputation. The following day, I entered a classroom to teach a class (like in real life) and found my students displeased with me as well, some of whom were even crying. One student named Gabrielle picked up my laptop and threw it on the ground as a symbol of her defiance and disgust with me. I cussed her out as well as the whole class, explaining that they didn't know anything. I scandalized a lot of them with my foul language ... but I got through to them.

I turned on my laptop to see if it still worked ... it did. A mysterious weasely guy in a suit came over and snatched a mini-DV tape from my briefcase, which I had used to record something. I suspected he was an agent working for the conspiracy and was attempting to blackmail me. I couldn't recall anything on any video tape of mine that could be construed as the least bit scandalous about me, but in any case, I demanded he give my property back, but he straight up denied he took anything. I attacked his pockets, but he artfully kept moving the tape to different compartments in his jacket. Finally, I hailed down a nearby security guard and demanded he frisk the guy. The guard found a couple empty mini-DV cases on him but not the thing I was looking for. When the guard left, the guy said he indeed had the tape and already somehow copied the footage. He played back some of it on his laptop to show me. The footage was of a girl I filmed wearing a somewhat low-cut shirt but not actually doing anything actually inappropriate. Nonetheless, he said horrible things could happen if I didn't keep quiet about this conspiracy. I said, "Wow, you'll have to do better than that. Sure, go ahead, show this to the world."

After that, I walked outside to go to a nearby cafeteria, though this required passing through a shady ghetto. I was a bit nervous, especially with the thought that these conspirators might take this opportunity to burst from the shadows and kill me. Soon enough, some enemy agents got on my tail and started chasing me. I ran through a gymnasium populated with little kids whom I had to avoid running over and eventually hopped a fence. During this time, the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen was playing in the background as a kind of soundtrack. The last thing I remember was meeting a guy holding a huge club that he called "The Shoe." I remember finding that somewhat hilarious.

Hydroelectric World Domination

I was trapped in this office building where one of my students named Josh (from real life) had invented robots that were powered by water. He had used these robots to take over the building and had further plans, moreover, to take over the world. I peered down a stairwell and found a half-dozen or so robots ascending toward me. I threw a grenade and successfully blew some up.

Through more adventures and near escapes that I can't recall, I eventually found Josh in a room, looking at something with his back turned to me. I snuck up behind him, put a gun up to his head, and said, "Any last words? Make it quick." Josh merely responded, "Uh ... I lost." I criticized him for his lack of creativity upon his last moments of life. For some reason, we entered into a conversation that was much longer than intended. It was so long and boring that I woke up before I pulled the trigger.

Rescue and Destroy

I was piloting a helicopter amongst a tall forest, and it was quickly apparent I had little or no experience doing such a thing. I was coming very close to crashing into trees at high velocities despite trying my hardest to rise above the forest canopy. Seeing the whole endeavor a lost cause, I decided to land before death came about, though this was difficult because the propellers refused to turn off. I improvised and tipped the helicopters nose down so that the helicopters blades started hitting the ground. At first they sliced through the dirt, digging a deep swath but soon slowed down and stopped altogether. I then exited the helicopter and grabbed it by its landing bars and began carrying it through the woods.

Upon my walky-talky, I called for extraction and heard many of my fellow soldiers discussing the best way to do so (like figuring out which of them was closer to my location and whatnot). After awhile, one of them radioed back and told me they had figured out one of the people in that last transmission could not be identified and could, furthermore, be a bogie intending to intercept me now that he had overheard my coordinates. This was a problem because I had with me a hard drive filled with top secret intel that would spell disaster for us should it fall into enemy hands.

So, still lugging my helicopter by its landing gear, I fortuitously came upon my grandmother's house and entered it. Strangely, no one was there. I found a closet and, although I was aware that this didn't make sense, stuffed my helicopter into it and hid myself there as well. As I waited covertly in this closet, I heard someone shuffle through the objects in the room and say into a radio, "Yeah, I'm attempting to find the hard drive." This no doubt was the bogie who had intercepted my transmission. It was then I discovered I had no firearm on me ... only something that looked vaguely like a gun, namely, an electric drill. Armed with this semi-lethal tool, I emerged from the closet, got behind the culprit, put the drill up to his back, and said, "Don't move." To my great scandal, it was my roommate Jim (from real life). I said, "Jim, what the hell are you doing here? You're trying to find the hard drive, aren't you? You're one of them!" Jim confessed to all this rather unemotionally. I inquired, "Did you just become my roommate just to get to me?" He answered in the affirmative. I demanded who he worked for. He replied "Gaba" or "Gabana" (I can't remember). Apparently, this person was a tyrant of some militaristic African movement, having tried to undermine our government for a long time. I felt so betrayed. Despite all the implausible events that led up to this point, I was fairly certain this part was real. In fact, I maybe even felt like crying.

My fellow soldiers arrived shortly after, and I told one of them (a female) to fetch some ropes. I swapped my power drill for a "kukri" (a real kind of traditional Indian knife) that was laying on one of the bookshelves (just like the one my dad keeps on his bookshelf). Whenever Jim struggled, I would press the blade to his throat a little more. The soldier returned with a bunch of blankets, saying that she couldn't find any ropes. I told her to retrieve bedsheets at least as that would work more effectively. She left for awhile (entirely too long) and returned empty handed, insisting that blankets would suffice for binding the prisoner. I got into a heated argument, insisting blankets were too easy to escape from, and that there had to be bed sheets around here somewhere. Finally, shouting at her in a frustrated and commanding tone, she relented and began searching some more ... but still found nothing. I told her to rip the bedsheets off the beds in the house (something that hadn't occurred to her). At this point, however, I was so bored that I extracted myself from the dream.

Royal Pain

I, as well as about a dozen other people, were hired to attend upon the King of England, who was currently residing in a luxurious suite in some high-class hotel or resort. Prior to meeting him, we were brought right outside his room and spoken to by one of his high-ranking officials. He said that most of us had been hired to be stenographers to write down everything that the King says. This was, he said, going to be a very difficult and specialized job because the King tended to speak very incoherently. However, we were the top specialists, trained to decipher confusing speech. They said that one of my particular jobs would be to classify the King's accent, as it had not been done so successfully yet (as I was some sort of expert in that field or something). The royal official also warned us that the King's stench was pretty bad, and he rather awkwardly stays in a bathrobe the entire time. He also told us some other things that were going to be hard to get used to but had confidence that we would learn how to deal with it all, as everybody else had managed to do. So, as far as I could see, this King was going to be a living image of high-maintenance.

As I and the others entered into the King's chamber, the King was playing a sitar (or something like it) as we entered. He greeted us musically, and it was obvious that the King had some talent with the instrument, possibly being the only thing he was really good at (as I remember assuming at the time). While the King was talking, I tried to pinpoint what kind of accent he had while realizing I was clearly no expert in the realm of British accents. However, I was under the impression that the character I was portraying WAS in fact an expert and had hope that I would then nevertheless figure it out.

Soon after our reception, he exited the room to take a trip to the bathroom. While he was gone, the King's daughter, a short-haired blonde girl in her late teens or early twenties, made herself known. We saw her as she picked petals off a rose (I think it was), inversely saying, "Should I kill myself?" and "Should I not kill myself?" It became very obvious that this girl, with all her pampering and luxury, was extremely spoiled and unhappy ... and in fact, as you will see, impressively psychopathic. When she got down to the last petal, it had chanced to fall upon the resolution of "I should kill myself." With that, she broke some kind of glass object, and began, rather slowly to cut her wrists in front of us all. Now being a servant of the King, I went over and tried to stop her. At this point, I was under the impression that I was a 62 year old man who didn't have a lot of physical strength. This spoiled princess came at me with the shard of glass, threatening to kill me now that I had dared to intervene on her suicide. There was also a sense that she desired to kill someone anyway whether there was some cause to or not. Not only did she now threaten my life, but she also mentioned how she was the daughter of the King and would get me in so much trouble that it was effectively the end of my earthly happiness if I survived. Suddenly, however, the King entered the room again. This made the princess start to behave herself, and both she and I acted as if nothing had happened, discreetly slipping into the background. The princess had bloodied herself a bit, but the King didn't seem to notice.

The next event I remember was swimming in a river as a woman (the first and only time I ever dreamt that I was a woman). Moreover, I was naked. The princess, whom I believe was also naked, surreptitiously swam up to me and then tried to drown me. I remember trying to scream for help, but I was screaming underwater, worried that people didn't hear me and that I was wasting air. I heard the princess shouting (above water), "Don't worry, everything's all right, I got her" (or something like that). She had managed to cut me too, causing some of my blood to be released into the water. Not to my surprise, a shark showed up. Finally, I managed to get my head briefly above water, catch a breath, and, instead of shouting, "The princess is trying to kill me," I said rather, "Shark!" The presence of this predatory fish fortunately made the princess let go of me. I began swimming backwards as fast as I could, though the shark was catching up. I managed to hit and grab a hold of its nose to hold it back (remembering hearing in real life that the shark's nervous center is there). Doing this a few times, I managed to pull myself on shore and escape the shark. I also remember throwing two very large fishes in the water to satiate the shark (wherever those came from). The piece of shore that I was now on was very small, surrounded by high cliffs or something, so I had to go back into the water to get to a shore that had access to human civilization. I waited until the shark was gone, while I held my bloody wound, worried that I was going to die if I didn't get it treated soon. Finally, I swam to another beach and found someone. I remember not being able to talk very well due to severe dehydration. I tried telling them I needed water and needed to go to a hospital. I felt weak and worthless and very sad. I believe I made it to the hospital but was physically disabled in some way for the rest of my life.

Too Much Caffeine

I was driving up a forested mountain road and running over large caribou with disturbing frequency (every other one seemed to be fake, for what it's worth). Whenever I would smash into them, I would drop a little circular coaster-like thing on the spot of the impact that had a blue symbol that represented "consciousness."" This escapade was supposed to be part of a far-fetched advertising campaign for Caribou Coffee (a real coffee shop chain), with the consciousness symbols representing caffeine and the nearby caribou corpses representing ... caribou. At the time, it made all kinds of sense.

Along the journey, I started noticing workers carrying large trees whose trunks were strangely curled, especially towards their base. I overheard them saying, "The tourists still want to see these coffee trees, even though they don't exist anymore ... so we need to replace them with these fakes." As I ascended the incline more, I came across more and more trees of this same fake gnarled species standing in the place of the formerly real ones. Had Caribou Coffee brewed their coffee from these trees? Now that they were extinct, was their coffee fake now too? Unclear.

I proceeded on foot with some other people to a small misty swamp or pond. I heard someone say, "They've made it look like a swamp." And indeed they had. A layer of artificial mist emanated just off this greenish pool in the midst of this artificial woodland. I claimed to have been to this spot before and that it used to be a small natural lake of lava. This apparent bog was meant to cover up a large hidden mechanical cooling system to control the spurts of magma emanating from an underground volcanic chamber. Some people didn't believe me. I questioned it myself, suspecting I had just made it up on the spot. Shortly afterwards, a large burst of fire erupted from one side of it, which then cooled down rapidly. I regained faith in my outlandish lecture.

Following this bit of self-affirmation, people started to jump into this fake body of water. There were only a few deceptive inches of liquid until they reached the slick plasticky bottom, resulting in a lot of sliding back and forth like a waterslide. Some engaged in this even fully clothed ... even in nice fancy suits. I refrained. It was a bit too stupid, despite their insistence to the contrary.

There was some other crap that happened, but it's too weird and complicated and forgettable to explain.

24 Sleeping Bags

I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah Clarke, the real actress who played Nina Myers on the television show 24, of which, in reality, I was quite a fan. I asked her how she got started in her acting career. She said that, while trying to make it in Hollywood, she paid the bills by collecting junk that people didn't want and then re-selling them. She said that she found the greatest profit in selling used sleeping bags. She said that some of them would sell for 80 or even 200 dollars sometimes. I found this most interesting. When I woke up, I was like, "... what?"

2011

Struggles at School

I was a high school teacher (like in real life) and received news that one of my female students had gone to the dentist recently, whereupon it was discovered that she had an abnormally large wisdom tooth that needed removal ... in fact, the largest wisdom tooth in recorded dental history. It was so large that they needed to cut through her cheek in order to extract it possibly leaving permanent scars on her face. The dentist said, "It will look like she's been bitten by the wolfman." Even in the dream, that expression didn't make any sense. Anyway, it was sad news.

Afterward, I found that the school had hired three new teachers. The students and faculty all gathered into one room where they introduced themselves. One of the new teachers a young but rather effeminate male who instantly failed to command respect. The students kept chatting to themselves out of turn, and some even just walked out of the room. It was pathetic. I thought to myself, "Oh, no. Is this the best we can do?" Another teacher introduced himself, one in his forties and much more masculine. The third new teacher was wearing a ridiculous, mostly green, jester-like mask. He was asked to remove his mask and introduce himself, but he didn't want to. The effeminate one said, "Well, if there's no objection, you can leave your mask on." After a beat of silence, I piped in, shouting, "I object!" which arose some laughter among the students as I intended, as everyone in their hearts objected too but were too embarrassed to say anything. Someone then yanked the mask off his face, and he was revealed to be a man in his sixties with long white hair, a sort of a washed-up hippy. He said, "No, I don't want you to see me yet because I need a haircut first!" He took the mask back and affixed it to his face once again. I noted, "The mask doesn't even hide your hair," which was true, spurring more laughter from the student body. Basically, things were getting weird.

The next moment I found myself to be a student among my own students, attending class, sitting up front, listening to the lecture of the second teacher, who was seemingly the most normal of the three. He announced, "I'm teaching you economics and political theory" and began writing something on the board, which involved numbers like "-80" or "-90" even though he was just writing down the name of the course. He paused to look at his notes and struggled to find what to say next. This lasted an unpardonably long time. One student (someone I went to high school with in real life) raised his hand but was ignored even when he walked up in front of the class to get his attention. The neglected student made a little doodle on the board amongst the teacher's notes, which confused the class. I began rather quietly insulting him for that, and he took offense and quietly insulted me back. The teacher, still unsure about what to say next, discreetly exited the room, perhaps to gather his thoughts in silence ... but it was shameful.

My desk then mysteriously became so close to the board that I bumped it, causing the erasers to go flying and erase parts of the diagrams the teacher had drew. I said, "Oops," and got up to reconstruct them. In the end, I embellished them, somehow unintentionally drawing a set of houses, one with a chimney stack, whose smoke was blowing into a couple of robots that were consequently catching on fire. The next house had a couple of kids standing on the roof in winter clothes throwing snowballs at the oncoming fumes in an attempt to put them out, as well as trying to fend off the attack of the robots who were stationed on the roof of another house ... or something. Again, I had somehow drawn all this unintentionally. Most of the class enjoyed this bizarre display.

One student (a real student of mine), however, came up to the board with a white board eraser in hand to eradicate my accidental artwork. I tried to pull him back, and we began to wrestle. With some difficulty, I finally managed to push him off so that the back of his head hit a desk (actually, multiple desks somehow). That wasn't the end of him, however, and he proceeded to suppress me by pinning down both my arms. Throughout all this, I was worried the teacher would come back any second and bust us for such rowdy behavior, but it was my consciousness that did so instead.

Spiritual Controversies

I was either visiting or attending my old high school and was late for "morning prayer" (something my ecumenical Christian school would hold in real life). As I entered, I saw the dean of boys making announcements and suddenly lost consciousness and fell backwards. I was shocked that no one noticed but then realized that this was a charismatic ceremony in which people were apparently "slain by the spirit" (supposedly knocked unconscious by God, an odd practice done in prayer meetings that many teachers and students in my school had really been involved with ... but never during school hours).

After everyone dispersed, I found one student remaining. She saw me carrying a book about metaphysics and promptly snatched it away from me, clearly not approving of the topic for some reason. I tried wrestling it back but without success. I then threatened her with 45 minute detention (because I was her teacher at this point?), and she finally relented.

Afterwards, I found myself at the house of this famous unnamed author who had once been Catholic, then became Protestant, and was now flirting with Islam. I didn't much care for him. The only other thing I can remember is that his house had a bunch of secret passages.

A Comedic Duel

The actors Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller as well as myself were acting in a comedic film, wherein Sandler and Stiller were enemies, competing in some kind of popularity/celebrity contest (it was somewhat reminiscent of the movie Zoolander). Incidentally, I was playing Stiller's manager.

At one point, I was with my family eating dinner in the kitchen, and Stiller quickly came in, grabbed a spatula and threw it at me, and then left. I said to my family, "Sorry, he's acting up again." I went and followed him, but he kept running away while throwing various kitchen utensils at me, including knives. I eventually picked up some myself and used them to block the others. I finally cornered him and told him to calm down. He said, "Bad news! It's so bad, you're going to kill me!" That is why, presumably, he was trying to kill me first, while at the same time running away in hope to avoid this altogether. I then promised I would not kill him ... I just wanted him to stop throwing knives at me. With that, he informed me that Adam Sandler had become the most popular guy ever, while we had been disgraced ... in some way ... I don't remember. I immediately suspected foul play at work.

Apparently, Adam Sandler had a viciously clever method of making it appear that he could levitate. This was one of the sources of his popularity. Ben Stiller, on the other hand, was mad that he couldn't duplicate this trick and suspected it would be the end of him if he couldn't. It was hinted that Sandler had actually consulted a real wizard to work this trick (somewhat reminiscent of the movie The Prestige).

I then dreamed that I had woken up from this dream and told people at a grocery store about it and was positively convinced that I could write a movie script about it and sell it to Hollywood ... with Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler playing those very parts (as it seemed to me the roles fit their characters perfectly).

The last thing I remember was hearing an interview with a guy who claimed to have heard Cleopatra, Mark Antony, and Octavian all say, "Veni, Vidi, Vici" with the V's pronounced as W's, thus proving the supposed "Classical Pronunciation" of Latin correct as opposed to the "Ecclesiastical Pronunciation." However, I thought about it, and I realized that this guy wouldn't have been alive at that time to have heard those individuals saying that. I thought about it very carefully, so much so that I thought myself out of the dream.

Atheist Theology

Richard Dawkins (a real celebrity atheist) was part of our faculty at our Catholic high school. Ironically, he was teaching Scripture. He apparently had a high appreciation for the literary element of the Bible and was well-read in it. He promised not to impose his atheism on the students but merely teach what the Bible was expressing. He said he was a big fan of the book of Daniel for some reason.

I remember wanting to ask him whether he believed that the Old Testament and New Testament were "unified" or if New Testament broke from the spirit of the Old. I also remember us making fun of each other in a friendly way. I thought the whole thing was a sign that our school admirably transcended conventional barriers, attracting a diverse number of people with differing views ... or something like that. I woke up and thought, "Uh ... no.""

The Z-Files

I was in the car with my dad, hot on a trail toward finding the truth about extraterrestrials. We ended up in a large garage complex, wherein we began seeing a number of "greys" (the stereotypical slender, bug-eyed, grayish aliens with large foreheads who, in this case, stood about 3 to 4 feet tall). They were constantly running away, dodging and disappearing behind parked cars. When they seemed gone for good, we parked our own vehicle, got out, and were met by a couple government agents who we were loosely working with. While we were talking, I noticed about four aliens peek over a car to look at me. I yelled, "Look! There they are!" But by the time the agent looked, they had ducked out of sight. I felt stupid. No one believed me, and I didn't blame them. I said, "Yeah, they dodged behind the ... forget it ... I'm just crazy."

We had dinner with the agents, and one of the things they told was that "Currently, there is no known way to communicate with an alien." I separated from the group to go to the bathroom, at which point I realized to my embarrassment that I was only wearing a T-Shirt ... nothing else. To counteract the awkwardness, I defiantly embraced the situation and deliberately stripped down completely (I would often do this to defy this annoyingly common dream phenomenon). I put the t-shirt on the railing of a wooden staircase and ascended to the next room, which was dimly lit. It felt adventurous. In it, I panned my eyes until about twenty feet away I saw another little grey alien. I instinctively reacted with a sudden movement, causing the grey to dodge into another room, but I quickly told it, "Don't worry! I'm unarmed! It's okay! I'm not going to hurt you" and stuff like that. The grey, without too much hesitation, came back into the room. Perhaps it was because I was entirely naked now, although at this point, I think I magically regained my clothes because of reverse psychology or something.

I don't remember what was said, but I do remember that the alien spoke perfectly coherent English. I rejoiced and thought, "Man, those agents were wrong ... lying, clueless bastards." Vaguely, I remember a friend of mine joined up with me, who, to my surprise, was already acquainted with the alien. Amidst our discussion, I noticed that my friend, who was a male, and the alien, who was a female, began holding hands in a rather affectionate way. I took note of this, as I was always curious whether humans and aliens could be romantically involved.

Afterwards, I found myself at home during a family gathering, where I took a walk with some of my siblings, bringing with me a glass of wine. Suddenly, cops pulled up, showing all manner of hostile intent. I said, "Is something wrong, officers?" to which they said, "We're arresting you for drinking on public property." It was true I guess. Other family members got involved, and one of them said that the police were only using this as an excuse to arrest me for being in contact with an extraterrestrial, since the government always wanted to cover such things up. I believed this theory, so, when the two cops were about to cuff me, I decided to invoke my omnipotence. I made two downward hand motions, one in front of each officer, telekinetically clamming each of them to the ground and unable to get up. I mocked them, saying, "Wow, you guys are pathetic." We all had a good laugh at them.

Apocalyptic Counter-Terrorism

Standing amidst a small group of friends, I was told that some guy had, by a combination of magic and science, managed to initiate armageddon. I brushed it off as a silly rumor, but as I turned away, I noticed an impressive black multi-faceted mushroom cloud growing in the distance, the likes of which no one had ever seen before, and which very much had "judgment day" written all over it. "Oh, crap," I said, standing by the lake over which the cloud had formed, which began to form multiple gargantuan tsunamis that were going to envelope the world in a matter of seconds. I sighed and did what any normal person would do, namely, become omnipotent. I stretched out my hands and halted the massive tidal waves from demolishing the coastline. It was as if they had hit a giant invisible wall, causing the water to ripple around and back to its source. With a few other acts of the will, I managed to calm the waters, though not without some effort, for it was a sizable sea that I was dealing with. Furthermore, with a wave of my hands, I managed to clear the mushroom cloud from the sky and, though somewhat unintentionally I admit, resurrect the structures that had previously stood there, which, as it turned out, included a majestic castle. It was now a serene, cool morning, without any hint of it having been the end of earthly existence. I dropped my hands and said, "Oh ... well, that wasn't so bad," and felt pretty good. I sensed, however, that there might be more to come.

I went into the castle and came upon a "Geothermal Bomb" which simply meant (in the dream) that it automatically chased after the nearest heat source and exploded (like a heat-seeking missile or something). I decided to test this out and turn it on. Resembling a large brown ball with metal strips, it was easy to throw into the next room, which was empty. However, being a good "Geothermal Bomb" it flew right back to me, sensing me as the hottest thing around. "Crap," I said, "Now I've done it." Furthermore, I somehow figured out this was all a trap, set for me by that same guy who had caused that doomsday mushroom cloud and the tsunamis earlier. I was also informed, either by a nearby friend or a mysterious narrative voice, that this bomb was armed with a Plutonium Nuclear Warhead. The situation was not ideal. I couldn't get rid of it no matter how hard I tried. It stopped ticking and proceeded to its detonation. The friend or narrator told me to telekinetically suppress the explosion. It was a fairly solid idea. So, being omnipotent and needing to do something quick, I surrounded it with my hands, just as the nuclear reaction was taking place, and telekinetically smushed it into what became a small electrical blue sphere. It was difficult to contain and sometimes would start expanding against my will, while other times I would successfully crunch it into an ever smaller point. I was extremely frightened that I wasn't going to pull through and end up killing myself and possibly millions of others. I tried shrinking it back to its atomic beginnings and undo the nuclear fission or something but began doubting that I had the knowledge and ability to perform such arcane molecular surgery. Then, the friend/voice piped in one more time and said that the nuclear reaction had finally lost sufficient energy. Upon hearing this, I said, "Oh, okay, that's good enough" and let it go. The nuclear reaction expanded only a small bit and then fizzled out harmlessly. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Eventually, a couple of my friends and I were laughing at the subtle truth that this was all a dream. In bad taste, I said, "Yeah! This is a dream! You guys don't even exist!" I knew I had put my foot into my mouth, and just as those words came out, the fabric of this unconscious realm began coming undone. I apologized, wanting to take it back. Both my friends were losing their shape, and their skin for some reason was turning blue. Not only did it not make sense but worst of all, I knew it didn't make sense. Logic was kicking in with a bitter vengeance and corroding all it touched. I remember grabbing one of their blue faces and saying, "Your face is blue! That's a bad sign! I'm losing you! Sorry! Goodbye!" And then I woke up, saying, "Ah, crap."

Not Just A Game Anymore

I was playing a sophisticated video game which would change slightly every time I played it in order to maximize replay value. There was one part where an AI character (who looked like the character Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager) would block a doorway but could easily be taken out by a simple punch in the face. During one session, however, as I routinely gave his face the whatfor, he was barely affected and responded, "You call that a punch?" I punched and kicked him some more, but he effortlessly brushed my attacks aside. He turned to speak to the other AI characters around him, which was a veritable audience, saying, "This guy doesn't have any real fighting technique." I was ashamed and frustrated, seeing the game had incidentally given this character not only superior martial skill but almost a kind of self-aware intelligence. I knew I just needed to try harder and turn on my omnipotence mode to show this pig-headed simulation a lesson. I thus replied, "Hey, if we fight each other, I assure you that I will win." He took up my offer.

We fought, though I can't remember the details. Eventually, I knocked him to the ground and was about to seize victory, but someone opened the front door to the room, and a character said, "Oh, that's interference. The match is a draw." For some reason, I didn't argue with this, even though it sounded really stupid.

Instead of fighting him again, I decided to show off my prowess without combat. I went over to a metal rack that held magazines and said, "Look how strong I am." I then began to tear off metal sections of this rack. I even grabbed a thick metal bar with both hands and just pulled it apart. The metal acted like putty almost, though I found that I needed to first visualize how the metal would tear before I could actually do it. Later on in the dream I tried doing this exact same thing to a brick wall but failed. Anyway, the character was most impressed and recognized me as the superior.

With that, I moved on to the next level, which unfortunately was just real life.

Santa's Big Helper

I consulted a librarian at my local library to see if I had any overdue books, and behold, I had not renewed a book for ten days and now owed the library fifty dollars. I was shocked at the high fee and tried to argue my way out, threatening to never come back to the library again. However, they didn't budge since the bad economy had apparently forced them into such aggressive measures.

Eventually, I was with friends about to exit a shopping mall, but I finally resolved to go back to the library and pay the fine. I left them and found one of the shops to be that very library, but before I entered, I noticed an eight-foot tall penguin yelling in frustration at a vending machine. I recognized it to be one of minions who helped Santa Claus wreak havoc on the world when Santa had gone crazy for a month during the last Christmas season (no joke, that's what I "remembered"). Even though Santa repented of his crimes and his henchmen had been acquitted, I felt like challenging this flightless bird to a fistfight. I began to throw verbal insults at it, cussing my head off. The penguin began to take notice and say, "Hey, don't swear!" But I didn't comply. Finally, the giant winged beast had enough. It charged at me in a fast-footed waddle. I began running the other direction, daunted by its great height. Finally, I turned to face it, jumped up and landed a few pathetic punches on its face. It laughed at me and then Judo-chopped me with its stubby but powerful flaps for hands. However, subtly using my omnipotence, I made myself invulnerable to them. It went back and forth and nothing really happened.

After a few moments, we became friends. It eventually waddled over to a librarian's desk to see if it had any overdue books. When it found out the truth, I realized I had it easy. The penguin had about five hundred dollars worth of overdue books. A random priest came along and encouraged it to pay the minimum amount first until it got more money (kind of like how credit card bills work or something). As the bird worked over this problem, I said, "Well, I'll see ya. Nice meeting you. Are you from Minnesota?" It shook its head, and then I followed with, "Do you live with Santa?" And it nodded, to which I replied, "Well, I know the general area of the world you live in ... so who knows maybe we'll meet again." In my mind, this was supposed to imply that I knew he lived in Antarctica ... even though later on I realized that's not the same as the North Pole.

I can't remember if I ever paid the library fine, but I was disproportionately relieved to find out this was all a dream for some reason.

To Hell With This

I was shopping at an overpriced grocery store with my friends just wanting to buy a small meal and then get out of there. I asked an African American clerk where I could drink some milk. He brought me to a little in-store cafeteria and said, "Here [in this store], you need to take this milk extract and mix it with some water." I was then informed that this was going to cost $7.50. I kept a charitable open mind and didn't object to any of this, but I was determined never to come here again. After the clerk showed me how to mix the concoction, he then took a sample sip of it himself. He pulled a face and said, "Hmm. Well, usually it's better than this." I shrugged and took a swig myself. It was intolerably sour and past its prime, and I even spit it back into the glass with disgust. He then said something like, "Oh, well, I guess you can do that." I then handed it back to him and said, "This is terrible, I'm not paying for this." He replied, "Well, you took one sip, you should pay at least one dollar." I said, "What? No. I'm not paying anything. This stuff is horrible." He kept arguing me, and I eventually shouted back at the top of my lungs, "I'm not going to pay for this!" causing all eyes in the store to turn to me. The clerk finally relented.

The store manager overheard this and came over to talk to me. She was also an African American for some reason. I explained the situation and my disgust. She began to think out loud who was right: the clerk or me. She kept talking to herself, and I just walked away, apalled that she was considering siding with the clerk.

I then put together a modest pasta salad from the store's buffet and went to the same clerk to buy it. I paid with credit card, and he printed out the receipt for me to sign. Carefully, I looked it over to see how much it was. At first, I saw something like $4.17 and said, "Hey, that's a very nice price" trying to make friends with him after our little tiff. "It's $4.17, right?" I confirmed, but the clerk hesitated. I then looked at the receipt closer and noticed I had not looked down far enough to see the grand total. To my horror it was something like $115.47. I was so angry. I pointed this out and said, "You're charging me $115.47? Really? Are you serious?" The clerk looked at the receipt carefully, and the manager came back and did so as well.

It was discovered that the clerk had put extra charges on my purchase. The clerk realized that (and this is confusing) he had subconsciously charged me with things that related to past events in his life. It didn't make sense. One past event involved being imprisoned with a guy who was possessed by the devil or something. I thought he was full of crap. It then turned out that he and I were now in that very prison. I looked into one of the cells, the one belonging to the possessed guy, and saw a crucifix on the floor, which then turned into a miniature man in a black suit in the cruciform position and started talking and mocking me (with a general sense of mocking the crucifix as well). I was spooked by this ... and began screaming. The clerk saw it too and began screaming as well. We both got the hell out there ... somehow. On our way out of the building, all sorts or creepy stuff was happening, like moving furniture and evil laughter. The front door to which we were scrambling was opening and shutting constantly. The clerk managed to get out first when the door was briefly in the open position, but when I tried getting out it shut tight. I was screaming more than ever before, but I managed to push the stupid door open and get into the sunlight. We both proceeded to run down the street, away from the haunted structure, all at the same time screaming at the top of our lungs. It felt good and cathartic to howl without restraint like that. Anyway, we eventually got back to the rest of the group (my friends, I guess) and recounted what happened since they were wondering why we were yelling and running down the street like psychos. They didn't seem too impressed.

The Water Troll

I saw a semi-truck pull up into a parking lot and several men jump off it, whereupon they began assembling a miniature version of the very same truck with parts taken from the bigger truck. They also sang a delightful song while doing this. Many onlookers witnessed it with great enjoyment.

After that, I think me and a couple friends and siblings got into the miniature truck, which was now a small school bus. During our ride, the big truck, now a large school bus, started chasing after us, possibly because it had been parked in neutral on an incline. The driver of our bus swerved back and forth, barely avoiding the superior vehicle. Believing I could resolve this situation better than he could, I grabbed the steering wheel and did a 180 degree turn for some reason. I'm not quite sure what happened, but the next thing we knew was that our bus was tumbling headlong into a river. As we were about to take the plunge, I calmly apologized to everyone and encouraged them not to die.

Once we were in the water, we immediately sank to the bottom. It was thirty or fifty feet deep. I, as well as Eric, my brother-in-law, worked to free the others, all of whom were about 10 years old or younger. Fortunately, they all seemed to be holding their breath but were not making any effort to move in any way whatsoever. The system we naturally fell into was that I would stay underwater, unhook the kids from their seats, and pass them to Eric who would swim them up out to the surface. This involved me not breathing. I remember cheating a bit and breathing through my nose ever so slightly, thinking, "Well, I'm doing my best. If this were real, I probably wouldn't be able to do that. Still, it's good practice."

I remember choosing to get my youngest brother Gabriel out last since he was the smallest and would be the easiest, though it was a tough decision to make. When I grabbed what I thought was Gabriel, I began swimming up to the surface but found it ridiculously difficult. I had to kick my feet so incredibly hard and moved only a few inches every second due to the extra weight I was carrying or something, and I was losing more air the harder I tried too. But knowing that this was not actually real, I was patient and just waited it out. Finally, I broke the surface of the water and found that everyone was there ... except Gabriel. Apparently, the person I was carrying was not Gabriel ... I had left him behind. Crap.

I swam down again but found the submerged bus empty. As I began to resurface, one of my friends pointed to the shore. There, I saw Gabriel getting out of the water by himself. He was safe ... but then he wasn't. I noticed a small, brownish, grayish, bald, raggedly, almost undead-looking creature walk along the shoreline toward Gabriel. It was some sort of troll or ghoul that looked intent on eating him. I quickly swam over, and when I got on land, Gabriel began running away from the monster, while I charged it. The troll proved very agile, and as soon as I would get in range, it would give itself a boost of speed and slip from my grasp. I got annoyed and decided to appeal to my omnipotent handbag of tricks and give myself some inexplicable afterburners of my own. With the increased velocity, I tackled the abomination to the ground and proceeded to do to it what the troll intended to do to Gabriel ... I began eating the troll. I tore it limb from limb with my teeth, ripping it to the bones and then snapping his bones with my jaws. His flesh somewhat resembled that of an already dead and decaying animal. It was disgusting. I eventually spit it all out when I was sure it was dead. I also remember thinking this was, to some metric or another, maybe unhealthy.

Ever since I cheated by giving me that extra speed, I began losing a hold of my dream. Randomly and psychopathically eating the troll didn't help either. I had no business here anymore. I woke up.

Northern Exposure

I was driving my family's minivan at night in the vicinity of my old house, which later changed into our cabin. I took a wrong turn and drove into a random driveway to turn the car around, but instead of doing that, I impulsively got out and wandered around to ask someone for directions. Not finding anyone, I returned to the driveway and discovered the front half of the minivan had been stolen (this included the engine and the driver's seat and passenger's seat). This eccentric carjacking made me all kinds of mad.

I walked to the neighbor's house and discovered a brown horse. Since I was in desperate straits, I stole the animal to ride it back home. It was difficult to control, as if it were not meant for riding, continuing to lurch its back, trying to throw me off. I contemplated whether it might actually be a mule, blindly theorizing that this might be how mules act.

I haphazardly led it back to where I found it and discovered it was neither horse nor mule but a large white shaggy dog. I was troubled at my unspeakable stupidity. It was growling angrily as I led it back and prayed it wouldn't attack me. When we returned to the house, I found the nearest tree and hastily tied the dog to it with a pathetically hopeless knot while noticing the tree wasn't even rooted to the ground. I was somewhat confident that if the dog tried to charge at me now, it would be slowed by the tree dragging behind it at least a few seconds.

When I scurried away, I looked over my shoulder and saw another dog, this one being black and meaner-looking, but thankfully restrained by a proper leash. Meanwhile, I saw the white dog struggling to free itself ... and succeeding. It tore down the tree, making a whole lot of noise, and then it spoke to me, "Ha! I wiggled out of it!"

Instead of biting me, the white dog rushed to its master's house to notify him that I was trespassing. I retreated, jumping back into my minivan (or what was left of it) and felt unreasonably safe. I decided to use my extra-sensory perception to remote view what was happening. I saw a boy and a girl finding the unleashed dog, which verbally informed them of the situation. One of the kids went to investigate, ultimately not finding me but someone else that was lurking about ... someone they knew and had given them trouble in the past. I knew intuitively that this person was the one who stole my car (or half of it). It was their neighbor, in whose driveway I had parked that started this whole ordeal. It explained everything ... more or less. One of the kids grabbed a pitchfork and impaled a wasp nest and ran to the edge of the driveway, and though they were stung little by little, they soon catapulted the buzzing projectile at the culprit. I didn't see if they hit. Instead, I stopped remote viewing and went to sleep in my half-minivan to resolve this mess in the morning.

After a good night's rest, I got out of the compromised vehicle and found the driveway was actually a large parking lot, while the house had become a large two-story restaurant in the style of a northern-Minnesota-style lodge. I found a man approaching his car and figured he was the owner of the establishment ... and the original carjacker. I approached him unassumingly and said, "Hello, sir, I'd like to eat at your restaurant." He looked me over and foolishly decided to trust me. He said, "Why sure, why don't you go to the lower level. Here, I'll show you in." Superficially, this didn't sound too suspicious, yet I could tell he was the shadiest of persons, running an even more shadiest of operations. It also seemed he was assuming I wanted something illegal from him, something he was happy to provide for the right price.

As we entered the lower level of the restaurant, I found a small but exclusive room wherein a dozen or so people were gathered. Most of them were women, some being scantily clad while most were completely naked. Some were frumpy, while the rest were attractive enough. Now that I saw what kind of business he was operating, he said to me, "The drinks are on the house," allegedly because the only service I had to pay for was prostitution. After he left, I found the bar was serving a delectable cocktail of prosecco wine and some kind of fruit juice ... a pretty good deal in some ways. I stood around, sipping the beverage and slowly becoming tempted to approach one of the more attractive ladies of the night. I shamefully thought, "Hey, I'm in the middle of nowhere. No one I know will ever find out," and other unforgivably cliched rationalizations of that sort.

However, suddenly, one of my mother's cousins entered the room and walked right past me. What was she doing here? She also had a beverage and went over to sit down among the male clients and prostitutes. She seemed to fit right in, which was weird. Then, one of my grandmothers walked in as well. I got the impression that she didn't know what this place was and was shocked to see what was down here. She hadn't glanced my way yet, however, but if she did, I was prepared to look as surprised and scandalized as she was ... which I kind of was. In the end, I thought it best to make my way furtively up the stairs.

I can't quite remember what happened next. The last thing I remember was that Q (the mischievous omnipotent being from Star Trek) had lost his powers but then regained them and that I was pretty sure he had fixed my car and punished the carjacking pimp. I remember saying, "Knowing Q, that guy probably got what he deserved ... and probably a little more."

Bedshock

I was in my old room talking with my old friend Will that I had not seen since middle school. We had a good time revisiting old memories and catching up on what the other had done the past many years. A couple of lights turned off in the room, and I went over to check the lightswitch which wasn't responding. With only one dim light, the room had become quite dark, which distracted us from our conversation. I found a fuse box on my wall, commenting, "Hey, that's weird. I don't remember this fuse box here." I said this somewhat humorously to get a laugh and figured that I had been too young and stupid to have noticed it when I had lived here. I tinkered with some switches but they proved to be complicated and unresponsive. I shrugged, and we just made do with the less-than-ideal lighting. I couldn't help feeling, however, that there was something evil at work here.

I asked my friend if he had played the video game Bioshock (a real video game of which I am a most avid fan). He said no but directed me to the computer to show me an online video that he knew partially inspired the game. He said the video was really creepy, and a lot of people get uncontrollably freaked out by it. I had played the game Bioshock (which was true in real life) and found the game to be quite creepy as well (also true), and I figured I could handle this video just fine due to such past experience. So we watched it.

This "video" on the internet, instead of playing on the computer screen, manifested itself in three-dimensions throughout my room as if to make us a part of the story. I didn't find this out of the ordinary. The "video" featured two characters. One was a tall, muscular, hairy, fearsome wolfman-like creature that stood on its hind legs and had sharp teeth and a short snout. The other one was a little girl, perhaps five to seven years old. The creature was apparently called an "ogre" and was a kind of guardian for the little girl (for those familiar with Bioshock, it somewhat resembled the Big Daddy and Little Sister characters). Not only did these two characters appear in the room but they interacted with us ... or rather me in particular.

As I sat back in my chair, the little girl walked up to me with her fearsome guardian looming over her, ready to do something if anyone (especially me) did anything disagreeable. The girl began talking in a very energetic, bossy, and rather malicious tone. She explained how she was going to brainwash me into believing anything she wanted. I believe she also explained how she was doing this on behalf of the totalitarian city that she was a part of and that this procedure was a kind of psychological control that the society had perfected. She held my head back and began shooting these thin green lasers out of her hands or face into my forehead and my eyes, as well as an especially powerful but brief flash into my mouth. As she was doing this, she was constantly telling me that, even though the date was 1969 (or something) that I was going to believe the date was actually 1983 (or something). She kept chattering on about this in an oppressive and relentless manner, as well as saying things like "we will gain control of you" and "we will make you think whatever we want" and stuff. It was indeed a bit strange and creepy, but I felt confident I wouldn't lose control. My father walked in casually at one moment, looking for something. He didn't notice what was going on but had but turn his head to behold the unusual scene. I prepared to tell him it was just a creepy video that Will was showing me and that there was no cause for alarm. He eventually left, never taking notice. Eventually, the girl stopped what she was doing, and the two of them pulled away (and I think disappeared, for the video was over). However, unexpectedly, I started to black out and go into some kind of trance. I said to Will, "Oh no, you're right, I'm losing it!" and then I felt my ears pop.

The next thing I knew I found myself in a grand submarine city under the ocean (like the city of Rapture in Bioshock except even fancier and before everything goes to hell in the story). The ornateness of its halls were so incredibly vivid I was convinced I wasn't dreaming. However, I closely inspected a complex design on some embroidered tapestry, marveling at its clarity but noticing that when my eyes passed over a section that I had already analyzed, I found the texture had changed. This convinced me that I was dreaming ... but nonetheless chose to enjoy this world where every kind of beauty seemed magnified.

I walked through a crowded art deco corridor, hearing an ominous and intriguing tune in the background. I began vocally adding a non-lyrical melody with it, helping it to sound more eerie, mystical, and sublime. Other people took notice and joined in as well, either copying me exactly or adding a harmony line. It was beautiful and uplifting ... a symphonic masterpiece. I realized that I would not remember this tune when I woke up but, once again, chose to savor it while it lasted.

The situation degraded in a manner that I can't recall in detail. What I do remember was being chased by one of those "ogres" and almost getting killed. I apparently woke up, walked around the room, half-remembering the tune. I began suspecting that I wasn't in fact awake, simply by the fact that I was suspecting that I was not awake (always a surprisingly reliable test). So I made another attempt to wake up and succeeded this time. Like I predicted, I could not remember the music at all.

Presidential Dishonor

I had managed to get Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama into a short one-episode sitcom, in which they all made fun of themselves (very much like a Saturday Night Live skit). I was convinced this was going to be one of the biggest sensations in television history.

It started with Obama and Clinton talking in a hall, outside what I thought was the Oval Office. Across the hall, Bush was eccentrically examining the stick figures on the men's and ladies' bathrooms. Bush noticed the two other Presidential figures and began waving to them in an excitedly embarrassing fashion. The two others sheepishly waved back, ashamed to have occupied the same job. Bush then walked up to them and shook Clinton's hand violently, saying, "Well, hello, Mr. President!" and then turned to Obama and did the same thing. "Well, hello, Mr. President!"

Bush glimpsed the sign on what I thought was the Oval Office. It read, "Barack Obama" and then below it, it read something like, "Zambou." Bush tried to pronounce the perplexing word and then "realized" that it was merely Obama's country of origin (despite it not existing in reality) but was quick to add that of course it had a US military base in it on which Obama was born, thus making Obama a natural US citizen, lest his election be constitutionally invalid and all that awkwardness.

The three Presidents walked into the office and found it not to be the Oval Office at all. It was rather an old trashy workplace dating back to the 70's or 80's with terrible brown carpet and badly painted white walls and furniture, desks, and toppled bookshelves as if the place had been ransacked. Bush said, "Whoa, what happened here?" Obama replied, "This is the temporary office space the Zambouians gave me." Bush replied, "We're in another country? I didn't know that!" Obama replied, "Yeah, we're in the Republic of Zambou." Bush went on, "Well, they sure made a mess of this place, didn't they?" Obama replied that it's part of their culture to present such gifts to people in such a state ... or something. Bush said something like, "That's stupid!"

Upon closer inspection, Bush concluded, "You know, I think there are a bunch of sea serpents swimming around in this 3-inch puddle of Campbell's Tomato soup!" And indeed, after he said it, the entire floor of the room was now covered in about three inches of what seemed to be Campbell's Tomato soup. There was no evidence of any sea serpents, however, as Clinton pointed this out. Bush went over to a side room and explained that the serpents were specifically over here because the soup was much deeper in this area. He stuck his foot in the room and it sank considerably lower, giving him the impression that he was right about everything. He also scurried away from it immediately afterward, worried that sea serpents might jump out at any time and try to bite him. The other two Presidents were not convinced that Bush had any idea what he was talking about.

The dream went through a series of forgettable and boring changes, until I found myself to be a member of a marine battalion. A high-ranking officer came into the room, saying something like, "This is not a drill. This is a state of emergency." Then he said, in these exact words: "Those of you who have been made unconditional leaders, raise your hands." A number of senior officers did so. He replied, "Choose your number-one officers." The "unconditional leaders" did so. They were then ordered to go and fight in the upcoming mission, whereupon they entered through a door on the right. In addition to picking those soldiers, he began picking others and walked up to me, put a hand on my back and led me to what I thought was the door to join the mission ... but instead he yanked me gently away and into the hall, where he told me, "No, no. I need you to stay behind." There was a feeling of condescension in this, one which he tried to hide. "Oh, good, I didn't want to go on that dangerous mission anyway," I said, which was true at first until I felt honored for being chosen until I realized I wasn't, thus dashing my pride to pieces. He continued to show uncalled-for concern for my feelings ... which ironically hurt my feelings. He tried changing the subject and said, "Did you like that burger place I showed you?" I responded in kind, "Oh, yeah. It was great. I mean, it was delicious and affordable and everything."

When the officer returned to the operations room, I headed for that very burger place. It was called, "Burger Tub" and had a logo that was clearly ripping off Burger King. The burgers also resembled Burger King whoppers, except they tasted less fake, to their credit. The entire restaurant was a one-room, un-manned operation with a big table that had a bunch of bags of pre-prepared burgers on it, where customers would use the honor system by stuffing five dollars in a large plastic jar filled with other money from previous purchases. I was surprised that the business seemed to work at all. I examined the burgers carefully, trying to pick the best one. Eventually, I did and consumed it with great ravenous delight. I was eating partially to console myself for the dishonor the military had shown me. After the first burger, I got another one. I knew it was a bit much, but I was pretty sure this was a dream and hence enjoyed it without fear of getting fat. Nonetheless, the dream sped forward in time and I was a large fat man in a big baggy jogging suit, taking a fat-burning walk down a road amongst scenic trees. I suddenly remembered I had never put my money in the tub for the burgers I took.

Elephant in the Dorm Room

I was in college and had been assigned to a new dorm room, now sharing with two freshman, though I was not a student at this point but a professor. One of these roommates, who was studying hard, asked me if I knew what the "Witan" was. I explained that it was a kind of Council of Elders that advised the King back in Anglo-Saxon England until the Normans invaded in 1066 and radically changed the government (this was historically accurate in reality). I was glad I knew I was talking about, considering I was supposed to be a professor here.

Later on, I was driving with my family on a road with treacherous traffic. I remember hijacking an abandoned car when mine broke down but with the intent to return it. I parked near a concrete gateway, and we all began walking through it, though one of them mentioned how we were now illegally crossing the Canadian border (into Canada, I think). I looked nervously into the crowds on the other side to see if we had been spotted by any border patrols. We got through and blended with the rest of the pedestrians.

I entered a shop at a zoo where I found my roommate Jim (my current real roommate), who had just gotten rid of our two elephants that we had won from the zoo a month or so before. Apparently, we had got these animals from the zoo when a zoo keeper didn't want them anymore, and I offered to take them. The zoo keeper didn't just want to give them to anyone, so he flippantly said we could have them if we guessed the names of the zoo's two cougars. We had chanced to overhear that one of them was named "Jimmy." We then hypothesized that the other one might be a kind of female version of the name. So, we guessed the other one was "Jamie." By incredibly dumb luck, we had guessed correctly and became the proud owners of two fully grown elephants that we then stuffed into our dormitory room ... or apartment or whatever. However, Jim had grown tired of them and how much space they were taking up. I sympathized with his position but was enraged that he had disposed of them without my consent. I thought having two live elephants was at least pretty awesome.

In that same shop, I found a walk-in closet. At the end of it was a door, and on the other side of the door was my dorm room. From the dorm room, it didn't look like a door but rather a tall, full-body mirror. This made me excited because I could now sneak across the Canadian border easily without fear of getting caught by the Canadian border patrols. In retrospect, I don't know why I was excited about this.

Artificial Conscience

I was directing and acting in a movie about an android and its people who were trying to make it. The first memorable scene was me (the android) and one of my makers walking through a large crowded department store (something like a Costco or a Sam's Club). I made sure my motions were subtly robotic. Eventually, my maker turned and talked to me. At first, my vocal cords didn't work so I merely mouthed my replies. But then I said, "Cut," turned to the camera crew, and told them that when my maker asked me something about good and evil, he should say, "Come on, you can answer this question at least," at which point, my voice would kick in. I explained, "This will confuse the audience a bit," which was good since I wanted things to be a bit more mysterious. The crew laughed in agreement for some reason.

At one point, I remember going to the headquarters of the institution that made me and learned that the cost for the research and technology that brought me into android existence was something like 123 trillion dollars. Many countries of the world had helped fund the project in the interest of forwarding research into artificial intelligence.

Eventually, I found myself at a bustling water park. Five or six teenagers popped in and began making trouble for the rest of the kids there. I'm not quite sure what they were doing but it was annoying. The lifeguards were too intimidated to interfere, as these teenagers had the reputation of using ruthless gang tactics against anyone who got in their way.

I walked up to one bully and told him to stop in a mechanical tone. He didn't, and his friend attacked me. I threw him off a very tall waterfall. Another one charged, and I knocked him out. Then, the one I first talked to tried to do something (I forget), but I threw an enigmatic clay pot at him that eventually burst in a highly corrosive explosion of acid. It went all over his face, and he stumbled and fell down the waterfall as well. Some of the acid got on my artificial skin, but it quickly repaired itself. I made a comment that the acid was something I used to eat to help clean my inner machinery or something. Finally, the head of the gang drove up in a little car. He pulled out a gun and fired a couple shots at me. He might have even shot a couple rounds into the crowd. When he saw I couldn't be hurt, he intended to throw the gun at me so that when everyone would come over here to see what the noise was, they would see the firearm next to me, indicating that I had fired it, thus framing me for the public shooting. However, I outstretched my hand and used my magnetic powers to throw the gun back at him when it was in mid-flight. He realized he couldn't win, so he ran back into his car and just drove away.

The last thing I remember was the head gang member invading the gun shop of one of his older relatives, who, despite being intimidated, screamed at him to get out, while firing multiple warning shots. The gang leader didn't flinch and told him that he needed to take care of some serious business ... that is, he needed more guns to kill me once and for all.

But that never happened because I woke up because the plot was becoming way too complex for me to keep track of while being asleep.

A Necessary Appendix

I was at a restaurant sitting at a table with two other people, one of whom was a dark-haired woman whose accent and mannerisms suggested that she was either from France or some Slavic country. As I started eating my food, she asked me, "Why don't you wash your hands?" Her tone didn't imply disgust but genuine curiosity. I wasn't even aware I hadn't washed my hands and wondered if I habitually avoided it enough that foreigners could even pick up on it. In any case, I gave a thorough, heartfelt, and scientific answer ...

I explained that the human appendix, long thought to be a useless vestigial organ, had recently been discovered to have a surviving purpose. I explained how it exists as a hang-out place for good bacteria in the human body that fight bad bacteria and/or viruses. However, when one lives a life that is too sanitary, excessively avoiding chances of disease, the good bacteria starts reproducing in greater number due to the uninhibiting absence of infective agents and effectively becomes bad bacteria that harms the appendix. This leads to appendicitis. Hence, it's good not to be so scrupulous about avoiding infection ... and thus not to be scrupulous about washing your hands. In the end, the European woman seemed to believe me.

By the way, I didn't make this up. I had read about this somewhere in real life, though it might indeed be completely crap.

Reload

I was riding in a taxi when all of a sudden I received a premonition that something bad was going to happen to me if I didn't get out of the car right away. The taxi driver laughed and kept driving, so I jumped out of the car right before the taxi cab exploded for some unknown reason. A variety of hostiles rushed out of a nearby gas station, some of inhumanely gigantic stature, among whom was a large white hairy "behemoth" with ridiculously long claws (clearly based off something from the video game Heroes of Might and Magic III), which charged and overturned my friend's car who had apparently been driving alongside me.

I engaged in battle with this behemoth and the other bad guys and lost several times. Fortunately, I was able to "reload" the "level" many times. This sometimes involved going into the gas station to a TV with an XBOX and saving the level progress when I was finally satisfied how things were going thus far (so I didn't have to start the level all over if I died). One time, I knew I had no chance and let the behemoth charge and impale me with its claws so I could just restart the sequence and do better.

Finally, in one reload, I did something different which caused the behemoth never to show up in the first place. Instead, I had to fight these giant crazy women who proved slightly less difficult. When all the bad guys were eliminated in the area, I began to walking on the walls of the now towering gas station building until I ran into Gandalf (the wizard from Lord of the Rings), who was holding his customary wooden staff but also a metal wand. Upon request, he temporarily lent me his staff (I let him keep the wand for his own protection). Looking back down the hall, various low-level henchmen started charging toward me with vicious battle cries. I waved the staff and thrust it in their general direction, whereupon a lighting bolt shot forth and killed the closest attacker in one satisfying shot. I did the same to the next guy with equal success and then again to the next. Finally, the behemoth showed up again, much to my stress. Like before, I waved the staff and fired and behold! The big lumbering brute finally fell down ... and with a single strike, no less. It felt so good. I even poked it to see if it was dead for sure. It was indeed.

Another guy began running toward me down the hall. He was kind of a roguish-looking fellow, possibly belonging to a gang, donning a lot of black leather, long dark hair, possibly a Native American or of Far Eastern descent. I shot a lightning bolt at him, but it did nothing. He said something like, "Lame." I backed away, worried I might have met my match ... again.

For some reason, I figure out that he wasn't affiliated with the rest of the bad guys and tried to use this to my advantage. I noticed him carrying a high quality sports bag and said, "Wow, that's a nice bag!" Instinctively, he held it up to look at it more carefully. It had black with gold letters on the side that read, "Jack Goldwyn" or something, presumably the brand name. "Jack Goldwyn!" I said in awe. "No way!" He immediately became friendly, affirming that this was, indeed, probably the most high quality brand of sports bags ever made. He went on to talking about how lucky he was for getting it. I admitted, "I'm just a pathetic person compared to you, and I admit I've never even heard of Jack Goldwyn but it must be really expensive." He said, "Hey, I've been into sports bags for most of my life and I haven't ever heard of Jack Goldwyn ... until recently. That's how rare they are."

As we were talking, one of the guy's buddies walked up to us, wearing similar clothing but had a fearsome hockey-mask on as well. This person was still in a hostile battle mode toward me, but the other guy calmed him down, saying, "Hey, it's all right."

I now aimed to get these men on our side. I tried remembering what our objective was in this adventure and vaguely recalled (or rather, pulled something out of my ass). I asked them, "So, are you interested in destroying the Emperor of the Universe?" I figured this would perk their rebellious interest, and indeed it did. I think I supplied them with a few details, and quickly they were enthusiastically on board. We agreed to call it a night and start first thing in the morning. He said we could sleep in the museum for tonight, whatever that was. As I proceeded to go to sleep, I woke up.

Denticular Slaughter

I was in a large store where I vaguely recall that I might have used a Jedi mind trick on someone and pretended to shoot them in cold blood, impressionably convincing them that they really had been shot (I recall saying "Bang!" when I pulled the trigger of an unloaded gun ... I think). In any case, the cops swarmed in, surrounded me, and promptly opened fire for this perceived offense. I loaded my firearm with live ammunition and tried shooting back, but it kept jamming. The police managed to hit me center mass, making me worried that I had received a mortal blow ... even for me ... but I was fine ... because omnipotence probably.

The police force then charged at me with some kind of high-speed bulldozer. I made a tall vertical jump and barely cleared it. Deftly, the bulldozer spun around and made a second pass. This time, partially for show, I avoided its lethal assault by turning into a ghost, allowing the vehicle to pass right through me harmlessly (I was really worried it wouldn't work ... but it did). Nonetheless, they came about and sped toward me once more. This time, I deliberately shrunk to the size of a spider, easily hopped next to the driver and other passengers, and told them that I had just now frozen time within the vehicle for two years, while the rest of the world has gone on without them. I then jumped out and left them to think about that. I knew, however, that this wasn't true, but I wanted to mess with their minds. Furthermore, I placed hallucinations into their minds for good measure, ones so real that I myself somehow got fooled into believing them too.

The mental illusions that I created developed into me being in a bathroom with the back of my mouth feeling irritated. I opened my mouth and examined it the mirror to find that I had two new back teeth growing out from the back of my throat. This seemed abnormal so I went to the dentist, specifically one whose office was located in a nearby trailer. After examining my condition, he explained how in rare cases, one can psychosomatically create new molars if one firmly believes they are about to lose their current ones. This made sense to me because I "remembered" thinking for a long time that through my violent encounters, I would soon get a tooth or two knocked out. However, this hadn't happened, so, like my wisdom teeth, these didn't fit in my mouth, so I needed them surgically extracted soon.

The next day, while I was walking to the dentist's trailer to get this operation done with, I found the ground to be extremely muddy. The result was that I became completely stuck. It seemed also that extra gravity was working against me. In addition, a car started sliding down toward me down a hill. I dodged it but after its momentum carried it up the opposite incline, it began sliding back down in my direction again. I found this highly unusual but eventually pushed it far away down a nearby hill next to a lake. I noticed another car parked there. Both of them began sliding in various directions, though at this point, I was sure they had a mind of their own and that both wanted to kill me but were making a futile attempt to appear that their movement was merely accidentally due to the slippery ground. I, however, wasn't fooled. Now, the two cars, without any subterfuge, started driving uphill toward me. I freaked out and headed to the dentist's trailer, successfully overcoming any remaining muddy obstacles, and barricaded myself in there, trying to figure out why this was happening to me.

A Bad Substitute

One of my colleagues at school got replaced with a new eccentric philosopher who, despite wearing a large messy green clown wig, was highly rated for his unorthodox approach to teaching the humanities. He began his class by showing a long avant-garde powerpoint presentation that didn't make any sense. I felt maybe this might appeal to some students, but it really didn't seem to connect with most of them ... including me. I was angry at the administration for picking this weirdo and prepared to give a tempestuous complaint to the higher-ups.

Not-So-Silent of the Lambs

I was living out a prequel to the movie Silence of the Lambs. I was visiting a prison/asylum when an alarm rang and swat teams appeared and began combing the building to find the escaped Hannibal Lector (the famous serial killer character from the movie). Meanwhile, I made my way all the way down to the basement, passing by many noisy boiler room machines, an area that the guards were stupidly neglecting. There, I encountered the insane Hannibal Lector. He dodged out of sight, and I eventually met up with another group who were searching for him. However, there was now a problem ...

Hannibal had gotten his hands on a mind-control device that made people look like they've swapped bodies with other people in the vicinity. With this, Hannibal could quickly disguise himself, cause confusion, and throw off pursuers. At this point, we had become convinced that Hannibal was disguised as one of us in the group. This was further supported when some of us began getting killed off when the others weren't looking.

Trying to solve the problem, we came up with the theory that this mind-control device operates by sending off high or low frequency sound waves with words that could only be heard subconsciously that repeatedly told its victims that the persons they were seeing is actually someone else, causing their brain to hallucinate accordingly. Based off this, I then plugged my ears really tight. Nothing happened. I thought perhaps the brainwashing sound waves were still subconsciously audible. So, in addition to plugging my ears, I start yelling in order to smother out the invisible sound for good. And behold! It worked! People regained their true appearances when I yelled, and just as I stopped, they went back to their false appearances. It was actually kind of neat. I went back and forth, yelling and not yelling. It was better than nothing, even if it got pretty annoying. We then proceeded to hunt down the elusive Hannibal with this method.

This dream then seemed to drag on forever. I remember waking up briefly various times and going right back into it, still trying to find a way to defeat Hannibal. Even when some tedious resolution was reached, I don't remember what it was.

The Lost Soul

Some kind of spirit suddenly possessed me and kicked me out of my body, leaving me as a ghost. The mysterious agent went on to puppet my physical form, pretending to be me to other people. I tried entering my body again but couldn't figure out how to seize back control of it. No one was aware of or could sense my disembodied soul ... until I made a high-pitch scream, and only then could the living only faintly detect something. Eventually, I figured out how to move around physical objects like a poltergeist and began to ghost-write my name on something, informing people, "I am Julian" and "someone else is controlling my body." At this point, some kind of spiritual medium was there and told me that my hijacked body and spiritual disembodiment was the result of a curse.

The medium, along with some others, went on to perform a questionable ritual in which lots of Arabic was chanted. As they directed, I followed them up a tower. Suddenly, an alarm rang, and I somehow started falling off the structure, but some ropes caught me, ropes that were also being held onto by the others. They instructed me to let go, saying, "Now you need to learn about death." With a leap of faith, I let go of the ropes and fell.

I then "woke up" amongst a meeting of soldiers who were listening to a speech being given by a military general. I was eventually able to pull him aside and asked him to "send me back," but he didn't know what I was talking about. I then heard another alarm and "realized" I was currently existing in two places at once. I tried to explain this absurd concept to the general who wouldn't have any of it. In the meantime, ninjas showed up but seemed oblivious to the existence of the soldiers, while the soldiers seemed oblivious to the ninjas. I tried describing to both parties what was going on, eventually concluding that both the soldiers and the ninjas were simultaneously existing in the same place at once. When asked how this could be, I replied, "Well, what about that time when I became a ghost?" All this somehow seemed to make sense at the time, and I was frustrated why no one else could understand it. At any rate, right when I said this, they pulled some kind of cloth over my head from behind me. Things went dark, and I felt my mind imprisoned. I faintly remember encountering a guy who offered to show me a way out but he turned out to be a traitor.

2012

My Undying Revolution

In an attempt to rally people to a movement to effect social change, I inadvertently caused an outpouring of unstoppable revolutionary spirit far beyond the degree intended. Eventually, the revolutionaries began assigning new names to the calendar months (like what the French Revolution tried to do for real), whereupon I withdrew my support from them completely. In response to my revolution against their revolution, they took me hostage. I, however, as well as a small group of followers fought back. I got my hands on a small laser gun which shot a very thin, red, stream of light that would only work if concentrated on a target continuously for several seconds. Eventually, I had to use it against a random horde of zombies that were being controlled by the revolutionaries. Later, I traded the laser gun in for a more appropriate nickel-plated 1911 semiautomatic handgun. I fought my way to the leader of the revolution, loaded a fresh magazine into the handle of the gun, lifted it up to his head, and pulled the trigger. The safety was on, however, but his zombie bodyguards were too stupid to react in time, so I figured out how to turn it off, after which I successfully busted a couple holes in the guy's cranium.

The scene changed, and I, along with a handful of other counter-revolutionaries, were fleeing the city. While we simply moved on foot, the enemy began tracking us with a helicopter which was sharply maneuvering in and out around the buildings. Furthermore, an absolutely enormous dark purple blimp slowly hovered into view, filling the night sky, dwarfing the skyscrapers in its foreground. Each of the aircraft began shooting at us with various arsenals. Somehow, we managed to pull through and reached a shoreline, finding a small docked submarine into which we proceeded to scramble. The helicopter caught up and landed next to us, and out came two commando-looking individuals. To our surprise, they took a friendly posture and said, "Is there room in there for us? You're not going to leave without us, are you?" So, we brought them with.

Contrary to expectations, we escaped in the end. The dream resolved with an obscenely rare degree of satisfaction.

Cold Prey

I was living at a vast, complex, futuristic planetary colony composed of beautiful sprawling glass buildings. Despite its scenic appearance, an inhabitant on occasion would mysteriously be heard letting out of bloodcurdling scream and be left completely massacred in a big bloody mess. Notably, it would be remarkably cold around the murder scene. I was hired to figure out what was going on.

At one point, I was taking an elevator down a glassy skyscraper when I saw two workers running toward me while a mysterious and barely visible cloud was encompassing them. Frost would form wherever the faint gas touched, eventually reaching the screaming workers, whereupon violent icicles erupted from their bodies, ripping them apart. The windows of the elevator protected me from this horror, but it got closer, icing the glass over. I pushed a button to move the lift to a safe distance, specifically in a horizontal direction this time, as it also doubled as a kind of tram or something. I looked back to see the enigmatic entity following me. It began taking the shape of a ghostly woman who said something creepy, but I don't remember what it was. I began to doubt that I could solve this case.

The dream switched to a department store where a Klingon Bird-of-Prey (an iconic starship from Star Trek) was seen buzzing around up in the ceiling (it might have been a miniature one?). I cornered it like a bug and somehow fired a "high yield photon torpedo" at it. As it made impact and exploded, I "realized" that "we" instead needed to hijack the ship later on in "the movie," so I magically went to "undo" my action using my brain.

At this point, I "realized" I was in a long-forgotten Star Trek movie in which the Klingon character of Worf (from Star Trek: The Next Generation) revealed that his father was actually a Ferengi (a mischievous race of aliens whom the Klingons hate in Star Trek), something he had hid from everybody all these years due to the shame and having employed reconstructive surgery to mask this undesired heritage. Star Trek fans were not too happy about this reveal.

Birth of a Superhero

A female friend from high school informed me in front of my family that she was pregnant with my baby. I took her outside and carefully explained to her that I had no recollection of having relations with her. The whole thing was a swirl of confused emotion. Right when I was expecting her to offer an explanation, I found that someone in the shadows of the parking lot had fired a poisonous dart in her back. She stopped breathing. I quickly used my supernatural powers to resuscitate her, making her breathe again, though she remained unconscious. I ran inside, handed her off to my mother, saying, "She was hit by a poisonous arrow!" (even though it was a dart ... I knew this but didn't care to correct myself), and I rushed back out to pursue the would-be assassin, who had already gotten into his car and driven off. I lost the trail.

I stopped in the middle of a sidewalk dividing two roads and honed my powers to point me in the right direction. This hasty act of divination apparently manifested itself in a strange performance of a small dragon-like lizard eating some kind of beetle on the sidewalk. It meant something for sure, and for some reason it felt like it was pointing me in the opposite direction of where the assassin obviously went ... so I decided to ignore it and blindly start guessing where he went instead.

I got to a large hotel and honed my powers again, which led me to a lavatory with a secret passage in it, specifically a revolving wall. After entering it, I went down a short hall, turned a corner, and found a small room with at least half a dozen people. They turned out to be an underground resistance movement to the hotel manager who was also a big criminal kingpin. They had come up with a way to forge the identifying clothing necessary to gain access to the inner circle of the criminal agency ... in particular, a complicated striped neck tie. I examined one of the forgeries next to one of the originals and complimented them on how similar they looked.

I exited the hotel to find at least half a dozen superheroes waiting outside to see what I discovered. I explained everything but then feared that the bad guys overheard me and that I just blew it for the underground resistance. Then I turned into Captain America and started to "fly" through the streets, soon realizing that Captain America couldn't fly.

Unloaded for Bear

I was out camping and hunting, whereupon I shot a bear dead with a rifle (a 30-30 calibre, like I have in real life). The next morning, the carcass was gone. I wandered to the nearest group of campers and found a dead bear in their possession. I was convinced they had stolen it from me. After much shouting on my part, a third-party member came onto the scene and did some amateur ballistic tests (consisting of examining the hole in the bear's heart made by the bullet) and determined that this was NOT made by my 30-30 rifle. Hence, it was a different bear.

I remember, however, that another couple of people were camping in the general area, namely, a guy by the last name of Paprotski and a girl by the first name Eunice (no idea where those names came from). I discovered somehow that both of them made headline news recently (as well as being featured in a major documentary) on their alleged involvement in an extraterrestrial event. I got the sense that they were a bunch of pranksters and, furthermore, were the ones who stole my bear.

After a few days, I was a high school teacher (like in real life), and Paprotski and Eunice were some of the students. I interrogated Eunice a bit in the hall, and she immediately became emotional and ran away. I then interrogated Paprotski's best friend, but he surrendered nothing, unwilling to betray his friend. I searched for Paprotski for a long time, even to the point of skipping out on some of my classes, suddenly fearing that perhaps I skip my class often by mistake and was in danger of getting fired. Finally, I found him in a class and pulled him out of it. One student, aware of my warpath, said, "What if you find out he didn't do it." I replied, "Maybe he didn't. I'll accept that. But if he did, I'm going to nail him to the wall!" I expected a laugh out of some people, but just an awkward silence ensued ... as if everyone was on Paprotski's side just because he was popular and I was ... a teacher. Anyway, upon my interrogation of the infamous Paprotski, I found he had with him some elaborate pencil sketches he drew of a bear ... as if drawn from real life. Furthermore, he had dated them all at the bottom, and the earliest date was the day when he would have stolen the carcass from me. I felt that I had irrefutable evidence to convict him. Paprotski, however, simply started giving me attitude, and I become irate, saying that I had risked my life killing that bear and that I wanted it back. I even started cussing my head off. However, before it got really ugly, I woke up.

A Psychopathic Sanctuary

I was a fugitive who, at one point, crawled into a sewer and eventually found a church on the other end. In the midst of a religious gathering, a slouched over high-pitched Irish man exclaimed, "Hey! I think that's him! It's Julian Ahlquist!" I looked over to see him pointing not at me but a large man with a very bushy gray beard. The Irish man explained how he wasn't "fooled by the disguise," while I laughed inside. The service ended a second or so later, and as the people exited the pews, I briskly slipped into the next chamber, as people crowded around to apprehend my unwitting "look-alike."

This part of the Church was big and dark with elaborate wood furnishings. I scampered up to one of the choir lofts to find that same Irish church-goer standing there, pulling out a gun, and saying something like, "Ha! I found you now!" I attacked and overcame him, stabbing him with a knife in his side, and grabbing his gun. Luckily, there was a closet right next to me, into which I stuffed his body, hoping there was no traces of blood left behind. Hearing people skitter around in the knave, I sloppily covered him with the coats in there and jumped into an adjacent closet, positioning my body in the back in such a way to hopefully look like just another hanging suit in the dim light.

I heard a group of three men come near me, each of them peering into my closet, reaching in and feeling around, all somehow failing to detect me. It was stressful though. I was tempted to run out guns blazing, lest they find me first. However, they did find the dead body in the other closet. One of the party members who sounded like a teenager lamented that it was his own father or something.

The kid said to the other to go on ahead as he checked my walk-in closet one more time. When they had appeared to have gone, the kid opened the stupid door one more time. I took advantage of his solitude and shot the kid multiple times, the sound being somewhat muffled by the coat through which I fired.

I vacated the closet finally, only to come face to face with the janitor. He recognized me and elegantly pulled out a double-barrel shotgun from yet another nearby closet, but I wrestled it away from him before he could get a shot in. He began running downstairs from the loft, but I followed. Finding he couldn't keep up, he dove beneath the wooden altar, begging for mercy. In character, I fired the shotgun right at him and then broke his neck with two violent impact with the butt of the gun. I felt so evil that I instinctively made the sign of the cross toward the church's crucifix ... but what mercy was there for me? And after all, this was just a dream, right?

I went back to the loft, searching that closet the janitor had used to happily find a box of shotgun shells which I greedily pocketed. A moment later, however, a deadly trio of ostentatious rednecks opened fire from behind a church pew. They would take turns firing a shot while the others would reload behind their wooden barricade. They did this rhythmically and jovially all the while yodeling and singing "Cotton-Eyed Joe," resulting in an overwhelmingly skilled pattern of gunfire and disturbingly effective technique of bewildering psychological warfare. I believe I then recognized them to be "The Singing Redneck Bounty Hunters." I felt outmatched at last.

I then "remembered" that there was some kind of oil that had spilt onto the knave's carpet on which they happened to be standing. Taking advantage of this, I lit a match and threw it down, whereupon the three men were engulfed in flames. I knew this was a bit of a stretch because, deep down, I knew there really hadn't been any oil or gasoline spilt there. It was just way too convenient. Disturbed at the incongruity of events, my dream was torn apart by logic, and I awoke.

Athaeaus

One night, an angelic being appeared to me, taking the form of a man, particularly a rather humorous person (resembling someone I knew in real life named Joey). This being revealed his name to be "Athaeaus" (I remember spelling it in my head and took pains to remind myself of it periodically ... however, I still have second thoughts, thinking maybe it was "Aethaeus" or "Aetheus" or "Althius" or something ... don't know). When I first introduced him to my sister, who was a bit skeptical about all this, I asked Athaeaus to pick up some nearby dice and use his supernatural mental agility to role all one's (or was it all six's?). He picked up four dice and sure enough rolled all one's. My sister was convinced.

I introduced him to my other friends and family, and we had a good time asking him questions about his life. I was gladdened to hear that everything he said regarding the powers of angelic nature agreed with the theological writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. We asked him how he seemed to "read minds" and he responded, "I err on the side of caution" which made us laugh ... although later when I was awake, I realized I didn't understand. The only questionable thing he said was something like, "Those Seraphim are such show-offs. What do they have to prove anyway? They're already the highest of the angelic choirs!" Maybe he was joking? Other than that, I can't remember what else he said. It was overall an oddly good time being around him.

2013

Chinese-Arabic-Italian Mysticism

I was undercover in the Republic of China and trying to get in contact with a defector. I had a miniature camera that had incriminating pictures on it (against some high-ranking politician or something) which was disguised as a cigarette. At one point, I put it in my mouth, pretending to smoke it, as guards frisked me at a random invasive checkpoint. I made it to the defector's home, and he began venting how much the communist government sucked. I couldn't help but worry we were being bugged though.

Later on, still in the defector's house, I walked past a girl (perhaps his daughter) who was wearing a shirt that said, "Sufism" on it. I "remembered" why she was wearing it and asked her, "So, how's your Sufism going?" That is, I "knew" she was into Sufism (a real heterodox form of Islamic mysticism). She said it was going fine but people were giving her flack for being a little weird. I responded, "Well, it is sort of weird." I figured she was bored with her incarcerated life in China, so she found a quirky outlet for her self-expression probably to get people's attention ... but she was just a little too weird that people generally veered away from her altogether, making her even more weird. It was a tragic vicious circle.

I remember the next part of the dream involved me jumping out of a helicopter near the Papal States during the medieval era. I plummeted into the ocean near Italy (the Mediterranean Sea, in retrospect) then quickly came up and began running on the surface of the water toward land. I passed by a bear who was standing on the water too and made note how random that was. I then proceeded to run through a cross-section of the Italian peninsula with lightening speed (like the superhero Flash). I eventually encountered a beautiful scene, a quaint street in an Italian town, with a notable emerald green villa on my left. The colors were so beautiful I found myself thanking God that for all creation and the ability to enjoy it. As I reflected on myself reflecting on this, however, my consciousness began tearing the scenery apart. I shouted the proverbial "Noooo! I don't want to wake up yet!" But yes.

Cafeteria Justice

Dr. Schwartz (my college history professor who existed for real) was serving his famous open face grilled cheese sandwiches (which in real life never existed). I grabbed one and sat down at a lunch table, but my 1911 pistol fell out of my pocket, so I ever so discreetly bent down to pick it up. When I turned back to my food, the grilled cheese masterpiece was gone. I asked around, and no one had seen the thief. Someone was generous enough to give me one of their own grilled cheese delectations. I turned around for one second, and it too was gone again. This time, some random person told me who the culprit was and pointed him out. I went over to the man, who was sitting at a booth with a few others. I told him to give me twenty dollars, and I'd overlook this injustice. He refused. I somehow got hold of his laptop and gave him five more seconds to pay up. He let his time run out, so I smashed his laptop on the ground. I picked it up saying, "Maybe it still works. This time I'll give you 10 minutes until I throw it on the ground again." He relented and went presumably to find the money ... but I woke up before the loser paid up.

Snakes on a Bed

I was a passenger on a plane, whose interior looked like a bus and the pilot looking like a bus-driver, and so on and so forth. The guy next to me was playing with a venomous tan-colored snake, and everyone was making humorous references to Snakes on a Plane (a real movie that was infamously not good). He seemed to have it under control though. I bent over into the aisle to pick something up. The plane hit some turbulence, and the guy lost control of the snake which fell onto my back. People shouted, "Don't move!" I remained in that awkward position and assumed they were waiting for the right time to pick it off me. I began thinking, "Crap, this might be how I die," and I began thinking what I should think and how I should pray in these possibly last moments of my life. The plane hit more turbulence, provoking the touchy serpentine passenger to dig its fangs into my back more than once. I thought, crap, it's done ... but maybe there's an antidote. So, I reached around to grab the snake. It struck my hand a few times more, but I clasped its head, stood up, and put it into some randomly safe container. Luckily, the plane started landing at its destination, so I could be rushed to a hospital. I started feeling feeble.

In my venture to be cured of the snake's bites, I began searching for books on nearby shelves, all of which were on some random cabin of the plane. The aircraft began taking off once again to my despair. I cried out, but the poison had made me hoarse, and no one heard me. No one was helping me. I persisted, desperately wanting to continue living. Repeatedly, I shouted out in a clear and indignant voice, "Hello?!" But I realized that I was saying this in real life as I was waking up. I was relieved but taken aback how physically many dreams had spilled over into reality at this point.

Superkinesis

Tony Stark (the Marvel superhero also known as Iron Man) was being evicted from his basement apartment. I asked what I could do to help. He told me I could move his main Iron Man suit. I considered it an honor and asked how exactly I should do that ... specifically, what was the secret number sequence I should punch into my special wristwatch that he gave me for this job. He said it's "8-9" (or it could have been "7-6" ... whatever). He also asked me if I remembered the self-destruct sequence. I combed my memory and asked if it was "5-3-3-7," to which he got angry since I was blurting it out in earshot to a bunch of other people, thus endangering all his Iron Man suits or something. I apologized, and he forgave me, acknowledging that he was putting me under a lot of stress.

I proceeded to Stark's secret hideout. Somehow I knew the entrance was disguised as one of those large, barred, sewer drains next to a river (those exist, right?), around which several dozen college kids were having a party, some of whom were casually going through it. An undercover agent of sorts was allowing some of them in and did the same with me upon recognizing my face. Entering this apparent sewer, I looked up at the ceiling to find the trapdoor which would get me into Stark's hideout ... except that it wasn't there. In fact, I was no longer in a sewer system but a shopping mall. Some of the "agents" stationed here started to panic and congregate toward the entrance, readying their weapons as if preparing against in incoming assault. I ran the other direction and redoubled my efforts at trying to find the access port on the ceiling. Some of my "teammates" (who had various superpowers thankfully) joined up with me, and I told them that this place was a trap ... that we were not actually nowhere near Tony Stark's hideout at all.

One teammate was a news reporter who had helped our group remain undercover by redirecting the media's attention away from us at certain key moments in this confusingly tense set of events. He told me that the media might pin this incoming attack on us superheroes, of course. Like a badass or something, I told him to make me the scapegoat for these terrorist events so the others could go free, but he said the media wouldn't buy it because Wolverine (the X-Men character), who was me at this point, didn't have the superpowers to pull off such a grand event. I replied that, aside from my Wolverine powers (fast healing, adamantium claws, etc.), I had recently acquired "telekinesis" and "electrokinesis" and, of course, "flying" (I can't remember how I got those extra powers, but it solidly made sense). The reporter was impressed and agreed to spin the story that way. I had some moral reservations about spreading this misinformation but rationalized that I myself was not going to lie ... rather the reporter was. Besides, I was sacrificing my own reputation for the greater good or something. It wasn't perfect.

The things attacking the shopping mall made themselves known at last ... large spiders. I stunned them with my "electrokinesis," followed by massacring them with my adamantium claws. It was awesome. We exited the mall, the outside of which was surrounded by cops who wanted us dead too, of course. We got past them, but more police cars joined the fray in automotive pursuit. I activated my telekinesis, pointed to the cop cars, and flicked my finger, causing their vehicles to be flung off the entire landscape accordingly. It was awesome. I did it multiple times and weeded out all the reinforcements. Strangely, a huge white metal blimp-sized nuclear-looking bomb got launched at us from somewhere. I strained my telekinetic powers and cushioned its landing on a filled parking lot of a used car dealership. It didn't go off.

Reporters eventually surrounded me with questions. I said cryptically, "Today I have shown kindness, but I have done other things that have not been seen." I hoped those true but vague words would lead some people to blame me for the massacre and not my friends. It didn't make sense.

I continued my search to Tony Stark's REAL hideout. It was night now, and I walked past some college dorms to where I thought the REAL sewer entrance was (to be clear, this was not actually real but rather a dream). When I got near, a sudden white flash, like a lightning strike, erupted upon it, except it didn't make a sound. When things came into focus, a creature resembling the Grim Reaper was standing there. It wore a gray cloak and held a scythe, its face cloaked in shadow beneath its hood. I became panicked, believing it was a demon that had masterminded all the chaos of this day. We then did battle. It was very agile, but I managed to avoid its attacks with incongruously acrobatic stunts. I even struck it a few blows (I somehow checked that it had lost some "hit points" indicating it was mortal). I felt like I had this battle in the bank until the overweening sense of inevitable victory, plus the sense of satisfying resolution and climax to the story, made the dream necessitate its ending. I woke up ... not too disappointed since I totally had that battle won ... but still.

Backyard Trek

I was somehow under the firm impression that there existed a gateway to another dimension in my backyard. I, along with some others, looked to the side of my house and saw a large bush whose middle had recently been cut away, large enough for a person to walk through. If one looked between the two sides of the hedge, one saw that the scenery behind it had a somewhat altered appearance from the rest of the yard ... clearly proving to be the very portal in question. Through it, there was a distinctive gazebo, and the grass and trees had a much more sparkly look. We entered through the transdimensional shrubbery to this pleasing fairyland. I noticed that little specks of gold were readily found in the soil and knew that there were probably far larger nuggets buried there as well. However, I then explained that this world is only safe during the night (ironically). When the sun starts to come out, werewolves emerge and attack all within. As I was explaining this, the sun was apparently rising of course, and humanoid canines began hopping into the yard, jumping off from neighboring rooftops. I ran back through the portal. Some of us didn't make it.

Later on, I was being dropped off at my old high school ... to go to high school again of course. I realized I had not packed a lunch. I quickly scavenged the glove compartment of the car and found a bagel in a sealed plastic bag, albeit its age and consequent state of decay was unsettlingly unknown. Unfortunately, that little hassle made me late for the school's morning meeting. I went to the main audience chamber where attendance was taken, and I found there to a guest speaker in the midst of a presentation. I sat down next to my friend, started listening, and discovered the presenter to be the actor John de Lancie (who played the character "Q" on Star Trek). I whispered to my friend, "That's Q, right?" He confirmed it. I looked on the program by my seat and noticed they wrote "Que" instead of just "Q." Idiots. Anyway, De Lancie at one point performed an odd magic trick involving him appearing to "phase" through the white floor he was standing on. Being in the front row, I noticed that the patch of ground he was standing on was actually a square hole filled with white paint that camouflaged with the rest of the floor that he submerged into. He eventually emerged out of the paint. The audience wasn't particularly impressed, but I thought he was still awesome.

When the lecture finished, I was informed that the actor Patrick Stewart (who played the character Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation and notably opponent to Q on the show) was sitting in the audience. I rushed up to him and shake his hand, telling him I was a big fan. He thanked me. Wanting to savor the moment awhile longer, I continued shaking his hand and said, "I just want to make sure this isn't a dream ... so can you just say my name? Say: Julian Ahlquist." He played along with this odd request and said it. However, it vaguely sounded more like, "Imperian Ahlquist." I thought, "Good enough" and then woke up.

Barbarian Invasions

It was a Friday and I "remembered" that I was "on call" for being an ambulance driver. This entailed dropping my car off at the hospital and picking up an ambulance for the day (though I would utilize it to go to my regular work as well or something). I stopped by the front desk to see if the paperwork was all in order. I realized I had walked in with a large hunting rifle and somehow got past the guards who usually frowned upon such things. In any case, it wasn't loaded ... but it should have been ... at the end of the day.

While contemplating this, I heard gunshots toward the entrance of the building. People started screaming. I immediately ran into a nearby office, locked the door, and crawled out a window and then down a fire escape. I sprinted down the slummy streets of what happened to be Chicago, found an alley way, and jumped over a brick wall, and waited there for awhile. Some homeless bums jumped over the wall too and started conversing with each other, fortunately not attacking me. I grabbed my cellphone and tried dialing 911 but kept mistyping it, and even after I succeeded, I somehow get a florist shop instead.

Things got blurry and I was now a high school teacher (like in real life) where a student wanted to take one of my classes even though it conflicted with his chosen elective. As we're working it out, I noticed all my classes were named after Greek gods. The particular class in question was titled "Poseidon." I admitted to him I had no idea what that class was about ... yet. We realized his schedule was unfixable, whereupon he left the room in lamentable disappointment.

I then looked outside to see a few dozen Viking warriors in battle array, ready to invade our land. My students armed themselves with knightly plate armor that didn't fit the period ... yet we were outnumbered. I approached the Viking leader, taking out my sword, laying it horizontally in the palms of my hands, and carefully setting it down in front of him to assure him that I sought a peaceful negotiation. He took out a very small knife (more like a fountain pen actually) and demanded I swear a blood oath to promise my words were true. I told him to cut himself first in order to show the blade wasn't coated with poison. He complied and slit his wrist (in the typical non-suicidal fashion). In the meantime, he was explaining that he was attacking me because I have filled my students' heads with overconfidence about defeating their barbarian culture. Somehow, I realized a deeper point he was making: I had, via some kind of time warp, personally been the one to spark the Viking raids in the ninth and tenth centuries on early medieval Europe.

I defended myself from these wild insinuations. I first asked him if there was a word for "future" in his language to make sure this wasn't beyond his comprehension. He grunted. I then said that I have seen many different versions of the future, and whether I had an effect on them or not, the "barbarians still attack European civilization because ... because they just do. So, don't try to blame me for it."

Unfortunately, that situation did not find a resolution. I somehow proceeded to the interrupted wedding of a friend of mine from college. Apparently, some gunman opened fire during the ceremony. Somehow, it made sense to me that the shooter was the same one in the hospital from earlier on in the dream ... or that in fact they were the same incident. I tried explaining this to my friend (the groom) but realized it didn't make much sense, wherein the dream started to fall apart. Before that happened, my friend, who was showing remarkable self-control about the situation, gave an inspirational speech about how he was not going to allow this to ruin his life but rather was going to work all the more to better the world. Unfortunately for him, he stopped existing when I woke up.

The Haze

My friends and I got trapped in a warehouse where an anonymous college student was subjecting us to a series of life-threatening "tests." One of them involved fumigating the place with poisonous gas. I managed to find a window which allowed us to escape. Random henchmen would periodically attack us as well. For the occasion, I had a pistol which frustratingly didn't work but nonetheless politely asked the henchmen to pretend to die when my would-be bullets would have killed them. I vaguely recall they played along a couple times purely out of the kindness of their hearts. Later, a student of rather nerdy appearance approached and casually began conversing with us. I become convinced that he was the maniac behind all this. He objected but not too strongly. In order to keep playing this game, I sarcastically admitted that I was "wrong," giving him the impression that whatever else he threw at us, we would still win (or something). In any case, my friends quit, saying they had better things to do.

This same student then subjected me to the final test. This person unexplainably became female and donned "marble armor" as well as some kind of marble battle-axe. She attempted to strike me, missed, but nearly hit my mother who happened to be walking by. I then grabbed the battle-axe, turned it upon her, and struck my opponent, shattering and dismembering her right leg. When she became conscious, she picked up her cell phone and called her lawyer, saying that she was going to sue me. I rummaged through my laptop to find the number of my own lawyer. I eventually found it in my phone. I was a little nervous, feeling this was all somehow going "according to her plan." However, I felt enough satisfaction that I had beaten her, so I decided to get out of this dream before it plunged into a tedious court case.

My Parochial Phase

I was at a small parish in some woodland area. I found I could magically make the floor liquid at points where I wished to pass through it. I did so and looked out through the floor like a submerged swimmer beneath the surface of the water. I made a quick gesture with my hands and instantly surfaced and became visible to others once more. After that, I began giving an art history lecture to a group of women about Early Church architecture.

Philosophical Roleplay

I was in a classroom at my old high school playing a tabletop roleplaying game (like Dungeons & Dragons, except not). I was running the game (as "the game master") while two other guys were players (more were supposed to show up but were late). Everyone was roleplaying characters who were real historic philosophers and discussing what topics to include in an upcoming debate regarding the existence of God. From a list, I read a common argument against God's existence, which everyone agreed to include in the debate, regardless of which side they would take. For the next argument, one which somehow made atheists look bad, one of the players playing an atheist spoke up and said it shouldn't be included. I told him to role a "diplomacy check" to see if he could convince the other characters in the group to exclude it. I rolled an "11" or something and he rolled a "16" or thereabouts. I then said, "Okay, but what's your actual argument to not include this one?" In the meanwhile, I prepared to roll another Diplomacy check for another philosopher character I was controlling, namely, St. Thomas Aquinas. The atheist thought hard on why it shouldn't be included. I'm not quite sure what he said, except something vague about "progress." I answered some of his objections. Also, I eventually learned that this guy's name was "Curricula," which I found strange.

We were then interrupted by a somewhat elderly woman in the back of the room, running some kind of deli bar. She said, "Do you know the Church might undo the doctrine of papal infallibility?" I asked, "Are you one of those people who rejected Vatican I?" She took offense and became argumentative. "What does that have anything to do with it?" she scowled. I then proceeded to explain that many heretics claimed that Church Councils could be overturned. I tried to put it diplomatically, but she stopped being willing to listen.

While this was happening, the third guy in our group was talking with Curricula. When I got back to our conversation, Curricula relented and agreed we should include the argument in question after all. I was glad that we were now moving on, since we apparently had a lot to cover. Unfortunately, all this deep thinking made me conscious of the fact that I was now conscious.

Rustic Autism

My friend Per, my dad, and I went up to a remote farm in northern Minnesota. When we got out of the car, Per uncorked a bottle of his homebrewed mead (something he would make it real life). We began drinking. I liked it, but my father said "it wasn't alcoholic enough." I thought it was fine. Per then went to a nearby shed, at which point he revealed that my dad had purchased (or leased or something) this land (either for man cave or preparatory post-apocalyptic reasons). From it, he retrieved a bottle of Maker's Mark bourbon (which exists for real). My dad then explained how he got a good deal on this place on account of it being populated by eccentric, anti-social, autistic savants who work for the government. Many of them were like human computers but were essentially retarded in all other respects ... as he more or less colorfully put it. My dad said that he once saw one of the local autistic residents take a dump on his lawn, probably because their toilet had stopped working and they didn't know how to fix it, hence the general state of dilapidation of the neighboring houses, which I was noticing more and more.

My dad also had brought a huge leg of lamb into this shed. He said it was for the savant who was still living here. The door eventually opened, and the savant in question showed herself. She looked like a relatively normal well-kept girl, but she didn't say anything. All she did was put the huge leg of lamb in a kind of plastic tub and then turned on what first appeared to be a large adjustable sink faucet but which ended up being a kind of flame thrower to cook the meat. She then left it burning like that, presumably to return later when it was done. My dad, however, looking at the hazardous setup, said, "Let's get out of here before it's too late."

Parental Detention

I was teaching a double section of some class. It was unusually stressful for some reason, and I couldn't find a marker that worked. There was a visiting parent (a mother) who said, "Found one!" She stood up, pretended to give the marker to me, but then rudely threw the marker on the ground to spite me for no reason. I lost control and started screaming at her, yelling her out of the classroom. She complained to the headmaster, I explained the situation, and he understood.

Space ... The Final Charade

Dr. McCoy (the character from Star Trek: The Original Series) told me he discovered a serious dental problem with me after some X-rays. He put me under with some drugs, but as I was falling asleep, he mentioned how he actually wasn't Dr. McCoy but a terrorist bent on destroying the ship (that is, the Enterprise) with some kind of bomb. I woke up after the surgery with my throat swollen and mouth fused shut. I couldn't talk. There was an assistant there to help me recover for the next few days. I made signs that I wanted to say something. He said, "Draw the word in the air." I did and proceeded to write "Kirk" (who was the captain of the Enterprise) because I wanted to let him know as soon as possible that there was a bomb on board. The assistant guessed the first letter was "K" but the idiot couldn't decipher my very obvious "i." What a moron. I couldn't believe it. I then found a pen and tried writing it on a piece of paper, but the pen ran out of ink right after the letter "K." I found a pile of other pens ... all of which had the same problem! It was maddening. I remember thinking this was literally a nightmare. This seemed to go on for quite some time. Finally, I forced my mouth open and managed to say, "I need to speak to Kirk! There's a bomb on board the Enterprise!" With that, the assistant revealed he himself was the very same terrorist who had someone disguised himself as Dr. McCoy earlier. I remember saying, "You're kidding me, it was you?" He had obviously been playing stupid in my attempts to communicate with him. He then leapt off a ledge onto a lower deck, presumably to go set off the bomb. By that point, I woke myself up, more or less satisfied that I had done my best considering the infuriating circumstances.

Global Chernobyl

I was on a school field trip at some ranch in Wisconsin, owned by a distant relative on my dad's side of the family. We entered a large, air-conditioned visitor center. My friend Sam and I got way ahead of the group, finding ourselves in a bar, where we got some drinks, flirted with some random girls, and then realized the rest of the group hadn't come our way for a long time. I went to investigate and found them in a large dining hall with about 50 round tables, each with about 8 to 10 people. I noticed that just about every girl was wearing a sparkling, silvery, sequined dress. I asked, "Where did the girls all get these fairy dresses?" No one would give me a straight answer. I called Sam back to inform him of this. I decided to sit at one of these tables, particularly one where three people were practicing a choral piece. I realized that I was supposed to be singing with them in a quartet later that day for some performance. I tried singing along but it was hopeless, as I hadn't practiced the piece at all. For some reason, I wasn't too nervous about it. They actually didn't seem to care either way.

The next thing I remember was meandering by myself in this visitor center and watching a documentary about the local town on a random TV. It talked about a famous ship that was believed to have sunk right next to this very island we were apparently now on. I decided to check it out. I found a window and took to the air because I decided that I was Peter Pan (or at least a modern, grown-up version of him like in the movie Hook). I was sure I had plenty of residual pixie dust to still get the job done. I hovered over the waters, trying to get a glimpse of the underwater ruins. Unfortunately, the sun was setting and I couldn't see anything. So, I took a deep breath and dove into the water. It jostled me ... awake. I thought (now conscious), "Yeah, that was dumb."

I fell right back to sleep into the same dream. I found some guy in one of the rooms of the visitor center as well as someone he kidnapped. He managed to restrain me as well (I can't remember how, but he pulled it off with expertise). He told me he planned to detonate a nuclear bomb. He launched the missile and fired some kind of laser pistol toward it when it was in the sky, causing it to explode amidst the night clouds. I had tried to wiggle free the whole time to fly up and redirect the missile, but alas, I was far too late. Shortly after, I did managed to liberate myself somehow and flew up, trying to think of a way to redirect the incoming nuclear winter on the world ... but my wits on the subject did not yield any solution. I remember later lamenting my failure to someone, saying how this was going to have global consequences. I remember using the term, "Global Chernobyl" and was amused how it rhymed. It laughed. I sighed. I was still stressed out.

2014

The Northmen

My extended family was staying at our cabin up north, though its dimensions were markedly different from reality. The younger siblings were playing by the dock, whereas everyone one else was sitting at the dinner table inside. Suddenly, I heard someone enter through the front door and heard him say something that indicated it was a stranger. I looked at my uncle Mike and said, "Get the guns!" The two of us went to next room which was filled with firearms. He threw me a pump-action shotgun. It was awesome. I realized though that I had left my eyeglasses at the table, making me worry that I was going to be a worthless shot. I quickly ran back to the dining room, now seeing that half a dozen to a dozen rough woodsman-looking fellows had entered the premises, wielding various armaments of their own. I ducked behind the table to take cover while simultaneously searching for my glasses. There were three pairs of spectacles on the table, which confused me for an annoying few seconds ... but I found them. I was elated if not taken back that something went right for once. While I was doing that, the men began shouting their demands. They wanted their "man" back. Apparently, one of my relatives had trapped another intruder earlier in one of the bedrooms.

Before anyone got off a shot, a third-party of professionally trained soldiers wearing green camo rappelled in through the windows, promptly breaking up the tense standoff. They said we had twelve hours to settle our differences ... or else (I can't remember what they said ... they threatened to kill us all?). The troops left, leaving my family and the woodsmen to duke it out ... peacefully.

When I began to talk with them, I realized that I no longer was holding my shotgun. I wanted to believe I still had it but realized I was just pantomiming its presence like a mime. This led me to believe that one of these sneaky woodsmen had nefariously lifted it from me. Right then, in fact, I felt someone unzipping my backpack (I was wearing a backpack now). I turned around to find one of the younger members of the unwelcome guests right behind me, catching him in the suspected act. I demanded he return the things he pickpocketed from me. He denied taking anything, but it was obvious he was lying, as he now was visibly in possession of my shotgun. I picked up a stick and a hatchet (since I no longer had my firearm) and proceeded to intimidate him. I poked at him with the stick, but he still refused and even fighting back a bit. I remembered striking his head with the hatchet at least two times, but he couldn't seem to die. I then pushed him off the cabin balcony, certain he would break his neck. He made quite an indent on the grass but didn't expire. I jumped onto the wooden railing, prepared to pounce on him. Before I could, he was already running up the balcony stairs and expertly flung a needle at me, puncturing one of my fingers. He said he had poisoned the needle with "Appleberry." I began sucking the wound on my finger to get the poison out ... although, instead of spitting it out, I simply swallowed it, which I soon realized was unpardonably stupid.

I then popped back into the cabin and shouted to my uncle (a different uncle, I think) that I had been poisoned and that he should swiftly concoct an antidote. I was directing these instructions to my uncle because I "knew" he was an alchemist. I told him, "I've been poisoned by ..." and then I couldn't remember the name of the infernal substance. I guessed, "Poisonberry" and others, but none of them seemed right. I looked at the rogue who had done this and demanded he confess what the name of it once more. He didn't help. "Appleberry!" I suddenly remembered, screaming it to my uncle who was now nowhere in sight, presumably already at work in his alchemist's lab, wherever that was, but hopefully having heard my boisterous bellow. I then began to scold the scoundrel for his malicious unhelpfulness, but then he admitted he hadn't actually poisoned the needle at all. He was just trying to freak me out ... something he indeed had succeeded at. I was relieved, even though I thought I had begun feeling woozy from the purported toxin. I said, "Well, it was some powerful placebo poison at least." I think some people laughed ... or at least I wanted them to laugh. I then called my playful nemesis "Placebo" for the rest of the dream ... but I don't remember what else happened, but I have a feeling it was zombies.

Into the Lion's Dream

I was going through a huge obstacle course that was integrated with a series of college dorm rooms. There were two teams, one populated with militant atheists for some reason. The competition wasn't a violent to-the-literal-death competition but rather involved something on par with a paint-ball match or something. Prior to the commencement of battle, I snuck onto enemy territory, taking advantage that neither side was familiar with their team mates yet and thus likely not to be identified as an intruder.

I made my way to a vast jungle gym where a meeting of the enemies was taking place. After a few words from the leader, they decided to stage a fake execution of a random person there ... and me too. They had caught me or something. I played along and pretended to get my throat sliced open by one of their "soldiers." Then someone yelled, "Zombie Apocalypse!" which meant that the rules of the game temporarily changed and involved any recently "dead" people to walk around groaning like zombies and pretend-biting people, thus creating more pretend-zombies. I started to do just that. Furthermore, I decided to use this as an opportunity to shimmy my way back to friendly territory.

In my journey, I had to skedaddle through none other than the historical gas chambers of Auschwitz ... at night ... with the lights off. I had a creepy sense that I was going to come face to face with some sort of real undead being like a ghost who was not at rest. On top of that, I briefly got lost too but eventually found the exit. No problem.

I was on the homestretch when my old roommate from college asked where I was going. I had a feeling he was on the other side and was going to bust me, but he was simply going the other direction but accidentally ran into a roaming lion (a rather strange and cartoonish one too). I began screaming both to veer its attention away from my friend and to call for help. My roommate and I both headed to our home base as the lion attempted to make at least one of us a meal. My friend busted into a lobby, went behind the front desk, and quickly grabbed some medieval-style weapons that happened to be scattered about. We made our way into a closet, but the lion made it in too, so I magically put my dream in rewind and did it right somehow. Now peeking behind the door with weapons at the ready, I began negotiating with the animal. In the meantime, I signaled my roommate (who was behind me) to call the cops. The lion transformed into a modestly attractive redhead. She said she was going to leave, but I convinced her to stay so that the police could come and apprehend her. I became desperate and told her I loved her. As I did, I saw about a dozen police officers surround her. Suddenly, she disintegrated. The lead officer who was responsible said something to the effect of: "That's how you take care of a lion. You disintegrate it!" It was moderately funny at the time.

A Breaking Bad Dream

I found a warehouse on the internet that was manufacturing an illegal drug ... probably heroine or something. They were using lots of old crock pots for the process. I kept waffling whether or not to join them since it would make things ... interesting ... not to mention the money too. I wondered that if the cops busted this operation, would I get in trouble too? Obviously yes. Should I then turn these people in before that happens? Probably. But then will the gang track me down and kill me? Hmm. In the end ... I joined them. They treated me like family, despite how the boss was famously ruthless. They kept telling me never to betray them and never to break the boss's rules ... the ominous rules that no one ever shared with me.

Somewhere down the line, someone got shot in the parking lot for some reason. I decided to book it, whereupon the dream switched to an aerial view of my car, and the graphics turned into that of a primitive computer game. I crashed into the river. I kept repeating the level over and over again, which included a challenge involving shooting people in the head in quick succession. I woke up and was glad to discover that I had not in fact become a psychopathic criminal.

Disney Underworld

I was staying at the house of my former high school latin and math teacher from real life who was currently playing a movie role of a man who had supersoldier powers thrust upon him. Nothing interesting came of this. Instead, I took a walk outside, during which my shoes fell apart.

After that, I took a boat to Disney World. Much of it was like a how I "remembered" it from childhood. Our group entered a large auditorium that resembled a school gym but designed to be one of those cinematic rides with moving seats. The movie itself featured a random combination of clips from old disney movies and video games, though the seats barely moved. At the end of each segment, a female attendant announced that if anyone believed the video segments needed to be updated into something more interesting, then "press button C." I looked at the arm of my mechanized chair and saw two buttons. I immediately pressed one. Right afterwards, the ride shutdown. Oops? After an awkward 20 or 30 seconds, one of the ride attendants came up asking what I needed ... because I actually pressed "Button B." His tone suggested, "You probably meant to hit the C Button ... stupid." I apologized and the ride continued. I knew the whole auditorium was pretty annoyed at me.

When it was over, I got up from my seat and noticed the wooden tiles on the floor were uneven and serrated ... not ideal for bare feet, which was my situation. Skipping through this obstacle course, I somehow hit my thumb on my tooth, resulting in agony. In the meantime, we headed to another Disney ride, something weird and hosted by the actor Bob Saget (famous for the 80's and 90's sitcom Full House). While waiting in line, I found my front top left tooth was loose. I scurried to a nearby bathroom and examined it and easily picked the tooth right out of my gums. I was quite distraught. I ran back to my group to announce that I needed emergency dental work. Some random kid was already trying to tell them this, but they had been telling him to shut up and stop interrupting Bob Saget. I gave him a hug and said he was a good kid ... and don't let punk-ass adults tell him otherwise. Again, I demanded someone get me to immediate dental surgery. Bob Saget himself volunteered drive me over into town on a boat because it was the end of his shift. I asked him if he was, in fact, Bob Saget. He replied, "I'm the 2nd stand-in" or something. I wanted to tell him, "Well, you really look like him," but then I didn't, thinking perhaps that wasn't a compliment.

2015

Where No Nuns Have Gone Before

I was at some kind of Star Trek convention, watching a talkshow featuring Leonard Nimoy (who played the character of Spock) and William Shatner (who played the character of Captain Kirk). Shatner kept talking and talking, eventually doing the unspeakable by criticizing Star Wars. I remember him saying how in Star Wars IV: A New Hope, when Luke Skywalker tells his fellow X-Wing pilots to stay "tight and low" in the Death Star trench, that (according to Shatner) they did no such thing. He claimed how Luke was pressing his face against the windshield to get a good look at the trench, meaning he wasn't flying low enough ... or something. He then did impressions of Luke pressing his face on a window for quite some time, and for some reason, he looked like the extraterrestrial hunter from the Predator series. It didn't make any sense.

When that was over, I drove away down a curving road amidst a grassy countryside. More and more, I saw nuns walking along the side and almost ran over them. I was driving way faster than I needed to and ended up spinning off the street, flipping the car several times, hurtling into the middle of a circular roadway, which had a little pond and some sort of pavilion or something. There were seven or so nuns around it. Instead of me emerging from the wreckage, some angry Asian woman did so who didn't speak English. A nun tried offering her assistance, but the Asian woman shot her instead. Emerging from somewhere, I disarmed the Asian woman, knocked her out with a punch, and applied pressure to the wound of the fallen religious sister who was now screaming in pain. It was unpleasant enough that I decided to switch to a new scene.

The next dream sequence still featured nuns. I had entered a 1960's television show resembling "The Flying Nun" (a real show ... but without the actual flying nun). Similar to that series, there featured a hispanic male who had some connection to the nunnery (I think he was there because his car had crashed near it ... just like I had done). I asked him if he was wealthy like the character in the show. He said no ... quite impoverished actually. I said, "Oh, good!" and then quickly explained, "because that would be too much of a rip-off."

After some manner of dinner, I looked outside a window and saw nuns washing dishes in a swimming pool. Sometime after moving outside, the party fell silent and grew afraid. Ghosts had entered the premises, judging by the eerie noises from the surrounding foliage. I investigated the garden but merely saw a group of kids running off into the darkness. I got creeped out and returned to the pool. When I did, a girl in the water was yelling that something was trying to drag her down. I sighed and jumped in to save her. I succeeded and then quickly dunked my head underwater to see what had been the cause. I merely saw a bright flash. When I came to the surface, a pair of badly animated eyes appeared (in the style of 1960's cartoon animation or so) ... which gradually transformed into some kind of balloon. I grabbed it and saw the anime character Pikachu was traced upon it. I "remembered" or something that the character of Pikachu had his debut in a 1960's show about nuns (which is definitely not true in reality). So ... it all made sense. It had all been a misunderstanding or something.

"Don't worry everyone!" I announced to all who were near with a subtle hint of sarcasm. "It just turned out to be mysterious balloon creatures! Yay!" Everyone else said "Yay!" at the same time I did, following some stifled nervous laughter because, of course, nothing about this made sense.

Breaking Vows and Silence

One of my students had become a priest but was known to have been sleeping around with multiple women (in the dream, to be clear, not in real life). He was at a dinner table with many people, including me, and I decided to stand up and denounce him. In fact, I said, "I denounce you, Father Rocky!" However, I immediately recalled his name wasn't Father Rocky. I turned to the audience, and in a calmer tone said, "Wait, it's not Father Rocky, it's, uh ..." Some people murmured some replies, but I couldn't hear them too well. One of them seemed to say, "Slackjaw," so I went with that ... Father Slackjaw. I then unloaded on him with all sorts of things that needed to be said. He eventually stormed out of the room. The people at my table gradually left as well until I was all alone. I didn't mind. It was awkward though. But slowly people poured back in and sat with me, saying that they were glad that finally someone said something.

2016

Standup Comedy Bomb

I was doing some kind of skit in which I was portraying J. Robert Oppenheimer (the real inventor of the Atom bomb). The scene was Oppenheimer giving a prep talk to the other scientists in the Manhattan Project (the secret government operation that had designed the bomb in real life). Fortunately, it wasn't a situation where I was expected to recite memorized lines (because that never works in dreams, does it?), but rather I was to improvise everything. From the very little I knew about Oppenheimer, he was an eccentric scientist ... so I was aiming to be as batshit crazy as possible.

As I approached the podium, I turned to examine a random table amidst the audience, running my hand along it, finding it to be rather dirty. Right then I planned to portray Oppenheimer as a neat freak and demand perfect cleanliness to laboratorial standards. When I got to the podium, I mumbled, "So, yeah, I'm Oppenheimer," and then I pointed to one person and said, "And you'll be an atomist," and then to another, "and you'll be an atomist," but then apologized, "Sorry, that's neither here nor there. Let me start over." I then ranted that I wanted things to be clean at all times. I walked down to a random table where people were sitting. "Otherwise, I'll go CRAZY!!!" I yelled, as I jumped onto the table. I composed myself and returned to the podium. I asked for a volunteer to put his hand on the floor. One person did so. I then said, "This is what it's going to be like when you're not tidy," and then began stepping on the person's hand. The person made a modest cry of pain. "Yeah, see, this guy's learning his lesson," I explained. I went on, "I'm going to continue giving my entire speech while stepping on this guy's hand to really nail this point down." I then gave some stupidly brief and utterly vague instructions on the topic and said, "Well, okay, I'm done," and stopped stepping on his hand. But then I said to the volunteer, "Wait, come back. I forgot something." He returned, and I continued stepping on his hand again. I paused and said, "You know what? Never mind. I'm done." I was laughing to myself so hard that I woke up and continued to laugh. After I got my giggles out, I then went back to sleep.

Reload Again

My friend and I were doing some volunteer work as some sort of assistant emergency responders and drove to a house at night where many people at a party had been killed by a mysterious mass shooter. As we approached, we saw police bustling around the scene as well as white body bags all over the ground containing the victims. Well, I saw the body bags at least, but my friend who was driving did not, and despite my shouts about slowing down, he ended up running over a corpse or two with his car. Idiot. Fortunately, it didn't exactly kill anyone.

When on the crime scene, I got the sense (I don't remember how) that the mass shooter was still here and a larger conspiracy was at work. I snuck out the back and went next door to try to find help for some reason, but then I found (somehow) that the neighbors were in on it too. My door-to-door venture somehow culminated in a video-game-like boss fight against a giant gray hulk monster, in which I had to "reload the game" many times in order to win and get around it. There was some stupid and very ethereal trick I figured out that made me finally win that I stumbled upon by pure luck. Anyway, at this point, I was Spider-Man, and a couple of the "bad guys" were getting away in a car. I shot my web and snagged the car and tagged along with it, eventually ending up in a garage.

At this new location, the gray hulk monster returned, except now in the form a normal-looking man. He challenged me to a proper fight, and I agreed. A large audience gathered around. I spent time figuring out what weapons to use. There were an assortment of medieval weapons including swords, knives, and polearms lining the curb of the random city street we were on, all of which were slightly off to my particular taste in one finicky way or another. After more persistent browsing, however, I found an elegant polearm (a war-scythe or something) that could slice through things with beautiful lethality. I grabbed a couple other random weapons for backup.

We went to the battle arena, which was a surprisingly small wood-panelled room purposed originally as some kind of store (one that sold overpriced books and needless paraphernalia, I think), but whose large display windows allowed the audience to see the action safely from outside. I stood on the opposite side of the store from him, slightly in an adjacent room where I was readying my armaments. However, I noticed that my awesome war-scythe thing was missing. I immediately suspected foul play and voiced this problem to my opponent. He started to come over, giving a show to help me find it, but as he got near, I spontaneously decided to stab him in the stomach with one of my secondary polearms as his guard was down. He made a cry of pain, and blood burst forth. However, he soon collected himself and seemed fine, a testament to the worrisome and seemingly superhuman fortitude that I was up against. I felt moderately ashamed that I had taken such a cheap shot as well. He said, with some relish in his voice, that we should take this incident to "the judges." That didn't sound pleasing. A ruling in my favor seemed unlikely, but I put on a stoic and indifferent attitude and agreed to it.

When we got to the judges, I was met with harsh criticism and disappointment from "my fans." However, I matter-of-factly stated off the cuff that my opponent crossed into my zone before the fight began, which was against the rules, and so I thus reacted appropriately. I didn't really know if such a thing was against the rules, but I had a reasonable hope. Amazingly, people easily bought it, and I wasn't disqualified. The battle resumed.

At this point, I was growing impatient and threw down all my weapons, telling my opponent that I would fight him unarmed while he was still free to use any weapon he desired. Besides, "Unarmed Combat is something that I've always felt most comfortable with," I said with confidence. This time, my opponent was now in the side-room I had been in, readying himself. He was taking awhile. I fully realized this was a dream now and all this lolly-gagging put me in danger of waking up and not achieving resolution. If I woke up now, I'd be pissed. So I gave my opponent a firm ultimatum. I said, "If you don't come out now in the next 10 seconds, I'm leaving." I counted to ten very slowly, milking those last numbers as he continued to procrastinate. Finally, he emerged ... also unarmed, lest he appear a coward.

He was acting very smug like he knew something I didn't. I threw a mock punch, which he made fun of, then one right in his face that sent him flying up to the ceiling and crashing onto a table. People gasped. I knew he was still in the fight ... and still smug. I told the audience, "Don't worry, he's fine," before he got to say it (I directed it especially to his mother, who was watching nearby). He got up. I dared him to hit me, putting myself wide open. He didn't take it. He just kept trash talking me. I responded with crap about his crap. I even did a little dance, making a sport of his redneck heritage (because he was a redneck now). Finally, I grappled him and started systematically crushing every bone in his body with my bare hands. I kept reassuring the onlookers, "Don't worry, he's fine. He'll recover. Nothing to worry about folks." I somehow knew that as soon as I let go, his bones would regenerate, and he'd indeed be fine. I could tell he was counting on this. Little did he know, however, that my plan was to literally eat him once I had crushed him down to size, and that's exactly what I did. I was confident that my warrior stomach would act as an eternal prison for his meddlesome existence. So, that's what I did. I don't remember the details about how I ate him, but I was victorious. He hadn't even landed a single shot on me.

Right after, the "camera" cut to what was happening upstairs, and my sister (who was Lisa from the show The Simpsons), was apparently now possessed by the soul of my opponent and was singing a song in praise of him. This apparently had been his plan all along. It was his way of saying that I hadn't really defeated him. But whatever. I totally had. I was looking forward to the next episode. I woke up instead. Still, I was adequately satisfied that I had beaten his sorry ass.

The Death of the Gods

I saw a giant castle sitting upon a plateau, overlooking a desert perpetually blown by the wind, conjuring giant "waves" of sand that would crash upon the castle's rocky shores like water. The dry mists of the splashing sands would sometimes shoot up as high as the topmost spire on the castle itself. It felt like a sea had once been here but had fallen into the crossfire of a supernatural conflict, leaving behind only its ghost to haunt the desiccated corpse of the land. Why the fortress had not been consumed yet by the bitter erosions of this resentful wasteland, only some arcane scholar could hope to fathom.

The castle itself was a center point for the apocalyptic history of this world. In its past, there were giants towering over a hundred feet who apparently had enslaved the lesser races of men and set themselves up as gods, wielding not just unvanquistable strength but an unsurpassing knowledge over the secrets of existence. After centuries or even millennia, humans found a mysterious way to throw off these monstrous tyrants. A war ensued that annihilated half the earth. The gods and men struck a truce, but no sooner was it made, that the gods broke it, charging into the vast chambers of the castle, once theirs, now occupied by these recalcitrant mortals. To their ominous surprise, the giant gods found their palace empty. It was a trap of some sort. The inferior races had outwitted the gods. I lost sight of the event before the nature of this trap was fully revealed, but apparently it was decisive.

This human victory did not end in bliss. The gods fell in great number and the rest were exiled across the unbreachable stormy desert, perhaps created intentionally to maintain a rift between gods and men forever. The war indeed ended, but it left behind a very barren world.

Incidentally, after I woke up, I spent long hours (in real life) creating a D&D campaign based off this and even played with a group (I was the Dungeon Master, of course). It ran for a few sessions until it got stupidly complicated.

2017

Dreamlore

While attending some event at a stadium, I checked my phone, finding a message left by the female android that I currently owned. She informed me that another rogue android named Lore (a character from Star Trek) was hiding in the audience and intending to capture and replace her with an evil duplicate, so as to destroy me.

I returned home and heard a noise from the closet. I demanded who was there, and my female android came out of it, though I suspected she was the foreshadowed counterfeit. Sure enough, she was. She attacked me, breaking a hand mirror and using its shards to stab at me. We grappled, and despite her android strength, I overpowered her and ripped out one of her circuit boards or something. It didn't deactivate her but made her non-hostile. One of my friends came along, and all three of us then played some sort of board game. It was a bit awkward in light of what just happened.

Our group proceeded back to the stadium. I decided to take the evil female android to the side and talk to her alone where I admitted that I was in love with her and that I didn't think she was actually evil, despite Lore's reprogramming. I'm not sure if I really believed all that, but I was at least doing it partially for the sake of interesting plot development.

I, more or less, won her over, and I (romantically?) carried her to where the rest of the group was, namely, a cafe in one of the stadium's corridors. When I got there, I accidentally dropped her, and she mysteriously disappeared ... except for her clothes. Everyone was taken aback. I found her in a cabinet under the cafe bar. She was wearing just her undergarments, so I threw her clothes back to her. I figured out that she was programmed to temporarily "miniaturize" when falling to resist damage, hence her apparent sudden disappearance. It made sense.

From there, I remember that the good female android had also warned me that Lore was not only hiding in the stadium but that at noon he was going to activate a bomb that would murder thousands of spectators. I also "realized" that Lore contained the consciousness of Joker (that is, Batman's villain) and that I was basically Bruce Wayne. I couldn't recall the exact warnings the good female android had given me over the phone, so I went to the "evil" female android and pleaded that she reinstall the "good" female android program into her brain so I could get the information again. She didn't want to. I promised that I would restore the "evil" program once I got the information, but she was unconvinced. I then promised that I would build her an entirely new and improved body, but that still didn't do any good. In fact, she apparently started to take precautions against any attempt where I might try to reprogram her. She began downloading vast amounts of data from the internet to increase the power of her intellect, but this began to overload her matrix or something. She started to spark in various colors and was immobilized enough that I could finally hit her off-switch (a button somewhere along her spine).

I detached her robotic torso, which turned into a 1980's-style computer. I booted it up and endeavored to reprogram her. However, I found I didn't have the backup drive for the "good" female android, but I persevered somehow in the reprogramming anyway. The screen brought up an old grade-school-looking learning program, but I discerned this was just a deceptive front. After some tinkering, it asked me questions how I would like to reprogram the android's personality. It kept asking various arcane choices for its personality types, like if I wanted her temperament to be: "High Brow," "Galin," "Vortex," and other such poppycock. I had to ask the people around me to "remind" me what on earth these words meant. Before I got a straight answer to anything, I woke up unsatisfied that I hadn't stopped the bomb.

Steampunk Makeover

I woke up at the sound of someone shuffling about outside my bedroom door in my apartment (but really I was dreaming). I tried getting up but found myself suffering from sleep paralysis. This gave me the impression that I was definitely in no dream (even though I was). I shook myself out of it and grabbed my Glock 19 pistol that I kept under my bedside table as well as a flashlight, so I could shine it into the face of the potential intruder (and, once again, to be clear, this was all a dream). Just in case the visitor was an apartment maintenance repair man, I didn't go out guns blazing but instead shoved the weapon into my pocket. I wasn't sure how noticeable the contours of the gun were and was very self-conscious about it for the remainder of the dream. I didn't want people to think I was some sort of psycho.

I cautiously exited the bedroom and discovered a carpenter working in my kitchen. He had entirely redecorated the kitchen area, giving it more classy wood panelling that somehow didn't look terrible. I "remembered" that I had made an online order to renovate the interior of my apartment, though I was a bit taken aback that the carpenter had just barged into my place in the middle of the night to do it. Maybe he had a schedule to keep and had even tried contacting me but couldn't, due to my sleep paralysis. I looked toward the living room and was struck at the profound improvement at everything already. It had a retro/steampunk vibe ... a lot of wood decor and old-style furnace-looking stuff. I specifically recall some mahogany floral trim thingy over the entrance-way. There seemed to be multiple fireplaces for some reason too, even though I recalled that they would definitely be against the apartment's fire code regulations. I was thinking I'd keep it as long as I could until they caught me and then I'd just move out in protest or something.

I was complimenting the carpenter quite profusely for his quick work (all accomplished under a few hours at most), though slightly uncomfortable that he had taken the liberty to rearrange all my possessions in the room as well. I asked, "So ... where'd you put my laptop?" He brought my attention to a new bookshelf he installed and said, "I noticed you have a rare Star Wars novel," he picked it out from the shelf (making me forget about my laptop, in retrospect). He seemed interested in the book, and I inquired whether he liked to buy it from me or something. He said, "The tradition is that whenever someone finds this novel, you rip off the back cover." He then brazenly did just that ... right in front of my eyes ... and then put it back on the shelf. I was shocked and appalled but held back for no other reason than he had done a wondrous job at redesigning my apartment. It hurt a bit though.

Two female assistants came in, wanting to know if I was satisfied with the results. I enthusiastically said yes. I also "remembered" that the price was somewhere between one thousand to two thousands dollars, which seemed like a great deal considering the fine craftsmanship. I was excited to show this off to friends. But then I woke up, and I was like, "Dang it."

2019

Dominion of the Sea

I was up at the cabin and had gotten my hands on a mystical artifact imbued with the power of Neptune (the mythological Roman god of the sea). It was shaped like a small but rather cumbersome cinderblock. To test it, I stood by the shore of our cabin's lake (though it was more of an ocean now), while friends and family gathered around to see if it worked. While holding the artifact, I commanded the water to summon a hurricane. To everyone's surprise, including my own, torrential rain materialized instantly and a giant wave began tumbling in our direction. I then held up the artifact again and bellowed something like "Go away storm," and then everything instantly became sunny and calm. I was in utter disbelief at my aquatic omnipotence. I experimented again in front of the crowd, and commanded the artifact to summon up a huge whale. Again, instantly it was so. The whale was ridiculously huge ... godzilla proportions. It jumped up from surface of the water and then disappeared back into the sea. I then commanded the artifact to summon up an even bigger shark. To everyone's bone-chilling terror, a gargantuan megalodon emerged much like the whale ... but somehow much larger. When it too disappeared, I wondered ... did the artifact conjure these creatures from nothing or have they been lurking beneath the ocean the whole time? In any case, I felt amazing.

A large boat started heading to our shore. I "knew" that they were treasure-hunters, after the Neptunian artifact. I commanded the water fling them to the opposite side of the lake. Instantly, it was so. However, more and more people on boats began flocking to do the same. Some of them managed to set foot on the wet sand. I hoped my powers could still affect them, but they didn't. I was becoming slightly nervous.

My dad told me to hide the artifact. He said that he had once hidden it in a nearby pile of rocks, and by dumb luck, the "Russians" hadn't managed to find it when they temporarily took over the cabin when searching for it in days past. However, we didn't want to push our luck by hiding it in the same place. As crowds of artifact-seekers flooded onto our property, I frantically scoured the grounds to find a new hiding place for it. At one point, I climbed on the roof and contemplated leaving it there somewhere, but two Asian kids who were also climbing the roof just for fun were looking right at me. I climbed back down, "accidentally" walked into one or two different people's homes, and finally settled on a nearly perfectly shaped square niche in the wall of the entryway of our cabin. I stuffed the artifact in there. It looked decoratively camouflaged ... a kind of hiding-in-plain-sight setup.

I walked into the next room. An older Asian guy approached me. Then, one of the Asian kids from before came up from behind ... holding the artifact! He told the older Asian (his dad, I think) that he had followed me to see where I would hide this mysterious object. I yanked it from his hands and explained that this was a valuable family heirloom of historical significance that treasure hunters were after. He understood, and he seemed trustworthy. I told him to touch the artifact to sense its power to capitalize on the importance of keeping it out of the wrong hands. He indeed sensed it ... in a sort of mystical Kung Fu way.

The rest of the dream was me wandering around a large mall-like building, wondering what to do with it. I heard a broadcasted speech of the President (a woman played by the actress Natalie Portman) talking about the "Stone of Gol" (which was the name of the artifact apparently, even though it really referred to something in an obscure Star Trek episode). She talked about the country that gets the stone will control the world, and squash all other countries. She seemed to imply that perhaps it should just be destroyed. I began thinking about it. I didn't really want to do it.

2021

Unplanned Water Buffalo

I was a controversial reporter and provocateur investigating an abortion clinic (specifically, it seemed I was James O'Keefe, known in real life for brashly unearthing corruption in political and business organizations and despised by the media accordingly). I brushed past a calendar hanging on their wall, after which a security guard immediately approached and began ranting about how I didn't have authorization to touch anything in here. He seemed even insinuated that he suspected I had somehow planted a bomb in the calendar out of my pro-life fanaticism, though it was eye-rollingly clear he was just trying to find any stupid excuse to scare me away. He tried provoking me with painfully bureaucratic, corporate, legalistic jargon, to which I kept calmly replying, "I don't know what that means." After awhile, however, I began heading to the exit, at which point I noted I had an oversized news camera apparatus integrated onto my right arm that I was using to film everything for potential incriminating evidence (it looked like it was modified from the 1980's) ... not exactly an undercover device. Other minions at the exit were antagonizing me as well, at which point I realized they could do very little to me, legally speaking. So, in an act of defiance to all the harassment they had given me, I walked back into the facility and unsheathed a retractable blade that I had surgically implanted under the wrist of my left arm (vaguely a combination of Wolverine from X-Men and the video game Assassin's Creed), reached over and tore a rip down their aforementioned wall calendar. I then left, leaving them to contemplate the symbolism of my vandalism, whatever it precisely was.

I hitched a ride with some friends and ended up stopping at a rustic lakeside cabin constructed of memorably dark wood which had a chicken coop and other modest commodities of animal husbandry. My friend turned a corner of one of the shacks, yelling, "It's evil!" and I saw some sort of bull was after him. I cautiously circled the shack to stay out of the animal's way, but it honed in on me and accordingly desired my destruction. I dashed toward the lake in desperation, the shore of which was muddy and fraught with thin skeleton-white trees whose branches were completely absent of foliage. I looked back to find the fearsome beast still in pursuit, whereupon I discovered it was actually a water buffalo, about which I remember thinking was "the most nefarious of bovine." Through the slim swampy grove, I detected yet another water buffalo, to which I lamented, "You got to be kidding me!" No sooner did I spy it than it spied me and moved to flank my position. I transitioned to climbing one of these brittle and precarious vegetation, though could not ascend far due to the absence of reliable footholds. The first water buffalo caught up and nipped at my heels, barely out of reach. Up close, I noticed the creature was mutated, possessing two heads, one of which resembled a deer (one that I had shot years ago and is now mounted on my wall in real life). During the wobbly standstill, I suspected that perhaps the monster's aim was not my demise bur rather innocuous play, though I was cautious since I had no objective evidence for this whatsoever. Reeling back and forth, I noticed purplish leaves/flowers upon these rickety branches, vaguely reminiscent of the plant known as "belladonna" (something I later found out in real life was a poisonous plant, also known as "nightshade").

This made the dream transition to the next scene, in which I was back off the tree but still on its muddy shore, now overseeing a rectangular crockpot of boiling shrimp. I knew that the belladonna-like flowers had been used in the seasoning of this upcoming dish and that it was either going to be used to lure the mutant water buffalo-deer away or that I, as well as my friends, would soon partake of the meal simply because we were pretty sure it would be delicious. As I tried to figure out which one was true, I decided the dream had become too stupid to continue.

Piss or Be Pissed

I was at my old house where all the toilets had temporarily been removed from the bathrooms for maintenance reasons or something (this dream is going to be ... a little gross, by the way). In the meantime, cardboard boxes were put in their place to serve as makeshift substitutes. The understanding was that they should only be used for purposes of urination, and that defecation would be postponed indefinitely. The first bathroom I entered was fitted with a stupidly small box, only about a foot or two wide and about half a foot deep. There was also a smaller open plastic Tupperware container in it, meant to capture most of the urine, though it was already nearly full from some previous use. The question came to mind whether the rest of the surrounding cardboard interior would be waterproof enough. I decided to assume the best without any justification that cardboard was much more liquid resistant than is commonly believed. More heinously, I thought if the material ultimately proved inadequate for the task, someone else would clean the mess up.

I don't remember if I actually used the first bathroom (though I'm pretty sure I did), but I do remember using a second one. In this particular restroom, there were several cardboard boxes, all of which were filled with books. One of them, however, which was slightly off to the side, only contained a few books, one of which was titled something about "Osmosis." With another rash judgment, I assumed this particular container had been appointed as the lavatorial replacement. I rationalized that the literature within it was meant to be discarded, thus giving the box an efficient if disgusting dual purpose. I relieved myself accordingly. I did not fill the receptacle up to its brim, as it was much larger than the first one, and because of this, I did not dump its contents into the bathtub as was currently the protocol, so I "remembered" just then. I would leave someone else to perform that job (which upon reflection made me cogitate why we were not allowed to simply utilize the bathtub directly in such a fashion). In any case, upon completing my contribution to the box, I was wracked with thoughts that I had perhaps made a grievous error. Maybe the books I had soiled were not meant for destruction, and I had embarrassingly ruined them for their owner. I vaguely intended to defend myself with the argument that this particular box clearly seemed to be the closest thing to an improvized urinal that the present system had apparently sanctioned. Hence, I reasoned I was totally guiltless for pissing on someone else's books.

Some boring stuff happened afterward that I can't remember, but things eventually changed drastically. I was escorting some students across a parking lot back to the school after recess while haphazardly opening a couple envelopes I had gotten in the mail. One favorably contained a few hundred dollar bills, while the other had a check for some other amount. I clumsily dropped the check, and it went tumbling in the wind, sweeping under parked cars. With determination, I successfully caught up and planted my foot on it. While my right hand was occupied with the cash, my left was inhibited by my tight buttoned up sleeve, through which my hand could not quite fit through to retrieve the bank note, the edge of which was still flapping in the wind. I can't remember how this tense predicament got resolved.

When the students and I got to the school, we were attacked by fully armored knights. We quickly retreated into the interior of the school, dodging sharply behind corners, trying to outrun a charging cavalier, who was mounted on a horse behind us. After entering a strategically convenient room, we turned around and prepared to face the hostile pursuer. A footsoldier instead turned the corner, and I, just like how I had been planning, immediately stabbed him right in his face ... with a plunger. He was taken aback but entirely unscathed. A few other knights joined the fray and surrounded us. It was unclear whether we were actually trying to kill each other or just pretending to fight. While most everyone was hesitating to land a single blow, I took the initiative to unsheathe a dagger from my shirt pocket (though I regretted it immediately, "remembering" I had a better one in my pants pocket) and lightly stuck the tip right next to the left armpit on the chest of one of the reinforcements. I recognized him to be a former student of mine (one who had entirely been inoffensive to me in real life). He just stood there, not quite sure what to do, but still in good spirits. Continuing to worry this might indeed be mortal combat, I slowly pressed the blade a little further into him, feeling his flesh unpleasantly tearing. "Ouch," he replied, though not too dismayed yet. "That actually hurt." I kept debating in my head how deep to plunge the weapon, still unsure of the context. At the very least, he should have gotten the message and run away ... hence, if I cut deeper, would it ultimately be his fault that he died or mine? I probably needed to make a decision in the next second. Alas ... yet another moral dilemma ... this one arguably even more important than the one about peeing in a box of books.

I don't remember if I killed him. I woke up soon after and discovered I required to use the bathroom for real and with utmost haste. I was relieved to find all the proper facilities in existence.

Non-Existent Lives Don't Matter

I heard shouting outside the window of my condo and peeked through the curtains, seeing a black guy and a white guy in a violent argument in the parking lot. Other people of both races began gathering around, looking like they were going to end in some kind of racially charged street battle. I grabbed my smart phone and started filming it for potentially legal reasons, as I saw many others do as well. I couldn't figure out how to manually switch the phone to camera mode, so I just told Siri to do it ... and it amazingly worked. People began fighting further down the road at an intersection. I zoomed in with my phone to find them not so much fighting but dancing in a suspiciously synchronized fashion (West Side Story came to mind). Nevertheless, worried it would escalate into some BLM riot or something and that my condo would be caught in the crossfire, I grabbed my semi-auto glock pistol from my gun safe, cocked it ... and it broke immediately. I examined it, finding multiple pieces were loose and flimsy. All this made me suspect I was dreaming ... after all, the whole landscape outside my bedroom was ... unfamiliar. In any case, I had other guns. I grabbed some kind of rifle and brought it to the window, careful to hide it from sight. I then thought, "Wait ... what kind of gun is this?" It didn't quite look like an AR-15. Searching its surface I noticed some confusing engraving that I interpreted as an "M-17" (a real gun, it turns out ... but nothing like this one). In any case, it didn't matter anymore, and I shrugged, fully convinced I was dreaming.

Later, I thought I had woken up in my old house and was updating my online dream journal with this new dream. My mother and sister were there on another laptop, scrolling through it as well. I made a slight change to it, and they immediately saw it on their computer. Likewise, they managed to make an alteration as well (something about rewording a dream title, switching "body" to "bode" and then adding a weird letter to a word that looked like the state of Texas), which I immediately saw on my own computer. That wasn't supposed to happen since I hadn't given them the login and password for the internet server. I then concluded, "Oh ... the only way this is possible is that I'm still dreaming." I then pointed to my sister and said in a reasonably light-hearted tone. "That means you don't exist!" I then pointed to my mom with the same amicable manner, "And that means you don't exist!" They were kind of laughing and playing along ... but indeed acknowledging the truth of their non-existence. I said, "All right, before I end the dream, each of you say something funny to make it more interesting ... you know, for the dream journal." I pointed to my sister, and she responded as if telling a brilliantly funny joke, "I'm ... thirsty!" We all laughed for awhile at how completely not funny that was. Then I pointed to my mom, and she responded, "Kudva." I confirmed, "Kudva?" She said, "Yeah ... Kudva." I made her spell it out, and she might have mumbled something about it being Russian. I thought that was weird but hoped it would be interesting enough for the dream journal. I then said, "Okay, bye!" And began willing myself awake. They disappeared but I was still in my old house. "Oops! That didn't work! Uh ... guys? Guys?" I was all alone in the house and faintly worried it would turn into a nightmare for some reason. I tried again ... and everything was just fine.

Dream Theft Auto

I was in church, dressed like Boba Fett (from Star Wars), eventually discovering that my bags which contained my normal clothes, as well as my laptop, wallet, and keys, were no longer where I had left them. I thought about "reloading" the dream to a previous "save" when I knew my bags were still there, but I was too lazy. Nonetheless, I "knew" I had to act fast, feeling that if I didn't find them soon enough, then they would be gone in the real world by the time I woke up. I frantically scoured the church, finding piles and piles of other bags belonging to other people, but never my own. As a last ditch effort, I "remembered" the secret passage in one of the closets. I walked in, brushed aside the hanging coats, turned to my right, and tore off a large ventilation grate, revealing a hidden room. I climbed through.

The secret chamber was composed of mostly unfurnished plywood but equipped with a few basic kitchen appliances that I "remembered" using for makeshift parties or something. Still not seeing my bags, I opened a door to a side-room. There, I saw a heavily scarred bald man who was barely conscious tied to the floor, laying on a trapdoor, which someone was unsuccessfully trying to open from beneath. I suspected foul play was afoot and that whoever had trapped these people here probably were the same culprits who stole my luggage. I started to go and find help but then the secret chamber was flooded with a dozen or so mafia gangsters who were clearly intent on not allowing me to leave. I had no doubt they were behind everything.

I planned to use my omnipotence to teach this mob a lesson. Before I could make a move, some kids who were also being held hostage here began fighting back with absurdly unprecedented success. Amidst the fray, I grabbed one gangster and began smashing his head repeatedly on the floor. I think I also broke the arm of another. One of their leaders whipped out a black snub-nosed revolver and tried loading rounds into it, but I swiftly intercepted him, took the gun away from him, and finished loading it myself (incidentally, the chambers in the gun were different sizes, some being fitted for 9mm and others .22, which I couldn't decide was a clever design or not). Soon, we had pruned the enemy numbers down to just three gangsters. I asked them if running heists like this in other people's dreams was common practice for them, to which they answered yes. I pointed the gun to the stomach of their leader, demanding he reveal where my stuff was. He shrugged, and I pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. I shrugged saying he got lucky, assuming the weird firearm only worked every other shot or something. I then pointed it at one of the more elderly mafia members and said, "Maybe I should kill you. Do you know that he [the leader] has looked up to you as a father figure? It's sad because by far you're the stupidest person here." I was pretty sure I was just making this up in an attempt to psychologically break them down. After another misfire at the boss, plus another violent death threat, they relented and said they had taken my bags to "High Sparks High School" (or something like that). I thanked them but then continued to take the leader hostage until I could confirm they were telling the truth. I also told him he would be driving since they had stolen my car keys.

I escorted the mob boss outside at gunpoint. It was currently night, and we happened to pass by a neighbor's fenced in yard where his pet bobcat was roaming as well as a very large bat crawling on the ground. We didn't ask questions and kept our minds on the mission. We got into a car which was being driven by my sister (one that didn't exist in real life) while I sat in the passenger's seat with the mafia leader, who had now transformed into a koala bear who sat on my lap with my gun still pointing at his head. As the koala gave directions to the school, the animal would also try to charm and mislead my sister, attempting to get her on his side. Whenever he would succeed, I would see my sister's "morality meter" on the dash board pointing more and more toward "evil." Finally, at one fork in the road, I saw the koala's two dialogue options regarding whether to go left (the correct route) or right (the incorrect route). The koala chose right, and my sister's morality meter hit pure evil. I, however, thanks to my omniscience, vetoed his instructions and told my sister to take a U-turn. She complied and her morality meter pointed slightly toward "good" again. We were almost there.

I felt my dream disintegrating and lamented how I was going to lose my laptop, wallet, and car keys in real life since I hadn't recovered them while asleep yet. I stressed out about having to cancel my credit cards and figuring out how to get duplicates of my keys, but I eventually just quasi-made peace with the whole inconvenient situation in my head. I woke up and to my relief I realized the logical details about how the dream was, in fact, just a dream and not real life.

The Philosopher's Stoned

I was at my school, attending a history class as a student (despite being a teacher in real life), wanting to raise my hand and participate but struggling to think of what to say. When there was mention of "Socrates," I got the teacher's attention and contributed the trivia that Socrates' father was named "Phineas" (like Phineas and Ferb, I pointed out .... which evoked modest laughter) and that he was an alchemist, being one of the most important historical figures to define the western alchemical tradition. I said it with authority and a solid sense of certainty.

When I woke up, I remembered ... with some confirmation from the internet ... that Socrates' father was actually a stoneworker named Sophroniscus who had absolutely nothing to do with alchemy.

Presidential Handshake

I was in a conference room in Washington D.C. giving a talk on economics to a dozen or more people, all hosted by Bill Clinton. I was trying to explain the theory of "Localism" and how it differed from socialism and capitalism. I was surprised how gracious Clinton was. It turned out one attendee had become friends with him despite their ideological differences, which was why he was here in the first place ... and why this event was happening at all. When the conference concluded and people were filing out of the room, I decided to give Clinton a cordial parting handshake, despite not being his biggest fan. As he turned around, he overshot with his own hand, resulting in one of those Roman-style handshakes, where we were clasping each other's wrists/forearms moreso than each other's hands. We continued with it anyway, despite its painful awkwardness. I said, "Thank you, Mr. President." I then quickly decided to follow with, "That's the right procotol, right?" I knew perfectly well that was his correct address, despite him not being President currently, but I decided to confirm it anyway to avoid a possible ensuing awkward silence exacerbated by the unorthodox handshake and all that. He nervously confirmed it and then scurried out the door, giving off a vibe of neurotic insecurity, as if he now was just a mere husk of a man. I knew he probably was dealing with a few ... issues ... some I dared assume pertained to the topic of morality. I was still at least mildly appreciative that he hosted this lowkey economics conference for us ... I guess.

Clean Up Your Dream!

The famous psychologist Jordan Peterson had moved into my grandparents' old house which turned out was haunted by the ghost of Winston Churchill (the Prime Minister of Britain in World War 2).

I began having a discussion with Jordan Peterson somewhere in the house about an annoying teenage male patient of his over in the next room who had severe ADHD. I suggested that since ADHD in males can be caused by a lack of sufficient rough-housing in early life (something I heard about in real life) that maybe the patient might benefit from rough-housing now ... with the implication that I really wanted to beat him up without mercy. Peterson basically said no, since the kid's brain development was too far along or something. In any case, I vaguely recall giving the patient a hard time anyway ... because he was so unforgivably annoying ... Peterson did too, I think. I vaguely recall feeling bad ... but not that bad.

Eventually, in the kitchen, I found a rolodex of multi-colored laminated cards hanging off a dish cabinet that detailed different kinds of ADHD each coupled with a name of a patient whom Peterson was currently treating. Most of the cards said things like "1st Degree ADHD" or "2nd Degree ADHD" or "3rd Degree ADHD" etc. but when I found the name of the annoying patient in question, it classified him as having "Rampant ADHD."

When I had lost interest in such mundane matters, I finally asked Jordan Peterson whether he or anyone in his family had seen any ghosts since they moved in. Peterson replied, "Actually ... there has been one!" He referred to his daughter experiencing some kind of apparition ... maybe Winston Churchill but lamented how he hadn't perceived any himself ... as if it was some kind of archetypal Jungian failure on his part. I suggested he walk through the house in the middle of the night with the lights off to see if maybe he'll sense any phantoms then. We both laughed at how totally that was NOT going to happen due to the resultingly inevitable psychological trauma of anyone doing that even for pretend.

Later on, I wandered the house and thought how cool it was that I knew Jordan Peterson. There was a haunting feeling that this was incorrect.

Space Tripping Bad

I found myself strapped into a seat next to several other people, awaiting countdown, so that we could be blasted off into space. All of us were untrained astronauts, yet somehow we were picked for an important mission in space. The rocket engine began noisily heating up until finally there was lift-off. The g-force was intense, and I was sure I would pass out from lack of training, so I did my best to breathe deeply to get enough oxygen into my brain. It worked well enough, and all of us soon felt lighter, indicating we had basically escaped earth's gravity. There were cries of joy all around ... but then the whole vessel shook, and from the window, things went red and earth's horizon went sideways. Over the intercom we heard, "Oh, no!" and we began descending again. The real historic Challenger mission came to mind. One older man to my right calmly commented that this was probably the end for us. We all reached over and held hands. Prayers were said. I did my best to make a perfect act of contrition in my heart.

When it seemed seconds away from hitting the earth, suddenly the landscape from the window changed to a peaceful sky above the clouds, something not earth-like but perhaps found on an alien gas planet. The clouds turned to an undulating sea of white and red balls. We were confused and amazed, thinking perhaps the mission was somehow a success. I then realized that my left index finger had been pricked by a needle that had shot out of the end of my seat's armchair. I immediately came up with the theory that the rocket ship builders had designed this to inteject some pscychedelic drug into the astronauts if they were about to die, so as to calm them and help them peacefully transition into the afterlife. I glanced over to my friend who had his hand away from his needle. I explained it to him, whereupon he then willfully pricked his hand with it to join in the communal acid trip. After that, I got out of my seat and explained my theory to everyone, saying that all this might be a hallucination, that maybe our perception of time had slowed down too, and that we are still about to die or that perhaps we are already dead. We all agreed that this would make a good mystery story.

Mission: Illogical

I was being recruited to spy on some Islamic country. There were a few others being recruited as well, including Tom Cruise. We all sat in a classroom, awaiting a presentation about the basics of Arabic and other relevant information for our mission. The instructor, who was a middle-eastern woman, asked me where my name comes from. She theorized that "Julian" came from India as it resembled a Hindi word meaning "coarse" or something. I assured her she was mistaken and that it came from Latin, related to Julius ... like Julius Caesar. She insisted again on the Indian origin, and I calmly corrected her again, at which point she backed off.

While she addressed the others about their names, I leaned over to Tom Cruise and said something like, "It's weird that they're making you a spy since you have such a recognizable face." With a bit of chuckle, he admitted to thinking the same thing. The actress Summer Glau (who appeared in Firefly and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) came and sat in front of me and turned to talk to Tom Cruise who, as it turned out here, was her father. In a sort of excitedly gossipy tone, she said, "Dad, another one of my friends totally has a crush on you!" It seemed like she enjoyed and even stoaked the marital tension and temptations her father had to undergo from being a celebrity. I stepped in and told her something like, "Listen, if you keep correlating chaotic behavior like this with romantic relationships, you'll always insist that romance must be chaos, and you will never have a healthy, well-ordered relationship in your life. So ... control your passions, woman!" She pushed back and argued a bit over this. Tom Cruise encouraged her daughter to keep arguing against me. After more back and forth, I eventually said to her, "Nothing you said disproves from point." I also tried citing an authority they care about, telling them that my position on this was based off something Kevin Bacon said (which, in real life, is not true but seemed true at the time), at which point, Tom Cruise confessed to me, "Yeah, you know, I think I basically agree with you."

Sleeper Agent

I drove to my old house (one I had not lived in for 25 years in real life) where across the street two cops were beating someone up. The once quiet neighborhood had obviously gone down hill. I opened up the front door, finding the interior completely renovated since last time I saw it, which made me realize ... this wasn't my house anymore! Idiot! I obviously was losing my mind, so I discreetly scurried back to my car, lest the nearby police officers arrest me for breaking and entering. Before I got into my car, however, the police had shoved the man they apprehended in their cruiser and drove away. Now, with the law enforcement absent, I wanted to get out of here all the more swiftly before some other criminal element presented itself. Unfortunately, I was taking forever getting back into my vehicle, fiddling with the keys and whatnot like a moron. In the meantime, another car drove up near me. I finally opened my car door but realized it was the passenger's side. I calmly closed it and went to the other side, but right when I got it open, three shady individuals emerged from the other vehicle and confronted me with overt mugging-related intent. I closed the door and locked it remotely with the key fob and then backed away slowly. My wallet was in the car, so hopefully if they didn't get my keys, they would get nothing. They cornered me against a snow bank (because it was winter now apparently). I had my hands behind my back, where I was steathily burying my keys in the snow, so they couldn't get them if they frisked me. All I had to do now ... was convince them not to kill me.

As luck would have it, the muggers got a phone call. The one who answered it became rather emotional and whispered something into the ears of the other two. They began walking away, obviously drawn to a more immediate and personal emergency, giving a vague shrugging hand gesture to me that I was off the hook this time. I sighed with profound relief. Immediately, I pulled out my phone to call the police, though I first wanted to make sure I had descriptions of the would-be muggers ready at hand. I hid and peaked out at the gang as they were walking away, getting a solid look at each other their faces. They did not go far, merely crossing the street to talk to a neighbor who apparently was involved in their plight. I remember noticing at least three of the people in the group were blonde women with shoulder length hair of varying ages but probable familial relation ... even though they had originally been men just a moment ago (a detail realized later in real life).

As I remained spying from my hiding place, I was now in someone's bedroom. A guy with noticeably dark hair walked out of the bathroom (I think he was wearing a bathrobe, which was awkward). He immediately said something like, "Oh, you're not going anywhere. You definitely need to die." Apparently, he was part of the gang of muggers. My heart sunk, having just escaped danger and now immediately plunged back into it. I asked, "But ... why?" The guy answered, "Because you know that I killed someone." I vehemently denied this, which was true ... however, now that I knew it, that wasn't true anymore. I decided to straight-up lie and emotionally claim, "I ... killed someone too." He asked who. I thought about answering that I killed my father but toned it down a bit and instead replied, "I killed ... my uncle." I explained it was self-defense ... that my uncle tried to kill me in a drunken rage ... or something cliched like that. I pondered at the time whether this was true in the least ... but it wasn't. It was a bold-faced lie. I feared that if this guy was going to end up killing me anyway, I'd have to answer for that lie in the afterlife but hoped the divine would let it slide considering the circumstances. In any case, my psychologically distraught performance made the guy relent for some reason ... and he let me go.

I vaguely remember that the gang of muggers gradually let me join their ranks. One of the female members even gave me a keycard allowing me access to their huge corporate headquarters in some downtown skyscraper. I visited it briefly to further my deceptive relationship with them. When I left, I found that my car in the parking lot was gone. I asked the nearby black security guard what happened to it. He said he would figure it out, leading me to a side-entrance of the nearest building. When inside, I revealed that I was undercover, trying to infiltrate and gather data on the criminal organization in question, because I knew somehow the security guard was part of an operation that had been working against them. I offered my services. He said something like, "We'll have to ask Davis." I knew about Davis for some reason. He was the guy in charge of this secret anti-mugging agency.

Davis eventually showed up. The security guard said something like, "Davis is here. Watch out ... he's going all Halo Master Chief right now." Just behind a corner, Davis was smashing walls and doors for fun with the equivalent muscular power of the bionically enhanced Master Chief character from the the Halo video game series. It didn't make sense. He nearly hit the security guard, but he was all right. He nearly hit me, but I was all right. Davis was just screwing around, perhaps to toughen up his agents ... or something. In any case, Davis turned out to be a rather tall, burly, Scottish-looking fellow with a short but full grayish curly beard. He had a vaguely lumberjack vibe to him. His violent shenanagins had knocked me on my back, and he threatened to crush me underfoot, but I called his bluff but simply calmly explaining my situation. He agreed to interview me for potential recruitment in the agency.

Davis and I went to an adjacent room full of random clutter. When we sat down, I noticed two yellow frisbees stacked on each other on a table next to him. I said, "By the way, I'm telekinetic." I pointed two fingers at the top frisbee and began moving it around the room with my mind with effortless ease. I figured it would impress him in the job interview. He reluctantly admitted he was indeed impressed, saying it with a hint of jealousy. However, he also said, perhaps to reassert his dominance, "I actually know why you're telekinetic." He definitely had something on me there, since I had no idea why I had telekinesis in so many dreams ... I mean real life ... but not. I also was about to say, "I'm also pyrokinetic," but instead decided to say, "I'm also electrokinetic," and produced a brief spark of lightning from my left hand. Davis also said, "I also know why you're electrokinetic too. It has to do with a special organ that runs down the left side of your face." I was intrigued. Had I been genetically enhanced by this organization from birth? Was I the chosen one or something? The answers to my superhuman origins was never revealed. The display of my superpowers probably weakened the hold I had on my dream as it always does. It was either that or I was mentally straining myself too much trying to make sure I remembered this dream. Whatever the reason, I lost unconsciousness.

Teacher becomes the Student

I woke up and looked in the mirror and saw that I had switched bodies with a random high school student of mine named Levi. I assumed it was a dream and thus proceeded to will myself to be transformed back to my normal self but nothing happened, giving me the impression that this was ... a serious situation ... maybe still a dream but still serious. I checked my wallet and discovered that my driver's license had also been replaced with Levi's too. Strangely, my family had recognized me and treated me as normal. It didn't make any sense.

When I got to school, I began trying to convince people of my anamolous transmogrification. I recall some of them being skeptical and me being frustrated that I couldn't prove my real identity with my real driver's license. Eventually, I saw Levi enter the lunchroom room and sit down. I suspected, by some logic, that he had "switched bodies" as well ... a theory that felt brilliant at the time. To test if it was really Levi, I went up to ask him what his middle name was to see if it was really his true consciousness inside there, and I would check to see if he was correct using the driver's license I had. In the end, this supposed Levi immediately answered, "Uh ... yeah, I don't know. I'm not really Levi." I responded with some relief, "Oh, good, yeah, I woke up with the same problem." A few seconds later, I said, "Whoever did this gave me my real license, so I can't even drive legally since the picture doesn't look like me" ... even though, of course, previously I had seen that I did have Levi's license in my possession, so it did look like me. Once again, it made sense ... even though it egregiously did not in rational retrospect. Later, I thought I woke up and told Levi that I had dreamt that I had swapped bodies with him (even though in real life, I hadn't told him yet ... though eventually in real life, I did tell him).

Oh How the Magical Have Fallen

I found myself at some conservative political conference where the speaker was boasting how the only great female political leader in history was not a liberal but a conservative, namely Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain. The speaker was really rubbing it into the face of a Hillary Clinton in particular ... who I think was attending the conference too ... and staying uncomfortably quiet. After a lengthy applause, the event began transitioning to a creative musical interlude involving Dominic Monaghan (the actor who played Merry in The Lord of the Rings), which made me think, "Oh, that's neat ... because he played the hobbit who sang that song in the movie ... and now he's going to sing another song now" (even though in real life that wasn't him but rather the other hobbit actor, Billy Boyd, who played Pippin). Part of the performance was Monaghan "flying" just above the audience ... or appearing to do so thanks to very thin wires holding him up, using the same technology the magician David Copperfield used to perform his famous flying trick (which happened in real life). The wires were supposed to be invisible but I could see them pretty well from where I was sitting. A few seconds into the feat, one of the three wires holding him up broke, forcing him to awkwardly make premature landing and end the performance. It was quite embarrassing.

Eventually, one of the high school students I teach (in real life) replaced Monaghan and attempted to don the flying contraption ... the same thing happened. The dining hall gradually was emptying as the event was coming to a close. They were still trying to pull off the show though. They thought that maybe a female should try it, since she would be lighter. However, the one who ended up getting picked was a severely overweight woman ... it ended in some kind of ungraceful disaster. At this point, David Copperfield himself intervened, adamant to sort out the problem, trying to redeem the reputation of his product. It kept going wrong even for him too. Soon, everybody was gone except him, as he was still trying to make the wires work. I felt bad for David Copperfield.

Delphine

I was taking my grandfather (who in real life was long dead) to the hospital because his body was rejecting the skin transplants that had been recently surgically grafted onto his face. I can't remember why he got them in the first place, but I remember thinking his face looked pretty good and ... seamless ... except for perhaps some minor redness on his lower right cheek. Anyway, I, along with my friends or something, handed him off to the medical staff and then proceeded to get a hotel room in the hospital ... because that made sense.

We made sure to book the same hotel room we got "last time" ... in fact, it felt like I had this particular room in a previous dream that I never wrote down and wondered why I hadn't (the real reason being I never had the dream). The hotel room was the size of a decent condo, complete with a living room and kitchen. There was also a 4-by-4 foot square fixture filled with soil and plants placed somewhere in the room. I then "remembered" and said, "Hey, I wonder if Delphine is still here!" As I "recalled," there was a fairy named "Delphine" who lived in this hotel vegetation whom we befriended last time. I called her name a few times, and lo and behold, a tiny blue fairy zipped out of the plants and landed on my outstretched hand, whereupon she transformed into this flat worm that stood up on my palm with a S-shaped posture ... something that should have been disgusting but was somehow inexplicably cute instead. I remember thinking that "Delphine" was probably an allusion to "Delphi," the ancient Greek city that was home to the famous Oracle who supposedly could reveal the future to people. And with that, one of my friends asked her to reveal something about a friend who was going through some hard times or something. Delphine, who was still in worm form, answered that she would only disclose such knowledge if my friend could correctly answer a certain question ... however, she said that my friend could pick the question ... any question whatsoever, in fact. I thought that this was rather generous ... but might end up being counter-intuitively difficult. I don't remember what the question was or anything else that happened afterwards but I remember it was rather disappointing.

Sick Day

In real life, in the early monring, I called in sick, and went back to sleep. I then dreamed that I had decided to go to work anyway (that is, to school ... being a teacher in real life). In class, while a student was asking a question, my right eye began watering suddenly, seemingly a symptom of my sickness. I grabbed a tissue, trying to discreetly fix the problem, hoping it didn't look like I was crying. Somehow it wasn't working, and I said, "Hold on, I really need to go to the bathroom," while realizing that I was irresponsibly leaving the class alone while they were taking a test ... but I decided I didn't care. I arrived in the bathroom, wiped my face to my satisfaction, but then felt very woozy. I looked at my hands, trying to figure out whether I might be dreaming or not, since I felt so weird. I remember thinking about the "rule" that if you're not sure whether you're dreaming or not, it indicates that you're probably dreaming. However, I thought this might be an exception ... that even though I wasn't sure, maybe I was, in fact, not dreaming. I stumbled out of the bathroom back toward the classroom. Dizziness, however, overtook me ... and I collapsed on the floor. I was very embarrased and wondered why I showed up. Then I realized ... oh ... maybe I AM dreaming! As I was passing out in the dream, I was gradually waking up in real life. I was looking at my arm as I was lying down and realized it was my real arm ... and I was not on the floor but on my bed.

Revenge of the Sea

I was at a vast sprawling seaside resort consisting of various interconnected hotels, shops, restaurants, and auditoriums. I was overlooking the beach several stories up from a window in one of the restaurants, when suddenly an unnaturally gargantuan flipper from a whale broke the water. It was so close to the sandy beach that I remember thinking there must be a steep drop-off only a few yards from the shore to accomodate such a gigantic submerged creature. A moment later, an absurdly large killer whale jumped out, measuring hundreds of feet, all somehow within a minimal distance from the beach. A middle-aged woman in a shapeless jumper who clearly was a naive and crazy animal-lover stepped into the water toward the beast to commune with it, as if nothing could go wrong. A few other random swimmers did the same. The titanic sea monster indifferently did a flip and crushed the well-intentioned persons in question. I, as well as many others, witnessed this with some concern.

The colossal orca became more problematically aggressive and proceeded onto land toward my location. It somehow lurched upward and smashed against the glass of the tall building I was occupying. Fortunately, the industrial-strength windows did not shatter, though they were clearly compromised. I immediately turned around and smashed throw a window on the opposite side of the room. I proceeded to fly through many different buildings in the diverse structures of the resort, smashing through window after window without much shame, just trying to get as far away as possible from this creature of the deep, whom I sensed was out for vengeance against me for some reason. I discerned it saw me as a rival to its oceanic superiority (something that felt related to a previous dream, namely, "Dominion of the Sea"). It was getting interesting (but my alarm woke me up, whereupon I hit snooze immediately to submerge myself back to sleep, but it did no good whatsoever).

2022

Out of Air and Time

I was on the Star Wars planet of Alderaan right when it got obliterated by the Death Star's superlaser. Fortunately, I had force powers and protected myself from the apocalyptic cataclysm with some sort of skin-tight energy shield. Unfortunately, I now found myself floating dismally in the vacuum of space on a tiny asteroid. I knew I could only keep this up for so long.

As I floated through the asteroid field that was once the peaceful planet, I inexplicably came across an alien cantina somehow established amidst the space rocks. I didn't question it. The establishment wasn't sealed off from the vacuum, however. This didn't bother the inhabitants, as they all were adapted to a space environment for one reason or another. I approached the bartender and asked him where I could get some air before I suffocated. Technically, I couldn't speak since I was holding my breath but still communicated my inquiry well enough through body language (everyone else could talk somehow, despite the airlessness). The bartender pointed to some tables behind him and told me to talk to "Bertrand" (or something). I scurried over and found what seemed to be a tall waiter in a tuxedo who, upon further inspection, was some kind of manikin and/or droid without a face who proved reprehensibly unresponsive. In a desperate attempt to a solution to my problem, I pushed a button on his belt, which opened a slot with some notepad paper and a pen which was almost out of ink. I managed to scribble down "O₂ please!" Nothing happened. I turned to a random table of alien customers whose faces resembled octopuses and saw they were using special breathing apparatuses. I showed them the note, combined with frantic sign language. One of the Cathulhu-esque creatures coldly dismissed my plight, but surprisingly the one across from him insisted he give me at least one huff from his gas mask. He shrugged and relented, detaching the device from his face and handing it to me. Right when I took a deep breath, I realized that this alien species might not breathe oxygen, and soon enough I found the gas I inhaled to be poisonous ("ammonium" came to mind, for some reason). Unsure whether the alien nefariously knew this would happen in the first place, I just handed it back, coughing and being all the more worried I was about to die for real at this point.

At this point, I was "cheating" by breathing through my nose. I knew this was a dream, frustrated that no solution had presented itself despite my efforts and thus rationalized that I could sneak a few breaths in the meantime. I then found two fellow humans (one of whom was my old college friend Matthew). Through gestures, I asked them how they were able to breathe. Eventually one of them said, "Oh, you need some 'hiya'. You can get some in aisle 80." With haste, I began combing the cantina for "aisle 80." I found many confections (mostly candy bars) on racks like that of a convenience store encircling the bartender's counter, each labelled with a number. I remember finding "40" but couldn't figure out the pattern well enough to find "80." By this time, I was irrecoverably frustrated with this dream. I had given it my best shot. I finally decided to come up for air and just wake up.

Chinese Takeout

War had broken out with China, and I had procrastinated in preparing for the worst. My house had been picked clean of nearly all useful supplies to help our troops on the frontlines for some legally ambiguous reason. Rummaging through the place, I managed to scrape together three long guns: a break-action single-barrel shotgun, some kind of pathetic low-calibre rifle, and finally a mere pellet gun. This was all useless, however, as no ammunition was anywhere in sight.

I carried the three firearms to two of my compatriots who were acting as lookouts from the living room window. I threw them two of the guns, suggesting that maybe the sight of them could at least scare any invaders off if they get close. Right then, some Chinese forces were approaching, undeterred by our unloaded weapons, and opened fire upon us. One of my companions died, while I merely pretended to do so, though my deception was ineffective. A Chinese soldier entered through the broken window, holding a triple-barreled rocket launcher. He fired one just over my shoulder, exploding the dining room, just to show that he meant business. He then turned to my surviving friend and said that he would fire another at me if he didn't unconditionally surrender. Meanwhile, other Chinese forces invaded the property, surrounding me and mocking me about my assured imminent death. I was more or less at peace with this, which paradoxically worried me a bit.

In short, my household surrendered and we were now being occupied by the Chinese military. It was a tense situation. When the enemy personnel wasn't looking, however, another one of my friends kicked an enemy officer under a computer desk and began choking him discreetly with a shoe lace. The rest of us, in response, made sure to talk loudly and redirect other Chinese attention elsewhere so that our ally could complete his brash act of stragulation. It worked. One soldier was down. He just had to take them out one by one. We stuffed the body somewhere in the living room under some blankets but were very worried the missing soldier would be noticed and our plans discovered. Unfortunately, the dream got sidetracked by some bossy Chinese women in the kitchen in some way that made no sense whatsoever.

Major Academic Issues

During school, a student named Becket came up to me and confessed that, for awhile now, he had been periodically eating worms out in the wild and was now suffering from worrisome stomach pains. Trying not to overreact I asked him ... WHY!? After a brief pause he replied, "I don't know," as if hoping I would have the psychological insight to explain it. "Was it a dare?" I inquired. He shook his head. Another student, John Paul, eventually approached and revealed he had been doing the same thing. "Do you know what led you to do this?" In short, he answered they were inspired by birds, that the idea of a mother bird feeding worms to their children was an inspiring act of love and care, and that perhaps by ingesting worms themselves they could receive a sense of that parental kindness. I knew for certain now that they were in fantastically desperate need of psychological help.

Later on, I was teaching a class that was getting out of hand. Mostly, it involved people turning their desks and clustering them together to form private conversations while I was trying to lecture. I eventually went ballistic and started cussing my head off, giving detentions all over the place, and telling some people to leave the room. At least some of them snuck back in later on, at which point I physically hurled them out, accompanied with more foul language.

After that, I thought I was awake but I wasn't, finding myself about to teach another class, specifically about the founding of the Fransican religious order. I said to the students, "Please don't talk out of turn. I just dreamt that you guys were doing that, and I ended up losing my mind and cussing everyone out." There was some slight laughter. The class was going well for awhile, as they seemed interested in the purpose of why and how Franciscan Friars survived off begging for other people's charity. Soon enough, however, the same crap starting happening. Two students in the corner had turned their desks away from me, and one of them was sort of standing on his head in his seat. In rage, I pulled him onto the floor and demanded to know what he was thinking. Other students started to complain and insult me. As I looked over the classroom, I saw many had clustered their desks together like before. Many were out of uniform as well. Some of them even had set up messy tent-like structures somehow. It looked like a veritable shanty-town. I went ballistic again, accosting them for their inexcusable recalcitrance. One student asked why I was attacking them. Surprisingly, another student defended me saying that the students were also attacking me and my authority. It was nice that someone understood. In the end, vaguely speaking, it did not end well ... but it did end.

The Cult of the Beast

I was being chased by King Kong through the old neighborhood of my childhood. I ran through people's backyards, eventually plunging into an icy river which was completely out of place and which the giant gorilla overlooked, clearly dismissing it as a plausible hiding place. It soon lumbered away. I noticed, however, that it had ignored the other pedestrians in the area, as if the monster considered them friends. I started to intermingle with this growing crowd, which led me into one of the rather large houses nearby, where a variety of people were holding a curious social event. I discovered somehow that they were all part of some kind of satanic cult, one that was part of a network of similar groups spread throughout the world. They generally looked quite normal and even unnervingly domestic (giving off a "Wicker Man" vibe). I decided to pretend to join them so as to undermine and utterly destroy them. I aimed to take out the leader especially, whoever he might be.

I presented myself as an initiate to this suburban cult. A few others did as well, including some businessmen who wanted to expand their sphere of influence through the cult's worldwide network. The cultists thus began subjecting us to a variety of tests to see if we were worthy. At one point, one of the female cultists, who superficially looked like a sheltered housekeeper but with a disturbingly uncharacteristic degree of confidence, asked each of us to make a "wager." I asked for details, but she insisted that the wager was up to each of us ... that we were in control of it, not some higher power. Trying to guess what exactly this meant, I nonetheless decided that if I won the wager (whatever it ended up being), then they have to fully reveal the deepest and darkest secrets of their cult. They responded that if they won the wager, then it would be my death. With this, one of the women brought out a tray of "food." The main items on it were skinned-off human faces. Actually, it was more like the skins of entire human heads that had been hollowed out, now looking like floppy rubber masks, all of which now sat deflated on top of one another, resembling something like flat bread or messy cold-cut sandwich meat. It was probably the most disgusting image I've ever dreamt. I went to the corner of the room and started to vomit. Others did the same. It seemed clear that they expected me to eat at least one of these amputated visages or else I would lose the wager. Considering my life was on the line and that I wanted to infiltrate this evil organization, I actually contemplated trying to shove one of these culinary horrors down my throat. I felt, however, that this would not only be cannibalism but that these fleshy abominations might likely inflict a curse upon the consumer. Nonetheless, would the heroic thing to do here be to choke it down anyway? As I weighed my options, I gradually remembered, albeit with some uncertainty, that they said the wager was up to me ... that I'm in control, not some higher power. Thus, perhaps I could just refuse to partake in this meal. Could I put forward another test for the wager instead of chomping down on a dismembered human face? How would they respond? Would they lose trust in me?

Many of them started moving to the basement while one of the male cultists stayed with me, presumably to watch me resolve the wager before I was admitted to whatever was down below. The cultist suddenly started acting possessed and began crawling up the wall and walking on the ceiling, clearly to strike fear and awe into me, now that I had shown a lack of commitment to their cause. Calmly, I said to him, "Yeah, whatever. I can do that too." I harnassed my customary dream omnipotence, crawled up the wall, and began walking on the ceiling as well. The cultist, now back on the floor, looked up at me with horror, clearly not having expected this. It was very satisfying. I made crazy sounds to creep him out as much as possible too and eventually reached out my hand and telekinetically strangling him to death.

After that, I made my way downstairs unimpeded. The basement wasn't particularly eerie, mostly a large bare living room with white carpet. A few dozen cultists were down there in a casual gathering, many of them young kids. The cult leader turned out to be a fairly nondescript suburban dad. Nonetheless, it was all very unsettling when I really thought about it. As I contemplated how I would assassinate the leader, I noticed how part of the large room was sectioned off with glass walls and a pair of glass doors, behind which was some kind of vaguely humanoid creature (somewhat resembling the "gimp" in Pulp Fiction). It seemed to sense my ulterior motives being here like some kind of psychic guard dog. It began going beserk, trying to force the glass doors open in order to get at me. I tried holding the doors shut, but the monster became unmanageably stronger with each shove it made, not to mention that the glass was cracking and shattering more and more. I thought I might have to go into full omnipotence mode to solve this undesirable situation and thus risk waking myself waking up (as usually happens). I simply wanted to destroy the cult in a fair fight. I can't remember what exactly happened next. Even after I woke up, however, I was plagued by other random terrifyingly demonic thoughts that haunted me the rest of the morning.

The Darkish Knight

I was playing a medieval knight in some low budget film taking place in a vast mansion. The plan was to film the entire movie in one day, then film the whole thing again the next day, and then a third after that, whereupon the film editors would start compiling the best takes into one unified movie. The first two days of filming went well, but when I returned to my locker to retrieve my armor for the third day of shooting, it was gone. I asked around and learned that someone had stolen it and worn it for what would have been the first scene I was in. I managed to track down the culprit who claimed he did it as a practical joke. I indignantly seized back my costume, filmed the rest of my scenes, and planned my revenge.

To conclude the production, the entire cast and crew held a very formal banquet in the mansion's ballroom. For reasons clear at the time, I had a hand-held device into which I could input people's names, after which, guided missiles would launch from elsewhere in the city and seek out the named targets for the purpose of their destruction. I inputted four persons' names whom I knew were evil or at least annoying, including the aforementioned thief. I then initiated the missile launch and promptly made an announcement to the dinner guests that smart missiles were on their way honing in on specific individuals, thus they might way to spread out to avoid collateral damage near whoever they hit. In only a mild panic, the people spread out throughout the mansion, including several on the large adjacent balcony. Through the night sky, glowing missiles flew overhead and over the roof of the building in search of their targets, presumably seeing none near me. Soon after, I got some group texts on my phone from two of the intended targets saying something like, "Ha. It missed me," and "That was really easy to dodge." I took this personally.

Judging by how this attempted assassination of these undesirable (and evil?) people was at least partially a failure, I decided to call up Batman. This mansion was, after all, Bruce Wayne's house, it turned out. In fact, at this point, I was Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Batman's sidekick Robin. Unfortunately, Bruce wasn't answering his phone. There were a few friends and family at the mansion who secretly knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman and that I was Robin, and I asked them where he might be. One of them suggested he might be in the Bat Cave. I whispered to them with some annoyance, "Batman hasn't even showed me where the Bat Cave is yet," suggesting that Bruce still had major trust issues, even with me.

I went off to search the mansion's corridors for the Bat Cave's hidden entrance, hoping I'd find Batman there to ask him how we should kill the rest of these enemies (even though Batman typically doesn't kill people, of course, but whatever). I strolled along another scenic balcony and leaned over it, finding what appeared to be a corpse lying below on a marble walkway. I feared it might be Bruce Wayne's body, which would explain his uncharacteristic silence on the phone. However, under closer inspection, it turned out to be a Muslim woman kneeling down on a prayer mat. She looked up and asked if there was anything wrong. I said, "Uh, no, I thought you looked dead from here. Never mind." I even added the Arabic phrase, "Inshalla," just for good measure to diffuse the awkwardness. I also noticed at least one other Muslim praying somewhere in the yard. Were we surrounded by Muslims? I briefly wondered if this might be a concern as well. I hastened my search for Batman.

I noticed on the device/phone that Batman had given me that there was this mysterious "lock" icon in the corner. I pressed it and it turned to an "unlocked" icon. At the same time, a nearby door near the balcony opened slightly. I pressed the button again, and the door then shut completely, and so forth. Could this be the Bat Cave? I opened the door, finding some thinly veiled transparent tripwires in a small hallway to another door. Most of the wires were not set except one which was connected to two grenade-looking things. Before attempting to walk over it, I heard some commotion outside the hallway. I went out, finding some people approaching who were also in search of Bruce Wayne. In between me and this group, I spotted another tripwire. I warned them to stay away, saying, "Bruce isn't over here, I checked." Nonetheless, one guy came close enough and someone triggered the wire. The grenades from the other room detonated. I quickly assured them, "You shouldn't be over here. Bruce is having some construction done on this wing, and some of it's unstable. That's what the noise was. We should leave this part of the mansion alone." It did no good. About half a dozen people walked past into the unlocked door to see what had happened. I followed too.

We found a somewhat messy storage room with lots of exercise equipment. If anything, it was more of a Man Cave, though it looked like a very early form of what could become the Bat Cave one day. People began to snoop and move things around. Before they might find anything that indicated Bruce Wayne's secret identity, I rather firmly said, "Listen, Bruce isn't here either, so let's stop messing with his things and get out of here, okay?" They agreed well enough ... that is, not until one more person said, "Wait, what's this?" He pointed to a tall cardboard cylinder and somehow easily lifted it up to reveal what was underneath: a Batman costume. I nervously laughed and said, "Oh! Cool! Bruce said he dressed up as Batman for Halloween last year. This is probably it. Yeah, he spent like a million dollars on it. Crazy, huh?" All of them seemed to naively believe it, one of them saying, "Wow. Good for him." I replied, "Yeah, but, like ... a million dollars? He kind of went overboard, didn't he?" With their curiosities satisfied, they started to exit the makeshift Bat Cave just as Bruce Wayne finally showed up. I discreetly said to him, "Uh ... yeah, we all just stumbled into this storage closet and found the Batman costume you wore last Halloween. Anyway, I'm trying to get them out of here." With self-control, Bruce smiled and nodded and waited for everyone to leave, except me. In a sort professional, soldier-like tone, I began debriefing him on what happened, saying, "I tried calling you about how to manage the situation." Bruce asked what led to this, to which I answered, "Well, you see, the Penguin ..." but then Bruce stopped me, looking over my shoulder to see how an even larger group of people were now standing and listening right outside the Bat Cave. There were at least fifty people staring right at us attentively, some of them holding babies for some reason. Bruce made some brief speech about how none of this was a big deal, and everyone should return to the party. Then I woke up briefly.

After a trip to the bathroom in real life, I partially fell back asleep and sort of half-dreamed and half-imagined the rest: Bruce said that to deflect all suspicion that he was Batman, I had to put on his costume and make an appearence to the crowd where Bruce would be intermingling and publicly visible. I therefore put on the Batman suit. Against Bruce's wishes but rather to his annoyance, I unholstered his grappling hook from his belt and played around with it a bit, zipping onto the ceiling and even shamelessly jumping off the balcony and zipping back on while in midair. I even threw around a couple batarangs, which could magnetically return to my hand, which I thought was a nice upgrade. In the meantime, I asked Bruce where he had been, and with some embarrasment, he said, "I was ... doing something important." I then said, "You were with a girl, weren't you? Is some woman getting in the way of you being Batman? This is very unlike you, Bruce!" He didn't want to talk about it. In any case, before we initiated our plan, we got a text message or something that the villains we wanted to kill had left Wayne Mansion and were headed to another party. We then decided to change plans and get into the Bat Wing plane and fly over there. I gave Bruce back his costume, as I got into my Robin costume. We got on the jet and started heading over there, discussing how we were going to accomplish this mission. The plan got too complicated, and then I woke up for good. I then immediately asked myself where was Bruce Wayne's iconic butler Alfred throughout all of this? I was embarrased at this plot hole. He probably could have solved all of these problems. I also remembered that I kinda hate Batman.

The Uncivil War

I was lounging in the living room of my old house from childhood when all of a suddenly I heard the outbreak of massive gunfire from outside and knew it signaled the beginning of a new American civil war. I ran downstairs, carefully avoiding windows, and scrounged around in my old bedroom in the basement for various firearms that I had apparently and prudently kept just for this occasion. I armed myself with an AR-15 rifle, a Glock pistol, and a couple other items of self-defense. I also rummaged through a box of ammunition, overwhelmed by its chaotic variety, knowing that I should have been more organized and prepared leading up to this fateful moment.

Along with various armed allies, we proceeded outside with guns in hand to recruit any nearby citizens to our side. We were invited into one of the neighboring houses, but from its back window, I saw some suspicious people moving on to the lawn. I charged out there, training my weapon on them, telling them to back off. Dozens upon dozens of people swarmed around me, though none of them appeared to sport any weaponry. They presented themselves as hippy-like pacificists only donning various neo-pagan garb. One woman of a rather nauseatingly starry-eyed personality and gaudy clerical clothing approached me as a representative of the group, asking me for an audience with my leader. I was tempted simply to shoot all of them on the spot, partially because I suspected it was a dream, but I decided not to be a complete psycho ... this time. I gave the airy woman the courtesy of referring to her as "priestess," as I assumed she would like that, and said I'd retrieve the leader of our troop for a diplomatic meeting.

I re-entered the house, joining the rest of my armed companions to relay the message. The owners of the house turned out to be two similar looking old men with short gray hair with identically bad posture. However, one of them identified as a woman, wore terrible makeup, a dress, and an awkward boob job. My friends were trying to get along with them as best they could, desperate to befriend anyone to build up our numbers for survival. The old man/woman eventually said to us, "I'm actually a virgin maiden." It was beyond cringe, but we kind of smiled and nodded. I sort of forgot about communicating the situation that was happening outside, distracted by the palpable knowledge that this civil war was going to be very confusing.

A Dark Echo

A couple of my friends and I were trapped in a confusing shifting living room built by some kind of ingenius psycho. The place somehow could seemingly change the direction of its gravity, though it was really an illusion of the whole room turning to a different side, causing furniture to shift around and almost crush us. Like a movie, the camera of the scene eventually pulled back revealing what the setup looked like from the outside, revealing that the cleverly engineered room was placed in the corner of a school gymnasium. The construction was deceptively simple but designed to a kind of diabolical perfection, giving a feeling that there was no way out of this and that we were dealing with a hopelessly superior intellect. Now looking at this construction from this more distant angle, I suddenly heard a a loud resonating bestial groan/growl/grunt behind me filled with a malicious yet cold indifference that echoed deep throughout the gym. It inspired me with a profound sense of danger and immediately jostled me awake without hesitation. To say that noise felt demonic would be an understatement. I still remember what it sounds like.

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