The Apparition

Was running through a bunch of corridors full of beige and steel colored pipes. The apparition chasing us (myself and a group of high school aged kids) and I was falling behind. When I finally caught up to the group, they were trying to open the rusty bolt of a door whose little round window showed the outside. The apparition appeared on a large screen monitor, terrifying everyone, I stood between it and the kids, arguing that it was just an image, urging them to keep on trying to open the door by rotating the handle back and forth to loosen up the rust. They were making progress when the apparition leaned out of the monitor, splashed us with rusty water, then grabbed both my hands with its own. I turned my hands over and returned the grasp, but with all my force. "So much for not being real..." it started to taunt us.

"You're not," I insisted and pulled myself up by its rough dry hands towards the monitor and into wakefulness.

Full on thundering heart and drenched in sweat, but happy to know I was right.

House Creature, Home Wrecker, New Cats

Rough Night last night, but I woke up enough to remember bits of three different dream experiences.

In the first dream, I had a small flying house. I was able to float between my three or four "landings" depending on which weather I preferred. On one of my Landings there was a knock at the door. Some local "Inspectors" were at the door wanting to check the premises for mice. I looked around the three rooms, and the little grey mouse got a worried look on his face, and dashed into the closet. The Inspectors spotted the motion, so I had to let them in and then had to admit that I had a small grey pet...The closet curtain fluffed out and a moose stepped out...moose. The inspectors were taken aback, and frantically started looking at their field book and ticket books. Apparently there was no infraction for having a grey house moose. Or a grey and silver cat, or a silver and black coatimundi, or a flying monkey, though the last one was more than a little bit scary when it jumped out and landed on my chest, asking, "how are we doing, boss." The Inspectors fled.

In the second dream, I was sleeping, when the whole house shook with a bang and then rattled to the sound of a heavy engine for a few seconds afterword. I just figured the neighbor was getting ready for work and had closed his gate, which is part of the fence running between our houses. Just as I was falling back to sleep, it happened again, only I could tell the sound was coming from my back yard. I struggled up out of my sound sleep and into some clothes and shoes. I looked out the window and saw that the back hill was covered in sandy dirt. A little darker and redder than street sand, and more powdery. It had over flowed the retaining wall, and only the top of the trees showed at the top of the hill. I could hear the sounds of engines and cracking wood from behind the slope. I noticed a pair of treaded tracks down the sandy embankment and then turning just at my now dirt covered patio, then up the hill over the space where the ivy used to be thickest. I didn't like this at all, I certainly hadn't given any permission for any work to be done. I followed the tracks up the hill, slipping occasionally in the soft dirt. I crested the hill and was looking over the back neighbor's yard. Bulldozers and backhoes were at work tearing down the house. There was a gap under the house where the granite had been dug up and pushed out the back yard and down the hill. Fairly shortly I saw a spinning cylinder covered in two foot steel spikes tearing up the granite as it drove out from under the house. The spikes were mostly bare metal, but the cylinder still retained some of its construction vehicle yellow. The fellow driving the vehicle looked very wide eyed and happy under his orange destruction cap. the tractor rolled back under the hill, then came out again, pushing the dirt in front of the now stopped cylinder, up the slope, across the back yard, and then toppled the heap over the hill into my yard. The tractor teetered on the crest of the artificial dune a moment before sliding down towards my house. He didn't make the turn this time, slamming into the fireplace, and shattering the glass doors on either side of it. (Apparently I'd added french doors to the dining room side of the fireplace.) The whole house buckled in slightly and was pushed about six inches off the foundation towards the front of the house. I shouted a loud "What the hell are you doing!" as the tractor climbed back up the hill towards me. The driver then spotted me, and with a maniacal gleam in his overly large, not very human eyes, lifted the cylinder and started it running, steering directly at me. The tractor was surprisingly fast and it was on me before I could dodge to the side, and though I might have been able to jump over the spikes onto the cab of the thing, he'd thought of that, and lifted the spinning cylinder of death just after I launched myself into the air. I knew I was dead. I wondered who would save the cats. I woke in a sweat.

The dream I was having this morning before the Chimester chimed in started out disturbing, the neighbors had dug a pit and were fighting insects and small animals in it. They had amassed a collection of scorpions, spiders, frogs and lizards and a struggling cat. I had to intervene for the sake of the vertebrates in the group, pointing out how sweet they were and how cute. It would be wrong to make them fight one another. Real animals feel pain and there is no Poke Hospital for them. The creatures all escaped, except one little dragon like thing that puffed out it's black and yellow scales, then eyed me sideways, then ran up my arm and dove into my shirt pocket. It cheeped at me and I rubbed the center of its head between its eye bumps, making it cheep some more. I wondered if it would eat cat kibble, or if I needed to make a trip to the store for crickets or mealworms. I needn't have worried, when I opened up my garage door it jumped out and raced over to the litter pan area, like it knew what it was doing, and began digging out the earwigs and snacking on them loudly. I crouched down to get a better look at what it was doing, then felt a cat rubbing on my elbow. It was the little white and black kitten. Marked much like Giles, only with more black than white on her. She ran off under a vehicle parked partly across my driveway. I went out and stretched out on the curb to see what she was up to. She came out with two more cats, a nearly all black cat with a just a white chin and toes, and an all white short haired cat, with beautiful golden brown eyes. The two adult cats had letters wrapped around their collars. The letters had obviously been written by a child. It stated that they had to move, and mommy and daddy said the cats would be okay on their own, but she knew better (I knew it was a she because there was a drawing of a little girl with her three cats, each with a name below them.) "Please take care of them and keep them together, they're family." There was a phone number. "text me."

My little dragon like friend cheeped at the cats, and they all got head bonks and shoulder rubs as they walked over me and then screwing up their courage, dashed across the open driveway and followed it into the house through the cat door. The white cat stayed with me the longest, unsure about the whole thing. I scruffed her up across the shoulders and ears, trying to let her know she would be safe in the house and wouldn't have to come out into the big blue room again. That seemed to satisfy her and she raced across the driveway, pausing only a second to two to figure out the cat door. I was glad I had just stocked up on cat food, and that I hadn't gotten rid of the extra litter pans yet. Giles and Ember would certainly be entertained with four new housemates. I texted the number that the cats were living with me, and they would be kept together. It was only a few seconds before I got an emoji filled text with hearts and kitty faces. I resolved to text pictures of the cats when they settled in.

Strangled, Reclaimed House

Had a dream that started off serene enough. I was parked in a parking structure downtown, just checking my phone for the e-ticket to whatever event I was about to attend. And moving the porta-potty to the back seat. I heard a noise outside the car and turned just as someone reached into the car and wrapped a belt around my neck. I managed to get a couple of fingers under it before they pulled it tight, but I knew it wasn't going to be enough if I didn't act fast. I turned so the main pressure wasn't on my esophagus and kicked away from the door - it tightened the belt, but also forced the person into the side of the car. The dream ended before I could tell if that helped or not.

This morning's dream was muck nicer. I was in a hilly area outside of the Dream City, just down the hill from Cemetary House, where there were several old abandoned buildings. I had purchased them and was in the process of renovating them. I'd finished the master bedroom and a ball room and the kitchen. In the process I'd hired the displaced people to do the work, and they had renovated small homes for themselves. There was a child who no one claimed, however, so I made sure that there were a couple of rooms that could be used as bedrooms and let the child have first pick.

-----

Later in the night I was inspecting the roof and retaining wall behind the master bedroom, it was built into a hillside with a small private patio on the roof and to each side. It was starting to rain so I had gone up to the top patio to close the umbrella and take it in. I found another child sleeping in a damp pile of bedding stuffed under the picnic table. I convinced the child to come inside, and introduced him to my new staff.

No one knew who his or her parents were, either. I took the child to the front of the house where the guest rooms were. There were two sparten but clean rooms with a common bathroom between them. I told him he could stay in the room the other child hadn't chosen. I went to introduce them, hoping they knew one another, but she wasn't in her room. One of my new employees said the child became frightened of the storm and went to the master bedroom to sleep by the fireplace. She wasn't sure she liked that. I told her the children were allowed to go wherever they felt safe, it would be okay. She was welcome to come up and check on her to make sure she was all right. The new child asked to sleep by the fire, too. The house itself was cold, as I only had heat from one fireplace and the other furnaces weren't working yet. We hadn't even cleared the rubble out of the stairs down into the basement.

I took the pillows and blanket off the guests (or childrens') beds, taking a moment to show the child how the hammock linen storage worked. (A bright blue hammock above the bed with extra blankets and pillows in it. The child asked if he could sleep in it.

"Sure."

The child brought the hammock down and then took the pillows I'd taken off the mattress below and tossed them into the hammock. The little dark haired child's face poked out of a pile of linens and pillows, smiling for the first time of the evening. "I can really stay here?"

"Yes."

The child grabbed the rope and pulled the hammock up above the bed, looking down at us contentedly.

I asked the tall blonde women to bring some snacks for the kids. "I guess we'll be camping by the fire tonight." We went back through the large dining hall, I explained that I was going to recondition all the rooms so they looked like this.

"Empty, you mean" I looked around, there was a single round card sized table with a jade top and a small lamp, at the table was a single embroidered cushioned chair.

I laughed, "no, clean, with nice walls and floors, there'll be plenty of furniture in time. We haven't even decided what to do with all of this space yet."

Counting Crows, Burglary

Three different and all disturbing dreams last night in the midst of the rain and thunder.

In the first dream I was walking out in my fields with RG.. There were a large number of crows about, and RG was shooting them and counting them. I was not real happy with that, thinking there must be another way. A couple of the crows were very large, and had bits of arrows sticking out of them, I found myself rooting for them to dodge out of the way and make it to safety, having already escaped a brush with death previously, but each fell to a loud "pop" from RG's rifle.

In the second dream I awoke to a crash. When I went out to the front of the house, the sink was missing and the garbage disposal was wrapped up in the braided rug that usually sits in front of the cat door. There was a gaping hole where the dishwasher used to sit and the microwave and refrigerator were gone as well. Oddly, my TV and DVD player were still there. The thieves had also not managed to get back to the computer room. I went in the garage. The washing machine was turned sideways, but still in place, the dryer was actually at the end of the garage at the door, which was open. My car was at the bottom of the driveway, partly out into the street.

I am sure if I could remember the title I gave my third dream I would remember it. I can only say, it too, was frightening.

I woke from each of these dreams in a sweat, shaking. Haven't had a night like this in a long time. I didn't feel like I'd slept at all by the time the light went on this morning.

Nightmare, Music

Terrifying little dream early this morning, three of us were trapped in an old lumber mill, and somehow we'd been tied up to a rack and sent down the feed chute to a large saw. We were upright and the platform we were tied to was moving about six inches at a time closer to the saw as it ran back and forth.

We figured out we could shift about that amount one way or the other so were able to avoid being filleted and got the saw to break apart the frame for us to escape with only minor injuries. That wasn't the nightmare part, though. When we confronted the person who'd done this to us, he kept getting back up, no matter how many times he was knocked down. None of us wanted to kill him, but it was getting rapidly clear that was going to be the only option if everyone was to escape. Finally I convinced the other two to run away, just take the boat and leave (Apparently we were on an island.)

I was planning on staying behind and just knocking the monster out until I no longer could. I would knock him down and then drag him around the mill, looking for something strong enough to tie him up with so I could eventually escape myself, but there seemed to be nothing available that he couldn't break out of.

I kept getting more and more fatigued and knew I wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer. I disabled the saw just before I blacked out.

In happier mindset, I woke to music playing (in my brain.) "In time the Rockies may Crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, they're only made of clay, but our love is here to stay." Thank you Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald for a performance that resonates stronger than ever.  I don't mind when some music gets stuck in my head.  (I blame J for this.)

Train-ing Day

Super secret agent training, on a train. Lots of dodging bullets and racing through crowded dining cars, climbing outside and across the top of the moving train. Unfortunately I climbed up to the top of the train to evade a couple of pursuers, or I should say, "tried" to climb atop the train. The tunnel the train entered had about eight inches of clearance, not enough to survive, even if I hadn't pulled myself head and shoulders above the roof of the car.

No matter how I rewound the dream the same thing kept happening, or I would get shot, or knocked off the side of the train, or captured in the dining car. I finally decided not to go back after I was dead, so the dream faded away to me sitting in a strange room. Lots of boxes and toys, all of them with strange two inch holes drilled through them. Little John came up to me and got a quick head bonk and a little pet, but was soon distracted by a cardboard box. It was too small for him, really, but somehow he got his paws into the two holes in the lid and pried it off. When he stepped into the box he changed from a big red tabby to a little grey and black tabby. I realized he'd somehow been transformed into Princess Tiger Lily. I did not like this one bit and my anxiety levels were through the roof. She stepped out for a Little John style head bonk and then right back in the box, I was hoping she would turn back into Little John, but no, she just curled up and died.

No, no, no, no, no! I took her/his body out and cradled it.

The dream wouldn't rewind. In fact it kept going. Miranda entered the room and stepped into the box, she turned into the emaciated shadow of her cousin T-Rex, who didn't even step out of the box before he withered and died in front of me. The room began to narrow and I forced myself to get up and find a door, it was at the narrow end of the room and it opened up to a ladder. The ground was rumbling and blurred below me, so I began to climb. Just as I cleared the top of what I realized was a rail car, the tunnel keystone took off my head again.

I woke drenched and shaking, heart racing, no kitties on the bed with me at all.

False Waking Night Terror

I had a false waking dream, and true to the genre, I awoke twice during the dream before waking up for real.

The first time I woke in the dream was because N was standing in the doorway calling my name. She was all dolled up in a sailor suit like outfit, not the school girl sort of thing, but the big buttoned shirt and bell bottom trousers kind. The shirt was cut to show off her trim tummy tuck, and her breast enhancements. She had also had her hair cut and dyed, so it was in a loose curly bob, not quite an Afro.

She was being very pleasant but evasive on the topic of why she was in my house at all. I managed to struggle out of bed, and stepped out into the hall. The hall closet had been replaced with a wall of drawers and small cabinets. I knew immediately that I was dreaming, and I found that I liked that look and wanted to remember it when it comes time I want to remodel the hallway.

I then found myself back in bed, sweating, glad that particular night terror was over when came the crashing and breaking noises from all over the house. Heaps of clothing from on top of the dressers landed on the bed, and the pile was so heavy at the head of the bed that I had to slither down and come out at the foot of the bed instead. I was glad I don't tuck the foot of the sheets in. Once I got out I was greeted by the musty smell of old sweatshirts that had long ago been cat pissed. I flung them off the bed, cursing at the cats, not only for their past transgressions but for the continuing crashing and howling coming from all over the house. 

I crawled across the lumpy bed and turned on the light. The entire contents of the bedroom drawers and closets were dumped on the bed and floor. My camera was broken, the lens assembly at the foot of the bed and the body by the door. It had to have been broken and it's parts tossed into the room. That's when I figured out that it couldn't have been the cats. I began to panic, as the noise was continuing from the rest of the house. I looked out the bedroom door and could see that the floor of my front room and kitchen was in a similar state, all the cabinet doors flung open or ripped off the cabinets completely.

I was sill trapped under the covers and struggled to get out so I could confront whoever was doing this. The noise finally stopped, like power outage quiet, and that was even more terrifying, aside from my wheezing and blood pounding in my ears, there was no noise at all. 

When I awoke for real I was laying in a pool of sweat, no cats in the room, and I had to get up and walk through every room of the house and turn on every light to make sure everything was all right. 

Found DROG File

DROG20110914

My brother and I were traveling together in a pair of wildly mismatched vehicles. I was in Little Red and he was in a large blue and silver van. We entered a town that looked like someone had beat it about the head and shoulders with a tree trunk.

We stopped in a clear spot in the center of town near what looked like it had been a park. Every manufactured item in the park was broken, burned or bent into unrecognizability. 

As we made our way towards the center of the park I started to get nervous. Turned out there was ahold reason. Three balls of trash and debris began to roll after us, converging as they came.

It looked like we were able to out maneuver them, but each time we did they learned from it and didn't fall for our tricks. 

My brother thought we were close enough to the cars to outrun them, but I knew that while his van would likely drive away from one or two hits, Little Red was unlikely to. 

I did know that my car was going to just start up and go, as I had left the engine on. 

We needed to outsmart them just one more time, so this time we split up, but looped back around, then took off with the three of the now over ten foot high balls crashing into one another. That gave us enough time to get to our vehicles. 

I have no idea why I thought they would stop chasing us after we left the park.  Because if anything, they were faster on the road.

Paralyzed Near the Spinach Patch

DROG20110809

Lovely little night terror this morning. I was laying along a dirt path, only my right arm able to move. I seemed to be wrapped in a thick blanket or comforter of some sort. Whatever it was, it as both too warm where it covered me, and too cold where it didn't. The longer I was there the more I began to worry about the cats, who'd been left in a nearby rental cabin. 

Then N showed up. She wasn't willing to even go for help. "Thats fine," I said, "I think i can reach the spinach." My arm wriggles out from under the blanket and I waved it towards the baby plants, stirring up the dust of the dirt road. I was actually two or three feet from being able to reach them.

I asked her to at least check on the cats, and for some reason I couldn't think of Giles name, and for whichever cat I named instead, N just said, "Oh, that cat's dead." or "Valentine's dead, too." This last confused me, as I have never had a cat named Valentine. (now I would be afraid to name a cat that.)

N walked back over to my cabin and named the cats she could find, there was one missing from her list, but I was tired of naming cats only to be told they were dead. 

As the sun came up, N excused herself and left me there. I was starting to worry that someone driving on the dirt road wouldn't see me, and I wasn't strong enough, with just one arm, to roll myself off of the road. I wasn't even sure being in the ditch would be much of an improvement, at least someone might stop for me before running me over.

Gardening with Pins and Needles

            I find it interesting how my brain interprets the chronic pain, numbness or tingling I get. In this morning's adventure, I was out in the misty rain sweeping up the wet leaves. Looking forward to plunking them down in the compost pile, which, now that it's been going a while is really cooking nicely, I reached into the pile I'd just raked together to put a handful in the green's can.
            The leaves and grass tumbled into the can, then I noticed what felt like sharp little feet crawling on my arm. I shook my arm, the plaid sleeve flapping in the sudden movement dislodged a small brown and black scorpion. I suddenly felt more of them crawling on me. I held my arm out in front of me. Upon seeing my hand, I immediately knew I was dreaming, but horror at the eight or nine quarter-sized scorpions crawling on my arm and wading through my arm hairs kept me from snapping immediately out of the dream. I mean, I could still feel them. I pulled one off, careful to grab it so the stinger was not able to get me, then flung it into the hill of ivy. I really felt no need to kill it, as I kind of find them fascinating, like the spiders we named the house after. I just prefer to be fascinated from a distance, however, like at least a camera-length away.
            As quickly as I had tossed the wriggling scorpion away another couple of them appeared on my arm, moving further up towards my elbow. I shook my arm violently, and that woke me up. The feelings continued, however, as it was really the pins and needles from the pinched nerve causing it.
            It took me about five minutes to calm down and assure myself that there was nothing crawling on me except the cats.

            This was pretty typical of my night terrors, especially the part about not being able to wake up even though I knew I was dreaming. I was oddly relieved that it wasn't yet another dream about N driving the car into a semi-truck or over the edge of a parking garage. Or the ones where I'm in the Toyota, not driving, but somehow I know the brakes aren't working and the steering is shot. That's pretty much been the fare the last couple of weeks.

A Passel of Plagues

              I dreamed that I was about 12 years old, living in a steam-punk universe, very Edwardian but with airships, robots and ray-guns, none of which were particularly reliable. The dream started with me being out on the streets late at night, having snuck out of the barracks like building with AH so that we could visit his girlfriend, in this dream played by his wife. As we made our way across town, the air-raid sirens went off.
              As bombs began to fall on the edge of town, the lights were quickly being turned off or snuffed out. We ran along a narrow river road, taking turns climbing on one another's shoulders to turn off the gas lamps as we ran. Soon we came across a police man doing the same, but from another direction.
              “Thanks, lads, now get yerselves t'cover!” he pointed over to a warehouse like building nearby with a large yellow arrow that pointed to a cellar door.
              “Raid Shelter 104,” was printed in four inch high letters on the base of the arrow and in eight inch high letters on the doors.
              “I have t'see to the Century Street Landing. Mind now!” he hollered as he ran off.
              AH and I looked at one another, “I have to get to C,” he ran off down the nearly pitch black street, “it's only a dozen more blocks.”
              I hesitated, eyes adjusting to the scattered starlight. It was easy enough to pick out the road from the river wherein was reflected the partly cloudy sky and its myriad stars between. Still, I ran carefully, keeping myself away from the river and following AH's uneven sounding footfalls. I lifted my feet a little higher than I would have if it had been daylight, or even if the streetlights were on.
              I heard AH tumble and shout in front of me, so slowed just in time to see him rolling on the street, clutching his foot. “Stubbed my toes on that!”
              Where he pointed was a steel box with several lit grills on its surface. As I approached I realized that the grills were glowing from within, the airship shaped grill was red, fading to amber even as I watched. There were seven stencil like grills in total. Of the three on top, one was the airship, the next one, which was a dark amber but brightening and turning red, looked like a dinosaur, the third grill was no shape I recognized, but was completely dark. There was one in the middle, which I interpreted to be the re-animation ray. The Bottom row of three were also dark, but one was an Orbital Mind Control Laser, the second a Wave and the last one was Fire.
              I wiped my hand across the OMCL grill, which lit bluish green. Lasers cut through the clouds causing them to light up like lightning, and the lasers cut into the dirigibles at the edge of the city, soon the sound of bombs going off faded to nothing. It seems the OMCL was more “Persuasion” than “Control.”
              I was pulled up to my feet, “C'mon, stop fooling with that, you'll get us ki...” AH's hand relaxed as he stopped talking. His other hand pointed towards the mouth of the river. I glanced down at the steel box, the Dinosaur was glowing brightly, as were the Wave and Fire stencils. “Wha...?”
              I looked up. At the mouth of the river a giant Dinosaur, much the size of Godzilla was climbing out of the sea. Water pushed ahead of him, surging up the river, it's crest visible as a line of darkness in the reflected milky way of the otherwise calm river.
              “High ground!” I shouted and grabbed AH's sleeve to pull him back up the street to the last bridge we passed. Our side of the river, and into the warehouse district, was flat and only a dozen feet or so above the height of the river itself. The high ground, what little of it there was, was across the river. The Cemetery, Mortuary and Crematorium were at the end of a long uphill winding road overlooking the town from across the river. We ran.
              Crossing the 98th street bridge I looked out to see a huge wave blocking the Godzilla-like monsters hips and legs, but his head swept across the city, shooting out a ray that hit the ground in a swath about a hundred feet wide, and everything it touched was bathed in flames. We ran harder.
              From half way up the hill, low trees and headstones all around us, I saw that the monster was not lighting the whole city on fire, instead laying out a pattern of stripes that created a sort of maze, the only exit of which, was at his feet.
              “It followed us!” AH blurted, panting.
              I looked at his feet. There was the steel box with it's backlit stencil like cutouts. I'd touched the OMCL grill before, and it had stopped the airship bombardment. (Or was a coincidence, but I wasn't so sure. It had glowed blue green where the others were amber and red.) I tried it again, but it remained dark.
              “Maybe you can only use it once,” I said.
              “Maybe it wasn't you at all,” AH added.
              “Well, here's one that hasn't been used yet.” I swept my fingers over the very odd looking last symbol on the top row. It glowed blue and then green. The Monster, Wave and Fire glyphs began to fade.
              The monstrous roaring stopped. I watched, stunned, as the creature turned and waded back into the ocean.
              I whooped, and turned to see that AH had started up the hill to the mortuary, calling out to C, who for some reason was at the top of the hill near the entrance.
              That didn't add up for me and I hurried after him, barely noting that the Reanimation stencil had begun to glow amber.
              As we made our way up the hill we grew, our youthful stick figures filling out to the size and shape of our current adult hood. There was a part of me that was sad about this. AH reached the top of the hill, and the small robot, which is what I now knew it to be, grabbed him and dragged him into the building, tossing him down some stairs.
              As I crossed the threshold, completely against my will, my instinct was to run, I once again found myself to be a young boy.
              The robot looked at me, its disguise shifting, trying to find something enticing. “Actually, I've always thought robots were pretty cool.” I said.
              The robot stopped in a half woman half robot phase and smiled at me. It was a predatory smile, but it didn't last.
              “What does the Reanimation Stencil do?” I asked.
              The change in demeanor of the robot was instant. “Help me shut all the doors. Now!”
The robot clattered off, closing and barring doors, sliding the ceiling and floor bolts closed, and then starting to slide furniture in front of the large front windows. Outside, the townspeople were making their way up the hill to the building.
              I thought they might want shelter from whatever was coming and asked if I should let them in.
              The robot shouted “No!” and let out a girlish shriek. As the people began to pound on the doors I realized that they were dead, and had pulled themselves out of the ground.
              “What about the people in the cellar,” I asked.
              The robot shrieked again, then ran down the hall to secure the cellar door. I ran upstairs and out onto a balcony. It was a short six foot jump to a nearby tree, and I climbed down the hill behind the mortuary, relying on my speed to avoid the reanimated remains. As I crossed out of the cemetery I noticed that there were machines along the road moving by themselves as well. The Reanimation Ray must also work as an Animation ray. I hoped that AH would be all right, but couldn't think of a way to get back and save him. Interestingly, the undead seemed to have no interest in me, instead it looked like there was sort of a conflict brewing between the robots and the zombies.
              I made it to the fair grounds, where I snuck into a large tent, not yet fully erected, and hid under the tarps along the upper bleachers. I was soon discovered, as people began to fill in the seats and they pulled back the tarps to complete the tent walls. The carnies all leered at me, but didn't say anything to me. I tried to sit as far away from them as possible.
              The show began, instead of animals, though, there were all sorts of animated machines, robots and other constructs. The talk was of dismantling the town to create more, and from there to take over the world....
              And in the middle of the center ring, was the steel box, it's stencils dim save for the one in the center. I knew that if I could get to the thing and wipe my fingers across the stencil I could turn that red to blue and then green, and the animation ray would work for me. The mechanical and one-legged trapeze artist were in the way, though.

Mish Mash: from the last several nights.

Mirror Doppleganger (Night Terror)I walked around the house for twenty minutes to shake this dream off, avoiding the floor to cieling mirror in the hallway by zooming past the opening.

Magnum P.I. I was him, standing on a hill overlooking the ocean.

Nudist Swimmers Attacked by Great White Shark.
Most of us made it up onto the boat.

Pirate Fairies and Mermaid

This one I barely remember now. It took place in a boat on the bottom of an aquarium, I think.

Summary of Dreamed Indignities

              During the last week of my dreams I have: had my pens stolen by a red-haired mop-topped skate punk, my car squashed by a large Humvee, dodged swings from an irate pizza party attendee, narrowly avoided being killed in a fusilade of gunfire from some sort of private paramilitary group, and been tossed from the deck of a research vessel into the dark cold waters of the arctic where I was pulling myself up onto an ice sheet and trying not to look like an injured seal in the process.
              All of these events in full surround-sound-technicolor-feel-o-vision. The arctic dream was so severe that I got up, told N about the dream, and then turned on the heating blanket. She suggested that if I put the blanket into pre-heat I would warm up faster. I told her "I don't want to melt the ice that fast, or I'll be sleeping in a puddle, level 2 will warm up fast enough." When I woke a few hours later, the blanket wasn't actually on, so I then realized that the telling N and turning on the blanket part was just another part of the dream.
              I think I dream that I wake up when the first dream is turning into a night terror, but it is still frustrating because I'm so sure that I talked to N and expect that she should remember.

Zombie Attack, Carmagedden, Blue Movie

Zombies Attack Jupiter III

              There were about a dozen of us at work when the news came in that Zombies were attacking the city. I was wiring the ship's internal video network, a mix of thin copper and fiber-optic cables. I looked over at the slender brown-haired woman who was one of two women I worked with on this project. We both had the "What did she just say?" look on our faces.
              The other woman was back in the Main Distribution Feed calling out the pair colors for us to terminate at each tap point. She told us over the radio that the city was being attacked by zombies. The infection had just suddenly boiled over and reached the tipping point. "This is a different strain, they're saying, very fast acting." She told us to tune to a certain channel when we hooked up the next station's tap.
              My partner asked me to finish up so she could go to the staging room and pick up the thin panel.
              "I have to see what she's rambling on about now. Sounds like she's watching a horror movie, not the news."
              "Right, because we haven't had zombie attacks in weeks," I stated rather matter of fact.
              "That's right, everyone was cured or rounded up," she raced down the curved hallway, shouting back "and stop calling them zombies!"
              I had forgotten that her own parents and sister had been infected in the last attack. I picked up my cell phone and called N. She didn't pick up, so I left a message; "Get to high ground and lock yourself away from everyone else. I'll figure out how to come get you."
              I then called the construction manager to ask him if the site was securable. Again, no answer. I crawled out of the crawl space and hit the intercom button on my phone. "Hey, has anyone else heard about the zombie attack, like, from security?"
              Both the gals on my installation team called back with "no" but there were no other answers. "I've got a bad feeling about this," the one in the MDF said, and then yelped. "Oh! My god! They're in the building, heading up the access stairs!"
              My partner arrived and began hooking up the panel. "There's some of the engineers running ahead of them, it doesn't look like they're going to make it."
              "Lock yourself in, Clair, don't let anyone else into the MDF, you hear me!" I shouted.
              As I pulled myself out of the crawlspace I looked at my partner, who was standing transfixed and trembling looking at the monitor. I read the crawl and froze.
              "Thousands of recently innoculated display New Terrifying Symptoms. Rapid onset, ravaging hunger. Statewide quarantine imposed. If you've been innoculated, lock yourself in. All National Guard units activated, call..."
              N had insisted on being innoculated, despite the vaccine being inadequately tested.
              The crawl continued running underneath footage of bloody-faced people in packs chasing through the streets, throwing themselves at cars and store front windows. Several buildings were seen where the rooftops were a milling mass of feeders, and those being fed off of. I knew, for some reason, that the zombies would climb after prey, but only rarely would they head back down once they had climbed somewhere. I had a locker on the floor just below us, and in that locker was a gun and about two hundred rounds of ammunition. I had stopped carrying it in my tool harness just a few days ago. My partner started switching through the ship's security cameras. There was no one on board but my construction crew. The locker room leading into the ships access way was empty.
              "Clair, I'm going to close the door to the locker room, I have to get something. Can you see the ship's controls from in there?"
              I heard the alarm sound and the ships internal bulkheads began to close. I told my partner to "Get to the control room and lock the doors, don't let anybody in."
              I didn't hear anything from Clair. I tried to remember if she had been innoculated. I knew that the brown-haired woman hadn't, she'd been terrified that this very thing would happen to her.
              "We have to save them," the woman pointed to the security camera image, a group of engineers and designers was racing towards the locker room and the access ramp of the Jupiter III (which wasn't a space ship, but a dirigible.) I noticed that the group was not panic stricken, like one would expect. I realized that they were all infected, and running towards what they knew was a likely source of nutrition. Us.
              We both ran for the access way. I only had one plan. Beat the much younger woman to the door, close and then lock it down. I grabbed the young woman by the back of her shirt. "Get to the bridge, fire up the hydrogen jets and heat up the lift cells. You were better on the simulator than me."
              She slowed and turned back to head for the control room. I heard thumping from inside the MDF and when I got to the plexiglass windows I dove and slid along the floor under them. I looked back to see Clair hammering against the door with bloody broken hands. I was thankful that she hadn't unlocked it before turning completely. I was a little bit worried that she might damage equipment needed to control the Jupiter III, but saw that all of the cabinets were closed. I was never more glad that Clair was compulsive about keeping things neat.
              I reached the access ramp and the guard station was empty, from what I could see, the locker room was empty. It was really just a long hallway full of lockers for folks to put their street clothes in while working. There was a long partition down the middle and there was a men's side and a woman's side. The door at the end of the access ramp was closed but not latched, and was always locked from the other side. I stepped quietly down the ramp and was just thinking of heading into the locker room when the guard appeared on the womans side. He had a handful of women's clothing held up under his nose.
              We lunged for the door together. I managed to pull it shut with a click just as he grabbed the handle from the other side, and pushed rather than pulled to try to get through. I knew he'd been infected.
              "Clair's locked in the MDF and the guard was also infected. He's outside the ramp room though." I rummaged through the guard's desk. quickly skimming through the security cameras. There was a dead body on the woman's side of the locker room, I hadn't been able to see it through the tiny windows in the doors. It only took me a couple of moments to find the external door locks and I closed off the hanger bay. Too late, it seemed. There were several people running across the hanger floor, followed by other infected ones.
              I grabbed the microphone on the desk. "Get into the secure cargo lockers, one per locker. You should be safe there until we come to get you out!" I shouted at them. Some of them looked around to try to see where the voice was coming from. That was a mistake, their pursuers closed the gap to almost nothing. They wouldn't have a chance to enter the storage unit and close it now.
              There was a shotgun locked to the side of the drawers of the desk. I looked in the top drawer for keys. I found ammunition for it, but no key to unlock it from its mount.
              "The hydrogen is preheated, we can get out of here when you have everyone on board."
              "They're loading themselves into the storage containers now. I'm trying to find the roof release."
              "It's not there, its in the hanger control booth."
              "Oh, shit."
              I thought a moment, that being difficult because of the guard banging on the door. I loaded the shotgun and tipped the desk back. I ripped off the security panel. I turned the desk so the shotgun was pointing at the door, and fired.
              Just as I'd hoped, the zombie ducked down to look at the new hole in the door, and I fired again. The hammering and clawing stopped. I pushed the other door open and discovered that the guard wasn't wearing any pants. So much for getting his keys. I went to my locker and grabbed my bag. I found the guard's pants, gun and keys on the bench and took them, too. I locked the door, but realized it wouldn't take a group of zombies long to worry the door apart, now that it had a hole the size of a fist in it.
              "Fire the jets!" I shouted as I prepared to open the door behind the guard's desk that led into the hanger.
              "What? That'll kill everyone in the hanger!"
              "There's no one left in the hanger but zombies."
              "Stop calling them that!"
              "I need to get to the control room to open the hanger and release the clamps."
              "I can do that from here. Get on board."
              Through the small window I could see dozens of other zombies enter from various doors in the hanger. The people who'd managed to lock themselves into the storage containers weren't going to be safe much longer if we didn't get off the ground.
              "Our passengers need us to be off the ground, soon." I shouted into the intercom as I raced up the ramp. I hit the ramp retract and jammed the joystick into place with a leather something from the guard's belt (Pepper spray holster?) and then leapt across the gap into the dirigible's entry way. Zombies were attracted to the noise and movement and began to move towards the opening. (The opening was only about 8 feet above the ground, very climbable for a zombie.)
              I managed to swing the shotgun around, but held off firing in the hopes that one or more of them might not be infected, "Yet" I mentally added.
              The dirigible suddenly lurched up a few feet, nearly spilling me out into the hanger below. I dropped the guard's belt, losing the extra side arm, radio and ammunition. I scrambled back away from the edge of the entry, then swung the door closed and spun the hatch shut.
              "What are we going to do about the roof?" I asked from where I sat on the floor.
              "They've got it."
              "Who they?"
              "The people in the control booth, they're waving at me, we have to find a way to get them out of there."
              "Get them out of there?"
              "They're trapped. We have to help them."
              "Tell them to open the doors and then you can fly over. We can lower a cargo pod to them."
              I heard her relaying my instructions over the radio. Just as I suspected, there was no response.
              "They won't open the doors. They just keep waving at us."
              "Can you turn us in place so I can see them." I stood up and went to the window of the Embarkation Lounge. "I'm at the window of the lounge."
              "I think so, just a second."
              I felt the ship begin to turn, really though it looked and felt more like the hanger rotated around us it was so smooth.
              Just as I thought. The people in the control room crew were a mix of live and undead zombies. The live ones were faster and clever, with some reasoning abilities as well as the ability to navigate in places they were familiar with in life. The dead ones, pretty much follow noise and movement, hoping for whatever it was they needed to keep going. Oddly, though both types would eagerly chase prey, only the live ones would chase prey down stairs. Deaders wouldn't step down stairs unless you were right ahead of them. City dwellers had sometimes been able to save themselves from undead packs by leaping the rails into subway access stairs or even dropping down into sewer access tunnels. Of course, that didn't work if there were live zombies in the pack.
              I really didn't know how my partner could possibly have thought they were anything else. I realized that we were stuck here unless I could convince her to let me shoot the people in the control room, cook the zombies in the hanger, and then make a dash for the control booth to open the hanger doors.I would need to do this before the power went out. After several hours without food, hungry zombies would begin to chew on electrical cords, even ripping up drywall to get to wires with power in them. I was concerned that after making all that carnage, she would then just leave me stranded there.
              That was when I realized we had a time bomb in the MDF. Clair, in a few hours, would be ripping into the UPS in the MDF for a little snack. The voltage would probably kill her, and then a couple of hours later she would revive to finish ripping out our power network.
              "They're all infected, babe," I said as gently as I could, "some of them are stage two." I resolved to avoid using the word "zombies" in an attempt to bring her back to reality a little bit.
              "Clair, too?"
              "Yes."
              "How about the passengers?"
              "Some of them are probably infected and haven't shown yet. That's why I asked them to take separate containers."
              "Oh god, oh god oh god oh god...."
              "Babe, keep us in the center of the hanger as best you can. I have to shut some more hatches." I had just noticed more infected workers racing up the stairs of the catwalk that surrounded the hanger, and they were jumping for the disk shaped envelope of the dirigible. They were missing, and becoming snacks for their fellows below, but it would only be a matter of time before we drifted too close and they would be able to jump to us. I started racing through the ship, trying to make sure I shut every access hatch I knew of, and every one I could find.
              As I closed the last one I knew of I went by a window and saw that we were floating out over the city. "How'd you get the doors open?"
              "I just kept asking over and over again, one of them finally pulled the handle to open them. I don't know that he really knew what he was doing, though."
              "Maybe there was enough of him left to know to do the right thing." I knew I said it just to be comforting. I remembered reading that none of the research that had been done on the infected from the first outbreak seemed to indicate that anything of an original personality survived. There were still hundreds of them being stored in warehouses around the nation.
              Looking out over the city I saw that many fires had started all ready, this outbreak looked like it was going to be bad. I wanted to ask to head over to the Submarine base to look for N, but knew that if this outbreak really started amongst the innoculated, there wasn't much hope.

Carmagedden
             
              Later, I dreamed that I was with an older woman, she had long white hair, down to her waist, the last few inches was a light blonde color. We were following a pair of vehicles that were racing in a flood control channel. There was a wood-paneled white station wagon like MS used to drive long ago, and a black and green stake bed truck with at least half a dozen people in the back. The station wagon was also full of passengers. They cheered and hurled insults at one another as they dodged the large boulders and parts of houses that littered the channel.
              I was recording the whole thing. Stopping only to interview the woman about what was going on. This was what we in the media were calling an "Apocalypse Club" and this particular one was called "Carmagedden" by its members. They raced with a complete abandon and an apparent disrespect for life. The woman corrected me on that particular. "No, we love life, but have come to understand that the demons come for us all, and you don't know when they will show up, or where, so you might as well live large, every day, it just might be your last."
              I went back to following the action from the dirigible (two dirigible dreams in one night!) and managed to get the camera settled just as the white station wagon tried to dodge a house shaped stone, that I soon realized. as we got closer, was a stone facaded house. It fell into the drainage channel and the truck swerved, two of its passengers falling out and ending up under the crumpled home. The station wagon rolled up onto the sloped side of the channel as the house passed just in front of them. A stone fence work tagged the front passenger side and the station wagon flipped and rolled.
              We looked around, but didn't see any demons. We swooped in to check on the condition of the driver and his passenger. Several of the passengers had climbed out and were all ready rolling the car over. The driver was in bad shape. The woman jumped out of the dirigible, dropping the last ten feet to the ground. She staggered over to the man and injected him with something.
              "Thanks." The drivers eyes almost instantly dilated.
              "Can you drive?" the old woman asked him.
              The driver held up his arms, both were a mass of compound fractures, bone and blood glistened in the hazy light. I imagined my news editor would have to censor that image before it replayed during the dinner hour. (It was going out live, now, though.) "No, Dolly, I don't think I can drive any more. It's time." Before I could wonder what would happen to him in a world in which medical care was nearly unavailable (demons seemed attracted to large groups of humans so hospitals and schools were a thing of the past) Dolly had taken out a gun and shot him in the head.
              Other cars began to arrive. Taking on the passengers and then taking off. "Get out of here, it's too crowded." Dolly started waving them off.
              From the slope above a leathery demon, batlike, swooped down on Dolly, the talons at the forward bend of its wings pierced her shoulders and it ripped her head off with its hands. I handed the camera to my sound guy and brought up a shotgun, blasting the demon. The flaming blast ripped its flesh from its frame, but the skeleton just leered at me and it crouched to jump for me. A second blast shattered its head. I immediately started scanning the sky, "Get back in the lift, before more of them show up."
              The club members of Carmagedden raised their intoxicants to us, beer, wine, pipes and needles of various sorts and sent us off with a cheer as they raced off in different directions. As we climbed out of the flood control channel, I watched as club members restarted the station wagon and drove it off as well.
              I signed off. The sound/camera guy looked at me, terror still written all over his face, "that's got Pulitzer written all over it."
              "That's got luck written all over it. Now I'm going to have religious nuts to deal with all afternoon."
              "Do you need more ammo?"
             
Blue Movie

              I was directing a film about two middle aged women who, in order to fight their depression, join an erotic dance class. They form a fast friendship, and end up in a furious romance that takes the form of them recording one another dancing, initially for their husbands and then eventually realizing they are dancing for one another. Finally they record themselves dancing together, this leads to more (not shown in our film) and that film is found by one of the womans' husbands. He feels that the other husband has to know what is going on. A serious complication, the second husband finds it quite exciting. The relationships, to one another, to their husbands and families explode, some to the breaking point.
              We had just finished a day of shooting on the erotic dance numbers, and the respective actresses found themselves fielding offers to help them "take the heat off." I had to send the crew out, finally.
              "My husband isn't going to know what hit him," one of them quipped.
              "I'm wishing I hadn't gotten rid of mine," smirked the other. She turned to me, "What are you doing tonight," she purred, "this is all your fault, you know."
              "I think you'd better call my wife and ask her," I pulled my cell phone off my belt for her.

Waves and The Simpsons

              I had two dreams last night that were at least partly memorable. The first started with N and I visiting the seashore. We were walking along the beach, greeting and being greeted by the other beach-goers, when we began to get hungry. There was a concrete building up against the cliffs a mile or so ahead of us, so we decided to head over to it, as there were people gathered around like it might be a restaurant. We arrived, and I commented on the large set of pilings out front with a watch tower on top. It made it look like it was tucked under some sort of pier.
              Sure enough the building had three counter windows about ten feet across each. Business was brisk, but to N the food looked and smelled a little bit off. I'm usually the one who can detect bad food, but it didn't smell off to me. It smelled like something out of the deeps and was oddly attractive. I stepped up and got a little oily fish taco. I noticed that the building was much deeper than it looked as it was built into the cliff face. It had ship style bulkhead doors behind the little shop areas, one of which was open to reveal a long copper verdigris lined hallway. I thought that was a bit odd.
              N squeaked out that the tide was coming in. I looked down the beach to where she was and told her there were stairs on the opposite side of the Under Pier food court here.
              It was too late. I saw a large wave surging ashore between her and I. It knocked her off her feet and pushed her back against the cliff, she managed to stand. She started running back up the beach the way we'd come, rather than towards me and the stairs.
              “Swim out and come back this way!” I shouted after her and headed out into the water. I looked back over my shoulders as I headed out into the waves; the other beach goers had all scrambled up the stairs and were also piling into the watch tower, having climbed a narrow ladder. Another large wave broke towards the shore, and N. “Dive under it!” I shouted and then did so. Even though I was under the wave I could feel it pulling me back towards the concrete building and the pilings. I managed to get myself past the uplift of the wave without being flung back, but just barely.
              I came to the surface and shouted for N.
              There was no response.
              I swam down the beach to where I had seen her last.
              The water kept rising and the tide was smashing against the cliffs. I bumped into a cooler and used it to haul myself up higher out of the water, trying to find N out away from the cliffs where the water was choppy but not surging quite as hard.
              The people in the watch tower had launched a large grey/green floating blob, and were helping pull swimmers out of the water. The blob had a large central floating mass that was hollow, and I could see people in there with oars and rifles. Every so often one of them would shoot at something in the water.
              One of them aimed at me and I dove just as the rifle bullet struck the water in front of me. I spun out of the way, and noticed that my feet were webbed with green and black scales. I noticed that I could also breath under the water. I could feel the salty dirty water flowing through my gills. I touched my neck and face, with webbed fingers, felt the gills flaring, the smooth scales replacing my beard. I swam hard and pulled myself to the surface where I saw a small figure like N's in the water. She was splashing towards a long floating green tendril. “N!” I shouted at her.
              “Don't touch it, it's not for us!” I warned her.
              She shouted something and scrambled to climb onto the tendril that would take her back to the main mass of the green gloop.
              One of the people in the central chamber raised his rifle to shoot her. I charged the base of the tendril hoping to knock off his aim. “Dive!” I shouted and slammed into the gloopy tendril, in an effort to shake the mass and save N from being shot. The central mass didn't budge, but the tendril whipped away from N and attempted to snatch me up out of the water. She turned to face me, a terrified look crossed her blue and green scaled face.

              Later I found myself on the top of a hill with Bart and Lisa Simpson. Lisa was saying that Katie had been turned into a dog in the Under, and if we didn't get to her she was going to be taken to the pound and killed.
              “Or spayed and adopted out, how bad could that be?” Bart quipped.
              We raced down the hill, stopping at the library, which also served as the gateway into the “Under Springfield.” Lisa and I talked to the librarian, there was some sort of big Under Springfield secret plan, and we convinced the Librarian that Katie being a dog would undermine that plan. She gave Lisa a sheet of paper that would act like a pass that would allow us to get assistance from any citizen of Under Springfield who we happened across.
              Bart was anxious to be going and so we raced back the portal hidden in the stacks of the reference room. “Has this been here the whole time.?”
              “Yes, Bart,” Lisa started.
              “Good hiding place, what nerd would ever come back here!”
              “Who, indeed, Bart.”
              We jumped through and found ourselves on top of a large mountain. I could see a road off to the left, down about two hundred yard and a ridgeline, sort of climbable straight ahead. The road snaked its switchback self down the mountainside to come out at the base of a large lake and followed that around behind the foothills and eventually into the city. The whole thing was real rather than cartoon-like as was the hillside and library previously. Bart and Lisa were also now human looking teens. Bart saw me eying the route and shouted.
              “Take way too long, man! This way!” He jumped on his skateboard and headed down the stone cap of the mountain. “Kowabunga, dudes!”
              “Bart!” Lisa shouted.
              “Let's go,” I grabbed Lisa's hand and we ran after Bart, who, miraculously managed to survive not being a toon.
              There at the base of the rounded dome top of the mountain was a large construction site, It looked like a tunnel came out from under the granite dome, and a channel was being cut all the way down into the city.
              “The Under Springfield Viaduct! Brilliant, Bart!” Lisa shouted and ran down the center of the large cut.
              “Via duck? Don't you mean via foot,” Bart quipped in a really bad Groucho imitation and then raced after his sister.
              I took a deep breath, all this running was starting to make it difficult to breath. As I stumbled along behind them I searched my pockets and found an inhaler. I suddenly realized that I was Millhouse.
              I managed to tumble out of the viaduct as Lisa and Bart were arguing over a map of the city. Bart was arguing that he should just skateboard ahead and Lisa could ride with me. He took off and Lisa shouted after him.
              I puffed up and grabbed the paper from Lisa and waved down a cab. “What are you doing?”
              “This thing makes people help us, right?”
              “Well...”
              “Let's take a cab, all the running's killing me.” I took another hit off the inhaler.
              The cab ride was uneventful, and the cabby didn't even charge us for the ride. We got there just as Katie was being put in the cage to go to the pound. Bart was distracting the Dog Catcher, and a police officer trying to delay them until Lisa could show up with the document.
              Katie growled at me. I realized that she could tell that I wasn't really Millhouse. While Lisa was showing the paper to the dog catcher, I whispered into the cage, “Play along Katie, we're here to rescue you, once you're safe I'll be out of here.”
              She immediately calmed down and I hammed it up “Good girl, you're going to be okay now. Good girl.”
              The dog catcher let her out and I made a show of hugging her and scratching her behind the ears.
              Katie gave me the “you are so going to pay for this” look.
              We went back into the house and I grabbed a long coat from the front hall hangers and a skirt from the floor of a bedroom we passed. “You might want to put these on.”
              “What does a dog need with clothes?” Bart asked.
              I didn't hesitate, and left Millhouse and took on the point of view of the dog, then stepped out of Katie. Lisa had just finished zipping up the skirt.
              “Whoa! Boobies,” Bart whistled.
              Katie yelped and quickly pulled her jacket closed.
              Millhouse blushed and took another hit off his inhaler.
              I turned into myself, grabbing a pillow to cover up.
              “Who are you?” Lisa asked.
              “An old dude, dude”
              “You have asthma, too!”
              “Thank you,” Katie turned and waved to me.
              I started to wave. The dream ended before I could even say good bye.
              One of the delightful things about this dream was how normal the kids looked in the dream. You could still tell who they were but they were not cartoon like at all. Bart was a regular looking crew cut wearing blonde kid, Lisa had short curly hair (also blonde) with a button nose and a great smile. Millhouse looked like young Toby McGuire and Katie was a cute brunette with dark brown eyes and full lips. All of them except for Lisa looked like college kids, and she looked like she was in her late teens at least.
              The city of Under Springfield was interesting as well. It was connected to the city I dream about by its architecture, the long blocks of covered sidewalks and shops that came right out to the edge of the street, so you would have to walk through them rather than in the road. Even the winding road had similarities to the one in the mountains outside my dream city. There was an odd tint to the sky, a sort of darker than normal blue that colored the buildings and streets of the city a little bit on the cool side, even in broad daylight. All of the cities official vehicles, police cars, the dog catcher's Van, even the taxis, all had the look of the 1950s, streamlined, fins and portholes, but I also knew that they were in fact fairly new.

Pacific Embolism

              I dreamed that the earth quake woke almost six million people from San Diego to Los Angeles. But that wasn't the worst part. I was somehow aware of a great shifting, a bubbling, like when a pot of water is slowly raised above boiling, and something is dropped into the over hot water. I woke N and insisted that she get her car keys ready. We could only grab some of the cats. N kept asking “Why?” and I found that I couldn't really explain.
              I drove us out of town, and up the highest mountain I could find nearby. As I drove I asked N to call all of our friends and warn them. She was grumbling about it, but she did so, in between wresting cats into the back seat.
              I pulled into a turnout on Palomar Mountain where we could see the ocean. I set up the telescope and trained it out to sea. Soon I heard N gasp.
              She pointed, I spun the telescope over and saw a giant wave, that wasn't really a wave. Water frothed and seethed and was tossed high into the air. It foamed like a giant carbonated soda. Then the embolism of Carbon Dioxide and Carbon Monoxide, invisible, save for the birds falling out of the sky in front of it, rolled across the ocean toward the coast and all of its inlets and bays. The water rolled back into itself filling the foaming void, and a tsunami formed, racing towards the shore, pushing the deadly gasses in front of it. I had sealed up the house as best as I could, I hoped the cats would have enough oxygen to survive. S called from Rabbit Rock, I hoped he was high enough off the ground. A and C were driving up the mountain to join us. We didn't hear from mom and dad, but I was hopeful that they were far enough inland and high enough at the top of their hill to avoid the disaster.
              I wound up the radio and we started trying to find news stations that would tell us what was going on.

Potted Plant Shoot, Ivy Cliff Fall

              I dreamed I was setting up lights and reflectors for a photo shoot, when some random people stopped by and asked if they could be in the photos. I said “Sure, just sign the release,” and some did, and some decided to just stay and watch.
              I took hundreds of photos of several folks with the various large potted plants I had assembled for the shoot. A smaller group of the “models” and I went back to the house to review the images. Several of them wanted to buy some of the images there and then, so I printed them on high quality photo paper and matted them.
              After making a couple of hundred dollars I was getting tired and managed to get rid of all but a couple of the women. They wanted me to take more “intimate” photos. I agreed and took their contact information. The women seemed disappointed that they weren't going to be photographed right now. I explained that I needed to clean up equipment from the day's shoot and to prepare my studio. I wanted to scout outdoor locations for them as well. They promised to return in the morning.

              Later I dreamed I was lying on the retaining wall in the back yard. T-Rex was madly pumping my back and howling in my hear. I found that I couldn't move, and it was getting darker, and colder every moment. I could see Little John and Marvin in the house, they were stretched up against the living room slider, clawing frantically at it. I could tell that they were meowing at me, but I couldn't hear them at all, other than their claws tappity-tapping on the glass. I wanted to shout at them to “Go get mom-cat!” However, I didn't seem able to speak. Some broken bits of ivy fluttered down onto me, and I couldn't muster up the strength to brush them aside. That's when I realized that I had fallen down the cliff in the back yard again.

Green Colon Slime

              We've been back two weeks, and I still have trouble getting up and out in time to have some writing time before work. Dreams are sort of lost by the time my first break of the morning rolls around, if I can even take a break. This seems to continue even on the weekends. I did have a dream this morning that I remember parts.
              More of a nightmare, really. N was visiting with J, when she began to experience severe lower GI discomfort. We rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with green slime in her colon. (Obviously been playing too much WoW lately.) The hospital doped her up so she wouldn't mind the pain, and that's all they said they could do for her. The EMT said that she needed a druid to dispel the magic, a de-curse wouldn't do it, so I couldn't help her.
              I didn't know that I could de-curse in real life. Figuring that if I could remove curses, perhaps N could heal herself.
              “She's not that kind of druid.”
              Yes, like I said, perhaps a little too much WoW.

Children!

       I dreamed that I had three children running through the house knocking things over, talking back and just being general pains-in-the-neck. The terrible thing about this, the part that made me wake up in a sweat, was that they were mine and I couldn't send them home; they were home!
       I then had a relatively normal nightmare where I dreamed someone was out in the front room yelling for help, and I couldn't wake up to go to help them. I was (dreaming) fully awake but unable to move. How do I know I was dreaming, well, the bedroom isn't painted purple like that. I'm also pretty sure that there aren't any big white spotted leapards on N's dresser. For some reason I couldn't wake up out of this one, though.

Chalk Lecture in KPFM, Night Terror

       I dreamed I was listening to a lecture by a woman who used multi-colored chalk to illustrate her lecture. The lecture was in a Killer Pizza from Mars, but instead of movie posters on the walls, there were blackboards. The blackboards were all different sizes and each had a tray full of various colored chalks, some of which were fluorescent. As the woman spoke, I sketched a scene from Star Wars (Luke hiding from Vader on the second Death Star) only in my scene, the characters were Lego Mini-Figures.
       "Why Legos?" S asked.
       "I like Legos, and I draw them better than real people," I answered.
       "That's just weird." S couldn't seem to take his eyes off the drawing, though.
       I had made the overhead light a part of the drawing, using it as the source of light in the Death Star picture.
       The woman made her way over to our table. She stopped talking and pulled out a piece of chalk, making a second beam of light seem to come from the single lamp, this one in chalk, she than added a scene next to mine on the wall, rather than on the blackboard. She drew the space battle taking place outside of the Death Star. Unfortunately she didn't draw Lego ships. For some reason that made me a little bit angry at her, but I didn't interrupt her, just mentioned "It would be cool if the ships were also Lego."
       "I can't draw Lego."
       "How's that?" S asked, "Everyone can draw Lego." He then pulled out some red chalk and began to draw a Sand Crawler and Jawas on the wall as well. He made the Crawler look like a Lego construction, and his Jawas had glowing red circle pieces for eye.
       "Now that's cool." I said.
       The woman huffed and wandered off, her space battle incomplete. I started converting her drawing into Lego ships, and things started looking better. She wandered back to her tables and continued her lecture, whatever it was.

       I had one of those short little "wake with a start dreams." I was in my kitchen, everything going along so normal I would swear that this is in fact a memory. I was cleaning off the counter when I swept up a fur covered eight inch rope. Only, I realized with a shock, it wasn't a rope, it was one of the kitten's tails. I called the two red tabbies names, shocked, trying to find out who had lost their tail. My heart started racing and I woke terrified. Everyone was safe and whole, but they were now expecting breakfast.