Mobiledreams

I fell asleep in mid-conversation on the phone twice tonight. And, each time I had a dream. I fell asleep for just a split second, yet was still able to dream...Is this normal? Well, who really cares about being normal anyway? So, the first one was of me being in a Dallas airport, and the other had a wizard in it...but I can't remember much else. Anywho, just a quirky little tid-bit.

An Ancient Remedy

In this dream I was, yet again, myself. This has become a frequent motif in my dreams of late. I wonder how long it will last? Enjoy.

It was nighttime when I climbed into the helicopter. It had already begun to rain, but the multitude of city lights burned through the slick haze. We lifted off from a small eroded landing pad of faded white markings, pulling higher and higher into the sky. I could see the Mayan pyramid off in the distance, a great hulking mass of trees and crumbling stone. I had been working several years on the excavation of this pyramid, and it looked like an old friend greeting me in the gloom of the stormy night. The pilot swooped up the side of the pyramid giving me a glimpse of the encroaching jungle scaling up the stone sides. I still had so much more work to do. Far off in the distance I could see the city buzzing, oblivious, or perhaps inconsiderate, of the greatness of the structure that stood right outside its limits. The pilot lowered me down onto the top of the pyramid using a rope ladder. I clung to the slippery rungs as the ground floated up to meet me. I jumped down onto the roof and ran across to a trap-door like opening. I climbed down yet another rope ladder into a cold stone hallway. It was dark and damp inside the pyramid, but I could hear voices and a flickering light was coming from the end of a long stone corridor. I followed the voices around a left corner and I walked out into a large cavernous space. There was a small group of people clustered about each other, standing along the edge of a very deep stone shaft that extended all the way down through the center of the pyramid. The shaft was part of the design of the pyramid; it was square and about eight feet across and eight feet wide. Above the shaft, mounted on the walls to the left and right, were two large, metal, cone-shaped coils pointing towards each other. On the opposite ledge from where I was standing was an old desk with a large machine sitting on top of it. The machine contained a large panel of knobs and buttons, and meters with jumping needles inside them. Kiko sat at the desk and was fiddling with the knobs and buttons on the machine. That was when I noticed that Kiko’s husband was standing in front of me, but he looked about thirty years younger. His hair was dark and his shoulders were straighter.  I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him, "What’s going on? I was called out here, but the message didn’t give any details. Did they figure out the wiring problem?” He said to me, “Just wait and see. It’s about to begin.”  Then suddenly, I could feel every hair on my arms standing on end, and there was a deafening crack as the coils sizzled to life with lavender electricity. Arms of light arched out across the gaping shaft towards one another and met in the air above the hole with another whip-like sizzle. A large crackling orb of blue formed where the two arms had met. An old radio on a table behind me jumped to life and began to frantically flip through radio stations, producing a garbled cacophony of background music to accompany the crackling power of the electricity. And then I felt it. A golden, molten warmth seeping and spreading through my body. Every cell in my being began to hum and fizz with life. I felt so alive. Such an effervescent feeling! I felt more alive than I had ever felt in my entire life. A hysterical bubble of laughter escaped through my lips as I flexed my hands, feeling strong and vibrant. Kiko’s husband looked at me and smiled. He looked even younger now than he had a few minutes ago. Kiko turned some knobs on the machine and the electricity popped out of existence, leaving the room cold and blindingly dark. I could still feel the new energy pulsing underneath my skin. Part of me was in shock. I just couldn’t absorb the magnitude of our discovery…we had found the fountain of youth.

A Very Merry Unbirthday/ これは日本の書店ですか。

Last night was very strange…for most of it I was caught somewhere between sleep and waking. My mind just kept pacing around the rim of sleep, like a panther stalking its prey. Pacing, pacing, pacing, tasting the edge, then back to pacing. When my mind finally plunged into the inky depths of sleep towards dawn, I had two dreams. I only remember a part of the first dream, and the second one was very short. In both dreams I was myself, which is a rarity indeed.

A Very Merry Unbirthday

There was a house in a dying wood. All of the trees had lost all of their leaves and the ground was cracked and dry and disintegrating into a fine white powder that the wind would suck up from the ground and fling across your nose and mouth.  The house was oddly shaped, like the entirety had been built at different times, room by room. It was longer than it was wide, and each room would end abruptly where the next began without a separating wall. I walked through the house from the front door to the back yard. In each room there were different people doing different things; in one room there was an old couple watching a T.V. program on an old out-dated television set. The furniture was old, the upholstery worn and filled with holes which were covered by crocheted throw blankets in a multitude of colors. A white screen door led out onto the backyard where a very long table was set out beneath the over-arching branches of the white parched trees. Faded paper flags had been strung between the skeletal branches of the trees, and they fluttered in the dust-strewn wind. The table had been painted white at one point, but the paint was now peeling and had been worn off with age. Teapots and teacups littered a white lace runner that ran the length of the table and white plates were laden with cakes and sandwiches. Dean entered the backyard carrying stacks of paper in muted colors. He said that we needed to make more paper flowers and birds for decorations. Apparently, we were preparing for my birthday party…and then…the dream ended and another one began.

Despite (or more likely because of) the faded colors, the peeling paint, and the bare trees, I have to note that the whole scene was quite unusually beautiful. And for some reason, the presence of paper was incredibly important.

これは日本の書店ですか。/ Is this a Japanese Bookstore?

I found myself in a maze of folding tables, all filled to the brim with old books. Heaven. There were other things for sell in this haphazard store other than books, like metal teapots, and antique lamps, but I wasn’t interested in anything but the treasure-trove of books that lay in wait for my discovery. Though I say this was a store, the whole place was open-air with a large canopy draped on poles for shade. I was on an outer edge of the store which was pressed up against the outside of a building where the walls were all made of panels of glass. I then realized that I had not put on any make-up, so I decided to use the glass as a mirror. I quickly slapped on some concealer and blush before anyone could witness me in the midst of a beauty routine. I finished putting on my make-up and continued browsing. Behind me I heard two women talking in Japanese. I turned to glance at them. There were two women and one girl all conversing in Japanese; a mother, an aunt, and a daughter. The mother and aunt both had long black hair tied back into a low pony-tail, but the girl’s hair was cut short and neat right to her chin. The mother was going to go into a shop next door and she wanted to know if they wanted anything to eat from there. They both said no.

The aunt was wearing a draped shirt in various shades of pale green and a pair of cropped blue-jeans; she had a very round face and a very serious “no nonsense” demeanor.  I approached the booth and asked the aunt,  「すみませんが、あなたは日本人ですか。」(Excuse me but, are you Japanese?). And she said, “I’m sorry, but no.”, in English. I was confused as to why she would want to conceal the fact that she was Japanese, and why she would answer me in English, which clearly indicated that she understood me. I just shrugged my shoulders and decided to peruse through the books she had for sale anyway. I picked up a thick, heavy, paperback book titled Her Sorrow. It had been slouching up against a brusselsprout colored hard-cover book in a dark corner in the bookcase. As I picked up the book, the aunt came gliding over, all smiles, wanting to know if I needed any help and mentioning that this was a very rare book. Judging form the way it was placed on the shelf like a reject, I highly doubted that.  Her Sorrow was a large compilation of dark fairy-tales written by various famous authors, one being my favorite author, Tanith Lee. The cover was all dark grey, white, and black; there were two beautiful blonde women, one dressed in black and the other in white, and a large black swan. The woman in black was on the left half of the cover. She had her left hand draped across the swan’s neck and she stood strong and tall looking out to the horizon to the left. The woman in white was on the right half of the cover and she was kneeling with her whole body draped across the back of the swan and her right hand curving up across the swan’s chest. Her eyes were down-cast and tears trickled down her face onto the black feathers of the swan.  Out of the corner of my eye, behind the rather large rear-end of the gliding aunt, I spotted another interesting book. What had caught my attention was the art on the cover. I could tell that it was the work of one of my favorite artists, Kinuko Y. Craft. I didn’t read the title, instead I looked straight to the author, hoping that it was one of Juliet Marrilier’s books. The author’s name was written backwards and upside-down in gold calligraphy. I made out that the first name started with a “V” and that the last name was Kiles.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to afford both, and so I prepared to haggle with the aunt. I began to inquire as to the price of the books and…I woke up.

Doors

Ok, I think it is time for me to come to terms with something. I am not consistent. And, I should stop making promises that I can't keep. So, I will post as often as I can. Enjoy. =)

The dream started off in a dorm. Amanda, Anya and I were hanging out in Troy’s dorm room while he wasn’t there. We weren’t supposed to be in his room, but he was in class. We listened to his music and used his computer to play games. His room was a mess, clothes all over the floor, and his door had been un-locked, which is why we decided to take advantage. We left his room, afraid that he might come back from class early, but then I remembered that I had left my book on the floor, so I ran back to his room and quickly retrieved it. I backed out of his room, taking in one last glimpse of the chaos within, and shut his door; when I turned around…

 I was no longer in the dorm. I was in a different hallway entirely.  This hallway was painted all white with dark hardwood floors, and high, square crown-molding.  The door that I had just come through was one of a set of three doors on that wall, and on the opposite wall was a large rounded square-ish arch-way that opened out onto a large living room and white and blue tiled kitchen. Then, it suddenly came to me, like I had known all along but couldn’t remember, I was in my own house. My mom and I had just bought a new house and we were renting that third room out to Troy. My room was the door in the middle and my mom’s room was the door on the far right. I went into my room. The room was abnormally long and narrow, like it had been made as an after-thought, or by accident. At the end of my room was a bay window with light lemon-cream colored cushioned seats and sheer curtains. My bed was off to the right side of the room, with a matching lemon-cream comforter.  On the left hand wall I had a white vanity. The room was filled with the sunlight filtering in through the windows, painting everything in a warm golden effervescent kind of glow. Next door, Troy’s room was now empty because he had moved out, and the house felt a bit lop-sided and hollow on that end. I looked up at the left side wall of my room, and I could see that the plaster was cracked and a bit had crumbled away onto the floor in a little powdery heap. There seemed to be something peaking out from behind the plaster, so I pulled my step-stool over to the crack in the wall, and stood on my tiptoes to reach the crumbling bit of plaster. I squeezed my fingers in-between the plaster and the wall where it had fallen away and pulled a big chunk of it off with a loud crack. There was a dark recess there that had been hidden behind the thick layer of plaster. I furiously began to pull pieces of the plaster down. When I had finished, there was a small doorway set high and deep into the wall. The door was painted a dark yellow and had a rounded top with a half-moon window cut into three pie slices set in it. I opened the door and there was more plaster on the other side, so I pushed on the plaster and it gave way almost like paper. The door led into the room that Troy had been renting from us. I ran out into the hallway looking for my mom.

“Mom! Mom!”, I yelled in excitement.

“I’m in my room!” She answered.

I didn’t even bother to open her door. I just spoke to her through it. “Mom, can I have the room that Troy was staying in? Please?! I found a hidden door in my wall that leads into that room!”

“Well, I guess so.” She answered.

I ran back to my room, but then realized that I had forgotten to ask my mom something, so I ran back out into the hallway, closed my door, spun around and…

I was no longer in my house. I was at my grandmother’s house, and I had just walked out onto her back porch and slid the sliding-glass door shut. Part of the porch is covered with an open-air structure painted a hot-pink, and the other part is an un-covered round piece of cement. But, the round piece of the porch was gone, and in its place was a large, square ornamental fountain-like pool. On all sides of the pool-fountain, stairs descended into the water, giving it the illusion that it was deeper than it actually was. In the middle was a small raised square where water bubbled up in a soothing sort of care-free way. At the bottom of the pool were hundreds of pearls in shades of cream, white, and grey; and on the surface of the water floated large, base-ball sized pearls. My step-mom came out and said to me, “Isn’t it beautiful? Your dad put it in just last week.” I looked across to the opposite side of the pool, and there was my dad, watering a tree along the fence of the neighbor’s yard. I stepped into the water, it felt so cool against my bare skin, and I lowered myself down and lay in the water, floating on my back. The sky above was a churned up soup of greys and white, and I could feel the wind gusting across my exposed skin. I closed my eyes and…

I was laying on a cold, grey marble floor. I saw myself from above;I was wearing a beautifully ornate, Victorian-style gown in dark-grey satin with light-grey and white stripes. The whole outfit was trimmed in dark-silver ruffles. I was dying. I had been stabbed, and my blood was spreading across the marble floor in a lop-sided dark-red circle from underneath my body.  There was a marble fountain to the left of my body, and as I was dying I could hear it gurgling away, pouring an endless stream of water into the basin. Fortunately I didn’t feel any pain, but I could feel my life trickling to a stop, I couldn’t breathe, it was becoming hard to think, I couldn’t see…

I opened my eyes and I was still in my Grandmother’s back yard, still floating on my back in the square pool that had once been the porch. I stood up shakily, feeling far colder than I should have, and wobbled over to where my Dad was watering the tree. The wind had picked up into a gusty, leaf-tearing howl. I looked past my Dad to where the neighbor’s house usually is, but it wasn’t there; in fact, there wasn’t any ground there at all. Instead, there was the edge of a cliff that plunged far down to angry looking ocean. My Grandmother’s house was now on a cove of cliff faces, and on the opposite cliff face was a whole town of houses painted in red and white that had been built directly into a hill, stacked like legos on top of each other. The wind blew harder, and you could see the houses on the cliff blowing away like sheets of construction paper, buckling in and then scattering. But, when the walls blew away there was nothing inside, as if they had never been real, and real people had never lived in them. The town was just a child’s construction paper dream.

I yelled to my Dad over the wind, “There’s a storm coming!”

My Dad turned to look at me and said, “Yep.” And then turned back around and continued watering the tree.

And then…I woke up.

Bunker Fare

Hello, the two of you that are following my lonesome little blog. I have not been as devout to posting as I had hoped I could be. School has taken a nasty tole on my free time. But, all of the stress, lack of sleep, and little cat-naps that have fueled me onward through my days have produced some pretty exciting dreams. I am going to do my best to catch up and make up for my serious (yet inescapable) neglect of this blog.

There was some type of chemical war going on. Dean and I and our partners decided to create an under-ground bunker to stay in. It wasn’t very big; there was just a kitchen and a living room with two couches, and two very tiny back bedrooms. There was also a small biosphere-like area where plants and food were grown. We had decided to head below because there had been a rumor of a chemical bomb threat broadcast over the radio. We decided that a month below could possibly be a sufficient amount of time to wait for the major threat to be over.

A month went by so slow; this trapped feeling rising in everyone’s throats, just on the verge of panic; it left a lingering after-taste. The hunger for sunlight was unbearable. The lights in the garden weren’t enough, it just wasn’t the same. Being down there felt like someone else had dressed me in my own skin, but had put it on too tight, or had thrown it in the dryer for too long and it had shrunk. I was scratching to get out, pangs of longing for the sky plunged deep into my gut.

We had small arguments now and then, brought on by the need to find a place to breath away from each other; even if it was just to gulp down fistfuls of stale air. But, for the most part we all got along pretty well; we had already been good friends for a long while. Dean and I had known each other for the longest. We had known each other since high school. Those days seemed so far away in comparison to the recent days, which had been filled with fear and running as the world fell apart in a clatter of metal and gunpowder.

Finally, the day came when we could return to the surface. By this point we had become more afraid of being underground than the chemicals that were possibly raining down above our little haven of solitude. We crammed into the elevator, pressed in even closer to each other for the last bit of our imprisonment; perhaps so that the escape would taste that much sweeter. The doors opened and we tumbled out in to the forest. Blinking, under that bright-green canopy, it began to rain. Oh, the air was so clean, expanding in my lungs, pushing out the fermented air-conditioned oxygen from the bunker. And the rain. The rain felt like magic. I never thought I could miss the rain so much. We danced in the forest, wet and pale, but free.

Insomnia

I'm afraid that there will be no post for tonight. I have been suffering from sever allergies for the last two weeks, so yesterday I finally broke down and went to the doctor. I was given a steroid shot, and I believe it is the culprit for this new found insomnia. I think I've slept a grand total of an hour tonight. Not exactly the best way to start the new semester this morning. Sigh. Well, maybe I'll try to write up an old dream a little later to make up for it. Hopefully everyone else had good night's rest. ^-^

The Nail and Hammer

Night before last...January 14, 2012

I was living in some sort of ranch colony, where all of the men and women slept in separate areas of the ranch. It was really a very beautiful place; rolling hillsides and tall grasses as far as the eye could see. I had a best friend named Emily, Em for short. She was a wonderful soul; unfailingly kind and honest and loyal. I loved her like a sister.

They called us all into the meeting house, said there was a big announcement to be made. Em and I hurried in, arms linked, and found a place to stand among the crush of people clustered around the podium. We whispered and laughed as we waited in anticipation for the big announcement; the thrushes beneath our boots released the sweet smell of fresh straw into the air around us.

The great doors to the meeting house thudded closed behind us, and we all pressed together closer, trying to get a better view of the podium. Then we heard the locking beams on the outside of the doors falling  heavily into place. Everyone looked back at the doors, confusion knit between their brows. Then came the hammering, the terrifying sound of hundreds of nails being driven into planks that had been industriously placed across the windows. People began to scream, women clutched their babies to their chests in fear, Em and I pressed closer to each other, holding each other’s hands for comfort. Torches were thrust in under the doors and pushed in through gaps in the barred windows; thick grey smoke began to billow down from the rafters. Everyone was screaming, and coughing, and clawing at the windows and doors, trying to find a way out. The cloth curtains around the podium caught fire from a torch that had been kicked across the floor in the trample of feet, and I could feel the heat across my face as it licked up and up into a towering blaze. I pulled Em over to a window and began to push and tear at the screen in a gap under one of the wooden planks. It came free! I pushed my right arm and head through the gap and found I was just small enough to fit through. My left hand still held Em’s; I could hear her gasping and choking for breath.  I let go of her hand and I pushed my way through the window gap, then turned back to help Em through. She pushed her arm and head through, but she was too big to fit.

I began to scream in a panic, “Em! Em! Come on, you have to try harder!”  I could feel that my face was wet, I was sobbing and holding on to her hand through the window. I could see her terrified face covered in a haze of dark smoke. I began to pull on the boards blocking the window, willing it to budge just a little so that Em could get through. But it was nailed fast. I grabbed Em’s hand again, “Em! Please Em! Em!” The shrieking of the people inside began to ebb as people were either consumed in the flames or had asphyxiated from the smoke. Em’s hand grew limp in mine as she succumbed to the heavy smoke that had invaded her lungs. “Em! No! No, no, no! You can’t leave me! No, Em, no!”

I could feel the heat from the window, so I had to let go of Em’s lifeless hand as the flames began to eat away on the side of the building. I collapsed into the dirt a few feet away, unwilling to move further. I wanted to feel the heat and the sorrow, and the unfairness of being the only one to escape. At some point, after the meeting house was only a raw pile of burning embers, I slept from the exhaustion of crying.

When I woke up, I was in my narrow bed in the women’s quarters, and Em was in the bed next to mine. I felt drained and my face was still wet from crying. Everyone was still asleep, dawn was just curling her fingers around the edge of the world. It was a dream. Just a dream. I took a deep breath and rolled over to face Em; her sweet face deep in sleep. I never wanted to see that kind of terror in her eyes ever again.

We got up with the morning bell, and the day went on as it usually did. During lunch break Em and I climbed up the tallest hill in the valley, our favorite spot, to eat lunch and watch the community busy with work. I looked at Em, so pretty in her mauve and grey cotton dress, her hair in a long blonde braid down her back. A gust of wind crept over the hill to pull her bangs out from the place where she had tucked it behind her ear. She turned and looked at me with those grey eyes of hers, a smile sliding across her square face, cheeks dimpling in pleasure and said, “They are calling everyone to the meeting house after lunch. They said that there is some big announcement!” Her eyes widened in excitement at the prospect. I felt all of the blood drain from my face. She must have noticed because she said. “What’s wrong? Do you feel ill? “She came over to me and took my hand. Should I say something about my dream? Or would she think I was crazy? Her terrified face engulfed in smoke flashed across my vision for a second, and I knew that I had to say something. I told her about what I had dreamt the previous night, and her eyebrows pushed together over the bridge of her nose in concern. “Maybe we should keep this to ourselves for a little while. When we go down to the meeting house we will look around first before going inside. If we see anything suspicious we will tell the others.”

We headed to the meeting house a little early. I pulled Em around to the side of the building, and there, hidden in the bushes, were piles of wooden planks, a box of nails, and several hammers. All along the outside wall there were similar piles hidden amongst the brush. Em said, “Those could just be for repairs…” But I could see that her face had grown pale. Then, hidden behind a barrel by the entry way was a bundle of wrapped torches and a box of matches. We ran back up the hill towards the community center. We could see people walking towards us in clusters, making their way to the meeting house. We stopped them and told them of my dream, and of what we had found. Everyone began to murmur, spreading the news like a fire across the groups of people. The head of our community stepped forward and said, “Are you sure of what you saw? This isn’t just some kind of foolishness?  A vision spurred from a girl’s nightmare?” We told him that it was the truth. He could see from the looks on our faces that this was no child’s trick. He turned to the group standing behind him, and began the first step of the uprising.

Then…
I woke up.

A Fence That Needs Mending

Last night.

I had a dream that I was at my Aunt Chelsea’s house.  She has a wooden gate on the side of her house that leads to the back yard. I can’t remember if I was going in or out, but I opened the door and all of these purple dogs came rushing out. They were in all different shades of purple and all different sizes. Some just had purple spots or stripes, while others were completely purple. I pushed them back behind the door and I tried to close it, but more and more dogs kept coming. A tiny silky-coated violet colored dog pushed its way under the gate and began to run around my feet yapping. All of the dogs were howling and whining all at once, and the sound was absolutely deafening.  My Aunt Chelsea came running around the corner of the house to help me. She and I pushed on the door, trying to keep more dogs from escaping.

She started yelling at the little violet dog, “Sammy! Sammy, you get back under that door right now!”

The little violet dog named Sammy squeezed his way back under the door, but just then, the door and the whole fence started to fall apart and sway back and forth. And the neighbor’s dogs started to push on the fence next to us, poking their blue heads in between the loosening slats.

Then…

I woke up.

A Summer House

Night before last. January 12, 2012

I had a dream that I was going to the funeral of a distant cousin. The funeral was taking place somewhere near the East coast. We arrived at a huge Victorian style house that had all of these different rooms all added on to the original structure, so that it looked like it was twisting up and up into the sky. It was all painted an antique cream with ivy-green trim, and it glowed in the summer heat, bees lazily droning around the honeysuckle bushes that clustered around the windows. It smelled like magic. I went in to the house through one of the many doors on the left side of the house. The door I entered through was a sliding glass door with a screen. It entered on to a dining room with a long wooden dining table running through the center of it. The table had a long elegant legs that ended in lion paws, and a long, tapered, maroon embroidered runner was placed in the center of it. There were white porcelain plates trimmed with gold set around the table at each chair, and a floral center piece with cream flowers and a candle shielded in a a hurricane lamp. Along the back wall was an ornate mirror with wooden vines curling it's way around the edges placed above a caramel-colored sideboard.
At the left end of the dining room was a set of white french doors that opened on to a pale-blue sitting room filled with white wicker furniture with cushions in varying shades of medium to pale-blue. There were dozens of white lamps set out on little mahogany tables. There was a marble fireplace with little gold figurines clustered on top of the mantel in the wall to the right, and a veranda that looked out onto the summer garden on the left. Next to the fire place was a little winding stairway that I went up. I came upon a hallway that twisted and turned at uneven intervals and had doors that led into rooms in random places. I picked a door and opened it.
There were people milling around in this room, with handkerchiefs dabbing at wet eyes. Many of the women wore large hats and long summer-colored dresses, with white gloves, like I had taken a step back in time. This room didn't seem to have a specific purpose like the ones downstairs; it had lots of little furniture in it, child-sized furniture. There were little round foot-stools in ivory and dusty rose all over the place. And there was a small vanity, which seems very important because I focused on it for a long time, and began to fall in love with the little things that were scattered across it's surface. I crouched in front of the vanity, afraid to sit in the little chair, and looked at myself in the three-pane fold out mirror. I had my hair tied in an elegant bun at the back of my neck, and I wore a large straw hat with a magnolia flower in it. I had on a golden-yellow calf-length dress of a very light material with little white flowers all over, with a heart-shaped neckline trimmed in lace, and little capped sleeves with pearl buttons. I also wore white gloves that came just to my wrists and a long strand of cream-colored pearls.
On the vanity there was a little sliver hair-brush and a strand of pearls, and little glass jars of play make-up. I pulled off one of my gloves to gently run my fingers over the little silver hairbrush. It felt sad. It was then that I realized that I was at a child's funeral, and I cried because the child was so little.
Just then, a woman came up to me and said, "It is very sad. But they are thinking about adopting you. And you could come and live here."
I stand up. Something about this frightens me, even though I would love to live in this strange house filled with hundreds of rooms. I need to find my mom and my grandmother, but I can't remember how to get back downstairs. I feel my heart begin to race a little, fueled by panic. I go back out into the hallway, but I can't find the stairs down.
Then...
I wake up.

Adventures on Death Planet

I had this dream when I was a teenager in high school. It was so vivid that even years later I still had no trouble writing it out. Enjoy the chaos. ^-^

I sat at a little table by my window. I held between my hands a little plant in a terracotta pot. Grow! Grow! I willed it with my mind. Grow! Just a little! Grow! Then, it suddenly shot up an inch and its leaves grew large and juicy, like enormous emeralds.

“Yes!” I shouted into the air.

“India!” My dad called me from downstairs.

“Coming!”

I ran down the stairs and found that the front door was open. So I stepped outside onto the front porch.

“India, come see this! It’s amazing!” said my dad. He was standing in the driveway, staring at something just around the corner of the porch. I stepped off of the porch, and in my driveway was a black chrome, three-piece train. It stood upright on its end like a rocket and hovered above the ground perched on top of a thick white cloud.

“Look! The cloud is made of cotton candy! Try it, its delicious!” Said my dad, as he pulled a big hunk off of the cloud and stuffed it in his mouth.

I pulled a small piece off and nibbled on it. It was cotton candy, sweet and fluffy. Then the door of the train slid downward with a hiss, revealing a black doorway. A little platform popped out of the side of the train and a stair quickly unfolded to the driveway. A little pudgy man with a red handlebar mustache and an orange and purple stripped conductor’s suit stepped out onto the platform; he surveyed us with his little black eyes that tunneled deep into his eye sockets.

“Travel to Death Planet!” He shouted. “See the Stars!” He said, a hint of awe pressing his words forward as he swept a plump little hand above his head.

I turned around to my dad, and by then my step mom and my Grandma had joined us. “Can we go? Please!” I begged.

“Of course we can!”

We all filed up the stair and into the train cabin. I sat in front next to the conductor.

“This sure is a tight squeeze.”  I said as we all squished in together. Then the cabin slowly began to expand until we all fit comfortably. The conductor pulled a leaver and we shot out of the driveway with a loud BOOM! We passed the moon, swooped around Saturn, then Pluto; we were going faster and faster, and the stars and planets began to blur.

Then everything went black. I was cold. And something wet was falling on my face. I opened my eyes, and there was a dark blanket of clouds above me. Lighting crackled across the clouds and a peel of thunder followed it, growling as it moved across the sky in pursuit of the lightning. Rain started to pelt my face harder and I sat up. I was sitting in mud, it covered my clothes. I shivered and looked around. My family members were scattered around me; they too were just waking up.  Somehow my mom and my Aunt Tina had ended up there also. The train conductor was nowhere to be found. We huddled together in the mud and looked around us; off in the distance stood two houses, so we headed for the one that looked closer off to the right. When we reached the house I walked up the wooden porch steps, which were warped and groaned as I stepped on them. I knocked on the door, I could see through the gaps in its wood slats into the dark house inside. The door swung open, and a man stood in the doorway. He wore a faded brown hat that was bent and warped from being wet, and it came all the way down past his eyes; all I could see of his face were his yellow crooked teeth. He wore no shirt and he had a large belly the pushed on the muddy suspenders he wore; he had on black rubber boots that were also caked with mud and he held a rifle in his left hand.

“Wa yoo wah?” He said as he ground something between his yellow teeth.

“Uh…um…we were just trying to find somewhere to stay…until the rain stops.” I stuttered, and backed up a few steps.

“ Shioo whar in graam fhish I chang iirim gruud my dog! He said and pointed to his back yard. Just then an enormous worm surfaced from the mud in his back yard as a streak of lightning cracked in the sky; its razor sharp teeth spun around inside its mouth as it howled up into the rain. It plunged its gleaming body back under the mud and disappeared.

“Um, no thank you.” I said as I retreated from the porch. “We’ll just try the next house.”

When we reached the next house the door was open, so we just went in hoping that the tenant was hospitable. Everything inside the house was in black and white, like an old tv show. We called out to see if anyone was home, but no one answered. We were all very tired and scared because the wind outside was howling and the rain was beating down on the roof with wet fists. We searched the house for somewhere to sleep, and we found a room with an enormous white bed that was big enough for all of us to fit together. We all crawled onto the bed and huddled under the covers together, listening to the storm outside screaming around the house. There were two sets of French doors on either side of the room with white curtains, and vines were growing through under the doors. Lightning flashed and lit up the glass in the French doors, I pulled the covers up to my eyes. I heard the shriek of a mud worm outside and pulled the covers over my head and fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning and found that everyone else was already awake, and I was alone in the big white bed. I got up and started to explore the house. I walked down a hallway and found another room. It was all pink and there was a little white bed that sat on tall thin stilt-like legs; it was piled high with frilly stuffed animals. I climbed up one of the legs and into the bed; I found a large pink teddy bear that I liked and I softly ran my hands through its fur. My mom found me up in the bed with the stuffed animals.

“India, now you know you can’t keep any of those stuffed animals. They don’t belong to you. Now, get down from there.” She said.

I stuck my lip out and put the bear down, then slid down the leg of the bed. I walked further down the hallway and found a picture of a man and a woman hanging on the wall; everything in the picture was in black and white, except for the peoples’ hair, it was red. The woman looked very business like and wore a string of pearls around her neck and her hair in a neat up-do. The man looked very intelligent and serious, and he wore small round glasses on the bridge of his long thin nose. I pulled the picture off of the wall and took it into the kitchen to show to the rest of my family.

On my way down the hallway I looked in at a room to my right. Inside was my Uncle Edgar, and he was sitting in a large arm chair in front of a blazing fire, with a deep red colored dress robe wrapped snugly around him. There was a pair of French doors in the left wall, and a cat was meowing on the other side. I opened the door and let the cat in; He was dark grey with white spots, and soaking wet.

“Poor kitty. I bet you are hungry.” I said. “let’s go to the kitchen and find you something to eat.”

I walked into the kitchen, which was at the end of the hall, and it was connected to the dining room and living room. The kitchen was in the middle of the two other rooms and looked out onto them over a breakfast bar. Just as I was about to open the cabinet to look for some cat food, the front door slammed open, and a gust of wind swept through the house. I looked down, and there at my feet was the little boy from the picture I held in my hand. He was playing with a set of toy cars, crashing them together and screaming, “Crash! Smash! Boom!”

I said, “Excuse me little boy, but where is your mother?”

He did not answer me, as if he couldn’t hear me. Then another gust of wind ripped through the house, and there, sitting at the breakfast bar was the man from the photo, and he was reading a newspaper. He didn’t seem to be able to see me, because he just continued reading as if I wasn’t there. Then, another gust of wind blew past me, and standing in front of me, staring directly at me with black hateful eyes, was the woman from the photo.

“What are you doing in my house?!” She bellowed.

And suddenly I wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. My family members and I were in a tall round room filled with levels and levels of floors; the levels opened down the center of the room so that you could look down to the bottom floor where a large red demon lay sleeping in a pair of ragged khaki shorts. We were all dispersed on different levels, and some of us began to scream. The woman appeared on the bottom floor with the demon; she shook him awake and smiled up at us with a malicious grin.

The demon opened his eyes, which were a bright yellow, and when he smiled you could see that his mouth was filled with rows and rows of sharp teeth. He laughed, and it was a deep sound, that seemed like it came from many voices screaming all at once. He inhaled deeply and from his mouth he shot a gleaming black cannon ball up through the floors above him. Up the cannon ball shot, shattering and splintering the wood floors, and just when it seemed like it was going to lose momentum, it leveled out and grew a mouth of its own, and little white slits for eyes; it then proceeded to chase my family members, eating the floor as it went.

I was on the top floor, looking down, watching as my family members were getting eaten by the ravenous cannon balls. I had to do something, but I couldn’t think what, when suddenly the room around me stretched, like it was made of rubber. Then I was standing back in the kitchen, holding a tub of butter and inside the tub of butter was the room that I was just in. Everyone was screaming inside the room inside the tub of butter, so I ran over to the sink and turned the hot water on. I placed the tub of butter under the hot water and it hissed and fizzled. Then all of my family members were back in the kitchen, like nothing had happened.

Then…

I woke up.