Dream Journal 7/3/16

Kyle and I were about to start our vacation in London. We had just gotten out of the back of a cab, when Kyle’s phone rang, and we were informed that our hotel had a gas leak, and that we could not stay there. Frustrated, we dragged our luggage into a small cafe across the street, and tried to figure out our next move. We were sitting at our table, scrolling through hotel listings on our phones, when a man approached us. I looked up, and there, standing by our table, was Felix Kjellberg… or PewDiePie, as you may also know him as.

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Daily Prompt 6/19/2016 | Wandering Aimlessly

[In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt 6/19/2016 | Aimless]

Ten years ago, if you would have asked me where I saw myself in ten years, I would have given you a detailed rundown of my 26-year-old self. Married, with my Master’s in Psychology, working as a counselor in a high school, living in a four bedroom house, with a big back yard, a desk and a pool, two kids, a dog or two… you get the idea. When I was in high school, I had dreams. I had ambitions. I had drive.

Not so much these days.

After I graduated high school, moved out of my mom’s house, and moved to Canada to go to a university with my then boyfriend, I realized that the world was a much different place than the one I had been taught about, and I was woefully unprepared. The world didn’t care about my dreams, or my struggles to achieve them. The world just didn’t care. It still doesn’t.

I left the university after just one year, several thousand dollars in debt, and unable to find work to pay it off. I had to move back to the US, and struggled to find work. After months of searching, and living on my friends’ couch because I could not afford my own place, I found a job at McDonald’s. My first job. I was 19 years old, working with kids still in high school, and I was miserable. Despite working 40 hours a week, my entire paycheck went towards my share of the rent and bills, and literally nothing else.

Cut to over 7 years later, and this is still the case. I’ve spent my entire adult life, moving from dead end job to dead end job, always making minimum wage, and always struggling to make ends meet. I’ve never been able to save up money, I’ve never been able to go back to school, and I’ve moved around so many times that I have no stable group of friends or support group.

The dream that I had for my future self died as soon as I graduated, and the world just kept kicking me when I was down, and made sure that I never made dreams for myself again. So here I am, wandering aimlessly through life, feeling like I am going nowhere fast. Wondering if my little family and I will ever catch a break, and get the chance to do something to better our future.

Is this all there is for us?

Thanks for reading, friends.

Jan

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!

Daily Prompt 5/23/2016 | Vivid Dreamer

In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt 5/23/2016 | Dream

I’ve always been a vivid dreamer, sometimes even a lucid dreamer. For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed in black and white, and in color. In sound, and in silence. I’m fortunate enough to be able to recall most of my dreams in vivid detail. My subconscious has remembered hundreds of faces from passing glances in my past, and they have all wound up in my dreams. I’ve never taken my dreams for granted, and even wrote a novel based on a series of dreams I had about a world overthrown by androids. My mind is a beautiful, crazy place.

I jot down my dreams when I wake up, and type them out in my Dream Journal when I am able, so that I can share them with my friends here online. Feel free to look through them. Some are sad, some are funny, and others frightening. Some are complete works of fiction, and some are long lost memories.

Do you ever dream about wonderfully bizarre things?

Jan

Dream Journal 4/2/2016

My mother and I were on our way to my great-aunt’s funeral (she is still alive in real life). The funeral went by quickly, with people coming up to us and giving us their condolences, and hugging my mom, who was very close to her. My mom and I were talking about spending the week at my grandmother’s apartment with her (she is actually dead, so…) to make sure that she was okay, and I argued that there was no way that the three of us would survive a week in her one bedroom, efficiency-style apartment.

We went anyway. At my grandmother’s apartment, she informed us that we would have to share the love seat in the living room, or sleep on the floor, because there was nowhere else to sleep. My mom got angry and stormed out, and my grandmother sat in her chair by the living room window and lit up a cigarette. I walked out of the apartment and went to explore the building.

My grandmother’s building was exactly the same as it was in real life. She lived on the top floor of a six story apartment building, filled with mostly elderly people, or low-income families. The building was shaped like a “U”, with a courtyard in the center, which was mostly used for smoking. The hallways were as dark as I remember, and a bit gloomy, and I walked up and down the back stairwells, just like when I was a kid. On the floor below my grandmother’s, I stopped to watch a maintenance man unload pallet after pallet of colorful Room Essentials towels from Target, all unwrapped and stacked randomly, which made me cringe.

Blue yellow green yellow blue red pink pink yellow blue green white red…

Something like that.

I stood there and watched him for a while, before returning to my grandmother’s apartment. When I walked in, I found her lying on the living room floor, lifeless. I stood over her, just staring, until my mother came back. She saw her on the floor, and screamed. She started telling me to do something, and I just shrugged and told her to try CPR, but that I doubt it would work, as she was already blue-tinged and cold. She kept yelling at me to do something, so I picked up the phone and called 9-1-1. While I was on the phone with them, my mom left again.

I hung up the phone and walked to the fridge, looking for something to eat. It was filled with grapefruit halves, a half gallon of milk, and coffee creamer. Just like I remember. On her kitchen table was a large, brown paper bag, which was filled with various takeout containers. I opened the top one, which had two large, meaty sandwiches in it. There was a sticker on the container dated from almost a month prior. My mom walked back in just then, and I asked her if she thought the sandwiches were okay to eat, and she knocked the container out of my hands. We stared at each other for a while, then she left again, slamming the door behind her. I picked up the fallen sandwiches, and the brown bag, and placed it all in the kitchen sink.

That is all I remember before I woke up. I vaguely remember something about Jurassic Park, but I don’t know why.

Dream Journal 3/13/16

I was running down a deserted street with Maggie and Glen from The Walking Dead, as well as another young woman with red hair. We were all armed, and were weaving in and out of deserted alleyways between very old, Spanish-style buildings. Out of nowhere, somebody started shooting at us from one of the rooftops, and we were forced to take cover inside one of the empty buildings. Glenn had been shot in the leg, and was bleeding badly. The inside of the building looked like a cathedral, and we found that we were not alone. Meredith, Alex, Callie, and Arizona from Grey’s anatomy were all there, pointing guns at us. We held our arms up in surrender, and told them we were just seeking shelter from the shooter outside. They invited us in and carried Glenn away to take care of his leg.

The room that we were in was very sleek and modern, unlike the rest of the city, especially the building we were in. Callie was stitching up Glenn’s leg, and Arizona brought us into the adjacent room, which was actually a massive indoor garage, filled with armored vehicles of every size, and enough weaponry to arm a small army. She informed us that there were over 50 people in their group, and that the rest were out scavenging in the city. They had been there for over a year, and had made the building a stronghold. I asked her why we were able to just walk right in if it was a stronghold, and she told me they left that specific door unlocked for people like us, and that if those people didn’t work out, they just killed them.

Arizona told us that we could take one of the vehicles from their fleet, and stock up on supplies, but then we had to go. Once Glenn was done getting his leg fixed up, we chose one of the armored vans, stocked up on food and a few weapons, thanked everyone, and left.

We were driving down a deserted highway, when we spotted a gas station that seemed to still be in good shape. We decided to grab whatever fuel we could find, and grab some more food and water. Next to the gas station was a car dealership, and the lot was filled with large vehicles. We decided that we wanted a second vehicle to bring back to camp, and decided on a black and chrome truck. Maggie and I went inside to find the keys, and Glenn and the redhead went to find food and water. Inside, there was a single zombie, which we took down with ease. While we were searching for the key, I noticed that my hair was wet, and was dripping onto the concrete floor, leaving a trail behind me. I ignored it, until Maggie asked me what was making the weird tracks on the floor. I looked down, and saw that something was following me, making weird tracks in the water left from my hair. I started running in circles, and the tracks still followed me. Something invisible. I reached down to grab whatever it was, and a small, white dog appeared in my arms. She was a long-haired yappy dog, with a pink bow in her hair. Maggie looked confused and walked over to look at the completely normal, no longer invisible, dog I held in my arms.

We went back to the van, unable to find the keys for the truck, and we all left. The dog was no longer with me. We drove to a mall, which had been completely overrun by zombies. Despite there being hundreds of them, we drove right up to the doors, and were greeted by a woman, who showed us how to jump the fence to get inside. Inside the mall was actually a prison, with over a dozen floors, all circled around a hollow center. There were no open rooms, only cells, aside from the bottom floor, which was a hilly grass-filled space. The woman showed us around, and gave us two cells on the second floor, overlooking the grassy area. She told us that we were not allowed out of our cells at night, and that it was very dangerous.

It was nighttime, and all the lights were out. We were sitting in the grassy area on the bottom floor with a few other people, who told us that the rules were stupid, and they wanted to do whatever they wanted. Suddenly, the doors opened, and a large figure dressed in full-body, knight’s armor walked in, leading a dozen zombified horses. We all ran to hide, and he didn’t seem to spot us. Zombies flooded the room behind the horses. The figure shackled the zombie horses to the stone walls, equal distance apart from each other, and began circling the room, chanting. The horses started going crazy, and one of them broke the bolts on the wall that kept it shackled in place, but it did not run.

Suddenly, the Grey’s Anatomy group walked in, dressed in formal attire, with Callie leading them, donning a white wedding dress, adorned with red gems. Honestly, it was terrifying. They walked in silently and slowly to the center of the room, where the knight bowed to them, and left. I ran out from our hiding place, and asked Callie what was happening. They all ignored me, and someone ran out and grabbed me, dragging me back to where I had been hiding. The woman who had shown us around the prison grabbed my arm and shoved me into the wall, telling me that I should not be here. The rest of my group was already gone. I shoved her back, and we fought, as I tried to run back out to Callie and the others, but she kept stopping me.

The horse that had broken free suddenly ran forward, and trampled through the group, killing them all. The knight started screaming for the zombies to attack, and they all started clawing and biting at the horses that were still in chains. The woman from the prison and I climbed up a nearby rope ladder up to the second floor, and shut ourselves inside one of the cells. We could still see below, and there was blood flying through the air, landing on the floor that we were on. There was an eerie green light flooding the building, and I became aware that the grassy area was on fire. Green fire.

And then I woke up.

Dream Journal 3/9/16

I was with a group of 6 or 7 people, all armed to the teeth with weapons, making our way through a thick forest toward a huge mansion in the distance. There were zombies closing in all around us. Once in front of the mansion, there was one zombie standing at the top of the steps by the front door, but she was different than the rest of the other zombies. She stood perfectly still and stared at us with creepy, white eyes. One of the girls in our group locked eyes with her, and the zombie’s face morphed into a zombified version of the girl from the group, and her eyes turned to a solid, creamy blue color. Suddenly, all of the zombies around us stopped moving, their eyes turned the same color blue, and they just stood there, swaying.

We took this opportunity to run into the mansion. Once inside, we barricaded the door, and the group immediately relaxed. The group, which had been 6 or 7 people, now had about 20 people in it, including popular YouTuber Markiplier, and we all separated to explore the mansion. The lights were on, and the mansion was very clean, as if the zombie apocalypse had never happened. I went upstairs with another girl from the group, and we raided a giant, walk-in closet in one of the bedrooms. I found a really cute bathing suit in my size, and put it on.

Connected to the bedroom was a huge bathroom with a walk-in bathtub. I filled the tub all the way to the top, and sat in it. Mark came in and pointed out the window, and asked if I had seen the weird zombie with the blue eyes. I looked outside and she was now out on the lawn, staring up at the window. I shuddered and looked away. Mark told me that he had asked out another girl in the group, but she said no, and I hugged him and asked if he wanted to get in the tub with me. He said yes, and jumped over the side and into the tub, which was now a much larger hot tub.

He looked out the window again, and the zombie was right outside the window, and we were suddenly on the ground floor. Mark locked eyes with her, her face turned into a ccreepy version of his, and her eyes turned to a muddle brown color. She began crying loudly. All of the zombies on the lawn began crying loudly as well, and Mark jumped out of the tub and ran from the room. I stayed in the tub, and just looked away from the window.

Several minutes passed, and I heard someone scream. I ran into the bedroom, where the girl I was with before was fighting off a zombie. I shoved it off of her and stabbed it in the head, then pulled her to her feet. I looked out into the hallway and noticed that all of the lights were off in the mansion. I asked her where everyone else was, and she shrugged. We walked into the hallway, where we were greeted by  a horde of zombies roaming the main floor. We silently made out way to the library, but we didn’t come across any of our people. The lights were still on in the library, and among the zombies were half a dozen human maids and butlers, cleaning, seemingly unaware that they were surrounded by zombies. We killed out way to them, and got them out into the main lobby, where our people were bus clearing out the zombies.

Once we met up with them, we fought our way back outside to the front lawn, where the hypnotic zombie was waiting. One of the guys in our group charged her, but before he got to her, their eyes locked, her face turned into his, her eyes turned red, and she viciously attacked him, tearing him apart. Blood and gore flew everywhere. She snapped her head up and looked at us, blood dripping from her mouth. She made a loud roaring sound, and we split up and ran for our lives.

That is the last thing I remember.
—————————————-
[A little bit of back story for this next dream bit. In most of my dreams where I am running, I forget how to run, and it ends up being a weird skipping run, and I get angry. I can not run in my dreams for some reason.]

I was back in my hometown, and I was walking through the playground at the elementary school. There was a group of young teenagers goofing off near me, and I was trying to ignore them as I stretched. I was wearing workout clothes, and started walking briskly toward the baseball field at the end of the playground. I started jogging, and decided not to go any faster, because I was amazing that I was successfully jogging, and not limping/hopping/skipping instead. I started crying as I jogged around the field.

That is all I remember before I woke up.

Dream Journal 2/1/16

3-4 years in the future.

I took Liam and a friend of his to a large museum, and we were in the dinosaur exhibit. There was another large group of children there, possibly from a school, and they were in the same room as us. We were just about to leave the room, when a woman rushed up to us, and tried to grab Liam’s friend. I quickly pulled both boys closer to me, and asked her what she was doing. Instead of responding, she started screaming that I was kidnapping the boys from the group, and security came rushing in.

I stood there, while everyone surrounded us, and the boys started crying. Security tried to pull them away, and I kept repeating that I was Liam’s mom, and that they were there with me, but the woman kept screaming and causing a scene. Holding both of their hands, I turned and ran from the room. We ran through several other exhibit rooms, until we got to an empty wing of the building, which looked futuristic/space themed. We hid inside of a large, silver spaceship exhibit, just in time for a large crowd of people to run by, hollering angrily, in search of us.

After they passed, we slipped out of the spaceship, and went down the opposite corridor. It was really dark and dilapidated, like it had been abandoned for years. There were glass cabinet displays, covered in cobwebs and dust, lining the corridor. We could hear voices shouting behind us, and started running. We hit a dead end, and could see light in the darkness coming closer and closer. We backed up against the wall, which swung suddenly, throwing us into a secret room. The room was decorated lavishly, and was lit with candles and torches. Liam’s friend started crying, saying he wanted to take a nap, so they two boys went to lie down on one of the antique couches.

There were two doors on either side of the room, one of them was a bathroom, the other led to another dark hallway. I walked over to a large bookshelf in the corner of the room, and grabbed a random book from the shelf. The cover of the book had several lines of hieroglyphics, and the pages were also filled with them. I sat on the other couch in the room, and started looking through the book, even though I couldn’t understand it. I could hear the crowd on the other side of the wall, but it sounded as though they were in the room with us. I ignored them, and kept looking through my book. There was a small, circular window in the room, and I could see the sun setting. The lighting in the room turned pinkish orange.

I got up and walked to the bathroom, which was massive. In the middle of the room was a large, stone bath, like you’d find in an old bath house. I pressed a button on the floor, and it started to fill with bubbly, steaming water. I took my clothes off, and stared at myself in front of a large wall mirror, the size of the entire wall. I took my hair out of the ponytail that it was in, and it was red and purple. I climbed into the bath, and opened the hieroglyphics book again. Liam and his friend were awake, and I could hear them talking and running around in the other room. The sun had set, and the room was bathed in a dancing glow from the candles strewn around the room…

And that is the last thing I remember before my son woke me up at 4:40 in the morning.

Dream Journal 1/29/16

Present day.

I was at a large, indoor arena, located inside a massive university. I was there with a group of people from my high school, who were now my age, to watch some kind of competition going on between MIT and Stanford, some kind of championship game for an unknown sport. The arena was located in the center of the university, and it was surrounded by windows, which were multiple stories tall. There were also several types of staircases, going in a bunch of different directions.

The lowest level of the building was where the bathrooms were located. I went down to the women’s room with a few other girls from the group, but the room was packed with people. The large, wrap-around wall of the bathroom was a large window, which looked out into the arena, and people were staring in. None of the stalls had doors, and there were no sinks. Where the sinks should have been, there were small toilets built into the counters, which you needed to jump up onto in order to use. One of the girls from the group jumped up and proceeded to use one of the sink toilets. She urged me to use the one next to her, as I had to pee badly, but the bathroom was littered with garbage and filth, and I opted to hold it.

I decided to leave, and ascended one of the large, spiral staircases outside of the bathroom hallway. At the top of the staircase was a large, open area, where a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament was happening. There was a tall, obese man yelling and waving his arms around, apparently because he was losing, and a skinny kid across from him, looking terrified. I stood there watching for a few minutes, when suddenly, a group of little kids walked into the room, probably first or second graders, and stood in a straight line. Everyone in the room stood up and lined up as well. The group of children began singing a Christmas song that I had never heard, and I tried to stand as still as everyone else. My heels were over the edge of the floor, and I was teetering, dangerously close to falling several floors down. A woman who was standing next to me started laughing and said that I had big feet, and I turned red.

When the kids finished singing, I went back down the stairs and met up with the girl from the bathroom. We walked back into to the arena together, which was now empty, aside for two guys running laps inumanly fast. One of the men was wearing a Speedo, the other in a black, wrestling leotard. we watched them run for a while, when the children before marched into the arena. They began marching in a line around the arena, singing the same song from before. People started flooding back into the arena.

And then I woke up.

Dream Journal 1/26/16

Future (2-3 years?).

Liam, now a blond toddler, and I were at the park with a group of other moms and kids. Liam was around 3 or 4 years old, and was running around the playground with several other kids. I was sitting at a picnic table with the four other women, and one of them was telling the group that she had caught her husband cheating on her, but he didn’t know that she knew about it. She was talking about how she wanted to get even with him, and that she wanted to find an attractive guy to cheat with, so that her husband would catch her. One of the other women told her that she could use her husband, as they were in an open relationship, and he probably wouldn’t mind.

The other two moms got up and left to get their children, visibly upset by the women’s discussion. I turned my head to watch the kids play, trying not to listen in on their private conversation. A few minutes later, I turned back, and they were passionately (and pretty aggressively) kissing each other, and one of them had removed their shirt. I quickly stood up and took several steps back. Once I vacated the picnic table, they quickly re-positioned, lying down over the spot I had just stood up from, and continued.

I looked around, slightly embarrassed, and saw other people starting to look in our direction. Several people were even moving closer. I kept backing away, and walked over to the playground to get my son. When I turned back around, a large crowd had formed around the picnic table, and were cheering the two ladies on loudly. I grabbed Liam’s hand and we walked away quickly, but the crowd kept growing and getting louder. We started to run, and cut across the baseball field to get to our car.

I could still see the crowd growing from across the park, and could see dollar bills, jewelry, and other expensive things, being thrown in the air. We drove away, and I asked Liam if he wanted to get lunch at Wendy’s. He told me he wanted to go to Jack In The Box, even though the closest one was hours away. I told him that we could go, as I hadn’t been in years, whipped the car around, and started speeding off in the opposite direction. I turned on the radio, and the One Direction song Story of My Life was playing. We sang together, joking about how much we really didn’t like One Direction, but the song was so catchy…

And then I woke up.

Dream Journal 1/25/16

Present day.

Kyle, Liam, and I were shopping at Target. Our cart was piled high with toys, and topped with a few frozen pizzas, and a bottle of juice. We walked to the front of the store, and walked out the front door without paying for anything in our cart. Dozens of others were also leaving with carts filled with merchandise that wasn’t paid for. No one noticed.

As we drove home, the roads were lined with people carrying comically large cardboard boxes, all staring and waving at us as we passed by. The closer we got to our apartment, the more people there were, crowding the sidewalks and streets. As we pulled into our driveway, we were shocked to see that all the people with cardboard boxes were gathered on our lawn. As we rushed to push through the crowd to get inside, they started taking  wrapped gifts from the boxes, in all different shapes and sizes. In unison, they started singing Happy Birthday to Liam.

We quickly shut our door, shutting them out, and turned to see that our living room and kitchen were piled from floor to ceiling with boxes and presents. I picked up my phone and called 9-1-1, but the officer laughed at me, telling me to be grateful that so many people would give us gifts for our son, but I was too freaked out to be thankful.

The officer hung up on me, and Kyle and I started boarding up our windows, trying to block out the many strangers still standing on our lawn, and their singing.

And then I woke up.