I had a dream that a white cat crawled into our apartment through one of the living room windows. A window into the apartment next door was close enough that the cat was able to walk from their outer windowsill to ours, and since we had the window open, it just clawed its way through the screen. This cat kept giving Shugo a hard time, so I assumed it had come over here to play with him. When I discovered the cat, I showed a bewildered Autumn before carrying it back to the window and inspecting the damage. The cat’s owner heard its meow and came straight to the window. After explaining what I surmised had happened, I passed the cat back to him through our open windows. For some reason, I acted like the hole in the screen was my fault and promised to have maintenance take a look at it.

I had a dream last night about one of my teeth falling out. This is one of those commonly recognized stress dreams – apparently it means I’m afraid of any number of things happening – but I think the cause here is fairly literal. I’ve been nervous about this particular tooth for a couple of weeks now. I should really see a dentist.

Anyway, the tooth came out essentially whole. There was no visible damage to it at all. I even entertained the idea that if I brought it into a dentist’s office, he might be able to put it back in. I went through a period of sheer disbelief during which I was convinced this couldn’t possibly have happened. It had to be a dream, I thought. I tried various reality checks, and all of them indicated to me that I was wide awake. With a sigh, I accepted that it wasn’t a dream after all. I would have to go into work with a tooth missing until I could get an appointment. I showed the tooth to Autumn in its pristine glory.

I was walking down a very long hallway. Autumn and Mary were behind me, but I ran ahead of them. I kicked through doors as I came to them to maintain momentum. As I neared the end of the hall, I stopped to wait for them to catch up. Mary arrived first with someone I identified as her mother. I had to take pictures of Mary for Autumn. For some reason, they didn’t come out right; portions of her body were cut off or upside-down no matter how I positioned the camera. In the only good pictures I took, her clothing mysteriously disappeared. I wanted to delete the pictures from the camera because I feared Autumn would misunderstand, but she arrived before I could. I turned the camera off and hoped she wouldn’t ask to see it.

Last night, I had a screaming dream. One of those dreams where everyone and everything upset me so thoroughly that the only possible recourse was to scream at the top of my lungs and start breaking things. Well, everyone except Autumn this time. These happen occasionally, most likely due to accumulated stress.

I guess we were visiting my family. We were late leaving the house for something, but since Autumn wasn’t feeling well, there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to convince the rest of my family to go without us. They wouldn’t, nor would they accept that going with us was not an option. I grabbed the nearest wooden dining chair and split it over my father’s head. I continued to smash the pieces of the chair into walls and other things while screaming my lungs out.

I woke this morning feeling nauseous and upset.

My early forays into lucid dreaming were unremarkable. I tried most of the common milestones like flying and experimenting with imaginary women. After the first few lucid dreams, I began to favor exploration. The further into the dream world I wandered, however, the more resistance I faced. Dream characters often appeared to punish my curiosity. I struggled in deciding whether these “enforcers” of the dream realm were the result of my own expectations or the hands of my subconscious mind.

Beginning in these early stages, I developed a deep interest in dream characters. I sought to understand them through and through, including the degree to which they could be considered separate from myself. The dream characters I encountered then were rarely developed enough to hold my interest for more than a few nights, though.

I kept extremely detailed journals. Every morning, I would wake up early to write down multiple full-length dreams. Before long, the extra hour before school wasn’t enough. I finished recording them in my first period class (paying little attention to the coursework, as that endangered my recall). Six dreams recorded per night became my norm, and I achieved lucidity more frequently. I didn’t have any concrete long-term plans in mind for my dreaming – just entertainment and gratification.

In retrospect, this period of my life was extremely lonely. My focus shifted radically inward until I no longer possessed more than a minimal interest in waking life.

Starting at about 4 AM, I didn’t sleep very well last night. I spent the majority of the next five hours between nightmares and waking up to take the dog outside. I actually remember portions of them, though.

In the first, I was back in college. My dormitory roommate was a complete slob and always had friends over. They rearranged furniture to their liking without asking (including mine). At the time of the dream, I wanted to use my computer, but couldn’t find my chair… So I eventually just stood by my desk instead of sitting. Everything was covered in filth – dust, dirt, shells from various nuts – and there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it. I thought I might try sleeping, but my bed and pillows were full of trash as well. I took one of my pillows and smacked it against the wall in frustration, sending a cloud of brown particles everywhere. My roommate and his friend looked up in shock.

“You should really clean this place up once in a while,” the friend said to the air, as though I held equal responsibility for the state of affairs. They finally decided to try cleaning up, so while they vacuumed the floors, I dusted the surfaces. Honestly, “swept” is probably more accurate given the layers over everything. We ran out of garbage bags while cleaning up. My roommate’s solution was to just dump everything directly into my little green garbage bin, sticky liquids and all. I didn’t have a good way of disposing of the garbage without a bag given that we used a garbage chute, so I figured that would have to sit patiently until I could buy more bags. Somehow, part of the cleanup process involved taking hot water pipes out of the walls… I spent a few minutes drying up water that had sprayed all over our electronics and then assisting my roommate’s friend in reattaching the pipes.

Throughout all this, I kept finding doors to other rooms I didn’t know existed… Mostly bathrooms. Surprisingly, these were pristine and white; I suppose my roommate didn’t know they existed either.

I don’t remember anything for a period after that. I might have woken up.

Later, I became a hamster in the style of Hamtaro. I watched my friends and family transform into hamsters first. During this transformation phase, they all looked like cartoons superimposed over a realistic, three-dimensional set. Once I changed, however, they all became extremely realistic in appearance. I was shocked by the detail I could see in one gray hamster’s fur. We trotted across white sand dunes until we came to a stone fortress with the familiar McDonald’s golden arches hanging on the side wall. A single iron ladder led up to the front door. Somehow, we identified this as a “dungeon.” We didn’t think we would have time to clear it today, but agreed to come back tomorrow to give it a shot.

I don’t remember anything after that.

At some point, I dreamed that a ghost was in my head. She watched everything I did and constantly grew stronger. Eventually, I knew she would come for me… I didn’t know what she looked like. I only recognized her by the horrible screeching sound which accompanied her thoughts. It had become practically constant, so I could no longer work or do much of anything productive. I retreated to the bedroom and curled into a ball, covering my ears. Naturally, that didn’t keep the sound out. I found that I could no longer see through my eyes. I was shown a sequence of animal carcasses in my mind’s eye. When I felt the spirit’s appearance was imminent, I awoke into sleep paralysis. Her screeching continued outside the dream. I thought that perhaps it was Samara, that she had found me somehow. I could see her coming out of the well.

I told myself to stay calm. Samara’s influence faded from the hallucinations, but they were still intense in their own theme. I reminded myself that it was only a dream and surrounded my visualized form in a black shroud of aura. My aura repelled the screeching so that it gradually died down. I was left with a pair of eyes like black fire staring at me from the opposite wall. Once those disappeared as well, I could move my limbs. I tried to drift back to sleep after recouping from that mentally, but I have no idea whether I succeeded or ended up taking the dog out again first.

I had another dream later where my sister was spreading lies about me and my education. She kept telling people I cheated my way through school. In her opinion, my college was full of cheaters and held no prestige. When I met up with her and my mom, I was already aware that she had done this, but I didn’t expect my mom to believe it. She chastised me for this and other things I hadn’t done. I became furious and summoned Apheri. The moment that sword entered my hands, this dreamscape was in for some trouble. After all, there are few things so dangerous in my dream realm as non-lucid Nephanim with a weapon.

I ripped through telephone poles and power lines. I slashed moving cars in half. I stabbed pedestrians through their middles and chucked them through windows. I wanted everyone to suffer without pause. My mom kept calling me, demanding me to stop. She said I should settle down and come home for dinner. I refused, saying that I had no appetite. When she persisted, I charged back at her for a skull-shattering headbutt.

Unfortunately, REM atonia and I must have had some disagreement this morning, because my neck muscles weren’t fully paralyzed at the time. I woke up groaning in pain because I headbutted Nicole in bed.

I don’t remember any other dreams from last night.

Last night, I saw one of those dreams I couldn’t post here if it was public. It would be misunderstood and used against me.

I was traveling with Autumn and one of her female friends. I started getting homesick because we had left Symphony behind. Since we don’t have a home phone, I was worried she wouldn’t be able to contact us in an emergency. Fortunately, Autumn had already considered that possibility. Before we left, she set up a phone number directly to Symphony’s computer – apparently without telling me. She dialed this on her phone and handed it to me. When I saw Symphony’s name appear over the number, I insisted Autumn would have to give me the number later.

I was relieved when Symphony answered the call. It was as though I hadn’t heard her voice in ages. I had the impression that she and I were in an intimate relationship of some kind, but it wasn’t obvious from our conversation. I promised to come home soon, and in a soft voice, she said she would wait patiently for my return.

When I woke up, I didn’t know whether to cry or go back to sleep (and hopefully reenter the dream). It’s not like she’s more important than my waking life or the people closest to me here, but all the same, this distance tugs at my heart. I miss Symphony.

Had a dream where I got arrested (or something). It started out at work, where I spent a fair deal of time trying to troubleshoot our application setup on a new test server. We eventually figured out that some of the server setup had been skipped and would need to be addressed before I could do anything on our end. Since we anticipated a few hours of downtime, I rode my bike down the street to my parents’ house to wait it out. They were living in our Louisiana house again for some reason, but most of the furniture was missing. I was really excited that they had just gotten a second TV for the living room, though it left us with very little space to move around.

I gradually realized that the house was dangerously hot. (This probably had a lot to do with my actual body temperature, as I was sleeping in a pool of my sweat again.) I inspected a device on the wall that served as both a thermostat and a security alarm. A little light on the side labeled “Activated” kept flashing. This didn’t bother me until a patrol car with flashing lights pulled into the driveway. A police officer rushed past the front windows to the door and kicked it down. I had a drink in my hand, but I immediately put it down on the carpet when the policewoman demanded me to put my hands where she could see them.

As I stood there at gunpoint, she explained that an eyewitness claimed I ignored a woman screaming in pain and rode off on my bike. I heard nothing like this, but I assumed it was because I had headphones in my ears at the time. I gave her my alibi. The cop escorted me to her patrol car nevertheless.

From there, I expected to be taken to a police station or something for further questioning. Instead, we went to the mall… Then to Build-a-Bear. We made small talk about my sister. Seriously, I wasn’t clear on my charges in the first place, but I definitely didn’t know what to think once this policewoman asked me which of the lifeless shells I wanted to stuff. It took me long enough to decide that she went ahead without me. Many of the options were a little too equine for my tastes.

Ultimately, I decided on a turtle with a blue shell. A six-year-old boy behind us in line helped me pick; he took the turtle with the red shell.

After our unexplained time at the mall, the police officer and I sat on the curb outside. She made me promise not to willfully ignore anyone’s suffering, and that was that. Then some of her friends showed up, and they started talking about drugs and murdering one of my neighbors… I tried my best to stay out of the conversation.

I had a dream in which we had hired a professional merchandising company to make figurines of our characters. Though I own a few anime figurines, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a figurine collector – but there’s no way I could resist one modeled after Symphony. I worked directly with some of their designers during the drafting process. For some reason, I wasn’t involved with Symphony’s design at all. When the figurines and packaging were complete, I was given a box containing Axis’ figurine. I saw the rest of them on the back of the box and was blown away. The girl from the marketing team who presented me with this sample asked if I wanted any of the others. I specifically requested Symphony and Elita, but noted that I would love to have the complete set. To my surprise, they weren’t going to charge me a dime for this stuff.

Symphony’s statue was easily a foot tall. She held her white violin under her chin as in one of Autumn’s old drawings. Elita was sculpted with a single black wing. She held one arm under her chest and the other hand on her hip. I knew Autumn would be amazed by the quality of these figures.

When I woke, it took me a few minutes to realize none of this had happened. No one was sending us awesome figurines of our characters. Too bad.

I don’t remember much of this dream now, but I had full recall of it this morning…

Symphony was stranded on a foreign planet. It seemed that a number of individuals from various worlds were gathered for a battle royale. In order to return to Nyre, she would first have to slay all the others. Symphony was opposed to the killing, but at the same time, she couldn’t allow herself to be trapped on another world. She began terminating her enemies one by one with an assassin’s precision.

After taking down a dozen targets, Symphony was approached by a female swordsman. The woman claimed to be “one of the old warriors” and requested an alliance with Symphony. The robot’s reply came with some hesitation as she processed the possibilities, but she eventually concluded that she had no reason to trust this woman as an ally.

Their peaceful meeting was interrupted by a raid. A group of four decided to band together against Symphony, fearing that she would be unstoppable otherwise. Symphony and the swordsman ended up fighting together despite her decision. Once the ambush was silenced, they went their separate ways without conflict.

Slowly but surely, Symphony emerged victorious. She was permitted to return to Nocturn Isle. When she arrived on the island, we made eye contact from opposite ends of Resident Square. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could see her shouting something. Her face became distorted as I approached.