What Dreams May Come (Volume III)

Dreams are a strange and ethereal experience. After all, what the mind makes real can be perceived as being real indeed. We've all watched The Matrix, so that should make some sort of sense. Of course, dreams are common and widely varied. Some feel almost entirely real, while others not real at all. Some fade from the memory almost at once, while others remain in the mind for much longer, and only fade with the passage of time.

A few months ago I had a dream of exceeding strangeness, and it has remained with me. It's still almost as fresh in my mind as it was the morning I awoke from it. The strangeness is such that I almost question whether I should share it with the world or not. Will readers think of me as a lunatic for not only having, but sharing such a dream? Then I remember previous articles I've written, such as this one, or this one, but especially this one, and realize that it's far too late to be worried about that.

And so, without further ado, here is my dream.

So often in dreams there is no real explanation to why something is taking place. There's no background story, so to speak. You find yourself in a situation, you know what is happening, but you have no idea why it's taking place. That's one of the many petty annoyances of waking life. Usually in the dream state one is not particularly concerned about such details. And so I have no idea why, in my dream in question, I found myself attempting to summon a dragon.

That's right, you did not misread that. It says summon a dragon. I know what you're thinking — why in the name of high school football would I want to summon a dragon? Of course, we already established in the previous paragraph that I have no idea why I sought to summon this mythical beast. If you really need an answer, well, were you to call down some fantastical creature of myth, what are you going to choose, a unicorn, a centaur or something comparably wussy? A griffon or a minotaur maybe, but let's face it, when you absolutely, positively need to have the most powerful mythical beast in the room, accept no substitutes. You want a dragon, and that's that.

I have a pretty good idea what the next question is — how was I going to summon this dragon? Well, that's easy. By collecting various magical items and burning them in a random bonfire on a beach. How else are you going to summon a dragon?

The first part of this dream consisted of collecting the magical items to burn. No, I don't remember what any of the items were, for those of you out there seeking to summon your own dragon. I think there may have been some eye of newt or some such stuff. I don't recall having any difficulty gathering the needed combustibles. I do recall being at a beach bonfire with some other unidentified people, who presumably were either there to see the dragon, or were completely unaware of what was taking place and were about to be scared out of their minds.

So often in dreams things change suddenly and without reason or warning. And thus it was in this dream. No dragon arrived, and all of us around the fire looked up to admire the stars, for there were many stars that night. Some of the stars appeared to be moving in patterns. It soon became apparent that these were not stars at all. No, these were alien spacecraft engaged in battle far above our heads. Lots of them. It was a spectacular sight to view, or at least it was until one of the damaged spacecraft crashed to the ground not far from our location.

I should point out that our location was no longer a beach. At some point while watching the skies that had changed. Also, the fire was gone. And we weren't even outside, but rather in some sort of cabin in a forest. And somehow we had a piece of debris from the crashed alien ship with us. This became a much larger concern when an alien ship landed outside.

We knew somehow that the aliens wanted this debris, but we weren't sure how hostile they would be to us. Everyone else was just waiting around for the aliens to enter the cabin, hoping I suppose that once they had completed their retrieval, they would leave us in peace. Me, I had a better plan. I hid.

Let me assure you that when I'm awake my hiding skills are fairly adequate. In this dream, these skills were sorely lacking. The cabin had a short wall to the left of the the door that protruded maybe three feet into the cabin. Upon entering the cabin you could not see anything behind this wall. After taking one and a half steps and turning around, you could see everything behind this wall. This is where I chose to hide.

In my defense, we left the alien debris near and to the right of the door, so there was no real reason for the alien to come around to the left and find me. That's exactly what he did, though, once he entered. He ignored the other people, he ignored the spacecraft debris, and came right around that little wall and grabbed me, and tossed me across the cabin. I think I may have landed on a bed, so it wasn't all that painful.

The alien, I should point out, looked completely human, and was if I recall correctly wearing an outfit that can be best described as 'business casual.' He paid no further heed to me or to the others in the cabin, but merely picked up the chunk of debris and left as quickly as he had arrived. Moments later we saw the lights of his ship taking off. It was about this time that I woke up.

Thus the dream ended with a sense of closure often lacking from dreams. Although, I have to admit that when I look back on the dream I'm somewhat disappointed that I never did manage to summon that dragon.