Tag: dreams

1156: Dream a Little Dream

Sometimes I like my subconscious. Sometimes it comes up with creative, awesome ideas or simply entertains me with peculiar, fascinating and sometimes grotesquely compelling images that then provide suitable fodder from which to compose a blog post later in the day. I know I have at least one friend for whom the experience he dubbed “the poo dream” is a source of considerable amusement.

Sometimes, though, I don’t like my subconscious. Today is one of those days.

I don’t tend to suffer from nightmares a lot. I don’t have many memories of being woken up suddenly by something unpleasant happening to me in my dreams, and I’ve certainly never done the Hollywoodesque thing of suddenly sitting bolt upright, wide awake and covered in sweat. This morning, though, my brain decided to show me some messed-up crap.

And yes, I said morning. As those of you who remember my previous posts on vivid dreams will remember, I tend to experience my most vivid flashes of weirdness from the subconscious after I’ve sort of kind of woken up once and drifted off back to sleep. In this case, it was shortly after Andie had gone out to work at half-past some ungodly hour in the morning, and I was far too tired to get out of bed at that point. So, without much encouragement required, I fell asleep again, and the peculiar images began.

This time around, I was back at my old secondary school. Specifically, I was in the music department’s main room. This was quite a big room with a stage at one end, though it was relatively rarely used for concerts when I was there — school concerts tended to take place in the large (and extremely reverberant) sports hall. Regardless of that, though, there was a concert going on this time around. I was set to perform. Specifically, I was set to perform Carnival of the Animals on the piano, which the astute and/or classically-trained among you will know is a piece of music that normally requires at least two people and two pianos and possibly some additional instruments too. However, for reasons that were at best unclear over the course of this dream, I was set to perform it solo, and I was extremely nervous about it.

I don’t remember anything else that was going on in the concert, but I remember the audience feeling somewhat rowdy. In fact, it felt more like a performance in front of a class of schoolkids than an actual concert — as I looked around, I remember noticing that the desks were laid out just as they always were — three rows, with another at 90 degrees to the rest of them down the side.

My time came to perform and I psyched myself up. I was going to give a small speech prior to starting my performance to explain why I was going to be performing Carnival of the Animals as a soloist, but as I stepped on stage the noise level from the audience (who, it was clearly evident by now, just were schoolkids) increased and increased and increased. I stood there mutely waiting for them to calm down so I could give my speech, but the hubbub didn’t dissipate. Eventually I gave up, laid my music down on the piano that was on stage and prepared to take a seat.

Suddenly, from out of the audience, out burst a kid who was a fairly notorious bully when I was back at school. His appearance in my dream was just as when I last saw him at the age of about 15. While I was at school, I didn’t have a lot of problems with this particular individual personally, but he was someone that I was wary of and tended to avoid whenever possible — not only because I was afraid of him, but also because I thought he was a bit of a tosser. Anyway, that aside, he leapt at me, and it wasn’t until it was too late that I saw he was wielding a knife. He slashed across me as he leapt at me. I didn’t feel anything, so I figured he missed.

Then I looked down and saw he hadn’t missed. The front of my clothing was stained crimson with blood, and the pain suddenly kicked in.

Then I woke up. That was not a pleasant way to wake up, I can tell you, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that it pretty much put a downer on most of the rest of my day. I’ve been feeling low and depressed all day and while I’m sure not all of it can be attributed to the activities of my subconscious, starting the day in that manner probably didn’t help.

But what does it mean? Well, aside from the apparent long-term damage to my sanity that classroom teaching did… who knows? And I’m not sure I want to know!

1131: Lavatorial Subconscious

Page_1It is, as I have noted a number of times previously on these very pages, during the hours of the morning between waking up for the first time and actually waking up enough to be able to get out of bed that your subconscious works the hardest to show you the most fucked-up shit possible to get you wondering what the hell someone was injecting into you while you slept. These “morning dreams” are also the ones that tend to stick in your memory a lot more than the things your brain dreams up in the main part of your sleep cycle, too.

As you will recall if you’ve been following this blog for a while, I have recounted these peculiar and surreal experiences in the past. And I thought I’d do that today, largely to resist the temptation to write about Ar Tonelico yet again.

This morning’s weird dream was once again somewhat lavatorial in nature, at least in part, so for that I apologise.

I forget the specific circumstances which brought me to the situation, but something had caused me to arrive at a building which looked somewhat like Kazuma’s orphanage from the video game Yakuza 3. There were a few differences, though. For some reason, inside the wooden building there was a large room with windows all around its walls, except for one completely wooden wall, which had a toilet on it.

I had arrived at the building to see someone I knew — I think they were a teacher, but I don’t recall seeing their face clearly. Their class were with them, but ignored me until I stepped into the bizarre “toilet room” and started having a piss, at which point some kid pointed out the fact that I was clearly having a piss, and that everyone should watch closely. Naturally, once I had started, I couldn’t stop — you know how it is when you really need a piss and you release that valve — but I was also very conscious of everyone standing around outside this room, with me on display.

Somehow, I managed to find a way of standing where I knew that no-one would be able to see my knob or the seemingly never-ending stream of piss erupting from me, but the crowd began to become more rowdy. At first it was shouting and laughing, but then it changed to singing — a few scattered voices at first, which eventually became as one, singing a driving, dramatic song that inexplicably developed an orchestral backing after a while despite the fact there was clearly not an orchestra present — at least not one which I could see. As the music built in intensity, volume and tempo, I became aware that I was losing control of my, uh, “flow” and it was going everywhere, and that everyone could see this.

Suddenly the music stopped, and I was done. I flushed, and went to wash my hands at the sink that I’m sure wasn’t there beforehand. The sink was full of paint and the draining board next to it looked rusty and dirty, but clean water came out of the taps, at least. I washed up and left the room, trying to get far away from my “audience”, who thankfully didn’t follow me. I’m not sure how long I ran or to where, but eventually I found myself in a room with Emma Watson, who grabbed me and kissed me rather forcefully.

And then I woke up, disappointingly. Well thank you, subconscious, for keeping me asleep during the bizarre, slightly traumatic part and waking me up just as things were getting interesting.

1121: Dreamscape

Page_1I had a “game dream” last night. As any longtime gamer will tell you, these happen with increasing frequency the more you like or have spent time playing a particular game, are often extremely vivid and are usually quite memorable, too.

In my case — and disappointingly for this blog post, which is about to get a whole lot of padding — I can’t remember the specific details about said dream. What I can remember, however, is the peculiar combination of games that formed the basis of said dream. First up were Ar Tonelico, which is my new RPG jam having finished Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2; and Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 itself — hey, I really, really liked it, okay? These two aren’t especially weird to put together, since Ar Tonelico’s developer Gust also contributed to Hyperdimension Neptunia and was even personified in the game as the character called, err, Gust.

Combining with Ar Tonelico and Hyperdimension Neptunia was the visual novel Kira Kira, which I was reading shortly before I went to sleep last night, so it’s perhaps unsurprising it put in an appearance. Kira Kira doesn’t really fit with the other two, though — it may also be Japanese, but it’s 1) not an RPG 2) not in a fantasy setting and 3) not quite as “crazy” as the other two.

This isn’t as bizarre an inclusion as the presence of CD Projekt Red’s dark fantasy opus The Witcher, however, which also put in an appearance courtesy of its white-haired protagonist Geralt, who looked very much out of place alongside the colourful characters from the other games.

As I say, I can’t remember what actually happened in the dream, so this story is mostly a waste of time, but I thought it was an interesting combination of things that my subconscious chose to put together — particularly since I haven’t played The Witcher for quite some time.

Game dreams don’t always blend together experiences like this. Sometimes they’re a focused experience based on a single game. Puzzle games used to be particularly bad for this — I remember shortly after getting my very own Lynx (Atari’s ill-fated 16-bit handheld which was absolutely enormous) and playing a whole bunch of Klax that I had a number of Klax-related dreams, which mostly centred their attention on my mental image of the female voice that whispered such sweet nothings as “Klax Wave!” and “Yeah!” and “Oooh!” while you were playing. (I think it was the latter that made me go weak at the knees. It was quite a sexy “Oooh!”. I have tried to find it on YouTube but instead found nothing but Flight Simulator videos. Apparently “KLAX” is the abbreviation for Los Angeles International Airport. What was I talking about again?)

Um, anyway… Yeah.

Dreams are a strange thing. I am fairly convinced that you can influence your own dreams strongly by what you’re doing immediately before you go to sleep (wash your mind out, pervert) but it seems that the most vivid dreams tend to show themselves when you’re not specifically trying to think really hard about something, and instead have a mind full of things that have stimulated it. In my case last night, the rather wordy prose of Kira Kira obviously kept my mind active as I drifted off to sleep, and then other influences that I felt strongly about drifted in there, too.

That still doesn’t really explain the presence of The Witcher, but eh, I’m tired, so I’m off to read a bit of Kira Kira and then go to sleep for hopefully some more subconscious happy fun times. See you on the other side.

1056: More Things I Thought Were True, But Aren’t

[I have written twelve articles of between 500 and 1,000 words each today so I am too tired to do a comic strip. They’ll be back tomorrow.]

A long while back, while I was in my faintly delirious “holy shit my life has just fallen apart, I need to distract myself in any way possible” phase, I composed a series of fever-dream blog posts that I have a feeling might have actually been relatively amusing. (Or at least I found them amusing. Your mileage may, as always, vary.) One of these posts was Things I Thought Were True, But Aren’t, in which I explored a selection of things that I had ingrained into my brain for various reasons — either I’d overheard my family or friends say them and gullibly believed them, or I’d simply never seen anything to prove my opinion wrong.

So, in the spirit of that original post from way back when, here are some more Things I Thought Were True, But Aren’t.

1. Taking a drink into the bathroom is forbidden.

You just can’t do it. You shouldn’t do it. I never questioned why this was — I believe the somewhat vague explanation of it being “unhygienic” may have been bandied around at some point — but over time I just sort of gradually grew to make up reasons why people didn’t take drinks into the bathroom, unless they were attending a house party, in which case everyone must take their drinks into the bathroom.

My favourite explanation of why you shouldn’t take drinks into the bathroom is because of all the “poo particles” floating around in the air as a result of whoever last had a dump or did a really big fart. If you take a drink — particularly a hot one — into the bathroom, then all the poo particles are naturally attracted to the drink and infect it with poo. So when you start drinking your drink that you took into the bathroom, you’ll then be drinking poo. And no-one wants to drink poo. So don’t do it.

2. You can make yourself dream about a thing by thinking about it really hard before you go to sleep.

I’m actually in two minds as to whether or not this one is actually true. Because certainly when you do something intense (get those thoughts out of your mind, hentai) before going to sleep, you’ll often dream about it. See: playing too much Tetris/Klax/Dr. Mario before bed and consequent surreal dreams. (My favourite was the one where I met the lady who said “Klax Wave!” before every level and “Ooh!” every time you got a 4-tile Klax in Klax on the Atari Lynx, and she was like totally fit and into me and we… wait, what was I talking about again?)

For a long time, though, I was utterly convinced that lying there with your eyes shut trying to picture something really vividly would influence your dreams. Of course, it doesn’t; your brain occupies itself too much with trying to picture something really vividly rather than actually attempting to shut off and get to sleep, making the whole exercise a fruitless endeavour. I’ve also found that as I’ve got older, my concentration span for lying awake trying to think of things has lessened considerably than it was when I was a teenager. This is perhaps a side-effect of the build-up of depression and anxiety over the years.

3. The first time you see something is the first time it ever happened/existed.

I genuinely believed this as a kid. The first time I got a copy of Fast Forward magazine, I thought it was the first issue. The first time I saw things on television, I thought it was the first time they’d been broadcast. Kind of silly, now that I think back on it.

This attitude did sort of perpetuate itself even after I left home, though. When a friend referred to baseball cap and tracksuit-wearing white trash as “chavs”, it was the first time I’d heard that word and I thus assumed that it had originated in our social group. Of course, it transpires that the word “chav” is very much in common usage to mean exactly what we thought it meant. It must have spread around the country somehow. I wonder where it originated? I’m pretty sure it didn’t originate from my friend Cat on the No. 11 bus heading to Safeway in Portswood, Southampton.

4. If you fart when you’re not ready, you’ll shit yourself.

I have no doubt that in certain circumstances, this may be true, but for the most part, the act of farting and the act of shitting are two distinct motions — unless, of course, you’re attempting to force out the fart, which carries a significant risk of following through. Let it come naturally and you’ll be safe. Probably. Right? OH GOD NOW I NEVER WANT TO FART AGAIN.

5. If you sleep on your back, you’ll…

To date, I’m not entirely sure if this actually happened or if I dreamed it at some point, but I am absolutely convinced that for a sex education class at secondary school, all the boys were taken to the library while all the girls went off to talk about periods, and we watched a video of a 1950s-style very British man explaining how if you slept on your back, you’d probably spunk your pants in your sleep. He obviously didn’t use that exact terminology — I forget the exact words he used, probably “nocturnal emissions” or something — but I vividly remember it. At the same time, though, I also have the strongest feeling that I might have made it up. Because it just doesn’t seem very likely.

That said, I used to have a recurring dream where I was going to have sex with someone on the London Underground, but couldn’t go through with it because I didn’t have the sheet music for it, so… wait a minute, that doesn’t really help at all.

I’m off to bed now. To sleep on my side. I have a hellish week coming up. See you on the other side, and apologies in advance for any day’s entries that are just “AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH”.

#oneaday Day 788: From the Depths of the Subconscious

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Analysing your dreams can probably tell you a lot about yourself. If that’s the case, though, I’m not sure I want to know what my most recent vivid imaginings say.

I dream best in the morning after I’ve woken up once. At least, those are the dreams I remember. If I wake up when Andie leaves for work and promptly fall back asleep again (which, to be perfectly honest, I usually do) then I’ll often have incredibly vivid dreams which, more to the point, I tend to remember pretty clearly. They’re certainly not conscious imaginings, because there’s no way I’d choose to think of a lot of the things that flit through my mind. Rather, it appears to be a completely automatic process, presumably based on anxieties or thoughts already stuck in my head.

This morning, these bizarre “snooze dreams” were — and I apologise for what I’m about to recount — rather lavatorial in nature. To begin with, I found myself sitting on a toilet in an upstairs hallway of a house. It wasn’t my real-life house, though I think it might have been my own house in the dream. Quite why there was a toilet in the upstairs hallway was anyone’s guess. And quite why I was sitting on it when the house was clearly playing host to a large party is an even bigger mystery.

Despite the fact I had clearly just had a dump in front of all the passing partygoers — most of whom seemed oblivious to my presence and activities — for some reason (and again, I apologise) I found myself unable to… uhh… “clean up”, as it were. I found myself panicking and wishing all these people weren’t in my house, screaming at them to get out of the way, but still no-one paid me any heed.

I ran downstairs and found myself in the house I lived in for my fourth year of university. I knew there was a nice, quiet toilet in the back where I could complete my business, so I opened the door. I found a toilet all right, but it wasn’t the one I was expecting. Rather, it was in a large, L-shaped room whose walls and floor were all made of ceramic tiles. There was no ceiling to the room, and outside I could see that we appeared to be floating in space. Worse, there was no bog roll here, either, only three circular red buttons next to the toilet.

I left, and the subsequent journey was a blur, but I ended up in what appeared to be an aeroplane bathroom, albeit one with a sloping roof that met the wall behind the toilet, and a large skylight in it. When standing in front of the toilet, I could look out through the skylight, and I saw that we were in some sort of rural area. Outside the skylight, men in peculiar costumes were being shepherded away by strange figures I can’t remember any details about. For some reason, I thought nothing of this strange and slightly sinister behaviour, because I had more pressing matters on my mind.

There was a toilet paper dispenser on the wall, so I pulled the handle to dispense some, but the string of sheets went down a small hole underneath the dispenser. When I retrieved the paper from the hole, it was completely covered in a weird black sludge which was then all over my hand. After going “urgh” for a little while, I simply washed it off, finally wiped my arse (noting with some surprise that my underpants had not been soiled despite all the running around) and then woke up slightly worried that I might have shat myself in my sleep. (I hadn’t.)

This particular incident follows a long stream of other bizarre “snooze dreams” I’ve had which include being unable to go through with a sexual encounter because I didn’t have the sheet music for it; starting to read the TV Tropes page for my own life and being literally unable to look away from it; and a particularly unpleasant one where I lived in a big house with all my friends and we all suddenly started hating each other for no apparent reason.

My subconscious is fucked, basically. Oh well, at least it keeps things interesting. And the fact I can remember all this nonsense gives me good fodder for when I actually do want to do something creative and imaginative… though I can’t see a novel about someone who might have shat himself catching on, really.

#oneaday Day 709: Reasonable Hour

I’m thinking this through this time, writing my entry for today before getting involved in anything which I might want to continue doing until the wee small hours of the morning, as has happened for the last two nights straight. Oddly enough, despite waking relatively “early” (for the holiday season, anyway) I didn’t feel too bad as the world came back into focus after only a few hours’ sleep.

I have a curious relationship with sleep. I like sleeping, but I also find it an enormous waste of time. I suffer from some degree of insomnia for the vast majority of the time, meaning I often find it very difficult to actually drift off to sleep once I’m lying in bed with my head on the pillow. It’s not anything specific keeping me awake, generally — I can and will always nod off eventually, even if there’s someone drilling a hole in the road outside or snoring thunderously in the same room as me. But sleep is one of those things that the harder you try to grab hold of, the more elusive it is. The more aware you are of the fact that you “should” be going to sleep, the less likely you are to actually fall asleep.

I say “you”. I mean “me”, because I know not everyone is like this. Several people I know have the uncanny ability to close their eyes, rest their head and be in the land of Nod (not the Command & Conquer variety) almost immediately, whatever happens to be going on around them. In the case of some friends, it became something of a “party trick”, albeit a usually involuntary one. Mercifully, however, my friends have never been the type to deface a sleeping person by shaving off eyebrows or beards — or indeed adding any adornments with marker pens. The closest we have come to defiling a sleeping figure came at my friend Ben’s Halloween party when he fell asleep rather early in the evening, still in most of his wizard costume (sans beard, sadly). Other friends Woody (dressed as Death) and Mike (dressed as Gay Satan) posed with the recumbent Ben for some photographs that remain, to date, some of my favourite “visual memories” of that particular group of friends.

But I digress. I find it very difficult to get to sleep, particularly if I get into bed at what your parents call a “reasonable hour”. I find my mind wandering — not necessarily in an anxious way, though if I am anxious about anything, lying in the dark trying to get to sleep is inevitably the time that every anxiety and neurosis comes out to play — and this makes it terribly difficult to clear out all those extraneous, unnecessary thoughts which it’s impossible to act on while lying in bed. While your brain is full of such garbage, it’s a challenge to convince your body that now is the time for rest. Inevitably, I’ll find myself attempting to do something distracting. It could be playing with my phone, it could be reading a book by the light of my phone, or in extreme cases, getting up altogether and doing something other than lying staring at the inside of my eyelids.

One thing I’ve noticed since I was younger is that it’s more difficult to “focus” at the time when I’m trying to get to sleep than it used to be. When I was younger, I found it very easy to slip into imaginative fantasy, half dreaming, half actively imagining and directing my thoughts, picturing myself on grand adventures. Frequently, these mental excursions would lead to slumber and some colourful dreams, so I often found it a good way to see myself through the night.

I’ve tried doing the same thing in recent years, however, and I find it enormously difficult to concentrate on the sense of “narrative” inherent in these brain-fuelled adventures. I don’t generally have a problem concentrating while I’m awake — I’m quite happy to sit staring at something I’m working on or playing with for hours at a time, but as soon as it comes to trying to concentrate on getting to sleep? My brain seems to release the floodgates of all the thoughts that I’ve been storing in my own internal “deal with later” pile.

You know when it’s not difficult to get to sleep, though? In the morning. On many occasions I’ve been woken up by my alarm (or indeed by Andie getting out of bed to go to work) and have promptly fallen back asleep almost immediately — for hours at a time on many occasions. The interesting thing about these morning “extra” sleeps is that they almost always feature incredibly vivid dreams, and since they occur during short sleeps just before I get up and switch my brain into “daytime” gear, I can usually remember at least a few details from them for most of the rest of the day. It’s during morning slumbers I’ve had bizarre and diverse imaginary encounters such as being utterly convinced that it would be impossible to have sex with someone if I didn’t have the right sheet music with me; or finding myself in my parents’ dining room with a male voice choir literally singing for my supper.

Sleep, then, is good — some might call it necessary. I just wish it was more a case of flipping a “standby” switch rather than spending all that time and effort trying to power down for the evening — time which I would rather spend doing something much more fun!

#oneaday Day 612: Good Night

I love the night. Some may argue that this is proof that I’m a vampire (though a sparkly one rather than a “catch fire in sunlight” one, given my ability to go outside in the daytime) but I simply explain it away as being a time when you can truly enjoy the world in a way that it’s easy to forget about — peacefully.

Going outside at night-time is a pleasant experience (assuming you remembered your keys) because it somehow feels “forbidden”. It’s not, of course — though naturally anyone who happened to be looking out of their window at the time might be wondering exactly why you’re wandering around aimlessly in the dead of night if you’re not Up To No Good –but to some extent, lingering feelings of childhood enter your mind, reminding you that you’re “supposed” to be in bed, but instead, you’re out in the darkness and cool air of the night.

It’s a good time to think, too. Whether this is because your brain has had enough of daytime thoughts (such as what you’re going to cook for dinner, whether you’ve paid the council tax and wondering whether you left the oven on) and just wants to indulge in flights of fancy is an unknown. But the night-time is the time to think about things, to be creative and to let your imagination run wild.

This doesn’t always work to your advantage, of course. Having something weighing heavily on your mind and then allowing your brain to get into that curiously imaginative late-night state will often get you into a relentless cycle of negative thoughts, at times even preventing you from sleeping. But what you need to remember in this situation is that if your brain is feeling imaginative enough to think about what might happen if you don’t send that Really Important Letter tomorrow, then it can imagine something stronger, too.

When I was younger, I used to try and influence my dreams by lying in bed with my eyes closed, imagining the opening for some sort of narrative in which I was the star. It would inevitably end up being some sort of heroic fantasy (not necessarily of the “swords and orcs” variety) in which I fantasised about a particular person and how I would interact with them if I had the opportunity to rescue them from the depths of an underground tunnel network/a spaceship/a civilisation that lived inside a tree/a world made of strawberry mousse. I’m not sure if imagining these narratives ever successfully influenced my dreams — everyone reading this is likely aware that their unconscious mind is capable of coming up with far more bizarre material than your waking mind can — but it was always fun to try. I’m not sure at what age it became more difficult to do that, but it’s certainly a lot more challenging to maintain concentration on a specific fantasy now when trying to get to sleep. Perhaps this isn’t necessarily a side-effect of age, but more other factors such as mental state, a greater number of additional considerations over and above what you had when you were a child, or simply that your concentration span is shot for whatever reason.

Despite good intentions, I somehow always end up writing these posts in the dead of night — sometimes later than others. The vast majority of any creative writing I’ve done over the years, too, has often been composed during the midnight hours. And for a while last year when everything was going tits-up, I found friendship on the other side of the world in the dead of night. (The latter ended up fucking up my body clock beyond all recognition for a considerable period of time, however, so more practical solutions have had to be found.)

This rambling load of old nonsense may have had a point somewhere along the way, but it’s escaping me somewhat right now. I’ll just say it’s the fact that “the night is awesome” and leave it at that — before bidding you, of course, a very good night.

#oneaday Day 608: Pain Killer

Aimee Lee had been wracked with inexplicable pains for several days now. She couldn’t explain them, nor did she feel that she could bother the doctors with them. She couldn’t talk to her friends about them, because she didn’t have any friends. But every night, it seemed, the pain got worse, and always, after she did manage to succumb to sleep, she woke the next morning feeling as if she has been beaten, battered and abused.

But there’s no-one there. No-one has beaten her, no-one has taken advantage of her, no-one has violated her. She’s all alone. She has been ever since the day when she decided enough was enough, and called the police on her abusive boyfriend, who took him away, never to be seen again.

“Bitch!” he’d called after her as he was forcibly removed from the premises, her trembling figure cowering in the corner as a female police officer spoke to her in a calm, low voice, assuring her that everything was going to be all right now. “Whore! You’ll suffer! You’ll suffer!”

She’d come to this town of her own volition, given up her life for the man she thought she loved, and for a while all was well. But then his fury started. Every day she’d dread the turning of the key in the lock, for it would mean that he would be back again, and the beatings would start. She’d often be in tears even before he arrived in the house, but that would only fuel his aggression. There was no explanation for it, and on the few occasions where he did prove to be lucid, he had no justification for it, either.

But she missed him. There had been love there, once, and amidst all the abuse and horrors, she knew that he was surely still the man she had fallen for and given everything up for. After a while, she even found herself longing to hear his voice in any form — even if it was yelling at her, a prelude to another beating.

It was in this admission that the shadow found its way into her soul. A fleeting thought, that was all it took for it to take hold. And then the pain started — a dull ache in her limbs at first, but gradually growing in intensity night by night. By now, by the time she eventually passed out from the pain — she couldn’t call it “falling asleep” — her body was wracked with the agony of a thousand burning needles searing her flesh, though her skin bore no scars.

The girl knew the signs as soon as she became aware of Aimee. She had come across this kind of horror before, and she knew all too well that if it were not dealt with quickly, Aimee’s mind and body would tear themselves apart, whether the agony were real or imagined.

So it was that she stepped into Aimee’s mind, flickering energy running up her arm letting her know that the blade with which she had already dispatched so many similar terrors hungered for the blood of the dark one responsible for this particular mess.

The room she found herself in was dark, its walls made of stone, and dull lights sitting in sconces high on the walls.

How cliché, she thought. A dungeon. Perhaps this’ll be simpler than I thought.

A moan from somewhere in the darkness led her to the prone figure of Aimee, lying on the floor, clad in a white dress that was already stained crimson with blood.

“Please!” cried Aimee, her voice quavering with tears. Invisible lashes cause her body to jolt with pain, fresh wounds opening with each hit. “Please!”

The girl stood watching this horrific sight, her jaw set. She wouldn’t have called herself “embittered” or “cynical” but she had been doing this for some time now, and she knew that to become emotionally invested in the situation was to show weakness to the shadow.

“Show yourself,” she muttered, clearing her throat then uttering it again. “Show yourself!”

Aimee’s writhing stopped as the invisible lashes ceased to batter her body. The darkness seemed to shift around her, taking form, becoming a recognisable shape.

“Uh-huh,” said the girl. “Let me guess. Couldn’t get no satisfaction, so decided to take to beating on this poor girl to get your ya-yas.”

The male figure before her snarled, black smoke billowing from his head as he did so. There was to be no parley, it seemed, as it lurched straight at the girl — but she was ready for him, deftly stepping aside and flourishing her arm as she had done so many times, the blade flashing and appearing ready in her hand as she summoned it.

The shadowy, smoky figure lunged at her again, tackling her and slamming her against a wall. Aimee screamed as she watched — she knew his violence all too well, both in reality and here in her own mind, and was terrified to see it inflicted on another. She sobbed, taking big gulps of air as she hoped the girl could escape his terrible clutches.

She did. Kicking away the shadowy figure and slashing at him with the curious blade she held in her right hand, the girl moved with the agility and speed of a cat. She wasn’t going to be caught out again. By the time the smoky figure crudely lurched at her again, she was already elsewhere, slashing at his body with her sword, but even a direct hit caused only black smoke to spew from the wound, not blood.

“Hey!” said the girl, addressing the terrified Aimee for the first time. “What do you want? This isn’t going to work if you don’t know.”

Aimee didn’t know what she meant. She watched the unfolding scene with tears blurring her vision, unable to stand, the pain from her wounds stinging her body and leaving her immobile.

“Come on!” said the girl. “I can’t help you if you don’t help me. I need you to know, Aimee. I need you to say it.”

Aimee gulped, swallowed some air, hiccuped and sobbed again. What did this strange girl mean? And who was she? Aimee had never seen her before in her life, but somehow the girl knew her — or at least her name.

The shadowy figure’s blow found its target, and the girl was sent clattering across the ground, winded, blade still clutched firmly in her right hand. It turned back to Aimee, menace in its glowing red eyes. It began to advance — far more threatening now it has a visible form than when it lashed her body with invisible strokes.

Aimee screamed. This isn’t what she wanted. She wanted things to be back how they once were — back when she was in love, back before he was engulfed with this inexplicable rage. She wanted —

“I want,” said Aimee uneasily, staring in fright at the advancing figure. “I want — I want the pain to stop!”

The girl leapt to her feet.

“That’s it,” she said. “You never wanted this abuse. You never wanted this pain. Once you thought you might, and that’s how you let this thing in. But now you know that way lies only suffering. So I’m here to help with that.”

She plunged the blade deep into the back of the shadowy, smoky figure, which let out an ear-splitting howl before whirling around in an attempt to strike back at its assailant.

“Come on!” cried the girl. “Torture’s such an easy, boring way to inflict pain. Take me instead! I’ll give you a fight.”

She struck again, slicing at its face this time. The blade found its target, and this time instead of smoke, black ichor spewed forth. The girl hopped backwards to avoid the spray.

“Made that mistake before,” she said, more to herself than the horrified Aimee. “That shit never comes out.”

Aimee watched in astonishment. Tears still stung her eyes and blurred her vision, but the sheer oddness of the scene before her almost made her forget the pain that had brought her to her knees in the first place.

The girl plunged the blade deep into the shadowy figure’s torso now, and it let out a howl even worse than the first one. It seemed to shake the very foundations of the room they were in. Its foul black blood sprayed again as the girl twisted the blade, no trace of anger on her face, to all intents and purposes looking as if she was simply screwing a piece of furniture together rather than doing untold damage to the innards of some monstrous creature.

Finally, the figure let out one last roar and exploded in a cloud of black smoke, a torrent of the black ichor suddenly falling to the floor and splattering across it, leaving a stain. There was a silence for a moment, then the blade simply seemed to disappear from the girl’s hand.

“Thank you,” said Aimee, though she still wasn’t quite sure what had just happened.

“You’re welcome,” said the girl, who promptly vanished.

Aimee gasped and opened her eyes. She saw the familiar sight of her bedroom ceiling above her and was momentarily disoriented. What had just happened?

She had no answer to that question, but she knew one thing — the pain had stopped, just like she wanted.

But who was that girl?

#oneaday Day 92: Dream On

Discussing dreams is regarded by many as self-indulgent, but then so is blogging, so to the people who whinge and moan about everything I say “RASPBERRIES, GOOD SIR” and bare my bum at them. (Maybe not the bum bit.)

But anyway. Dreams. Weird, aren’t they? A statement that surely qualifies for the “Captain Obvious Award 2011”, yes, but it’s true — which is why it’s obvious, obviously. I have, however, come to the conclusion recently that the most vivid and bizarre dreams seem to come not during your big long sleep that you (hopefully) have throughout the whole night, but instead in those brief “snooze” periods you have between alarm clock harassment in the morning. Assuming you use an alarm clock. If not, it’s those brief snooze periods you have between waking up and deciding you can’t be arsed to get out of bed just yet.

Anyway. Regardless of when those brief snooze periods happen, that’s when your brain suddenly decides that the most interesting and/or fucked-up dreams really need to happen. Because, as everyone knows, the brain works best under pressure. Ask any student or journalist with a deadline coming up.

Take this morning. I woke on an airbed on my friend’s floor (I do know how I got there, I hasten to add) and considered getting up but wasn’t sure if it was a good idea because my phone battery had gone flat and I wasn’t wearing a watch. And this being the digital age, of course there were no clocks anywhere to be seen that weren’t on mobile phones or on TV-connected things that made noise and would wake up my sleeping companion (who was on a different air bed, I hasten to add, and sleeping off an enormous amount of alcohol that he had consumed over the course of the whole day in celebration of both digits of his age changing) so basically, I couldn’t tell if it was late enough to wake up in a suitably sociable manner. You get me? Good.

Now we’ve established that, I can explain; following the above, I established that it probably was too early to wake up, so I promptly fell asleep again. (Oddly enough, I find it enormously difficult to fall asleep at actual normal bedtime, but have absolutely no problem dropping off again in the morning. Somewhat frustrating and a little impractical.) My brain decided that this would be an appropriate time to imagine going to the fridge, taking out a 4-pint bottle of milk to take a refreshing cold swig from and discovering that it was actually full of egg-fried rice.

“Hmm, seems a bit ricey,” I said. The people in the kitchen at the time (whom I didn’t see) found this hilarious and we all had a good giggle about it. Then I woke up. Cool story bro.

If dreams are supposed to be some sort of “message”, then I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what that was trying to tell me. I drink too much milk? I really fancy a chinese? I’m going to die? I have no idea, but I guess it’s no weirder than the time I dreamed about navigating a field made entirely of strawberry mousse.