Dreams 10/16
AS FURTHEST BACK I REMEMBER
Myself and a classmate were graduating High School, and leading the Middle School students on a tour of their new classes. Specifically the science room. We led them through the school Bay House, which was just a big open building with benches that was so close to the Ocean spray from the rocks often flew in through the doors. There were two: One leading to the path back to the Middle School, and one leading up a path into the rocky crags of the shore.
The teacher took us aside and told us that this was the time to make way for the new students by getting the older students to give things up. So as we led the tour, we should steal as many textbooks and props and academic aids as possible, to be returned to the Middle School.
We did this with excellent grace. The other graduating student might have been Griffin Simpson. But older, and more Greaser-y. He kept combing his hair.
The Science teacher was Mr. Haas, who I haven't heard from in a while, and we robbed his classroom blind while he was teaching in it. He was distracted by all the little tots in the hall and apparently I was missing homework. I told him my textbook had gone missing and without the little table of engineering standards in the back, it was impossible to complete. "I don't know what little symbol this is," I told him. "It's an O," he said. "No, actually, it's an Omega. But I don't know what it's supposed to MEAN, embedded in the middle of a number like that. A unit type? Something?"
I wound up stealing an extra-old textbook for myself to replace the ones I had lost.
(I lost probably a thousand dollars worth of textbooks in highschool, because I lived in two houses. But I definitely didn't STEAL any of them. In real life. Though I did smarm my way into replacements.)
When we get out of the building, it is Australia. I am trying to remember how we GOT to school because I offered some folks rides home but forgot that I didn't drive us there, it was Raine (HAHA She can't drive in real life!) but somehow she went back to Colin's house and left it there? The logistics were confusing.
Somehow eventually we all got a ride.
There is a conversation in the car that eventually gets to the point where I say, "... and anyway dinosaurs are all extinct."
And Penny and Brennan give me these looks (don't ask me how the car became different people) that say I have said something wrong. But I am fairly sure all the dinosaurs are extinct, except for some lame holdovers, so I say, "Well, aside from crocodiles and certain birds but they'd don't count at all!"
And then Brennan starts arguing with me about whether Dinosaurs are extinct and then GIANT THINGS START MOVING ALONG THE TWISTED TREES. Whoever is driving sort of speeds up but otherwise performs ADMIRABLY in not FLIPPING THE HELL OUT.
So these things. Some of them look like classic tyrannosaurs, if tyrannosaurs were made of was and were melted a bunch. They have huge heads, but no arm-limbs, or, sometimes, one HUGE armlimb, and their torsos are bulgy and lumpy and they have huge tumors on their heads and legs. They are brown.
Others of the giant things look like tree-men composed of woven vines and roots and saplings with tiny heads and ENORMOUS arms. And there were more horrific things I can't even remember clearly, but they were uniformly the height of the trees nearby, and brown. Most of them were distracted terrorizing other cars on the road or fighting the electrical wires (which came up to their chests). A few took notice of us, though, and tried to chase after us, but they were sluggish and sort of pitiful in their way.
There were other bizarre scenes, too. One that sticks out in my mind was a grove where twelve trees arranged in a rough set of two circles had had all their lower branches woven together and across the intervening space to form a giant wicker pentagram.
Everyone was panicking (except the driver). My form of panicking came as CONTINUING TO ARGUE THAT DINOSAURS WERE EXTINCT, mainly by citing that these could not POSSIBLY be dinosaurs. They looked more like mutant sludge monsters. Or maybe they were zombies or maybe they were TREE ROBOTS, since some of them seemed to be made out of wood.
And then a bleeding tyrannosaur-type staggered out of the woods, and Raine, I guess, swerved the car to the left to avoid getting stomped and half of us rolled out of the car to flee. But after a moment the tyrannosaurthing shrieked and a fifty-foot lash of leafy vines SHOT out of its chest and snaked across the road as it collapsed to the ground.
"Ahah!" I said, "See?! Clearly druidic magic at work here! And there's the holy symbol... thingy!"
On the big bulby growth that jutted out in the middle of the tyrannosaur's forehead, a red star inside a red crescent moon appeared. Meanwhile, the color drained out of the rest of the monster.
"We just need to look that up," I said.
And Brennan was like, "Actually, my grandma lives not far from here! She knows all about this kind of holy symbols. And she has wifi."
So we went to Brennan's grandma's house. I think the implication was that the degree of separation between Brennan and his mom was the same degree of separation between Brennan's mom and HER mom, in terms of knowledge of the occult and of pagan symbolism. (That probably isn't true in real life. I bet Brennan's grandma is a hardcore Christian. But that's a question for him to answer.)
In any case, I was in extreme awe and intimidation of meeting this woman.
Brennan's Grandma's house had sunken deep into the ground, so that the only entrance was a kind of hayloft door very near the roof. There was a little rickety porch leading up to it an everything. We all had to duck to get inside, and we were all sort of panicked because we were hearing this periodic slithering noise following us. So getting inside was something of a hassel, because of the strange arrangements. I was the last one in, and I couldn't figure out how to get the swinging doors to stay closed. Brennan was shouting at me not to close the door, but I was going to close those damn doors no matter what. Eventually I did, but it didn't particularly matter, because a swift breeze would open it and there was no way to block or lock it shut.
We climbed down a ladder into the main room of Brennnan's grandma's house. It was a tight space that descended further. You know how raised ranch houses have a hallway and a living room? Take that same space and halve it. The hallway went across overlooking two staircases but terminated immediately in a door. The kitchen seemed sizeable, but the other end of the living room and hallway had an ancient computer on it covered in nick-nacks and a single sofa. There was no natural light anywhere, because we were practically underground. Most of the light seemed to come from candles in the kitchen.
Griffin Johnston was already on the computer when we arrived and sat around the space, shell-shocked. He was pretty annoyed that Colin and I started shouting at him IMMEDIATELY to google "Red Moon in Star" and "Red Moon Eating Star" and "Red Moon Eating Sun", because he hadn't been outside and didn't realize how important it was. We didn't find anything.
Meanwhile, Brennan had gone to talk to his Grandma. He came back out after a bit and told Griffin to google "Red Robert Mazely."
But before we had a chance to, there was a crackle of thunder downstairs, and we all rushed down there. There was a tall adult man in old leathery armor and a cowl and cloak, and he had an animeishly large claymore which he pounded into the middle of the floor, knocking everyone to the walls with a blast of wind.
But Brennan had had a kitchen knife in his hand from upstairs that was knocked loose, and as it caromed past the claymore it took a definite chunk out of itself. And I was like, "WOAH HEY," and the man started delivering an evil monolog about how he would crush us and when he turned his back to look at the rest of the group I crawled forward and grabbed the knife and started cutting the HECK out of the claymore, which was still embedded in the center of the floor.
The knife went through it really easily. Probably because Brennan's Grandma had blessed all of her cutlery or something and the claymore was a symbol of the man's power. It also became apparent that this guy was probably Red Robert Mazely because the same symbol was etched into the claymore's pommel.
Anyway there lightning that forked all around me, barely missing me (probably because of Granma Lee's knife), and Red Robert Mazely started shouting cursewords that he hadn't zap-fried me and that I had screwed up his sword. There was another enormous blast of wind like you wouldn't believe that knocked the knife out of my hand.
This went on for a while like a predictable boss battle, with the knife flying away, and one of us creeping forward to get it, then passing it to someone else like some kind of shell game, until we could mess up his sword, at which point he would peg everyone with wind and the knife would go flying again.
Eventually he got wise to this, but he could never directly influence the knife and didn't seem capable of touching it, so mostly he just blew it around until EVENTUALLY someone threw it through his symbol and he shrieked and flickered.
We went back upstairs and Grandma Lee was annoyed at how messed up her room was so we explained that it wasn't our fault, that Robert Mazely had shown up and tried to kill us all. She seemed mollified. She also didn't seem particularly panicked that Red Robert Mazely was attacking Australia (where, remember, we were) but told us we should do something about it.
Darn Gandalf Kenobis.
In any case, we went back upstairs and googled Red Robert Mazely.
AS WE LEARNED ABOUT HIM, THE DREAM CUTAWAY'D to Red Robert Mazely, as an adult, walking out of the school from earlier. He began to talk to a fat old crow, who was disappointing him, so he threatened it and told it to go fetch his other selves.
Red Robert Mazely was a wicked, wicked man who lived long ago in a forgotten time when the whole world had been explored and magic was still rife. He possessed the ability to control storms and had travelled the world in that fashion, committing heinous deeds.
Three of the deeds he did were so terrible that his spirit(s) were doomed to walk the Earth until such a time as they could be redeemed. His young boy self had committed a terrible act of fratricide, and was preserved. His adult self have started a wholesale genocide of a nation in America (at the time ruled by the predecessor of the Iroquois Nation) and was thus preserved. And his elderly self had lost all humanity, becoming a twisted, goblin-like monster, and was thus preserved.
Uh, as we were reading about this on the internet, the dream was focused on Red Robert Mazely.
His boy self was fairly innocent-seeming. Sad, almost. He was a pudgy kid wearing a frock, but I recognized him as being one of the schoolkids that I had helped give a tour of the High School.
I also suddenly realized that his stormwalking abilities explained storms off the coast of China and Ireland I had dreamt about MUCH earlier, earlier than I remember the dream having happened. My subconscious may have made it up to seem like it could foreshadow.
The group decided in a voiceover over watching Red Robert Mazely that the storms had dredged these terrible creatures up from the depths of the ocean, where of course they had come from. Except for the trees, which answered to Elder Monster Mazely.
Young Mazely met up with the crow, who said he was going to carry him across the ocean to meet with his older selves. The boy consented, but said he was probably too heavy for the crow to carry, no matter how magic the crow was. The crow lifted off with the boy grabbing his talons and agreed, and told Adult Mazely that there was no way he could carry his younger self all the way across the ocean. Adult Mazely said something about the crow being useless, and suddenly it found its wings being buoyed up by high-intensity winds. A sea storm was starting. I don't think Adult Mazely was actually THERE. The crow was probably some sort of familiar, communicating telepathically.
I think I may have been the crow for most of this sequence. Certainly most of this was from the crow's point of view.
The Mazelies were headed for darkest Africa, where Old Monster-Man Mazely was hiding, and doing his dark works.
Meanwhile, the gang at Grandma Lee's had started to climb back up out of her house, to go search for more clues and reduce the damage being done to Hometown, Australia.
But that's about when I started waking up.
Myself and a classmate were graduating High School, and leading the Middle School students on a tour of their new classes. Specifically the science room. We led them through the school Bay House, which was just a big open building with benches that was so close to the Ocean spray from the rocks often flew in through the doors. There were two: One leading to the path back to the Middle School, and one leading up a path into the rocky crags of the shore.
The teacher took us aside and told us that this was the time to make way for the new students by getting the older students to give things up. So as we led the tour, we should steal as many textbooks and props and academic aids as possible, to be returned to the Middle School.
We did this with excellent grace. The other graduating student might have been Griffin Simpson. But older, and more Greaser-y. He kept combing his hair.
The Science teacher was Mr. Haas, who I haven't heard from in a while, and we robbed his classroom blind while he was teaching in it. He was distracted by all the little tots in the hall and apparently I was missing homework. I told him my textbook had gone missing and without the little table of engineering standards in the back, it was impossible to complete. "I don't know what little symbol this is," I told him. "It's an O," he said. "No, actually, it's an Omega. But I don't know what it's supposed to MEAN, embedded in the middle of a number like that. A unit type? Something?"
I wound up stealing an extra-old textbook for myself to replace the ones I had lost.
(I lost probably a thousand dollars worth of textbooks in highschool, because I lived in two houses. But I definitely didn't STEAL any of them. In real life. Though I did smarm my way into replacements.)
When we get out of the building, it is Australia. I am trying to remember how we GOT to school because I offered some folks rides home but forgot that I didn't drive us there, it was Raine (HAHA She can't drive in real life!) but somehow she went back to Colin's house and left it there? The logistics were confusing.
Somehow eventually we all got a ride.
There is a conversation in the car that eventually gets to the point where I say, "... and anyway dinosaurs are all extinct."
And Penny and Brennan give me these looks (don't ask me how the car became different people) that say I have said something wrong. But I am fairly sure all the dinosaurs are extinct, except for some lame holdovers, so I say, "Well, aside from crocodiles and certain birds but they'd don't count at all!"
And then Brennan starts arguing with me about whether Dinosaurs are extinct and then GIANT THINGS START MOVING ALONG THE TWISTED TREES. Whoever is driving sort of speeds up but otherwise performs ADMIRABLY in not FLIPPING THE HELL OUT.
So these things. Some of them look like classic tyrannosaurs, if tyrannosaurs were made of was and were melted a bunch. They have huge heads, but no arm-limbs, or, sometimes, one HUGE armlimb, and their torsos are bulgy and lumpy and they have huge tumors on their heads and legs. They are brown.
Others of the giant things look like tree-men composed of woven vines and roots and saplings with tiny heads and ENORMOUS arms. And there were more horrific things I can't even remember clearly, but they were uniformly the height of the trees nearby, and brown. Most of them were distracted terrorizing other cars on the road or fighting the electrical wires (which came up to their chests). A few took notice of us, though, and tried to chase after us, but they were sluggish and sort of pitiful in their way.
There were other bizarre scenes, too. One that sticks out in my mind was a grove where twelve trees arranged in a rough set of two circles had had all their lower branches woven together and across the intervening space to form a giant wicker pentagram.
Everyone was panicking (except the driver). My form of panicking came as CONTINUING TO ARGUE THAT DINOSAURS WERE EXTINCT, mainly by citing that these could not POSSIBLY be dinosaurs. They looked more like mutant sludge monsters. Or maybe they were zombies or maybe they were TREE ROBOTS, since some of them seemed to be made out of wood.
And then a bleeding tyrannosaur-type staggered out of the woods, and Raine, I guess, swerved the car to the left to avoid getting stomped and half of us rolled out of the car to flee. But after a moment the tyrannosaurthing shrieked and a fifty-foot lash of leafy vines SHOT out of its chest and snaked across the road as it collapsed to the ground.
"Ahah!" I said, "See?! Clearly druidic magic at work here! And there's the holy symbol... thingy!"
On the big bulby growth that jutted out in the middle of the tyrannosaur's forehead, a red star inside a red crescent moon appeared. Meanwhile, the color drained out of the rest of the monster.
"We just need to look that up," I said.
And Brennan was like, "Actually, my grandma lives not far from here! She knows all about this kind of holy symbols. And she has wifi."
So we went to Brennan's grandma's house. I think the implication was that the degree of separation between Brennan and his mom was the same degree of separation between Brennan's mom and HER mom, in terms of knowledge of the occult and of pagan symbolism. (That probably isn't true in real life. I bet Brennan's grandma is a hardcore Christian. But that's a question for him to answer.)
In any case, I was in extreme awe and intimidation of meeting this woman.
Brennan's Grandma's house had sunken deep into the ground, so that the only entrance was a kind of hayloft door very near the roof. There was a little rickety porch leading up to it an everything. We all had to duck to get inside, and we were all sort of panicked because we were hearing this periodic slithering noise following us. So getting inside was something of a hassel, because of the strange arrangements. I was the last one in, and I couldn't figure out how to get the swinging doors to stay closed. Brennan was shouting at me not to close the door, but I was going to close those damn doors no matter what. Eventually I did, but it didn't particularly matter, because a swift breeze would open it and there was no way to block or lock it shut.
We climbed down a ladder into the main room of Brennnan's grandma's house. It was a tight space that descended further. You know how raised ranch houses have a hallway and a living room? Take that same space and halve it. The hallway went across overlooking two staircases but terminated immediately in a door. The kitchen seemed sizeable, but the other end of the living room and hallway had an ancient computer on it covered in nick-nacks and a single sofa. There was no natural light anywhere, because we were practically underground. Most of the light seemed to come from candles in the kitchen.
Griffin Johnston was already on the computer when we arrived and sat around the space, shell-shocked. He was pretty annoyed that Colin and I started shouting at him IMMEDIATELY to google "Red Moon in Star" and "Red Moon Eating Star" and "Red Moon Eating Sun", because he hadn't been outside and didn't realize how important it was. We didn't find anything.
Meanwhile, Brennan had gone to talk to his Grandma. He came back out after a bit and told Griffin to google "Red Robert Mazely."
But before we had a chance to, there was a crackle of thunder downstairs, and we all rushed down there. There was a tall adult man in old leathery armor and a cowl and cloak, and he had an animeishly large claymore which he pounded into the middle of the floor, knocking everyone to the walls with a blast of wind.
But Brennan had had a kitchen knife in his hand from upstairs that was knocked loose, and as it caromed past the claymore it took a definite chunk out of itself. And I was like, "WOAH HEY," and the man started delivering an evil monolog about how he would crush us and when he turned his back to look at the rest of the group I crawled forward and grabbed the knife and started cutting the HECK out of the claymore, which was still embedded in the center of the floor.
The knife went through it really easily. Probably because Brennan's Grandma had blessed all of her cutlery or something and the claymore was a symbol of the man's power. It also became apparent that this guy was probably Red Robert Mazely because the same symbol was etched into the claymore's pommel.
Anyway there lightning that forked all around me, barely missing me (probably because of Granma Lee's knife), and Red Robert Mazely started shouting cursewords that he hadn't zap-fried me and that I had screwed up his sword. There was another enormous blast of wind like you wouldn't believe that knocked the knife out of my hand.
This went on for a while like a predictable boss battle, with the knife flying away, and one of us creeping forward to get it, then passing it to someone else like some kind of shell game, until we could mess up his sword, at which point he would peg everyone with wind and the knife would go flying again.
Eventually he got wise to this, but he could never directly influence the knife and didn't seem capable of touching it, so mostly he just blew it around until EVENTUALLY someone threw it through his symbol and he shrieked and flickered.
We went back upstairs and Grandma Lee was annoyed at how messed up her room was so we explained that it wasn't our fault, that Robert Mazely had shown up and tried to kill us all. She seemed mollified. She also didn't seem particularly panicked that Red Robert Mazely was attacking Australia (where, remember, we were) but told us we should do something about it.
Darn Gandalf Kenobis.
In any case, we went back upstairs and googled Red Robert Mazely.
AS WE LEARNED ABOUT HIM, THE DREAM CUTAWAY'D to Red Robert Mazely, as an adult, walking out of the school from earlier. He began to talk to a fat old crow, who was disappointing him, so he threatened it and told it to go fetch his other selves.
Red Robert Mazely was a wicked, wicked man who lived long ago in a forgotten time when the whole world had been explored and magic was still rife. He possessed the ability to control storms and had travelled the world in that fashion, committing heinous deeds.
Three of the deeds he did were so terrible that his spirit(s) were doomed to walk the Earth until such a time as they could be redeemed. His young boy self had committed a terrible act of fratricide, and was preserved. His adult self have started a wholesale genocide of a nation in America (at the time ruled by the predecessor of the Iroquois Nation) and was thus preserved. And his elderly self had lost all humanity, becoming a twisted, goblin-like monster, and was thus preserved.
Uh, as we were reading about this on the internet, the dream was focused on Red Robert Mazely.
His boy self was fairly innocent-seeming. Sad, almost. He was a pudgy kid wearing a frock, but I recognized him as being one of the schoolkids that I had helped give a tour of the High School.
I also suddenly realized that his stormwalking abilities explained storms off the coast of China and Ireland I had dreamt about MUCH earlier, earlier than I remember the dream having happened. My subconscious may have made it up to seem like it could foreshadow.
The group decided in a voiceover over watching Red Robert Mazely that the storms had dredged these terrible creatures up from the depths of the ocean, where of course they had come from. Except for the trees, which answered to Elder Monster Mazely.
Young Mazely met up with the crow, who said he was going to carry him across the ocean to meet with his older selves. The boy consented, but said he was probably too heavy for the crow to carry, no matter how magic the crow was. The crow lifted off with the boy grabbing his talons and agreed, and told Adult Mazely that there was no way he could carry his younger self all the way across the ocean. Adult Mazely said something about the crow being useless, and suddenly it found its wings being buoyed up by high-intensity winds. A sea storm was starting. I don't think Adult Mazely was actually THERE. The crow was probably some sort of familiar, communicating telepathically.
I think I may have been the crow for most of this sequence. Certainly most of this was from the crow's point of view.
The Mazelies were headed for darkest Africa, where Old Monster-Man Mazely was hiding, and doing his dark works.
Meanwhile, the gang at Grandma Lee's had started to climb back up out of her house, to go search for more clues and reduce the damage being done to Hometown, Australia.
But that's about when I started waking up.