Lucid

Today I had another lucid dream.

It starts out like any dream one might expect a dream to start out as...

Suddenly...

I’m walking down a dimly lit main road.

I know this road.

I grew up walking to school on this road; I got my first ice cream and pizza from a local hole in the wall on this road. I easily find my way to a local dive where they do karaoke and you can play pool for quarters.

I go inside and see some family there, it's nice to see them as I haven't seen them in many years. We drink and hang out. I was surprised to see them there and they greeted me warmly.

After a while I notice someone was missing who said they were going to be there. I’m not going to say who that is, but the realization I make later about the person in question, deeply affected me emotionally, and reverberates into today. It’s at this time me and a buddy go in search for the missing person. In that search it’s when I realized I was dreaming; My mind made the connection that this person is actually passed away in real life and there is no way I could have seen them. I felt great pain and sadness in that moment because I saw her perfectly as if she was standing right in front of me just hours ago in this dreamscape my subconscious created for me.

I'm alone now.

I don’t wake up. The dream is now lucid.

I then proceed to keep progressing the dream.

It's dark outside; it's only getting darker at this point. Eventually there is an abando with a woman I’ve never met living there. She was very well put together and kind sharing a smoke with me and departs some wisdom on me before my departure. I nod in understanding to her before leaving.

It’s at this point I decided I want to fly.

I find my dream feet, I firmly plant them into the moist dirt underneath and push off. Confidently.

-I’m flying through the sky.

I can only describe the sensation of take off, as being on a swing set that never swung the other way, I just kept going. It was unreal and soon I have control over the direction I take; I'm soaring over an unfamiliar landscape. It's plains as far as the eyes can see. Beautiful amber colors light up the flatlands as the sun sets in the distance. It's beautiful. The horizon in all it's fiery glory, I'll never forget it. The sun just falling beneath it, Icarus would have been envious.

How much can I control? A trivial thought, it's my dream. Still I wonder to my dream self; what can I make happen in this lucid dream?

I decide I want to see something apocalyptic.

I simply look out into the distance in an otherwise cloud free sky.

There against my gaze, form’s a great fire opening up in the close regions of our space. Opening into a fire lit portal into a dark ever consuming void hung just above the horizon.

Like the northern lights, only far more hellish.

I fly towards it.

I never even get close to it...

Landing into a what I assumed was the bedroom where I was sleeping. I felt the familiar bed underneath of me, I could feel my pillow now damp with sweat. My eyes are closed and I am now dreaming that I’m dreaming inside of the bed I fell asleep in still very much dreaming. I practice leaving the bed without waking up a few times even opening my eyes to see the familiar room, I leave the bedroom the feeling of losing balance as I leave the bed and go outside the room, reaching for the door knob I open the portal to which it opens not into the kitchen but where it is now dark and unfamiliar and once again, I am outside.

I decide to fly again. I am now in a suburban neighborhood. It reminds me of stuffy rich folk with their noses turned up at their less fortunate counter parts. It smells of designer grass and infidelity. Very well off folk living here. The houses are all old Victorian style architecture, the every detail of the neighborhood was outlandish for a dream. Such detail. All my senses were being tested here and my nervous system was actually functioning as normal in my dream. I could smell, feel pain, and cold and hot and everything else in-between. But it was what I was seeing that challenges my understanding of reality even to this very moment.

Something was quite eerie; off-putting and just not right.

It was very dark...

All the lights in the small housing development are off; save for one very brightly lit up house. I hear a girl’s voice, a child’s voice to be exact, and on the porch I can make out the shape of an ethereal white garbed girl. I hear her voice in my head; she tells me to come into the house. I'm afraid, but I felt compelled. I fly over, landing on the porch, I enter the house. I didn't even knock... I didn't feel rude then, should one feel rude for barging into a dream house created by your own subconscious?

Food for thought...

The first thing I see is a living room dimly lit by a small table lamp a L shaped couch with a mid 30s woman laying on a portion of it. She’s average in appearance, and seems unbothered by my entrance.

She speaks to me,

“I see <name of said beckoning girl, I don’t recall the name> has sent us another cousin.”

I choose my words knowing this is a dream, which is difficult to do, but I manage to utter out,

“Where should I go next?”

She points to an entrance way just outside the living room, I go that way and enter now what is very obvious a galley kitchen. The kitchen itself is no larger than a hallway leading down to rooms on the left and stairs to the right. An open refrigerator and a sink full of dishes add to the chaos of this kitchen. I go towards the steps. I ask aloud;

“Do I need to go into the basement?”

The lady responds from the living room grimly -

“Unfortunately you do.”

I head down the stairs into the dark depths of this basement. The stairs are wet and appear to be made of wood; worn down. At the bottom of the stairs the entrance is covered in spider's web, I won’t go farther.

I peer into the darkness.

A gravel floor lays littered with children’s toys an old tricycle catches my eye. Long forgotten. In another corner of the basement was a table with various tools; rusted from the dank atmosphere; time was unkind here. In the middle of the basement there are various other toy trucks, shovels, and a doll house. The doll house, a replica of the house I was in, suddenly had it's attic light up; I am now terrified. I head back up stairs, and into the living room where now there is a younger woman on the other part of the couch. I introduce myself she does the same. I ask if the girl in white I saw was a ghost. She replies back promptly “No, she’s a god.”

I then follow her to the kitchen and now off to the left. There are a couple bedrooms, I enter one and see a bunk bed, with a man laying in it. When he notices us, he gets out of bed and and introduces himself. I am offered to look around. There are copious shelves filled with books. I pull a few to the side. As i read the title’s and authors, I am astonished I can read the text in perfect English.. I note to myself this is rare in dreams again recognizing this as a dream. I try and remember the title’s of the books to try and look them up when I wake from the dream

...I forgot once I woke up save for one title, simply titled in gold embroiled lettering...

“Liar”

Feeling weirded out I look around the room and notice my new friends have left the room. I leave the room and look towards another room where I’m greeted almost right away why by the male I had just met.

He looks at me and smiles big. Like he never frowned a day in his life...

He says cheerily,

Don’t forget to smile.

And then his face distorts.

I don't want to be here, in this funhouse of ethereal madness, faced with my own failures and shortcomings.

'I don't belong in that house', I think.

I leave the house in a hurry, panic and anxiety is felt deeply here.

Where's a dream Xanax when you need one right?

I leave the house and end up “waking up” but I’m still inside my dream bed from earlier, which takes me several attempts to wake as I'm greeted by heavy sleep paralysis. I eventually woke up and had Alexa take notes so I wouldn't forget it. I never needed the notes. And it wouldn't be the last time I enter into this state of astral projection.

I would experiment with nightmares and madness, eventually.