Shadowfiend23 @ Wrocław

Last night, I had a dream that seemed strangely profound – at least parts of it. Some of it seems to be fueled by anime I’ve been watching recently, but the rest of it…well, you’ll see.

I was an eight-year-old boy, wearing a prison outfit, being filed into a German concentration camp during WWII. I was crying because I was scared and confused – why was I here? What could they possibly want with me? When I came to the front of the line, they asked me for my name and my nationality. I told them my name, and before I could continue, they interrupted – in French, they asked me: “Your last name is Schneberger? That sounds like a German name. Are you German?” Between sobs, I tried to tell them (in French) that I was German (in part), but they wouldn’t listen. They laughed off my plea, saying (again, in French) that with such a weak constitution, I must be Icelandic (????). Anyway, they picked me up and carried me, kicking and screaming, into a nearby bunker. They threw me on the top bunk, closest to the door, and on the way out, the guard told me with a wide sneer on his face, “This is where you will die.”

I started crying even harder, knowing that I would never escape this horrible place. Just then, a woman walked up to me and asked me (still in French): “I heard you speaking French to the guard outside. We French need to stick together. Don’t worry, we have a way out of here. You’ll be fine.”

(Here’s where it all starts to get a bit magical)

The lady disappears, and suddenly my perspective becomes third-person and I am watching her speak in front of a large council, begging them to summon the seven “old ones” to set all those in captivity free. The council was presided over by an old man with a long, gray beard and a tattered, arcane, red robe. After thinking for a moment, he quietly responded,”If it must be so, then it shall be done.” He clapped his hands together, and suddenly my perspective changed again.

Now I was looking at a dimly lit temple with large marble columns surrounding a massive statue of a goddess. The temple seemed to be in excellent condition, but the statue was strangely dilapidated – covered in cracks, stains, and creeping green moss. The priests in the temple calmly walked over the statue and stood around it in a tight ring, heads bowed in prayer, whispering an unknown incantation. The blemishes in the statue began to glow yellow, and I watched as the statue started repairing itself. It was then that I noticed a small roguish man cowering in the shadows of one of the columns farthest from the statue. He seemed to be salivating with greed, enticed by some unknown desire. Out of the shadows behind him came another man, let’s call him Reaper, who looked extremely similar to this character:

Reaper told the other man that now was his chance to steal the goddess’ power, to do as he himself had done years before. The rogue slowly nodded his head as he said, “Do what you need to do.” Reaper unsheathed a red katana he had been storing at his side and slashed horizontally, decapitating the man in one fell blow. Instead of falling to the ground, the man’s entire body disappeared. Just as it did, the goddess statue began shaking violently and a bloodcurdling scream rang out from an unknown source. The statue shattered all at once, leaving behind only a pile of white dust. A red cloud of energy congealed in its place, and it seemed to pulse with a seething, burning hatred. The startled priests bolted from the room, having no idea what they could do to stop the monstrosity that had been created. Reaper closed his eyes and lifted his arms above his head, almost beckoning the cloud to approach him. It enveloped him, and the two became one. They suddenly changed shape and grew into a monstrous black dragon, crashing through the ceiling of the temple and towering several stories above it. It swung one of its heavy claws as it leveled another corner of the temple, reveling in the destruction it was causing. But something was wrong.

The dragon put its hands up to its head and let forth an ear-splitting roar. It couldn’t control its own power. It started wildly changing shape (into monsters so grotesque and bizarre that it would take me paragraphs to describe them. Maybe I will at some point). It finally took the form of a hideous cross between a giant and a rotting schooner riding on top of a tidal wave hundreds of feet tall. The ship/giant creature howled in pain just as the wave began to billow outwards, destroying all in its raw primeval sovereignty. After my vision was flooded with water, it slowly morphed into a very different scene.

I was aboard the ship creature now, but it was no longer deformed. It had become a regular schooner, but it seemed to be broken into two equal sections, from port to starboard. There was a single narrow plank bridging the gap between the two halves. Additionally, the ship seemed suspended in some sort of purgatory. The ship was floating in a massive expanse of whiteness, white as far as one could see in every direction. Large snowflakes were slowly drifting down from the zenith, further compounding the surreality of the scene. I felt as though I had been hurled straight into the conflicted psyche of the monster, that I was there to soothe it and quell its torrential rage.

As I arrived on the scene, a young blond boy sobbing heavily ran across the planks and up a staircase that lead to the deck of the ship. I felt as though the boy was the embodiment of the ship’s regret, of his last lingering humanity. I don’t know who I was at this point, but I felt compelled to chase after the boy, to nourish the men’s final hope at becoming human again. After I began to race forward, a large two-headed dog jumped out in front of me, blocking my path across the plank. His two heads snapped and chomped relentlessly, as though they hungered voraciously for that which dared to retain hope for the little boy.

Sadly, that it where the dream ended. I’m not sure what would have happened next. Eventually, I might write how I think it might have gone.

I had a dream last night that was thoroughly bizarre but uplifting in its own way.

In the beginning of the dream, I was wandering through a forest near my mom’s house. I was stumbling through bushy, evergreen thickets, in the wild and unknown but grasping for what was safe. What was familiar. Off in the distance, I saw a wooden tower that I knew harkened the path back to safety.

I blindly ran towards this odd beacon of hope. After reaching it, I noticed that it was a half-finished tower looming over my mom’s house. It seemed to be a symbol that perhaps I was growing as a person but that my growth was far from complete. I felt a strange urge to start climbing the tower, so I proceeded to do so.

After reaching the top, I felt a jolt of fear course through my body; off in the distant swamp, I saw fires moving around in the clearing. Somehow, I realized that I was one of the only survivors of a recent apocalypse. I realized that the fires were coming from giant road-warrior like trucks that murderous clowns (who were dressed in leather and black/white makeup) were driving, mowing down any survivors they could find. I felt a protective nobility surge throughout my body, and I immediately activated my lucid dream powers. I flew down off of the tower and rocketed straight towards the nearest clown car. Then, I gave myself a new lucid dream power – I gave myself the ability to throw saws from my hands.

One by one, I flew up to the road warrior trucks and destroyed them by raining saws down upon them – some of the saws destroyed the clowns quite brutally, I regretfully add.

The last truck proved to be much more of a nuisance. I sent a barrage of saws hurdling down onto it, but somehow the truck was able to dodge all of them without a scratch. Then, the lead clown starting cackling and raising his hands up into the sky. Just then, I saw a white ball start to fly out of my throat, and I only then knew that he was stealing my soul. I quickly started doing barrel rolls through some nearby weeds while quickly pulling my soul back to my body and making myself invincible to any further such trickery. After that, I released upon furious anger upon the final truck – a gigantic saw rose from the ground behind the truck, following it for a short time before it eventually cleaved it in two. I flew up into the sky, surveying the swamp that I had barely defended, happy that there was a piece of the wasteland that I had fought for, even if it was only a small patch of land…

Last night (Oct 2), I had a startling dream. It was one of the rare dreams where I attempt to invoke my lucid dream abilities and not only do they not work, but my dream actually reacts to my attempt to control what is happening. In other words, it is a dream that is about lucid dreaming – a meta lucid dreaming dream.

In my dream, I begin in an arena with two wild dogs. I believe that I am a gladiator and that I am supposed to slay the dogs to appease a crowd consisting of post-apocalyptic survivors. One of the dogs was relatively unimportant, staying in the back of the arena and posing no threat. But the other smaller dog was barking like a hell-spawn and frothing at the mouth. I activated my lucid dream powers and starting flying above the arena, out of the reach of the mad dog. As I brushed up against the roof, the dog chomped clear through part of his tongue, and blood gushed, gushed, gushed. I knew that if I continued to float out of harm’s way I could ride out the rest of the dream, but I felt something compel me to float back down to the dog’s reach. Just as I passed within inches of the dog, he jumped up and bit my foot. Everything went dark for a moment, and I felt myself being transported to a different part of the building. In the new room, I was told that I had contracted the dog’s disease (it didn’t have a name) and that the only way to combat it was to kill the dog. I was relieved because I knew that with my lucid dream powers, killing it would be a snap. I thus made myself immaterial and began floating up through the room’s ceiling back to the arena. But just as I was passing through the ceiling, I was yanked back down to the ground and was made corporeal once more. I felt a voice within me saying that my lucid dream abilities wouldn’t cut it this time and that I needed to redeem myself through hard work and good intent. I nodded my head in agreement and dashed out the door to find the dog. Then the dream ended.

Now, as I said in the preamble to the post, I believe that this dream is profound. I have some ideas for what it could mean, but here is what I find evident: the dog biting off his tongue represents my difficulties speaking French, and my inability to lucid dream properly represents that I realize that only hard work will bring me fluency.

Normally, I find dream interpretations dubious because I don’t see why any dream needs to be significant a priori, but I think that given my circumstances, the aforementioned interpretation seems a bit obvious. But in any case, you’ve heard what I have to say.

I actually had a second dream last night that I found powerful enough to recount. In the dream, I was in the backyard at my mom’s house, out where the dudley docker has been for a while now. But instead of the dudley docker, a gazebo was planted squarely between the trees and the swamp. I began the dream right in front of the gazebo with the knowledge that a killer (who was in the middle of attacking my family) was waiting for me inside. I ran inside and found myself overcome with primal, volcanic, murderous rage at this man. I picked up a rock and started beating the man’s face in. Or at least that’s what I was trying to do. After several “lethal strikes”, the man had mere scratches across his face. He scowled and told me, “That is not the way to go about anything in this world.” Then, there was a flash and everything changed. The room was now empty save for a ghostly, icy, frosty  mist trail that snaked through the room. I realized that I was a cold breeze and that if I released myself and flew with the trail, I would be carried to where I needed to go. I embraced the cold and started to flow through the mist. I tunneled through a variety of rooms, but most of them seemed in stark contrast to my current state – they seemed bright and warm. But this wasn’t a negative dichotomy – both extremes seemed comfortable and cozy. I ended up in a secret room of my mom’s house, but just as I arrived at it I awoke. Oh well.

My only comment on this dream is that it seems to be a strangely literal representation of my love for snow and the cold. Weird.

I had a strange dream that I was in some kind of battle royale situation. I was locked inside a small village – where it was always twilight – and I was forced to kill every other combatant in order to escape. I won’t go into the details of the battles, but suffice it to say that it was brutal. I used my lucid dream abilities to stop bullets, to teleport, to throw spikes, to throw boulders, etc. I stood alone at the end of the competition in a square built for the winner. The commentators starting chiming in, saying how I was a monster for slaughtering the others so mercilessly. But I disagreed. I told them that I had done what I needed to, in fact, that I had beaten the system. I then raised my hands and wished for everyone to come back from the dead. And come back they did. So I had found a way to get everyone out of the arena alive – no one died in the end. The dream leapt forward one year, and I recognized one of the girls from the battle. She thanked me for saving her, telling me that she would be forever grateful.

I remember having many nightmares when I was little. I probably had a normal amount of them, but I felt like I was the only person in the world having so many nightmares (you don’t know much about other people as a kid). Anyway, one night when I was about six or seven, I remember having one particularly scary dream. A dream where I learned one of my first lucid dream tricks – how to prematurely end a dream. (and how to split infinitives : )    )

When the dream started, I was in the kitchen at my mom’s house. It was the middle of the night, which was probably inherently scary to me at this age. I was watching my sister Molly fold clothes in the living room. She was putting the folded clothes into a laundry basket that was sitting on top of a stool. Everything was normal at this point, but I remember feeling like there was an evil presence in the house. Something I didn’t understand. Suddenly, Molly started freaking out, seizing and thrashing all while dashing to and fro inhumanely quickly. Like a hummingbird. She collapsed in a heap, knocking over the stool with the laundry basket on it. The clothes formed a grinning face, with slanting, derisive eyes. I knew that something was wrong. Just then, I heard my dad laughing from somewhere downstairs, near the laundry room. But something wasn’t right. His laugh was too loud, too hearty. He sounded insane. I knew that he had been possessed by a demon. I started to become panicked. I decided to run up to the master bedroom, but as I ascended the staircase, it started to stretch up and up infinitely while also becoming frigid, icy, misty. My stomach dropped. I was paralyzed with fear. Just then, I decided, “No. No, no, no. I don’t need to go up there. I don’t like where this is going. This dream is not fun, and I don’t need to keep having it.” So I shut my eyes tightly, and squeezed. Squeezed as hard as I could. Suddenly, I woke up. In real life. And I was relieved.

I continued using this trick when I was younger, and I grew to love it. When I realized I was having a nightmare, all I needed to do was to squeeze my eyes in the dream, and consciousness, my old friend, was persuaded into staving off my tormented slumber – for a while, at least.

So I’m not sure how many posts I’m going to end up doing here, but I thought that it would be fun (for me and for others) to write down some of my dreams, the lucid ones especially.