TBTT#32 As if Spiders Weren’t Bad Enough ~ 6/29/2013

I dreamed my New Orleans game night group and I were walking down near the Walmart on Tchoupitoulas, which was nearby, when some convicts, most of whom were murderers, were lead down the street with people who were claiming that the convicts had repented, were born again, and needed to be forgiven, and we should donate money to help raise awareness for them.  An old paunchy silver haired man who looked like a football coach put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You NEED to do something for them!”  I glared at him and said I pray for them all every day, now get your hands OFF of me.  Then we joined up with Greg Sanders and Warrick Brown from CSI, and they were trying to solve some mystery.  The killings involved a new species of tiny, black, bioengineered spiders that scatter in the light, but in darkness gather by the hundreds and thousands, begin to vibrate up and down in chorus like daddy longlegs, and then, with sparks and flashes of tiny blue lightning, shoot forth suffocating grey masses of sticky cobwebs to engulf a person.  The spiders had infested my hill country home, and we were trying to both get rid of them and study them, and they kept massing in the TV room, in the deep corner recesses of the built-in book shelves.  At some point Adam and Jamie from the Mythbusters teamed up to help us.  As long as we kept our flashlights and cellphone lights trained on the corners, the spiders stayed hidden, but the lights kept going out, and we’d see the little blue sparking arcs start up, and scramble to get the lights back on. Then I woke up.

A Nautical Theme ~ 11/28/2017

I dreamed I was visiting the school I had kindergarten in, in Corpus Christi, Texas. It was white sided Victorian building nestled in medieval stone cloisters. Slate roofs had been added to form halls where there had been yards, and one of the roofs had collapsed. I could remember walking there as a child.

In my pocket I found a letter I had written as an assignment to the person I admired most. It contained the word "adulation," which of course I used as a five year old. Who wouldn't? I had written it, not to anyone famous or family, but a girl who was two years ahead of me at the school. She was attending the same reunion I was, so I gave her the letter, and we became Facebook friends.

The reunion committee had collected a bunch of home videos, and they were on a loop in the cafeteria. I saw my kindergarten self, and there was a man's hand resting on my head, patting my curls. His fingers were covered with enormous, flashing rings. One was a rectangular cut red stone almost as long as his finger. But I knew it was my dad, because on another finger I could see his Aggie ring.

I went fishing with my mother and sister. We were sitting on the steps of the seawall, and I could see large fish swimming just beneath the surface. I cast out my line with a hunk of chicken meat on it, right in front of a 3-foot drum. I was just using a bamboo cane pole, so I couldn't reel my line in, but I tugged it around in the water to entice the fish. Then I realized I'd actually got the attention of a nine-foot shark. I yanked my line back to shore, but unfortunately the shark followed it, and we all fled up the steps as it flopped around out of water below us.

Since further fishing was clearly out, I went to the mall to pick up a few things. I realized I was running late, and needed to board the boat to Antarctica. I jumped on my bike, and sped to the embarkation terminal on the ground floor of the mall. But I couldn't take my bike aboard, so I needed to lock it up, but I didn't have a lock.

The school groups were all boarding, so I figured I had time. The embarkation host helping me kept telling me things, but she was whispering from four feet away, so I couldn't hear her. I ran to a few shops, but finally found a bike lock in a vending machine. It took me a while to figure out how to work it, though.  By the time my bike was locked up and I'd dug out my passport, I could only stand and watch my Antarctica cruise ship sail out of port. And then I woke up.

Snowbound ~ 9/30/2017

I dreamed I was traveling to a national park in Missouri with my boys and their Nanny. We were on our way home, and needed to catch a fight in Little Rock. Dylan was driving, and  the rest of us were in the back seat, when Debbie noticed the road ahead was white. I got into the passenger seat, which also had pedals and a steering wheel, and sent Dylan to the back.

There was snow on the road, and I decided to get off the highway. I pulled over to a left hand exit, and was stopped in a line of cars. I turned left into a narrow lane that led off the highway, and began to drive along a row of warehouses. The lane turned into a gravel road, then just a gravelly field, but I could see a paved street up ahead, and along it an empty paved lot for semis, with long, diagonal parking spaces, behind what looked like a garden store.

I pulled into one of the spaces and we got out. We needed to figure out how to return our rental car and how to get to the airport. I pulled out my phone and went to Google Maps to figure out where we were, so the rental car people could just come get the car. The little street was Ivyshield, and we were actually behind a tiny, old hospital. Debbie left to confirm when our flights were and how best to get to the airport. The boys stayed with me, and kept talking about the snow and asking so many questions, that I couldn't focus on my phone long enough to figure out where we were.

We walked down a ramp, along a parking area beneath the hospital second floor, where the ambulances could turn in as drop people at the emergency room. Everything in the hospital was quiet, but people were starting to gather along the bigger road out in front. We walked out so I could find a street sign. There were streetcar tracks, and I stopped and confirmed with a police officer that we could take the streetcar straight to the airport.

I continued to try to pinpoint our location for the rental car company. We were on Irene St., and the elevated boulevard overhead was Sageshields, one man told us. He said we were in the Shields district, and the big cross street I could see over to the right was Braeshields. We were parked behind the Ivyshields Charity Hospital.

I pulled my phone out to call the rental car company, when suddenly we were surrounded by five very old Chinese women, all talking at once, to the boys, not me. The boys could understand just enough Mandarin to answer them, and they seemed so pleased. Kieran told me they were wishing each boy good fortune, individually, and the boys were saying thank you.

They finally walked away, and I couldn't find the hospital anywhere! We were still on Irene St., with Sageshields overhead, but the street was lined with very old apartment buildings. Each had obviously once been luxurious, but the were now faded and dingy, though still dignified. There were old Chinese people at the windows and doors here and there. There was The Grand Ivyshields, and The Sage, and then a small neon sign above an old public library, then, oh thank goodness, the hospital.

More people had parked in the back lot, and an orderly was telling everyone we couldn't park there for more than 30 minutes or we'd be towed, by then another orderly called down to her that the mayor had suspended restrictions at city buildings and hospitals because of the snow, as long as we weren't blocking essential services.

I finally got in touch with the rental car company and told them where we were leaving the car. They said they'd send someone to get it. When he arrived, he'd brought us a big pepperoni pizza. Debbie came back then, and said she'd gotten in touch with the mayor's office, and we could catch the streetcar on Irene and take it straight to the airport.

She helped us finish the pizza, then went to the hospital desk to talk to the intake nurse to confirm the mayor's name, so she could donate to his campaign website, because he'd been that helpful. I decided to use the restroom and get the boys to go, too, before we set off for the airport. I asked another nurse where we could find it, and he told me to go through the doors to the library, and the women's room would be down the stairs to the right. The boys and I had just found it when I woke up.

An X-Files Wedding ~ 9/20/2017

Last night I dreamed I was Dana Scully, and I was marrying Fox Mulder in St. Louis Catholic Church in Castroville, Texas. We were staying in a sort of greenhouse room, with big windows and wood and glass construction, and it was the day before the wedding.

That's when I learned that a serial killer who was stalking me had found out where we were, and where we were going to live, and was coming to get me, and there was nothing I could do because I had no proof.

The killer showed up, and he was a twelve year old boy who was being groomed by his grandfather. We got the police to kick them both out of the church where the wedding was about to start, but instead of going away, the kid slipped into the reception hall, then came out with an oyster knife and ran at me to stab me. Then I woke up.

TBTT#31 Into the Light ~ 6/28/2018

I discovered I was in charge of fighting a hideous reptilian swamp monster that was guaranteed to show up if we all gathered in the swamps and marshes of the West Bank. Until some random dude showed up, patted me on the shoulder where I sat curled up and crying with fear, and said he'd take care of it. Then we learned that a woman who sort of acted like a switchboard operator over CB radio and reported all the town charitable events and gossip had died suddenly, and I joined CSI Nick Stokes to investigate the crime. But the thing that stands out most in my memory still is the little ghost girl. One of the female CSIs had come into the lab, and Nick said, in a high, gentle voice, "Well hi, honey!" And we'd looked at him weird, because it seemed out of place as they weren't dating, but when I looked back at the woman, there was a little girl in a velvet dress and little patent leather shoes, almost victorian in style, with long brown curls and big brown eyes. The other woman couldn't see her. As the little girl looked up at me, she vanished from Nick's sight. We must have connected in some strange way, because after that she followed me, and only I and a few people very close to me could see her. She loved us, and captivated us, but she was restless and unhappy and frightened. She needed to go into the light, but she was afraid to go alone. She was only four or five, and she never spoke, but when we made it clear she had to leave, she began to cry and throw a fit, beating little empty fists against my friend who held her. I reached to take her hands, and we were so close in spirit that I could feel them and stop them. I held her little hands in mine and looked into her eyes. I told her not to be afraid, that I'd go with her as far as I could. I'd keep her safe and show her the way, and while I was almost certain I could lead her to the light and still come back myself, seeing her eyes fill with tears and loving her as much as I did, I didn't care if I came back, as long as she was safe and at rest.  I took her hand and we turned to the light, while my friends tried to stop me.  And then I woke up.

TBTT#30 Tree Talker ~ 6/26/2013

I dreamed I was on the side of a forested mountain, roughly in the Bywater, where I could look upriver and see the bridge.  I was surrounded by enormous trees veined with living silver.  If you were of elvin kind, you could place your hands on the tree and communicate with it, and it would grow however you desired.  Many elves had created large homes for themselves in the hollows of these trees.  Under the moonlight, I placed my palms on one tree, sank my fingers into the crevices of the slate gray, rough bark, and let my mind flow into the camber and the veins of silver and sap, and learned I was part elven as the tree shifted and swelled and grew according to my thought.

Close Encounters of the Bat Shit Crazy Kind ~ 6/22/2017

Part of my dream was a mash-up of Bambi and Harry Potter. I dreamed people could be born animagi, and that it ran in families, so of course Harry could turn into a dear at will. A fawn when he was little, and as he grew up, a stag. Animagus Harry was charged with clearing out a forest that had been invaded by aliens.

The aliens were books from outer space. There were 10 books in the series, and they had been sent to Earth to spawn because they needed iron, and Earth is such an iron-rich planet. They couldn't take over until all 10 books were brought together, and so far there had only been a number of copies of the first book, one copy each of several others, and two of the eight book. The books all communicated with each other wirelessly, and I wasn't sure what they'd do to the planet, but I just knew it wouldn't be good.

The numbers of books were controlled by the cream-colored cat that had been sent to manage them. The cat had these little round iron tokens, about the size of pennies, each painted the color of one of the book covers. If the cat had all the tokens, he could command new copies of the books into being. If any tokens were out of the cat's reach, none of the books could spawn.  So of course, to help Harry, I stole a few of the tokens.

We were able to round up the books, and most of them we could just burn. But the eighth in the series was dense and not flammable. We only found the two copies of it after we thought we had it all taken care of. So we packed them up in a metal lined box and shipped them back to Amazon. Then the cat said the joke was on us because there was so much wireless traffic on earth that the books couldn't have talked to each other anyway, so they never could have fulfilled their plan, even if they'd spawned.

I stole the rest of the cat's tokens, and the cat ran off into the woods. I tried to chase it down, but as I got close, it dove into a group of cats and kittens that were hunting a flock of mother and baby birds. The birds were about the size of pigeons, but they were a soft brown, and had long curved bills and long, stilt-like legs. The mother cats were trying to teach their kittens to hunt, so no birds were actually getting very hurt, but I couldn't find the alien cat in all the confusion.

So Harry took some of the tokens and I took the rest, since we found we couldn't melt any of them down, except the one for the eight book, funny enough. We each swore to keep our tokens safe. Over the years, mine turned into clear, smooth, brightly colored stones. I kept them in a plastic bag with a bunch of polished quartz.

I was trying to learn a new Sousa march with my community band when I noticed that the stones were shrinking. The band director came and showed me how the problems I was having were because I wasn't blinking my eyelashes at the right times, and after we got that sorted out, I left rehearsal.

Outside, some teen-aged girls were giggling and whispering in a scandalized sort of way. I gathered they'd seen a dark, handsome, but heavily tattooed young man coming out of the edge of the forest, and for just a second it looked like he had antlers. I figured it was Harry, and he might be having trouble with the tokens he'd taken, too. We agreed to meet after I went to watch the ice skaters who had come up from Rice to compete in a national championship.

I went into the darkened rink and sat to watch the graceful skaters glide over the ice. The family sitting next to me saw that I was wearing a Rice shirt, and their kids started asking me questions, since they wanted to go to Rice some day. Then I woke up.

TBTT#29 Of Pets and Vampires ~ 6/10/2013

I dreamed that my mother's dog (my dog in my dream) kept dimensionally shifting to become a talking koala bear, and that this would cause an additional reflexive shift that made my cat completely disappear, only to reappear when the dog was once more a dog.

Then I began to wander an art museum featuring portraits of famous vampires, before and after their change.  When I found the painting of Armand as described by Anne Rice, I managed to also find the real Armand, along with Lestat and Louis, skulking around the museum.  They changed two of the museum's bartenders (of COURSE the museum had a bar!) into vampires, and somehow I changed to.

And then I could fly! A group of people began hunting me (I hadn't even DONE anything yet!), and my car couldn't go fast enough, so I pulled it off into the woods, began to fly, and had to dodge helicopters. Then I woke up.

Nell deGrasse Tyson ~ 6/13/2017

I dreamed I was Nell deGrasse Tyson, a black, female astrophysicist with enough gravitas to fill a galaxy. I had been asked to consult with a science magnet boarding school to help modernize their culture and curriculum.

I was on a break, and watching the rehearsals for the graduation ceremonies. They had a singing and dancing troupe that was going to do a performance themed with all the things the graduates had to look forward to. One of these things was falling in love.

I went to talk to the song and dance teacher, because all of the couples in this montage were male-female, and I asked if it was too late for them to have one male-male and one female-female couple, to give at least a little representation to the students that might not be heterosexual.

The troupe leader was a sandy-haired, pock-marked man with reddish-gold eyes, and he very politely told me that my idea was completely counter to the Christian values of the school. I pointed out that the school was a completely secular institution, and that given the size of his troupe, at least one or two of those talented young people would probably really appreciate this innovation.

He challenged me to spend more time with his group and see that I was completely wrong. While I was observing, the students who weren't graduating began planning for the summer trip the group would take the next month. Their leader went over all the sorts of snacks they should pack, then dismissed the younger students, but held the rising seniors back.

That was when this guy reminded the oldest kids of the troupe tradition where, on the first day of the trip, they could raid the snack stashes of the youngest kids and have whatever they wanted. I stood up and said I was just about done involving myself in their troupe business, because that wasn't what I was at their school for, but I challenged the oldest kids to really ponder how fair this was, and if it was a thing they really wanted to do to their younger peers. They all agreed it was bullshit, and they were going to break that tradition this year.

All I remember about the graduation ceremony was a bunch of kids coming up to me and thanking me for everything I'd done for them that year. Then I woke up.

TBTT#28 Dream Vacation ~ 6/13/2013

I dreamed I was traveling with a group of friends in Italy, only two of whom were actually people I know in real waking life. We stopped in Segontium, on the Tyne, surrounded by red rock cliffs. (Yes, I know how wrong my geography is. I was dreaming. It's fine.) We were able to cross the river on foot, stepping on rocks. Eric and Al had been there before and showed us the way. Then Eric and Al went off to continue their travels on their own, and the rest of us took boats to a remote island with sort of a retreat resort on it run by Pacific Islanders. The island was made of the same red rock, but covered also in jungle flora. The coast where we landed had these amazing trees with enormous white lily-like flowers. The upper cliffs and ledges were draped in small herbaceous growth with flowers of magenta and gold and sapphire blue and a hundred other colors. Part of the lodgings were built on a wide plateau above the water, but extended out on a platform that from below looked like a highway overpass. I had just discovered this spot when enormous waves broke around the cliffs and I had to run for it, but I got to high ground safely. I went up to the lodgings and claimed a bed, then found my friends sitting in a high glen. We sat for a while talking and watching the tide come in. The eddies swirled with the rainbow colors of the flowers until the waters stilled to almost glassy smoothness, with just an occasional swell that broke into ripples amid the stones we sat on. I wanted to go back to the rooms, but the path was under water and I was afraid. One of my friends said he knew the way, and we set off into water first ankle deep, then knee deep, but never more than waist deep, and when I got scared because the current grew strong, he held my hand and kept me safe. We talked about a trip I was planning to Rome, which was really London, and he said his family had a three bedroom flat that my friends and I could all stay in for free. And I remember thinking how amazing it was that he seemed to find me beautiful when I was wearing burnt orange corduroy skinny pants and a bright neon orange sports jersey. Yes, I dream in color. But it was a beautiful island, and after the most stressful day I'd had in a long time, it was wonderful to have a dream in which all my fears and anxieties were escapable and were soothed by people who cared about me. I SO needed that.

 

TBTT#27 My Beginnings as a Vampire ~ 6/10/2013

I dreamed that my mother's dog (my dog in my dream) kept dimensionally shifting to become a talking koala bear, and that this would cause an additional reflexive shift that made my cat completely disappear, only to reappear when the dog was once more a dog.  Then I began to wander an art museum featuring portraits of famous vampires, before and after their change.  When I found the painting of Armand as described by Anne Rice, I managed to also find the real Armand, along with Lestat and Louis, skulking around the museum.  They changed two of the museum's bartenders (of COURSE the museum had a bar!) into vampires, and somehow I changed to.  And then I could fly! A group of people began hunting me (I hadn't even DONE anything yet!), and my car couldn't go fast enough, so I pulled it off into the woods, began to fly, and had to dodge helicopters.

It's Made of People ~ 3/27/2017

I dreamed I was part of a military intelligence operation tracking shipments down into Houston by various rivers. The Frio River ran almost due north/south, and we had detected a lot of clandestine activity coming from a northern port city called Ebsilos. We thought we might be onto something big, and we were keeping our discovery very hush hush.

So when my commander came in one afternoon waving a newspaper, we thought we'd been blown and were about to be in enormous trouble. It turned out, though, that only I was in trouble. I'd done some work that had brought to light a thriving black market in human flesh for human consumption, and Houston was a hotspot for that trade. I hadn't spoken to the paper, but somehow I was named as a person involved at the highest levels, and one of the bosses was after me.

His name, as far as I could tell, was something like Alfred Canata, and he looked like a Colombian Mario, with a red Make America Great Again cap instead of a plumbers hat. So the boss told me to go up to New York City and try to track this Ebsilos thing and stay out of Alfred's sight.

So I went up to New York and I met my friend Summer there. She had booked us a room in a reasonably priced and inconspicuous hostel on the edge of Central Park. We settled in, and I gave my cover name. We went out for dinner in Chinatown, and when we came back, the desk clerk said a friend had come by looking for me.

We asked some nervous questions and found that, sure enough, it was Alfred Canata, king of the cannibals. The clerk gave a very clear description, and said he'd left me something in my room box. I knew that meant he'd watched the clerk put it in the cubby, so he'd know what room we were in. He had left me a warm, juicy cheeseburger, and it didn't smell quite like beef. I was absolutely sure it was ground human flesh.

We called the cops, and they took the burger away for testing. They looked at some security footage, and were able to identify Alfred as someone they'd had under surveillance, and knew just where to pick up. They swore they'd apprehend him, and the desk clerk put us in a suite of rooms that was the most secluded thing they had on the property.

We had to go up to the fourth floor of the main building to get to the only staircase that led down into a brick courtyard. That courtyard was covered over with a tin roof, and no one could observe as we entered a small square of lodges with windows only facing into their own private court. We were in the back two rooms on the ground floor, that had hidden stairs leading to a suite in the basement.

We had gotten settled in, and it was decided that I was sleeping in the basement rooms, of course, though I hated to be down there away from the light and air. Just then, the front door opened, in spite of all the locks they'd locked, and a guy I knew from New Orleans came in. It turns out, they'd given us his rooms by accident, and he had the key, of course.

We locked everything up and explained to him what was going on, and we all agreed it would just be easiest to share, and that he could even add a layer of obfuscation if anyone came looking for me. Then Summer's cell phone rang, and she had to go to the first floor rooms to answer it, since she didn't get reception in the basement.

I heard her start to yell and curse, and I ran upstairs. It turned out that the police had detained Alfred, but he'd made it clear that nothing he did was illegal, and he meant me no harm. He just wanted to get to know me better, and couldn't understand why I'd made such a fuss over a perfectly normal cheeseburger. The lab hadn't had a chance to test anything yet, so they just sort of took him at his word and let him go. Some of his friends had come to pick him up.

By "friends" I knew he had meant his minions or followers, because the black market human flesh trade was pretty much a cult. They claimed they never killed anyone, but bought bodies from people who had been donated to science, and that anyone who was a member of course donated themselves as needed. I that was a load of crap, because we'd turned up ample evidence that a number of missing persons and murder cases could be traced to the black market. Maybe he did want to kidnap and convert me, not kill me, but I still had no intention of going along with his program.

Summer finished reaming the NYPD up and down and out, then the hostel desk clerk called and blithely informed us that she was sending our "friends" over, so Summer started in on her. My friend from New Orleans pulled a shotgun and a pistol out of his suitcase, and we got them loaded.

We turned off all the lights, and I laid down along the base of the door and front window, so that I was invisible from the outside. Everyone else hid similarly, and we hoped they'd just decide we were out and go away.  Then the locks began to turn above my head, because the desk clerk had given them a key.

I couldn't decide at that point if they were going to recruit us or grind us up into mincemeat, but I knew we'd shot a few deadbolts and bar locks they couldn't open with a key. This had the benefit of definitely keeping them out, but also would be a dead give-away that we were somewhere inside. Then they began breaking the glass on the door and window, and we couldn't really pretend any more.

Something about the mullions kept them from just coming in, and they couldn't reach the locks, but they had guns, too. Alfred said several times that he just wanted my friendship, not my flesh, at least, he joked, not in THAT way, but he wanted me to marry him and be his queen. His minion Christopher had orders not to hurt me, but the rest of my friends were fair game.

Christopher began shooting into the room at everyone else, and they were shooting back at him, but no one seemed to be able to hit anyone. I had the shotgun, and I was only feet from the door, so I knew I couldn't miss. I pumped the gun, pointed, and pulled the trigger. Something clicked, but nothing else happened. I scrambled to check that it was loaded, and it was, but every time, I cleared it out, loaded the cartridges, pumped, and tried to fire, and absolutely nothing was happening.

I wasn't sure how long we all could last, and there seemed to be absolutely nothing I could do.  Alfred Canata just stood there, on the edge of the ring of light from the front porch lamp, smiling, smiling, smiling, and Christoper fired over and over just around me and above me at my friends in the room behind me, his eyes absolutely dead and void of any light and feeling. Because that's what you became when you'd eaten as much people meat as he had.

Then I woke up.

Last Night in Television ~ 3/21/2017

I dreamed I was really good friends with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not Scooby Gang level friends, but we spent a lot of time together socially. I'd been staying with some friends in the little guest cabin beside my godparents' house, and we all headed over to the mall where Buffy and I worked. She worked in the shoe department, and I worked in a book store.

I was going to meet her for lunch, but when I got to the food court, she was sitting at a table covered in crystal and silver and lilies, over a snowy white cloth. There was champagne in glasses, and Riley was sitting across from her. Buffy's back was to me, and Riley was facing me, but he had eyes for no one but her. Slowly, he rose from his seat, knelt down in front of her, pulling a small box from his pocket. He began to open it, and something glittered in the sunlight, streaming from the glass overhead.

But as he had risen, Buffy had realized what was going on, and turned, pretending to look for something in her purse, which was slung over her chair, as an excuse to take a minute before looking at him. She looked up at me, and her eyes gazed into mine. It was like time slowed down, and I could hear her thoughts. "This is it. I should be giddily happy. But I'm not. Should I say no? I feel like I want to say yes, but I'm just not..."

Then the scene was interrupted as another girl we worked with came running up. She had long, reddish dark hair, golden skin, and enormous green eyes. She was in a panic because her mother and father had come to have lunch with her and her older sister, who also worked at the mall, but the manager was throwing them out because her mother wore a hijab.

Her older sister was incensed, and was shouting at the manager. Her father was indignant, but trying to calm her and remind her to act with dignity. Her mother was weeping, but standing her ground. The older girl finished her tirade, announced that she was quitting, and marched to the exit. We all scurried after her, and I had this horrible sense of foreboding. Sure enough, just as she stormed out of the shop doors, she tripped and stumbled out into the street. There was a squeal of tires and a horn, but the semi truck couldn't stop. I watched, horrified, as everything slowed down again, and I couldn't look away from the sight of the truck smashing into her, her head impacting its grill and shattering, and blood and brains flew everywhere. Her family collapsed in shock.

Buffy and Riley and I spent a lot of time after that looking after our friend and her parents. Buffy wanted to look into whether or not the accident had been caused supernaturally, and went off to consult Giles. When we got warning that massive tornadoes were headed our way, Riley ran off after her, and I had to get the family to safety. They were taken into a cellar, but there wasn't room for me. I went to my book shop and found a corner of shelving that was secluded from all the glass windows. I crouched down there, beneath a heavy table. It was the best I could do.

The tornadoes tore through the mall, but only caught the far end of the book shop. I watched a deep, sooty cloud of dust and dirt and torn paper and ripped fabric churn across my field of vision, beyond the shelves. A broad swath of devastation had been cut through the mall. Far on the other side, still standing, was the university wing, stately and untouched.  The facade was layered arches of red brick, and I could see someone waving from a window.

I picked my way over and climbed up flights of deserted stairs. Sunlight slanted hot through the windows at each landing. On the third floor I found Hodges and Wendell from Bones and Sarah Sidle from CSI. Hodges and Sarah were expecting a baby, and Wendell was making all sorts of cheerful, knowledgeable suggestions that were making Hodges super suspicious about how he knew so much. Wendell explained that he had a lot of younger brothers and sisters.

Hodges was insisting that Sarah get to a hospital or something while the weather was good, because there might be more storms on the way, but Sarah didn't want to. She called to me and asked me to help her up to her office on the fourth floor. Hodges wanted to come with us, but his father showed up with a present for him and the new family, and Sarah and I slipped away.

Sure enough, the sky was getting gray and the light was fading. There was a heavy dampness to the breeze. But Sarah insisted she wanted to have her baby here, where she felt the most safe, so we locked ourselves in an unfinished corridor that had good air flow and access to her office and lab. I boiled water and pulled out blankets and made a pallet for her as the rain began.

The wind was high and lightning flashed, but there was nothing really dangerous in the storm. As the thunder rumbled, Sarah gave birth to a baby boy. When she and the baby were both safe, I ran to the tower to ring the bell. The signal was two tolls for a healthy boy, and I looked out the window as the sun came back out and our friends all cheered across the courtyard.

When we came down to greet them and introduce the new baby, Hodges and Sarah announced that his name was Louis Martin Hodges, and he was named for the Louis Martin Lighthouse.  This had been Hodges favorite place to go with his father as a boy, and his father had a wonderful story about how he'd been a sailor and the lighthouse had saved his life.

His father had left a while before, but Hodges now opened the present, and inside the box was a tiny lighthouse, painted bright blue and white. It was an exact replica of the Louis Martin, and there was a note that said, even though they were estranged, that he was proud of and happy for his son and daughter-in-law, and new grandchild, and hoped they'd always remember this family history. It was absolutely perfect.

Then I woke up.

TBTT#26 May 2013 Weirdness, Part 2

May 26, 2013

I dreamed that Summer and I kept sneaking off, and my family thought we were doing something bad, like working for a Hooters-like place in skimpy clothes.  But really, we were on a sports team sort of thing, and finally my mom came out to watch us, and it turns out that we wore these soccer uniforms, but what we *did* was a sort of two person competitive karaoke/DDR team event, where one person sang to a track, and the other danced, and the score was based on accuracy.

My mom had brought Kerri and Erik’s youngest two sons (they’d had a third), so she had to go early to take them home.  So I left to hang out in a bar with a college boyfriend and his roommate while he was at Rice.  A girl across the bar was making eyes at my ex, so he pretended I was with him, and she said some really cutting things about me, but whatever.

Then those guys turned out to be two of my guy friends from New Orleans, and both of them were there to keep eyes on their sisters.  My sister was there, too, and we were all talking about how protective we were of our sisters, and I realized no one felt that way about me.

The bar was on the coast and some blue whales were going by, so I left and walked down the beach and followed them.  I swam for a while, until I realized that the orcas and other predatory whales that were also there might think I was food, so I swam back to the bank, which was loaded with penguins, and a dead Beluga.  I was sad, and the blue whales had gone up a fjord out of sight, so I trudged back to the bar.

As I looked down from the balcony to the street below, I saw my mom and my sister were outside waiting, but before I could go down to them, I saw my dad coming through the crowd to get me.  He’d been worried about me, and he took me in his arms, and it felt so amazing to be loved and cherished by someone who wanted to take care of and protect me, and it felt so good to smell the cigarette smoke and motor oil in his clothes again, and hear his voice, and I began crying and I said, “Thank you, God, so much, for letting me have him back.”

They took me back to the French Quarter where I looked around for one of my tour guide friends as I walked home from Jackson Square, since I thought it was after 10:30, and he might be done with his tour.  But it was actually only just after 8:30, and I didn’t see him.  Then I woke up.

Fighting Evil with Sherlock and Watson ~ 2/18/2017

I dreamed that I had been accepted into Harvard as a doctoral student in mathematics, and would be starting in the fall. In the mean time, I needed to complete a third year of university-level foreign language. They had a program where I could go to France and take third-year French, so I jumped on that opportunity.

So I went to France, and had started classes, but couldn't find the book the instructor recommended in the university book store. I thought his book might be one I already had from previous French studies, so I went back to the class to ask if my Vis-à-Vis book would be okay to use in the class, or if I needed to buy the book store's book, which looked different from what he'd shown us.

I couldn't find the professor, and since it had gotten dark, I decided to just go home and try again the next day. I was walking across the park when I found some children standing around a storm grate, fishing. I couldn't figure out where their parents were, but as I stood there chatting with them, they kept reeling in these half-decomposed fish carcasses. More and more children were walking up. I glanced over my shoulder to see where they were coming from, and Sherlock and Watson (Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman) were there. Sherlock said it was some sort of clue, look at the children's faces.

I turned back around, and saw that the faces of the children were turning a waxy, moldy, livid green. The texture was like half-withered leaves, with veins standing out, like their skin would crunch and crumble if touched. Sherlock said something was beginning to wake up in the castle, and we needed to investigate.

Sure enough, the water below the storm grate was flowing down from a nearby hill topped by a spectacularly turreted stone castle, falling into ruin. We climbed the hill and crawled through the rubble of its front gates to enter yard. The stone was a bluish-gray slate filmed here and there with dark patches of damp and bright patches of golden-green moss. In the moonlight it was a mass of shaddows. We split up to see if we could find the source of the trouble.

I walked through a vast stone hall, its floor littered with a tumble of stone and wooden tables and chairs. All around the sides of the hall staircases climbed and spiraled to different levels, cloistered corridors, towers and turrets. Bits of bright color flashed in the darkest corners, but when I tried to look into the shadows to see them more clearly, they were gone.

I found my way to a wide terrace overlooking the moat. As I gazed down, the sluggish, leaden water began to bubble here and there.

"Bubbles," Sherlock said behind my shoulder. I jumped and spun around, and he and Watson were there with me, looking down at the moat.

"'Bubbles,' what does that mean, 'Bubbles'?" Watson asked.

"Follow me," Sherlock replied. He turned on his heal, his dark great-coat flying out around him, and he began to run. Watson and I followed him.

We sped up stair cases, to the highest tower. We came out upon a landing overlooking a high courtyard, where the years seemed to have turned the paving stones to gravel. The gravel bulged and stirred ominously. A woman appeared, clinging to the wall on the other side of the courtyard. She was skeletal, with skin as green and waxy as the children in the park. She wore a red and purple and white harlequin's suit, and had flying, straw-like pale hair and deep circles around her blazing eyes. She began to laugh, saying it was too late to stop what was about to happen.

Giant fanged worms burst out of the gravel, their faceless heads writhing higher and higher, up toward the landing where we stood, and we scattered. I fled back into the stairwell, up, up, up to the top of the highest tower, then up again to the top of the small turret at its back. But there was nowhere to hide from the worms. They wound their way up the tower, up the turrent, and I dashed back into the darkened stairs and sped down to the hall.

The flashes of color resolved themselves into the skeleton woman's minions, thin as paper, but tough as horn, in purple and red, flapping and drifting down from the shadows to hold me. They could pin me against a wall. Their edges could cut and slice. But they could also be evaded. Then I found I could catch one from behind and roll it up into a sort of pointed lance, and it would be helpless in my hands. That tough lance could then be used to pierce and pin the others.

I began catching and rolling and pinning them to walls while I tried to find their queen. I figured she could probably be destroyed with one of those lances, too. And somehow I knew that if I destroyed her, the worms would die. I kept pouncing on the skinny minions and rolling up a lance, but others kept attacking and I had to use my lance before I found the queen.

Finally, up on the terrace above the moat, I found her, and I had a lance in hand. She was wheedling with Sherlock, telling him she'd call off her army if he'd consent to be her king. I was hiding in the shadows, waiting for my chance. The leaden waters bubbled below. A sickly looking moon shown through a rusty iron lattice, all that remained of what must have been glistening mullioned windows looking out over the water. Sherlock denied her, and demanded she release the children in the park from her spell, and she began to laugh. I spun to stab her with my lance, and then I woke up.

TBTT#25 May 2013 Weirdness, Part 1

May 15, 2013

Last night I dreamed I was a hawk.  I was soaring over and through a forest in search of prey. It didn’t seem worth it to eat anything smaller than a pigeon, but I was really hoping for a pigeon shaped bird the size of a duck that I don’t think actually exists.

May 20, 2013

I dreamed last night that I was helping out with an event at a plantation home.  My job was to haul everything out of every cabinet I could find and organize each cabinet's contents in rows from left to right and top to bottom based on the size of the object. I'm not sure HOW this was supposed to help, but that was my job.  I woke up with my brain anxiously churning about objects out of order and piles of things like stock pots, red high heeled pumps, and binder clips coming out of cabinets in a white and gold-paneled drawing room.

May 21, 2013

I dreamed last night that I was a Mayfair, being haunted by Lasher. In my dream, Lasher briefly took on substance, and the appearance of my distantly Mayfair husband and was trying to strangle me, while I basically tried to fend him off with the force of my hateful thoughts. I was afraid to try to hurt him while he was corporeal because I didn't want him to learn how HE could hurt US.  Somehow, also, my dream involved watching movie filming in which Robert Downey, Jr. was acting in a nude scene in which he was only covering most of his genitalia with a towel or rag.  I was somewhat fascinated by this, but surprisingly unmoved.  Then some tourists and I climbed up the craggy cliffs that the Marigny and Bywater were perched on. Up there somewhere a bunch of my friends were meeting, and I met up with my mom.  We went shopping, and I wanted her to buy me a brown, faux mink coat I found.  Then Emily texted me and asked if I thought orange roses and ornamental pitcher plants would be pretty flowers for us bridesmaids to carry in her vow renewal wedding ceremony.

A Magical Rescue Party ~ 2/6/2017

I dreamed I was in my last year of high school when I discovered I had magical powers. There was a particular elevator I'd walked past in my school for years without realizing not everyone could see it. One day I realized this, and found myself in a group of people who could seeing it, looking around carefully, pushing the call button, and hopping in.

We wanted to go all the way to the top, floor 34, but the elevator stopped at 17 and wouldn't go any further, so we got out. We found ourselves in a sort of foyer that was a veranda looking over a dazzling ocean view. A bunch of girls were gathered around because there was a school legend going around that if the scent of a newcomer immediately caught your attention, that meant you were destined to be together.

One really lovely girl, with dark hair, olive skin, large dark eyes, and a sultry pout, perked up as we got off the elevator. But when she tracked down the person she'd smelled, it was the thirteen-year-old boy that I'd taken under my wing and was now best friends with. He was pleased that he'd interested her, but pretty devastated when she was openly scornful and disappointed. I told him she was obviously a bitch, and would have some growing up to do before she was ready to be with someone awesome like him. None of the few guys standing around seemed to scent me, though another girl in our new group perked up at the same time as one young man, and they wandered off, happy to meet each other.

My thirteen-year-old friend and I went down from the entry way out onto the shore to explore the island. There were four or five large lagoons, each with a different sort of beach and different land and water activities going on. We were in a school for water and tree magic, and we got into swim suits and paddled out to find out what we should do. An older boy with dark red hair and slightly slanted brown eyes came to guide us through a lazy river sort of course, except the water was anything but lazy. It roiled and surged along its banks, and swimming it was just exhilarating!

Suddenly, my young friend was gone, and I realized he'd transformed into a small, twiggy creature with leaf-like hands. He was using these to paddle along, and our new acquaintance was worried he'd get swamped, but somehow I knew he'd be okay. That he was just now discovering his powers, and some day maybe he'd be a giant log to ride the rapids.

As night fell, I walked along the shore with my two friends, the younger one back in human form. The sky was soft as velvet, studded with gleaming diamond stars. The waves were like gauzy silk frosting the water below, and their sound was a lullaby. As the castle at the peak of the island went dark and they called us in, I stumbled down a sand bank and was delayed trying to climb back up. No one seemed to notice, and as everyone left me behind, the castle went dark. All but a baleful red light glaring out from one window high up on the roof.

I knew then that this was what had called me here. I sprang up the outside of the building and began climbing the leads, still warm from the newly set sun. I reached the window, and found myself looking into prison. There was a man, strong but bound and blindfolded, dejected, but still majestic, sitting in a faded, dusty throne. He looked like he had sat tied there for years, but still wept for his freedom and his wife.

She was nearby, though he didn't know it. He couldn't see her, and she couldn't call out to him, because she'd been frozen into marble stillness, a living statue, helpless, immobile, and asleep. As I looked at them, I knew. I knew that they were the rulers of this realm, a king and queen, captive here. And they were my parents. Someone here would be sure to find that out, if they didn't know already, so I could count on being in danger. But I couldn't leave. I had to free them.

Over the next few days I confided in the two people I trusted, and we kept our eyes open and our ears to the ground, trying to learn as much as we could about what was going on. We learned that the upper parts of the castle were reserved for the most talented students, those who had proven both their skill and their loyalty to the school. As they grew in their powers, they became almost like angels. As we watched each others' backs, we worked hard to rise up to that level, but somehow I never could manage to get ahead.

But my friends rose, and they kept quiet about our mutual devotion, but they never abandoned me. When they'd been at the penultimate level for a week, and the younger boy was ready to ascend, they came to me to tell me what we had to do.

The girl that had turned her nose up at him when he arrived had begun to show an interest as the brilliance of his talent became clear. She had snuck him up to her room a couple of times, and he had seen through doors that were quickly shut on him that to get into the top levels, you had to shrink to pixie size. This was something I could do, so we laid our plans.

On a night as warm and still as the night we'd arrived, with the same eerie and ominous red light shining from the prison window, I shrank down to a quarter of my usual size and joined the pixies in the uppermost halls of the castle.  There was a stretch of roof I needed to get over to unlock the prison cell, but I knew that if I stepped on any of the ornaments that adorned the slates, I'd sound the alarm. A being had to be even smaller than pixie size, with just a particular ratio of weight and length and breadth and limbs. I figured out the math, then called my younger friend. He turned into his twig creature and was scampering through the maze of ornaments to the lock.

And then I woke up.

Odd Reactions ~ 1/20/2017

I dreamed my little sister was bein picked on by the son of a guy I'd gone to high school with. They were both about eleven. When my sister told me about it, I doin the boy out at a school dance, an I told him who I was. Then I told him if he ever messed with my little sister again, I would CUT him, and he could go ask his dad if he thought I didn't mean what I said

That settled that, and I went to visit some friends who lived in New York City. They lived in this enormous house on the shores of a bay of crystalline blue water. As I walked toward the cul de sac at the end of their street, I realized I'd been there before. The second to last house on the water front was a two story Tuscan villa style house with a broad driveway and a stony path down to the rocky shore beyond.

I stood on the sidewalk, gazing over at the water, a neighbor noticed me, and came to make sure I wasn't as sketchy as I seemed. As I was explaining, the dog of the house, an old golden retriever, with a heavy frost of silver around her muzzle that contrasted with her deep reddish coat, came bounding over the weed draped rocks, up from the ebbing waters, and came right up to greet me enthusiastically. This seemed to settle things for the neighbor.

I gazed a while longer, and threw a stick for the dog, before going back to my friends' house. As I walked in, I bumped against something, and some grayish, ashy powder got on my hands. I brushed it off, but in a few minutes, I noticed squishy bulges on my face and arms, that sort of slid around beneath my skin. I was able to guide them toward my eyes and nose and mouth, and as they reached these outlets, bright, silvery dollops of liquid metal fell out of my face. I started gathering them in a bowl, and my friends said not to worry, that it would stop after a while, but not to touch the baby until it did. Then I woke up.

I Came, I Hiked, I Got Bitten by a Cobra and Met a Queen ~ 1/14/2017

I dreamed I was on a long hike through a rugged jungle. I was following an ancient, stone-paved road through the dense growth. It was cracked and choked with weeds, but it still showed a clearer path than the thick forests on either side.

Groups of exotic animals often wandered past me, deer, leopards, alligators, with brightly colored birds flapping along overhead. As one group rushed past, I looked down and saw they were being chased by two snakes. One was a cobra, and just as I saw it, and turned to hurry away, it noticed me, and it struck.

I felt its fangs go into my calf. It hurt a lot less than I'd thought it would. It was going to bite me again, but I managed to dump my backpack on its head, pinning it to the ground. Then I slid the backpack back along its body so just its head was free, and I stomped down on it, grinding it into the ground and killing it.

I pulled out a handkerchief and tied it tightly around my calf above the bite as a tourniquet. Then I sat down on a boulder beside the road, wondering what to do. I didn't want to walk, because that would spread the poison quicker, but I knew I needed help, and soon.

Just then, a group of local boys ran past, and I called out to them to help me. They stopped and I told them what had happened. I asked if they would go to the bed and breakfast I was supposed to stay at that night, and let them know I was bitten and needed help. They said they would and ran off.

I wasn't very confident that they would actually complete that mission, but they must have, because a young man came back down the path about fifteen minutes later. He had golden skin, huge green eyes, and thick, dark, wavy hair that tumbled around his face in the wind. He almost didn't seem human, he was so beautiful. He said he was the village doctor, and had come to help.

I told him I'd been bitten by a snake, and he asked if I knew which kind. I said it was a cobra, and he was skeptical, and told me cobras didn't live in this area. I pointed over to my backpack, with the dead snake still pinned under it, and he said that, oh, well, obviously I'd been bitten by a cobra. But he said it in a way that made it clear he was laughing at himself. He apologized, and got to work examining the bite.

Even though it hadn't hurt that much at first, my lower calf now felt like it was on fire, and the feeling was spreading up toward my tourniquet. The doctor pulled out a knife and knelt down. He made two little x shaped cuts over each puncture mark, then bent to begin sucking the poison out of the bite. The burning feeling slowly faded, to be replaced by a dull ache. He said that was perfectly normal after that sort of bite, because even though the venom was gone, some damage had been done to those tissues, and only time would heal them up. Until that healing, my leg would be very shaky, and wouldn't hold me, so I should stay off of my feet.

To complete the healing ritual, he said I needed to replace the blood he'd taken, and he took the knife again and made two little x shaped cuts on his own shoulder, telling me to drink the blood that flowed out. I was hesitant, because that sounded just plain gross, and what about hepatitis or HIV or something? But he insisted, and I figured, what the heck, this was a dream anyway, so I licked up the trails of blood that had begun to roll down his arm, and I sucked for a while on the little wounds. It didn't make my leg feel any better, but it satisfied the doctor that we'd done everything we could and should.

He helped me to my feet, pulling my arm around his neck so he could support me on my injured side. He picked up my backpack with his free hand, and we limped along the last mile to my bed and breakfast, where he got me into my bed and made arrangements to extend my booking.  I fell asleep before I could thank him for all his help.

I woke up the next day to find a bunch of school kids having breakfast downstairs. This B&B didn't just feed paying guests, but sometimes hosted groups of local kids, because the owners loved children so much. I sat for a while on a sofa with my leg propped up, and was given the job of minding the television remote so the kids wouldn't watch anything inappropriate. Eventually they cleared out and the inn was quiet again. The owner said that since tomorrow was a weekday, they'd be in school, and that the mob scene was only a weekend thing.

After a few days of rest, I was definitely feeling better, but my leg was still achy, and sometimes gave out on me. But the innkeeper came in and told me that the queen demanded that I come pay her a visit, along with a group of teenagers that had come in buses for just that purpose. The B&B was located in what had once been a gatehouse to the grand palace, and the queen had heard I was there, and wanted me to come in so I could thank her personally for the hospitality I'd been shown.

Since I still couldn't walk very well, the innkeeper showed me an enormous peacock that had agreed to let me ride on his back. The teenagers and I went in procession through the gates to the palace. Every building in the huge, sprawling complex had been made of a deep red sandstone that contrasted gorgeously with the lush green of the palms and vines that filled the grounds. The kids went in for their audience, and I was told to wait. After a few minutes it began to rain, and I was purposefully moved to an antechamber with no roof, so I would get all wet. The queen was a vain and spiteful person, apparently. She wanted me to thank her from as humiliated a position as she could put me in.

I curled up under a narrow table to stay as dry as I could, and my peacock spread his tail over me to shelter me. The tail turned out to be amazingly water-tight, so I stayed mostly dry. The guard that was sent to guide and watch me realized that I wasn't actually going to let myself get soaked, and he was tired of getting drenched himself, so he took me into a more sheltered room. He wasn't going to let the bird come with us, but I argued that I had to ride it, because I couldn't walk. The peacock went over to a bed of plants and neatly defecated, proving he was house trained, and apparently fairly sentient.

So the guard took us through, and I met the queen. She had a Cleopatra sort of hair style and was dressed in turquoise silk with huge gold jewelry. I was as obsequious as I could be, because I just wanted out of there. I could tell she thought I was mocking her, but there wasn't really anything she could call out, and she finally got bored of baiting me, and sent me on my way. But she did say my peacock belonged to her, and he had to stay when I left.

I rode back out to the guard house, then got off the peacock's back and sat against a column, wondering what I should do. My leg did feel a lot better, but the doctor had said...

Then the peacock in front of me shivered and transformed into the doctor, wearing the uniform of the palace guard! He told me it had been his pleasure to help me, and that my leg should be fine now, and was healed enough to be all the stronger for being used from here on out. I was much more grateful to him than to the queen, but he wouldn't let me thank him at all, probably because it would make her jealous, and she'd take it out on him if should couldn't punish me. But I felt like I had made a true friend. We said goodbye, and he walked off into the guards' quarters. And then I woke up.

Pre-Wedding Jitters ~ 1/4/2017

I dreamed it was the day before my wedding. I was getting married in my family's new house. Which we were currently in the process of moving into. What could possibly go wrong?

First, thank goodness, my father was able to make it, but we kept having to hide him, because he was in the witness protection program, so no one but us could know he was there. Which also meant he couldn't help with any of the moving.

Then, Brooke was supposed to be in charge of making the pizza for the reception, but she wouldn't stop carrying stuff from the old house to the new long enough to do it, and mom kept taking away the ingredients anyway. Finally I put everything I needed out on the counter in front of me where I could keep an eye on it, and started making the pizza myself.

I kept telling mom to take my wedding dress over to the new house and hang it in my changing room, but someone kept bringing it back. Then mom got really mad at me for telling her to do things she knew she'd already done, and I tried to explain that I *knew* she'd done it before, but it needed to be done again, and no one could figure out why or how this was happening.

I finally finished the pizza, and Brooke carried that over, along with my dress. It was just about time for the wedding, and we all knew for once where the dress was, so they rushed me over to the new house so I could get ready.

The new house had an amphitheater, which is where the wedding was going to be. People were already getting seated, but it wasn't like I was supposed to keep from being seen, because, since there wasn't actually a groom, it didn't matter who saw me before the wedding.

My changing area was basically the last few rows of the amphitheater with sheets draped to block the area from view. My dress lay there over one row of seats, but I couldn't change into it, because people kept coming through the sheets and sitting in the back rows. Which made no sense, because then they wouldn't be able to see the wedding!

I finally started yelling at everyone to get out and stay out and no one else come back there, and once I was alone, I got changed super-quick. I looked in the mirror and began debating whether or not it was okay that my bangs were in my eyes, and whether or not I should shave, or at least trim, my beard. And then I woke up.