Just One Dream

It was the zombie apocalypse. I was trying to survive with a group of survivors in a mall, and after careful measures we had managed to wipe out the horde of zombies in the parking lot. Over the next few months we were clearing out the vehicles and salvaging what we could. I was part of a team that had survived by taking over a mall, not unlike “Dawn of the Dead.” We had cleared out the mall, and the surrounding area and were starting to stock up when a herd of zombies came our way. I was on the outside when it happened and was forced to hide in a van full of supplies that I had just brought back. I was the only one.

Everyone else ran back inside, I was cut off from them for a long time, many days. After a while I decided I needed to make a run for it. Even though I still had plenty of food, the living conditions within the van were not tolerable for me, so I opened the door with my shovel in hand and fought my way through. I struck down a few zombies and ran for my life.

The next thing I remember was coming across a community that was in ruin, there were survivors but things were collapsing as soon as I arrived. I joined the fray with my shovel and the others soon recognized me as a helpful ally. At one point a few children were told to go hide inside with their parents, and from the screams we could tell their parents were already zombies and we had inadvertently sent them to their deaths.

Roughly forty survivors including myself built up fortifications, we were planning a major fight. We would draw the zombies in with a huge bonfire, it was a disaster. I remember faces which seemed familiar even though they were fleeting, and all dead or dying. I fought and fought, as I am want to do, and after dozens, maybe even hundreds of slain zombies piled up around me, the number of the living had thinned to nearly nothing. I fought into the crowd and out of the two. I found a clearly and ran. The fire behind me burning and drawing the attention of the zombies. I was holding a woman’s hand dragging her behind me. She was wearing the garb of a police woman; perhaps I was thinking about “Silent Hill” at that point, I cannot be certain.

The fire burned though out the night and allowed me and the police woman to escape.

It’s strange in dreams... how time warps. Many years must had passed in an instant, me and the police woman were holding up in a warehouse with a bunch of college students and a group of needlessly hostile minorities, not unlike the scene in “Diary of the Dead,” everyone hated each other. The college students were meek and had insane and judgemental leftist views about the whole situation, and the blacks and Hispanics who had banded together to survive were racist and untrusting towards all these “whites.” It was stupid but it was just like some of the badly written social commentary forced into so many zombie films. The only people I could rely on was myself, the police woman, and the leader of the minorities a man named Marcus, he and I had become friends. The three of us were the only competent level headed people in the group.

The events that transpired were more like a montage of tragedy, one of the students broke their leg, it got infected and he died. There was a rape, and I murdered the rapists when they were drunk, and that drove the conflict between us more. Mistakes were made and we were overrun. Some of us escaped, but slowly we dwindled. Zombies got a few of us, we had begun to kill each other, and others literally broke down laid down and refused to go on. I lost the police woman... she died trying to help a child... though the child was already gone. Her mind had gone, the police woman, the stress and the despair of the situation was too great, she lost her sanity and soon after she lost her life, and with her gone there was only Marcus and me left.

We stopped speaking to each other, Marcus and me, there was nothing to say, we had gone well over a year with the police woman before she was taken from us and at least another year before we lost the rest of the group, and another two or three years walled up in that warehouse. We had survived for so many years and never seen another survivor, and now without the police woman... we were just two men waiting to die. The human race was finished we were its last representatives.

Marcus died, in the night. We were starving, and all the canned food we were finding was expired, I grew tired and weak, but he grew ill, and slowly he decayed in front of me. We never spoke, I knew he was dying, and I could tell we wanted to die, and there was nothing left. With Marcus gone I was alone, just one man waiting to die. I was the human race’s last representative.

Years passed. Roaming alone was easier than with the others, even Marcus and the police woman as capable as they were had slowed me down. I no longer had to share the scraps of food I found and hiding, moving, and running were all easier when you only had to worry about yourself. I wore the police woman’s helmet, she had become important to me, I did not want to forget her, also the helmet kept me safe. I wore a leather jacket and gloves even when the sun was high in the sky, the only exposed skin I had was my lower face. I carried a rifle, a pistol, a shovel, a knife, and an axe, I had gotten so good at taken out the living dead that I rarely made any sound and I never broke a sweat anymore.

I lost count of the days and the years. I prowled through the ruins of Calgary wishing for any sign of life. Then slowly I awoke. I stirred in my sleep for a moment feeling the full effect of my zombie apocalypse dream, and the feeling I had was not unlike the inspiration I drew from Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend.” I was proud to know I fought until the end even when there was nothing left to fight for.

When I drifted back to sleep I dreamt I was an interloper in a foreign farm community, I had my secrets but they only came to me as they developed within the confines of the story. I have always been a hard worker and an agreeable helping hand, so even though I was un-trusted for being a foreigner I soon gained the trust of the many locals with my willingness to work. I became one of them, only I was really a spy.

This dream was a little more complicated. Everyone knows what a zombie apocalypse looks like, we have all seen the movies. This dream, it was like Stargate, sort of, some alien had come to this technologically backward world and declared themselves a god. I was sent here to find out about this alien and arrest him while doing the minimal amount of shock to the locals. I was not just a foreigner, I was an alien to this world. That was the secret I was keeping from her.

I had fallen in love with one of the girls in this village, but she was very dedicated to her god, the alien I knew to be a fraud. She was golden like a sunflower, and eyes blue as the sky, well as blue as the earth sky, here the sky was often a pale shade of purple. She had a twin sister who was much more tomboyish then her with short cropped black hair and eyes just as dark. Though one was gold and the other black they were very alike in their behaviour, the only difference being I got along a lot better with the one I was not in love with.

The girl’s father was very fond of me, I worked for him and he was very happy to learn my intentions to be with his golden daughter, I had his blessings and everything. He was their only parent since his wife had died birthing the two girls, and that loss had haunted them all. The greatest hurdle to winning my golden lady’s heart was the fact that I was a foreigner and I had not shown much love or respect to their idol god, and that was something the golden girl could not look past. This had created a huge emotional and sexual tension between the two of us, and in my sleep my body was twitching in response to an agony I knew all too well in real life.

The technology of this place was backward yet complicated in a way only orthogonal thinking could create. Their cotton jinn and steam engines were designed so very differently than earth’s. While surrounded by all these strange machinery I had begun to learn that the prays the girls made to their god were more than just wishful words, there was a literal voice in their heads answering them, and I knew through them I would find and arrest this false Stargate-esq god.

I tried to talk to my love, the golden girl about it but she grew very distant and untrusting of me for asking, saying a lot of things that hurt my soul, how I was unworthy of her and never a true member of the community as long as I was doubted their god. I was hurt but I had a job to do so I turned to the black sister. She was more cooperative but she warned me a great many times that their god did not like anyone seeking him or his voice out, especially outsiders. She also warned me that my inquires about their god would drive a great distance wedge between her sister and me.

I caught the two sisters praying together and I tried to spy on them but their god, or whatever voice in their heads told them I was close and they discovered my presences. I was successful at acting aloof, but the golden girl would not have any of it, she did not trust me. She stormed out of the farm and into the fields. I chased after her. I took her hand and pulled her close to me. I told her I loved her and I only wanted to help her. I could not explain that her god was an alien fraud or how I knew I could not chance blowing my cover I still had a job to do.

She broke into tears telling me that I could never understand her, how I would never know what it was like to be hurt like her. She never even knew her mother.

I lost my temper then.

I shouted at her “Everyone I ever knew is dead. My entire planet is over run zombies. I have no home to return to. You have a father and sister who love you, and me, I love you. I have lost everything, never dare complain to me about your insignificant pain.” While this would be an interesting line of dialogue to absorb and ponder over as to just why does my mind create such scenarios of sadness, but at the time all I could think was, “holy shit, is this still the same dream?”

Insanely this was still the same dream, and it came back to me how the two completely different scenarios had come to be connected. As I walked the ruin earth one desperate lonely night I saw a light in the sky and the light encompassed me and took me aboard a rocket ship. Aliens from another world had seen what sad fate had become of the human race on earth and taken pity upon the few survivors left. They had rescued me and a handful of others. In my gratefulness I agreed to help them in any way I could and since I was genetically so similar to these other creatures who had been victimized by an alien opportunist they had sent me in to investigate.

After a few days of being awake and thinking about what a crazy story my mind had come up with in that long dream I came to think that it might be a good idea for a short story, or a collection of short stories. The situation was so complicated that if I made the many levels of science fiction play off each other I may just have a story crazy enough to be considered acceptable to a popular mainstream audience.

As of now I am left unsure whether my imagination is amazing or if my dreams are just crazy.  I may or may not have a great idea for a novel series on my hands.

Dreams of the Workplace, and Zombies.

Dreams are little more than what you are thinking about when you go to sleep. If you are anything like me than you work hard, and you think hard about the work you do, and subsequently you dream about work sometimes... or a lot, it really depends on two variables. How hard do you work, and how crazy are you. Again if you work as hard as me (no one does) than you have an intensity and pride that makes doing a perfect job take precedence over everything else in your life. Also you need to be crazy in order to live this way. Also you need to be crazy to invest the amount of time necessary to think about work so much outside of work to haunt your dreams.

Here are a few examples of dreams I have had where work was a major presence.

I was studying hard for a calculus exam and taking periodic breaks to watch the anime “One Piece.” This was before “One Piece” was known in North America, before it had been touched or translated by 4kids and sub-sequentially ruined. I went to bed hoping to get my average two hours of sleep a night and I began to dream I was navigating a pirate ship, only some asshole had made the ships controls only responsive to advanced mathematical equations, as if that was now seafaring was done. So I would guide the pirate ship along and dodge cannon balls with math, you know, cause that made sense. It was not a very good sleep. I did pass every calculus course I ever took though.

The sound of chit printer on a kitchen line. Working the line was vivid enough in dream to consume my thoughts and drive my imagination throughout my sleep with this one endless task, but there was one thing that was inescapable; the sound of the printer. Anyone who has worked in a kitchen knows what I am talking about. The sound of the printer is the sound of more work, and the sound rings and rings when you are busy. It becomes a bad omen after one too many busy lunches, and then it becomes a horrible echo that will not go away. As the heat and long hours wear on you, you begin to hear it even when it is no longer printing. Then you start hearing it in your fucking dreams! It took about as many years to get the sound out of my head as it did for me to grow hair on the fingers back after quitting my job as a chef. It took many years.

I worked an average of sixty hours a week for every week in December 2011 in a warehouse. The commute was so bad that I would lose roughly fifteen to twenty hours a week just getting there and back again. Needless to say, I was tired. At nights I would toss and turn in my bed thinking about skid picking, but I was trying really hard to sleep, and I was so tired. I began to dream that I had fallen asleep on the job and was lying passed out on the skid on the pallet jack I was using to pick dog food (I worked at a veterinary supply warehouse) and I was trying to pick product while sprawled out on my skid. It was a pathetic effort, and I am sure if someone awake was watching me squirm in my sleep they would have to wonder what my out stretched body was trying to accomplish. Lying on the skid and reaching out to the lot to grab product was difficult in the dream, which made sense, doing that would be difficult. The real lack of realism coincidence with the fact that I was able to drive the pallet jack around while lying on the skid, that’s just impossible. I guess exhausted sleeping Colin didn’t notice.

Recently I have been working a good job for a good company. This may not sound like a big deal, but since it is the first time in my life that either of those two variables as described have been present in my life it is pretty exciting to me. I work asset management, and record, name, tag, and place key assets in the company’s records. Small mistakes are easy to make, like recording a CRN number with an “OG” instead of “0G,” and then somebody has to go through and fix them all. I had this terrible dream someone had misspelled “Chinook,” as “Chinnook,” and I was going to have to go through thousands of records and fix them. Unfortunately given the nature of the assets and software program in use there is no easy way to search for an error like. Such a misspelling could occur in so many different fields of data and the auto-populate feature means it could be a reoccurring problem over many assets in many fields. So I was hunting the errors down in the dream and then we were attacked by zombies. This was the same night season 2 of the Walking Dead aired their season finale, so you can piece together what I was thinking about as I fell asleep. Getting attacked by zombies in the work place just seems appropriate to me. I fought zombies in the University of Calgary, at the restaurants I worked, in my office as a book keeper, in a warehouse, and even on a pirate ship. Every story should end with a zombie apocalypse. You never know when the zombies are going to show up at work, and I guess subconsciously I am ready for that.

It might seem that I work too hard and sleep too little, but frankly I enjoy crazy dreams like these, they make going to bed all the more interesting. Sometimes you dream about work. Sometimes you dream about school. Sometimes zombies show up. Whatever you are thinking about can and will happen in dreams.

My Favorite Girl in the Whole World

A long time ago someone asked me what I liked in a girl, both ascetically and personality wise. The physical characteristics I seemed to find most alluring were interesting. I like fancy short cut hair-dos. I like a slender face. I like blue eyes. I like a turned up nose. I like a slight pronunciation of the front teeth. I like pouty lips and perky tits, and a round ass. I liked those things specifically, and all at once, all those things I saw on a single perfect human being.

I was cleaning dishes, as is part of the job as cook, and I saw this pretty girl with fancy hair. I thought she had great hair and from what I could tell a nice body. She turned and I saw her. It was the first and perhaps only time I have ever stared at someone.

The personality of someone I like is a little more difficult to explain, as is such things. I like someone smart, not just smart in general, but someone logical, someone who can learn and grasp complex subjects. I like someone who is tough, tough enough to argue with me when I am wrong, tough enough to stand their ground and speak their mind. I like someone who is honest, honest about their life, and honest with themselves. I like someone who is mischievous, someone willing to get into a little bit of trouble, someone daring enough to make things interesting on their own initiative. I like someone good. Someone who is loyal, and morally strong, someone who believes one's word still means something, someone who treats other with the respect they deserve.

As I got to know the princess, I saw that she was all these things. I learned a lot about myself, and about what I wanted in life. I gained validation knowing that all those things I listed above could be contained within a single girl and that I could love. I could love.

I have spent the last four years fawning over my favourite girl in the whole world. Whenever someone who knows is broached with the subject of Colin Kelly and his princess, they often point out how one-sided and terrible our relationship is, because we do not have one. Some see inspiration and feel admiration for me for my exemplarily work in wooing the princess, as it has become very much like a real life romantic comedy, her being a beautiful princess and me a hopeless romantic. Still I have slept alone in a cold bed every night for the past five years.

You see my favourite girl in the whole world has one crippling character flaw, one thing that prevents us from being together; my favourite girl in the whole world does not love me.

Sometimes I worry. It hurts me to know that these arms of mine that would keep her safe and hold her dear are wasted while another, an ingrate perhaps, may takes advantage of a girl so sweet.

Sometimes I feel stupid for loving the princess so. The inequality of our relationship is so off balance that I am the victim of my own reproach.

Sometimes I feel stupid for not moving on... but then I recall... I am unable to find anywhere to move on too for my favourite girl in the whole world has set a standard so high that I cannot find comfort, joy, or even interest with the women I meet. I have met my dream girl and there is no going back.

The princess was not alone in scorning me, her entire gender has spoken, and the word is not good. I am not so arrogant to argue with a unanimous vote, and the female gender has been united for as long as I can remember that I, Colin Kelly, was considered best to be ignored and forgotten. My favourite girl in the whole world is no exception.

I see things... I see things so differently than others... because I am on the outside looking within. I have a bird's eye view of others in their relationships, and I see their interactions and their compassions without bias. I spend long hours thinking about why I think so much and contemplating the motives and desires of all people, myself included. And I see things... sad things... but beautiful things too... I see flowers growing out of mud, and I see hardships hardening people, I see strength stem from suffering. I see lust turn to love, and I see cowardice disguised as romance. I see women constantly mistake kindness for weakness and cruelty for strength. I see people judge themselves for the relationships they do not have, or need.

And all these thoughts that spur my imagination to far away fantasies, come to a halt and I contemplate the single issue before me... no one loves me... and the odds of that changing are not promising.... and strangely I feel brave. I look upon my misery and I both smirk and cringe, because I know that I can take it. I almost laugh as my troubles and I say to myself a mantra, "happiness is for wimps." I am Colin Fucking Kelly, I am the King of Braves. I can make a good life with or without the princess, or anyone for that matter.

When I look in the mirror I see many things. I see a man haggard from an unfair and lonely life... but I also see a man with the endurance to live through it all over again a thousand times if need be. I think of the man I wanted to be when I was young, and I see that man looking back at me in the mirror now, lonely and hurt, but strong and noble. I see myself in the mirror and I see a man complete within himself, in need of nothing, in need of no one, and I am proud to be, me. All that pain and all that unhappiness, that is only the past and nothing more.

I love the princess, but she will never love me. I do not call her. I do not see her. I just hope she is happy... it is all I can do... it is all she will let me do. These feelings in my heart... wasted though they are... is love, real love, true love, the kind of love people should be looking for, and it pleases me, it pleases me to know I can feel this way. It is hard to stay mad when there are so many other things to enjoy in this endless odyssey we call life. I am a man of many things; having failed in this does not make me a failure elsewhere.

I see her in dreams, my favourite girl in the whole world, and she makes me calm. Her blue eyes cool my angry spirit, her smile makes me smile, and her company gives me something to look forward too. She speaks to me in words that suit her as if the dream were real, and she says the same encouraging and wonderful things she has said to me in real life. Even in dreams she is just beyond my touch, but I see her there as the friend she sometimes was to me and the symbol she always was to me. She gives me strength, and reminds me just how much I can do when motivated, and she motivates me. Suddenly the cold courage I feel when faced with my own inner demons becomes god like when I bask in her light. I walk invincible through life knowing what few do, I know what love is, and I know what it means to stand strong for something you believe in, and I believe in the princess... and I believe in myself... and I believe the princess believes in me... and that so much to hold dear to I do not know how I hold it all in.

One day, when this age of loneliness has finally come to an end, I will find her, or another like her, and I will love her again... and she will love me... it is a dream I have.

Dreams Within Dreams

The most reoccurring dream within a dream people seem to have is the waking dream. The dream where your alarm goes off, you wake up and start getting ready for your day, but then you wake up and realize that was all a dream, and then you have to go through all of that again. That is a dream within a dream, the more times you wake up and go through the waking motions of getting ready for your day, the more levels of dreams within dreams you are experiencing.

Being the odd fellow that I am, I have little to no memory of these sorts of dreams within dreams. No, my dreams within dreams are usual TV and movies.

A stated in the last rambling essay I stated that it is the strangest things that set us off and wake us, and that has everything to do with personality. Different people, different personalities, and different triggers that upset us and our minds wander to different dreams. A very reoccurring dream setting is through the eyes of others, namely the black knight and other characters from the fantasy world. But Hunter, Bombos, and Guy Morgan are all characters I created and the adventures they go on are also derivative of my own imagination, so waking from dreams from their points of view usual are struggles since everything is either a preset of my own understanding or a development further into the same creative thought patterns. Things become a little more impossible and difficult to accept when I see the world through the eyes of other characters, ones I did not create.

A few examples of the more reoccurring characters I have seen the world throw the eyes of in dreams are; Sir Gawain, or King Arthur, or Merlin from Arthurian lore, Autobots Prowl, Ultra Magnus or Optimus Prime; ninja turtle Leonardo; or sometimes Batman or other superheroes. This is not too surprising I really like all the stories and mythologies surrounding the above mentioned characters, and if I go to sleep thinking about them at length it is only natural to dream about them and through their eyes.

However I am not any of these characters, and while I may feel a kindred connection to their motivation, personalities, and emotions, there are differences enough that usually I will begin to struggle between what Batman would do and what I would do. Once that debate starts going through my head it is hard to accept and process, something is wrong and I know it... I know that I am not Batman... I am someone else.

Interestingly enough that debate of identity never occurs when I see the world through the eyes of Hunter, Bombos, or Guy, probably because I have always had complete creative control over them. I decide what their motivations and actions are, I do not have to respect or consider other writers interpretations of them to remain “realistic” within the given confides of the premise and who they are and what worlds they live in. In my fantasy world I am god like in what happens; there are no conflicts of creativity.

I find it quite amusing how my mind usual deals with the dreams through the eyes of fictional characters, what I am seeing cannot be real, so it must be... a movie.

Then the dream takes a dramatic turn, I am sitting in front of the TV watching a new movie or TV show about whichever character I have dreamt about. This is a dream within a dream, the movie or TV show was the dream within the dream of me watching it. I find this an interesting turn, an interesting and highly logical way for my brain to make sense of the situation. “No Colin, you are not ninja turtle Leonardo, you are watching a new ninja turtle movie,” makes sense.

Sometimes I think my imagination unhinged comes up with much more powerful and interesting ideas then Hollywood or Showtime can, but come to think of it, pretty much everyone who loves movies and TV feels that way about the mythologies they love, so I guess I am not so special in that regard. Still my imagination unhinge has greatly entertained me in such dreams, there was some good ideas in there, so some nonsensical ideas, but mostly good.

Detective Casmir in Calgary

The second dream where I saw the world through the eyes of Detective Casmir took place in my home city, Calgary Alberta.

I was planning something or I was here to stop something from happening. I was talking to a woman on a cell phone and promising her the spell would work.

The spell would work? Somehow I knew what this meant; I had cast a sleep spell on the entire city, ensuring they would not be awakened when the dead came back to life. Oh and by the way the dead are coming back to life tonight.

At midnight everyone was asleep and safe. I walked my way to the Bow River and waited for the first signs of life, or death depending on your perspective. Slowly zombies emerged from river, and I drew my long sword and began to cleave their heads off. I was quick and graceful and never in any danger, killing zombies at my own leisure. I was keeping the city clean from some strange necromancy.

In many dreams a flood of ideas enter your mind explaining the impossible location or scenario you are in. You just know who you are and what you are doing like you have lived this life your whole life. As this dream stood I was Detective Casmir and apparently the natives of the area used to bury their dead underneath the currents of the Bow River. But old forces had awakened these restless souls and they were emerging slowly. How I knew any of this, and how did I know to be where I was needed and when, no explanation, but that is one of the funny things about dreams, if you do not think it is important you will not think about it, and therefore you will never think of an explanation. Dreams are after all, all in your head.

As I was working away killing zombies with incredible efficiency, I saw out of the corner of my eye a young girl watching me. I finished the zombies quickly and rushed over to her. She should have been asleep, I had cast the sleep spell, and it had worked on everyone else in the city, but here she was awake.

She said something nice to me, about how amazing I was for taking out all those zombies. She was remarkably unfazed by what she had seen. Her enthusiasm along with her heavy compliments was a delightful thing, but I was curious about her. She was clearly immune to my spell, and the only explanation I could think of was that she was immune to all magic. She was a miracle birth, a random human completely immune to the affects of magical spells, so rare that I needed to remember her.

I asked her name, “Samantha.” I asked her how old she was “ten.” I asked her how curious she was about what she had just seen, and she told me she thought it was amazing, amazing to learn that zombies and sword wielding necromancer detectives were real, which is fair. I promised her I would show her more of the world of magic when she was older, but she had to promise me that she would not tell anyone what she had seen here tonight. She agreed, and I took her hand and cast some spell marking her. With this mark I could find her again ten years from now, and I would remember her, Samantha.

So that was nice, but the dream continued.

I report to my boss, the woman I was talking on the phone with earlier. She is sturdy black woman, and she is mad about Samantha, but much less mad when I explain her amazing immunization to magic. Samantha would be very useful to us when she is all grown up, she could help us fight the evil of the world.

This woman, Doris, and I talk at length about the world of magic, and now humanity has forgotten all about it, which has made us vulnerable to the forces of evil that use magic. I remember only one specific line of dialogue I said to her, I was responding to her concerns of all the recent magically activities across the globe, to which I said;

“That is why I came to this world;” ominous.

She says something about how she does not care for my strange ways, but she knows she needs my help, the lone necromancer in the world.

Later we go to a building, a tall skyscraper, and break into the underground of the building. There are traces of magic everywhere, they light up to me like a pale green fog or dim grey lights in a prison cell, but I see them, I can even fell them. This was why Doris brought me here; she wants me to find the hidden cult hideaway.

A very elaborate maze of tunnels and secrete doors unravel before me. I find the secrete passages and solve the winding tunnels with remarkable speed, but then again, of course I do, I am a necromancer detective. This is reminiscent of the “Death Maze Race,” insofar that I am able to solve the maze and secretes before me incredibly easily because it’s all me. This whole situation is all in my head, I literally have to invent the hidden passageways before I discover them, but in this dream there was an excuse preset to explain to my brain why it was possible; I am Detective Casmir.

Eventually we come to a hidden meeting room/sleeping quarters. It is empty but there is evidence of recent use, I recommend to Doris we station some men and try to set up an ambush. She agrees but is concerned, the sleeping quarters could house hundreds of people, and she never thought the cult could have become so great in number. Furthermore the ridiculous number of spells that were cast to hide this place was alarming; they clearly had some strong sorcery on their side. I promise her I’ll look into it.

This was about the time I woke up.

I really enjoyed this dream. Nothing haunting or horrible was happening to anyone. I was incredibly capable and enjoyed killing zombies, and unravelling a mystery. But most of all, it was such a pleasant display of my imagination. I learned a lot about the fictional character Casmir, he was clearly not form earth or at least not from this earth, he was sociable and kind, he hides a long sword under his grey trench coat, somehow, and he can sense and see magic. Also the world building was nice, this world there is a lack of use of magic, but evil doers are aware of this and hope to catch civilizations off guard by using ancient evil magic to cause havoc. The best thing of all, there is still the air of mystery to everything. We still don’t know who or what Casmir is, and we don’t know what were up against in regards to the cult.

I am a story teller, even in my dreams.

You Must Fight

“My father said to me, ‘Lyoto, you have warrior’s blood. You must fight.’” – Lyoto Machida

When you sleep your brain releases a chemical that paralyzes your body, this is why you don’t move in your sleep, this is what prevents you from sleep walking. The name of this chemical eludes me, but I know this is the case.

Night terrors are often caused when you become half awake, as in you become aware but the chemicals released by your brain have kept your body paralyzed. These are often terrifying ordeals since you are still partial asleep and dreaming but cannot move.

I do not have any memories of night terrors, not exactly anyway, but I have a lot of experience with sleep paralysis.

Frequently, recently, I have not been sleeping well. I am worrying about school and work, and other things, but since sleep and dreaming is all your thoughts swarming over one another, when you are troubled your thoughts become very hard to handle. So while I’m thinking up solutions to international economic quiz questions and trying to think of some way to find work that will actual pay the rent while I finish school, and some other things maybe I’ll talk about some other day, I grow very restless. I am not accomplishing anything lying in bed worrying about things, I need to get up and solve my problems. The workaholic in me, demands I forgo sleep and get back to work, but the exact words I start yelling at myself is, “Colin you must fight!”

When I realize I’m only dreaming, I start getting upset, feeling this is a waste of time, and when I can’t move, because of sleep paralysis, I begin to get really agitated. I try to twist, and move, and open my eyes, but I can’t, and I struggle for... god knows how long, until my fingers begin to twitch, and then slowly my hands can form fists and reach out, then my legs began to twitch and then usually my eyes open and I’m awake. The whole time my mind screams at me to fight.

I find myself amusing. I’m not yelling at myself to wake up, or get back to work, I tell myself to fight. I look at the problems in my life before me and my subconscious has only one solution, combat. Perhaps it says something about my testosterone levels in that I want to solve all my problems with violence. Maybe it says something about my superhero complex and I want to rush into battle and fight the good fight. Maybe, and I think this is it, I feel that life is constant battle.

My favourite girl in the whole world once said to me, “Colin why is everything a fight with you?” Like most insults throw my way it did not have the intended effect.

I replied with, “of course it is. Life is an endless series of battles, you must fight.”

I think I intimidate a lot of women.

But it’s true you know, life is a forever ongoing series of fights, and there is choice, you must fight.

Just a few days ago, it was happening again. I kept awaking in locations that I was familiar with and yet had no reason to be in, and gradually these dreams within dreams began to make sense to me, I was dreaming, and none of these was real. I began fighting the dream trying to wake up, violently forcing myself to move, my fingers began to twitch and for a moment I thought my eyes opened and I was looking across my bed out my window and tall demonic figure was standing on my thirty-second floor balcony looking into my bed room. My hands began to clench and I began to thrash and yelling at the figure, “Fuck you, you are not real!” I repeated this exclamation a few times and even my eyes shut tight I continued to see blurry visions of my bedroom, my legs began to twitch and my arms began to move, slowly and awkwardly, and then like before my mantra came to me, “Colin you must fight!”

In the next moment my eyes opened and I found myself perched up in my bed on one arm, my other clenched in a fist and at the ready to strike, and I was pleased with myself. I was able to fight off a dream and force myself awake very quickly while suffering sleep paralysis. I was pleased when I looked at the clock and saw it was one-thirty am, I had only been asleep for a maximum of an hour, and in that time I could awake on sheer will power. How Green Lantern of me.

Psychologically this fighting perspective of mine works twofold. First it seems unhealthy to consider everything in life a enemy that needs to be conquered, but conversely it is very healthy to march forward unafraid of the obstacles in your life thinking of them as just another fight in the never ending battle that is life.

I find it interesting anyway.

Death Maze Race - Part 3

There is an obvious reason why I excelled at the Death Maze Race; I am the one making the whole thing up.

It is all a dream, and all a dream is, is your imagination running amuck. Every passageway, every trap, every hidden clue, I had to make them up on the spot during the dream, and the way my mind processed this was that I was not inventing/imaging these things, I was discovering them. When I think about the Death Maze Race, what was really happening was I was fighting my own imagination, literally. My imagination was thinking up death traps to kill me and I would think of ways to survive every time.

The third, and thus far, final dream I dreamt of the Death Maze Race was chaos. I was thrown into the race without explanation or warning, and this time it was personal. The creators of the Death Maze Race were angered that I had survived twice and been the victor twice. Why was this important? What did me winning or surviving matter? I have no idea, but I had made an enemy and this enemy was striking back.

After evading a few forgettable traps, I knew what was happening; I was in the Death Maze Race for a third time, but why? The second Death Maze Race was a huge success, for me anyway, all my friends had survived along with many others, all because I had led them to the finish line. The returning champion, me, had been abducted in his sleep and thrown into yet another Death Maze Race. As I spoke to other contestants, and unveiled hidden messages the rules had been changed again. This time the winner would be the first person to cross the finish line, and like the first Death Maze Race, the winner would be the only survivor. I kept this information to myself, I did not recognize any of the faces this time around, I had no friends this time, and I could not bring myself to make new ones. It is not selfish for me to covet my own survival before others, and whatever the reason were that the masters of the Death Maze Race wanted me dead I would find out, and more than that, I would defy them.

There was no modesty in this dream, I knew I was the king of these mazes now, and I made no effort to hide what I could do. I charged forward in a rush, leaving others behind me. My feet were fleet as I flew down passageways, my mind was sharp when I conquered puzzles, and my reflexes were nimble to dodge the traps that sprung around me.

One of the first thing I remember noticing was just how young everyone was in this race. I was their elder, not just in Death Maze Race experience, but also in years of age. They were so young and naive, and not too surprisingly, nothing in their lives had prepared them for this.

I watched people die everywhere.

The dream became more vivid when I walked into a dining room, with many other people, and the doors locked behind us. The dining room was very large, and even though we were indoors, this room, within a room, had windows looking out; at least they have if they were not so heavily fogged over.

There were many water based traps in this dream and in this room water began to fill the room and flood us in. I knew what to do immediately; I grabbed a chair from the dining table and began to smash all the windows. Then I stood atop the dining table and waited to see how far the flood would go. I would have left through the windows immediately, but I had the suspicion there would be a clue somewhere in the room. Looking about myself I notice the chandelier in the center of the ceiling, and waited for the water level to raise high enough for me to grab hold of the chandelier and get a closer look. Sure enough an envelope awaited me.

I tried to read the clue, but you cannot read in dreams. So my thoughts projected what I thought the message might say and words slowly formed something to the effect of needing to find key in the roof to escape the room.

I left through the windows and look about myself, ridiculous Super Mario style platforms were scattered about three pillars reaching up about three stories. The water only a few inches deep, did not help my drugging around looking for were to start.

In what can best be described as an angry moment of brilliant defiance, I discarded the idea of trying my luck jumping up this thing and decided I needed to think of some more clever way of getting around this. I realized if I could get to the roof of the dining room I could make a long leap onto a rope and climb my up to one of the platforms, and from there I could use the ceiling’s scaffold to get myself wherever I needed to go, thus completely bypassing the entire obstacle. With the help of one of the other contestants I was hoisted onto the roof, made my leap to the rope and began my climb to the ceiling. Once there I was able to eye where I needed to go and carefully descended down upon the envelope containing a key out.

Back in the dining room I charged past the crowd, opened the door back out into the maze and ran like the wind knowing I must have lost a lot of ground with this diversion even I did defy the challenge of it the way I did.

After running through a twisting wall maze in what must have been record time and leaving behind me many other contestants, I came to the final challenge. A collection of downward leading stair ways that for the most part were little more than water slides. People were falling off the sides and plummeting to their deaths. I knew the finish line must have been somewhere at the bottom of this chasm, so I began running and jumping down the stairs. I came to the realization that this maze could also be cheated, since the one thing all the stairways had in common, even the dead ends, were they headed downward. So I picked a random stairway and once it came to an end I found a comfortable spot to jump off onto another stairway. It only took a few leaps before I realized which stairway would be the right one, for I could see down far enough to know which one I needed to get too.

There were many people who had made it this far and I was far behind some of them so I took a gambit and made a nearly suicidal dive over the edge aiming for the final stairway. I kept thinking I might break a leg from this distance, but as long as I can move I can survive this. The fall did in fact hurt but throwing myself down stairs, flooded stairs at that proved painless. And so I continued to use gravity to my advantage to overtake the last of the young contestants. As I came far enough down the final stairway I noticed that it emptied into a pool, so when I came close enough for the fall not to kill me I threw myself in. I remember the bodies of those who had fallen earlier floating about in the distance. I swam to the shore, and limped my way down a tunnel. There were signs pointing me to the final destination. I limped on my aching legs as fast I could and then deep within the tunnel I found a ladder leading me out, and once upon the surface I ran across the finish line. I had survived yet again.

I held this smug smile on my face as I looked about the crowd around me. There was nothing that could kill me, and this is very indicative of my personality. Remember the whole Death Maze Race is actually me battling my own imagination, and insofar as that battle went I could not think of anything that could kill me. I cannot envision my own death, I truly believe I am indestructible and after a warring dream testing my own imagination on death, I had survived.