Somnolent Spotlight: The Earliest Dreams I Can Remember

I had a conversation in the waking world with some of my friends recently about dreams we used to have in our early childhood. This, of course, brought a few of mine to the surface of my memory. I recalled some of the earliest dreams I can remember for everyone and to which one of them responded "oh, I don't like that. I'm an adult and I don't like that". So I thought I would document those dreams in long format to make everyone uneasy! 

Now, I must put a disclaimer here: a necessary evil of remembering something is that the environment in which you remember it will influence the recollection ever so slightly, and a lifetime of minute changes can amount to significance so I'm not sure for how long these dreams recurred, or even if they recurred at all. They could have been one offs, but they remain vivid, vivid memories and have indeed stood up to years of recalling, so here we go!

The Waves

The first I'll write about, and of which I am certain was a recurring dream brought on by real-life events, was a dream where I was in open water in a storm-ravaged sea at night, being tossed around on enormous waves without a boat, a float, or even a bit of flotsam to hold onto, it was just me and the open ocean. In those dreams I would try to call for help, but I either had no voice to call with or I couldn't be heard over the sound of the tremendous churning of water. There was no narrative to this dream, I was simply trapped in the ocean. I would regularly have this dream if, that day, I went to a particular swimming pool the next town over. 

Now before you think (if you haven't already) "My God, what an awful dream to have over and over again!", it didn't put me off going in the water at all! I loved going swimming as a child, I've been SCUBA diving since I was twelve and I have two degrees in Marine Biology, so as traumatising a dream as it may sound to you, a reader, I assure you that, to me, it was just a dream and I was unaffected by it, if anything it stoked my interest in the ocean; I wanted to overcome those waves!

The Goblins in the Moonlight and the Voice that Banished Them 

The next dream(s) I can recall from an early age link together over a period of time --or at least I think they do. 

The first was hyper realistic, and I have recalled it for so long I'm no longer certain where reality became dream. The vision started when my father put me to bed each night, he would leave my bedroom and my awareness would shift to the upstairs landing. There is a window on our landing and through this window would stream down thick rays of moonlight. Within this light, small glimmers would pass through the window and travel slowly down. Once these descending specks of light reached the floor, they became tiny goblin-like creatures that scurried and skittered and tried to get into my bedroom. I'm quite sure that I would ask my father to "smash the goblins" in the waking world because the dream was so vivid, but don't hold him to that! When I did, he would appear in the vision standing in front of my room with a mighty sledgehammer and would crush the goblins if they so much as dared to approach my door.  

These visions of moonlight-riding goblins invaders happened for quite a long time until one night I heard a voice in my dreams. The voice told me that it had the power to get rid of the goblins forever, but in return I would have the dreams that the voice decided to show me. I agreed because I was afraid of the goblins and never wanted to see them again. I was too young to be sceptical of a voice making a deal like that. 

For the next [indeterminate period of time] I had the same recurring dreams which consisted of still, grainy, monochrome images of nothing in particular that would flicker like old, worn-out film in a slideshow that repeated until I woke up. I never had another dream about the goblins again though! I also don't remember hearing the voice after that. 

Interestingly enough the gritty, dreary slideshow dreams ended the night my father said the Lord's prayer with me one night before bed. So that was the end of that saga! Isn't that weird! 

But they're all just dreams right? I'm quite interested in the memories of dreams, and the point at what they mix with memories from the waking world. "Did that really happen or was it a dream"? That sort of thing. I'm also interested in the idea of fake memories, or memories we might make up to pad around another memory we have. I've tried to keep padding to a minimum for this entry, but I'm certain that the process of writing them out again has altered my memory of them. 

As usual, here's a picture to capture peoples' eye in the thumbail, thanks for reading this far!

26th July 2020

Night of 08.05.2020: Profane Rituals and Colossal Beasts

 As I have come to expect from my dreams, this story has no beginning. I was simply a part of an elite squadron of assassins.

We had infiltrated the castle of Carriel and were looking for the Queen. Numerous moles from all nations had reported that the queen of this land was killing her citizens in profane rituals and amassing a dreadful necromantic power. If left unchecked any longer there was no telling what the consequences would be. A spell of mass killing? Potentially. An insurrection of undead soldiers and the subjugation of all living beings? Perhaps.

The bottom line was that her foul work could continue no longer.

One in our squadron, Rhizo, was particularly attuned to the residues and the voices of the departed and was able to shift the energy of the next world into physical form in this. He had asked the spirits lingering in the castle to tell us the way to the queen and had created a 3D map of the hallways and interior of the castle, which we were now following.

Soon we came to an outdoor walkway with two other paths running directly above and below. We detected another party approaching our location on the lower tier so we climbed up and hid in the highest, being careful to mask our presence by lowering our heart rates. There existed ears sensitive enough to hear even heartbeats, especially when powerful magic is involved. The owner of such a pair of ears was also in our group; her name was Borda.

Borda listened to the group on the lowest pathway from whom we were hiding. She told us that they were spies from one of the other nations. They had intel that the King and the Prince would be passing along the walkway we jumped up from.

Both our party and theirs in our respective hidings witnessed the King and Prince walk out into the sun. The prince was grimly trailing along a person in unusual purple robes by a chain fastened around their waist.

Borda, our ears, notified us when the King and prince, and the other spies had moved on. We dropped down and followed the path back into the castle that the King, prince and article of sacrifice had walked along.

Slowly, and carefully we proceeded, the essences told Rhizo that the queen was before us on the path we walked. We perceived once more a bright, natural light spilling in at the end of the hallway and our map told us we were approaching a large outdoor colosseum. She was in that colosseum. We interrogated our map further as a direct attack was our least favourable option. There were numerous subterranean passageways, presumably where the champions of the past would have come up from their chambers to fight in that arena. Three of our unit stole away to secure those routes, leaving myself and the strongest, most capable fighters to deal with the possibility of a head-on fight. Rhizo stayed with our group and told us that the spirits of the departed were howling that the queen was ahead of us and was draining the life of more people to fuel her profane magic. There was no longer any doubt.

Our mark was ahead of us.

We waited the amount of time the others told us to wait for them to secure the secret passageways, and when that time expired, we surged forth into the light.

Sure enough we found ourselves in a vast, stone-built, empty colosseum in bright, midday sunlight. The queen stood ahead of us in the centre of the colosseum and at her feet lay desiccated, withered once-human forms. Rhizo was at once overwhelmed by the foul, relentless, churning of the spirits of the furious dead. Their rage was his, their insatiable thirst for vengeance against the fell queen was being channelled directly into his human frame. As Rhizo was imbibing this ancient hatred, the rest of the group and I launched a rapid attack against the queen hoping we could land fatal blows before she was able to put up her guard.

Fools that we were.

When one such as the queen stands in the threshold between life and death, they exist immortally. In shattering their union with the world of the living they are no longer bound by its rules and escape the cycle of life and death. She was not playing by our rules.

The queen’s mouth. One dreadful, boiling, rasping word that pulsated and filled our bodies with fire and torment. Such was the queen’s power that she could manipulate the fabric of reality with one contemptible word.

We fell to the ground, wracked in pain. All I could do was watch the queen laugh hideously, but all at once a green, healing light emanated from somewhere.

It was Rhizo. He had stilled the fury of the restless lifeforce perverted by the queen and beseeched it to aid him. Our bodies became our own again, but the Queen was not without response. She recited an incantation and become wrapped in a shroud of horrible purple light. It lifted her up high, high into the air and assumed the immense shape of a spider around her waist. Once again her voice filled our every sense: “You fools cannot hope to defeat me. I possess more power than can be contained in this universe!” her gargantuan spider-self lurched destructively towards Rhizo:

Another flash of green light. Rhizo now sat atop a colossal, green boar. The boar reared forward and locked tusks against the spider’s legs in some desperate struggle of the millennia-oppressed vs the millennium oppressor. The two vied back and forth but Rhizo the boar broke free and pushed the spider back. With a titanic, primal force that shook the Earth, Rhizo roared:

“We!” the boar sank its dreadful tusks into the spider, purple blood spilled freely from the puncture sites. The boar pulled back.

“Will!” again the boar struck, deeper into the same wounds.

“Never!” terrible blow after terrible goring blow did the boar skewer the spider

“Be silent” the spider was limp from these heinous wounds but the boar did not let up

And then the final words. A constellation of the spirits of the countless killed emanated around the boar, lending their rage, their strength and twisted glee to this ultimate blow:

“To you!” 

The boar reared back, scraping its behemoth hooves across the ground in anticipation for the apocalypse strike that would end it. With a tremendous howl the boar surged forward and struck the spider with enough force to dissipate its form. The queen fell, defeated, to the ground.

Without missing a beat Rhizo masterfully shifted the boar into an enormous sarcophagus and sent it crashing down on top of the Queen, encapsulating her. But she was not to be defeated so easily. Once more she assumed her spider-form inside the sarcophagus and thrust her 8 needle-legs out, barring her tomb from trapping her completely. This second struggle lasted for what seemed like an eternity but her power ultimately waned. She could not indefinitely resist the weight of her sins and was sealed away by the powerful magic she had unwittingly created.

But as an immortal she was not killed. The sarcophagus churned and twisted and shrank into an ornate, jewelled container that might reasonably be compared to a Faberge egg. Her essence was trapped in this form by Rhizo’s powerful magic. But her voice emanated from it

“You fools, you have not defeated me. The moment this egg is opened, your sealing spell will break and I will be freed. The curiosity of your wretched kind will be your rightful downfall!” and she laughed a maniacal laugh. “Did you not think that I would not have guards in every corner of this colosseum for precisely this situation?! Guards! Kill these insurgents and free me from this form!”

The gates of the colosseum opened but the members of our troupe stepped out. They had easily despatched the guards and cast their unconscious forms in front of them. 

At this, Rhizo produced a sheet of tin foil and the vessel containing the sealed Queen in it, her curses were muffled to silence. Rhizo slipped the egg carefully into his pocket “Don’t think so”.

Here's an image for the thumbnail! 

There was more to this dream after this scene. Later on I was in the castle's training ground at the King's man-at-arms recognised the Prince's sword which I had swindled as spoils of our successful mission. I obviously wasn't the Prince so the man-at-arms was incredibly suspicious and challenged me about who I was and why I had the Prince's sword. I think I managed to convince him that I had done a great service to the Prince and that this was my reward. I also have this gut feeling there were velociraptors in the dream, but in what capacity I don't remember.

Friends in Celestial Places 26-27.6.20

I was visited by a group of beings that took me to lots of different places to make new friends as I have recently moved from Plymouth to Bath. The group never told me who they were, but they weren’t human. That said though they weren’t frightening, nor did they make me feel uncomfortable. The situations and people they took me to became increasingly unusual and in a few cases extra-terrestrial…

On the first trip the group whisked me away and dropped me off in a room with someone I hadn’t met before. I don’t remember what they looked like, but they were video chatting with one of their friends using their TV screen. I introduced myself to the new faces as a marine biologist and the friend on the TV said that they too studied marine biology, after a while the TV person said they also played guitar and we encouraged them to play something. I picked up the chord sequence quite easily and fetched my cello which was magically on hand. I played along, knowing full well that the latency probably made it sound horrible on their end.

The group then took me to a different planet comprised mostly of water. It was dark when we arrived, and I found myself near a small river with a little waterfall and plunge pool a bit further upstream. Once my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I noticed that there were floating specks of faint light in the water and I got closer to have a look. I got to the riverbank and saw three pillars of starlit water arise slowly from the river surface. Whether the pillars and I spoke out loud or through telepathy I don't know, but I determined that the lights were sentient, bioluminescent phytoplankton, and that they were who I was communicating with. 

The phytoplankton told me that whilst each plankter had its own sentience they were able to join together to form a collective conscience through processes similar to quorum sensing. They told me that the colour they were glowing was influenced by their environment; their current blue colour meant that conditions were stable and favourable. The lights in the dark water then changed to red and they told me red means conditions are getting worse or that the phytoplankton are busy doing something.

Then the plankton glowed green.

Though it was dark I noticed the flow of the river sharply quickened when they glowed green, as if the planet was responding to them. Many many more phytoplankton stirred in the water until the river was teeming with green light. They told me that their green glow released a chemical into the water which alerted all the "sleeping" phytoplankton that they were needed to respond to a threat, and thus the green light was their defence mechanism. The “green” bioluminescence also connected every phytoplankter to the collective consciousness so they could communicate their situation across great distances very quickly. 

The group then took me to another planet where many rock platforms were floating freely in outer space. These platforms moved around and to each other to create walkways for the inhabitants when they wanted to go somewhere. As soon as I set foot on the planet many platforms joined onto mine and a number of inhabitants came out of their houses to greet me. They thought I was the postman. After a while of me explaining that I didn’t have any post for them—and that I was brought here to make new friends—I felt a presence behind me and turned around to see who or what it was. I was met by a humanoid being that seemed very muscular and broad in shoulder, it was wearing a two-piece suit and whilst its body was corporeal, its face was a holographic projection of orange light. I don’t remember any interactions with it, but it was also pleased to see me.

The final place this group took me the sky where a passenger plane was physically breaking apart in midair as we arrived. We rescued everyone from the plane and the group suggested telepathically that I used the opportunity to ask all of the people to be my new friends. I began to wonder if the group had engineered the plane to break apart to create that scenario for me and suddenly felt quite predatory.

That’s all I can remember from that one!

Night of the 27.6.20

A friend of mine in the waking world who plays cello and I were standing in a spacious, open chamber with many large windows that let the room fill with natural light and views of the outdoors. We were talking to a pair of girls; one of them was saying that they had come to the join the University Orchestra and played cello. I was happy to hear they were joining the orchestra, especially as I had now left and quizzed them about their cello, I said something like,

“Oh yes? What cello do you play?”
The girl looked a little flustered and said,
“Oh it’s the best model, everything about it is top of the line!”
She didn't give a very clear answer, nor did she mention what level a player she was, so I asked a few more questions.
“Neat!” I started, “so we’re talking like, high hundreds, maybe even thousands of pounds (for your cello)? My cello was only a couple of hundred, but my friend's was closer to a thousand” I gestured to my friend to hint that even if this newcomer was a better player than me then they wouldn’t surpass my friend.
 The girl responded, quite firmly “It’s the best money can buy”. 

This further cemented in my mind that she was just trying to show off, maybe she was a new player and bit of more than she could chew trying to big herself up to us two. I went and got my cello and brought it back to the group.
“Look,” I said holding my cello up to the newcomer “look how beaten up and cronky my cello is. The bridge is all out of whack, there’s rosin caked on everywhere, chips in the woodwork….” I tailed off as the girl looked quite blankly at my cello, not sure what she was meant to be looking at. Someone who knew what their way around a high quality cello would have noticed the Larsen strings and the pickup under my bridge, so I was pretty sure they were just fronting. But I was still pleased they were going to join the orchestra

In the next scene I was adventuring on my own in the deep wilderness. To my left was either a wide river or an estuary with a relatively small, fragile wooden bridge stretching over it. I was walking along a dirt path forged by the years of footfall that had come this way before me, and everywhere else was long, untamed grass except for a small range of mountains stretching off to the right.

I was approaching the time-worn bridge when a warrior appeared, seemingly out of thin air. They were dressed in tight wraps of fabric which muffled the sound of their movement and confronted me with a single-edged blade. Few words were exchanged before we started fighting.

I beat them easily and as they were kneeling on the ground in exhaustion, they demanded that I kill them but I refused and left them on the ground to continue my journey. The “camera” then stayed on them as they took a moment to recover and get back on their feet. They then followed my footprints back to my house.

When the warrior got to my house they broke in and attacked everyone who was living with me, including the new cellist in the previous scene. There was one scene in particular where the warrior inflicted a number of very swift, light cuts to one of the more elderly people who was living with me, who fell to the ground in shock. I don’t think the warrior killed any of them though; their attack was to leave a message: “You should have killed me”.

The “camera” returned to me still in the open wilderness, I had put the encounter with the warrior out of my mind. That is, until a messenger came running towards me from over the hill I descended earlier. I moved towards them to shorten their already-long journey. when they arrived, they told me about the onslaught on my friends led by the warrior who I had left alive.

I roared in distress and anger which summoned a horde of gigantic beetles the size of cars. I mounted the beetle closest to me and the lead the stampede as the valley shook with a great thundering of dashing feet, the clashing of the beetles rigid bodies as they ran in close formation and my cries of rage and sadness.

The dream then played out in a series of still images of me riding the giant beetle with score after score of beetles following behind in a tremendous uproar. Every now and then amongst the beetles I could see fierce centaurs with the four legs and body of a horse, the incredibly muscular human torso and arms, the snarling head of a lion, and two imposing, black horns that jutted straight upwards from their head. These chimera beasts had come down from the mountains to aid in my revenge.

I think the final scene happened after the dust had settled from the previous encounters. All my friends were still alive and life was beginning to return to normal. I had enlisted another swordfighter to teach me new techniques to improve my own combat skills and it is in one of the training sessions that the next scene takes place.

I was standing a little outside the house in a large, flat grassy garden which continued on to a large hill that sloped down and away from the house. The swordfighter told me that today they would teach me a special technique which created either fire or explosive energy and rained it down in front of the user when executed properly. They showed me a few times, directing the energy to fall down the hill and out of harm’s way. I moved forward to the top of the hill and copied the movements I had seen my teacher perform; it seemed to involved drawing a circle with the tip of the sword to create a flow of energy and then to chop that circle into many parts to disrupt the flow of that energy and cause it to release explosively.

I executed the technique successfully a few times but then lost my footing and slipped all the way down to the bottom of the hill. I picked myself up once I had stopped tumbling and slowly made my way back up to the top of the hill. I wasn’t injured.

As I walked up the hill, I noticed there was a small platform of rock to the left of the slope. I could hear a sort of bestial breathing coming from. I passed by the outcrop and saw a large blue cyclops sleeping on its back. I thought to myself that the training had a second function of dispatching this giant. 

That's as much as I remember! Thanks for reading!

Author's Commentary
I think these dreams are a very clear message to me that making new friends is playing on my mind a lot. There is a heartening message to my existing friends in the dream from the 27th where I (very territorially!) say that my new friends will never be as good as my old ones, but in the waking world I know that's quite a naive outlook. Beyond that, the dream about the warrior by the river is almost directly lifted from a Legend of Zelda videogame called Breath of the Wild. In the videogame I was walking along the coast and got attacked by a member of a ninja-like tribe who are out to get the main character. I wasn't able to beat the ninja in the game as they teleported away before I could defeat them. The centaur-like creatures are obviously the Lynel enemies from the same game, and the sleeping cyclops is an enemy called a Hinox. I think the fire-making sword technique is influenced by another game I've been watching a playthrough of called Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance in which the main character fights with a katana and there is a combat mode where you freely control their sword.

I believe the phytoplankton I met in the first dream are influenced by an episode of a programme called Disenchantment where the main characters swim through an underwater tunnel lit by bioluminescent sea creatures. The creature with the holographic face is almost a direct lift from a music video for a song called "Magnum Bullets" by the band Night Runner. The scene where the plane was falling apart in midair is from another videogame I've been watching called Grand Theft Auto 5 (V) where the people playing spawned a bunch of passenger planes in midair which collided with each other and broke apart.

Here's a picture so that there will be an attractive thumbnail when I share it in social media:

13.11.19: Vorous and the world of hallucinations

I was chosen to take part in an exam.

A sinister, macabre exam where any signs of collusion, communication, revealing your answers or leaving without finishing the exam would spell death. 

Equally, the person with the lowest mark would also die. 

The exam hall was a large, austere, grey room with steps leading from the door to the exam floor. There were about 50 grey tables set in lines and rows and some people had already started by the time I got to the room. The questions on each exam paper were different to the next, so even if one person managed to ask another without detection it would be fruitless. I didn’t know whether breaking the rules led to an instant death or whether it would start a ‘timer’ so to speak but I wasn’t about to find out.

I was dealing well enough with the questions they were short-answer questions and didn’t seem particularly difficult. I decided to look ahead; my exam finished with an essay question which asked me to

“Explain why logical reasoning is wasted on human mortals”

From this I got a glimpse of the motives of the forces that made this death-exam.

As it happened, I didn’t feel like the question was unanswerable and started formulating whilst I worked through the rest of the questions. I was going to talk about extra-dimensional beings that were beyond our comprehension, like the Eldrazi, the Great Old Ones and the other ones that live among us undetected except for the slight shiver we get as one passes through us.

Aside from the harsh rules, the exam would also try and make us lose by transporting us to different locations (or giving hallucinations to that effect). I didn’t notice anyone else being taken but I was suddenly transported to a grassy field on a bright, sunny day. I was sitting at a picnic table decorated with a few blooms of lichen. There was a wooden fence to my right and a dirt path which crested over a small hill to my left. As I sat working, two walkers appeared from over the hill. They asked what I was doing and looked at the papers on the broad, wooden tabletop. They were looking at the questions I had yet to answer, which I thought wouldn’t count as revealing answers, so I let them look and made no effort to explain to them, lest it break a rule.

After this I was transported to a dark series of hallways with one or two other people. At parts the hallways snaked round or narrowed in to make passage more difficult but never enough to stop us being able to pass. At other parts the hallways expanded into open plan areas where groups of people stood motionless, phantasmal, in the middle. We passed through those crowds as inconspicuously as possible.

After we had explored for a while we heard a tremendous explosion ahead of us. A squat creature the size of a full-grown bull with the body of a frog, the head of a dragon and the limbs of a lion crashed through the wall ahead of us. The name ‘Vorous’ filled our heads. The creature was stunned from the impact but soon came to its senses and had us in its line of sight.

It gave chase.

We ran as fast as we could but soon found Vorous on our heels, it was snapping its large, body-wide jaws and slamming recklessly into the walls, pillars and other infrastructure in these hallways. I had the idea to bring it to the dim-lit plazas to feed on the motionless ghost-people and communicated it to the people I was fleeing with. They were horrified by my idea of killing other people to let us live but realised we were without other options, aside from being killed and eaten ourselves.

We came back to the quad of people and ran through them, hoping they wouldn’t grab us, or try to slow us down. We cleared them and kept running. I had no idea whether Vorous would stop and eat the unfortunate people I had brought fanged-death to, but in my mind’s eye I saw the creature tossing the poor souls about before ripping them apart, as would a crocodile, with its terrible jaws.

Whatever happened, we were able to put distance between us and Vorous and thought we were in the clear as we vaulted over a stack of trolleys that had been rolled out as a hurdle for us. Whilst we were mid-vault, Vorous slammed back into view, piling frenziedly into the wall, sending bits of plaster tumbling from the ceiling. We narrowly escaped its snapping, foaming, bloodied jaws by all cramming into a lift which took us away from that floor.

After this chase, I was back in the bleak exam hall. I thought that I had answered all but the 16-mark essay question, but it had disappeared off my paper and several other questions had appeared instead. The words changed positions and the letters seemed to shimmer in and out of existence, I could not read them. I recognised individual letters but could not form the words. It was at this point that I remembered you are not meant to be able to read in dreams so decided I would simply not finish the exam. If I didn’t finish it, I couldn’t die from having the lowest mark, it would also stave off the death of another who may have otherwise got the lowest mark. I would fold up the exam paper, keep it, and a pen, on my person always and become a mute.  

Later on, I was walking in a park. There were a series of fissures in the ground which meant certain parts had to be traversed with wooden platforms that moved along when a dial was spun; a la Legend of Zelda puzzles with the gust bellows, Deku leaf or gale boomerang. There was also a McDonalds in the park whose door opened using the same mechanic. I wasn’t interested in going in but saw someone from the choir I sing in, and a few other people sitting on a bench outside. They hailed me over.

As I was walking towards them, I saw someone swing a tremendous greatsword to trim a hedge and also take off a low branch of a tree too. I also saw that if you took an immediate right after going through the park’s gate you could scramble over a narrow bit to get to this part of the park without using any of the puzzle platforms.

Once I’d got to the group’s table the person stood up to tell me there was wasp and asked me to deal with it. I was mindful that this might still have been part of the exam and a trick to make me speak, but I spoke anyway. I told them that as a rule I didn’t kill animals and had a particular affinity to wasps; I would be no good to them. They went and sat glumly down again.

The scene now cut to a much nicer, more opulent hallway inside what I would later discover to be a hotel. Apparently, their wasp had flown into a ventilation duct and I was going to get it out. I looked around for a chair to stand on as the duct was quite high up, I found one and brought it over to the entrance of the pipe. I unscrewed the lid and peered in. There was a radiator-like grill directly behind the now-removed cap so I couldn’t look in very far. I grabbed a fibre optic cable with live imaging capabilities and fed it down the pipe. After a while I saw something very strange; there were black veins growing all over the inside of the duct, I thought they may have been streaks of dirt, but they seemed to be pulsating, as if transporting a fluid. I had not been looking at these veins for long before they moved towards the entrance of the duct and out of frame of the optic cable. I got the impression they knew I had discovered them and were coming to get me.

I don’t remember if the black veins actually entered my body (though if they did it was through my eyes) but soon after I was thrown into a world of hallucination. Not a single thing in my sight retained its real-world identity. I don’t remember particular details (except for one) but the walls, floor and ceiling were perpetually shifting. Things appeared larger, then smaller, and their colours swirled, changed and melded. Anyone I was previously with had now disappeared. I walked a while, lost in this fluctuating, unreal world. On one wall I saw a small, rectangular gap that, upon looking into, showed the stars in the night sky along with nebulae and solar systems. I grabbed the rectangle and took it with me. It still showed the space-scape.

The perspective then cut away to show me in the non-hallucination world. I had pulled a mirror off the wall, laid it on the steps of a grand staircase and was looking into it.

Later on in the hotel after I had regained my senses I was stood in a glass lift to get to my floor. The lift stopped at a modern-looking, well-lit bar. A couple got in and asked me if I’d like to join them for a drink. I declined, saying that I’d recently been drugged, they accepted that as a valid reason and left me to my business.

Later still, my group and I were leaving the hotel on the ground floor. The entrance foyer held many seats and tables to host a lot of guests. As we sat in the foyer we were brought food, likely pizza, on wooden boards, with a red-looking garnish on the side. Everyone else was presented theirs with the pizza as the closest thing to them on the board and the garnish the furthest away. However, mine was given to me with the garnish closest. I thought this was highly suspicious and didn’t eat it.

Author’s notes:
There are a lot of waking-world influences to this dream. Nothing is particularly untoward. 

The paranoia element comes from walking home from work. It’s very dark when I walk home from work now, so I'm careful not to be sneaked up on. 

The hallucinations and madness of the dream are likely a result of my reading a book called The Woman in Black by Susan Hill wherein a man is haunted by a ghost as he tries to sort through the estate of a dead widow.

The claymore-wielding weed-trimmer is influenced by a videogame called Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and my favourite character: Ike, wields a greatsword named Ragnell. The motion the person used in the dream to swing the sword was identical to an attack in the game and even had the slow-mo effect.

Vorous and the whole chase sequence are likely influenced by a game called "Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion" where you get chased down narrow corridors by certain horrors that try to kill you.

This is kind of what Vorous looks like...It's also to make the thumbail nicer :p 

Hypotheon and the Centaurs of Mt Edgcumbe

I was walking along the coastal path of Mt Edgcumbe one day. As the path curved round and the woodland thinned a little I saw a colossal horse-like creature tromping around the coast. In the waking world, the coastline of Mt Edgcumbe slopes down to sea level but in this dream it was a daunting cliff that sheer dropped about 100 metres to the sea below. The horse creature was as tall as the cliff and freely stepped between land and sea. I halted my progress to watch the thing: it was moving rather aimlessly, along the beach at the bottom of the cliff. Then it started to turn around. As it turned, I saw its titanic animal body had the face of a human, equally as enormous. It paused briefly as if it had seen me, staring in my direction, but it continued its turn and jumped from the shore at the bottom of the cliff, into the sea throwing up pluming spouts of white water and sending forth powerful, surging waves.

I continued walking, knowing that to get to the path which would take me away from the titan, I first had to get closer to it. The creature was still very far away and I was confident that it had not detected me. 

I was wrong. 

As I walked, the giant moved, unseen, right to my location. The path was suddenly thrown into shadow as the creature craned its chimera neck over the trees above me, its human face staring right down at me. Here I got a closer, horrifying look at the thing's face. Its eyes were wide, blue, and did not seem to move or their pupils focus, I might have fancied they were unseeing. Its mouth was closed, neutral and impassive, but easily large enough to devour me, and the scenery around me, in a single bite. I was stuck to the spot, looking back at the creature like it would do me some good. The towering face pulled away and I hoped to hope it would dismiss me as harmless and go back to its tromping. 

It did not. 

Almost too soon did two prodigious human hands, attached to its brown horse limbs, reach down from the sky in an attempt to scoop, crush or otherwise capture me. I luckily evaded but watched as the hands moved straight through the earth as if the solid ground were not even there. They closed, and withdrew, taking the entire landscape within them cleanly away, almost with surgical precision. I looked at the newfound slope where roots and shoots, now exposed, jutted confusedly out. There amongst the soil was a human skull with a clean, scooping cut, showing the same fate as the terrain. I was not the first person this Goliath had attacked. I gathered my wits and fled. 

Later on, I dreamt (within the dream) of a symbol resembling the greek letter "Phi" but with two other lines within the character:

The symbol glowed in the dark with a steady orange, like fired metal in a forge. The name "Hypotheon" filled my head. Then the vision ended. 

I came back to Mt Edgcumbe, fueled by my fascination with the giant horse-human. Perhaps guided by the vision of "Hypotheon" I came to a low cave. I pressed into the stony dark and shortly came across a small wooden door bearing the symbol I had prophesied. I tried the door and it opened readily. Beyond the door was a small, dark chamber within the cave that had simple wooden furniture and a fire pit. It looked as though someone lived here, modest though it may have been. 

After a time the door opened and a hooded figure appeared quiet and dark through the doorway, not seeming to let the daylight in behind them. They were carrying a bundle of firewood that seemed to me too heavy for a human to carry. They did not start, or flee upon seeing me, it seemed almost like they were expecting me. The figure kept its hood raised but revealed to me its name was "Hypotheon"1.

Hypotheon explained to me that he was once one of three centaurs that lived at Mt Edgcumbe. Over time Hypotheon and his wife became more interested in the human world and had given up their wildness, becoming human in form but retaining some centaur traits, for example the increased strength. He then explained the third centaur had rejected his humanity and sought to become fully wild. This third centaur was the colossus I had encountered earlier. He explained that through seeking to be feral the creature had attuned to the power of the wild and grown to colossal proportions2. Hypotheon told me that he lived in this cave with his wife out of fear of encountering the colossus centaur. 

Authors notes: 

1: Hypotheon isn't necessarily a real name, but it does contain two elements that have meaning in Greek. "Hypo-" means "under" or "beneath" and "Theos" meaning "God". Put them together and you get "Under God", perhaps Hypotheon was a semi-deity, or lost his godhood in pursuit of attuning with humanity. This led me to affectionately naming the giant centaur "Hypertheon, "hyper" meaning "above" in Greek, though this was a decision in the waking world, not within the dream itself.

2: Hypotheon never made the transformation process clear, but I like to imagine the centaurs needed an element of humanity to transform, to have that kind of magic. As Hypertheon sought the wild and rejected his humanity, he lost his ability to transform before fully achieving horse form, meaning he was stuck forever with a human face and human hands. I never saw his hind-limbs but perhaps they were human feet. 

Night of 8.3.18: The end of humanity

It’s been a while! I think going back to work quashed the time I was able to spend in the morning writing my dreams out. I was discussing disturbing dreams vs nightmares with my friends lately and what distinguishes the two, for me, is when my friends from the waking world get involved. For example, I had a dream where someone got dragged into a room by an inhumanly long, bandaged arm, then the door closed and blood exploded through the keyhole and under the door, and that wasn’t overly disturbing for me to witness, but the dream I’m about to write concerns the wiping out of the human race and witnessing the subtle, chronic destruction of a number of my  friends.

I was walking along Eldad hill in Plymouth, or rather I was hurrying. I was aware that a contagion had been placed somewhere along North Road West and was seeping out, ready to explode. At the crossing leading to Wyndham square I saw the Incredible Hulk laying on his back on the ground, upper body on the pavement, lower body in the road and arms spread weakly out at his sides. I went to him but it was obvious he would be dead soon. I reassured him that he fought bravely and that he was the best Avenger and soon he passed, his skin paling once he did.

Upon his death, whatever was on North Road West finally detonated and a stampede of animals bolted across the road, breaking down the wooden doors and seeking refuge in the Plymouth College prep school. The sky had changed now as well: streaks and accents of purple now mottled into the sky, much as red does on a sunrise or sunset. The purple was localised over a small patch, presumably where the contagion was, but I knew immediately it would spread.

I followed the animals into the walled grounds, but it was no longer the prep school, it was a great landscape of rocks, trees, and a path which led down a grassy hill to a shore where waves swelled and crashed, and the horizon spread uninterrupted by other landmasses. I felt like it was relatively safe there but reckoned that the contagion was spreading in the air so went back to my house on Winston avenue.

The dream then cut to me being awoken at 3am by a phone call. I was worried a friend of mine was suffering from the contagion and answered, but as I did a message reading “connection not available” came up on screen. The call timer was ticking along however, so the call was happening, but from an impossible number. I put the phone down. Unsure what to think or feel I went outside and checked the road to see if I could see anyone in need of help. I had no idea what damage the contagion would cause, or over what timescale so I was on high alert. As I walked down the road and away from the house, a shadowy, silhouetted figure rushed out from the top of the road and ran into my house. I detected its movement as soon as it appeared, shouted it to stop and chased it back to the house, desperate to bar its entry. I arrived at the house a fraction later than the figure and reached out, in vain, to grab it as it bustled through the door and disappeared up the stairs. Was it in my room? The bathroom? My housemate's room? Had it gone and hidden in the loft? Had it gone to kill Kiki (my pet cockatiel)? These were all questions that were buzzing in my head and I had no easy way of answering them.

An indeterminate amount of time then passed and the three following passages may have happened in any order after any amount of time.

I was sitting in my bedroom and my housemate poked his head round the door, he was looking restless and unwell and was shifting around uncomfortably. He looked into Kiki’s cage and stated that he couldn’t see her. I looked in the cage but she was obviously sitting on her top perch by her food dish. I said that there were some vegetables pegged up by that perch, which may have been obscuring his view but I felt like that was a weak excuse. My housemate then said he was suffering from something called ‘speciesosis (species-osis)’ where he confused animals as others, and simply couldn’t see some animals. I was very worried for him.

In another scene the same housemate and I were in a hotel somewhere, potentially in Cornwall. We wanted to go somewhere but didn’t know how to get there and were weighing up the options. He wanted to drive but I was cautious that he, and I, and everyone else, were being driven subtly insane by the contagion. I dissuaded him from taking the road as he was unsafe to drive and everyone else out there would be unsafe as well. We considered asking some of the other people in the hotel bar but ruled that they were insane as well and couldn’t be trusted. In the end we found a map in a nearby pamphlet holder and plotted a course that way. We went by foot and were vigilant for any “crazies” that tried to attack us.

I had been going regularly to the walled garden to see the animals and admire the scenery. There was a crow that I had befriended which would fly from its tree at the end of the path to my hand when I got to the bottom of the hill. Sometimes there would be multiple crows, sometimes it was just the one. But the crow would always come to my hand each time I went there. One day, as I got to the bottom of the hill the crow didn’t come. I walked along the path, puzzled by this development. I looked through the row of trees on my left and into the field beyond but it was empty. Not a crow to be seen. There was nothing in the field to my right either. As I got to the end of the path, by the tree that the crow would usually perch in, a tall woman, taller than 6ft and dressed in long, flowing black clothes came around the corner. I was under the impression that the crow had become this lady, but was still the crow, so I held out my hand as I would for the crow to perch on. The lady approached my hands and kissed my fingers, as the crow would have pecked at food I had in my hand.

(On reflection of this passage and the ‘species-osis’ that my housemate suffered from, it’s quite likely I too had developed that condition and lost the ability to distinguish between crows and people. This means that I would have perceived a crow as a potential mate which has impact in the final scene of the dream)

Next, a number of people from choir were at a party, as were two other stallholders from Mt Edgcumbe. The venue was a large mansion, similar to the wedding venue I played at in December. The morning after I had no memory of the party except seeing a long black coat on the ground, asking if it belonged to someone, and their denying it. One of the stallholders had taken a number of photographs throughout the night including me, a friend of mine, and someone else dressed up and decorated as living statues stood by a fireplace. Other photos showed choir members collapsed on the floor. I hadn’t been drinking so the only explanation could have been amnesia caused by the contagion. From this point I starting regularly taking pictures throughout the days to chronicle what I did as I didn’t remember it after a while. It seemed that my affliction from the contagion was amnesia. Which I considered fairly light, considering other people had been driven crazy, to the point of taking their own lives, others had physically atrophied and died that way. Others were killed by insane people and others had simply vanished. 

No matter what order the previous scenes happened in, the following was the final scene of the dream. 

I was back in my bedroom. The sky was now purple. The contagion had spread worldwide. There was a woman in my bed, I don’t know who they were but I was familiar with them in the dream and got the impression that we were a couple. We were watching a news broadcast on television saying that “the aliens were taking to the ocean”. They then showed footage of odd, grey, hybrid forms taking to the ocean. Some resembled oarfish, others were humanoid with webbed hands and feet. Others resembled merfolk, with the upper half of a person and the bottom half of a fish, or perhaps a shark. One creature was the size and shape of a whale. All of these creatures were swimming away from a shoreline and disappearing into the depths. The news reporter said that the human population was estimated between 5 people and 4000 people. I switched off the news, looked at the woman in my bed and reassured her that we’d won. I then went over to a clutch of black eggs and cradled one of them in my arms, holding it like it was my own child.

That was the end of the dream.

*** Commentary! ***

This was a harrowing dream to recall, and I woke up feeling distressed. I am fascinated by these sorts of dreams that cover such a threatening event and over such a detailed timeframe, however, witnessing the end of the world and the mental dissolution of my friends and myself was certainly harrowing. On reflection of the dream I get the impression that the contagion acted by altering the DNA of either humans or every lifeform on Earth. I feel like people whose DNA was only altered got off lightly, other humans had their DNA simply destroyed, case in point, the Hulk. The Hulk’s DNA had already altered by gamma radiation, so the DNA altering property of the contagion might simply have destroyed his DNA beyond repair, leading to his death.

The purple colour of the contagion might suggest it was a kind of UV radiation but that was never proved in the dream.

Another way the contagion might have acted to reduce the human population was by altering our perception and making us see all other animals as humans, meaning we would mate with other animals and not produce offspring. This is hinted at when the crow I was familiar with suddenly became a woman, and in the final scene too, where I had a female partner but we had a clutch of eggs. Then again, it might be that the person’s DNA was altered so much that she simply laid eggs. 

Night of 5.2.19: Interdimensional swords and a bodyguard mission

I had been given a short sword with runes carved into the blade. I had in my head that it was a magic weapon that was able to strike –and strike from—different dimensions. I was unable, however to see into those dimensions so I wasn’t sure how it worked. I saw a group of people who couldn’t see me and, from a distance, swung at one of them. Their head immediately disappeared, and they dropped to the floor. There was no blood. I had no idea what just happened, but I was confident I had done it.

As I became more practiced with this sword I could begin to see into parallel dimension it struck from. It seemed it brought anything it cut off into that dimension.

 I was walking in this separate dimension when I bumped into a friend from real life. We haven’t met up or even spoken for a long time, so I was excited to see them in my dream, we exchanged a few words however they were fairly curt and weren’t interested in talking to me. Perhaps they had their own things to be doing. We parted ways soon after.

In a new location, but still in the same universe as I had my magic sword, I had been tasked with protecting a child from a series of killers, potentially attacking from this other dimension. I first had to collect her and this saw me pretending to work in a restaurant. The restaurant was part of a big complex spread out in multiple buildings and I was given a tour by a worker of similar age to me. Once they’d pointed me to the restaurant they departed. I looked around the site to see if I could spot any assailants, but it looked secure. I headed in to the very dark, very large restaurant.

Once I stepped through the door I had to walk down a flight of stairs and the restaurant supervisor was waiting for me at the bottom.
“Went to help somewhere else did you?” he asked, and I remembered there was a juice bar across the way from this building, I didn’t want to come off as suspicious and I could still play to my unfamiliarity with the place so I nodded quietly, still unable to see properly in this dark place.
“That’s alright” the man said, looking across the floor. “If you report to that person there”, he pointed to one of the waiting staff “they’ll show you what to do”.
Fortunately the person was nearby and I could more or less see them in the dark. “Alright” I started, “but I’m just going to let my eyes adjust first”. I was able to see perfectly well at this point, I was giving excuses to scan the crowd and check for assailants. The supervisor went off somewhere and I started walking the floor.

I walked straight to the furthest part of the hotel which tucked in behind a corner. There were 5 burly men with long, wild hair dressed in animal skins and thick cloaks hunched round three long tables that they had brought together. Among them was the young girl I was meant to protect. I figured these men were her bodyguards. I produced a notepad and asked if they wanted anything, they shrugged me off, after all I’d done nothing to distinguish myself from the other waiting staff so to make a statement I drew one their swords from its sheath and struck down into the table. I was more a sharpened hunk of metal than a sword, it broadened out towards the end, up to about 2ft and had a double spike at the end, similar to those used by the Uruk-hai berserkers in the Lord of the Rings films. They immediately knew who I was and filled me in on the mission so far. The girl got up from the table and came with me. I assured her that she would be safe and that I could even see enemies attacking from another dimension. I also told her I had a faithful lizard companion and a small green tree gecko crawled out of my chest pocket and moved onto my chest. The girl was thrilled by the lizard, “It comes with me when I go into other dimensions too!” I told her.

It was a new scene, the girl and I were standing in a small quadrangle with a dirt floor surrounded on all sides by single-floor wooden buildings. The sky was red-yellow, like a sunset. I had my magic sword in one hand and was scanning the roofs of the buildings to see if the attackers were approaching. My lizard climbed out of my chest pocket again and I understood this to mean I should check in the other dimension. I don’t remember what happened after this.