Tag Archives: dreams

Dream – Cardboard Killer

13 Aug

I rode in a black SUV racing through the City with the rest of my team, and the night sky was pouring rain. You could feel the tension, the sense of anticipation as the light of our destination came visible at the opposite end of the street. You could feel the fear, the anxiety that we would not make it in time and that They would kill us before we arrived. The fear, the hope, half fleeing, half purposeful as we drove.

The SUV had stopped. The rain beat down, streaking the city’s neon lights across the pavement in silver blurs. We stood in a tight huddle in the road, our backs to each other, gun sights searching the shadows for movement.

Someone attacked us, and for a moment the world was chaos. Then, a body lay on the ground – the Villain’s second in command, a man we’d already killed. But there he was, dead again.

A member of my team tapped my thigh with their rifle, nudged me forward. “Check if he’s dead.”

I didn’t want to. We’d done this before – killed him before. How could he be dead now if he didn’t die then? Still, I edged toward the body and kicked his leg.

It was cardboard, a cardboard man lying flat and lifeless in the rain, shot through and bleeding even though it was impossible. I shouted back to my team and knelt with my gun propped over my knee.

I crossed one flat arm over his chest, then the other until the body lay in a funereal pose. He looked peaceful in the rain. I folded his knees up, then his hips and then turned his head down against his chest. With each fold, I knew I was lessening the chance that he would stand up and kill again.

I picked up the saturated cardboard square and ran back to the vehicle.

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Lucid Dreaming: Step 1

20 Apr

They say that there are stages to lucid dreaming.  Like anything worthwhile, lucid dreaming must come as a result of training and mental preparation.

God help me.  This is going to involve effort.

Step One:  Research

Why does everything boil down to research?  Is it because the world is now, literally, at our fingertips, or have we just made an intimidating name for something that should sound much more fun?  Maybe we should call research “Internet adventure time” instead.  That is the implication of a search engine, after all.

Lucid dreams have been around long before the fancy modern name.  You can see it in the biblical story of Jacob and the Ladder and as a part of Asian philosophy (they have a yoga devoted to it).  Long before it had any sort of scientific credibility, people were controlling their dream experiences.  People probably thought it was witchcraft at some point… I assume several people were executed in connection with it.

The concept of lucid dreaming is pretty cool.  You go to sleep in your bed, and you wake up inside a dream.  That could be a beach, your living room or a shuttle station on a space colony.  Once you are lucid inside the dream, you can control what happens to you in your environment.  If you want to practice violin, rosin that bow!  Artists, get out that easel and get to work!  Golfers, work on your swing!

Plans C, A, D and B

Basically, I have several options to induce lucid dreams.  I can meditate myself into a lucid dream state, which I thought would take more concentration than an entire semester’s worth of meditation condensed. This option is set aside as Plan C.

Or, I could go with Plan A.  I will learn to trigger a “wake up” moment in my dreams.  The “wake up” moment is when you realize that something is wrong with the dream around you.  I make a comparison here with the “ah ha!” moment, which is more akin to discovering the word that defeats writers’ block or understanding a mathematical concept after an intense three-hour study session.


There are some contradictions between dreams and reality, so the best way to trigger a “wake up” moment is to practice them and constantly ask yourself “Am I Awake?”.  Here are some daily reality checks:

  • Look in the mirror.  Are you blurry, lumpy, grainy, fuzzy or otherwise distorted?  If so, you either need to clear your eye boogers or wake up. Right now!
  • Check your watch, note time, check your watch again. Did the time jump forward by an absurd increment?  We all know that time ebbs and flows in dreams, so unless you’re a stoner or have narcolepsy, time in real life should be constant.  I’m not talking “let’s check the atomic clock” or suggesting we learn theories of relativity; just look at the wall clock.
  • Can you hold your breath and still breathe?  In real life, no.  But you can induce a nosebleed.  Be careful.
  • Read a book.  No, seriously.  Read words, look away and then read them again.  If they’ve changed or become jumbled you’re dreaming.  Dyslexics need not apply.
  • Make sure you have all ten digits.  In dreams you often lose or gain fingers and toes on a whim.  Disgusting, especially if you hate toes.
  • Jump around!  I’m not going to try this one because nothing except helicopters, bugs and robots fly in my dreams.  The idea of human flight is just silly.  Who am I, Icarus?
  • Pinch yourself.  No, not really.  This doesn’t actually work, but it’s a common rumor.  Besides, why would you want to pinch yourself when everyone knows the intense physical sensations that can accompany dreams?  I’m calling shenanigans on this one.
  • Does the lighting change when you turn on the lights?  No?  Oh buddy, you’re screwed.

There are other methods, of course.  I could “wake back to bed,” which requires setting my alarm clock for 4 – 7 hours after falling asleep.  When I supposedly wake up (because I would never just shut off my alarm), I need to spend a full hour thinking, meditating and researching lucidity.  Then, I go back to sleep.  If possible, I’d make this my Plan D simply because it requires me to get up at 3 a.m. and think.

I could keep a dream journal and write down everything I remember as soon as I wake up.  This will help me remember odd scenarios, make my dreams more vivid and make me more likely to call out any dream antics the next night.  I would call this my Plan B except I already do this.  It’s called  Twitter, folks.

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Zombie Virus Hits Kansas

13 Apr

The virus turned them into zombies but had been contained in four locations: California, Kansas, Florida and Virginia. There, small civilizations lived in isolation, as if they were detached limbs of some greater whole.

The boy was mischievous from the start, a bad characteristic in this age.  They were in the woods, skipping classes to wander among the towering redwoods when he spotted the stranger.  Sensing the threat, he killed the man.  The kids hid the body, but by the time they returned to the settlement everyone knew about the death.  Another had come from Kansas, forcing the California clan to hold a lottery to choose who would replace her dead comrade.

I “won” the lottery.

In California, we were atheists and had no fear, but in Kansas they proclaimed themselves devout.  Their civilization was sophisticated – much more so than mine.  They rode submersible water skis for entertainment on a man-dug lake,  and I was able to take my tour of the new compound on one alongside their leader.  They had contained the virus here, they said, and had been cured.

But the disease returned and began to recontaminate the people, and they turned into beasts.  I was there with the leader, arming myself against their approach when he turned.  I shot him and headed for the stairwell.  On the ground floor, they backed me into a break room; I backed my way into the room, my shotgun blasting, and had to draw my pistols.

The lucid ones crowded around me in a semicircle as I held my guns in their faces.  Movement on my right.  I turned and fired quickly, but the man in the Acapulco shirt had just been reaching for a soda can.  I stood aghast. He held the bullet between his fingers; it had only dented the can.  Then I shot him in the head and he was thrown backward in an explosion of gore.

The others were impressed by this man’s abilities, and as  I turned on them with murderous intent, they begged me to do them next so they could test the sign that had been shown to them.   They were willing to feel the ‘pop’ because it held no pain or fear for them.  So I killed them all.

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