I Am Completely Serious

Last night I dreamed I was in a hammock on the porch and saw a small plesiosaur, about the size of a pony, oozing across the yard like a big slug.

Aren't these things supposed to be extinct? Have we always had plesiosaurs in the yard? Maybe I should go get my camera, or something.

But even in my dreams I'm tired all the time, so I just laid there. It noticed me looking at it, glared at me, and hurried away towards the creek. It was the colors of a fire opal.

More plesiosaurs trundled across the yard, a whole herd or school or pod, each in different jewel colors. I finally hauled myself up to get the camera, but by the time I'd found it, they were all gone.

Me: So last night I dreamed that we all went to [cousin]'s son's bar mitzvah? And it was at a fancy, ridiculously expensive hotel, and was just interminable, like we had to keep moving from one place to another for different ceremonial things.

Mom: Huh.

Me: So during one of these moves I skipped out to use the restroom, and as I was wandering around trying to find everyone again, I realized that the hotel was located on the Death Star.

Mom: Hah! No, the invitation says it will take place at -

Me: The Four Seasons, right? The Four Seasons that's aboard the Death Star.

Mom: - at a synogogue, dear. It will be a small ceremony at the local synogogue, and then there'll also be lunch at the synogogue. Sorry to disppoint you.

Me: And I thought all my dreams were premonitory now!

Mom: Sorry. It sounds like the title of a story, though. Bar Mitzvah... On The Death Star!

Me: It sounds like someone's fanfic.

Mom: Yeah.

Instead of making brackets the sports nerds were making shipping grids.

The Midnight Crew were the protagonists of Mother 3 - like, Salsa was Clubs Deuce and Beartiger was Diamonds Droog. Duster was still Duster and Slick was still Slick. Slick wanted to kill me, and we were having a car chase - but like WV, he couldn't really drive, so I managed to knock him off the road into the lake. He died.

I solved the problem, Homestuck protagonists, you just need to give that dude a car.

He had an indestructible knife that never needs sharpening, which I took from his stolen car and threw into a stream near the house. When the FBI came to question me about killing Slick, they didn't actually care that he was dead. They just wanted the knife. For entirely legitimate reasons. (The X-Files means I always think the FBI is up to no good.) I told them I had destroyed the indestructible knife, which they for some reason believed.

Later I gave it to Duster. Duster can be trusted with such power, as long as he isn't amnesiac or kidnapped or doing whatever stupid thing his abusive Dad tells him to do.

Actually, no, what was I thinking, give me that knife back right now, Duster. From this day forward it will be used to slice apples and nothing more.

I haven't had a dream I'd really term a nightmare for a couple of years. I have scary dreams all the time, but on some level my subconscious must be pretty optimistic, because there's always some kind of escape route or task to complete to get rid of the bad thing.

But last night I decided to skip my before-bed Benadryl. I've been taking it pretty much every night recently, because I've been having really bad insomnia, but I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea of getting dependent on it, so. I didn't fall asleep until about five AM, and when I did I apparently dropped straight into this really long nightmare where I was trying to get out of this evil multistory Japanese department store, and I could never find the ground floor, and each floor had some new awful obstacle.

( Cut for the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors. )

So I took the fucking Benadryl tonight, because Jesus Christ.

In a sprawling, damp underground city, there is a charismatic preacher who does not realize that his charisma comes entirely from his telepathic control of his congregation. He is shy and easily frightened. However, anything he says is believed by everyone who hears it, so he believes that he must be important and wise. Fortunately he is too afraid ever to go anywhere but his house and the church, so he does not cause too many problems.

There is not much light in the city, and his powers work best in the dark. Their effects fade when people go out into the light. Most of those who live here are not human. They're small creatures with large eyes and ears and narrow double-jointed limbs, and they can see in the dark - but in a strange way. When there is no light, they can discern color and movement, but not shape and size. An red apple rolling down the lightless road, for example, might appear to be a red car moving erratically.

Three little boys, two human and one not, live in a cave system a short ways above the preacher, and each one has his own set of psychic powers. The one who is not human, who is about eight years old, always dresses in t-shirts with yellow and black stripes that fall to his knobby knees. He likes to play jokes and sneak into places where he shouldn't be. He goes into the preacher's house one day and terrifies him. The preacher runs outside and wails incoherently, "A bee! A bee! - bzzzz!" (He has trouble communicating simple ideas when he gets excited. No one but the three psychic boys ever notice this, of course.)

The boy scrambles away through the caverns to escape the torrent of people trying to kill the bee that upset the preacher. If he can find a place with good light, they will be able to see him for what he is, and the preacher's power will wear off. He can tell who heard the preacher shout and who is safe because the ones who heard him repeat the last thing he said endlessly: "Bzzzz, bzzzz, bzzzz."

Later, for unrelated reasons that make no sense, the three boys are dead, and are waiting in a long line in the afterlife to be processed. To be processed is to have a sort of totem object held up by a person in the world of the living, and to have an image summarizing of your life somehow spoken. (It is an image, not a word or sound, but it is spoken nonetheless.) When the image has been spoken, your death is final, and you are gone forever.

The line is in the world of the dead, but it is somehow accessible to the living through a place that resembles a large silver-and-white kitchen. The dead mostly do not think to get out of the line. The three boys are special, though, and know that it is possible to get out of line and go back into the world. They also know that time is flexible here, and that to walk towards the back of the line takes you back in time, and forwards takes you forward. They like causing problems for authority figures, and feel that throwing death into disarray will be even more fun than scaring the preacher.

They may be able to see the way out of death because of their powers. Or it may be because one of the boys' father is doing some sort of work in the kitchen, in what looks like a small photography studio he has set up there. He is all white as if someone painted him, except for his gray eyes, and he looks angry and frightened all the time. When his son excitedly tells him that they are going to make a mess of death, he furiously tells him to get back in line, seeming afraid that someone will see him and cause problems for himself and the children. His son is worried by this, but is not willing to wait for himself to cease to exist. He returns to his friends, and they prepare to return to the world of the living. They walk back in time.

For some reason, if you go back in time the entrance to the world of the dead is in the Opry Mills mall in Nashville. Huh.

I dreamed that my dead cat's ghost came to sit on the couch. I saw Nixon curled up in her usual spot, and it took me a minute to remember that that was wrong. I said to her, "Oh, no, honey, you passed away months ago. You shouldn't be here." She heard my voice and came whining towards me, walking across the quilt that thegeekgene was working on next to her.

As I leaned over to pet my ghost cat, who was still very soft and still complaining about nothing, thegeekgene asked me, "What are you doing?"

I said, "Nixon's here. Can't you see her?"

"No."

"Maybe I'm just hallucinating her, then."

I turned around to see if I had any other hallucinations waiting in other parts of the room. I saw Anxiety asleep on the table, and beside him another version of Nixon from earlier in life, very fat and healthy. They seemed to flicker in and out of existence, and I was sad because I felt that this probably meant that either they wouldn't last, or I needed to go to the hospital.

Akira from Hayate x Blade had a flaming machete and used it to storm hell with her sidekick, Vette from The Old Republic. They made out at one point.

The characters from Game of Thrones are able to come and go from an area, removed from ordinary time and space, in which no violence takes place. They don't know why, and the place itself confuses and unsettles them. There are reasons for that other than the obvious one.

The place seems to be the inside of an old hospital or school, but it is slightly off - everything, even the exposed pipes and windows, is painted heavily with the same shade of white latex paint. There are so many coats that the walls are soft, and you can peel it off with your fingernails.

This place contains various promotional materials for the show, like posters and ads clipped from magazines. They are the only colorful things within the building, and they confuse the characters. They can't figure out who made all these pictures of them. Ned Stark doesn't like how grouchy he always looks; Cersei Lannister's all like, "Ehhh, this is fine."

Sherlock Holmes was attempting to unravel the schemes of the criminal mastermind Hello Kitty.