Waves

I was staying at a hotel on the coast with my brother, his wife and my girlfriend. The hotel's entrance to the beach opened on a long corridor of sand with tall beach grass on either side. At the end of this corridor, right where the beach starts, a tall dark wall of rock stretched as far as the eye could see into the sky. This wall went along the edge of the beach for about 100 feet before turning at a right angle on both sides and running straight out into the ocean. The only entrance or exit to this enclosure was through a very small door which the hotel corridor led to.

We all went to the beach for the day and I started to dig a hole in the sand. We were all laughing and talking and the beach enclosure was filled with other people, all enjoying the day. After a while though, the sky grew dark and the waves increased in strength. Within just a few minutes, the tide had come up and the waves were pushing us back towards the enclosure wall. People began to panic and get as close to the wall as possible, but it seemed like most of them were not aware of the door. Maybe too panicked to think clearly.

We ran back to the wall with everyone, but we had been in the middle of the enclosure, so the door was directly in front of us. The waves were incredibly high, at least 100 feet, and they were smashing down not far from where we were. People were crying and clutching each other, scrambling at the wall in a desperate attempt to climb it.

I knew that not everyone would get out of there, so I stayed at the door and started yelling over the noise at the people to the left of the door. I screamed at them to come with me, waving them towards the door and shouting that they needed to get out as quickly as possible. A few people looked at me, horror plastered on their faces and started to head towards the door. Most of them were too panicked to think.

I shouted over to my brother to do the same with the people on the right side of the door. We started ushering people towards the door together. The more people who listened and stopped panicking, the easier it was until only a few people were left, most of them clustered at the far ends of the wall. The waves had increased in strength and proximity until now they were staying put, feet from us. We were all drenched and tired. My girlfriend and my brother's wife were no where to be seen; they'd been the first couple that we'd pushed through the doors.

All at once, the tide drew away from us and the sky began to lighten.



Everything faded away and now I was at my apartment with my girlfriend. Instead of the apartments opening onto the main hallway with closed doors, now there were glass storefronts. The apartment next to ours had been renovated into an open bar, with a counter facing right out into the hallway. As I walked by, the man who lived there was polishing a mug with a towel over his shoulder. He smiled as I passed.

Our apartment door was glass, with big store windows on either side. The rest of the apartment was the same as in reality, but the first room was now a store, with counters and tables piled high with containers of cookies, candies and cakes. We'd lived there for a few months already and had already looked around at everything. We had assumed the food was all fake, just there for show until we bought enough real food to open the shop.

As I walked in the door, I saw the shop room and decided to go in a have a look, seeing as I hadn't been inside it since we'd moved in. There was a lot of color, just as you'd imagine a candy store, and a pie counter was near the door. I moved over to it and picked up a fake cookie. As I picked it up, I noticed crumbs falling from it and took a bite. It was real, and very tasty.

Excited, I ate the whole thing and then called my girlfriend to come and look. She screamed out in joy and we both scanned the pie counter, my eyes searching for a chocolate cheesecake.

Looking over at the sour candies, I almost died, saying, "This is just like winning a million dollars!"


With cookie crumbs in the corners of my mouth, a chocolate cheesecake in my hand, I said to my girlfriend, "Remember though, everything in moderation."

I wake up, extremely disappointed and hungry.

Home Run

I was in a long classroom with large windows on the right side. On the left side of the classroom were long counters, presumably for science experiments and the like. The windows faced out onto the main lobby hallway of the school. I stood looking out the window nearest the classroom door and watched as a boy, probably around 17 years old, walked through the front door with a gun. I didn't see or hear anyone else, but I knew there were people around somehow. In the classroom I was in, there were other people, but I don't remember seeing any of them.

I crouched down against the wall, peering cautiously over the sill of the window to see where he was going. He started to shoot randomly into the walls and offices around the lobby area and I knew I had to do something. I locked the door to the room I was in to protect the other people there. We waited for a few minutes, hearing the gunshots and hoping he wouldn't see any of us and I had to keep motioning everyone to stay down. After about five minutes, the people in the room with me disappeared and I realized I was dreaming.

I knew I had to do something to stop the boy from hurting anyone, so I unlocked the door to the room and picked something up. I'm still not sure if it was a baseball bat or just a piece of broken chair.

I whistled to get his attention before dropping back down out of sight. I was nervous, but I tried to focus on just being quick and getting it over with. He walked slowly over to the door, finally not shooting at everything he saw. Bringing the gun up, he opened the door and started to step inside.

Just as his foot hit the floor, I whirled in front of him and brought the bat down on his head. The gun didn't leave his hand and he only looked at me with a shocked expression on his face. I hit him again, a little harder and he crumpled to the floor, passed out. As he fell, I grabbed his pistol by the barrel and held it away from him.

I looked up to see a police officer walking towards me, surprised by what had just happened. I handed the gun to him and he directed me towards one of the offices for my statement.

When I got there, a man was looking at a computer screen at some sort of defense grid for the entire world. He said that now that the danger was passed, he would have to send a message to certain defense networks so that they could lower their alertness. I thought this was strange, seeing as the 'danger' had only been a boy with a gun. On his map, I noticed most of the grids he was looking at were in the Middle East.

I told another man there what had happened, but when I told him, I was describing it to him as though I had just dreamed it, even laughing at the absurdity of it. He never laughed though, only took everything I said down as if filing it away for future use.

I wake up.

Flash

I was riding a bicycle through the streets of a nondescript neighborhood. Only the road was clearly visible, the houses and sky were blurred together, only vaguely in recognizable shapes. The bicycle I was riding had very short handlebars with only enough room for my hands to just barely cover the left and right sides. Because of this, I had to steer by leaning my entire body to one side or the other. This made high speeds terrifying.

I couldn't seem to go slower than terrifying though. The bicycle didn't have brakes, so each time downhill I would tense up, using all my energy to keep from falling. Uphill, the bicycle would slow down but I don't remember ever having to actually use the pedals. The bicycle always moved at a minimum speed.

I came to my old house, one we have not lived in for almost ten years. I dropped the bicycle in the front yard and immediately went for one of the front windows. A window that had long ago been to my sister's room. Now I'm in the hallway, past my sister's room. I walk slowly down the hallway and notice that the house is still filled with odds and ends that we left there when we moved away, ten years ago. I pass my mother's old room and see a little piano against the wall. I walk through to investigate it, thinking I'll take it back with me if I can, but when I get to it, the keys are all missing and the inside of it is completely empty, save for random bits of trash.

I poke through other piles of stuff, not looking for anything in particular when I suddenly hear footsteps coming from upstairs. I stop to listen, not wondering how there can be an upstairs on a house that is only one level. The footsteps become louder and I can now hear them coming down the stairs, quicker this time. I know the house is unlived in, so I think that it must be a homeless man or drifter that I woke up. I turn to run back down the hallway towards the open window that I climbed through. I dive through the window and into the grass outside, rolling into a ball and coming back up at my bike. I pull the bike up in one swift movement and am down the street without looking back.

I come around a curve too fast, almost falling, and start up the largest hill in the neighborhood. I still don't have to pedal, so it's easy going, but I'm tired so I get off the bike to walk it up the hill. There's a nice looking hispanic man standing on the other side of the street, walking down the way I came. My bike disappears and I'm walking emptyhanded. He says hello to me, but I'm out of breath so can only manage to wave back. I notice that he's carrying a very nice camera with him.

"$600 picture, my treat?" He says, smiling.
I look at him quizically, not understanding.
"I take a $600 photo of you, for free?" He says again, beckoning to me with his camera.

I nod yes and walk over to him, skeptical that he'll keep his word but intent on humoring him.
"I'll see what you've got," I say.

He snaps the first picture and then produces a thick black screen from behind him. He holds this in front of the lens and takes a few more, changing position with each one.

"Give me your hand," he says.
I stop, wondering why all the niceness has left his face.
"Give me your hand!" He says more forcefully, grabbing my hand in his and holding it directly in front of the black screen.

I feel a small pinch on my hand immediately when the flash of his camera goes off and he smiles again.


I start to feel tired, like my brain has been slowed to a crawl. The man and the neighborhood around him becomes one blur.

All I see before I wake up is his still smiling face.

Depersonalization

I get this feeling sometimes, a feeling of total detachment from the world around me. I've tried to explain it to people before. Usually they don't understand what I'm trying to say, sometimes someone will say they get the same feeling, but I'm never sure because my explanation never seems close enough to what it is.

Just going about my daily life, I'll suddenly have a strange out-of-body sensation where I can see myself doing whatever it is I'm doing. With this, I experience a deep sense of self and where I am physically. As in a dream, a question will present itself to me and make itself entirely important, unable to be swept aside.

"Am I really who I am?"

This is always followed by a strange flow of thoughts concerning the rest of the world and the people in it, usually in terms of why am I who I am and why I am not someone else. Am I really experiencing the things in my life?

The strangest part of it all is the final question before all goes back to normal.


If I wasn't experiencing everything in my life right now, what would I be experiencing?

Sorrow

I'm at our family property, only this property is different from the property my family owns in real life. The forest is all around, as in real life, but a larger house occupies a smaller open area. The house is two storied, with a steep roof and gabled windows. There is a wide porch coming across the back, which faces a thick forest.

Between the house and the edge of the forest is a small building made from unfinished tree limbs and rough hewn logs. The limbs seem to be tied to the main frame of the building, and there are wide open windows of air. From one side of the grass, I can see through the openings of the building and through to the other side. This building is obviously very old and I walk towards it in awe, as if I'd never seen it before.

As I leave the porch and walk across the grass, I notice that I'm surrounded by family members, though I recognize none of them. They are all holding cups and chatting amongst themselves, as any family would at a reunion or holiday. One of them, an older woman, comes to me and starts to relate to me the story behind this wooden building. The building had been built by women in our family many generations ago. I don't know why the fact that only women had built it was important, but the woman tells me this in deep reverance to her ancestors and I feel pride mixed with sorrow; the building takes on the feeling I would have towards a tombstone.

As this woman finishes the story, I notice my real life cousin Julie in among the other family members that I do not recognize. Someone then yells out from the side of the house and we all turn to look as one of the older men of the family leads a large brown Ox out towards us. He's bought the animal from overseas, and will use him to help around the property.

Fast forward, my dad comes out of the house carrying a load of old sheets of yellowed glass with another man. They're extremely heavy and thick, but the men carry them over to the little wooden building and place them down on the short set of steps leading into the building, explaining that they'll be used as windows. The Ox is tied beside them to one of the support posts of the building.

Suddenly, something happens. I can't see what it is because my vision blacks out for a moment, but everyone screams and it seems as though there is alot of movement. I can only guess there was an earthquake. We try to collect ourselves and see that everyone is okay when we hear deep moans from the Ox. With the movement of the earthquake, the sheets of glass were dislodged from the building and slid down onto the Ox, slicing a deep gash into the animal. We all rush to help stop the bleeding, but we know it's too late. As the Ox bleeds to death, many of us are crying and I'm filled with a sadness I've never felt outside of waking life.

I woke up more disturbed and depressed than seems reasonable.

I actually had this dream a week ago.

Mistake

I was in a forest, thickly wooded and dark. Two friends were with me, neither of which I recognized from real life. I was young, a teenager and I had the distinct feeling that I was in a time far before this one.

We were hiding in the bushes all around a wide oak tree, peeking out at a stone house. The building was old, the stones covered over with thick green moss. We were all scared of the house, but in that way that teenage boys are, where they want to get as close as possible to what scares them, so as to see who is the bravest of the group.

I leaned out from the tree one last time to look once more at the house. As I looked at the right side of the house, a black figure appeared suddenly, as if conjured from the air itself. Before I could react with anything but surprise, the figure disappeared and then, in the same instant, reappeared closer, then again, and again, covering the distance between us in less than a second, but without walking or even physically moving at all. As the figure appeared directly in front of our tree, my friends shrieked and I was filled with utter terror. All I could see before I tore off into the forest were black eyes and long black hair and a pitch black mouth, permanently fixed in a scream.

Fast forward. I'm walking through the same forest with a girl, dressed in the same old sort of clothes I and my friends were dressed in before. The terror of the dark figure has deserted me and I feel as though it's only a memory, nothing more than a hallucination. My friends are lost, having run in different directions as I and now I'm searching for them with this girl. I carry a gun with me, and walk in front of the girl, in a protective position. The dark figure is merely a myth from the town in which we live, and we're sure we will find my friends. The gun is there for assurance, nothing else.

Something is disturbed in the bushes to my side and the girl behind me screams, I turn, leveling the gun at the brush. A dark figure appears and I fire at it in the same instant that I turn, grabbing the girl by the hand and retreating back to town, terrified that my hallucination from before had returned to me.


One of my lost friends returns to town a day later, dirty and scared. He's in a state of shock, completely terrified. He'd found our other friend in the midst of bushes drenched in dried red blood, a fatal gunshot to the chest.

I wake up.

Beach Tower

I was in an elevator with my sister, Hilary, and my cousin, Chelsea. The elevator we were in was at the bottom of a tower, many stories in height. The tower was familiar to me, though I've never seen it in real life. We were all in a good mood, laughing and joking, as we'd done in childhood. We were hitting random floor buttons, though I only remember four and six. At six, we got off the elevator and stepped into a small circular room, with a hallway connecting entering and exiting at our right and left. The hallway curved around in front of us and connected into a larger room. The walls were shades of blue and made of a sort of opaque glass. In the center of this larger room was a glass desk with a writing lamp sitting on it. As we stepped into the room, a woman stepped out from the hallway in what looked like a nurse's uniform.

She turned towards us and we retreated quietly back to the elevator, like children wanting not to be seen. We were stifling our laughs and looking around at each other as the elevator door shut and I suddenly got the distinct feeling we were in my Uncle Billy's office, where we were not supposed to be.

The elevator descended, but when the doors opened, we found ourselves at the top floor of the tower. All around us the sky stretched forever and we could not see the ground. The wind was blowing fiercely, and seemed very loud. We walked to the edge of the building and suddenly stairs opened up before us, leading down to a beach.

The roof of the tower suddenly became the wraparound porch of a beach house. It was still made from the same opaque glass material, though now it was considerably darker, a steely gray. The beach was filled with celebrities, all very good looking, and all happy to see Chelsea and Hilary. I then noticed my girlfriend, Ashton walking and laughing with Jennifer Aniston, both wearing beach sarongs and flip flops. I didn't talk to anyone, just surveyed the beach, presumably looking for someone who wasn't there.

The sky turned very dark, and the howling wind from the tower roof returned. Trees all around were blowing hard and everyone scattered, gathering their things and piling into their cars to evacuate. The celebrities had all vanished and all the people were family members, some I recognized and some I didn't. I went from group to group, making sure everyone was accounted for and seeing that everyone left before whatever was threatening to happen happened.

I watched the last car leave and then ran to the porch of the beach house. My aunt, Laura, was there, forgotten in the panic to leave. I helped her to gather the things she was picking up, clay figurines and black and white pictures. The wind grew stronger, the dark more complete and from there everything clouded until I woke up.