A Dream Within A Dream Journal

It's a dark, cold night and in front of me I see a derelict building. To the right of it is a dried up river and a small stone bridge. The moon shines brightly above me as dead trees stand foreboding in the surrounding landscape casting shadows onto the dark ground.

I hear a howl in the distance then growling. I turn around to find two large gray wolves behind me. Suddenly, there is someone on the opposite side of the river calling my name. I do not know this person or who she is.

The wolves begin to charge at me. I quickly turn and run towards the stone bridge. As the wolves were about to jump on me, I turn onto the bridge and cross it. I see the girl in front of me still calling my name.

She holds out her right hand and I grab onto it. As I tightly grasp her hand, I pull her along with me and we run parallel to the dry riverbed. Behind us are the two wolves who were originally chasing me but are now chasing the both of us.

Then, our escape becomes short lived-- two more wolves appear in front of us. Their snarled expression and glaring stare stop us where the both of us stood. The two wolves then charge at both of us. I quickly slide down the slope of the riverbank into the dry riverbed below and look up to see a pack of four wolves now joining the chase.

Still grasping the girl's hand I run back towards the bridge. My thought is to run beneath the bridge and back up the riverbank and out to safety away from this place.

My plan fails as I see that the space beneath the old stone bridge has been overgrown with vines and dead shrubbery. There is no time for me to clear it. The girl beside me begins to cry and falls to her knee. Our situation grows more dire by the minute as we see two more wolves from either side of the riverbed slowly approach us.

With four wolves in front of us and two from each side, we knew our end was near. All eight wolves jump into the air at us...

... and I wake up.

For this dream, I take on the appearance of a young boy no older than 12 years old. I have brown hair and I seem to be following him.

He's running down this long driveway that connects four adjacent houses including mine in real life, and he's being chased by four men. He hurriedly opens the screen door and enter the nearest house he finds. No one's home.

Too scared and afraid, he runs into the bedroom straight down the hallway and forgets to close the front door behind him. He did, however, close the bedroom door but there is no lock. He can hear them banging on the bedroom door as he tries to hold it closed. They were too strong for him and eventually force it open.

The young boy falls backward onto the bed. All of a sudden I am in that boy's body and I take his place. The four men are now in front of me and raise one of their arms. In each hand were handguns of some kind and they begin firing their guns at me.

As soon as the bullet touches me, I wake up.

It's early in the morning around six o'clock. I can hear my sister knock on my bedroom door and she opens it.

Enthusiastically she says in a loud voice, "Wake up! Wake up! Daddy's home!"

I slowly open my eyes to see a young girl who wasn't my sister but someone much younger than her with long brown hair. My sister has black hair.

I look into the hallway to see a young man standing there, who isn't my dad but someone else in a brown leather jacket and blue jeans. The young girl runs up to him, hugs him wrapping her small arms around his legs and says, "Morning Daddy! Welcome home!"

The girl runs back to me and changes into the appearance of my sister who tries to wake me up. The young man then turns into my dad all of a sudden.

Bewildered and confused as to who I saw, I wake up...

I wake up around midnight in my dream because I hear some noise coming from my parent's room, which is next to mine. I walk into their room and see my sister and my dad digging a large hole in the floor.

To either side of them are two bodies and in the floor there seem to be more bodies coming out of it.

My sister with a blank stare on her face turns to me whilst holding a shovel and asks, "There's a shovel right there, can you help us here?"

My dad across from her is still digging and doesn't say a word.

Too scared at the sight I saw, I walk back to my bedroom and I wake up.

One hot afternoon, I wake up after a short nap during the day. I walk down the hallway and into the livingroom to find a young girl sitting on my couch.

She seems familiar to me as if I've seen her before. I am then surprised she calls out my name and asks me to sit next to her. We then strike up a conversation and we talk about the most random and inane things from "Where she's from?" to "How is my day?" to "Why is the sky really blue?"

The conversation lasts until the late afternoon. The front door is open and she stands up and says that she has to go back home.

Right when she is about to exit my house, I ask her for her name.

All I see is her jaw move up and down but not her lips. I hear nothing come out of her mouth. When I start to look at her face, all I see is her short brown hair, blue eyes and her mouth continuously going up and down as if she was trying to say something.

I am surrounded by white light and I wake up.

I open the door to my apartment and I see this girl that I've seen in my previous dreams before-- short brown hair, blue eyes.

She tells me her name but it was too fast for me to understand it. The girl holds out her right arm and reveals two tickets in her hand. I ask what they were for and she says that we won a cruise trip.

I am here in my pajamas and she takes my hand and walk outside. It's the dead of night.

In front of us for some reason is a small yacht on a river.

"Come, come, we don't want to miss our trip," she tells me as she runs to the yacht.

I ask where we were going and she doesn't reply back.

On the boat, I am standing next to her at the front of the ship talking about the most random things, even things I don't even understand.

Night turns to into day and I see my two friends in real life pull up alongside the boat and scream at me to jump into an inflatable raft they're in. I ask why, and again I get no response.

I turn to the girl and she pushes me off the boat onto the inflatable raft. I ask who she was and all I see is her mouth move up and down with no sound coming out of it.

She waves goodbye and the yacht suddenly disappears behind me as the raft gets pulled forward faster and faster. I ask my two friends what's going on.

No reply.

A few minutes later, one of them says, "Get ready, we're going white river rafting."

I ask, "But, where are we?"

He replies, "We're on the Yangtze River in China. We'll be in Beijing in a few hours."

What? The Yangtze River isn't this violent, and I can't swim if I fall off. Somewhere, however, along the way, we enter the Yellow River and it calms down. Night falls and we reach Beijing at the end of the river.

(Note: Neither the Yangtze or Yellow Rivers actually connect or touch Beijing.)

Our raft stops at the same exact dock I left earlier in a yacht with that girl. In front of me is a travel agency. My two friends just stand at the dock and wave goodbye. I enter the travel agency and enter my apartment.

Someone knocks on the door and it's that girl again. This time her face is nearly unrecognizable except for her blue eyes and brown hair.

I wake up right when I ask her name again.

I wake up mid-afternoon in the old house I used to live in back in high school. My family and I have moved out of this old house back in 2003.

I am in my bed covered by my blanket. Sitting on the bed next to me is the young girl again of unknown age. She just sits there and looks at me not saying anything.

The girl then smiles and places her right hand on my face gently touching it. She says something that I can't hear. I see her lips move this time.

She takes her left hand and holds onto my right hand as I'm still lying in my bed.

It's quiet all around me. A gentle breeze is blowing through the windows of my old room. The desk and the old clock is still to the left of me. My old dresser is at the front of my bed.

There is this rather melancholy appearance to her face. She seemed happy.

She continues to stroke my face and says, "Thank you."

I wake up.

I am standing in the livingroom of my relatively new house that I've been living in since 2003.

In front of me is that young girl again dressed in a white dress that reaches down to her knees. She bends forward with both of her hands behind her back and tilts her head upwards looking at me.

She giggles and smiles then says, "Hello."

She continues to look at me, turning her head and changing her body posture. It's as if she's trying to get a good look at me from different angles.

The girl then takes her index finger from her left hand and touches my nose.

I wake up.

I take on the appearance of my FFXI character in this dream. I'm in Gusgen Mines mining when a girl comes up to me. She has this same short brown hair and blue eyes I've seen before in my previous dreams.

The girl then tells me, "We've got to hurry, it's not safe here."

She points to a mining cart and tells me to jump in. In the distance I see a group of Quadavs running towards us. I turn to the girl who is already in the cart.

"Hurry," she screams back.

I jump into the cart and it inches forward then slowly picks up speed. The young girl sitting behind me grabs a hold of me with her arms as the mining cart goes faster and faster.

We travel through the depths of Gusgen Mines and out towards Oldton Movalpolos. The tracks begin to get more winding and dangerous. Joining the Quadavs chasing us, whom themselves have got into a mining cart as well, are Goblins in another mining cart behind them.

Eventually, the both of us reach Newton Movalpolos and in the distance we see the track end. I feel the girl's head against my back as she clenches on me tightly.

The last words I hear as we fall into the depths of Newton Movalpolos was, "Hang on!"

I wake up at that point when everything gets dark around me and I can feel myself freefalling.

I am walking up to this hotel in the middle of a forest in the Northwest US. It looks old as if it was built in the 1970s. It has this "tries-to-be-modern" look that seemed prevalent of 1970s architecture.

I check in at the front desk and head to my room. For the next three days, I go skiing even though I don't know how to ski and even attempt snowboarding which I've never done before.

One night, I hear noise from the room next to me. Someone knocks on my door and I open it to find a young woman with brown hair but an indiscernible face. She holds up in front of me a book made of glossy thick paper.

The young woman asks, "Want to join us? We're filming a movie next door."

Confused but for some reason, I immediately accept her offer.

I walk next door and enter the room. It's relatively small and cramped especially with the camera crew, two other actors, the producer and director. I find a spot next to the closet and sit on the red velvet carpet with a strange gold-colored pattern of swirls on it.

The young woman sits next to me. I open up the script but it looks more like a graphic novel than an actual script.

I ask, "What are you filming?"

A man who I assume was the producer replies, "Don't worry we're not filming a snuff film."

"Or a porno," the woman next to me replies as the whole room bursts into laughter.

"This is an indie film," the producer tells me.

The producer then tells me that the story of the film is about this man who travels to Italy to take revenge against a mob family. They tell me I'm playing a minor role but for some reason I'm also appearing in the end of the movie as well.

She tells me to go there and take a look at the lines. Again, it looked more like a graphic novel than a script. On the pages she pointed out was a stylized picture of a car being chased down a street somewhere in Italy. Behind the car are two men in another car.

A tall man with blonde curly hair standing next to me says in a thick Italian voice, "You're that person."

He points to the person in the first car that's being chased down.

"How can I be in a minor role if it seems I'm actually the protagonist?" I ask.

Apparently the hero of the movie keeps changing until the end and I'm the last person that seems to have survived.

We begin to enact a scene from somewhere in the middle of the "book." The woman is to play the dead mistress and was found lying on the bed in the hotel room from what I was told. I am supposed to bust into the room and quickly shoot the tall, Italian man with blonde hair then run to face the dead body of that woman. She apparently is, well was, my friend's mistress up to that point in the film.

Since I messed up my lines several times, the producer decides that we take a break. I head downstairs to the hotel cafeteria. Determined not to mess up another line, I take the book with me and just buy something quick to eat-- honey buns.

I sit at the bar and read over the scene to myself. The young woman with brown hair sits next to me and asks if I'm alright with this role.

I tell her "Yes."

She just smiles and strokes my back with her right hand.

"It's unusual to have an actor appear in front of us all of a sudden because we lost the other ones."

I ask what happened to them and she replies with a blank stare on her face, "They've all been shot to death the day before."

I suddenly hear gunfire in the hall next to the cafeteria. She pushes me off my barstool and onto the floor. The woman kneeling on her right knee pulls out a silver handgun from behind her back and begins firing in the direction of the gunfire.

I look up to see what was going on. There was the producer and director trading gunshots with this young woman. She tosses me a handgun and asks me to help out.

"You're going to help me out!" she stammers back to me.

Holding what looks like a 9mm handgun in my right hand, I begin firing at the producer and director. The Italian man then jumps through the window and begins shooting at us.

The whole scene turns chaotic and the woman grabs my hand and tells me to make a run for it.

We exit the cafeteria into the outdoors outside the hotel. The three men make haste and beginning chasing us. We try running towards the parking lot but are slowed down by the thick layer of snow that has suddenly appeared within a half hour.

I hear two gunshots and the woman falls into the snow face first. I turn and fire towards the direction of the three men but I feel a sharp pain inbetween my eyes.

I was shot dead by one of them.

I wake up at this point.