I've always had a knack for recording my dreams. I would like to say I do it one hundred percent of the time, but no one is perfect. I do record them quite often though, and I love going back through them. Dreams are often great sources of inspiration, but they're also deeply personal and introspective. Something about reading other peoples dreams lets me see something raw about humanity. An unchained narrative, a thought left to wander.
I'm going to be gathering my dreams into articles here, sometimes by year, and sometimes by month, depending on the volume of dreams I recorded or how many I can find and recover. I'm going to leave them raw and unedited (other than names, for anonymity), as I usually record them in the groggy moments of half-sleep as I first rise.
Here are the dreams of 2013
The Tattoo
I was at a party, it was in some sort of basement, dark and grungy, someone’s house. There was a table we were all sitting or standing around. It was a square table. The lights were super dim. My boyfriend and his sister (except it was his brother, and apparently his brother was a girl in my dream) were there. There were probably two or three other people there who I didn’t know.
Everyone was drinking or something. I wasn’t, I don’t think I was at least, but I was pretty contact high. Someone said something. I decided right then and there that I need a tattoo. Not that I just wanted one, but like life-or-death, or I would hate myself, whatever it was it was a really strong feeling that I needed a tattoo. So my boyfriends's brother/sister/whatever gave me one right then and there.
It was on my right arm, on the inside. It was two pinkish crystals growing out of the ground, except one was broken.
I took a shot, or a drink, but instantly I as super drunk. And apparently I am a sad drunk because I instantly hated my new tattoo. I was almost in hysterics, the feeling that I hated this thing but I could never get it off of me. Getting laser surgery definitely flashed through my mind. I scrubbed at it, and thanked the stars it had started to come off, fading a little like a sharpie drawing.
I asked my boyfriend's sister/brother if they had any lotion that got rid of tattoos. They have me some, but it only made the image darker and clearer again. I was crying, I was just so upset.
I went up the stairs and outside, it was very dark out as well. It was my front yard.
My boyfriend came out and I ignored him. I was just so upset. He tried to make me feel better but I kept ignoring him. He went back inside and I felt bad, I went inside and downstairs, opening his door a little. Everything inside was very dirty and cluttered and dark. I opened his door a little, he ignored me, he must have been upset with me.
I went back outside, and mom and grandma had come, the car at the top of the yard. Mom was pissed, I didn’t want to talk to her about the tattoo yet. She started to complain about/yell at grandma, how she had been super annoying and racist all day. Apparently she had been confused about why a black lady she had seen was quilting.
Ransom
I was trapped inside an old school. The door was locked and I was panicking. I turned around and saw three other girls who tired to calm me down. They explained to me that the water still worked in the school and there were food rations. They handed me one of a bunch of huge cylinders, I thought it was a bottle of water, but it ended up being a huge tub of peanut butter.
It seemed like there was this lady kidnapping girls and holding them in the school. For ransom? I wasn’t sure. Every so often we would have to come to this big room with one large window wall on the right, sit inside grocery carts (which is hard to do, btw) and listen to her speak. It happened pretty routinely, but it could also happen at any time. There were guards watching us while this happened.
She drank, it was some sort of alcohol with fiber or something and we were not suppose to touch it. Of course this lead to me and another girl running through what looked to be the outside (but must not have been, since we were kidnapped and held in this school) through these portables, trying to sneak past guards, who would kill us if they caught us, and touch the alcohol. I think we did manage to touch it. It was like a plastic Popsicle.
Next time we were in the big room, a rock went through the huge window from the inside. Everyone stopped and looked.
I noticed a firetruck waiting outside.
Were we going to be rescued?
The Girl and The Monster
There was this little girl, in a park. It was just a grassy area, brightly lit, some trees on the outside, but it had a feeling of being safe. Of being in a public area, where no one would try and do anything to you. I have no idea how old she was, she could have been 8 to 18. She was all smiles and giggles, but she was facing this monster thing. It was sort of like Slenderman, but it had a face. It reminded me of the Rake, the way it hunched over though. It had these scary, evil eyes and this huge pointed teeth Cheshire cat smile. It reminded me of Rumpelstiltskin a lot. It was watching the girl, trying to play with her.
She was perfectly content playing with it.
It hopped around, getting her to follow along, but it never left small area of the park.
She hugged the monster. It hugged her back. Tentacles came out of it’s back like Slenderman.
Old House
My two friends and I were going through this abandoned old house and it’s property. We had looked all over, though I’m not sure what we were looking for. The house was a light blue grey color, and falling apart slowly. It had a deck, and we were on it, looking down into a sort of gully behind the house. There was a little muddy sinkhole at my feet. I stepped off the porch, one friend was kneeling down, still watching the gully. The other was standing, thinking.
There was a pair of doll shoes on the ground, little Japanese sandals.
My phone went off as a car drove up to the house.
“Oh, my ride is here, guys. I have to go, sorry.”
Neither of them really said anything, I leaned down and awkwardly hugged one, and then nodded to the other, who nodded back.
I was in the car, a lady was driving, and a girl I didn’t know was in the backseat. The lady kept talking to me, but I really was not paying attention. I tried to make sure she thought I was. She had offered to give me a ride to and from church weekly, but I was just using her to get to places I needed to be. I had told her that the meeting at the old house had been a study group I needed to get to. It hadn’t, but it had been important.
I was home, and my room was dirty. I noticed that my heater, which was rising off the floor to nearly my height in places, huge grates and square ducts rising a bit like mushrooms down the length of my room, was dripping, leaking water. I started to pull dirty clothes off of it and clean up so that I could run it and see if that would fix it. I didn’t want my clothes to get burned, and I didn’t want to start a fire.
As I was cleaning I could see that my bed was a bunk bed, with three beds underneath, forming a sort of bracket shape, though one side was longer than the other. I threw blankets back up onto the beds off the floor.
Good Girl
I had a girl sitting at a table in my room, her hands on leashes that were secured to the table. I was giving her food, the table was set very fancy-like. When she was done, I kept pouring more pop into her nice glass, she would drink it, and then I would pour more. It was cola, I know that, but it was clear, like sparkling water. She started to get angry, shaking softly and holding the glass as if she would throw the pop at me. I only smiled, shaking my head.
“You wouldn’t do that. You’re such a good girl. Not like the others, the other’s haven’t learned to be good like you.”
She lowered her glass in defeat.
The whole time I had been dreaming, the words “My name is Greg.” were being repeated over and over.
Return
My parents were back, and I was the happiest person in the world. They had been gone for so long, everyone thought they were dead, I thought they were dead, but then they just showed up. I clung to them as much as possible. They were happy to see me too. We up to the street, we were going to walk somewhere, but we passed this cute pile of giveaways at the top of the yard. I was giving this all away, probably because I was just so sad. But it was full of beautiful things, like matroshkas, and dolls, and beautiful furniture, like a big dark wood cabinet, and other antique furniture. I had to let go of mom, I had to get some of this inside. Now that my parents were back, I had seen the true value of these objects again.
I grabbed a bunch of matroshkas in my arms. How had I thought of throwing these out in the first place? There were a bunch of antique dolls too, but one in particular, hidden a little on the cabinet, caught my attention. It was a ball joined doll. I picked it up, so excited, and looked it over. She was a little dirty, and would need a lot of love and care. I asked my mom if I could have it, and she laughed a little and said yes.
Sleeping
I was looking up the story of a death of a girl. I found the address that she died, and googled it, and my aunt was the only thing that came up in the search, only about four things came up. I was stunned. No way, no freaking way. This girl had died on my aunt’s property.
I must have gone there, to check it out. I walked over to where I thought she had died. There was a little weed, no more special than any other. But that was where she died. That was the exact spot she had died.
From there, I must have started work on a stop motion animation of the girl and her death, because I had this whole stop motion animation- I super fluid one too- of my sleeping doll making food in this little cluttered cabin. She was making sweet potatoes and other things, straining things out of boiling water, but she couldn’t open her eyes to look at things. It was strange.
Field Trip
I had to take one of my finals at the Seattle campus for some reason. The class if was for had two finals only a day apart, but one was at Bothell and one was at Seattle. To get to Seattle, I agreed to go spend a day with a friend and have fun. We went to the twin’s house which was in Seattle. We had fun, we were laughing really hard, or at least they were making me laugh really hard. I lost track of time a little, but remembered that I had this test soon.
The rest of them went outside to a little beach across the street and were playing. I was sitting on my friend’s car’s hood, looking up at the sky. It was really dark out, which was really strange. My final was at ten in the morning or something, it couldn’t be more than eight, we hadn’t spent that much time here. But when I looked at my phone it was ten at night. I panicked and started crying.
When I woke up I had my hands over my ears as if I was blocking out sounds. I didn’t even notice until I moved my hands.
I fell back asleep.
I was back at school, in the class I had missed the final for. I was going through the class grades and website, looking at things I had missed. I had also missed the fact that I needed to dress up in costumes and post pictures of that on the class website, but it looked like the teacher had nulled those grades for everyone, because so little people did it. I was still panicking, and the teacher came up to me, I hugged her, telling her I missed the final and asked if I could retake it. She smiled and said no.
I went to the library, but noticed that there was no door in or out of the library. One side was a large concrete wall behind glass. I went through the books, it was set up less like a library and more like a bookstore, with short shelves that went up a little less that your shoulder. On the other side of the library I talked to someone else who was there.
When I turned around though, the concrete wall was flooding, water surging down the wall. I walked over, looking through the glass at the torrents of water. There was a section of the library I could see that was flooded. There was a body, its head in the bookshelves. No one was panicking. There was no way out of the library though, and I was confused and scared.
Game Show
I was watching Jeopardy. There were lots of contestants, all women, and all in long orange bridesmaid-looking dresses. There were no podiums, they were just standing in a line at the corner of the stage. One women was standing with Alex Trebek, reading a letter she wrote to him. He had called her a whore the last time she was on the show.
This was not scripted and the production got angry, she was ordered to stop and get back in line. When she got to the line of women, they were all very upset and angry with her, holding hands and not letting her back into line. It was a “Wife Pride” themed episode, and she was in a polygamous relationship. The women said “This is a very special spot- not for someone like you!” She shoved through them and ran off through the audience.
She was running through empty hallways. The camera kept cutting to what looked like a teleprompter, it was black with white/yellow glowing words, mostly names, but also derogatory terms.
Eventually the camera cut to her lying on the inside of a teleprompter, a goat sitting next to her, sucking worms out of her mouth.
Denny's
My mom, brother, and I were at a Denny’s. It wasn’t like other Denny’s, it was cramped, with things all over the walls and pushed into little crannies. I was hungry, but looking off at all the little things on the shelves on the walls.
The server finally came to take our order. I smiled, and I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. I was so excited. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized I wouldn’t be able to eat it.
I tried flagging down the waiter, but it took two tries. I asked to cancel my order and she seemed skeptical that I would be able to.
When she came back, she was smiling and told me that she had canceled the order successfully. I asked if they had a gluten free menu and she glared at me, explaining angrily: of course they didn’t have a gluten free menu, and I would just need to deal with it myself.
At a loss for words I just sat there until she left. My mom and my brother both shrugged a little. “We’re going to eat anyways.” They started on their food. My stomach rumbled a little. There was a shelf above our table with a lot of slightly-green bananas.
“I’m just going to take a banana and wait outside then, unless they cost more.”
My mom looked up from her food. “They probably cost more.”
Frustrated I pushed from my seat a little violently and left the restaurant.
Late
We were leaving for another camping trip. We had already been camping, but my whole family was back at the house, getting more supplies for the next trip. I was in my room. I needed to hurry, I was just going to grab something. My DS games caught my eye. I grabbed for my DS, looking around for which pokemon games I should bring. I rummaged around, finding Yellow and holding onto it, but I couldn’t find my copy of Black. I looked in slots and in other boxes, and eventually found it on a shelf. I heard the car outside honking, I was really late.
I grabbed the game, curiously it said Black and White, instead of just one color like all the rest of the games. I also grabbed a large doll from the floor and hurried down the stairs. At the last moment, I dropped the doll. I didn’t want my parents to yell at me about being late /and/ having a doll. The truck was already moving slowly down the road in front of my house, honking, I opened the door and mom got out of the truck, clearly very mad. She needed to lock the door because I didn’t have a key.
Camping
I was with everyone from High School, we were the ones camping. There were maybe 10 people there, but I only remember four of my friends exactly. We were all trying to get to sleep on the same bed. We were camping literally next door to where we had been camping before in the dream, so I was confused as to why we needed to be here. This was a creepy guy’s house. Why did we need to camp at a creepy guys house?
Everyone was on the bed but me, so it was beyond cramped. I was on a little couch thing at the end of the bed, trying to get some sleep. I was trying to use everyone’s legs as a pillow, but it was really hard because people kept moving.
Everyone was whispering and talking to each other. I noticed the creepy man walk in from the other room, but no one else seemed to notice. He was almost transparent, a dark black figure. He crossed the room and stood in the corner by the window.
Everyone was whispering about how creepy he was, and things like that. I told them to shut up in a harsh whisper. “Can’t you tell he’s right there?”
The figure didn’t move though, and everyone kept talking, apparently no one heard me.
The figure finally moved, approaching one side of the bed and lifting its hands up, its face contorting into a hissing growl, a really scary face, and then the whole figure vanished.
I was so scared.
I tried to explain to everyone what happened, but no one had seen it but me.
We had a laptop with us, and, because it was suddenly morning, we decided to boot up a little quiz of mine that would tell us if this creepy man was a bad guy or not, but he had to be the one to take the test. My friend was going was going to go give it to him, but he forced me to come along.
We went into the other room where he was. He looked a lot like Artie from Warehouse 13. He smiled at us, agreeing to take the test, though we didn’t tell him what it was for.
I complained that, as the history buff of the group, I was forced to be here.
He took the test, as I looked around the room. It was full of warm colors.
The test asked him questions, even asked him to design a running shoe.
He smiled and gave the laptop back when he was done.
I clicked a few things, and the computer said:
YOU ARE: THE VILLAIN OF THIS STORY