Dream
So I had another interesting dream.
So it was evening, and I'd been waiting in line at the office of some magistrate or official of some sort. I wasn't entirely aware of why I was there at first, but then after about "half an hour" of waiting, the banquet was called and I knew why: We were all there for some wedding of notable (or just wealthy) peoples. I was friends with the... groom's family, I think. So after another long wait, I decided to go see why neither bride nor groom had shown. I casually strolled into the back kitchen/small dining area...
And was somehow not terribly surprised to find myself on the flanks of an armed standoff between bride's Russian family and groom's Irish family. There was great opposition to the marriage from both sides, you see, as the Russians and the Irish were two feuding powers in town. It was so bad that even some of the bridesmaids in these relatively traditional families were packing heat and drawing down. There were shouts of "I'll shoot you you sonofabitch!" and the like, so I came whipping around the corner, hollered something like, "Hold it hold it hold it, nobody's shooting anybody!" and drew a Walther P99 in my left to sort of vaguely hold towards the Irish family and a ViS wz.35 in my right, which was brandished towards the Russian family. The lights were off in the darkened kitchen, so I had flicked on the light mounted on an underbarrel rail on the ViS.
I remember the ViS more distinctly (the Walther was less clear in my mind). I knew it was not a Colt M1911, but the Polish 9mm design from WWII that was based on it. One of the Russians, who I knew and had considered a friend and thus not a threat, came up to grab at the ViS. I had a sudden knowledge that he was Polish and had always wanted the weapon as a matter of ethnic pride, so I slapped at him and told him "Not now!" But he shook his head and pointed to it: He'd turned the light off. It makes sense, I was illuminating his cousin, the main instigator in the Russian family. I was making him a great target for the Irish boys, who were far from innocent... And, as I think about it more now, was also setting myself up as a target too: If I'm the reason their boss got killed, guess who the Russians would be gunning for next?
So I tilted my right, reached over with my left to turn the light back on (not a grip or trigger light, just a switch on the light's housing... I remember chastising myself on that decision). As soon as it flickered back on, the shooting started. The Polish cousin was a weasely sort, I think he fired a few shots aimlessly while retreating forthwith. My view of the bride's family was largely blocked by some cabinets; instead of actually shooting at people I could see, I fired into the cabinets, hoping that the wood and contents would slow the rounds down enough to merely injure and suppress those behind them, encouraging them to flee. The splinters, likewise I had hopes for.
I dumped ammo into those cabinets like there was no tomorrow, at least for the first few seconds. I remember dropping 6 rounds from each, and thinking about how I only had one mag for each. (There was also a moment of lucid-dreaming where I felt like I should have carried 2 more for each, and the reality started to change to that, then I decided that would be cheap and twinkish: Carrying a brace of pistols to a wedding was ridiculous enough, being loaded for war would just be twinkish.) Two more rounds from each pistol and I decided to slow it down and keep just a little under half a mag each in reserve, so I popped shots 10 and 12 (must have had an aftermarket double-stack in the ViS) into the cabinets and ducked down behind the counter-tops.
The shooting stopped moments later, and I came around the cabinets. Could I feel glad that my Irish friends had won? Not at all, for what had they won? They accomplished their hot-headed goals of the moment, but this was no victory. I was relieved that few of them had been hurt, but also angry at them: Most of the bridal party involved int he showdown had been killed, ensuring a blood feud. The wedding was of course a bust, a love would most likely die here as well.
And while I had failed to keep the firefight from occurring, I was even more disturbed by what I saw: Directly opposite those cabinets I'd been shooting into were most of the dead bodies, fallen into something of a fan pattern in a line from where I had been shooting. It's possible that the Irishmen had killed them; that area was completely exposed to the Mics, after all. Nevertheless I had the distinct but low-grade fear that I had been the one to fire the fatal shots on most if not all of them. Thankfully it was not that dream-knowledge, where you know something as an absolute fact, but I'm sure it would have bothered me for the rest of my life. Especially since one of the perforated bridesmaids did not seem to have a gun anywhere near her hands.
The dream started to lose cohesion after that, and I remember that I was far more fascinated by a Bible one of the Russians had carried: It had dents and holes in the pages from the volume of fire that had hit it directly or via deflection, and I remember I wanted to keep it... right before waking up.
This was a hell of a dream, action and awesome in one, and beats the droll crap I've had the last couple of weeks. But it wasn't just the action. It wasn't just the historically significant ViS pistol showing up. I'm more happy I had it because it wasn't a videogame firefight. It was frightening, lucky, and had a moral impact. I do believe from past experience that I would be relatively unconcerned like this at first, and maybe even autonomously distracting myself from the carnage and consequences by fixating on a bullet-ridden Bible. But I reiterate, this wasn't just a shooting-gallery dream. If it had continued, I know that the "next day," the impact of what I'd seen, what I'd done, would have hit me much harder.
Probably like a .22 in the base of the skull, if it were taken to its realistic end.
So it was evening, and I'd been waiting in line at the office of some magistrate or official of some sort. I wasn't entirely aware of why I was there at first, but then after about "half an hour" of waiting, the banquet was called and I knew why: We were all there for some wedding of notable (or just wealthy) peoples. I was friends with the... groom's family, I think. So after another long wait, I decided to go see why neither bride nor groom had shown. I casually strolled into the back kitchen/small dining area...
And was somehow not terribly surprised to find myself on the flanks of an armed standoff between bride's Russian family and groom's Irish family. There was great opposition to the marriage from both sides, you see, as the Russians and the Irish were two feuding powers in town. It was so bad that even some of the bridesmaids in these relatively traditional families were packing heat and drawing down. There were shouts of "I'll shoot you you sonofabitch!" and the like, so I came whipping around the corner, hollered something like, "Hold it hold it hold it, nobody's shooting anybody!" and drew a Walther P99 in my left to sort of vaguely hold towards the Irish family and a ViS wz.35 in my right, which was brandished towards the Russian family. The lights were off in the darkened kitchen, so I had flicked on the light mounted on an underbarrel rail on the ViS.
I remember the ViS more distinctly (the Walther was less clear in my mind). I knew it was not a Colt M1911, but the Polish 9mm design from WWII that was based on it. One of the Russians, who I knew and had considered a friend and thus not a threat, came up to grab at the ViS. I had a sudden knowledge that he was Polish and had always wanted the weapon as a matter of ethnic pride, so I slapped at him and told him "Not now!" But he shook his head and pointed to it: He'd turned the light off. It makes sense, I was illuminating his cousin, the main instigator in the Russian family. I was making him a great target for the Irish boys, who were far from innocent... And, as I think about it more now, was also setting myself up as a target too: If I'm the reason their boss got killed, guess who the Russians would be gunning for next?
So I tilted my right, reached over with my left to turn the light back on (not a grip or trigger light, just a switch on the light's housing... I remember chastising myself on that decision). As soon as it flickered back on, the shooting started. The Polish cousin was a weasely sort, I think he fired a few shots aimlessly while retreating forthwith. My view of the bride's family was largely blocked by some cabinets; instead of actually shooting at people I could see, I fired into the cabinets, hoping that the wood and contents would slow the rounds down enough to merely injure and suppress those behind them, encouraging them to flee. The splinters, likewise I had hopes for.
I dumped ammo into those cabinets like there was no tomorrow, at least for the first few seconds. I remember dropping 6 rounds from each, and thinking about how I only had one mag for each. (There was also a moment of lucid-dreaming where I felt like I should have carried 2 more for each, and the reality started to change to that, then I decided that would be cheap and twinkish: Carrying a brace of pistols to a wedding was ridiculous enough, being loaded for war would just be twinkish.) Two more rounds from each pistol and I decided to slow it down and keep just a little under half a mag each in reserve, so I popped shots 10 and 12 (must have had an aftermarket double-stack in the ViS) into the cabinets and ducked down behind the counter-tops.
The shooting stopped moments later, and I came around the cabinets. Could I feel glad that my Irish friends had won? Not at all, for what had they won? They accomplished their hot-headed goals of the moment, but this was no victory. I was relieved that few of them had been hurt, but also angry at them: Most of the bridal party involved int he showdown had been killed, ensuring a blood feud. The wedding was of course a bust, a love would most likely die here as well.
And while I had failed to keep the firefight from occurring, I was even more disturbed by what I saw: Directly opposite those cabinets I'd been shooting into were most of the dead bodies, fallen into something of a fan pattern in a line from where I had been shooting. It's possible that the Irishmen had killed them; that area was completely exposed to the Mics, after all. Nevertheless I had the distinct but low-grade fear that I had been the one to fire the fatal shots on most if not all of them. Thankfully it was not that dream-knowledge, where you know something as an absolute fact, but I'm sure it would have bothered me for the rest of my life. Especially since one of the perforated bridesmaids did not seem to have a gun anywhere near her hands.
The dream started to lose cohesion after that, and I remember that I was far more fascinated by a Bible one of the Russians had carried: It had dents and holes in the pages from the volume of fire that had hit it directly or via deflection, and I remember I wanted to keep it... right before waking up.
This was a hell of a dream, action and awesome in one, and beats the droll crap I've had the last couple of weeks. But it wasn't just the action. It wasn't just the historically significant ViS pistol showing up. I'm more happy I had it because it wasn't a videogame firefight. It was frightening, lucky, and had a moral impact. I do believe from past experience that I would be relatively unconcerned like this at first, and maybe even autonomously distracting myself from the carnage and consequences by fixating on a bullet-ridden Bible. But I reiterate, this wasn't just a shooting-gallery dream. If it had continued, I know that the "next day," the impact of what I'd seen, what I'd done, would have hit me much harder.
Probably like a .22 in the base of the skull, if it were taken to its realistic end.