All Singing and Dancing, Science Fiction, Future-Fantasy, Seven Escape-Room Extravaganza!

Starting with a sliding ice puzzle and winding its song and dance routine way through; star crossed romance, rescues, tentacled maidens, mafia weddings with choreographed bridal deflowering, lost purses, exes showing off their reconstructive breast surgeries, and, in general no foot, hand or chest pains. What an exhilerating and eshausting morning.

Fevered Dream

Started with our little community theater group in Dream City, I'm in the second seat of the first row. The show is going, the audience is full of former cast members and parents, and friends, and the recently homeless, watching, and singing along. It is a run through, working rehearsal, but with a few stops as possible. It is going well. familiar music for everyone.

Take the stage with your friends, the writer and director urge, looking at me for permission. Who am I to deny these people, all these talents, their fun?

There is the digging to enlarge the stage, mounds of stored flats and frames and crates,
Lead down below the hall to the back of the ruined temple on the other side of the block.
And an exterior door.
Street Level.
A short walk to verify, Ware house of house of storage for house of horrors. (See us in Octobre)

It is one of my warehouses, holding a now defunct show's sets I cannot make myself evict.
I smile.

I walk through to a street, a band was set up,
Streets blocked, then been told their promised gig could no go forward.
This City must Move
Without them.

Pack it all up.

Interrupted Nuptials, famous vocal cords grown old, but still grasping at the youth promised of wedded bliss. Fran-San Cisco will not have them.

Take the stage, both of you,
Join the show,
Take the stage with our little community of performers, we're moving the audience into the ground floor,
Opening all the crates.
Under UV lights,
The faded sets like cartoon fireworks, all horror long faded.
We perform the Entre` Act
The choreographer adjusts.
Then a Wedding
Then Act II
Dizzying effects,
Unforgettable Nuptials
A community restoration
"Hallelujah" sung by hundreds of voices.
"We can't sing that, we don't have the rights!"
"I wouldn't worry about that," the silver-haired groom, and owner of the song smiles. "It's meant to be sung. Just, like, this."
He smiles.
"We have three more nights..."
The band, smiles.
My director and choreographer smile.
The excavators smile,
The bride and groom look at one another, all honeymoon plans fled, they take the stage.
And smile.
We finish the song with the crowd.
And smile.

I awake, music still thundering in my ears.
I smile.

Dropping in on a Class

I dreamed I was working at a college and dropped in on a Drama course. While this was obviously influenced by the movie we'd seen last night, "Middleton," it felt a lot like my other theater dreams where I am out of my element and not prepared for the class/performance. This one had the additional feature of my being shirtless. (The covers had been pulled off and I was getting cold, I think.) There was a prop piano that I was setting up with a microphone, not for the instrument, but for the folks who would be sitting around the prop. The piano was going to be staged so that the audience couldn't see the actor's hands who was supposed to be playing the piano. This was because there wasn't actually any keys on the piano, it really was just and empty shell.

I was very self conscious of my flabby old self, but the students didn't seem to even notice. They even climbed up around me to help move the piano into position and then we all sat together while the audio engineer adjusted the microphone settings.

There were other dreams as well, small snippets that vanished between the bed and the water closet, I do know that one of them was full of warm, fluffy, cuddly kittens. I was so happy to be the center of their little world that I didn't want to wake up.

RGB Troll Theater

I was a member of a troupe of performers, and the story we were performing was a tale of the rise to power and terrifying fall of an historic leader of the Tribe. Trolls were divided into three castes, Orange-Red were the political leaders, the Blue trolls were the educational and religious, and the Green trolls were the warriors. The lightest tinted of each group were the workers, farmers, and craftsman, and performers, of society. Being born to a family of depth (or strong hue) didn't mean you would inherit the hue, every troll started out like a clean white parchment.

There was something about your rank in society and your position that caused your skin to change as you aged, and there were even the rare trolls who took on more than one color. I was playing the roll of one of those sorts. My color, however, was applied by a combination of lights and makeup.

The show was a progressive show. In other words, the entire production moved through the village, and the regions around it, each change of location representing a new act in the performance. In many of my performance dreams, I became, as the dream progresses, more and more unsure of my actual lines in the show. (I think because I am waking up.) This time, however, I was very familiar with the show, and the story, and the character. As we moved into our second act, some of the crew, and performers were taking the ground route, to entertain our following audience, and some of the others were taking an actual airship. The trollop I was infatuated with was taking the airship. I tried to impress her with a little bit of magic, as I had recently discovered my flesh turning blue, and found I had shamanistic control over the wind and sand. It was getting so pronounced that in the first act, I no longer needed the blue lights and blue makeup.

At the end of the first act, I used my new power to stir up the dust under the red and blue spotlights that were on my left and right. This was a pivotal moment in the plot, my beloved whisked away by a powerful prince in his airship, and I a lowly shaman, had decided to take matters into my own hands in her regard, but there was a choice that had to be made, a path to choose, and until this point in history, no troll had ever chosen a blended path, at least not with any great success. (I knew as a modern troll that there were many such folks, even amongst our company and in our audience, but this was a historical piece and the castes were much more rigid in that time.) I stood as the lights picked up my swirling dust and the they swung over to each light a half of me...then suddenly the performance area plunged into darkness. (Part of the show, not a surprise to us in the company.)

We slipped away into the night so I could get a light dusting of red to make me a more purple or blended looking troll. I discovered that my beloved hadn't even been watching my climactic moment at the end of the first act, so hadn't even seen the magical effect, which I could hear our audience chatting about with no small appreciation. She asked if I could do it again for her, but my reserves were too low and the sand where we were conversing was a little too wet for the slight breeze to pick up the grains. She laughed and re-boarded the airship gondola, which was winched up into the sky as the airship, with the lighting and sound crews aboard headed to the location for act two. The makeup artist looked me over and put away his red powders. "Don't know what's going on with you, did you do your own makeup?"

I hadn't. I told him that. He grew very quiet when he realized it wasn't makeup.

He pulled out a jar of tan powder and slapped it all over me. "Well, however you did it, you need to tone it down, you're too hued for the second act."

I looked down at the palm of my hand. It was indeed purple, and much darker than I remembered. I reached out with my mind and sifted through the sands, grinding the grains even smaller and making an even finer powder out of the pile of sand at my feet. I was squeezing my hands so hard that the blood spilled into the sand, and was immediately absorbed and spread throughout the growing mound. I was immediately able to control the sand and the air about it with much more ease. With a start I realized that this was some sort of blood magic, something the character I was playing could do, but almost no trolls currently practiced, as it was considered a lost art.

We began our journey, the interlude route was where I would pick up my "army" of maimed and oddly hued trolls, the outcasts and untouchables of their time. We would also pick up members fo the local audience who fit those descriptions, and they would stay on the stage with me during the second act, no longer shamed for just looking different. It was in fact, during one such performance that I had joined the company as a young troll. Now our company director was stepping down, so he'd asked me to keep an eye out for promising talent, so I really looked forward to this part of the performance, part ritual and part improv.

What was different this time, was that some of the shamanistic miracles we would just read the holy text's descriptions of...I was fairly certain I had enough control to do some of the effects, even if just to a small scale. The first event was a sand bridge allowing the character and a maimed old man to cross a ravine. The bridge was in place and the airship would light it up as I approached. With the addition of all my flying red sand, the illusion was nearly perfect. We had a lot of people follow us to the second act at that point who might not have otherwise done so. I even heard surprised gasps from some of the crown, and saw a blue shaman eying me with a suspicious look on his face. He was missing some fingers, so I motioned for him to join me. I took his hand and noticed that I was already darker blue than him, it shocked me. He nodded to me, and fell in with my army. I could see my actress friend up in the airship looking over her balcony rail, she was in the company of an Orange Red troll of pretty deep hue, and I realized I had lost her. I didn't give up, as the character I was playing proved, "hue is a temporary thing, ever changing, and fortunes and feelings change with them."

After some more fluffing the sand around the dream broke up and I woke.

Accidental Downspout

I was dressed in a green wool suit, wholly inappropriate for the weather, but right for the 1940's style murder mystery weekend I was acting in. I was glad that my character would be killed in the first half of the first day. After that, I would go into town and get a shave and a haircut, rinse out the temporary hair color and return as a late arriving "guest" for the rest of the weekend. My job at that point would be to be a sort of improvisational "shill" who would be responsible for making sure one of the investigation teams stayed somewhat on track with the story. Missing out on the main action would give me the excuse to say "What happened, again?" with great sincerity. I had done this enough times to discover that was typically enough to keep things on track.

I always got a kick out of the round up at the end of the weekend where our roles were revealed. There were always a few people who never knew I was one of the main cast the first morning.

This particular time, things went a little bit odd when I returned from town. There was a child out on the porch, just sitting and looking out at the rain. Now, this is an "adult" weekend, as there are frequent bad words, some partial nudity, and the occasional heavy sexual tension. (Sometimes the guests brought their own brand of this, which, as a single actor, was not unwelcome.) So, I was surprised to see the child. I stepped out onto the patio to try to determine where he belonged.

And I was a child, playing on the same patio, but newer, with a fresh coat of whitewash, and brand new cloth screens between the beams. "Let's go on the roof to watch the storm come in!" said a little brown-haired boy, my brother, older, braver, but shorter than myself.

I watched as he swung out of the patio door and hoisted himself up the corner post, stepping on the lantern support and then up onto the roof. I ran out to the uncovered part of the patio, pacing him as he raced over to the shorter part of the roof. By leaning back, I could see the black and green cloud wall approaching. Wind and lightning whipped around the thing silently. The wind stirred across the yard behind me and flowed, full of the leaves dropped in an early fall, up and over the roof of the house, as if the storm contained some giant vacuum cleaner. "Get up here! It's keen!"

"I can see it from here. Looks like a tornado, we should get in the basement!"

"It's too late for a tornado, you're missing the lightning!"

"I can see it from here!"

"No you can't!"

"Can, too!"

"Chicken!"

Well, I couldn't let that stand, so I hopped up on the rail and walked over to the corner post with the lantern support. My brother had turned back to watch the storm. The climb terrified me. I half walked half crouched over to my brother once I was on the roof. It was covered in leaves and the footing seemed unsure. He laughed but quickly turned back to the storm. He was right, of course, I couldn't see all of the lightning. The storm had to be at least a mile across, a solid green-gray wall of blurry motion, shot through with lightning that rippled around the circle, up into the thick clouds above and leaping off the roofs and trees below as though it were being drawn up into the thing.

I stood, completely amazed, entranced.

"Told you."

"Uh huh." I nodded, still standing slightly hunched over, afraid I would fall backwards.

We could hear the rumbling of nearly continuous thunder, like an approaching freight train. The cloud and its lightning storm began to blur and fade. Too late, I realized that was the storm letting loose, the curtain falling on a show. I turned and went back to the patio, where it would be easier to get down.

"Yellow!" My brother teased.

"I don't want to get..."

But it was too late. The water from the storm front hit. I could barely make out my brother, it was as if I'd been dowsed with the laundry tub, only the water kept coming. I scrambled on all fours to the corner post, easing myself down over the edge of the roof, hanging on to the lantern support for all I was worth. I could feel my feet slipping on the hand rail of the open part of the patio. I turned to see where my brother was. He was coming straight down the roof. I'd seen him hang from the gutter and drop to the patio chair before, so figured that was what he was going to do. I grunted, I should of done that. It was a ten foot drop off the handrail to the ground below if I slipped.

Then, the wind came. I could feel the whole house shake. My brother hadn't made it back to where the patio was when he slipped, then rolled towards the edge of the roof. It was probably twenty feet to the ground where he was. I shouted his name. His foot slammed into the gutter and he hunched up against it legs drawn up to his chest, but instead of crawling back to the relative safety of the porch overhang, he stood up and waved at me, keeping one foot in the gutter. Another gust, and I dropped to the rail, forcing myself to fall on the patio side. It hurt, but I was safe. I stood up, there was no sign of my brother, the gutter where he'd been standing was burst out, and water poured out of the accidental downspout. I limped over to the rail, but couldn't bring myself to look down right away.

After a moment, I followed the falling stream of water, watching it arc down past the patio, and finally to where it splashed on the small crumpled form of my brother in the broken berry bushes below. And I knew, I just knew he was gone.

The adult me stood alone on the patio, in the midst of a sudden fall shower. I turned and looked out past the edge of the patio, eyes along the roof line, and there about six feet past the end of the patio was a rusted hole with the ragged edges still slightly bowed out, water poured out of it far in excess of what one might expect for such a gentle rain. I walked to the edge of the patio, following the falling water with my eye, and there at the bottom of the fall, it fell in a bramble bush, pushing the leaves and branches playfully to splash on what I'd always thought to be just a granite stone, but that I now realized was a grave marker. The young boy was there with me, appearing out of nowhere.

"It wasn't your fault." I said.

"I still miss him. He won't come play in the rain any more."

"Of course you do. He loved you." I turned to face the boy, and he faded away smiling sadly.

The older gentleman who owned the house slid open the door. He watched me standing in the rain for a moment or two, then motioned with a towel in his hand.

I looked out at the gutter again for a moment, then turned back to the house.

He handed me the towel. "I should fix that gutter some time."

I looked at him, "no need, looks like the water goes right where it's needed."

"You saw him, didn't you."

I nodded. I could hear the sounds of the guests chattering about their clues in distant parts of the house, the old man and I looked out across the rainy valley.

"I still miss him."

"Of course you do, he loved the wonder of the world, the adventure of it, loved you."

The old man handed me another towel, "hold that for me,"  then stepped out onto the patio himself.

Spiderman Costume, Waiting

              I dreamed I was at a party or get together where I didn't know hardly anyone. I was wearing a Spiderman outfit, at my wife N's insistence. She was wearing an Egyptian Goddess sort of outfit, with cat ears, so I'm assuming Bast. At one point in the evening I was upside down in the hallway, and there were 5 other Spiderman costumed folks there. N was trying to figure out which one was me. She eliminated the two women and the one really heavy man (over 300 lbs, easy) leaving one fairly slender guy, and myself, who was pressed up against the wall and ceiling upside down. Since I had done the wall climbing thing to her once before, she finally sighed and picked me. I could tell she was more attracted to the skinny Spiderman.
              “I told you I should have come as Uncle Fester,” I said, “No duplicates there.”
              “Ugh!” was her only response.

              I fell back to sleep this morning after N left for her meeting. I found myself on a stage, pretty much empty, save for a single light tree, with a dimly lit ellipsoidal aimed upstage.
              “Nothing to be done.” I struggled to remove my left boot.

Brass and Steel Chess Set.

       I dreamed I was playing chess in a large room with dozens of other people. The chess sets were made of Steel and Brass. The Steel sets were highly polished and the Brass were dark with tarnish, while still having a coat of highly reflective varnish over them.
       There were naked women painted on the squares of the chess boards. Whenever you captured a piece on one of the squares, that woman would remove an article of clothing.

Lost in Little Red, Lost Back Stage

       Last night's dream escapade involved driving through a neighborhood in search of the way out of the neighborhood. I found myself driving in circles, always ending up in the same cul-de-sac. No path seemed to take me out of the neighborhood. Finally I asked and someone pointed me to an overgrown path that went between two houses.
       Little Red was small enough to fit. I pulled her tires up onto the two worn tire tracks and followed the path between the houses until I came to a shiny new stretch of wire fence (the rectangular grid type not chain link.) I got out and looked at the stretch of wire across the path. It was much newer than the wooden fence posts it was stapled to on either side.
       A woman came out of one of the houses. "Get away from there!" she shouted at me.
       "I was told this was the way out of this neighborhood."
       "Who would want to leave?"
       "I'm lost, and trying to get back to the freeway."
       "Well, you'll just have to..." she paused and then looked around. I couldn't see what she was looking at, she followed the invisible something for a bit and then turned back to me. "You want to make love to my daughters!"
       I had no idea where that came from. I looked around again. This time I did see a tuft of red hair and a little summer dress scoot back behind her house.
       "Too young for me, if they grow up to look like you, call me then." The woman was also red-haired, well rounded and only a little thick, still very attractive.
       This seemed to snap her out of her dangerous seeming weirdness and back into her normal weirdness. "I should call the cops on you."
       "How would they get in to get me?" I asked.
       The dream ended before I could get an answer.

       In another dream I was in full Japanese Kimono and mask, I had to go to the bathroom so made my way to the bathrooms back stage, but you had to go outside to get to them. As I was adjusting my costume to make water, I heard a child-like noise behind me. I turned around. A little girl was looking at the urinals, pointing. "What's that."
       "A Urinal, this is the men's room." I stated.
       She looked like she was about to panic. It was obvious she'd been surprised by my voice. I hushed her and ran to the door, pulling it open a little bit and looking out.
       "No one there, the women's room is just across the walk, go for it." I held the door open for her.
       "Thanks," she muttered and shot across the walkway to the other rest room.
       I was laughing so hard I couldn't pee.
       Later, I was on stage, and I heard her in the audience tell her parents that's the woman who was in the men's room. (So I guess she didn't figure out I was a man beneath my kimono and mask after all.)
       The play was going quite well, despite the fact that they'd put me in the wrong costume and I didn't know any of the lines for this character. The two of us they'd mixed up in wardrobe just quietly fed one another our lines, and since most of the performance was dance and pantomime, we weren't too bad off.
       We did change into our proper roles at the first opportunity. After the show the Stage Manager came back to give us notes, not knowing what had happened. Unfortunately one of the notes was that the first act was the best he'd seen for dance and pantomime, just a little slow on the line pickup. We decided to change roles, but this time to learn the other's lines first.

Musical, Picnic, Insect Panic

       The first dream I have any recollection of was a musical. The subject is now gone, the lyrics forgotten, but I still have the impression of people suddenly jumping up onto tables at the book store and singing and dancing. I know there were police involved and girl scouts gift wrapping books. Not much else remains.

       In the next dream, that I remember, I was at a picnic with several generations of family. There were three flattish areas on the side of the hill the house was on. The young kids were running up and down the hillside, mostly at the flat area at the bottom of the hill near the driveway. They were flying paper airplanes off the hill and chasing them down into the yard.
       The moms and dads of the kids were up on the nearly flat spot on top of the hill, they'd taken their lunches and walked up to the shade of the trees where they could watch over their broods.
       The grand parents and childless aunts and uncles were on the patio behind the house. They were about two thirds of the way up the hill. They were minding the grills and sitting near the coolers under the patio covers and sun shades.
       I was out on the hillside, making paper airplanes and throwing them up in the air for the kids to chase them. One of my fellow adults asked me if it wasn't time for me to join the patio bunch. I said I'd be there in a bit, I still had a soda and a handful of chips in the crook of a tree near by, there were still a few sheets of advertisements left to make planes out of yet. The adult just shrugged, headed back to the shade of the patio.
       "He's not done playing with the kids yet!" he called out to N.
       "OK, I've got more soda for you when you're ready!" She yelled over to me.
       "Thanks!"
       "I'll get it for you, Uncle!" One of my nephews started racing up the hill, soon joined by several other kids.
       The adults looked panicked. I laughed when they brought back sodas for everyone, but forgot mine. "When do you think we'll have to stay at the old people's table?"
       "Not until you're ready for it."
       "Why aren't you at the old people's table?" one of the younger nephews asked, his older sister elbowed him.
       "Ease up, girlie girl, that's a fair question. Sometimes I do sit over there, sometimes I sit up with your parents, sometimes playing with you guys is fun, I'll get tired long before you do, though, so don't expect this to last all day."
       "Unless we're in the lake!"
       "Well, that's the lake, my belly fat lets me float all day long, you know."
       I shook my belly fat in both hands to a chorus of "gross" and "Ewww!" and general laughter. Soon waters and sodas and lemonades were all consumed and the pile of paper airplanes was large at my feet. I started tossing them up in the air for them to chase again.

       The last dream I remember before waking up was much scarier, the feeling of hundreds of small insects, like ants, crawling all over the carpet and sliding glass door to the bedroom. The insects weren't normal insects, and they were making a lot of noise. I didn't want to sit up in bed and see them, so I just lay still sensing them moving around and, well, chanting, I think. I tried to call for help, but couldn't. I felt them start climbing up the bedspread at the foot of the bed, their scouts running across my toes. I started sweating and shivering at the same time. I finally did wake up and sat up, just managing to stifle a yelp. Thank goodness we didn't have one of our seasonal ant swarms going. (At least, not in the house.)

Convention Horrors

       I dreamed I was talking with a bunch of people I didn't know and we were discussing getting into a Risus campaign game over the next few days. One of the men wanted to make sure everyone brought their trading cards and insisted that we use them to develop our characters and villains.
       "You will, of course, have to surrender your cards to the game master when you use them." The man insisted.
       About two thirds of the players (6 of them) were ready to call it quits at that time.
       "I'll round up some envelopes and I'll keep your cards separated. You can get them back at the end of the game."
       That seemed to calm everyone down. Everyone left except a dark-haired woman. She didn't seem right to me. She was somehow hollow. I resisted her advances until she became angry and shoved me into a hole under the stairs. She locked me in somehow bound me. I couldn't move or call out. I could only just barely see her through some slats in a ventalation grill. Every time the heater kicked in I could feel and smell the air being drawn into the little space I was trapped in.
       I could hear her being attacked by a couple of drunk fellows. Eventually the sounds died down and she appeared at the grill. She was hollow, her head had been filled with trash, plastic chip bags, soda cans. "They completely filled me with junk," she moaned.
       Despite the fact that she was by far the creepiest thing going, I felt bad for her. Embarrassed that she'd been so poorly treated by those who I'd thought were fellow gamers.
       "Your turn." She showed the the remains of those who'd been so disrespectful of her. Not gamers, their torn and shredded clothing marked them as gang members, or at least wanna-bes.
       "I'm sure they deserved to die!" I mumbled, or tried to mumble.
       "I think, since you didn't want me, that you should be eaten by the four year old."
       "I'm not really into children, and how horrible that you would corrupt a child."
       "Not a human child. One of our newest."
       For some reason I was thinking of a tiger, a four year old tiger would be able to consume me. I was worried about missing the game, "I have preparation to do."
       "After we're done with you."
       Now I was confused.
       With that she pulled me out from under the stairs, snapping the ventalation grille back into place. She tossed me on the couch, dumping trash everywhere and slowly returning to a more normal shape. She absorbed the bones of her assailants, that really brought her into solid form.
       "That will hold me for a long while." She said.
       "You certainly look less hollow, now."
       "Am I attractive enough for you, now."
       "You were attractive enough before, now you're scary. I just didn't want to get involved with a player before the game. It makes being fair too difficult."
       "Well, Julie here isn't in your game." The dark haired woman, now not hollow seeming at all, turned and left. She was very feminine in her hip swaying walk out of the suite.
       "Hello sexy man." I heard from behind the couch.
       Julie was a blue-eyed blonde with long straight hair and a dusting of freckles over her nose. Her face was unnaturally flat, like some air had been let out of a playground ball. Just enough to give an overall sense of wrongness about her.
       I wanted out, but was still frozen, unable to move my arms and legs. I could feel myself breathing faster. She stood up from behind the couch to reveal that she was only wearing a man's shirt. I realized it was the one plain blue cotton button down shirt I'd brought to wear at the formal dinner before the awards show. It wasn't buttoned. She was not big breasted, but her breasts were firm and well shaped. Her slender waist hinted at a more than natural hollowness.
       "How are you a four year old?" I asked, trying to distract her long enough that I might get some feeling back and begin to move.
       "I've been like this for four years, silly, what did you hope for."
       "I thought she was talking about a tiger, or worse, a child."
       "A child would be worse than a tiger?" She paused in her stalk around the couch.
       "Being eaten by a tiger isn't evil, at least not on the tiger's part."
       "So, don't you think I'm better than either?"
       "I'm not so sure about that." I looked over at the pile of clothing from my predecessors.
       "They didn't have to die, they could have been nice. Good things happen to people who fill us with good things."
       "And bad things?"
       "Happen to people who fill us with bad things."
       "How about people who don't fill you at all?"
       "Not an option, sweetie, at least, not now that you're here."
       I tried to break out of my paralysis.
       Julie dropped my shirt to the ground, "Don't you find me attractive, I'm not all stretched out, either." She turned, showing me her lips, both upper and lower. "I'm much more careful about who I bring into me. I need you to fill me."
       "With good things?"
       "Whatever you choose."
       "Give me a hint here, what would be a good thing?"
       She shrugged. Then leaned down over me, I could feel her hand rubbing across my chest. Then she settled on top of me, her flat face hovering over mine. Her nipples barely brushing against the silk Hawian print of my shirt. "Your shirt is so soft."
       "It's silk, soft like you." I managed to move my head up next to hers. "You are lovely, but I don't know you, or where this is going. Are you sure I couldn't just teach you how to play Risus or something, it can be very fulfilling."
       "Fill me, fill me with anything you like."
       I suddenly found I had the use of my arms and legs. I hugged her to me and sat upright.
       "Oh, that's good."
       Interesting, I was frightened. I had felt something go out of me, into her, but I didn't feel bad about it, I didn't feel like anything was missing from me. I'd come to the convention not only to play games, but to make friends and enjoy the people I met. I held on to that idea.
       "Let me tell you about the game I've invented for the convention, perhaps you'll join us?"
       "Give me more..."
       So with the slender and ever more sexy blonde in my lap I proceded to tell her all about the game I'd brought to the convention, and then about the Risus campaign I'd be running as well. After a while she started asking questions, focusing on areas where I hadn't done much thought or preparation.
       During our brainstorming, there was lots of holding and cuddling.
       All the while she seemed to be absorbing something. Her face became normal looking. He waist filled out to a more realistic proportion. She was very wet and her nipples were hard. I didn't know that game system discussions could have such an effect on a woman.
       "Are you going to kiss me?"
       "Even though you are sitting here naked on my lap, there is something, not natural, going on here, and you haven't explained the rules sufficiently for me to know if it is worth taking that risk. You are physically very attractive, and in listening to me talk about games and game design, and actually asking questions, you are intellectually re-affirming, and interesting in your own right."
       "Well I wasn't always hollow inside. I am a gamer chick, always was, you've helped me remember that."
       She looked over to the room where here suitemate was sleeping, or digesting, which ever it was. "She's a gamer, too, you know. Be good to her in the game."
       "I will be good to everyone. That is what making a good game is about."
       "I, I can't kiss you first. I can only give what I am filled with."
       "I think I understand, sort of. How could you sit here aroused and naked, then?"
       "You're aroused."
       "I'm not naked."
       "Yes you are," and with that I noticed that somehow I was naked, and pressed up against her. "Fill me with good things and good things will happen to you."
       "Can you be one of my good things?"
       "Oh! My..." was the last articulate part of her response.
       Somehow, I skipped the good parts in the dream to wake up to both women holding on to me. I got up, kissed each of them on the forehead. "Another few days like this and we will be whole again," commented the Dark Haired Hollow woman.
       I went back to my room and got ready for my first gaming session of the day. I felt more prepared and confident than I had ever felt about a convention game. I just knew the playtest was going to go well, and that I would find many GMs for blind playtesting over the next three days.
       

Play Production

       I dreamed I was once again working on a play, this wasn't one I'd written, but I was directing and taking care of the technical direction as well. A young person, who I was trying to convince to take over the technical direction, kept flip-flopping on whether they wanted the job or not. I had the good fortune of having one of my favorite redheads as an actress in the show, the contract with her included the chance to direct our next production, so we were going to be working together for at least one more show. SCV was visiting the set while we were setting up for the second act. I tried to convince him to work on a live play utilizing some of my troupe's core players. He seemed to think the medium was too restrictive, though. I suggested we could use some of his poetry to lead into the play, and again during the intermission. S liked that idea.
       I was delighted in the noise and activity as the theater was alive with the sounds of construction, costume fittings, sound checks and actors spread throughout the building rehearsing. Sometimes I think I miss this more than anything.