I dreamed I was s contestant on another weird reality TV show. I was given ten children to foster, from toddler to high school senior, and I would win certain prizes based on how many I still had at the end of a month. If any of the kids got too sick, got too hurt, got into too much trouble, or became too unhappy, they'd be taken away. There were also other contestants who would be teachers, coaches, lawyers, bosses, who would get prizes for helping me or for making me lose my kids, but no one knew their objectives in advance.
The first kids I lost were two teenaged boys who turned out to be members from rival gangs. They got into a huge fight in my front lawn. Thankfully, neither was badly hurt, but the police came and took them away. This was when I began to suspect the social worker who placed them both with me was working against me.
The next kid I lost was my high school senior, who was a star quarter back. He collapsed on the field during a game, and it turned out that his brain had gotten really dried out. There was this test they showed me, where they opened up the skull and spread a special powder on this circular area in the middle. A normal brain would absorb the powder quickly, and the spot would look just the same in a few seconds. A desiccated brain would stay chalky and gray because the powder wouldn't absorb. My boy's brain stayed gray with powder, and they said this was probably caused by use of performance enhancing drugs. So they took him away, and I thought maybe his coach was behind it.
This was all really difficult and awful, but pretty straightforward. What started to happen next was truly devious and evil. One of my kids was a little girl about five years old. She was very sweet, and had this favorite snack that was apple wedges on buttered toast. She was very close to an older girl of about thirteen, and she had two little pets (sometimes they were dogs, and then they'd become cats). She really loved her little critters.
Well, at some point we noticed something was wrong with one of the cats. It started to show up with small wounds, it became withdrawn, timid, his a lot and had to be coaxed out. The wounds healed quickly at first, but new, more serious ones started to appear. Then it began happening with the other little dog. I promised the little girl I would get to the bottom of this and make her little friends safe again.
This went on for weeks, and I came to realize the cuts and burns and bruises were the results of systematic torture. Then one day I came home from dropping the kids off at school to find the little dogs on my doorstep, one of them badly hurt and disconsolate, nudging the other, who was dead. There was a note this time that said that after the surviving dog was gone, it was the girl's turn.
At this point, I went ballistic. I went into the histories of all the players in this warped game. I found out that one of my older kids had abused a previous foster sibling, and that a lawyer who lived nearby was a sadistic serial killer. I went after him first. I broke one of his fingers after another as I questioned him. He said he was involved in it, but he wasn't alone. He wouldn't tell me who was helping him.
I was debating how to question the girl and planning more research when I woke up.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Friday, December 19, 2014
TBTT#8 Shut Up, I Know I'm Late With This, and Haven't Written Much Lately ~ 4/16/2012
I dreamed I was with some coworkers and we'd pulled off the road in a small canyon to observe some brown bears. We walked up the canyon a ways for a closer look, still far away from the two we could see. About two hundred feet from the car, we realized we were surrounded by brown bears, all standing on their hind legs, who proceeded to attack us with butterfly knives and syringes full of some sort of narcotic sedative.
I tried to look very small and inert against the canyon wall, but they saw me, and started to advance. One of my companions intercepted them, and I saw an opportunity to rush the bear that turned to attack him. I wrenched the syringe out of its hand and plunged it into its neck, then grabbed the butterfly knife and severed an artery.
I looked at the blood on my hands, and back to the bear that was gasping and gurgling on the ground, only to see that it was really an eight-year-old little boy. I fell to my knees by his side, sputtering out my useless apologies and tears as the life left his eyes and he stopped breathing.
I tried to look very small and inert against the canyon wall, but they saw me, and started to advance. One of my companions intercepted them, and I saw an opportunity to rush the bear that turned to attack him. I wrenched the syringe out of its hand and plunged it into its neck, then grabbed the butterfly knife and severed an artery.
I looked at the blood on my hands, and back to the bear that was gasping and gurgling on the ground, only to see that it was really an eight-year-old little boy. I fell to my knees by his side, sputtering out my useless apologies and tears as the life left his eyes and he stopped breathing.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Being an English Reality TV Star ~ 12/10/2014
I dreamed I had been assigned the role of Frances, Queen of Clubs, in a reality television adaptation of a historical novel series. I was the betrothed of a Scottish laird in exile, and went to live in his family's manor north of London. It was near the village Olt, on the Olt River.
His mother greeted me when I arrived, and showed me my suite of rooms. My sitting room had shelves and shelves of books, and large picture windows facing west. It was sunset, and the sky I saw through the windows was flooded with amethyst clouds, flaming bright pink at the edges.
There was a door out onto a patio and dock that stretched out over the loch the house was built beside. There was a hatch that opened up over a fish trap. My only job, as the newest member of the household, was to take any fish out of the trap each evening, and behead and gut them and take them to the kitchen. My hostess showed me how to reach into the cold water, grab the three-foot long fish by the gills, and flip them out onto the dock. The hardest part was making sure they didn't slide back into the water after I'd cleaned them, or the loch monster would eat them up. The laird's younger sister, who had had the job before I showed up, promised to help me the first few evenings, until I had it down.
The next day the laird showed me around his lands. He rode a horse, but I walked. The sandy paths were soft and spongy, the land was marshy, and there were dark gray stretches of boggy quicksand. I told him I'd never stepped in quicksand before, and was curious how it felt, so he directed me to a nearby patch, and I stepped into it, then when I was done sinking, up to my knees, he pulled me out.
It started to rain, so we went inside. I took off my shoes in the back kitchen, because they were pretty muddy. He gave me a tour of the manor house then, and every room was carpeted in thick golden sheep skin, from sheep raised on their lands, that was unbelievably silky and warm under my bare feet, and so thick that I sank into it up to my ankles.
I decided I wanted to write a story about a young woman who moves from her flat in Bayswater, London, up to the village of Olt, to research and write about a mysterious woman who moved up to Olt from London to build a manor and become a recluse. I tried to google driving directions from Bayswater to Olt, to add verisimilitude, but my tablet kept thinking I meant "Old" instead of "Olt", and my google maps searches kept thinking I wanted Old Street, which gave dozens of hits about ten minutes from Bayswater, instead of the village, which was at least an hour and a half away.
I mentioned this to the family that evening, and they thought it might have something to do with the powerful matriarch three generations back, who had moved to Olt from London to become a recluse, built the manor, and made its lands and the village unplottable. They began talking about their family history and traditions, and all the strangest bits, like the newest person being in charge of the fish, stemmed from her. Also, they'd put me in her rooms.
I began to suspect there was some deep, adacanthic mystery attached to this woman. Adacanthic meant dark, eerie, maybe a little macabre, and steeped in the exotic romance of a bygone era. Basically it meant the same as gothic, but gothic was applied only to fiction, whereas adacanthic was used to describe only academically verifiable history.
I was pondering the etymology when I woke up, and I was convinced for a while that adacanthic was a real word.
His mother greeted me when I arrived, and showed me my suite of rooms. My sitting room had shelves and shelves of books, and large picture windows facing west. It was sunset, and the sky I saw through the windows was flooded with amethyst clouds, flaming bright pink at the edges.
There was a door out onto a patio and dock that stretched out over the loch the house was built beside. There was a hatch that opened up over a fish trap. My only job, as the newest member of the household, was to take any fish out of the trap each evening, and behead and gut them and take them to the kitchen. My hostess showed me how to reach into the cold water, grab the three-foot long fish by the gills, and flip them out onto the dock. The hardest part was making sure they didn't slide back into the water after I'd cleaned them, or the loch monster would eat them up. The laird's younger sister, who had had the job before I showed up, promised to help me the first few evenings, until I had it down.
The next day the laird showed me around his lands. He rode a horse, but I walked. The sandy paths were soft and spongy, the land was marshy, and there were dark gray stretches of boggy quicksand. I told him I'd never stepped in quicksand before, and was curious how it felt, so he directed me to a nearby patch, and I stepped into it, then when I was done sinking, up to my knees, he pulled me out.
It started to rain, so we went inside. I took off my shoes in the back kitchen, because they were pretty muddy. He gave me a tour of the manor house then, and every room was carpeted in thick golden sheep skin, from sheep raised on their lands, that was unbelievably silky and warm under my bare feet, and so thick that I sank into it up to my ankles.
I decided I wanted to write a story about a young woman who moves from her flat in Bayswater, London, up to the village of Olt, to research and write about a mysterious woman who moved up to Olt from London to build a manor and become a recluse. I tried to google driving directions from Bayswater to Olt, to add verisimilitude, but my tablet kept thinking I meant "Old" instead of "Olt", and my google maps searches kept thinking I wanted Old Street, which gave dozens of hits about ten minutes from Bayswater, instead of the village, which was at least an hour and a half away.
I mentioned this to the family that evening, and they thought it might have something to do with the powerful matriarch three generations back, who had moved to Olt from London to become a recluse, built the manor, and made its lands and the village unplottable. They began talking about their family history and traditions, and all the strangest bits, like the newest person being in charge of the fish, stemmed from her. Also, they'd put me in her rooms.
I began to suspect there was some deep, adacanthic mystery attached to this woman. Adacanthic meant dark, eerie, maybe a little macabre, and steeped in the exotic romance of a bygone era. Basically it meant the same as gothic, but gothic was applied only to fiction, whereas adacanthic was used to describe only academically verifiable history.
I was pondering the etymology when I woke up, and I was convinced for a while that adacanthic was a real word.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Dune ~ 12/8/2014
I dreamed I was a member of the royal family of Arrakis. Not the ruling branch, though. Sort of an offshoot side branch, but still among the nobility. Frank Herbert's novels chronicled the history of our planet and our family. There were about four books that were newer than the Brian Herbert sequels.
The planet had been completely regenerated in the centuries since its total distruction, and we lived in a bustling, futuristic city, up in high towers with windows all around, up in the blue sky. We walked in private gardens and tended forests. The walkways were golden sandstone, remnants of the original desert.
My branch of the family all had light hair, and we were good and generous and kind. The ruling branch were all dark and stern and suspicious. I dreamed that half my life was spent avoiding assassination attempts, because they were always afraid, since we were more popular, that we would plot to seize control. But I woke up before they could get me.
The planet had been completely regenerated in the centuries since its total distruction, and we lived in a bustling, futuristic city, up in high towers with windows all around, up in the blue sky. We walked in private gardens and tended forests. The walkways were golden sandstone, remnants of the original desert.
My branch of the family all had light hair, and we were good and generous and kind. The ruling branch were all dark and stern and suspicious. I dreamed that half my life was spent avoiding assassination attempts, because they were always afraid, since we were more popular, that we would plot to seize control. But I woke up before they could get me.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Another Night of Mish Mash ~ 12/4/2014
I dreamed I was putting together a cool new puzzle. Basically, I had a photograph of an art installation, and a pile of the raw materials that went into it, and I had to rebuild the installation. I was focused on the correct placement of strangely shaped boards that had a lovely silver and amber grain. I needed to stack them in the correct configuration to form a lazyboy recliner.
Then I had to get ready to go to work. I went to eat breakfast, but someone had left the lid off the honeycomb cereal, so it was all stale and full of baby roaches. There was another box, but it had strawberries in it, and I don't like berries in my cereal. So I decided to just head out, after I'd stomped all the baby roaches and cleaned up the mess.
To get to work, I had to cross the lake in a gliding box. It was shaped like an upside down wooden coffee table, with cords strung between the legs that were used to steer it as it glided across the water. I climbed the tower to the launch platform, got into the next box, and set off, terrified of heights the whole way. I was crossing the lake with two friends. One of them was steering, and one of them was escaping human traffickers that wanted to sell her into sexual slavery.
And I dreamed that my mom had wanted to name my younger sister Brooke, but had somehow accidentally named her Leia on her official birth certificate. So we called her Brooke, but she had to answer to Leia as well. But she didn't learn this until she applied for a driver's license. And then I woke up.
Then I had to get ready to go to work. I went to eat breakfast, but someone had left the lid off the honeycomb cereal, so it was all stale and full of baby roaches. There was another box, but it had strawberries in it, and I don't like berries in my cereal. So I decided to just head out, after I'd stomped all the baby roaches and cleaned up the mess.
To get to work, I had to cross the lake in a gliding box. It was shaped like an upside down wooden coffee table, with cords strung between the legs that were used to steer it as it glided across the water. I climbed the tower to the launch platform, got into the next box, and set off, terrified of heights the whole way. I was crossing the lake with two friends. One of them was steering, and one of them was escaping human traffickers that wanted to sell her into sexual slavery.
And I dreamed that my mom had wanted to name my younger sister Brooke, but had somehow accidentally named her Leia on her official birth certificate. So we called her Brooke, but she had to answer to Leia as well. But she didn't learn this until she applied for a driver's license. And then I woke up.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Weirdest Board Game Ever ~ 12/2/2014
I dreamed I was up in a balcony of a performance hall with some friends while vocal master classes and dress rehearsals were going on. While people were onstage, we had to stay quiet, of course, and would listen to the music. But in between those times, we played a board game.
The game involved C, D, and E cards that called out different actions, which you drew and followed when you landed on a space marked with the letter. You could also build on blank spaces, and put little tokens on the spaces you built to modify their actions. Like, you could put down animal cards, and if they were the same animal, and if they had a peppermint or a soccer ball token on one of them, they could communicate, and your marker could jump straight from one to the other, getting you across the board faster.
The game also had these big, sausage-shaped rabbit sort of creatures. Every so often you'd land on a square where you had to pay a fee using a certain amount of a certain color fur, which you would have to see if you could find and sheer off of your rabbit.
There were also castle spaces, and my sister played a card combination that let her jump to the next castle space, but since I didn't have any rocket ships built, it made me have to go backward. We had a difference of opinion about how far back I had to go. She thought I had to go back to the first castle after the home castle withe the peacock and the waterfall. I said that didn't make sense, that I should have to go back to either the last castle I'd passed, or the home castle itself.
It turned out, after several minutes of consulting the rule book, that I had to go all the way back home. Then I woke up.
The game involved C, D, and E cards that called out different actions, which you drew and followed when you landed on a space marked with the letter. You could also build on blank spaces, and put little tokens on the spaces you built to modify their actions. Like, you could put down animal cards, and if they were the same animal, and if they had a peppermint or a soccer ball token on one of them, they could communicate, and your marker could jump straight from one to the other, getting you across the board faster.
The game also had these big, sausage-shaped rabbit sort of creatures. Every so often you'd land on a square where you had to pay a fee using a certain amount of a certain color fur, which you would have to see if you could find and sheer off of your rabbit.
There were also castle spaces, and my sister played a card combination that let her jump to the next castle space, but since I didn't have any rocket ships built, it made me have to go backward. We had a difference of opinion about how far back I had to go. She thought I had to go back to the first castle after the home castle withe the peacock and the waterfall. I said that didn't make sense, that I should have to go back to either the last castle I'd passed, or the home castle itself.
It turned out, after several minutes of consulting the rule book, that I had to go all the way back home. Then I woke up.
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