Another "guy" dream

This is another post that is not for the faint of heart. Towards the end is when it gets pretty bad, but if you have an active imagination, and you know who the characters are, it may seem very real. Now that you've been warned proceed at your own risk.

Last night and the night before, I had very weird dreams. I can't remember what it was the night before last, but last night was a continuation of a horror dream. Oddly enough, I remember the first one as though I just had it. But it seems more like a movie than a dream. Old Freddy was in it. No, not Freddo. Freddy. Krueger. Old-looking man, shriveled to a crisp, claws that only Wolverine could top -- that guy. No, not the innocent, bearded wonder of Pius Hall. Yes, the dream killer.

Just FYI, if this actually is a movie, then it's movie that I fell asleep in front of and dreamed it while it was happening. But I can't figure out where I would have fallen asleep in front of a movie like this. Maybe you can tell me. But in order to know, you would have to know the dream, wouldn't you?

Anyway, to get this started, I should tell you the first dream, as best as I remember it. A family was in desperate shape. They came to Christendom, asking for students to come and help them. Naturally, me being Mr. Nice Guy (right...), I offered my help, and a few other students came as well.

None of the people had any idea how to decorate a house appropriately for Christmas. We find this out after we've gotten to their house. Desperate shape? Please! But not willing to laugh openly at this family, who apparently believed that this was indeed a dreadful situation, I looked at their house, and got an idea of what needed to be done.

It was an average size, two-story house. The house was already decorated, but poorly, and rather unfestively. There were a few lights on it, and ribbon decorations. I then actually noticed that the lights were all clear, and the ribbon was all black. I have no sense of style, but even I know that solid black ribbons and clear lights don't make for a very festive house. I looked at my fellow volunteers, and we just kind of rolled our eyes. If Niki G. (formerly Niki K.) were here, she could have transformed the place like she did with the gym for Christmas formal my senior year. But she wasn't here, and I was one of the decorators. The house would be a bit more festive than what it was currently, but I couldn't promise much...

We go inside and these people inform us that this project must be finished by nightfall. It absolutely had to be finished then. They didn't explain why, but they acted as though it was a matter of life and death.

The other volunteers and I put together a list of everything that these people needed, and told them to go to the store and pick the stuff up. They took off as fast as they could go, and the volunteers and I got to work stripping the house of all of it's "decorations".

It turns out that the black ribbon was everywhere. It took us hours to unwrap and undecorate the various things. Even though hours passed, the family never showed back up. The sun was setting, and the end of the day was quickly approaching.

It turned out that it was a matter of life and death. Freddy showed up and began freaking us out. Oddly enough, it wasn't in a dream world. After running and screaming for a while, we all caught on to the fact that Freddy was outside his territory and could only scare us, but not kill us.

Now that you get the idea of the first dream, on to the next.

It was a year later. This same family showed up at Christendom again, and made the same request. I knew exactly what was coming up, and I decided to go along anyway. Several students also volunteered their services. There was a much larger group of people going this time. I can only remember one student, Nick O.

For some reason, I'm convinced that sometime on the trip between Christendom and the family's same house, I warned my comrades about the impending doom, and told them the truth about Freddy's limited power.

Once again, the house looked the same as before. Once again, we gave the family the same list of things to buy. I told them to make darn sure they came back, or I would exact the fate that they tried to inflict upon us last time upon them this time. I got in their face about this. The other student's were surprised by my agitation at the family, but I think they understood. The family promised to come back, and sped off.

This time, I wasn't going to waste any time in stripping the house. Instead of carefully unwrapping stuff, I had brought my knife with me this time. I started upstairs in the attic. What came as a mixed surprise to me were the number of bodies just lying there dead. Considering it was Freddy, it didn't surprise me, but considering that he was outside his turf, it did. I didn't understand how that could work, but then I got the hint that things had changed. I knew that I would probably have to at least fight if not kill him.

I placed the bodies elsewhere, to prepare them for appropriate burial. When they had all been cleared out, I went to the window. I noticed that the curtain rod had been wrapped in black ribbon. I looked closely, and it was actually two rods bound together by this black ribbon. The fastest way to get them apart, obviously, was to cut the ribbon. As I looked out the window, I pulled out the knife. Two people who I didn't know approached the house. The knife sliced into the ribbon, between the rods. Freddy zipped on the scene out of nowhere like the Flash, and ran them both through with his claws. My jaw dropped open, as he took off again, leaving them lying on the ground, looking similar to the bodies that I had removed. I looked at what I was doing, and pulled the knife out slightly from the cut I had made. It was coated with blood. But not normal human blood. It was bright red, like strawberry syrup, but clear. But it definitely smelled like blood.

I was a little freaked out by these happenings, but I wasn't going to show any fear at all. I knew that's what he wanted. I hurried to finish stripping the room, and then went downstairs.

No one downstairs gave me any indication that they had seen what had happened, or any bodies. Relieved, I went to work on the garage.

Nick O. was working on the garage already. I suggested that we just whip through it, fixing what was possible to do so quickly, and setting aside what was not. Above all, we had to fix the garage door, because that was a security hazard for the family. The garage door did not close. There was about a foot-and-a-half space underneath it. Anything could sneak in from there and endanger the family.

We looked around and found that the door had jumped the track, or else had been forced off it. I got underneath it and pushed up on it, hopefully to help with the weight of the door on its rails. Nick tried to put it back on, but it was not going anywhere. We got into a brief conversation, in which we asked where the family was. I replied that I wasn't sure, but that they needed to hurry up. We both looked at the ground underneath the garage door, and we saw a vehicle's shadow just sitting there. It had caught my eye as I was under the door, but I had dismissed it as I had *ahem* weightier matters to attend to.

{drum roll, cymbal crash} Thank you!!! {crickets chirp} *cough, cough* OK, that was really bad. I know. I know.
"SHUT UP, SMITHA!"
Ok.
"ON WITH IT!"
All right.

We rolled underneath the garage door. It was the family's Jeep Grand Cherokee. Had they gone and come back already? Nick and I looked at each other, and knew that they had not even left. Inside, the entire family was frozen in a very odd rigor mortis. The father had been slashed through the heart, and the mother, in an attempt to get away from her window, had moved closer to the father, but she was also frozen in death with a hole through her head. This one looked more like an odd bullet or a futuristic laser gun than the work of Freddy. The front windshield had a single hole through it. If you looked straight through the hole, you saw through the hole in the mother's head, and through the hole through their teenager's head, and out the driver's side, back seat window. They moment they were frozen in forever was the moment they opened their mouth to scream. That's why no one in the house heard this.

At this moment, I knew I was dreaming.

{pause}

Has this ever happened to you, when you realize you're dreaming, and you can simply take control?

{continue}

I asked myself, should I keep dreaming and confront Freddy, or should I wake up? There would be one result by my confronting Freddy: I would win. I already knew that. It was my dream, and I was in control. Instead of the confrontation that I wanted deep down inside, I woke up anyway.

Darn all the luck. I wanted an adrenaline rush, too...

Another weird dream

I've had this partially recurring dream a couple of times now. It's such an adrenaline rush that I have to share it with you. If you can't tell, I had the dream again last night. The dream wasn't the same as last time. I can tell you that for sure, because if it was, I'd remember a lot more about it.

What was the same were the conditions, the location and the characters.

What was different was what happened.

Here's the dream, as much as I remember.

I was living in this massive house, along the lines of a mansion. The occupants in the house were the rest of the basement boys from my junior year, and my senior year. And guess what? I was still the RA.

Oh, and yes, I did have the greatest floor ever during those years. Trust me. Don't believe me? Ask them. ;)

Anyway, back to the dream. So there were about 30 of us living in this one house. This was the official basement dorm, and we were still on campus. Somehow. I don't know how. Don't bother asking me to explain it. Let's just say that the campus had quite the different layout in my dream.

Now as I said, this was a large, mansion-like house/dorm. It was simply glorious. I would spend my free time drawing a full replica of this house as best as I remember it just to post it here, but there are two problems: #1, I can't draw, so that's out, and even if I could, #2, free time? I still have that? This blog takes up too much of it already!!! Well, I guess that's ok. It kinda lets out my creative side.

Although I don't know if this is the better (best?) side of me...

Enough tangenting. Back to it.

As I said, the "basement" was magnificent. If you have seen Yours, Mine and Ours, take the house that they all live in, chop off the lighthouse tower, and add a story. This was about the size of the house. I don't remember the profile of the lighthouse, but I don't remember it being too deep. This mansion in my dream was very deep, but not as deep as it was wide. The building was whitewashed stone on the outside, lined with huge marble Corinthian columns (I think -- I looked at architectural columns online, and I think they were Corinthian), gold trim, ivory decorations -- the place wasn't just a mansion. The place was almost a palace.

Yeah, hook me up. :)

I may have even had a silver sports car... ;) Ok, no I didn't, but a silver sports car would have fit in quite nicely there...

Well, this palace was surrounded by huge gardens and forests which were just there. I don't know how, they just were. And if you zoomed out even more, you found that this place was on an island.

Some of you are probably asking, "How is this still the basement of Ben's, and how is this still part of Christendom?" You should know by now that most of my dreams are kind of way out there. My imagination is just running wild at this point. Just let go of reality and nod your head in appreciation of weirdness. :) Even if you don't really appreciate it.

Now if it's on an island, how do you get to it? Well, you could fly. There is a helipad there, of course. Or you could drive. Most people chose this option, as this presented the best challenge. You'll find out why...

Well, the girls decided to come over. I don't know which girls, I just know it was a pack of them. When I say "come over", at this point, I really mean "raid the dorm". I can't blame them. Catherine's, Campion, Margaret's, Theresa's and Augustine's (which is now a guy's dorm -- take that, you crazy womenfolk!!!) don't even hold a candle in comparison. No, a candle is too nice of a comparison. As it stands in reality, those dorms don't hold a candle to Ben's. In comparison to this, I should have said, they don't hold up a match to this dorm. :)

All of a sudden, I somehow sense that a great number of you are very upset by this wording. Just as a reminder, I don't go to school there anymore. Even if you were to raid St. Ben's, it wouldn't affect me. :)

Unless whenever you raid, you put down in big letters, "In loving memory of the great Smitha." Then it would affect me. ;)

But raiding St. Ben's is a can of worms that you don't want to open, right, ladies?

Anyway, the guys all saw that the place was being raided, and we all took off to the girls side. We figured that the best way to deal with this was to strike back immediately. But we all know that the Basement Boys are awesome raiders, so without any planning at all, all the guys hopped into the vehicles that were parked in the underground garages and took off down the road.

As I said, there are two ways off the island, driving or flying. You could boat across, but no one had boat, and besides that would take a while. There are two roads off the island: a quick way and a safe way.

Ken F., Paul P., Peter K., the Bobfather, Bryan S., Alex K., etc. -- like I said, all the guys with vehicles hopped in them and took off. Guys like John J., Michael C., dove into whatever vehicle they could. Both of my cars were in use. I was at the helm of the Acura. I tossed the keys for the Nissan at someone else, and they caught them. All the cars were full of raid-happy guys.

Now, just for clarification, raids are strictly against the rules at Christendom. In real life, I would never have been in the leader of a raid. In fact, I don't think I've never been a participant in a raid while in a position of authority -- another good mark for a clean record. :)

In real life, have I known about raids? Oh yes. What have I done to stop them?
Me: "Guys, you know that raids are against the college's rules, right?"
Them: "Yep."
Me: "You all know that I'll bust you if I catch you?"
Them: "Oh, yeah."
Me: "Good."
That's all that's necessary. :)

This is not how it was in my dream. Picture, if you will, over thirty guys walking out of their rooms and seeing a raid in progress. All eyes turn to me. My subconscious took over. I wasn't about to stop them. They knew that, and within seconds, we were well on our way to returning the favor.

I roared out of the garage, flames shooting out of the back of the fully-modified Acura. Bryan, in his redneck truck, and Alex, in his awesome old-school van with antlers, tore out of their respective garages, Dukes of Hazzard style, with Paul in hot pursuit in his own truck, pipe clenched in his teeth, and his shotgun at the ready. The Bobfather zipped along in his Beemer, tailed closely by Peter's overstuffed car (a Corolla, I think?). Anyway, the rest of the cars all zipped out, as I said, full of raid-happy guys, laughing in eager glee with what they were about to pull off on the girls' dorms. There were many roads around the island, all connecting to each other in a massive web, all connecting to the two ways off the island.

I decided to take the fast way. Some guys were right behind me, others took the safe way.

The safe way was a tunnel leading under the bay back to the mainland.

The fast way was a bridge over the water, but not any normal bridge.

{pause}

Have you heard of the term suspension of disbelief? I hope for your sake, you've already applied this principle. You'll really need it now.

{continue}

Along the lines of a video game, this bridge had a speed limit, but the speed limit was a minimum required-to-make-it speed. This was about 100 mph.

A little bit of physics applies. This is a high-enough bridge to not worry about high water, but not so high that a battleship can pass through. With this in mind, the engineer behind it designed a passage for the extra-large ships that would be passing through, and here's how it worked.

This road was a straight shot out over the bay waters, until about the middle. Just before the middle it zigged hard left, and then zagged even harder right. Then it went zigged back hard left so that the bridge was parallel to the road before the zig-zags, which makes anyone wonder why the zig-zags were there. And then, along the lines of Mr. Freeze at Six Flags over Texas, this road was a straight shot out, until it suddenly went vertical. Straight up. This is why driving 100 MPH was necessary, and faster was recommended. Physics lost all effect as the cars sped up from 100 MPH around the sharp bends, and continued to accelerate well into the vertical roadway. (The Gorillaz 19-2000 music video suddenly pops into my mind as an example.) Well, I already had the car in overdrive, the pedal to the metal, and I was accelerating from about 110 MPH. I hit the curves at 110, got out of them at over 125, and got up to 135 by the time I hit the vertical ramp. Part of physics was in effect, because while my tires were still on the road, I had the potential to accelerate -- it's just that gravity didn't work while my car's tires were on the vertical ramp. When I left the ramp at about 150 MPH, physics and gravity suddenly kicked in.

At this point, the engineer was a pure genius, because how I get out of this seeming predicament was not normal. Not that I'm implying that this predicament was by any means normal... In reality, a car going up a road like that would topple over backwards. Not this time. I shot straight up, and the vehicle began to decelerate, but still go straight up. One wonders what the point is -- I'll simply land on the same road I just took off from. Nope. Like I said the engineer behind this road was a genius. He knew that once my car reached a certain altitude, the winds would take care of the rest. And that's exactly what happened. The winds blew in the exact direction I needed to go. It pushed the nose of my car down and moved my entire car forwards, towards the road on the other side of this ramp. I took the car out of gear and took my foot off the accelerator. Time to save a bit of gas. ;)

By now, all upward motion had stopped and gravity had ahold of me, with all it's terrifying reality. I saw that I was heading exactly towards the road (car landing strip?), and I was very glad, because deep water lay everywhere else. The landing strip was also a bridge, not much wider than the road I had just been on. As I approached the ground, the sunglasses went on, the clutch went down, the car went into gear, and a second before I hit the ground, I popped the clutch and floored it. I hit the ground hard, for all it's worth, but the Acura took it very well, which is good, because less than a hundred feet in front of me was another sharp right, which led directly onto the mainland.

At his point, I had so much adrenaline going through my bloodstream that I woke up feeling like a million bucks. And very thirsty... I got up, got a drink, and tried my hardest to pick up where I had left off, but the furthest I got in it was that after I entered the mainland, I was driving through the forest on the mainland, only to be told by the real Ken F. that it was time to get up for work.

What a way to start the day...

An amazing series of dreams

Well, for me they were amazing. You'll probably be bored to tears by them... ;)

#1
I was driving my new car to the Lilly's house. Now, to everyone who knows the Lillies, everyone knows that you don't have to drive along a steep rugged mountain path lining the coast of a huge body of water to get there. But, in fact, that's what I was doing, and I'm almost certain that my destination has not been misrepresented. Anyway...

Now, the new car is a two-door hatchback, with a manual transmission. The transmission makes it a lot more fun than an automatic, but it's a smaller car than my Sentra, which, also, needless to say, can be a problem for more than two people. Fortunately, it was me and one other person, although I can't remember who.

Anyway, I was on my way along this wide open highway (I'll get there, don't worry) in front of a long line of cars. For some reason, they are all tailgating me, flashing their lights, in an attempt to tell me to hurry up. Well, I'm already doing about 10-15 over the speed limit on this wide-open highway in a wide-open country. They could have passed me but they didn't. Well, A few short miles zip by, and I suddenly find myself decelerating, much to the dismay of everyone behind me, because up ahead...

...the road suddenly becomes a one-lane, one-way-at-a-time road, that is twisted, going sharply uphill, and along a very jagged mountainside. (See?) Now, I said that I decelerated. That's true. I took my foot off the gas, and shifted the car into neutral, so that I would slow down at a much more gradual rate. Everyone else braked hard and started approaching this turn with a lot more caution than I. I zipped along the winding path (car still in neutral) until it really started ascending, at which point, gravity slowed the forward motion of my car. I saw a speed limit sign: it read 2 1/2 MPH. That's right, 2.5, 5/2, 10/4, take it how you will, two-and-one-half miles per hour. Well, I was easily speeding, but gravity was helping slow me down.

And then something blew out the window. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was something like my hat. (For the sake of continuing the dream, I will say it was my hat.) By now, the car had lost all forward momentum, and had even begun drifting backwards. Well, I let it drift for a little bit, then applied the brakes, stopping right next to where the hat was. Unfortunately, it wasn't right there on the road, it was out a little ways. There was no room to actually get out of my car, but I could open the door and lean wa-a-a-a-ay out ... over the sharp drop ... and sharp rocks ... and deep body of water way below extending as far as the eye can see...

Well, I just barely got my hat in my left hand (my right hand was holding onto the door as an anchor for myself in this endeavor) when I woke up...

It was 3AM, I had been asleep since 10PM, and I needed a drink of water...

When I went back to bed, this is when the better dream occurred:

#2 (I think anyone who reads this one will get the idea of where this dream came from...)

It started out really weird. I was in a dark place, carrying this huge thing on a pole. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going, but I knew that I absolutely could not put down this pole. I didn't even know what was on top of it, but it was heavy. There was some reason for me to be going fast -- it was like there was something or someone chasing me.

Anyway, I duck in and out of tunnels, stumble in the darkness and recover, all the time seeing this extremely faint light in front of me, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. In spite of however many turns I took, it was always the right one, or if it was wrong, I somehow always got back to the path.

I finally arrived at the light. I set down the pole upright and exhausted. I leaned the top-heavy pole against the wall in a corner. I took a breather, and that's when I noticed what looked like a ticket booth off to the side. I wondered if this is where I was taking this heavy object.

I walked over to the booth, and asked the person manning it, "Excuse me, is this the place where I'm supposed to be delivering this ... pole?" The person turned and looked at me. A few lights went on in the booth, and I could see it was a woman. She looked at me with some confusion, and asked me, "Delivering?" I told her that I didn't know what the pole was for, but that I was delivering it. If it was for me, why was I so worried about getting it to a destination in time?

The lady smiled at me, and told me to step outside. Something in me told me not to, that I wouldn't like what was out there, and that I would rather stay in the darkness-- after all it was bright out there. But her voice told me that everything was all right, and that I had nothing to fear. I turned in the direction of the light. She called me back. She said, "Don't forget that." And when she said those words, more light from outside shone inside, and I looked at what she was pointing at. The pole that I was carrying had a beautiful crucifix on top.

(Pause -- ok, you all know what a processional cross looks like. Picture that. Ok -- resume.)

The pole was a dark wood material, and the cross was much wider than the pole. The pole was about eight feet tall, maybe two inches diameter. The cross was about five inches wide and two inches thick. The cross was about two feet tall, and a foot wide. The wood was lighter in color than the rest of the pole. The corpus was silver. There were decorations on it, but I can't remember what they were.

Ashamed of my previous thoughts about "the pole", I hoisted the cross on high and proceeded to exit the cave. I was proud to be marching under such a standard.

And then I saw it -- one of the most magnificent sights that any Catholic would ever hope to see on the day of his judgment. I saw a magnificently huge army standing in perfect formation, all bearing their own standards, their own crucifixes.

Freeze -- picture the default Windows XP background: the green, rolling hills underneath a blue sky. Very peaceful. Now, picture that, but lusher, greener, bigger hills, valleys, mountains, stretching as far as the eye can see. More natural than anything you could ever see on a computer. The grass is soft and a couple inches tall. Flowers are shooting up everywhere. The sky is bluer than you've ever seen it. "Oh, no," you say, "I've seen the sky so blue, and the grass so green that..." Blah, blah, blah. Trust me -- you've never seen a sky like this before. Play.

All my family, relatives, friends, and neighbors there. (Not that I'm going to account for all of you reading this.) As well, there is an army (army is an understatement) of legions (still an understatement) of people all waiting to march. I walk out proudly bearing my cross, and I see that everyone has their own, perfectly unique to them. One I saw up ahead, but I couldn't place who the owner was, had a pole six feet tall, with what looked like a 4'x2' crucifix mounted on it. Now, that was bulky, but simply magificent. There were some crucifixes that were gold, some of silver, some of wood. There were tiny crucifixes mounted on top of extremely tall poles, etc. As I approached this body of people, I saw an opening next to Josh K. and in front of Ken F. The position would have put me between Ida F. and Josh. I took up the empty slot and Ida suddenly left and ran forward. I assume that she was commanding this particular regiment.

I woke up shortly after this. It was Ken asking me if I wanted to get up then...

A really weird dream...

Last night, I had a really weird dream. I can't tell you what it's about. But I will tell you that I was played for a fool. And I woke up feeling quite foolish...