I enjoy my night dreams, when I have them. In fact, I find them so
interesting that I keep a dream journal where I write down as much as I can
remember about the dreams that I do manage to recall. To do it successfully, I
have to have the presence of mind to actively run the dream back through my
mind as soon as I wake up, and then either sit at the computer or jot down the
key points in my bedside notebook. But it’s worth the effort.
The other night I was looking through my formal dream journal on my
computer, and it came to me that some of those dreams could be the inspiration
for some interesting stories. So I decided to try taking a few of the dreams,
elaborating a bit, creating names for characters, and making some short stories
out of them. I tried writing from different points of view (first person,
second person, third person) and in a few different styles. What follows are a
few examples:
Death by RV
You are motoring
along a highway in a fairly large RV. You are not driving. Instead, you are
sitting in a special seat toward the back of the vehicle. It is set up high so
that your head and upper body reach through a special hatch in the top of the
RV. From this vantage point, you look out over the roof of the vehicle, see the
scenery all around you, and feel the sun on your head and the wind in your face
as you race down the road.
It’s a bright summer
day. The air is warm but fresh. All around you, everything is a succulent
green. There is not a lot of traffic, and you are far from any city. As you
pass through the semi-forested countryside, you catch the aroma of hay fields
and stands of pine trees. From your perch atop the vehicle, it’s a perfectly
beautiful day for traveling.
There are other
people in the RV with you, but you don’t recall how many. You can hear them
talking and laughing below you. One of them is your sister. You know this
because she mentions that “Dad is up ahead of us” in a separate car. You are
not sure who the other people are, but they seem to be having a good time.
Far up ahead, you
can see that the road curves sharply to the left before running parallel to a
large, wide river. It might be the Shenandoah. Way off to the left you can see
that the road curves right again and crosses the river over a very long bridge.
But you sense that you are approaching the first curve too fast. Something is
wrong.
Instead of turning
left with the highway, the RV barrels straight forward. It runs through the
safety barrier, off the road, and toward a cliff. The ride becomes bumpy as the
wheels run over uneven ground. At the edge of the cliff, you continue forward,
flying out over the river, which is in a gorge far below. There is no way to
stop it.
As you plummet
toward the bottom of the gorge, the RV begins to turn over. You realize that
the top of the vehicle, where you are now trapped, is going to hit the bottom
first. As you turn over, you can see that you are headed toward huge rocks. You
are going to be crushed. But you don’t scream; you can't.
Inside the RV, you
can hear people yelling and crying. You hear glass and plates breaking. But you
block out those noises and concentrate on the rocks that now seem to be racing
up to meet you. Even though it is happening in an instant, it seems like slow
motion to you.
You are keenly aware
of everything around you. You can hear the whistling of the wind against the
metal railings that line either side of the vehicle. You feel your hands grip
the support bars along the hatch. You hold on so tight that it’s like either
the bars or the bones in your hands will break. You can feel your hair, your
lips, and the skin of your cheeks being thrust back by the force of the wind.
And still those
rocks draw ever closer.
You know you are
about to die a horrible, crushing death, and you wonder how much it will hurt. You
want to look away, but you can’t. You wonder whether God – however you perceive
the deity – will pull your soul out of your body at the last second to spare
you the pain. Or will you die in agony?
And just as you are
about to be smashed upon the rocks, everything goes black. There is nothing.
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Saving the Castle
It was medieval times, and there were thousands of
people in and around a castle. The people of the castle were trying to defend
themselves against an invading horde. The castle’s defenders were more
sophisticated, knights and soldiers with better weapons and a sound defensive plan. They
wore fine armor highlighted with cloth in sharp red and gold.
The invaders were barbarians, large men with great
beards and long hair. They were clad mostly in leather and fur, but with rough
iron breastplates and helmets, and they carried long swords and axes. Though
they lacked the finery of their opponents, they had greater numbers and were ferocious fighters.
The battle was intense and moved into a tunnel complex
below the castle. Despite heavy losses, the invaders were gaining ground toward
taking the castle and the city. At one point, they had surged through the
next-to-last defensive point, and most of their army was below the castle
complex.
At this point, the commander of the castle’s
defensive forces ordered
a black-powder fuse to be lit, and this caused a
series of explosions that destroyed the castle and brought it down upon the
attackers. The entire invading army was crushed and destroyed under the rubble
of the castle. But the city had been saved.
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In the Kitchen
Derek and Cathy were in Derek’s
kitchen peeling vegetables for dinner. The kitchen was not Cathy’s favorite
place, and Derek was really more comfortable and capable in the kitchen than
she was. But she enjoyed spending time together, even if it was in the kitchen.
Derek noticed that Cathy was having
trouble with the knife she was using, so he asked if she wanted to change with
him. She said that she really did want to use the knife he was using, so he
gave it to her gladly. Then Derek asked Cathy why she didn’t just ask him for
it if she really wanted it. She just looked down, shook her head, and said, “I
don’t know.”
Derek told her – reminded her,
really – that he would give her anything or do anything for her. “You know
that,” he said. She nodded and responded that she was trying to understand that, but it was hard for her to ask for what she really wanted. She said it had
always been hard for her.
As they continued peeling
vegetables, they got into a discussion about hosting a Thanksgiving dinner.
Cathy said that she wanted to host a dinner for her friends, and Derek asked if
that meant she would not be coming to his annual dinner. She said that she
wanted to, of course, but she also wanted to get together with her friends, and
it was a conflict on that date. Derek suggested that he could cancel his plan
and help her with hers.
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The Never-Ending Search
You are in an underground parking
garage looking for your pickup truck. The garage is huge, and you don’t know
exactly where the truck is because someone else had parked it there for you.
Suddenly the lights in the garage
go out, and you have to search using only the light on your mobile phone. You
walk and walk from one level to another, but you can’t find your truck, and you
are getting frustrated.
Then it seems that you are not
searching for a truck but for an airplane. It is an old B-25 twin-engine
bomber from World War II that had been converted into a private civilian plane.
You finally find such a plane, but it has tail guns, and you can see another
gun turret on the bottom, so you know it’s not yours. You keep searching, but
you never find it.
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A Strange Day
A group of guys were about to stage
a robbery of some kind. They were like
mafia guys, perhaps even characters from the Sopranos television series. Greg
wasn’t part of the robbery; he was just along as a kind of observer.
Suddenly three of the robbers
turned their guns on the other two and shot them dead. Then the three killers
ran off. It was a "hit" that had been
disguised as a robbery so that the two guys being clipped would not know. And
to the police, it would look like the two guys were just victims of a botched
robbery.
After that, the mafia guys were
playing basketball. Greg was playing with them, but he missed a lot of shots.
Embarrassed, he admitted to the guys that he had never been very good at the
game.
After he left the basketball game,
Greg was in a store with a group of people that included a family he knew. The
mother in that family was a friend of Greg’s, and he knew that she was having
an affair with another man. Greg had also had a short affair with her, and he
knew that she had also had sex one time with the teenaged son of one of Greg’s other
friends.
At one point, the whole group left
the store and was walking to another place. Greg and the woman managed to cross
a busy street ahead of the others who had to wait for the traffic lights. That
gave Greg a chance to talk with her. He told her that she needed to figure out
why she had such a need to cheat on her husband and either work things out or
get a divorce. She asked him if he still wanted her, and he said not anymore.
It wasn’t because he didn’t care, but because he knew he couldn’t trust her.
She was very hurt and tried to hold back her tears as the rest of the group
joined them.
After that, Greg was walking home
to his apartment. He had been gone for a very long time, years in fact. It had
been so long that he wasn’t sure which apartment was his, and he could not
remember the combination to his mailbox. As he was going up the stairs, he
suddenly remembered that he had left a cat and a dog alone in the apartment when
he left, and he became filled with grief that they must have starved to death.
When he opened the door, he found
the cat, alive but very hungry. Instead of crying like he usually did, the cat
just reached up and hugged Greg’s leg. The dog was also there, but she was very weak.
Greg felt terrible pangs of shame for having been so irresponsible with those
little lives.
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Robbery and Attempted Murder
You live with your teenaged daughter
in an apartment. You are awakened from your sleep by a noise. Then you feel a
drop of water on your head. You decide to get up and check it out.
The lights don’t work, so you find
a flashlight. Then you notice that something doesn’t smell right. You feel a
bit light-headed, almost faint. You hear a sound coming from the kitchen and
find that all the burners and the oven are open, but unlit, and they are spewing
deadly gas into the apartment. You turn off the burners and open all the
windows.
You go to the fuse box and see that
all your circuit breakers have been shut off. So you reset the switches, and
your lights work. You wonder why that lights had been turned off and the gas
turned on, and you realize it had to be intentional. But you can’t understand
who could have done it.
Looking around, you see that a lot
of things are missing. Expensive stereo equipment, television, computers, and
other items are all missing. You have been robbed. And it seems that the
robbers turned on the gas to kill you in your sleep.
Suddenly there is a man in the
apartment – one of the robbers who apparently had come back for something. But
he sees you and quickly leaves. You see that there is a door between your
apartment and the one next door. You look for a weapon and can only find a
baseball bat. You open the door and go into the next apartment.
You see more people and all kinds
of stolen items. Not only are your things there, but there are many other
stolen items. These robbers are able to pass through doors into other
apartments as well. You yell at two men who are there and demand that they return
your property. They ignore you and speak to each other in Russian.
Thinking angrily about how they had
turned on the gas and tried to kill you and your daughter, you yell “pochemu?”
(why?). Then you lift the bat to bash one of the men, but you can’t bring
yourself to actually hit him.
The men go out of the apartment,
leaving three women behind. The women are part of the gang of thieves, and their job is to process everything. You
identify your items among all the stolen goods, and you demand that they be
returned. But no one does anything. They ignore you.
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Caught Between
Worlds
I was alone at the
trailing edge of twilight, camped on a relatively flat spot, part way up a very
tall hill. It was a grassy hill, fairly
round or conical, with even slopes except for the small plateau I was on. Below me, perhaps 100 yards away, was the
edge of a dark wood, from which I could hear the sounds of the forest night:
tree frogs singing their monotonous love songs and crickets voicing their praises
of a warm summer night.
Occasionally, the
precise call of a bird would add a bit of spice to the chorus, but with the
gathering dark, birds were mostly silent.
Those sounds from below were comforting, and together with the crackling of my campfire and the aroma of burning wood, I felt very comfortable. Looking at the edge of the forest below, I could see almost nothing
except a dim vision of the facing sides of trees, which seemed to dance with
the flickering light of my small fire.
Far above me,
framed by the very last glow of a day fading beyond the jagged horizon of
mountain peaks, was the top of the hill, and on that hilltop was a
building, a resort of some kind. There
were small white lights, but it was much too distant for the lights to
bother me much. Behind and beyond this
building were others, separate, yet connected in some way that I couldn’t
entirely discern.
From the top of the
hill I could hear intermittent voices and even laughter from some kind of
gathering or party. But like the lights,
the sounds were too distant to distract me and only floated down on the breeze every
now and then. They were just an
occasional reminder of what was up there.
After a while,
there was a rustle from the bushes around the trees below me, and a mountain lion emerged. It
walked up leisurely and sat beside me at the fire.
The lion and I knew each other well, and we talked. We reminisced about walking for days through
the forest without ever crossing a road, walking under a power line, seeing an
airplane overhead or hearing the sounds of people.
We remembered
going to the tops of mountains and looking out over a world that seemed ours
alone. We recalled the warmth of the sun
and the close comfort of finding a cave, hollow or some other refuge from the
rain or snow. And we remembered too
those times when there was no shelter and we shivered in the rain until it was
done. As we exchanged memories, those
times came alive for us. They were special.
We talked of
freedom, of “owning the world,” and of starry nights you could get lost in. The
cougar pointed out that there was a clear sky and endless stars over the
forest. But looking back toward the top of the hill, we could see none – the
sky behind the buildings was bleak and gray. Then she asked me to go back into
the forest with her. I said it wasn’t the same any longer; what we had was lost
forever. I didn’t belong there any more and I’d only be disappointed.
Then she motioned
with her head and eyes toward the top of the hill and asked me if I was going
back up there. I replied that I didn’t belong there either; there was no one
and nothing up there for me. I said there were sometimes when it was OK, but
that mostly I felt separate from what went on up there, different from the
others and very out of place. Still, I added, it seems I have no choice but to
return and do my best to get by.
“There is no
freedom anywhere,” I said, “and no place left to find happiness.”
“Your soul is not
there,” she said. “There is nothing
there of spirit, nothing that fills your eyes and soul with awe or takes you beyond
yourself, nothing that makes you grow or gives you life.”
“I’m lost,” I told
her. “It’s just my fate to be lost.”
Then we just sat for a long time, quietly watching the fire.
After a time, I
turned to say something and found that the mountain lion had become a beautiful
woman. She was a bit exotic looking with a roundish face, high cheekbones,
large green-gray eyes, and brown hair that flowed just past her shoulders. She
looked at me at first with a kind of sad expression that spoke of carrying a
heavy burden of emotion. I looked deeply into her eyes and tried to relieve her
of that sadness.
After a few
moments, she allowed a smile to creep on to her face, slowly at first. I
answered with a smile, and then she opened up into a broad smile that was like
a bright light that released all of her hidden beauty.
She placed her
hand on my cheek, looked at me plaintively, and said that I didn’t have to be
lost and that she would be with me always, just as she always had been. I just
needed to learn to “recognize her” again when the time was right. Then she laid
me back and lwe made love. While we were locked together, my vision blurred into a
kaleidoscope of color, becoming evermore brighter until it was like fire.
When the lights
finally dimmed and my vision returned, she was gone and I was alone. The forest
was still there, with the night sounds and blanket of stars. And when I looked back
up the hill where the buildings and people had been, I saw nothing, except a
clear, starry night.
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