Snake Dream

In this dream, apparently I was being attacked by a snake of a species I had never seen before. Its dorsal surface was black, very glossy; but its ventral surface and the lower half of its head were a very bright, almost golden yellow.

This snake insisted on attacking me; it had one hell of a grudge, and its bite was extremely venomous. Nonetheless, as it attacked me and launched a strike aimed at biting my face, I intercepted and caught it and held it gently behind its head.

I held it firmly and forced it into a basket, where it lay coiled for some time. Every now and then, I would feed the snake a mouse to make sure it didn't starve; and I'd hold the basket close to me, so my body warmth would ensure it never got too cold.

In the end, after a period of this sort of treatment, I took out the snake, again holding him behind his head very gently, and allowed him to slide up my arm and around the back of my neck, where my body warmth would make him feel comfortable.

Thus it was that I had, by turning hostility into trust and cooperation, mastered this snake and put paid to his grudge.

The Blood Path Is Now Live On DriveThruRPG!

I've been posting Legend - related posts here since this blog began. And of course, The Blood Path was inspired by a dream I had.

So it gives me great pleasure here to announce that The Blood Path, my adventure for the fantasy tabletop roleplaying game Legend, finally went live on DriveThruRPG today.

The Blood Path On DriveThruRPG

The Blood Path

There is an important announcement that I will shortly be making about The Blood Path, the adventure scenario I have written for Mongoose Legend. Keep an eye out for the announcement, which I will make here in a few days.

A Musical Interlude

Following on from the recent tribulations to hit access to the sound files on Hypnotic Erotic, I thought I'd post a few of the Incompetech tracks that I enjoy, whose moods more suit the themes of this blog.

Of course, since some of them also match the themes and moods of this blog, this post has been cross posted from To Scape The Serpent's Tongue.

Right-click on any track to download it.

Intended Force - evocative of Sherlock Holmes but predating the chase theme of Steven Moffat's "Sherlock"

Exotics

Arcadia

The Pyre

Virtutes Instrumental

The Other Side Of The Door

Not As It Seems

Please try and see if the links work. If they fail to download, let me know in the comments. Kevin McLeod is a gifted composer and musician, and basically he ought to be writing movie and TV show scores. His compositions match a lot of the moods I try and evoke in my blogs, and it's always enjoyable listening to them.

Outliers

I was outside the folks' house, out by the back road. There was what looked like a butterfly fluttering near the back wall, with large pale wings, looking slightly translucent. It looked so delicate. I swear, its abdomen glowed greenish-blue.

Later, it was late evening; the sun had set, but there was still a glow in the West, past the houses on the opposite side of the road. For all intents and purposes, it was more or less night.

The butterfly came back, still with its abdomen aglow - but now I realised that its wings were also glowing, lit up with this same blue-green radiance. As I watched, another glowing butterfly came along, joining the first in an intricate dance. A third one flew in, looking to fight off one of the butterflies - a rival, it looked like. I wandered onto the back road, wondering if there were any others around. To my astonishment, there was a small cloud of blue-green dancing lights all the way down at the far end of the road, and nothing between there and where I was standing. It looked as if all the noctilucent butterflies were clustered down at the far end. The three hanging around my house were just the outliers.

Hotel Invasion

I was on holiday with some people I didn't know. I think it was a prize I'd won or something.

The coach turned up this road going up a grassy hill in lovely countryside. The hotel at the top was hilariously ramshackle.

Something else, too: it was haunted. Strange things were happening: doors opening and closing of their own accord, windows and curtains opening and closing, cupboard doors, drawers ...

I had with me what looked like a carbon rod mounted in a silver hilt, like a dagger but with a thick pencil lead instead of a steel blade. Apparently, one touch of this "pencil," which was actually as thick as a cigar, was enough to dispel whatever magic or possession had control over the object; so I was putting big black marks on everything.

The weirdness, however, was caused by something external: and the minute it dawned on them that they were losing control, they sent in goons. First I heard was a crashing as the main door was brokrn open. I was upstairs, having reduced an Ikea table back into its component flatpack, and I'd left the three old people whose room it was and was making my way along the corridors and stairs. I bumped into one of the staff, a room service person, and greeted her cordially. I barely had time to register when I heard her give a cry, muffled. I peeked back around the corner and spotted her in the arms of some thug dressed in black. He had a rag over her mouth, and she was going down, her eyes closing.

Time for me to split; and I did that thing I seem to enjoy doing in all my dreams - find a thick wall, and phase into it. Then I heard more people converging on the thug's position. He'd obviously called it in. It was me they were after - me, and the secret of my thick carbon rod.

Freudians, the queue starts back over there.

Songs and Encounters

I was walking along towards King Street bus station down this road.

For some reason, I was singing "Serenade," the song by Ultravox from their album Quartet (1982) - and curiously enough, the bus station was exactly as it was back in 1982, long before the modern renovation.

I can't show you what King Street looked like, back in the day. I can show you what it looks like today, however ... (King Street is where the video starts):-

Now for some reason, I found myself by the bus stand for Chester buses, still singing this song, and I was interrupted by a large young man - an adult, not a child. He looked nervous and asked me if I was singing an Ultravox song. I confirmed this, and told him it was "Serenade." He then finished off my sentence with the correct information - and inexplicably turned and beat his forehead against the wall.

I asked him why he would do that. He would not say. I asked him if this was something he'd had done to him in school, and his eyes began to water. He said 'I'm sorry.' I caught him as he turned to face the wall again, and turned him back to face me.

I looked at him, and cupped the side of his head in my hand. 'Just because that was done to you in your school,' I said, 'it doesn't mean it's the way things are in the real world. School was a long time ago, and the bully left his childhood behind at the school gates. Time you did too.'

Then I rested my forehead gently against his. 'I am not sorry for you. I am not sorry for you being the smartest man in the room. Well, second smartest while I'm here.' I grinned. 'I am not sorry for you having that magnificent brain in your head, and for wanting to use it. I am not sorry for that at all.'

The man began to sob.

Are You Being Served? Episodes

The following is an episode from the legendary 1970s BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? which I'm posting here in honour of the late Frank Thornton (Captain Peacock) who died 2013 03 18, aged 92.

The theme tune is pretty iconic. Composed, of course, by the late, great Ronnie Hazelhurst, the BBC theme composing legend.

And here's another - YouTube seems to have pretty much all of them, as far as I can see:-

Rest easy, Captain Peacock.

Catering

For some reason, I was inside some sort of catering marquee, and I was in charge of catering at a wedding or some sort of polite outdoor garden do. I never saw what it was; I was just catering for it. I've zero experience of catering for public events, so why I was doing this, I cannot even guess.

I was in a hurry to make sure that there was enough food on the buffet to cater for a very large crowd, so I was running around making sure that the food was being prepared, and keeping what looked like a small army of cooks and staff in line. On occasion someone would come in, grab a covered platter of fresh hors d'oeuvres and disappear out of the catering marquee; and one old man stumbled in, dressed in a tuxedo, balding, looked like the actor Leslie Phillips, and he could not seem to understand that this was not the beer tent - that the beer tent was next door.

I never even got to see the happy couple.

Shortcut That Led Nowhere

Once again, I was Out Of Town somewhere, in some strange city, trying to get home. I was, inexplicably, wearing a black vest and jeans - nothing else. Not even shoes.

I knew I had to catch a Number 1 bus heading for the railway station, and that there was a stand across the way - but there was a park in the way, and between the park and the road there was a huge gap: I think there was a railway line underneath, and the road was some sort of flyover. The building behind the bus stop was some sort of large building, all columns and statues. A bit like St George's Hall, Liverpool, for some reason, though this was not Liverpool and Lime Street was nowhere near in this dream.

All I knew was that I had to catch a Number 1 to get to the train on time. And night was already starting to draw on. I even watched a Number 1 coming along and driving past the stand.

Then someone came up to me. She looked like the actress Anna Chancellor, for some reason. She asked me if I needed help. I explained what I needed, and she explained that she could help - but that I would need to take a little shortcut.

What is it with me and shortcuts in these damned dreams?

We stood beside a tiled wall - it looked like the entrance to an underground station - and Anna touched a tile. It moved with a slight click, and the part of the floor we were standing on sank into the ground. We reached the bottom, and Anna drew something on my vest. She said it was "for protection," and then she was gone and I followed the signs.

I found myself in a crowd, and people kept bumping into me - and for some reason, everybody suddenly began fighting with one another. A moment later, I had rounded a corner and I was alone in the corridor, but the fighting was just outside and it was starting to get nearer. I got the distinct impression that the fighting was spreading.

A man in a grey suit appeared. He resembled the grey-suited Government guy from the last season of Being Human and apparently he was very concerned. He had two or three grey-suited men behind him. He looked at my vest and touched the diagram on the cloth. He ordered me to remove the vest and gave me a shirt to put on instead.

Then he told me that the diagram was some sort of spell which had been miscast, and that it had turned into contagious aggro - and that while I, the creator of the spell and he and his men were immune, it was clear that nobody else was: so they were going to have to cordon off and quarantine the area before it spread beyond the Tube. He gave me a chance to get away: there was an emergency stairwell nearby which led to the surface. The stairs and railings were all painted deep red. I could hear the fighting getting closer, and decided to waste no more time dallying.

I climbed the stairs hastily, passing by some people along the way - they looked like transients - and instead of just climbing the stairs, I had to clamber up from landing to landing, grabbing hold of handholds - because apparently the stairs had been designed by M C Escher and if I'd tried using them I'd never have been able to reach the surface because they'd have gone on forever.

And so it was that I found myself, finally, outside on the surface. The sun was low on the horizon, and it all felt washed out like viewing film footage taken in the Seventies. I was in a park, rolling meadows, people hanging around, trees off in the distance - and not a sign of a road, or a Number One bus, anywhere.

What is it about these damned shortcuts?

The House On The Railway

My buildings often have some strange architecture.

I was with a woman, who was dressed in a dark blue dress, inside a house with one room, and a front door which opened up directly onto a railway track. As in, the track was right in front of the door, with trains roaring past not ten feet away. I opened the door - it opened inwards (how strange ...) - and this friend wandered outside and crossed the tracks.

The tracks remained empty, until she made it to the embankment on the other side; only then did the train speed past the entrance, blasting by at speed. I kind of felt a little trepidation about exiting the room at that point, but what the hell - it was that or stay for the fire. So I left.

I crossed the track, encountering nothing thankfully; but at the top of the grassy embankment were more train tracks. Lots of them, both in current use and abandoned and grassy and overgrown. And I was under the distinct impression that I had to hurry to make it across all of these tracks, because there was going to be another one any minute.

The Special Spectacles

A particularly intense one, today.

While visiting my folks, they called me into the living room, and told me that an item they'd bought mail order had finally arrived in the post. They wanted me to have it as a present.

I opened the parcel and discovered a spectacle case and a pair of special spectacles inside. These specs, which looked like the 3D specs you can buy in a cinema, allowed the wearer to see through the heaviest clothes - real Superman-style X-Ray vision. Taking care not to look at the folks through them, because some things one really does not want to see even in a dream, I called my two exes downstairs - apparently they'd both dropped by to visit me and come with me to visit the folks, and they'd both gone upstairs for some reason.

I expected to see the two of them walk into the room, and I really hoped I'd get to enjoy seeing whether or not these specs worked as per, well, spec. I only caught a glimpse of them as they came downstairs, and it looked as if they worked because I caught glimpses of flesh - and I knew they both had jeans and thick cardigans on.

The alarm, sadly, spoiled my fun before they could come into the room so I could see them fully.

Maybe tonight, I can continue the dream. Wish dreams came with save points.

Period Drama Dream from 2005

I originally posted this article in my Livejournal blog, here.

I had myself a weird, kinky dream early this morning, after a prolonged period of insomnia kept me awake from around 1 am till about 5.

In my dream, Jenny Agutter and I were working on a new British movie of some sort. It was going to be a period drama. All bustles and manners, and the men in frockcoats and top hats and stuff.

Trouble is, all the roads in the UK are modern - modern two lane tarmac, white lines in the middle. We needed an old single lane country dirt track so we could race horse and buggies and carriages along them.

So there we were, looking ... and we found one, leading across this open space, on the border of the Moors. There were trees all around, and in the distance all the trees petered out and there was nothing but moors.

Up ahead, though, there were some trees and undergrowth on either side of the road, blocking the view immediately past them. As I came up, I noticed that part of the ground ahead seemed to be pixellated, as if it had been blurred out in post.

I though "This is weird," and bent down to look at what was there. It turned out to be some discarded sheets of blue Bond paper, handwritten - they looked like pretty intimate letters.

And then, just past the brush, I heard noises, conversation, cameras and stuff.

I went up to the brush, and noticed discarded photos and what looked like full page photos torn from a glossy magazine. Pictures of women, dressed very provocatively in basques and stiletto heeled shoes.

Things started to get interesting as I went around the brush. Because that's where I came across the people. Half of them were sitting on folding chairs, shooting sticks, what have you, on a tarpaulin. They were all dressed in the manner of country gentlemen, in tweeds or green sleeveless jackets. One or two were wearing riding jodhpurs, and they were all wearing boots and flat caps. I only saw them from the back, but they looked as if they were filming what was ahead of them, either on video cameras or snapping away with digicams.

And the other half ...

Up ahead of them, there were what looked like six or seven couples, men and women, engaged in what I could only describe as a "wheelbarrow race."

The women were elegant, slender, wearing those provocative black silk Basques. Most were brunettes, and one or two wore stiletto heeled shoes ... although their position meant that those shoes were nowhere near the ground ...

The men pushing the "wheelbarrows" around were tall country gents. Dark hair, slicked back; grey waistcoats, shirts, cravats, handlebar moustaches. But between the shirts and their riding boots ... nothing but hairy legs and bums.

It looked as though the gents and the women did this sort of thing on a regular basis, for entertainment, way out in the open. I had the distinct impression that if the police were to arrive, they'd be all "Afternoon, Judge." "Oh, hello, John. How's the kids?" "Doing fine, Yer Honour." "Good, now do go and arrest someone, there's a nice chap." "Have a good day, Yer Honour."

And that's all there was to my dream, because at that point, I awoke again, it was day and I was laughing too hard to get back into bed again.

Department Store

Sometimes, I dream of this department store. In its way, it reminds me of the old John Lewis in Liverpool. Everything in this store is antique, right down to the lifts - you'd call them elevators in the US. Old-fashioned things with big levers for up and down and rattling metal lattice cage doors. The tills are old mechanical types with big, clunky keys, and the butcher shop is very old-fashioned, with a big, crank-handled meat grinder dominating one end of the room.

This store is a place I have visited many times, and in my waking life I've handled old equipment like this before. Even a meat grinder with a crank handle, and an old-fashioned butter churn. Don't ask where.

Tonight, I was trying to get through the store in order to get to the other side, and the bus stand just outside the store heading for home. For some reason, the only way to get through the store was to go through the jewellery department on the top floor. Why the top floor was the only floor to connect to the bus stand outside was anybody's guess, but top floor it was. The curious thing was, I was in the company of a woman at that time - she looked like the actress Anna Chancellor - and she was stuck on this floor, trying to get to the top floor. I decided to bring her to the top floor with me.

Because I could not get into the lift - I was being blocked by some of the store staff - I did my walking-through-walls thing and grabbed hold of something jutting out of the bottom of one of the lift cars going up, while holding on to my terrified female friend with the other. Fortunately, the lift was going straight up to the top floor, so once it reached that floor I passed through the floor of the lift car, with my passenger in tow, and made sure she was safe before passing through the walls.

The top floor was well-lit, with white walls and a minimalist look. The lifts occupied a row in the middle of the floor, and I had no idea which way to go to get out. I had a feeling that I'd have got to the bus more quickly if I'd just gone around the store in the first place.

And then the alarm went off, and that was it.

Inspirations for Greentown: Legend Fantasy Roleplaying

I've taken up my pen again to begin writing two books to follow up from The Blood Path, my Legend orcish adventure which approaches completion as I speak.

The common setting for these books is Greentown and the local region. There is a map of Greentown already available in the preview - however, I am going to put it here as well.

And then I thought that I could look for pictures of old urban sprawls, something to remind me of the decaying splendour of a town like Greentown. So I cast about for some pictures of urban street views, and came up with these ...

Real back streets from real, modern cities can often provide inspirations for fantasy settings better than any original fantasy art. After all, once you've drawn one mock Tudoresque mansion you've drawn them all; but there is a vast variety of back streets from a vast array of cities, some of which could date back centuries, and all of which have their own unique character.

I just hope that Greentown will prove to be as memorable, and as loved, a place as any setting for your Legend fantasy roleplaying games, for just this reason.

Temple Dream from 2010 12 19

This is one of my favourite dreams - the Temple Dream from 2010 12 19.

I have a Temple in my dream. An altar, a Chaosphere suspended over it, plain floors, walls and ceiling. The top of the walls has a long grille completely surrounding the Temple: behind this grille is a long observation gallery for Acolytes, accessible via stairs to the first floor outside the main Temple building. Just behind the altar is a shelf where I place my tools - wand, athame, pentacle, chalice and so on. One of the tools is a long Chaos staff topped with a small Chaosphere.

My dream began with word that a student from some nearby White Light Christian community had been brought to the Temple, and had been laid out before the altar, bound, gagged and hooded. Out of curiosity I went down to the Temple where, indeed, the woman was lying at the foot of the altar exactly where the Acolytes said she was. She was dressed in some kind of white blouse and trousers; she was barefoot.

I knelt and removed her hood. She had shoulder length straight blonde hair, blue eyes and this look of absolute fear and hostility. I greeted her, welcomed her to the Temple and watched her begin to struggle against her bonds.

It turned out that she had been caught by the security patrols casing the Temple, possibly out of curiosity - certainly without official sanction from her people. She froze when I brought forth my little focus, Blacklight - a wand tipped with obsidian (I always use obsidian in workings, because for some reason I have the ability to handle it). I brought it up to her eyes, and Blacklight did its trick, sending her into a trance state.

I can do this naturally. Hypnotising people is so easy. So easy.

Next, I told her body to relax, and told her conscious mind to go to a safe, warm place where it would feel warm and safe and comfortable. That left her unconscious mind in charge, and I summoned it to the front.

"Unconscious, say hello." I've done this, too. Often, a healthy unconscious is as curious as I am and as willing to talk to someone who seems to want to listen to its needs.

I gave the unconscious a couple of helpful suggestions - when I tap her on the shoulder her conscious and unconscious minds swap places, her conscious goes to the safe, warm place and I talk directly to her unconscious mind again - and a couple of other suggestions which I thought would come in handy. Then I made one final suggestion.

"When I tap you on the shoulder, you will awake. Your bonds will have been loosed by your struggles. You will be free, and there will be absolutely nobody else in the Temple, so you can do as you will.'

After loosening her bonds, I tapped her on the shoulder and stepped back. The girl awoke, untied herself and got up. She looked around, seeing right through me as if I wasn't there. She glanced about her one last time.

Then a sly look came over her face. I watched as she began to remove her clothes, climbed onto the altar, took the staff, kissed the Chaosphere at the tip and, well. Don't know what happened next, because the damned alarm woke me.

But by the look on her face, she seemed really into it for a White Lighter. I'd not placed any suggestions in her on how to behave - this was her, pure and simple.

I had her. I'd had her from the moment she'd allowed herself to be caught. She'd probably made a lot of noise just to draw the attention of my remarkably inattentive Acolytes.

I love my Temple dreams.

Lousy Dream - from 2012 09 27

I had one lousy dream this morning (the day after my brother's birthday in 2012).

I was working in some commercial establishment, in the kitchens. Outside the kitchens, in the main body of the building, the general public was dining. I was employed as some sort of sanitation staff or general gofer or something.

The kitchen staff were all clustered around the freezers, which one of them had opened. There was food inside the freezers - some member of staff had left a plate of food on top of the other food in both the freezers, it turned out.

For some reason, one of the kitchen staff, a young woman, was forking great mouthfuls of food from one of the plates into her mouth, and one of the staff had handed me a plate with what looked like a corned beef casserole and spuds, carrots, some peas. I had a fork, and just gently squashed one of the corned beef chunks.

And something emerged from inside it. A very small white worm, wriggling as it lay in the gravy.

Some others emerged, writhing about on the plate. Beside me, the young girl began retching and bolted for the staff toilets, clutching her mouth. But the worst part was that, when I looked through the windows of the kitchen, I saw two old people staring in at us, their faces pressed against the glass. They had seen everything.

And one of them was already on her mobile phone.

Last thing, I found myself on the main floor, just as the word reached the customers that there was something in the food. The last I saw before waking was the mass panic starting as customers began getting up to rush for the toilets, or or the door - presumably to hospital to get their stomachs pumped or something.

More Vampires?

After the last dream, I never imagined I'd have a dream where I was a vampire. But apparently, I did.

No, not the gay Goth Nosferatu from the last dream - I was me, as a bloodsucker. My face felt the same as it normally does - there were apparently no mirrors to check, not that that would have done any good - and apparently, I was in a different city to the last dream. More modern. I swear it was a modern Italian city of some sort, possibly Milan or Naples. At least the architecture was Italianate, and moreover it was gorgeous.

I was wandering in the streets, surrounded by tourists and locals, and then I met up with other vampires in the middle of the street. I had the distinct impression that I'd called the gathering, and that they had come from their domains to see me in mine. Almost as if I were Prince ... or a pretender conspiring to usurp the Prince's throne.

What I was supposed to do then was anybody's guess, because the alarm went off.

What Kind Of Dream Was This?

I was wandering the streets of Ancient Rome, in broad daylight, surrounded by crowds of Romans of all classes. Alongside me was a travelling companion: a very gay bald vampire, a real Nosferatu, with a narrow face, a sallow complexion, his two fangs in the middle of his mouth where his two inner incisors should be, and dressed in a black toga.

I remember distinctly that the vampire was definitely gay - he told me so himself - and that, for some reason, he owed me his unlife, because he'd been threatened with being buried with an acorn planted beneath his coffin, so that it would grow up into an oak and slowly pierce his chest as it grew through him, in effect staking him in excruciating agony for four hundred years.

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) - Final Scene (clip)

Okay, check the mouths of the characters. Whose mouth is expelling vapour, and whose mouth is not? Do you think one of them might, just might, have been infected? And who, pray tell, do you think that infected one might be?

As for why this clip is here, instead of To Scape The Serpent's Tongue - since I first saw the movie, scenes from this movie have haunted my nightmares. Ditto, scenes from Aliens and, lately,  The Fellowship of The Ring, but particularly this movie.

The Dream - 2011 10 02

I'd like to describe a dream I'd recently had.

I found myself in a street at night full of people - young men and women. At a glance, I could compel them to do my bidding. So I made young women chase after young men, and gay men and lesbians find appropriate romance.

Then I had another idea. Summoning every couple I'd entranced to my side, surrounding myself with young, sexually-aroused couples, I commanded them to follow me. I knew of a place nearby where they could indulge their carnal passions freely.

I seem to have a lot of abandoned buildings, mostly hotels, in my dreams. This one had a vestibule, a lobby with a reception desk, and a room with a massive oval jacuzzi which, against all probability, still had running water and electricity, and a transparent dome overhead the same shape as the jacuzzi below.

I led the six couples into the jacuzzi room, past a little kitchen off to one side of the corridor, and told the couples to disrobe and enter the pool.

Then, before I could disrobe, I heard someone at the glass double doors of the front entrance, knocking, asking to come in. It was Mum and Dad, with one of Mum's brothers and his wife (Aunt-in-law?).

I ushered them into the kitchen area, and asked them to settle down and pour themselves a cuppa while I went into the back room to explain to the guests that they might have to leave. I hadn't taken two steps into the jacuzzi room when I realised that Mum and the in-law had followed me.

And they were standing right behind me when they caught the sight of six couples, in the jacuzzi, all stark naked, standing up "in the presence of the Master," as one of the young men said.


Crossposted from Hypnotic Erotic.

Hypnosis In A Dream

I was out in town, in an older part of town with narrow, red brick streets, cobbled roads and terraced housing. This was a residential area with a small store, and I'd just finished shopping in that store - I came out with a joint of meat wrapped in old-fashioned wax paper, carried in a bag - when I noticed a woman looking at me from her living room window, from just behind a red curtain with a floral pattern. The window, too, was old - a wooden frame painted red, the same colour as the door, lintel and doorstep.

The woman was mature, with short red hair and green eyes. I remember looking squarely at those eyes, and catching her attention. I didn't know if she wanted someone to talk to, or even for anyone to notice that she was there at all - but I went over to her door and knocked on it.

When she answered, I asked her if there was a reason for looking at me. She led me into her room and sat down. I took out my wand - a ritual tool which is essentially a big obsidian - and gently pointed the tip of it at her Ajna chakra, bringing it up to her forehead to establish the "animal magnetism" connection that Franz Mesmer described.

Hard to describe "animal magnetism." It's a different feeling from hypnosis. It's a feeling more like a physical attraction, compelling movement towards the source - in this case, between the woman and the tip of the crystal wand.

As I brought the wand up to her Ajna chakra, the spot right between her eyes above the bridge of her nose, the wand did its thing. The woman's eyelids fluttered closed. I touched the tip of the wand to her forehead, gently brushing her skin, and she sighed and sank back into the chair, her body relaxing and growing flaccid as she sank deeply into a trance.

I asked her what she wanted. Her unconscious responded with moans and gasps. I asked her how long it had been since she'd experienced intimacy. She replied "A long time." I asked her if she wanted intimacy now, and she hissed "Yesssss" through her teeth, her body arching.

Damned alarm. Lousy timing.

Crossposted to Hypnotic Erotic.

Dream Fragment 3: The Garden of Obsidian Statues

I seem to dream myself into the Legend Fantasy Roleplaying game a lot this day and age. Something about the game - maybe the compactness of the books, or the simplicty and openness of the rules, just lends itself to using the imagination. In my case, I even dream myself into the game.

Some of the previous dreams have included the inspiration behind The Blood Path and this dream sequence, along with my recent dream The Seer Princess and my dream of a book of wine-dark red. And then there was this third and final dream fragment.

I was apparently in the sumptuous courtyard of one Lady Jorana, a noble lady of some ill repute. She was said to be a practitioner of strange sorcery, and that she had once used it to transform herself into the woman she is today, having been born in every respect a man.

Outside, in the garden of this villa, were a number of strangely-posed obsidian statues, every statue different, their surfaces as smooth and dark as the day they'd been carved. Not a single bird landed on any of these statues; not an insect or spider crawled on their surfaces.

I was with a party of adventurers, just exploring the courtyard at the Lady Jorana's request. There was a lavishly ornate fountain in the centre of the courtyard, and the sound of the trickling waters was like sweet music to my thirsty colleagues. However, I warned them not to drink any of the water. Not even to touch it. Not one drop. I had no idea why, but no way was I going to go anywhere near that fountain for any reason.

The Lady Jorana arrived, her servant bearing golden goblets filled with water, because by now the adventurers were all very thirsty; they'd been travelling long, and the roads had been hot and dusty, kind of like the setting of my Sullup Lurth stories (I'll tell you about them some time ...). She herself wore a flowing, patterned silk cloak covering her face and body; apparently it was some sort of enchantment designed to damp down her natural beauty, which was unearthly beyond human reckoning (part of me was thinking "In game terms, she has a CHA of 22 ..."). As she spoke, she dropped the cloak and stood, her unearthly beauty revealed before everyone. I saw her as Morticia Addams, say, aged 19 when her charms were at their most fiery, a single woman - only this one was, in this case, not looking for a Gomez - presumably because she already knew what it had been like to be Gomez.

Despite my warnings, my fellow adventurers could not resist the lure of the drinks. Some of them downed the water in the goblets, then rushed to the fountain, all reason and caution abandoned, to quench their thirst in the waters there. Bad move on their part: the waters in the goblets were drawn from the fountain, which was enchanted to turn the imbiber into an obsidian statue.

I just watched, helpless, as the adventuring party turned into black, glassy statues, one by one, their eyes reflecting the horror as they realised what was happening. And Lady Jorana smiled, because she now had three fresh new obsidian statues to add to her garden.

Dream Fragment 2: Hot Stoves

There was once a time when my brother, with whom I did not get along that well in life sadly, presented himself to me as my Shadow; a dark figure haunting my nightmares.

Well, that was until I told my Shadow, flat out, that it was no longer to appear in that form in my dreams. "Come as anyone you like, be as menacing as you like, but if you put on the appearance of my brother in my dreams again, I will hurt you. I will be your Shadow." My words.

Since then, my brother has come to me in my dreams as more of a brother to me - the brother I wish I'd had while he was still alive. Someone I could talk to, without him starting an argument all the damned time.

I was at home. I presume I'd managed to get back from Connection Station. It was night outside, and the house was not the usual place I have in my dreams - my usual home in dreams looks more like the old house I grew up in; I never dream of my current lodgings.

No, this place looked like a bigger complex, with many rooms and a spacious kitchen, done up in an old-world style. There was a massive fireplace, with a fire burning away in the grate; and there, on a grid over the fire, was a pot of some sort, with food cooking. Sean, my brother, was sitting beside the fire on a small stool, watching the flames and waiting for the pot to cook.

And beside him was a much larger stove, on the kind of industrial scale you associate with hotel and restaurant kitchens, roaring away. I have no idea what was cooking inside that stove, but it could feed an army, or a giant.

This was a new place to me, because I asked Sean about the stove, and he told me he'd found it and turned it on to cook something. I was amazed to see it; I had no idea it was even here when I took up ownership of the place. But it looked as if whoever had owned this place had used it to feed a hell of a lot of people at one time, because you could run a catering business from products made in that stove.

And that was the second dream fragment.

Dream Fragment 1: The Connection

I am so used to out-of-town travel that I even dream of it these days, even though I can no longer afford the luxury of being able to go out and see the world in person much, any more.

I dream of attending conventions out of town, and travel in these dreams involves going by train, and a stop at Connection Station.

Connection Station, my name for it, is a railway platform out in the middle of nowhere. There's supposed to be a village nearby, but I have never seen it. The station has a ticket machine, a rude shelter, some street lamps and that's it. Trains from Out Of Town come here, and I connect with those trains at this station.

Some of my convention-going dreams involve me heading along the coast, which in my dreams seems to conflate the North Wales coast and its little resort towns with the larger coastal towns along the North West of England to produce a garish, Vegas-cheap ride through endless seafronts and promenades and vulgar arcades, hotels and funfairs.

Out Of Town itself is a foreign place to me. I don't have a map for the place, naturally, so I have to make my way around. Out Of Town is every place I ever got lost in; and while the hotel where the convention takes place is easy to reach, I've managed to come up with an alternative arrangement.

Apparently, I have a second home in Out Of Town. Big place. Mostly empty, most of the year, unless I'm visiting and attending conventions. This second home used to be part of a hotel / resort complex, and a lot of the outlying areas are abandoned and falling to the steady encroachment of Nature. But the place is mine.

In today's dream, I was actually returning home from a local journey which had taken me away from my dream home town, to one of the outlying areas which kind of feel like the suburbs, and occasionally like the rougher spots on the periphery of the real town where I live. I was on a train coming in to Connection Station, my business having been concluded, and I got out of the train onto the platform of Connection Station. As always, I turned away for a second, and the train was gone as if it had never been - a theme I have noticed with all the public transport in my dreams. The train was gone, and I was alone, free to explore the environs of Connection Station to my heart's content.

I had something like an hour to wait until the train heading for home, and I'd already headed along the northbound track to look at the abandoned station twenty minutes' walk away (I always pass by it in the train journeys in my dreams, and it looks identical to Connection Station in almost every way) so instead, I wandered along in the opposite direction, towards the bottom of the footpath beside the embankment, nearer to the trees.

I had hardly moved away when I realised that there was a train on the platform. I had barely registered its presence before it rumbled past me and headed along the tracks. I thought I had missed the train at first - but for some reason I remembered that an outgoing train always stopped at Connection Station ten minutes after the other train arrived, so that one would have just taken me Out Of Town again, and that was not where I wanted to go.

Instead, I found myself wandering around the almost-empty car park, and found myself looking at a double-decker Arriva bus which was parked there, empty, with no sign of any driver. As if it was waiting for the driver to come along and take its passengers home.

Well, just me, at any rate.

And that was it for that dream.

The Maze

I was in a garden maze, surrounded by tall privet hedges on all sides. Struggling for a way out, I noticed a guide up ahead.

She wore a white shift. She was barefoot. I could not see her face, only the back of her head; she had long, straight, black hair. She kept vanishing behind corners as I approached. However, I had a feeling she knew her way out of the maze and I only needed to follow her.

And then I finally emerged from the maze, and looked upon a flat lawn, with a boundary hedge barely visible through the early morning fog. No sign of my guide anywhere.

Books Of Wine-Dark Red

I often dream of a book, whose cover and lettering are wine-dark red. A book I am frequently drawn to consult, as if it contained deep secrets of sorcery and power.

The book has a tooled leather cover, with some sort of circular design on it. The pages are edged in gold, shiny and heavy to handle. It's unusually warm to the touch, too, as if alive.

I've never been able to read the contents, but the pages look gorgeous. On occasion, the lettering bleeds, and the book itself leaks a gorgeous, deep red fluid.

Not blood. Pomegranate juice.

Benedict Cumberbatch ... and George Formby?

Not often do I dream of a celebrity - when I dream of people I know, I usually dream of ordinary people much closer to home. People I know, or relatives.

So you can imagine how weird I felt when I dreamed that Benedict Cumberbatch was some sort of villain with world domination on his mind. Not as some character in a forthcoming JJ Abrams movie - the actor himself.

At first, he thought I'd be useful because of my dream ability to phase through walls. Some people fly in their dreams. I phase through walls, and even swim through the ground. Go figure. But later in the dream, I was apparently surplus to requirements so he was content to leave me sidelined in a room that I supposedly couldn't phase through.

You'd have thought he'd have learned to lock the door of the room, though.

In the next dream, I was a passenger on a bus. I wanted to stop at a clearly-marked bus stop, but apparently the driver didn't want to stop there - in fact, he seemed a bit hysterical and actually floored it as I asked him repeatedly - so again, I phased through the wall of the bus. I ended up about half a mile from where I had to get off, so I had a bit of a walk.

And on the way there, I bumped into another famous face - this one a bit more dead: the late George Formby. For some reason, he was leaning against his lamp post, playing his famous ukulele ... and for some reason the tune he was playing was a cover of The Police's Roxanne.

Roxanne

You don't have to put on the red light

Those days are over

You don't have to sell your boy to the night ...

Book Vandalism

Only a short dream today, but it was bad enough.

A relative of mine - naming no names - popped into the house for a visit. He said that he had brought along a mountain of books, and asked me if I'd like to look them over and see which ones were valuable, which ones I'd like to keep and which ones to give to Oxfam. The books were on the table in the dining room, and a mighty stack it was - Niven, Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, William Gibson, Olaf Stapledon, John Wyndham, Geoff Nelder's book Aria: Left Luggage, Stross, Mieville, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson and more.

I heard this awful sound - tearing paper. I looked in in incredulity as I saw the relative tearing out a page of one of the James Blish Star Trek TOS adaptations. To a Trekker, that is utter sacrilege. The damned thing was a first edition, and hadn't even been taken out of the packaging - the plastic sleeve lay on the floor at his feet as he began tearing off the back cover.

So I threw him out.

Nobody damages books in my house. Nobody.

The Roman Banquet

I hate it when I have to get up early.

What little dream I had was lavish. The setting was a traditional Roman house, with an open courtyard, crescent benches of marble situated among peach and pomegranate trees, a central fountain, what looked like canaries - the green ones with grey wings, not the inbred yellow ones - and a small shrine for the household gods and ancestors, with candles and incense kept burning.

There was a ewer at my feet, filled with oil, and I was awaiting a slave to come along and anoint my feet with the scented oil. I was curious to see what her reaction would have been to have seen my right foot - I'd been called "Saturn-footed" before, it seemed - and I'd been entertained by household slaves playing a lyre and some sort of woodwind instrument.

The table was being set up for a banquet. I was wondering what they were going to serve, probably a steady stream of exotic meat dishes and frequent trips to the vomitorium to puke it all up whilst being entertained by a never-ending stream of prostitutes, when the damned alarm went off and I had to get up and get to the Museum for the tour.

The Seer Princess

This one comes over as kind of a fairy tale, but I was statting up the characters for the Legend fantasy roleplaying game like crazy today.

The story begins halfway across the world where I, a lonely poor wanderer, stumble across a silver ring lying in the midden pile onto which I'd been thrown from my erstwhile lodgings, along with all my worldly possessions - most of which I was wearing.

The silver ring had a large cabochon amethyst mounted on it. Putting the ring on, I admired it - then decided it needed a clean, so I rubbed it with my sleeve.

Guess what popped up next ...

The genie offered wishes to me. I asked it if it could take me to my true love; and I was whisked off to some far-off land, with another kingdom on its border. The difference between both kingdoms was easy to see - the kingdom next door was ruled by a sullen, angry King, ruling by force of arms; but the kingdom I'd been transported into was much fairer, ruled by a much nicer King; a kingdom of blue mountains rather than dark, forbidding crags, blue skies and rolling meadows rather than its reflection's dark forests and twisting roads.

Apparently, the bad guy next door had poached something of great value from the good King - his daughter, the Seer Princess. A young woman of cold, haughty demeanour, born blind at birth, but gifted with remote vision through an eyeless domino mask, a ceramic milk-white thing attuned to her which only she could put on, use or remove.

I sneaked across the border and entered the bad guy's castle, quickly locating the Seer Princess alone in a well-lit room, a magnificent blonde woman wearing a voluminous kingfisher blue silk gown, the ceramic seer mask firmly attached to her face. She greeted me and told me to enter, and told me to close the door.

I didn't need to explain what I was doing there - she already knew. When I asked her to come with me, she agreed - but told me to wait until the coast was clear. Two guards were heading along the corridor, but apparently they were only interested in a freshly-opened cask of ale down in the kitchen. Apparently, her seer abilities extended to divining the motives of people she spied on, as well.

I stole a horse and rode with her back to the kingdom, where she explained to me that, while I was most pleasing fair to her, she could never be my true love. However, she did arrange to gift me with a suitable reward - a place of my own with wealth, courtesy of her father the King, who sought to reward me for bringing home his chief Minister of State Intelligence.

It was then that I called up the genie and asked it if it had truly delivered me to my true love. It told me that it had - that my true love was adventuring.

The See-Through Invasion

Apparently, there were these two species living here on Earth, invisible and intangible to humans - more or less. The first lot were benign, dwelling in copper-hulled phallic flying ships propelled by grav suspension and rotary wings, and they'd been visitors here for many years, living among humans in peace.

The others were new arrivals, destroyers, hunters after the first, benign species. Their silver-hulled ships were of a similar design, but boasted more advanced propulsion and powerful electric arc weapons. There was a war, and the copper-hulled ships were losing in spectacular Space: 1999 level fashion.

As a refugee of the benign species, apparently I was on the road, watching the war going on all around. Cut off from my people, I stumbled across a narrow road leading off to the side, bounded on both sides by thick hedgerows. A car was barrelling down towards me, and I had no choice but to tun to the end of the road, where there was this shack and a bunch of guys, what looked like farmers, who were surgically sterilising livestock. I got the distinct impression that they may have considered me to be livestock too, and that the whole place might be a trap, something they had set up for many years - so they had lots of practice.

I phased through the back wall of the hut, and found myself amid more undergrowth. Then someone hauled me up onto the roof, attached a harness to me and hauled me up into the sky. I looked down, and saw three bodies lying still in the back of the farm. Apparently the back of the farm was ringed with a thicket of "rage trees," intangible alien flora from the invaders' home world, impassable to either of our species. The trap was the back yard, where three of the invaders would close in on their prey; with no way out but through the back wall of the shack and into the waiting arms of the rest of the invaders, their prey would have had little hope.

Apart from the stranger who was now hauling me up to safety, to an invisible ship hovering overhead, using stealth rotors to mask its sound. An invisible ship which was not only intangible like my species, but also imperceptible and cloaked to everyone.

I got the impression that, as soon as I was safe on board, this ship would have proceeded to use its weapons to reduce that farm below me to ashes.

"Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams" - LJ blog post

This comes from this Livejournal blog entry here, dated 2012 08 10.
I dreamed I was part of a small group travelling through somewhere, overland, and that we'd been forced to stay at some seemingly deserted village that was little more than a collection of buildings on either side of a little-travelled side road.
You can already guess this might not be one of the nice dreams.
The homes were surprisingly well-maintained, for all that nobody seemed to be around during the hours of daylight actually maintaining anything. Round the corner was a small bush of some sort, growing against the wall, with seven small flowers blossoming and a bunch of withered ones.
Inside that house, the party of seven, including myself, settled in to wait out the night. The main corridor showed a picture of a beautiful woman with a mane of blonde hair and proud blue eyes.
I entered a room and found what looked like the inhabitants. They were all lying about in cots, dressed in dark mourning veils, twitching spasmodically. I thought that it would be a really good time for everyone to pack up and get out, but darkness had already fallen and the first of the party was already gone, and one of the flowers withered on the bush outside as fireflies danced around them.
The other buildings turned out to be empty. Only the building we were in turned out to be inhabited, and for some reason none of the party even knew about the room with the twitching people in mourning veils.
One of the victims decided to abandon his fellow travellers and head on out. He heard a shuffling sound behind him. There was no further sound. It cut to the bush outside, and five blossoms remaining.
Back in the room with the twitching people, I saw a scroll on a bureau across the room. I had to go through the room to get it. It had a long list of words written down it. I knew I had to translate those words, but I had no idea what language it was.
That night, one more person vanished. She let off a blood-curdling scream.
Four flowers remaining open; the first three were already withered.
The party was now fighting amongst themselves, arguing that it was every man for himself. One by one, they tried to get away - none of them made it.
Then there was just me, trying my luck with the door. I made it outside, and it was broad daylight, the sun shining yellow through some dark clouds. I turned, and the people in mourning veils were in the streets, standing still, blocking my exit. Turning again, I saw their leader standing behind me. I pulled up her veil.
It was the woman from the portrait, her hair still gorgeous, but her eyes filmed over and her face pallid, sallow, lifeless.
I felt the material of her clothes, the fine fabric of her mourning veil, the cold of her hard arm beneath the fabric of her sleeve, and I said "I'm sorry." I didn't know what she or her people had done to be condemned, but I was sorry that this was done to them.
She gave me the scroll; and this time, I could see what the words read.

PRIDE
ENVY
SELFISHNESS
PACT
ACRIMONY
ACCURSED
SHUNNED
DEATH
PAIN
ETERNAL I had a pen, and I drew a line through the last word:-

PRIDE
ENVY
SELFISHNESS
PACT
ACRIMONY
ACCURSED
SHUNNED
DEATH
PAIN
ETERNAL following it up with other words in the language which I could now understand:-

PRIDE
ENVY
SELFISHNESS
PACT
ACRIMONY
ACCURSED
SHUNNED
DEATH
PAIN
ETERNAL
forgiveness
love
sacrifice
parole
rest
peace Then it was just me and the Lady. The others had gone. She touched my chest, whispered one word, "WITNESS," and she was gone.
I turned to leave, but then I noticed that all of the blossoms had withered.
I'd gone to bed at 00:00, hoping to get a good solid night's sleep. I woke up from this dream at 05:40.
Gaah.
Gaaaaah.

Orcish Dream

Sometimes, the dreams I have turn out to be inspirations for some of my writings. This one comes from 17 June 2012.


I had a dream this morning, based roughly on the Legend fantasy roleplaying game.

I was a sorcerer working with a party of adventurers I'd hired for some quest. En route home to Greentown, I and my party were coming home after a successful quest when we encountered a band of orcs. We'd surprised them; they'd surprised us. Swords drawn, growling, everyone getting ready to roll initiative.

I stepped forward and yelled "Parlay!" in Orcish. The orcs stepped back, weapons still drawn; the Orc leader took a step forwards. "Speak."

I pointed out how he had Orc glyphs drawn on his armour in what looked ike Orc blood. His own blood. I read "Honour" over his heart, "Seeking" below it and "Justice" on his right arm. I asked him if he and his party were on a blood path, and he replied that he was.

The Orc leader, Grugruk, belonged to the Bregnar family, which had been slaughtered and the two last kids abducted for unknown purposes by humans. The glyphs were "Seeking" and "Honour," meaning that he was charged with locating and retrieving these children; and "Justice," meaning righteous retribution for the family's murder.


"Honour" in blood over his heart, drawn in his blood, meant that he would either fulfill the oath or see his life's blood spilled; "Justice" on his weapon arm meant that he would not be held in fulfillment of his oath until the signs were obliterated by the blood of the enemies he'd sworn to kill. This was a matter of justice and honour, not petty vengeance; and this meant that if we'd engaged these Orcs in battle, we'd have lost.

I remembered something I'd overheard previously, before the quest we'd finished; a conversation between a ginger-haired man - blue eyes, small beard, buzz cut - and another man - black hair and beard, dark eyes - in a pub called the Stone Branch; just a snatch of conversation; "Rock Creek Park. The abandoned pavilion. They'll never find them." I thought that the orcs could start there, so I said I'd vouch for Grugruk the Orc leader and his party in town.

I and the party made our way to Rock Creek Park, where in the back of the abandoned pavilion we found two sleeping Orc kids, tied up, drugged, surrounded by chalk marks and candle stubs on the ground. I untied their bonds and woke them up with a spell; they looked terrified until I told them that Grugruk was here. I reunited Grugruk with his family, and told him we'd set a trap for the men. Grugruk said that the murderers would taste his blade; I had a different idea.

Neither of the men had the sorcerer's look about them; but the markings were sorcerous in nature. I had a feeling that the Orc kids had been the intended target of the men, and that they had been sponsored by someone in the city to procure these kids for muti.

So we needed to get the thugs, and their sponsor.

Back in town I made a point of asking around for someone who could supply me with the ingredients I needed for a powerful ritual; a ritual which requires Orc child's blood and eyeballs. Then I set up the trap in the pavilion and waited.

Presently, the two men and their sorcerer sponsor arrived, and walked into the trap we'd sprung. I Palsied the grey-haired sorcerer before he could let off a spell. The men fell to the Orcish blades; Grugruk himself made the fatal blows that despatched the mercenaries, fulfilling the Blood Oath and restoring his honour. Their blood obliterated his markings, and restored his soul.

Finally, their honour satisfied, I and my party escorted Grugruk to the city limits with their prizes; the corpses of their enemies, one mage alive but paralysed, and the last of Grugruk Bregnar's family, with promises of safety if we needed to talk to the Orcs again.

So. Sorcerer, adventurer, diplomat. And enough material for a complete Legend adventure.

Old Dream - 2012 09 14

This comes from September 14, 2012, posted originally on To Scape The Serpent's Tongue.

I dreamed of my brother Sean this morning.

We were in a room in our old house, and Sean looked more or less as he was when I last saw him. He was working on a complex computer program which was clearly beyond him. Some sort of puzzle, to work out the equations for a matrix transform that would connect some lines together to form a shape on the screen like a bevelled rectangle, or a picture of a chimneyless house roof seen from above.

I just changed a few parameters, and got one of the lines to go where it was meant to go. Sean looked up at me, and I didn't have to read his mind to know what he was going to say next.

He asked me then for my help, and his voice was not that of the adult, but of the boy I once knew, back when we were kids.

I realised that he was also kind of tipsy, and I told him "In your current state, Sean, I doubt you'd be able to solve this little puzzle without my aid."

And then part of me woke up, and the dream stopped but somehow I remained kind of asleep, in the dark behind my eyes, as if the curtains had gone down but I was still in the theatre.

And then I realised what I'd been saying, and where Sean was, and I continued, with infinite sadness and a great, crushing weight, "Indeed, in your current condition I doubt you'd be capable of doing very much at all."

Turns out both my parents had had dreams about Sean, too. His birthday is coming up very soon. We cannot go one day without missing him.

Music While Dreaming

On occasion, I put on my headphones and listen to music while I sleep. My unconscious mind incorporates the music into my dreams.

It can lead to some pretty epic dreams - like last night's.

I incorporated the snow into my dream, too. I was standing, looking over a town from a high vantage point. It was snowing, late, and the whole town seemed empty. The light from all the sodium striplights had turned everything orange, and everything felt cold and dead.

This was a flight dream - I took off and flew through the snow, looking at all the empty streets from above. When I landed, there was nothing but orange light and snow everywhere.

The Ugly Child - A Dream I Had This Morning

[X-posted to Livejournal and Dreamwidth]

I was a part of some sort of extended travelling family, run by a triumvirate of old matriarchs, adherents to this belief in something called "The Ugly Child." They had a mythology, relics, everything. The relics looked like scrimshaw sticks and little figurines, and they could have been very old ivory.

They and I moved into the house next door to the folks', the old place where we used to live before Dad was forced to sell the old place. I was in the kitchen, watching as the matriarchs laid out the various scrimshaw relics and placed them on a sort of shrine.

A while later, I bumped into a beautiful local girl, and took an immediate shine to her. For some reason, the matriarchs did not like that, so they arranged for the two of us to play a video game, and rigged it so she would win.

Next thing is, the matriarchs were all taunting me, saying things like "Go on. You wouldn't want it to be said that you got beaten at a video game by a girl, would you?" and things designed to drive a wedge between me and this unsuitable candidate for mating. It did not have the desired effect; I figured the game had been rigged, but not by the woman I fancied, and I told the matriarchs what to go and do with themselves. Next thing I knew, everyone was packing up their scrimshaw and making tracks.

In the next part of the dream, I was merely observing as the girl came into the house, which was now empty barring some small items on the kitchen table - a video game, a small figurine, a letter from me and the deeds to the house, signed over to her.

The letter told her that the house has been mine, but I had now signed it over to her instead, and that she should look after it well, and hopefully that it would give her good memories to cherish. I then told her that I and the matriarchs had parted company, and that I was off to find my own fortune. She would not see me here in this place again.

I also told her that the myths the matriarchs had been telling had all been about me. I was their Ugly Child, and they'd wasted half my life secretly trying to cockblock me from falling in love with, and becoming attached to, any woman who came my way because they, in their haughty arrogance, had secretly decided that no woman was ever going to be good enough for their chosen one - their Ugly Child.

To Sleep. Perchance To Dream.

Welcome to my brand new blog!

I've maintained a whole lot of blogs over the years, most of which are general purpose (To Scape The Serpent's Tongue, The Plainclothes Clown, Musings of the Welsh Warlock) but some of which are specialised (Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog, Hypnotic Erotic).

This will be one of the specialist blogs. Its purpose is to document and catalogue different dreams I have, and have had, over the course of my lifetime.

This blog will also look into various phenomena relating to sleep, dreams, nightmares, night terrors, sleep paralysis and so on, including articles covering myths, mythologies and legends concerning sleep and dreams.

So just sit back, knock back that camomile tea, take a last bite of that cheese and settle back. It's going to be weird tonight ...