nightmule

a digital dream journal

[nightmule]

this is my digital dream journal, feel free to read but know that none of it is real and I'm only recording it because it helps me sleep

[nightmule]

several memorable dreams last night, not sure what the order exactly was as they sort of bled into/through one another but I'll start with what I believe was the first

I don't remember how it started but I was in some sort of clinic or office and getting what some sort of cosmetic fatloss procedure done (which is not something I'd be likely to do in real life). In the dream what this amounted to was a very cheery friendly woman in berry colored scrubs that perfectly matched her lipstick maneuvering me into different positions on an exam table so that she could inject various parts of my body (stomach, hips, etc basically anywhere fleshy) with something. I don't know what the injection was but I could feel it spreading into my body with the burning-cold feeling of liquid nitrogen or maybe some sort of acid. The woman was chattering about summer plans and how I was wise to choose this over surgery since it was less invasive and how I was going to look lovely once we were done. After a while I was allowed to take a break to stretch my legs and use the bathroom. While I was in the bathroom I looked in the mirror and raised my shirt so I could see how my stomach looked after the injections. To my horror I was left with significantly more loose skin than there had been fat to begin with and so I just stood there frozen looking at my reflection trying to figure out what to do but too overwhelmed to think of anything other than "I need to go back in time or have that woman un-do the procedure."

In the next dream (this one and the final dream overlapped at times but I can't explain exactly how) I was moving in to a new apartment in the city. It was out of the way and kind of hard to find but I got there and was trying to figure out a way to make the odd layout nicer. The kitchen was very narrow and dim, the living room was awkwardly shaped etc. Some of the decor was weird and not things I would have chosen in real life too. The nice thing about the apartment was that it had a large porch/balcony with vines and stuff growing on it. It was bigger than most of the apartment with enough space to have a small garden, pots of flowers, a table and chairs, a trellis, and an awning to shade part of it all on the balcony. While sweeping some dirt and cobwebs off the balcony I found a black and white cat (like a cow print cat) was living in one of flower pots that had been turned on it's side. Since the balcony was screened in I decided it could stay living there (it wouldn't be in danger of getting hit by a car or able to kill songbirds which are some of the major issues I have with outdoor cats) and that if it was friendly then over time I would find a way to let it into the indoor part of the apartment when the weather was bad without triggering my allergies. Time sort of skipped ahead and a storm was coming so I was trying to coax the cat to come inside with me and somehow it shrank down to the size of an ant. I crawled around on my hands and knees very very carefully picking up every bug and bit of dirt trying to find the cat and becoming more frantic and unsure of my reality. How could a cat suddenly shrink to the size of an ant? What if I had already squished it in my search or it had fallen through a gap in the boards ofnthe balcony floor? Had there ever even been a cat? What if I had been imagining it for weeks?). At some point in this dream, though I don't remember when, I also looked in the mirror to find my face... beautifully distorted? It had lengthened and become more angular and defined with sharp cheekbones and my eyes were bigger and almost luminous and I didn't know whether to admire the almost inhumanely beautiful face looking back at me or scream.

The last dream seemed in some way related to the middle one. It took place in a location very similar to or possibly the same as the apartment from the middle dream, but now I worked there in instead of/in addition to living there. There was several other employees of whatever my job was there too, I think the job was in some way related to theatre or film, but it wasn't my real job or my real coworkers. I was sitting at the kitchen counter on my laptop trying to organize my notes and talk through the details of some upcoming event with one of my coworkers when someone behind me asked me a question I didn't quite hear. I turned around to ask them to repeat it and it was the actor Barry Ke0ghan (purposeful misspelling so this doesn't come up in his tags). I remember thinking in the dream "huh I guess I am attracted to him in real life" which is funny to me in hindsight, because it was a dream and also because though he's famous and widely regarded to be a handsome man I've never been particularly attracted to him in my actual real life when I've seen him on screen. Anyway he was seemingly "the talent" for whatever the upcoming event was and was asking for permission to use the kitchen to make himself a snack and a cup of tea. I was surprised that he was asking to do it himself and not for someone to make or go get a snack for him (as many of the infinitely less well known actors I work with in real life do) but told him that of course he could. He said he'd make me a cup of tea too if I wanted one and I thanked him. My coworker whispered that they couldn't believe I was letting Barry K make me tea and I was like "well he offered and it is my kitchen." He returned a couple minutes later and asked if I liked Irish Breakfast and I told him it was my favorite black tea because it always just seems smoother than English. At this point my coworker nudged me and said "stop flirting with the talent!" To which I responded "we were just talking about tea!" And Barry K overheard this and said "here I was hoping you were talking about more than tea, what a shame" and grinned at me. And then I thought "well that's not realistic a celebrity wouldn't flirt with me also why is this entire company in my apartment for some reason?" And then I woke up

[nightmule]

Had a dream last night that I died. Only dying wasn't part of the dream (at least that I remember) I was in the place that you go after death. Not heaven or hell, some sort of in-between place. There was folding tables and a continental breakfast and crafts for the kids (and for me). The room was warehouse-like; a large open space with dusty cement floors and high square windows that let in the sort of wavering watery light that shines over you when you let yourself sink to the bottom of the swimming pool. Lots of people were there, some I knew and some I didn't, and we'd sit at the folding tables and eat French toast and scrambled eggs from the breakfast buffet and make things out of popsicle sticks and sometimes they'd play a movie on the projector, but never any particularly good ones. I'd find old friends or make new ones and talk about alive-things like love and fresh strawberries and first snow and laughter. And eventually, they'd all move on. I don't know if they moved on to a new life or a different sort of place or to become one with the indestructible energy of the universe or to something else entirely. None of us knew what happened when you left the in-between place, but everyone knew it was temporary and eventually everyone left. Everyone except me. Even when the last of the friends I knew in life had died and spent many years (or what felt like it anyway, because time no longer passes in any real way when you're in the in-between) keeping me company I wasn't ready to give up my identity, I was too afraid to move on even if we went together. "I can't believe you're leaving. Everyone leaves me. I died!" I remember shouting at him. "So did I. Everyone does." He responded with so much kindness in his voice and waited a few moments to see if I'd change my mind before he finally left. In the end, I was the only soul there. And then I woke up.

[nightmule]

I had a strange dream last night where i lived in a seaside (or maybe lakeside?) town.

I lived in the attic apartment of what appeared on the inside to be a 19th century boarding house but that looked almost cubist with metal and glass jutting out at odd angles on the outside. It was run sort of like a 19th century boarding house too, with a curfew and certain standards of behavior like not allowing any "male visitors."

The town was beautiful and quaint and built on a hill that sloped down to the water where fishing boats were docked. Sunny but not in a way that made you squint or overheat, fall but not yet cold with leaves just starting to turn. I'd leave my little attic window open (against boarding house rules) and I could smell the water on the breeze, though I couldn't quite see it. There was a church steeple in the distance just like in real life, though it wasn't the same church or the same view.

Even though the town was beautiful and quaint and seemed to exist in a place outside time, there was an undercurrent of sadness and tension that everyone tried hard to ignore. Until something horrible happened and they couldn't any longer. A building burned down (arson, not accident) with someone in it. Everyone became increasingly mistrustful and paranoid and the rules of the town and the boarding house both got even stricter "for our safety." But there was a mystery there and I was trying to solve it (though unfortunately I woke up before I did).

In the dream I had a... boyfriend? Suitor? Love interest? Who was trying to help me solve the mystery. He was a journalist I think, and I was some other kind of writer. Maybe I wrote fiction, maybe I was a poet. I used a typewriter and in the dream that wasn't odd though I've never actually used one in real life. He had floppy hair and a mustache and only ever wore shades of blue. His skin was soft and I liked to tease him by tugging on his tie.

The last thing I remember before the dream ended was watching him climb up the outside of the odd boarding house to sneak in my window. I whisper-shouted that he was going to get caught and he just tossed his floppy hair out of his eyes and said "okay" and grinned. It made me like Rapunzel in the tower. Not in the sense of needing to be rescued, but in the sense of being worth the risk. I never feel that way in real life, but in the dream it felt like the sun.

I thought I woke up from the dream and I thought I was in my old bedroom at my parents house and that the room was pitch black around me, but with the door open and a warm yellow light on in the hall. I could never sleep well with the door open so I got up and shut it and thought how unsettling it was that it was wide open when I thought it was both shut and locked. When I got back into bed I woke up for real in my real room in my real apartment with the door firmly shut. I was temporarily very confused about where I was and what really happened.

I wish I had solved the mystery of the seaside-lakeside town. I wish there was a way to step back inside the world of dreams to see how the rest of a story unfolds. I wish that in real life someone felt that loving me was worth the risk and that I felt the same. I'm glad I woke up in my real room with my real door firmly shut.

[nightmule]

Haven't written down a dream in a while but last night's feels significant

I'm in college again but the years since I graduated have still passed. I still have the memories of college ending and am confused by this and think how I can't afford to stay here another year.

It's the first day of school and one of my classes is a history class but it's awful and taught by a shark toothed man who ridicules the students, teaching nothing of any importance. The class is held in a library conference room with big windows and I realize we must be in an extremely tall building because when I look out I see the tops of clouds. There's an apartment in the building next to us with all glass walls and I can see everything the people inside do and I can't focus because I need to know if they know. Seeing them set the table for dinner and laugh at an unheard joke makes me anxious. I need to know if they've put themselves on display or if I'm intruding.

The library/classroom shifts and now the mezzanine level is a crowded party/bar/club with music and purple and green lights. I'm alone and still oddly shaken by the glass apartment and I want to figure out how to leave the awful class so I try to find the exit. Looking down from the mezz I can see the office of the counselors and wonder if anyone is in. Rounding a corner I bump into CM. I'm surprised to see her so she must not be caught in the extended college experience that I am in this reality. I greet her and she calls me the wrong name with a grin that shows it was on purpose. Then she sinks to the floor, crying, and though I don't like her I feel obligated to pat her shoulder awkwardly and mutter some bland words of comfort before I move on.

I make it down to the office and Taystee from oitnb is the receptionist. She gets the counselor for me even though it's after hours. They both seem worried about me hurting myself no matter how much I reassure them that that's not why I'm here. The counselor's face seems different everytime I look at her. I don't know that I'm dreaming but I know there is something wrong with the passage of time and the building and the people I meet and it makes me squirm. Finally the counselor says she will email me so I have a record of what we discussed and that I should go.

I get the email right away and read it in the hallway outside the office. She says again that she's worried about me hurting myself and this time it gets in my head. Maybe she's right. Maybe I'm not well. Maybe that's why everything seems so strange. I decide to go back to the party where even if everything's strange at least I'm not alone.

I look up from the email and I'm frozen. Even after all these years looking into those green eyes puts reality on pause. CQ is there in the hall staring back at me with a wrinkled white t shirt and hair a touch longer than I remember, messy like he's been asleep. I blink and for a moment he's covered in blood. My heart drops. Before I have time to feel anything more sophisticated than shock the blood is gone, the white shirt spotless, and he shows no sign of mutilation.

"What are you doing here?" I ask him. Or maybe it was "where did you come from?" I ask him something. I don't hear his answer. We're in the party now and I see my friends at a high top table in the corner. I go sit down, relieved, CQ all but forgotten. I wonder if I should tell them about him or about the counselor or about the glass apartment but if I am losing my mind I'm not sure I want them to know. I don't want to worry anyone. "Who's that?" They ask. CQ is waving at me from a table across the room and I start to get up, thinking for some reason that if I explain to him how unsettled I feel he will believe me, but my friends tell me to have him come to us instead and I decide that's a better idea. I tell my friends he's the guy from my stories. CQ comes over and I notice he looks different now. Neater hair. Dark clothes. I'm not sure when he could've changed. I realize my legs are bare and I'm wearing a very short dress that I've never seen before. I sit back down so I can hide my bare legs under the table.

CQ smiles at me and for a second it makes me feel just the way it always used to do. And then I remember the blood and I know something is wrong I just don't know what.

Even after waking I felt off and unsure the way I did in the dream and all day I've been worried about CQ but I haven't talked to him in years and it doesn't seem right to reach out now. The way I kept questioning my own perception and mental state and the way the counselor insisted I was a risk to myself in the dream was disconcerting too.

[nightmule]

My dreams lately have been fragmented and seem to shift between scenes/realities with no warning. The lack of cohesion makes them harder to remember than usual.

First I was in some sort of large institutional building. It seemed like some combination of school and factory, perhaps my mind's version of a modern take on a Victorian work house? There was quite a few people there, maybe a hundred or so, some of which I knew and some I didn't, of various ages. We were all ushered into a large room with rows of a type of sewing machine I've never seen before, wooden floors covered in lint and strings, and one wall of floor to ceiling windows looking out over a city. The windows showed that it was night and that we must have been on an upper floor of a relatively tall building surrounded by other skyscrapers.

We all sat down in rows on the floor and my boss, one of my coworkers, and a third woman I didn't recognize stood at the front of the room and started explaining how to use the machines and what we were expected to do. The presentation was probably important but the words kept slipping away from me and I would become focused on entirely unrelated topics not just in the normal way of someone distracted but to the extent that I'd convince myself that these topics were actually, secretly what they were talking about. After a few minutes of this I began to try to explain my theory to the people seated around me, talking quickly and nonsensically, and gesturing wildly with my hands in between pulling out strands of my own hair. Seemingly having some sort of episode, even in the dream I felt out of control. One of the people seated next to me was my childhood best friend (although we were both still our current ages) and she pulled me against her and held my hands down in my lap to get me to stop. Though they women giving the presentation seemed nice enough there was the sense that we were afraid of what might happen if I drew their attention by behaving in this way. At first I struggled against my friend, upset at being restrained but I didn't want to hurt her and she would not ease up so eventually I gave up. Once I did I started to think more clearly and the out of control feeling slowly evaporated. I started to enjoy the warmth of her body against my back and when, after a few minutes, she released her grip on my wrists I took her hand and held it.

Suddenly, I am in the employee back room area of some sort of large retail store. Everything about this is unclear. It's unclear whether I'm actually there or if it's a memory, it's unclear if I work there or am a customer who's somehow entered an employee only area or if I'm there to speak to someone who works there, even the visual input of what the room looks like is hazy. All I know is where I am and that the fluorescent lights are hurting my eyes. Someone who looks a like a long-haired Simu Liu asks me a question I don't hear and when I open my mouth to ask him to repeat it I'm back in the factory.

Time has passed, I can see the lavender inklings of dawn approaching out the window and someone had fallen asleep with their head in my lap. I assume it's my friend since she was sitting next to me and it would make more sense for it to be her than a stranger, but when I look down it's a man. My friend is nowhere to be seen and this feels like a loss. The man is about my age, wearing a ribbed white tank top and jeans, and in a very deep sleep. I gently try to wake him but he only rolls over. His curly hair is the darkest auburn, and feels coarse and wiry where it brushes my arm. I can see his face now that he's rolled over and I remember he was sitting on my friend's other side before. Though I normally would not want a stranger in my personal space like this he looks so tranquil that I don't want to disturb him. In this peaceful state even his patchy, stubbley beard seems beautiful.

I blink and now I'm trying (And failing) to operate one of the machines and somehow I've arranged myself so the sleeping man's body is draped across the chair next to me with his head still resting on my lap. This doesn't seem to help my ability to do the work, but if lifting him onto this chair didn't wake him I'm not sure what would and in the dream it seems unthinkable--if not impossible--to remove his head from my lap. It's like his sleep has attached him to me somehow. E from work is approaching and so know I need to hide the sleeping man from her as she is one of the bosses here, but I don't know how I'll manage it. Luckily, my old friend R from college appears, winks at me, and tells E how so-and-so is trying to see how one of the lower mechanisms of the machine I'm using works. It seems obvious we're trying to hide something but somehow E believes it. I turn to R and I'm transported again.

This time I'm in a house. The house is occupied by a collection of 20-somethings, including R, the Simu Liu look alike from the retail store, and a giggly blue haired girl. R leads me to the lower level of the house, which he calls "The Commune," where the blue haired girl has created a Willy Wonka style candy making operation. One room has a floor like a pin ball machine batting large jawbreakers through candy coatings until they reach their finished, bowling ball size. Another room has flowers spray painted on the walls and cotton candy hanging from the ceiling like cumulus clouds. The chocolate room is an ordinary, shabby looking kitchen with large saucepan of liquid chocolate cooking on the stove and the most heavenly rich smell. The blue haired girl explains that she's moving out and she needs someone to take over the operation because the candy sales support the entire household. R wants me to be her replacement but she is not convinced. The Simu Liu lookalike comes downstairs and for some reason I feel I should ask him if he knows the sleeping man from the factory. I ask and everyone stares at my blankly until it all fades to black.

I'm back in the factory again, the man still asleep on my lap, R still standing to my left looking and me expectantly. I try to ask him about what I just saw/experienced. "The Commune with the candy in the basement.. your house... Were you with me just now? Or did that happen before? Again? Yet?" I don't know quite what I'm asking or how to ask it. R just laughs his signature R laugh and puts his hand on my shoulder.

Now I'm in bed, but it's not my bed. The sheets are white and crisp, and the room is far too bright. I pull the white sheet up over my head. The sleeping man is still with me. Still sleeping. I'm laying on my back, his head is on my stomach, facing away from me. I'm wearing a white t shirt and my underwear, he's naked apart from gray boxer briefs, the light filtering in through the sheet turning his exposed skin golden. It should be lovely but I'm consumed by anxiety. I need to see his face, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, but I'm afraid of what his face will look like if I see it. I want to wrap my hand around the smooth, warm skin of his bicep and turn him towards me, but I'm afraid to touch him. I'm not sure where the fear comes from but it's visceral and paralyzing. My heart races and I feel the prickling of panic behind my eyes, but I have to know, I have to quell the screaming in my head that he's not sleeping he's dead and has been the whole time. I rest my hand in his arm and just as I'm about to turn him towards me, I wake up.

[nightmule]

Last night I dreamed that hell was a fancy lounge/club/restaurant. I was looking for someone, or maybe just for the exist, and I kept getting turned around. The place was a labyrinth of rooms and hallways and little alcoves decorated in an elegant but deliberately disorienting style. Some of the rooms were library rooms with dark shelves full up books extending all the way up to imppssibly high ceilings with rolling ladders to reach the top shelves. Some rooms were dining rooms with low light, white table cloths, and indistinct people in fancy dress talking and laughing and eating. Most of it was hallways though, full of random twists and turns and corners and pieces of walls and dead ends. The hallway sections were painted a deep dark green with brass accents and random walls or even the floor and ceiling done in black and white chevron which was dizzying and made it very easy to lose your way. Periodically, I would turn a corner and an "employee" would emerge from a little gap between the walls and block my path telling me I wasn't permitted beyond that point. If I tried to disobey then whatever I saw in that room would evaporate and become more of the chevron hallways.

Even in the dream I knew that this was a strange liminal space and that I was dead. I'm not sure how I died in the dream, but I knew that I had and that I must be in some version of hell, although looking back it seems almost like the trickery of some fairy kingdom. After a while I shoved one of the "employees" out of my way and dashed through their little gap in the wall before they could stop me. I remember thinking "what are they gonna do? Kill me? I'm already dead and if this is hell it could be a lot worse." And then I was out. Not out of hell at large but out of the labyrinth at least. The next place I found myself was a cold, drafty garage with some folding tables and chairs set up and a few other confused-looking people milling about. I only spoke to two of the people because they were the only two who seemed aware of my presence in any way. One of the people was a young boy who asked me what was going on. I didn't tell him he was dead even though I was pretty sure we all were. Instead I told him a partial truth which was that I was still trying to figure this place out. The other person I talked to was an old woman. She was maybe my grandmother's age but instead of the air of frailty my grandma has she was strong and straight-backed but just seemed tired like she had seen too much. The woman told me she had been in this place for a long time and that she likes to come back to the garage to meet new arrivals. Apparently, there are many different areas all shifting and connecting nonsensically to one another and while souls can be dropped in anywhere most are start off in simple, empty places like this garage or an open field or an office waiting room. Normally, she would advise against exploring on your first day but since I've already been through the labyrinth and seem to be "a curious soul" she wishes me well and says she will look after the little boy. She leads me to a pile of junk leaned up against the wall and helps me move it to reveal a passageway. I go through.

In the passageway it feels like I'm experiencing lots of jumbled up stuff all at once. I'm watching a group of friends sing and dance while making clothes as part of an assembly line. I'm befriending a shirtless man wearing Mardi gras beads. I'm a mobile doctor answering health questions for people who take alarmingly bad care of their bodies. I'm with my family and we're trying to find a place to park on a busy street so we can get inside before the storm hits.

I come through the passageway and into a large wood paneled room that seems to be some sort of class or conference room with chalk boards on one wall and desks pushed into the corners of the room. The room is filled with people of a range of ages starting around my age (mid 20s) with a few of the oldest in perhaps their late 40s. It's a roughly even split between men and women with a few more androgynous looking people as well. There is maybe 30 ish people in the room in total. Apparently, the objective is to decide in a sort of democratic fashion who the most attractive person in the group is. It's not just looks, personality is factored in as well with everyone mingling and chatting before the votes are cast and several rounds of voting. Many of the people are familiar to me, like I know them from somewhere and some of them I even know their names in the dream, but where I've met them before I just can't quite place.

I'm a late add to the competition but the first round of voting hasn't started yet so they throw me into the running. The rest of the contestants have chosen black outfits from a provided wardrobe so they look similar enough that fashion doesn't skew the judging too much, yet there's some style/individuality shown since they chose which pieces to wear. This isn't an issue for me because, as I often am in real life, I'm already wearing an all black outfit. In the first round of judging men and women are ranked as separate categories and those below a certain ranking in either group are out of the competition. I'm not sure where this leaves people who don't fall strictly into either camp but before I can say something I'm pushed into the women's line up. In the first round I get a sort of middle of the pack ranking and progress to the next round.

I'm scrambling to think who I will vote for of the men but apparently there's no ballot or anything they just read your mind and I voted for the women too, not including myself. They line up, stand for a moment, then the rankings are written on the chalk board and a handful of extremely unmemorable men leave the room. Now we are meant to talk to each other as each round of voting you're supposed to know the people better. I talk to people but I'm not sure what I talk to any of them about. This is when I wish I could remember where I'd met/seen some of them before, it's so awkward not quite remembering and wondering if they do. I am the way I normally am at parties. Shy, yet brash. Giving sincere compliments and sarcastic remarks in equal measure. I say some things that are rather strange and get blank looks that make me want to shrink into myself and other things that people laugh uproariously at, which is their intended effect. We line up again and this time somehow I'm in 5th place out of everyone, which comes a surprise to me and many of the others who I guess didn't realize they found my antics as charming as they did. We are told to leave and come back the next day for the final round. Now that I'm doing well I'm desperately, vainly invested in the competition. I don't want to leave because I don't understand this place well enough to make my way back to this room reliably and I want to know who wins. I linger. More than caring about the competition I like this room better than everything else I've seen so far. It's warm and clean and bright. The other people are amiable, not to mention nice to look at, and even those who are voted out are pleasant and sportsmanly about it. Somehow I understand that I cannot stay so, reluctantly, I open the door.

I end up back in the garage. The old woman and the little boy are gone. The other new arrivals, who still don't seem to see me, pace and fidget and stare at walls. I find a folding chair and sit in the corner by myself and doze off. My alarm starts going off in real life and I think it is the alarm waking me up to go back to the competition. Even the new arrivals are gone now. I try to go through the same strange passage as before but I end up in the dark labyrinth staring at a chevron floor. Every corner I turn is just more chevron or that dark green paint, no sign of wood paneling or even one of the little gaps the "employees" come in and out of. I was lost and frustrated and utterly alone in an environment that was actively trying to make me feel all those things and that's when I began to understand the madness inducing nature of the place.

[nightmule]

Fitful sleep with fragmented dreams. Something I don't remember happens on the side of the house where the dog has his tie out. I think it involves plants. Maybe a spider. Inside mom is watching something that reminds me of downtown abbey.

Now I am inside the show, still watching but from inside the scenes instead of on the screen. A lesbian maid falls in love with her "spinster" lady and they hire a young gay butler so that they can live together openly, at least in their own home. They grow older and the maid trips on a hair roller and breaks a leg or hip. Now the lady must take care of her, after a decade their roles have been reversed.

I'm at work. We're all talking about a YouTube video about fashion. One of my coworkers says of the woman who made the video "I just wish I had the confidence to wear wigs all the time like she does." I've watched a few of her videos before but never knew this. Later that day somehow I meet the YouTuber and she tells me she's self conscious about wearing wigs but even more embarassed by how little natural hair she has. "I only found out you wear wigs this morning," I say, and tell her what I do for work and that all of my coworkers liked her last video. She seems excited and says she's going to talk about this conversation in her next video, a little shoutout of sorts. I don't care one way or the other I'm just glad she seems happier now.

There is a mystery. I think someone's been murdered, but in that bloodless Agatha Christie sort of way where all the suspects are contained to a house or a village or a party or a boat. Everyone is fancy and old-timey The detective was there too. For some reason the victim's wife is not a suspect. For some reason the detective examines even those people who do not fit the suspect's description of a man with white or pale blonde hair and a cut on his bicep. For some reason this includes him rolling up my sleeves to look at my bare arms despite my brown hair and the fact I'm wearing a dress that shows off my curves. "Not to question your process, detective, but I'm not sure anyone would mistake me for a man in this outfit. It's not exactly very... masculine." He responds by letting his fingers wander lecherously and saying, "No, it's not masculine at all. Not from the front side, the back side, or your good side." I shudder with disgust. The posh woman behind me tells him off, pointing out that he's checked both my arms for cuts already and he should move on to the next suspect since a murderer on the loose seems a bit time sensitive. I turn to her with a grateful smile. She looks like Trixie from Call the Midwife. The next morning the detective and the victim's wife have run away together and it belatedly occurs to me that the detective fits the description of the murderer perfectly. No one pursues them. Life moves on.

[nightmule]

Last night's dream was one of those dreams that twists and shifts into many different things. I was at a party thrown by an actor named Michael Pasimedes (I don't know anyone by this name in real life) and I went into a bedroom (not something I'm prone to doing at parties) because I needed something/to do something I couldn't find/do in the main area. A man enters and starts yelling at me that this is his house and what am I doing here and I struggle to explain and apologize but I'm not really sure what to say and I'm thrown off by the factbhes wearing a Spider-Man costume.

Things shift and I'm in a woman's apartment helping her reorganize and decorate it. I believe the apartment is in Manhattan and it's very large with a cityscape view, but all of the rooms are long and narrow with corners at odd angles and little nooks bumped out randomly in the walls. One of the things I'm helping her with is clearing out a roughly 8×10 "closet" to become a playroom/bedroom for her young son.

Suddenly, I'm at work and my coworkers are having some sort of celebratory lunch. My boss tells one of them "look you voted to lower the standards for this sort of thing so don't complain when you buy a rotisserie chicken and it's not 100% chicken!" The coworker offers me a plate of rotisserie chicken and, unsure what percent chicken it actually is, I say "I think I'll just grab something to drink" and walk into a bathroom where I open the cupboard under the sink to find beverages in cans and bottles. I'm looking for a particular flavor I prefer of sparking water but the drinks I find keep getting weirder and weirder. A few of them are supposed to taste like full meals lile that gum in Willy wonka and have ingredients like "2% deep burger extract." Someone knocks on the door wanting to use the bathroom so I just pick a silver can that looks plain and leave but when I take a sip the flavor is strange and wonderful. It's cold even though it wasn't refrigerated and it tastes mainly like cream soda but also minty and herbal with a strange almost unpleasant after taste that makes you want more. I look at the can and it says it's Quartz Crystal flavored and also that it's alcoholic. I'm horrified because somehow I've ended up drinking at work and I don't even drink when I'm not at work!

I'm looking for a place to dump the drink out even though I desperately want to finish ut when I realize I'm back in the apartment of the woman. The organizing and redecorating is nearly complete, I just need to move the spare bed into her bedroom because her son is little and likes to sleep in there with her. "We should really trade that in and get two smaller beds" she tells me. I ask why and she says it would be better to have one bed for each of the children. I'm confident that she's only mentioned one child up to this point but instead of arguing with her I acquire the beds and get the situated in the apartment. The woman facetimes her best friend to show off the improvements we've made and tells me to sit on the bed next to her son's so it's not empty. I knew she only had one kid.

Her best friend turns out to be Mandy Patinkin as he looked in the early 2000s show Dead Like Me, only Mandy is in some sort of dessert wilderness area doing "conservation efforts" which appear to consist of tearing up non-native plants and burying them in red sand. He tells me and the woman that what we've done to the apartment looks great and that the best thing we can do for the environment is to consider environmentalism our religion and preach about it.

On my way out of the apartment there's an indoor garden with some vines growing on trellises and some landscaping stones. The stones are primarily fools gold. Or perhaps real gold though that seems unlikely. I bend down and grab one to examine it before putting it back. Suddenly BP is there looking over my shoulder. "You shouldn't have done that" he says. "I put it back" I say defensively. "Doesn't matter, you shouldn't have done it," He replies. He sounds resigned rather than upset.

We walk together until we come across a large grey (aka dusty, faded black) velvet stage curtain blocking our path. We shrug, part the curtain, and continue. To the left there's a group of people on bleachers, to the right a man gesturing to a tangled pile of chairs and lecturing about design or something. We speed up to get out of the middle of the lecture and come to another curtain. Here there's a man sitting on the floor holding a toddler and a voice over a loud speaker talking about triage and how to properly manage infants in an emergency room setting. This time a curtain starts to drop from the ceiling just past where the man is sitting. I slide on my hip like a baseball player and make it just under the curtain. BP is left on the other side and although it's just a curtain I know that means I am alone. Here there is a woman talking to a small group of people sort of huddled around. She is saying something about how unfinished art can haunt you and how dying just before the curtains opened on opening night of what everyone predicted would be his finest work Michael Pasimedes (there's that name again) as one of the first victims of the pandemic created a ghost of a potential masterpiece and that ghost will outlive him. "I just saw Michael Pasimedes," I think, "he was hosting a party and wearing a Spider-Man costume and yelling at me for being in his room, he certainly hasn't been dead for 2 years!" But before I can tell anybody I wake up.

[nightmule]

We turn out of our driveway like we have a million times but the neighborhood is overrun by these giant bull-like ram-like creatures. They're the size of bison with white downturned horns and they're extremely aggressive, blocking traffic by attacking vehicles and each other. Upon waking I realized the animal they're most similar to is fictional but in the dream we thought they were related to mountain goats which is odd since we don't live near any mountains. Apparently, we were on the car because we were going on a family trip. We need to get gas and Mom, A, and I want to go to the bank before we leave town. When we stop for gas A brushes some snow off a hatch in the ground and opens it. She says she thinks it's a passageway that leads under the street and will take us to the bank. Since it's extremely cold outside and we don't want to get attacked by the creatures we decide to chance it and try the tunnel.

There's no light in the tunnel except my cell phone flashlight and oddly enough we go up and down several sets of rough stone steps and a ladder or two along the way. At a certain point the gray stone and cement transitions to deep red bricks and there's a tiny bit of ambient light ahead and I push past Mom and A to see where we ended up. Here the steps are perhaps 2 feet wide or maybe even narrower and made of crumbling brick leading up between two brick walls. The bank is not a brick building. I look over my shoulder to see if Mom and A are okay on the very precarious steps and see a tall thin woman with long shiny black hair all pulled to one side, an orangey red sweater, and a tight floral dress. She's definitely not my family, I've never even seen her before and I would've remembered someone else in the tunnel. She looks upset and reaches for me when I make eye contact, but she's wearing heels and slips on the uneven steps. I try to grab her hand but I'm too far away and she falls back down the hole into the tunnel.

For a moment I'm horrified and distraught. It's a long-ish fall, maybe a storey or so, with lots of hard surfaces for her to hit her head on along the way. I move to peer down into the darkness to see if she's okay and head a splash. I don't remember there being water in the tunnel, but suddenly Mom is next to me saying "she landed in the water, I can hear her splashing around now, she's fine." It's unlike my mother not to check on someone who might need help and I'm not entirely convinced that the woman is fine but the space is so narrow there's no way for me to go past Mom to see so we press on. Eventually, there's a gap in one of the brick walls and we enter the bottom of a stairwell.

It's immediately clear that the building we're in is very old and very grand and I find myself saying, "We must've ended up in the old university building." Apparently, in the reality of the dream this was some sort of derelict local landmark but in real life it doesn't exist, or at least not in my neighborhood. Based on this realization we expect the place to be empty and abandoned but it's warm and clean inside. We go through a doorway onto what should be the ground floor in the hopes of finding out way out and I hear voices. I look around the corner apprehensively and see doors to outside on my left and on the right a short flight of steps with a woman at the top standing at a small kiosk with a handmade sign reading "Gift Shop." Mom immediately bolts to the outside door but I see A take a step to the right. Few things in life are less threatening than a gift shop so I approach the woman at the top of the steps and she says "it's just starting, go on in!" and gestures to a dark room that seems to be the source of the voices. I feel drawn in.

As I cross the threshold a high cheery voice says "Oh I was hoping you'd come! I set this aside just for you" and as my eyes adjust to the darkness I see it is the same dark haired woman I saw coming out of the tunnel, only older now somehow. She hands me a small feather made of metal, which seems to change in color, size, and shape even as I look at it. There's a price tag attached that just says "Free?" and the question mark makes me desparate to return it but I don't see the dark haired woman any more, only the handful of students seated on cushions and beanbags around the room. Mom left already and I don't know where A is. I'm alone and I'm worried A is too.

I turn back to the gift shop lady and try to ask very casually if she's seen the girl I came up the stairs with. I don't want to show fear in front of these strange people but I am frightened. Something about this place and these people just isn't quite right. She tells me A went through the other door, the one behind her kiosk and somehow I know she's lying. "Would you mind telling her I'm out here waiting for her?" I ask, hoping to make a mad dash for the exit while she's in the other room. I don't want to leave A but I realize I don't remember A actually being with me on the stairs, just that single step in this direction. She probably went outside with Mom right away, I wouldn't know, I didn't look back.

The gift shop lady opens the door behind the kiosk and I move to set the strange feather on her kiosk before I run. There's no way I'm taking it with me. As soon as it touches the surface she's back. I have no idea how she moved so fast and she's snarling at me with too sharp teeth and pointing to a sign with too sharp nails. The sign says "No Returns."

[nightmule]

In the dream I am driving late at night. I start in the town where I live but as I drive the roads get icier and things get less familiar until eventually I'm on a winding road through the woods with no other cars and no place to turn around or off of the road. I find myself thinking about the warm glow of a house with people in it, the warm glow of a home, and how lonely it feels not to even see that light spilling out of places as I pass by anymore.

Through all this I'm not sure where I'm actually going or if I'm going anywhere at all, I'm just driving. It gets harder to see and the road gets narrower until I go around one of the many curves and I hit something. It's like road gets worse and worse to drive down and then it just stops. The thing I hit appears to be someone's garbage bins which are now crumpled between the front of my car and the trees. I think I hit my head on the steering wheel or something because it's aching and I'm in sort of a daze. I look to the right and realize there's a gap in the dense, dark forest where I can see a little bit of the night sky. There's the rough outline of a house against the sky and I can just make out a figure coming towards me in the light that trickles from the windows. As she gets closer I realize the figure is a woman. She's saying something I can't quite make out so I open the car door and start apologizing for hitting her bins and saying how I didn't realize the road ends here but she only wants to know if I'm alright. I answer honestly that I'm not sure and she leads me over to a patio table and chairs to sit down.

At this point I realize two things. First, it's no longer winter. Second, the sky is the pale lavender of dawn and there's enough light that I can really see now. The woman has the sort of smooth, ageless, homogenous beauty of the super rich. She's wearing silky pajamas and fuzzy slippers and a woven dressing gown all in shades of silver and taupe, not a hair out of place despite me waking her up. The extremely large house and pool we're sitting next to confirm my impression of wealth. I don't remember being asked to come inside, but suddenly there I was with a bandage on my head, wearing one of her silvery pajama sets as she explained they always wore pajamas when her husband wasn't home. She introduces me to "the girls" aka her two young stepdaughters and their live-in nanny, a young woman with a square face and white-blonde hair named Juliana. I never learn the first woman's name so I'll call her The Wife.

The Wife immediately welcomes me into their home and their life, insisting that she can take care of me until I'm well enough to drive because she was in medical school before she was married. We spend the days making homemade waffles for breakfast, watching the girls play in the pool, and having classic movie nights. It was like getting to have an idyllic childhood summer vacation as an adult. Juliana was quiet, in fact I don't remember her saying anything at all. The Wife was warm and friendly and welcoming. She talked a lot about her husband; how he was gone a lot for work, how his first wife passed away shortly after the girls wete born, how she never thought she'd be a stay at home mom but she fell in love with him and his daughters and dropped out of med school to spend as much time with them as she could. The strange thing was I couldn't find a single trace of him in the house. No men's clothes in the closet or men's shoes by the door. No family pictures anywhere. There was nothing in the house to suggest another person lived there, let alone a man. As time passed I had healed and started to ask about getting my car fixed. Anytime I mentioned leaving The Wife would come up with some excuse why I couldn't or change the subject or distract me with some fun spontaneous activity. It started to feel like when Circe doesn't want Odysseus to leave her island in the Odyssey. A pleasant prison but a prison nonetheless.

[nightmule]

My memory of this dream is patchy and I don't know how the pieces connect or if it was one dream or many.

I am playing a Sims-like video game in my basement. It's multiplayer and I'm playing with friends. The dream seems to cut back and forth between this and being with the same group of people (which consists of my real life friends plus a few people I don't know) at a restaurant/bar/cafe with dark wooden booths. For some reason I need to find a partner ASAP, kind of like when people get married to get a green card or health insurance but I don't think that was why. I'm sort of speed dating the people in the group who I don't know to see if any of them might be a good option. One girl makes our characters get married in the game. I turn to her in surprise and she says "what? You have to marry somebody in real life soon so this seemed like a good first step." She's very beautiful with black wavy hair and pale, pale skin with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. I'm not sure what to say. Thinking about it now I think she was a version of what that girl O I liked in 8th grade before I knew liking girls was a legitimate option probably looks like now.

My family is at a house on some sort of beach with the B family and we brought our dog. The dog of course wants to run around and maybe go in the water and since it looks like there's a long stretch of sand between the boat house and the water and I am told it gets deeper very gradually I decide to let him. When I go through the boat house and open the back door however the water is right up to the threshold. It's clear enough to see the rocks at the bottom but looks 3-4 feet deep. The dog runs past me, excited, and panics when he immediately has to start swimming. He knows how but he's an old dog and tires very quickly. I try to pull him back up through the doorway and into the boat house with me but he's suddenly much, much heavier than he is in real life and this isn't a good angle to lift anything from, especially a very squirmy dog. I know somehow that getting in the water myself is a bad idea so I start calling the names of other people in my family and the B family to come help me. With each wave he gets pulled a little farther away from the boat house and so I grab his collar to at least keep him from floating away. Eventually we get him in but it takes 4 out of the 6 of us kids plus my dad to do it.

I'm back with the friends from the first sort of segment of my dream. A and S and M and their respective boyfriends, plus a gradually increasing number of other people none of whom I know in real life but a handful of whom I seem very close to in the dream. The girl who looks like O unfortunately doesn't seem to be there but I keep looking for her as if I expected her to be. We're at a house party, I think at the same property as the boat house from the dog dream. The main house is enormous and the way the various rooms go together doesn't really make any sense. For example, there are 2 different basements. One you access by going down stairs that has wood paneling and a pool table. The other you get to by going down a ladder at the end of a hallway. It seems sort of half-finished with unpainted walls and folding chairs and cast off furniture. I'm trying to find a man named Silas with platinum blonde hair and keep him from sleeping with a woman named Vivian. My reasons for this are twofold. First, it would have consequences that would affect all three of us and second, I am a little bit in love with Silas and can't bear the thought of him hooking up with one of my friends at my party. I've never let on that I was interested in him not only out of fear of rejection but because *apparently* we're both wizards and wizards aren't allowed to be together in this world. I'm extra upset because Vivian is also a wizard (and I think the three of us work together?) so maybe that wasn't the barrier I thought it was after all. When I finally track down Silas it's too late and when I confront him he's like "why do you care? It's not like anyone important enough to get us in trouble is ever gonna to know." I ask him "Don't you think things might be weird now, between the three of us? Did it ever occur to you that I might care on a *personal* level who you hook up with as a guest in my home?" then walk away. He starts to follow but I ignore him and go for a walk with my friend A. Then I wake up.

[nightmule]

In this dream I'm the same age I am now  (23) but I'm back in school, specifically in some sort of English Literature class. I believe it's the first day or at least very early in the semester because I don't seem to know the other students or the teacher. Someone spilled coffee and the floor before we got there and one of the other students tries to mop it up while we wait for the teacher even though the floor is carpeted. There's a worksheet about some Jane Eyre type heroine in front of me, but as was often the case when I really was in school, I didn't read the book and I'm a bit stressed over how few of the answers I know.

 The teacher of the class finally shows up and he's a man I would guess to be in his 40s. He tells us that we don't need to know his name and we should simply refer to him as Professor. In response to this caginess the students reach an unspoken agreement to try to find out as many personal details about him as possible by any means necessary. As he lectures not only do we psychoanalyze him and deduce things about his life based on what he says about the story, we also share these hypotheses with him as they arise. After one particularly accurate deduction he asks if he can sit down with us for a moment and gestures to my seat. It's a small class, only about 7 students, with only exactly enough desks for each of us. Since he singled me out I get up and offer the professor my seat, which he takes, presumably to talk to us "mano a mano" about our behavior.

 I only stand there feeling awkward for the briefest of seconds before there's a tug at my sleeve from a classmate offering for me to sit on his lap. Now in real life there's basically no way I would agree to this as I'm very awkward when it comes to physical contact of any kind and sitting on someone's lap would no doubt make me incredibly self conscious about my size, but in the dream this feels like the obvious solution to the room's lack of chairs. So I sit on his lap, sideways so that I can look directly at the Professor as he speaks.

 The Professor puts his head in his hands and tells us "It doesn't matter whether your guesses about me are right or wrong, I'm not the thing you're supposed to be learning about!" And sighs heavily. "This definitely means we were right" I whisper into my seat-mate's ear and he laughs softly. When the Professor gets up he is no longer a middle aged man but a young woman who I know, despite not reading the book, resembles the protagonist. "Maybe this will help you focus on the assignment," she says. Our worksheets are different now too, instead of questions we must answer there's a list of "Common Assumptions about Gothic Heroines" and we need to mark which ones are true for the heroine of this book.

I turn to my seat-mate with a look of shock. The type of "did you just see that?" Look human beings everywhere are prone to share when something unbelievable happens. After we make eye contact I do a double take. This is the first time I've really looked at his face and unlike most of my dreams where I just conveniently never see people's faces I really see and remember it. He has dark skin, a wide jaw, and a broad smile that feels like coming in out of the cold on a winter day. "I'm going to love him" I find myself thinking and the thought is so startling that I almost fall off his lap. He puts his arm around my waist to stop me falling and it feels like home. I look at the worksheet once more and realize that maybe I do know the answers.

[nightmule]

I'm in my car but I'm in the back seat, which even in the dream registers as odd. My coworker Z is in the front passenger seat and we are in a parking lot near a mall. I think we're waiting for someone (presumably the driver) but I'm not sure who the other person was or why they got out of the car. Before this I think I was driving but I don't remember that part of the dream well, I just know the mall wasn't our actual destination and that we were lost and stopped there to reorient ourselves.

I'm looking out the window reading a billboard when I hear yelling. "Do you hear yelling?" I ask and turn to look at Z. She's frozen with her eyes locked on the rearview mirror (how I know this sitting behind her I'm not sure, it was a dream). Obviously I follow her gaze to see what she's looking at and realize what I'm hearing is a man standing at the back of the car sort of mumbling and yelling. Whether he's talking to us or to himself isn't clear and I can't understand a word he's saying but he clearly isn't happy. I can see him in the rearview pacing back and forth 2-3 steps in each direction behind the car with one hand gesturing towards nothing in particular and the other down past where his image is cut off by the edge of the window. "Um, Z--" I start in a quiet voice to ask what we should do but an almost imperceptible shake of her head cuts me off.

I watch the man in the rearview for a view seconds longer, discomfort building, when suddenly the man falls silent. He stops pacing and raises his hand toward the back window. In his heretofore unseen hand he's holding a handgun and even in the rearview mirror I can tell that handgun is aimed at Z and me.

The first thought through my mind is "there's nothing I can do." I can't reason with the man if I don't know his motives. I can't give him what he wants if I don't know his demands. If I can't understand him what reason do I have to believe he could understand me? Any move I make could be enough to set him off. Maybe if I was in the driver's seat I could get us away from him, up over the parking lot divider with its scrawny trees. Or maybe I could put the car into reverse and run him over in self defense. But I'm not the driver. No one is. In the back seat I'm a child again. I am neutralized. The fear burns away my insides, I can feel them crumble into ash. I squeeze my eyes shut wanting to be anywhere but here, not wanting to see, not wanting to know.

But then I open them again. If someone is going to die I want to bear witness to that death. Even if the someone is me. If I am to be killed I want to die with dignity, not consumed by fear and worrying that makes me a coward. No, no I have to watch. That observational faculty lets me remain a subject rather than an object in whatever time I have left. I stare into the rearview mirror and the dark opening of the barrel seems to grow larger and larger the longer I look. It's almost as if I'm falling down into it, into the gun and into my waiting death. The black hole of it grows to fill my entire field of vision and when not even a glimmer of light remains the feeling of falling stops. I realize that I have been dreaming, and that I am now awake. I open my eyes and sure enough I'm in my bed. Check the time and its 1:53am meaning I've been asleep for a maximum of 20 minutes. I Google what to do if someone aims a gun into your car but the results do little to put me at ease.

[nightmule]

The start of this dream I was watching a music video and thinking how weird it was that the people were all leaning against the wall. Then the camera shifted to show they were really laying on the floor which had been painted to look like a wall with graffiti. Once I realized this suddenly I was on the set (but not laying on the floor) playing a role in a short film of someone who could not talk and had to communicate with pre-written signs. They didn't give me all the signs I was supposed to have though so for most responses I had to resort to charades.

Then suddenly I was in prison. The reason why wasn't clear and the way prisons worked in this reality wasn't quite the same as my understanding of them in real life. This prison was owned by an entertainment company and if they could make some money off you through reality tv etc then you would get better treatment (wear your own clothes, access to supplies to do hobbies, more social interaction, and just less strict of supervision/rules overall). The people the company couldn't make much money off of werr treated really really badly so I tried my best to do interesting things and be likeable without completely going off the rails and selling out by starting fights or whatever for the sake of reality tv. I knew this wouldn't be enough long term because my ratings as a "character" were slowly slipping and if I didn't start a fistfight or a fake romance soon I'd end up in the dungeons with the other unprofitable prisoners.

We had a sort of supervisor/director who would come when the reality t.v. show was filming. She had been a prisoner/on the show in the past but had finished her time and "won" the show and now worked for the production for real. She was much nicer to us and more approachable than the other execs since she had been one of us once and she seemed to genuinely care about us and wish us the best. One day when she came in she was wearing this really cool denim jacket with like side vents and a cowl neck somehow and when I told her I liked it she said it was Calvin Klein. In a stroke or inspiration I thought maybe exaggerating my love of fashion could be my ticket to stay on the show and out of the dungeons! So I decide to do a "slightly aided" handstand leaning one of my legs against the wall and yell "Calvin and Klein can both take me anyway they want me my body is theirs!!" All the other prisoners and the director/supervisor laugh hysterically at this and I think maybe I'm into something. I stand back on my feet and then I wake up.

[nightmule]

In this dream I was back in school, not back in a level of schooling I've already completed in real life though it was either graduate school or a specialized course of some kind. The campus where these classes were held was a sort of uncanny valley version of the campus where I attended undergrad. In the dream I wasn't aware of the similarity to my undergrad campus, but I was consistently surprised by the layout and architecture of certain buildings saying things out loud like "I could've sworn this building obly had 4 floors" or "could you always see the dining hall from here?"

Two girls I was friends with as a kid and still run into every once in a while around town were also in my program, but they started later than me or transferred from another school or something so I offered to show them around. We quickly started to become friends again. One day A was acting strange so after class I asked her "Is something wrong? You just don't seem quite yourself."

She said that nothing was wrong then immediately burst into tears, which seems like a pretty good indicator that something was, in fact, wrong. I told her as much, and that I was there for her if there was anything I could do to help. At this point we were walking on a sort of mezzanine walkway/hallway overlooking the ground floor of the building and A lunged toward the railing like she was going to throw herself over it. S screamed and I grabbed A who was still crying and repeating "nothing's wrong nothing's wrong" under her breath.

S says we should bring A to a certain house on campus where someone can look after her. When we get to the house a tired sounding middle aged woman says "put her in the Queen Anne's Lace Room" and tells S and I that she'll be taken care of and we can come back later. Before we can go back to our own homes a man and a woman outside the house usher us into some kind of meeting.

The meeting is on the top floor of the building our classes are in, but for some reason the interior looks completely different than the rest of the building does. Where the classrooms are old fashioned with lots of brick and wood this top floor meeting room is modern with glass and metal and plastic. The room has a gloomy sort of dim blue light.

Next I go to class and find myself thinking how strange it is that I can't remember anything that was said in the meeting I was in only minutes ago, but I really can't recall anything about it except the man and the woman and the room. I look out the window and see a tree with a camera attached to it. The camera is pointed directly at me and I stare straight at the lens until class is over. My next class is in the same classroom and so I usually keep the same seat, but this time I move to a new seat that can't be seen from the window.

The professor of this class notices I'm not sitting where I normally do and takes the seat next to me, asking if there's a reason why. I tell her about the camera and she says that the administration told her the cameras are supposed to be turned towards the courtyard below, not in towards the classrooms. "That doesn't explain why it was focused on me specifically for the past hour." I tell her. She says "They say a lot of things that I don't think are true. Things about peace." I just say "panopticon vibes" and then I wake up.

[nightmule]

This dream starts off relatively straightforwardly but I don't clearly remember or understand what happens later. I'm not sure I did even in the dream. First, my parents and I are in the car driving to the city. Along the way I get hungry and see into the windows of one of the buildings we're passing that it looks like some sort of cafe. We have plenty of time before we need to be where we're going so I ask if we can stop. My father obliges and asks which place it was I wanted to go inside and I point to the strip mall it was in. I could've sworn the first time we drove past that the cafe was on the corner, but now that space is vacant. We find the cafe in the middle of the building and decide I must've just not been paying much attention before. My mother and I decide to go in while my father waits in the car.

We walk into the cafe and are greeted by a cheery woman at a counter selling teapots and prepackaged goodies, things you could give as a gift is my impression. From the outside this space looked small, modern, and brightly lit. Now that we are inside the lighting and colors are more subdued and earthy, and it's much larger than we thought. My mother buys prepackaged coffee flavored macaroons which come in a tin with a coffee bean design, and a container of candied nuts which I never actually see or taste.

After making our purchase we ask if we can look around. We turn left into a room with a buffet counter of foods I can't quite identify but desperately want to eat. There are many small tables, all of them full despite very few cars in the parking lot. There isn't much public transportation where I live and walking/biking isn't common so this is a bit odd. We go up the stairs at the end of this room and the geometry of the space doesn't seem to align with the architecture of the building. For one thing, how can there be windows on two walls of the room if we're in the middle of the strip mall? Upstairs looks even older and posher than down with glossy dark wooden banisters and wainscotting and a celadon green wallpaper that looks like a William Morris design. It's just as full up here but the people seem.... indistinct somehow. People almost always are in my dreams but usually I don't realize that I never saw someone's face clearly, for example, until I wake up. This was notable to me within the dream, their sort of blurriness. We come back down a set of stairs to the right of the front desk, which I could've sworn didn't have anything to the right of it when we first came in.

At the front desk my mother picks up our snack and starts walking back out to the car and I ask if I could possibly get a glass of water for the road. An attractive blonde boy smiles brightly at me and pours it. Once I leave the cafe the water is no longer in my hand, but I'm also no longer hungry or thirsty. At the car mom says "Did you get your water? What about the cute boy's number?" which made me just as pissed off as when she makes this sort of comment in real life. I know she always means well but as someone in their mid twenties who that sort of thing never happens to I never take it well so I parry back with, "no, did you?" As I watch the blonde boy cross the parking lot in the opposite direction.

Our destination is a hotel in the city. My brother meets us there, it's some holiday or another I believe and we're going to see a play the next day. I can't sleep and for some reason the logical solution to this in the dream is to walk across the street to the place where the play is being rehearsed and see if they need help with anything. Oddly enough the cast and crew are there at 4am and welcome the extra set of hands. I help unload some platforms from a truck and into the theater and do some small last minute costume fixes a button here, a safety pin there.

At precisely 5:51am we go underground. I'm not sure why we go underground or how we get there or what the space we're in is supposed to be but at 5:51 that's where we are. By "underground" I don't mean a cave or a subway station this is a sprawling underground building/community. In different rooms different things are happening but most of them seem to be cavernous gyms and auditoriums filled with young people (I was one of the oldest people there, I doubt anyone was over 25).

I don't remember the next part very clearly. It seemed kind of like a normal school or community center at first (apart from being underground) people were playing various sports, eating breakfast at long tables, or gathering in small groups at the edges of the rooms, but I felt a strange animosity from everyone. When I walked past people would stop what they were doing, fall silent, and stare at me. There's a really disjointed hazy quality to this part of the dream in my mind and it seemed rather non-linear as it was happening as well. I learn somehow that I'm not allowed to leave. At some point the others shift from just staring to blocking my path, pushing me into walls, hitting balls towards me, etc. I'm not sure if that was before or after I find a couple of the people from the theater crew and sort of ally with them. I go into a gym with a bright blue floor and there are five gallon drums and sort of low blockades of things set up at intervals around the room. A group of stereotypical "popular girls" in matching camouflage sweat suits are there and they start fighting me and one of the theater crew people. I think they were guarding the door to leave because the door behind them had a bit of light coming in around the edges. Right as I was about to kick one of them off me and open the door an alarm sounded. The alarm was some sort of reset and we set the blockades back up and went back to our starting positions to fight again. I thought this was unfair since I had been about to escape but the reset wasn't just a rule I wasn't supposed to break, it was a rule it was impossible to break. Then the alarm went off again and I realized it was my real alarm to wake up, so I did.