The octo-Jesus & attack of the snakes.

I had a strange dream last night:

I look up for a moment and notice the sky is a light blue and not a cloud is in the sky yet a haze seems to fill the expansiveness of it.  The late morning sun gives off a cool light; the high altitude only adds to the coolness of this summer day.  Short burst of gunfire split through the otherwise static air and I look ahead and take cover by a large rock jutting out of the pale desert sand.  My friends position themselves similarly and we give each other the nod, quickly stepping out from cover and running forward, rifles drawn.

Almost without transition, the landscape is literally rebuilt before our very eyes.  Day turns to early night, water bubbles out of the ground , forming a very small lake – the sides of which are walled with a very polished kind of concrete.  People appear from thin air and others crawl up from the ground but everybody is laughing, talking and enjoying themselves.  There is an air of festivity here, one hell of a contrast to the earlier tension that permeated the mountainous desert landscape.

I quickly walk to one of the cliffs on the far side of the pool and attack a well-armored soldier, pulling him from his small roofless hovercraft.  I hit him on the side of his mask and realize how foolish it was since he is wearing a mask.  My knuckles throb and I shake my hand quickly but before  he can retaliate I charge at him, throwing my shoulder into his torso, knocking him off the cliff.  I quickly turn around to handle his comrade, grabbing him by the collar of his body armor off the hovercraft and hold him at arms length.  I am caught off guard upon realizing I am looking at Jesus Christ – a heavily armored Son of God, actually.  He changes shape into an octopus/Jesus hybrid and tentacles slither out from the back of his head.  I grab a fistful of them and wrap them around his neck, spinning him around and kicking the back of his knee out, sending him stumbling off the cliff.  He falls much faster than the other soldier did and explodes into a mushroom cloud when he finally hits the hard ground hundreds of feet below, turning my sight to third person as I walk back from the cliff and the mushroom cloud billows up behind me, turning me into a silhouette.

Their hovercraft reminds me of a paddleboat and I curiously step up into it.  It slowly moves forward and I lean back, causing it to rise in altitude.  For the next hour I toy with this vehicle, repeatedly flying over the lake and everyone below.  I manage to fly high but there coms a point where a ceiling is built in accelerated real-time above my head and I am not permitted to go any higher.  I test my height a few more times but I get the same result.  I dip down to a foot above the lake’s surface where my ma and my little nephew are playing in the water.  My ma tells me that the hovercraft belongs to her and she wants it back but I am not about to give it up so easily.  I play hard to get, soaring over her and flying past her, enjoying the feeling of flight.  Nobody else at this lake seemed to care about the craft I was on which made me even happier that I could be left alone to fly as I wished.  The only exception was my brother, who asked how I got it.  I told him about the Jesus octopus mercenary and his friend and my brother just shook his head, laughing, causing midnight to set in.  Millions of stars glowed into existence making the constellations impossible to make out.  Finally, I brought the hovercraft as high as I could and leaned all the way forward, plunging it into the lake and dramatically exploding out from it again as if I were in a movie.

The ground begins to tremble slightly and everybody becomes a bit more quiet.  A loud rumbling breaks through the newly muted conversations and we all look up, seeing…something in the sky trailed by fire.  Almost everyone in the lake manages to escape before this object slams into it, throwing water everywhere.  The tail end of this object looks similar to a grouping of stalactites and the water around the object boils giving off an aura of steam. Random groups of people gather around the lake, picking up the debris and inspect it.  Two men begin to yell orders to everybody there in an attempt to take charge and secure the site, though they were civilians like everyone else.

I ran to the side of the lake closest to the object to further inspect this thing and the sound of impacting water erupted, followed by two large glossy black tentacles quickly wrapping themselves around a handful of people about twenty feet away, pulling them in despite their screams and protests.  Panic set in around the lake, causing lightning to flash in the sky and connect some of the stars with lightning bolts.  A humming noise rises up from the water as people foolishly gather at the site of the “monster kidnapping” but I don’t join them, I am too busy running along the lake trying to leave this area.  As I sprint, I see black snakes slithering in the water, rising and falling next to me.  I scream across the lake for my brother, ma, and nephew to run to the exit and wait for me.  They seem to be in a daze and do not respond, causing me to scream even louder for them to get to safety.  The rocks and rock walls around me begin to move, turning to snakes as well.  By this point, snakes are slithering everywhere, small snakes and other snakes the size of limousines made up of snakes wrapped around other snakes, forming these enormous ones.  A brightly colored green snake rises up in front of me and lunges forward to bite me but I swat it aside and keep running.  I get to the exit, two tall gray slabs of tall rock that give way to a bridge built on the ground that keeps disappearing and reappearing made of wooden planks.  I take one look back at the mayhem unfolding and see a bright red flash and everything then goes black.  I wake up.

I had a strange dream last night:

I look up for a moment and notice the sky is a light blue and not a cloud is in the sky yet a haze seems to fill the expansiveness of it.  The late morning sun gives off a cool light; the high altitude only adds to the coolness of this summer day.  Short burst of gunfire split through the otherwise static air and I look ahead and take cover by a large rock jutting out of the pale desert sand.  My friends position themselves similarly and we give each other the nod, quickly stepping out from cover and running forward, rifles drawn.

Almost without transition, the landscape is literally rebuilt before our very eyes.  Day turns to early night, water bubbles out of the ground , forming a very small lake – the sides of which are walled with a very polished kind of concrete.  People appear from thin air and others crawl up from the ground but everybody is laughing, talking and enjoying themselves.  There is an air of festivity here, one hell of a contrast to the earlier tension that permeated the mountainous desert landscape.

I quickly walk to one of the cliffs on the far side of the pool and attack a well-armored soldier, pulling him from his small roofless hovercraft.  I hit him on the side of his mask and realize how foolish it was since he is wearing a mask.  My knuckles throb and I shake my hand quickly but before  he can retaliate I charge at him, throwing my shoulder into his torso, knocking him off the cliff.  I quickly turn around to handle his comrade, grabbing him by the collar of his body armor off the hovercraft and hold him at arms length.  I am caught off guard upon realizing I am looking at Jesus Christ – a heavily armored Son of God, actually.  He changes shape into an octopus/Jesus hybrid and tentacles slither out from the back of his head.  I grab a fistful of them and wrap them around his neck, spinning him around and kicking the back of his knee out, sending him stumbling off the cliff.  He falls much faster than the other soldier did and explodes into a mushroom cloud when he finally hits the hard ground hundreds of feet below, turning my sight to third person as I walk back from the cliff and the mushroom cloud billows up behind me, turning me into a silhouette.

Their hovercraft reminds me of a paddleboat and I curiously step up into it.  It slowly moves forward and I lean back, causing it to rise in altitude.  For the next hour I toy with this vehicle, repeatedly flying over the lake and everyone below.  I manage to fly high but there coms a point where a ceiling is built in accelerated real-time above my head and I am not permitted to go any higher.  I test my height a few more times but I get the same result.  I dip down to a foot above the lake’s surface where my ma and my little nephew are playing in the water.  My ma tells me that the hovercraft belongs to her and she wants it back but I am not about to give it up so easily.  I play hard to get, soaring over her and flying past her, enjoying the feeling of flight.  Nobody else at this lake seemed to care about the craft I was on which made me even happier that I could be left alone to fly as I wished.  The only exception was my brother, who asked how I got it.  I told him about the Jesus octopus mercenary and his friend and my brother just shook his head, laughing, causing midnight to set in.  Millions of stars glowed into existence making the constellations impossible to make out.  Finally, I brought the hovercraft as high as I could and leaned all the way forward, plunging it into the lake and dramatically exploding out from it again as if I were in a movie.

The ground begins to tremble slightly and everybody becomes a bit more quiet.  A loud rumbling breaks through the newly muted conversations and we all look up, seeing…something in the sky trailed by fire.  Almost everyone in the lake manages to escape before this object slams into it, throwing water everywhere.  The tail end of this object looks similar to a grouping of stalactites and the water around the object boils giving off an aura of steam. Random groups of people gather around the lake, picking up the debris and inspect it.  Two men begin to yell orders to everybody there in an attempt to take charge and secure the site, though they were civilians like everyone else.

I ran to the side of the lake closest to the object to further inspect this thing and the sound of impacting water erupted, followed by two large glossy black tentacles quickly wrapping themselves around a handful of people about twenty feet away, pulling them in despite their screams and protests.  Panic set in around the lake, causing lightning to flash in the sky and connect some of the stars with lightning bolts.  A humming noise rises up from the water as people foolishly gather at the site of the “monster kidnapping” but I don’t join them, I am too busy running along the lake trying to leave this area.  As I sprint, I see black snakes slithering in the water, rising and falling next to me.  I scream across the lake for my brother, ma, and nephew to run to the exit and wait for me.  They seem to be in a daze and do not respond, causing me to scream even louder for them to get to safety.  The rocks and rock walls around me begin to move, turning to snakes as well.  By this point, snakes are slithering everywhere, small snakes and other snakes the size of limousines made up of snakes wrapped around other snakes, forming these enormous ones.  A brightly colored green snake rises up in front of me and lunges forward to bite me but I swat it aside and keep running.  I get to the exit, two tall gray slabs of tall rock that give way to a bridge built on the ground that keeps disappearing and reappearing made of wooden planks.  I take one look back at the mayhem unfolding and see a bright red flash and everything then goes black.  I wake up.

Urine-spouting Hermes wannabe.

I had a strange dream last night:

The cool white colors dominate the courtyard I am having lunch in with my friend, Brandon.  The cobblestone floor is slightly worn, like the walls, with bits of moss growing on the cracks.  The sky is clear overhead and piercing blue.  A chill goes up my spine, as it is early spring and the shade is far cooler than I would like.  I look out at the chairs in the sunlight and tell Brandon we are moving to that area but before we rise, a skinny, dark skinned boy with white patterns on his skin appears, standing on the tips of his toes, small wings beating furiously at his ankles.  He has no hair and no muscle definition; eyes colored red and glowing bright as fire.

Smoke appears over the walls off in the distance and gunfire cuts through the relative quiet in the courtyard.  This South American town is in utter upheaval and revolution.  The boy moves his arms and hands in an erratic fashion, causing his cheeks to puff out.  He stands on one foot and leans forward, his arms spread out and spits a watered down yellow fluid at me as if he were a fountain.  It hits me directly in the chest and from the smell of it, I guess it is urine.  Furious, I rise from my chair and run at the lad and he snaps into a fighting position and jumps at me, feet first.  Performing some kind of  Brazilian martial arts in slow motion, he knocks me off my feet and I crash into the stone wall behind me, my neck emitting a loud “crack” upon impact.  I become nervous, not sure how to beat him since I do not know martial arts.  Not deterred enough, I run at him a second time and land a solid punch on his left eye but he spins around and throws me back into that same wall.  He takes up the fountain pose and spews more fluid from his mouth and it hits me in the face this time, burning my eyes, making it hard to go after him.  I scream at him furiously, causing the stream coming from his mouth to become thicker; less like urine, and more like a citrus smelling fluid.

Everything stops for a brief moment–no sounds can be heard, nothing moves, everything is frozen in time.  When “time” resumes, he heaves as if about to throw up and his ankle wings beat at full speed, creating a high pitched humming sound, lifting him off a few inches from the ground.  An old man hobbles into the courtyard, unnoticed by this quasi-Hermes creature, and whispers to me to be still and raise my arms up and out if I want to save myself and banish the evil spirits in the boy attacking me.  I follow his instructions and the winged boy drops back to his feet.  He runs at me again but fails in his attempted attack.  He tries repeatedly to assault me but I keep my arms out and refrain from saying anything, staying calm as possible.  After what feels like almost an hour, the boy refrains from attacking me and instead paces back & forth impatiently.  A deep “crack” echoes up from the ground in the distance and he snaps his head to attention.  He smiles, holding his hand out to me, palm facing the sky and snaps his fingers, causing a flame the size of a grapefruit to appear in his palm.  Everything goes black.

I woke up.

1915. Negotiating for wheat. Europe.

I had a strange dream last night:
1915.  Early summer in Europe must look more beautiful than this.  Far off in the distance, bright yellow sunlight blankets the hills, however, here by my brother and I, it is dark overhead and the thick, potent smell of a bog permeates the fog that covers the ground–everything is tinted in a muddy green color.  We shoulder ourselves against large, colorless boulders for shelter and wait; you can almost hear the air crackle with tension.  I look down at the ground, brushing aside some dead grass and a glow catches my eye.  A quick whistle from my teeth brings my brother over and everything turns black and white.  Pictures form in the glowing object; tanks rolling through the country on the outskirts of a city, massive buildings still in flames, their white pillars turned black from soot & smoke, and a sequence that moves too fast for me to comprehend aside from noting a crescent moon and swastika in the confusion. 

My brother and I stare at each other; he holds up his index finger and I hold up my index & middle finger, both gestures symbolizing world war I and II.  The first war has ended and we have just entered the second.  Within the glow, a swastika forms again, absorbing it until no light is left.  The symbol then forms into the number  “70” and then into the head of an eagle, resting atop a shield.  It vanishes and an eagle flies overhead; we follow it s flight path to a glass box of a house a few miles ahead.  It looks about a quarter mile away from a river bank and I ask my brother how we can utilize the energy of the trees hanging over it.

Slowly, we approach the river bank, everything is in color again.  To the left is the glass house, no walls, with a man sitting in a throne-like chair in the center, motionless.  As we continue forward along the water, the ground begins to shift, slowly pulling a 180 degree turn; the house is further ahead of us now.  We walk toward where the glow had been coming from earlier, a handful of soldiers walking with my brother and I, carrying towers of ceramic dinner plates.  Without warning, a few of them break at the base, sending all of the other ones crashing to the ground in slow motion.  I quickly signal at the troops with me and we all dive further into the water, which is waist deep and has tall, dry grass growing up from the mud.

The man in the glass house stands up, walks through the glass and floats over to our location.  He opens his mouth to speak and wheat bushels grow out from his tongue and his eyes tint bright green.  He says that he cannot grow anything on his farm because of the war, that he is forbidden from feeding us.  I slowly rise from the water, making eye contact with him, planning on an attempt at negotiation.  The droplets fall from my hat in a slow drip.  His eyes narrow in on me, causing my eyes to fill with blue fire.  I grab the wheat from his mouth, telling him that he can do as he wishes, as it is his farm, and we are hungry.  Agitated, he steals the wheat back from me, balancing it on his palm and it turns to ash.  He tells me that my soldiers, brother and I have little understanding of what is happening and what the war is about.  I disagree with him, stating the specifics of what fueled the war and the desperation of Europe, causing him to close his eyes and point to the middle of the river.  My soldiers are out there, dead, in a heap.  My brother puts his hand on my shoulder and matter-of-factly states, “We will not die”.  Everything cuts to black.  I wake up.

Space’s Rosetta Stone & the desert facility escape.

I had a strange dream last night:

A low humming sound adds to the “spacey” ambiance of the room I become aware of.  There are two others sitting at the rectangular table with me.  In the center, some kind of chrome plated sphere hovers in the air, slowly bobbing up and down.  It almost sounds as if that is the source of the humming.  I scratch my head and look down at the black stone tablet, thin as paper and easy to crumple, but unfolds itself into it’s original shape if tampered with.  Printed on the tablet are white numbers, encased in two dimensional white-outlined squares.  A large celestial map sits in front of me, the contents of which alternate between the heavens, colored in indigo’s and deep blues, and an old world map, colored in brown and parchment tones.  I look at the others sitting at the table with me and they are hard at work trying to decipher the have similar tablets in front of them.  I touch the exact middle square with my finger and the chrome plated sphere emits an extremely high pitched whining, hydraulic sound and blinds me with a bright flash.

When I “come to”, I am in a desert, though the color palette of the terrain looks very washed out.  I am by myself for awhile and not sure where to go, as nothing is in sight aside from more desert and some mountains off in the distance.  Soon enough, a bus comes barreling down the dusty road and pulls over as it nears me.  A few small, one story buildings grow up from the ground as well as a stable filled with people in hospital gowns with shaved heads.  The atmosphere becomes malicious.  A man in uniform approaches me and states that I have been selected to work at a high-end, secret facility for cracking the code on the tablet.  My gut screams at me not to trust him, but having no other options, I board the bus in order to bide time.

We ride for hours and the landscape never seems to change, it only looks like the same few shrubs are placed in different areas off the side of the road.  A line of shuffling feet cuts into my anxious thinking and up come a group of identically dressed, shaved-headed individuals, holding their arms in such a way as if they were holding invisible rifles.  They look like they are in an extreme amount of pain & discomfort but cannot fight back or do anything about their current circumstances.  Intuitively, I am told that they are being trained to oversee the other people being taken to the facility, that they are being broken & brainwashed.  That put fear into me and heightened my senses; I go over ways to escape.

The bus is turned into a boxcar and all goes dark.  The door is rolled back and the sunlight slams into the wall behind me, rattling the walls and floor.  One by one, we are all taken to the ground and directed to one of the brainwashed individuals.  I am the last one; they grab me and throw me to the ground and kick me in my sides to rough me up and intimidate me.  It hurts but I am not intimidated, just pissed off now and more determined than ever to escape.  I approach my “overseer” and he looks insane, his eyes are wild and seems that the only thing that is holding him together is serious PTSD from his “re-education”.  He cradles his arms and bends his knees, sticking out his tongue and slobbering everywhere, yipping at me to jump into his arms.  What a balanced fella.  I run and jump into his arms two times and fall, making him laugh hysterically.  On the third attempt, he tries to stick something into my back to control me but I flip over his head, gripping it with both hands and, as hard & quick as possible, twist it, breaking his neck.  He crumples to the ground and the boxcars disappear along with everybody else and some more one story buildings grow up from the ground.

As fast as I can and barefoot, I take off to a shed sitting by itself on the far side of the road.  Inside are more guns than most people would know what to do with.  I know sure as hell what I am going to do with them.  Shots ring off in the distance followed by orders being yelled out; they are coming for me.  I strap myself like a one man army and kick the door open.  I run in the opposite direction of the shouts, desperate to get away to warn others of this place but ready to fight.  A bright flash whites everything out.  I wake up.

The moral opposites war of iron & leadership.

I had a strange dream last night:

Stretched across a worn, dusty, massive plain, 2 armies, both of which number in the millions, stand opposite of each other.  A soot-colored, gargantuan mountain breathing smoke sits at the heels of the evil army.  The sky has absorbed the mood, showing off a thick mass of  rolling, low-hanging clouds, dark grey and sickly green in color.  On the horizon to the west, a faint glow breaks the doom of the ominous clouds, a pale light lingers, hugging the ground for survival.  The smell of sweat, horses, and iron fills the air around me, whereas drifting from the other side comes the smell of rot and mucus.

I unsheathe my sword slowly and can hear my heart pounding in my ears, the sound of my breath magnified by the helmet covering my head.  My horse utters a brief “neigh” and I look to the west, taking notice of the pale light reflecting off of the millions of helmets stretching out as far as the eye can see.  I hear the men clearing their throats, coughing, and shifting their feet.  All jaws are clenched as the thousand yard stare ensues, both sides contributing to the tension that you couldn’t cut with a knife if you so wished it.  Everything cuts to black.

A thousand “clangs” mix with a great roar and, as if opening my eyes, I can see again.  I am on my horse, sweeping across the battle field & shouting orders, cutting down my enemies all the while.  A white flag splattered in blood surges up from the thick of soldiers under attack.  I give my steed a light kick and run full speed into the group, plowing my way to the middle, and grab the flag.  A scream erupts behind me and a grotesque captain from the opposite side charges me.  I wait.  Everything moves in real time around me but the enemy captain and I are stuck in slow motion.  The ground rumbles beneath his clumsy, large feet.  My horse bull snorts and steps forward, eager to take him on, it seems.  I hold the flag over my shoulder and my focus narrows.  Beads of sweat fill my peripheral vision and slide off to the sides of my helmet.  A tingling feeling fills my groin.  The adrenaline.  Fear mixed with excitement.  A feeling of dominance surges through me, insistent that I overpower this thing that is easily twice my size.  A mere 20 feet from me, enraged, out of control, swinging his oversized axe behind his waist, nobody stops him.  15 feet.  With all of my strength, I launch the pole-end of the blood-splattered flag at him and, within the blink of an eye he stops dead in his tracks.  I hear him coughing, gasping for air over the clamor of war.  Blood bubbles up his throat and leaks from his mouth and he stares at me blankly.  My horse half-turns back and forth, raising its head up and down and the captain collapses to the ground with an earth-quaking thud.

A raucous chant splits through the plain, grabbing my attention.  Tens of thousands of unarmed, but well armored soldiers called “bullies” march toward us.  Swords are useless, as are spears.  I take off to the east side of the battle, calling out for the archers in the middle and rear of the formations to take aim and fire on my command.  Word spreads like wildfire through the ranks as the bullies march closer and in unison, the sound of stress from the twine and the wood sound off .  Upon screaming out “UNLEASH!!”, the whittling and spitting noise of tens of thousands of arrows tearing through the air seems to dwarf all other noises.  A second volley of arrows only slow the bullies down.  I quickly realize the futility of another attack and speed further east, booming out for the immediate formation of the cavalry.

Thunder shakes the earth as they line up, coming out from a passageway that leads deep into the eastern mountains.  I cannot count them due to the greatness of their numbers and they are clad in deep, richly colored gold robes with lightweight silver armor plating.  Their helmets are rounded with small, silver wings covering the ears and short plumes of white and black on the top.  The eye pieces are slanted to give an angry and intimidating appearance.  These men are not to be challenged.  I point forward and “CHARGE!” reverberates from the mountain behind us and speeds ahead.  Right as the bullies approach the front lines of my comrades, we hit the first “thick” of them, plowing through them to the end  of their numbers on the western side with relentless determination, confusing, separating, and trampling them.  It serves as enough of a punch that the swordsmen/spearmen charge in to cut them down as they scramble to realign/reform themselves.

With the bullies broken, I ride to the eastern mountain passage to meet with a few hundred elite soldiers.  They arm themselves as they see fit, each specializing in their own art of killing that compliments the others.  I adjust my breastplate as I await their readyness and glance back at the carnage.  Two thirds of my brothers in arms, are being slowly overwhelmed.  None of the special forces before me seem concerned, so confident they are that their actions on the field will turn the tide back in our favor.  A bush rustles behind me and as the figure emerges, I immediately recognize him.  It is Gandhi.  He hobbles to my horse and asks me how I think he would handle this situation.  I pause to consider the meaning of his question and then ask him to back up.  He smiles and does so.  Refusing to bow to or use nonviolent means against the evil we are fighting, I make a speech to the men present (the full contents of which I cannot recall so will not post) and every time I end a sentence with inspiration, the last word appears in the air in front of me in large, bold, white letters, followed by an exclamation point.  The men chant each of those words back to me in unison.  At the end of my speech, I give each of the men a look of confidence; at the last one, several elementary schoolmates of mine appear, smirking & shaking their heads, thinking I am being overly dramatic in my speech.  I ignore them, seeing the successful effect my speech has on the men and understanding that my classmates knew me as a child but not as the leader I was becoming.

The specialists pull out their battle horns and the largest one is handed to me.  We line up at the exit of the passageway and take a few seconds to observe the sight in front of us.  It is so dramatic.  Poetic.  Historic.  Beautiful & tragic.  The forces at the foot of that terrible black mountain have no idea that we are about to unleash absolute hell on them and chase them until every single one of them is lying motionless in their own blood.  I look back at the men one more time, then to the west, whose dying light is rapidly becoming brighter.  My horse rears on it’s hind legs and I blow into my horn, sending a crack up the side of the black mountain to the north; it is echoed by the hundreds of horns behind me.  We roar ahead, chanting together as loud as our voices permit, causing another crack to split the ground a few hundred feet ahead of us, out of which, a spring of water bubbles up.  The blinding light fully breaks in the west, causing a great flash.  I wake up.

The go-kart escape from Nazi’s to the moon.

I had a strange dream last night:

It smells warm out here.  It should, I suppose, since I am in the evening desert.  The sun is beginning it’s descent and the far reaches of the sky in the east are colored in purple & indigos.  I look up at the concrete, 80 story high-rise apartment building next to me, trying to see into the 77th window, where my friend Olivia is living.  She is the only one in this building and there are no other buildings in sight.  For an hour we “hang out”, though she is in her apartment the whole time and I am outside by a grouping of oak trees, oak trees whose branches twist and corkscrew and whose roots loop up out of the ground.  I take a hit of the joint in my hand and she does the same; my old friend Mike appears.  He and I walk around the perimeter to the back yard and take shelter under a shady grove of trees and he disappears.  A fat fella struts across the yard with his pet “Ostrich mini”, sets up a card table, places his little friend on it, pulls out his pellet gun, and begins target practice.

I tell Olivia that I am going to get rid of the heavy lad and put an end to his mildly disturbing hobby of shooting midget birds.  I yell out to her that I just experienced deja vu and she says goodbye.  I approach the gunman and his body odor assaults my nostrils, making me resent him for not taking care of his hygiene.  I casually inform them that he will stop shooting his bird and he turns around to face me but has no face.  The sun burns out and the sky turns to night with stars overhead pulsating to a rhythm I cannot hear.  He points his pellet gun at me, causing me to laugh at the absurdity of his threat, but, at that moment, the sound of heavy boots hitting the ground fill the air and I hear soldiers yelling orders & swearing in German.  I snap my head to the left and see Nazi’s fast approaching.  The same thing occurs on my right and then in front of me.

Erratically and quickly, a hole is torn through the space in front of me.  I peer as deep as I can into it, noting the dot of light at the end of the tunnel.  The walls are lined in stone and I can hear the sound of rushing wind.  The Nazi soldiers stop marching and begin what seems like an incantation of sorts.  I feel a disturbance in the air above me and look up: go-karts are falling from the sky.  Olivia reappears as the karts hit the ground.  A small crowd of people appear immediately afterwards and we hop in, buckle up, and hit the gas, driving as fast as we can toward the end of the tunnel and away from the Nazi’s.  Each time we get halfway through the tunnel, we appear back at the start and the Nazi’s fire their weapons into the air.  After a few tries, we all become so determined to make it to the end of the tunnel that we drive over each other.  Everything begins to shake and vibrate and the Nazi soldiers crumble like sand.  Black.

I am now in front of the house that my friend Jesse’s grew up in, asking him to come outside.  He steps out from the front door and points behind me at an enormous rocket.  We laugh and grab the tail end of it and it takes off into space with us holding on.  Within seconds it crashes into the moon and throws us into a crater.  We spend what feels like the next few hours running all over the moon, taking pictures and performing zero-gravity stunts.  From the bowels of this rock, comes a booming voice that yells “Enough” and I appear in Washington D.C. in some sort of archive/intelligence center to explain what I was doing on the moon.  Having the pictures and video handy would be convenient but I am not able to find any of it aside from one blurry and beat-up picture to present as proof that I have been to the moon.  All of the computers in the room shut down and I throw the picture at the sole individual in the room with me, an old man.  It freezes in mid air and everything goes black.  I wake up.

Prometheus vs. Poseidon vs…….me?

I had a strange dream last night:

I roll over and grope my cordless box thing I use to make phone calls. 10:46 am. Shit. I am late for work. I stare at the phone a bit longer and the following appears on the screen: “10:46 am. Shit. I am late for work.” Apparently I have a super power of some kind involving a deep telepathic bond with cell phones. After backflipping out of bed into a set of 10 jumping jacks while giving myself my usual “Your job NEEDS you!” pep talk, a pep talk that is completely untrue, I run down the stairs and out the door to my…….bicycle? Where the hell is my car? It’s my dream and I demand an Infiniti G35!

The sun is at high morning posture, a yoga position that it is in the process of patenting. I am at 54 Dover Road, my childhood house. The day is crisp & mild with a slight breeze to break up the monotony of perfect. The sound of a jackhammer, a bobcat, and other construction monsters cut through the serene aura of birds chirping. I roll my eyes at the tactlessness of the construction cult for working so early in the morning (to those of us that don’t wake until noon) and notice that my bike has gone missing. I approach the construction worker and over the sound of the jackhammer jacking, yelling like an obnoxious American tourist at a foreigner in their home country, demand to speak with their supervisor. The yellow hat-wearing worker (who has a handsome late 80’s mustache) points into the garage. As I near the supervisor, I see my bike stuck between two planks of boundary wood in a garden. I rip my bike out with some effort and hop on.

Not long into my ride, I notice that the handbrakes are missing. Not only the handbrakes, but the wire that connects them to the brakes, the chain and….the tires. How I managed to ride a bike with no tires is something that would take another whole sentence to explain. I refuse to do that. I clamorously drag my bicycle to the house having the work done on its front yard and right before yelling at the men working, I look up in the sky and see 2 dots on the edge of a cloud. I peer closer at it and everything goes dark for a split second, making me feel like I have been knocked off my feet.

When I open my eyes, I am up in the sky with my girlfriend, whose code name will be “bandia”, which is Gaelic for “goddess”. She and I are debating who would win in a fight: The god of fire, or the god of water. She sides with the Matchbox 20 wannabe and I vouch for the wrath of a thousand squirt guns. They both look like Zeus to me. We look down onto the land beneath us and take in a beautiful sight: 2 temples rise from the beautiful, square pools that remind me of the rectangular one at the Taj Mahal. The one belonging to the flamer is surrounded in pyroclast and steam, its foundation stained in soot. The other temple is surrounded in a rushing torrent of water and an aura of mist. The battle ensues.

By the end of it, the god of water lay dead on the ground, his body still sizzling, charred, and broken, his trident still in his hand. Codename “bandia” starts giving me crap for being wrong and so I hold up my hand and tell her I will be right back. I focus on the god of fire and scream through the sky, landing on my feet next to the god of water with a loud boom. I take the trident from his hand, offended by the smell of burning flesh and fresh blood and aim it at the god of fire, who is too busy standing proudly with his chest out on his temple steps to notice me. I take aim and throw the trident at him and it makes contact, piercing his chest and going through his back; his heart sticking to the two inner pikes. A look of shock crosses over his face and he clumsily stumbles down the steps, taking his last breath before landing on his face. I look back up in the sky at codename bandia and laugh a little, yelling up to her, “I guess that makes me the god now!” I wake up.

Meanwhile, back in Africa…

I had a strange dream last night:

Impressive in their size and not built to excess, cream-colored pillars decorate the torch-lit walkway I find myself walking down. I look up at the sky and the moon is full and bright, muting the glow of the stars closest to it. I turn right to an unimpressive & bland gated area, and realizing I don’t have the access required to pass through them, I turn around and am greeted by a smiling, dark-skinned lad. He signals for me to follow him to the end of the walkway; we stop at a large double gate and he slides the key into the lock and opens it for me, inviting me to walk through.

As soon as both of my feet are on the opposite side of the gate, as if in a literal blink of an eye, my surroundings change and I am in what looks like the wilderness of Africa. I hear a loud pop followed by a small explosion and a slight shimmer in the distance catches my eye, like it is winking at me. I take three steps in it’s direction and am next to it. At a closer look, it has tiny grooves of similar pattern at the base and tip and is emitting a low humming noise. I reach out to touch it but before I can wrap my hand around it, the screaming of children assaults my ears. Coming at me is a platoon of African child soldiers, guns firing and grenades exploding a few feet in front of me. In such circumstances I would usually raise my arms and roar/go akimbo and bang some pots and pans together to scare them off but I was caught quite off guard this time. And I was in Africa for some reason. Naturally I did not have my usual composure about me.

They all stopped moving and firing within a few feet of me and lined up. They parted a gap in the middle of the line and a slightly taller young fellow passed them and slowly approached me. Within arms reach, his eyes turned jet black (eerily like the demonic senior from last night’s dream) and his teeth sharpened right before my eyes. He snickered and continued toward me. I whipped out a small, ornate sawed off shotgun and fired off a round at his chest. He stumbled back, stunned a bit but shook it off and continued toward me. We went through this for what seemed too long of a time and each time he became more persistent than the last. I felt a magnetic sensation around my head and eyes, which I was sure was coming from him trying to hold my gaze (a fancy way of trying to put me in a staring contest against my will). The shells would slam into his body and face but he was not wounded by them, only forced back. Eventually I began to wonder what I would do once I ran out of ammo or became bored with the repetition of this possible stalemate of good vs. evil in the desert (could this represent a possible move toward amoralism within myself?? Ooooo, deep!).

I hear the rushing of wind above me and looking up, see a floorless hangar/warehouse type building coming right at me. The child in front of me snarls his lip and turns his back to me right as the building lands around me (thank god for the angels of Industrialism and their shield-buildings). This building had a row of dusty windows on each wall at the top; aside from that it was empty and had light pouring in through the windows, forming rays that were exaggerated by the dirt and dust on the panes. I heard a knocking sound on the far end of the building and as I approached, the ground around me cracked and shattered, it’s particles being thrown into the air in slow motion. I woke up.

The demon of Somalia

I had a strange dream last night:

The sun is at its highest in the sky and relentlessly pounding the dirt with a blistering heat. Before me are the sights of a run down, broken desert city, in the midst of ruin. Shanties crowd for space along the narrow streets. Needless to say, there is a lack of curb appeal here. Gun shots pop off about a mile away, followed by return gunfire and some shouting. A stranger runs into my line of sight and I stomp my foot into the ground, bringing up the crosshairs of a reticle. At the bottom of this scope are a list of weapons I may use. I blink at the one in the middle and hear the whooshing sound of a small rocket leaving me overhead and it slams into the frantic stranger, leveling him in an instant. 

I take off running through this maze of a city and suddenly there are hundreds of people running about, shooting at each other, beating each other in some desperate fight for survival. I am able to remain somewhat unnoticed and take down person after person in my crosshairs. There is an alley to my right that I squeeze into, hiding momentarily before rushing back out into the street to kill a group of four. I peer down the dirt road about a half mile and fire a barrage of small swords and knock another from his motorcycle, immediately appearing next to it, hopping on, and taking off. The bike is palm-sized but I am able to ride it nonetheless. A boy grows out from the grime of the side of a building and speaks to me in a guttural, strained voice. Fighting the urge to invite such a seemingly friendly demon for coffee, I pulled on the throttle to get away from it/him as quickly as possible but every half mile or so, he would appear off to the side of me and laugh first, then try and swipe at me to knock me off my micromachine crotch rocket.

I steer off a hill, catching a lot of airtime before crashing to the ground. My entire body feels like it is on fire. The boy devil approaches me, taking his time and I look at the bike, which is now in flames and I panic, knowing I have to get up and get away. There was little distance between us now and I yell something inaudible at the kid, somehow causing the bike to be “pulled” over to me and attach itself between my legs. It sits up, with me on it, and hits full throttle. I was gone from the bottom of that hill, making my way, full speed, on a bike that was now in flames. Every shanty and hut I drove past, the people would pour out from with the same face as that devil that had been pursuing me. Up ahead I noticed a long stretch of concrete road and as I approached it, everything went black.