I woke up to my friend Aaron shaking me awake; apparently I was sleeping in his house, I think on a couch. I was so tired and hating life, and told him to screw off; I needed sleep otherwise I’d go insane! Aaron didn’t speak, but just kept on being a pain and shoving me awake. His wife Lex, sleeping in the living room on another couch, was within eyesight and looked up at her pest of a husband.
Eventually I could take it no more, so I got up and went after him…he tried to duck his body on the couch and I started hitting him, closed fist pounding down on his back like Donkey Kong not too hard, but enough to make him leave me alone. Once I figured he got the message I went to the other room, walked past Lex, and I just laid on the floor…finally finding a restful spot to sleep.
Lex was talking to me but I couldn’t really hear her, and I tried talking back to her but my voice wasn’t working. That’s strange. I tried again…my sound cracked a little but wouldn’t properly come out. Now that was strange! I thought, I’ll do a state-check…but couldn’t be…right finger through left palm…see, not dreaming…oh wait, and oh gross…a little skin flap opened and my finger went through my hand. WHAT? I guess am dreaming! Well, at least my waking body was finally getting some sleep!
Now, what to do…my current goal was to get on top of a roof. The only problem was, I was in a dark house with no windows. Should I change goals? Nah, screw it, let’s just go through the wall. I ran towards the dark wall in the dark house and tried body-checking into it. Sweet: right through! Hmm, actually not exactly…all I saw was darkness. Was I stuck in the cursed wall?
I closed my eyes and then found myself outside, waking up on a sidewalk outside a commercial condo strip mall. I thought I had woken up in my waking life! Elway (from Dexter) was there beside me, seemed to be a shopkeeper, standing outside his establishment door to start the morning. I was too tired to think straight, nor cared if it was daylight or not, as I curled up on the sidewalk wanting to get some much needed sleep. I gave Elway a final look, sorry that I was picking his establishment to sleep in front of. He had a comical look on his face with a wry smile, seeming to notice that I was an inch from exhaustion and just needed a place to crash. I tried to explain my circumstances to him before drifting off but my voice wasn’t working…hmm, I must be too tired, let’s try that again…still not working.
Haven’t we played this game? Now I was really confused as I was just in a lucid dream…how could I be dreaming after waking up? I did what I thought was a pointless state-check to verify, and sure enough the gross skin-flap version of it happened again, my finger going through my palm. WHAT? I guess I am dreaming again! Wow, these false awakenings mess me up!
At this point I felt instantly rejuvenated…now it was on! There was a tall building beside me, about 3-storeys high, though I didn’t notice any windows or doors. 3-storeys, eh? Of course my brain couldn’t give me a nice 1-storey building to complete my current goal of getting on a rooftop, but such is life. I accepted the challenge and was about to try running up the wall but then said, ‘Screw it, I’ll just jump.’ I started jumping and ‘Woosh’! I leaped straight up in the air, my vision a blur, and it looked and felt like I could’ve gone to the moon! But when I stopped I looked and had only made it half way up the building, and was kinda stuck there, just floating in the air. I looked down and saw Julianne Moore (red-headed detective actress) on the ground, looking up at me smiling. She seemed happy for me.
I looked back up towards the roof, wanting to complete my goal to make it all the way. Hmm, how to move…I started swimming in the air like a breast-stroke, and it was working, getting me higher, just a little slow for my liking. Then I gained a little confidence…while looking at Julianne I put my arms down against my sides, put my palms facing out, and then did a tiny flutter with my fingers (so keeping the bottom half of my hand quite still), and just did a weird flapping “up” “up” motion, all my fingers in unison, and sure enough up I went, sort of showing off to her as she just looked up and smiled. I quickly reached the top of the roof, black shingles I saw, and landed on it…current goal of getting on the roof of a building complete!
I was still awake in the dream, which was unusual for me following a successful goal, normally I wake up afterwards. Hmm, what should I do now? I jumped back down to the base of the building and found that I was on some sort of very strange urban cliff overlooking a massive dream city. The atmosphere seemed a lot like Vegas, buzzing and full of life, but not quite as commercial as Vegas looks. As I looked around, I couldn’t believe how vivid everything was, so clear, so colorful! Luckily in this dream I didn’t have my normal waking-life “short-sighted” eyes…I could see with such crystal clarity! I stood there to try to take it all in, looking all around with this wonderful dream-vision…the city...the whole dream city…and the sky, the amazing sky!
The sky had been something that I’d been meaning to look at, as is typically very rare…perhaps have never seen it in a dream, and definitely not like this. Everything was so clear, not like my usual hazy dreams, and there was so much going on, sort of a whole packed magical world, and such beautiful colours! I wish I was an artist or could take a snapshot of this somehow. The sky spanned over the city in amazing multi-colored brilliance and beyond…then was another suburb town way off on the horizon, with greenery, and clear blue skies over it (kind of neat seeing different colored skies over different areas) and some light poking through from the horizon as if there may have been a sun just coming up or setting.
As I was completely wonderstruck admiring this dream setting, I contemplated what to try next. I then remembered a Reddit post IRL about lightning earlier that day, and I commented on a guy’s response as he said he actually got struck by lightning once…lmao. Okay, I thought, ‘Let’s make lightning.’ Hmm, might be hard as it’s currently a nice bright sunny day, breathtaking sky over the city with no clouds…hmm, oh, over the distant suburb town in its plain blue sky there, I could see two small fluffy white clouds. I stuck out my hands like a sorcerer and tried to will lightning out of the two clouds, and sure enough, in that piece of the dreamverse miles and miles away, one of the clouds started sparking and igniting and moving around quite quickly. It was working!
Then the poor blue skies darkened over there, which was a shame but at least it would be easier to see the lightning. Then the second cloud jumped in, sparking. They then started producing lightning, success!
But then they seemed to grow a mind of their own, as they continued moving around the sky almost seemingly to terrorize all who stood below. I was picturing the poor people in panic, probably wondering where the heck this freak lightning storm came from, and how these insane lightning-spewing clouds chased them! The darkness and mood of the storm extended rapidly and its fringes started to reach all the way over to where I stood. Wowzers! I looked up in the sky, small lightning striking horizontally here, vertically there, this wasn’t quite shaping up as planned! Thinking of the guy on Reddit with the funny response that he got struck by lightning, I thought. ‘Oh great, this stupid lightning so out of control is likely to hit me!’ My hands that were out trying to spin clouds and will the lightning now felt like an exposed lightning rod, and I winced in preparation to be struck. Then I thought, ‘Hey, now might be a good time to change things up!’
I looked back at the furthest reaches, being the darkest and the root of all this weather, and tried to will it to become a nice sunny beach scene, believing it would be easier to change a faraway scene I couldn’t really see than a close one. The sky slowly lightened and looked like blue skies again with a warm glow, mixed with browns, so potentially there was sand down below. Sweet! Hmm, now how to get there to see my created dream beach? I was still up on this urban cliff overlooking the whole city, and the potential beach I may have created was way past it at the next suburb town…geez that’s far! I’d never walk all the way there…maybe it was time to try one of my ultimate goals I made when I had first started with lucid dreaming - flying.
I looked at the beach in the far horizon, looked at the urban cliff in front of me, and thought screw it, let’s try! I ran towards the edge of the cliff I was on, and there was a little step there for me, as if the dream created my own personal jumping platform. As I neared it I thought, ‘Hope this works!’ praying I wouldn’t fall to my death. I leaped off, Superman-style, looking directly towards the far potential beach I had hopefully created, and...success!
Woooohoooo! Flight! My first real, non-kite flying, non-hovering, pure bonafide horizontal flight! I was amazed at it, and what’s more, I finally felt the ‘tingling feeling’ other lucid dreamers mention while they fly...like your body is full of moving energy, tingling all over...
As I looked down, I saw I was passing over a large lovely fountain. I was reveling in the sensation of the tingling and vibrating which grew so strong it was hurting my tooth a little, which in my waking body is currently broken. I closed my jaw-dropped mouth (didn’t even know it was open) to silence the brief pain and continued towards the beach, still stupidly far away. About halfway across the city I looked down in the streets and caught a glimpse of two girls. I thought, “I suppose a little detour couldn’t hurt.” I’ll stop there ;-)
This article was released in issue from
June 2021
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