i have two pretty commonly recurring dreams, though i suppose one you could call a nightmare. they're always a little different, but the same basic themes.
the flying/falling dream
when i was younger, i used to fly in my dreams. i was quite proficient at it. it was always sort of like swimming, involving flapping my arms or legs. never quite seemed remotely plausible in the waking world, but par for the course in dreams. i'd fly high, or low, and do all kinds of tricks. probably one of the most fun things you can ever really do.
as i got into my teenage years, i'd have dreams where mid-flight, i'd start to have problems. like sluggish responses to changes in direction, not getting enough lift, and puttering out to the ground. as this progressed, i reached a point where i'd just start randomly falling from the sky. eventually, it began to get harder and harder to stay aloft, or even to get off the ground. it was particularly frustrating, in this strange almost sexual sense, because i'm a smei-lucid dreamer. i'll know that i'm dreaming and that i've had similar dreams before, but i am for whatever reason powerless (or too stupid) to change things upon this realization. so i'll remember being able to fly, and spend the rest of the dream trying to figure out what's going wrong.
lately, this trend has been reversing itself. i've been getting up off the ground more and more easily, but i can't seem to figure out the controls anymore. so i'm sloppy, and reckless, and go crashing into things. for instance, i had one a few months ago where i seemed to be superman, but i couldn't control my power of flight very well. i got way up high, but came crashing down almost immediately leaving a nice crater. one a while back where i flew up high to go someplace, but overshot it by a long margin and ended up in a big artifical lake. and one i think last night where i got tangled up in a sheet and some powerlines. i'm flying again, just badly.
these dreams almost always take place in my own neighborhood, though there are generally several large changes. a new plaza just on the other side of those trees, a big billboard where those apartments used to be, etc.
the memory loss/paralysis nightmare
i remember the first one of these quite vividly because i woke myself trying to scream. i was with a crowd of people in a little wooden cabin. none of us knew how we got there or what we were doing. it was dark, lit by the moon and not much else. at the end of the short hallway was a screen door, and beyond that a small open area with grass, and beyond that the forest. seemed rather north of here, not a florida forest; pine trees and such. something about it said "freedom" so i ran for it. the others followed. something was chasing us.
i got to the trees, and turned around to see where everyone else was, but all i could see was our captor standing in the doorway. he wasn't human. i don't remember what he was wearing, because all i could focus on were his eyes. they were gigantic, white and featureless, and took up about half of his face. their edges were glowing electric blue, and
buzzed audibly with rage as he pointed his index finger at me and... i was out.
i woke up in a pristine looking waiting area, like something out of 70's sci-fi. clean, but kinda tacky, with strange scenery in the background. pointed mountains and such. i didn't remember how i got there, or the bit that came before. i looked over, and saw someone i recognized, a girl i knew in middle school but lost touch with. she was equally confused. a nice looking middle-aged man with white hair in what appeared to be most of a cleansuit came out to meet us, and the others who were waiting on the benches. he took us on a tour of his facilities. he wasn't human either -- he was a representative of some kind of space alien society that had come to help mankind. good feelings all around, and they certainly seemed like nice people.
he walked us into a surgery observation area. the others of his kind, in full cleansuits this time, were busily working on someone on the table, using a big aparatus coming down from the ceiling with a rotary blade on the end. they were cutting into the person's side, on their left. i used to get random pains in that particular spot, never thought much of it, but it became significant in the dream. the nice man quietly explained to us that there were correcting some defect in human anatomy that would help us get along on their world, or some such thing. but it was clear they were putting something in as well. i didn't trust him, or his motivations for taking organs out of people.
as we went back out into the waiting area, i stood off a distance, alone, and watched him talk to my friend from middle school. i began, slowly, to notice things about him, visually, that were disguised as human before -- like his giant white featureless eyes. and all of a sudden, my memory of the previous half of the dream came rushing back. he looked at me, and knew. i stood their trying to shout a warning to my friend and the others there, but i couldn't open my mouth to speak. i jumped up and down, and tried and tried and tried to shout like the future of all mankind depended on it... and woke up.
these figures have since featured in at least one other dream that involved something like sleep paralysis, and one genuine case of sleep paralysis. the most recent case was in an empty school, where i started to become aware of
little ones. nobody else could see them. they were actually sort of cute, big-headed and big-eyed like living anime. and they knew i could see them, so they took me by the hand and we played a bunch of childrens games in a kindergarten classroom. they accepted me as one of their own. but when they figured out that i wasn't one of them, they turned on me. again with the electric blue and the buzzing, only this time i could see their mouths as well -- and they were filling with giant pointy teeth. they surrounded me. i got the impression that they
fed on souls and wanted mine. needless to say, i ran like hell. one got me in some kind of administrative room. desk and a computer and a door on either end. found myself on the floor unable to move, making a lot of grunting shining noises fighting against the paralysis, semi-aware of the real world outside of the dream and trying to get the attention of the people there. (since i hold odd sleeping hours, the people who were awake at the time pointed out later that i was making audible noises in real life). spent a good ten minutes fighting it until i was able to move... and i caught a regular school bus home from the bus loop. it didn't take me all the way, so i flew the rest of the way.
Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.
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