Vans of Film-makers

The front of the house was mostly glass, a long window that stretched completely across the front. It was obscured by fragments of cling-film in sections, in multiple layers in some places. At intervals, pieces of torn paper hung in the cling-film, parts of shopping lists or notes from phone conversations hung in the air over the view outside.

Outside the door, a van pulled up so close it almost touched the door frame. It blocked the pavement outside. An old, blue van. The driver vanished before I could tell them to move.

There was a series of knocks on the windows, and I answered the door to find a group of film makers complaining that the van was in the way of walking along the pavement. I said it was nothing to do with me, not my van, and they'd have to wait for the owner to return. They tried to engage me in conversation, but I got frustrated, and my cat tried to get out of the door, so I shut it and ignored them.

I remember the driver returning to the van, holding an old cine-camera. The van darted off, over a crossroads and was followed by the film makers in an old ford escort, filming it and giving chase.

Ocean inside of the World

The beach seemed to go on forever. I was walking along it, on a holiday with D, but the horizon curved upwards, as if we were on the inside of a giant sphere instead of standing outside the globe. The water was calm, almost still. I blue mirror of water.

There was a shop in the middle of all of this. It looked like a kiosk from the outside, but there was more inside. D was unsure which icecream she wanted when I offered to get one, and I headed inside. Up a small ladder, the counter was cramped. The lady behind the counter had a strong Spanish accent, and she had a large black dog that was very friendly. D finally came in, and I shouted over to show her the dog, but by that time it was sitting on my lap on the floor trying to lick my face.

And then I woke up.

Wedding Murders

I was at a strange party that was a combination of a wedding reception, and the celebration of the end of a play production. I remember getting into a huge lift with a group of the actors who were dressed in fake armour that was flexible. At the top of the lift, I remember getting out and there was an argument. There was a guy there who was acting like a robot - his actions were cold, deliberate and he was doing exactly what he had been programmed. He didn't look like a robot, just a normal young guy with close cut blond hair and wearing army green like an Action Man from the 70's.

He'd killed someone at the wedding, and things had started to get confusing. I remember trying to leave, and someone was pushed, landing with the back of their head being impaled on a wooden spike that was jutting out of a doorway. I started walking down the stairs, and I remember I was holding a pencil. The tip had broken off and I had crushed graphite all over my left hand. I touched the cream, expensive wallpaper, but didn't realise I was covered in this graphite, leaving a grey smudge down the wall. In amongst the murders and confusion I was worried that I'd damaged the wallpaper and was looking for something I could use to clean it as I walked down the stairs.

That's all I can remember.

Moving In

I was seventeen again. For some reason I was helping a girl from school move house, and was crammed into a van full of furniture and boxes. We arrived at the house, which was huge, old and had multiple entrances and immediately started carrying the boxes in.

Parts of the house were partitioned off with huge plastic sheets stretched tight over frames that acted as weird patio doors, but the plastic wasn't perfect, and gave everything a foggy look. It was where some of the walls should have been, and I kept walking into the while carrying stuff in. T that I used to work with many years ago was there, strange as he wasn't related to the girl whose house this was going to be. He hung around and directed where the boxes and furniture should go in his usual casual style.

LARP and Demonic Enemies

It was some kind of elaborate LARP. I wasn't sure what was going on. Part of it seemed to be real, like I was there and taking part, and parts of it felt like I was controlling what was going on with my character remotely, as if I was online and the game was miles away. I was a magic user, and I remember having to try to take down the bad guy while we were all running through the woods. I was shouting out spells, making hand gestures, but nothing was working, and I wasn't even sure how the rules worked. I was just making up words and shouting them out, until I finally shouted "Summon Demogorgon" and everyone just stopped and it was game over. I'd killed the bad guy, and all of us too.

We packed up and agreed to meet up later. We were out of the game but I knew something was wrong, and the demonic presence I'd summoned was still a danger in the real world. It was after someone.

I bundled the target into a car, the driver was going to take us to Scotland to get away from it, but he didn't want to know where it was exactly in case the presence could read his mind.

TV, Towers and Taxis

I was at home, but it wasn't any home I recognised. It just felt like home to me. My parents were there, which was odd. I remember turning on a huge TV on the wall, must have been 60"+. There was a programme on I wanted to see, but being a dream the remote control wasn't working properly and I couldn't get the volume to the correct level. It was either off (on mute) or insanely high.

I finally managed to get it to work, and the programme came on. It was a new drama featuring the kids from a recent, popular supernatural TV series. They had started putting together a towering cake in celebration of someone's birthday. It was multilayered, like a wedding cake, but each layer had candles. It must have been about 12ft tall.

By now, I was no longer watching this on TV, I was in the room of the programme I had been watching.

I was concerned about the candles, knowing that they would set fire to the card that kept the cake together of the layers above. But they kept going. One of the kids grabbed a goldfish out of a bowl and started climbing the ladder, saying the fish was important to finish the birthday surprise...

I worried about the fish, but discovered I was no longer in the room. I was in the back of a taxi travelling around a big city. The cab was a movie style yellow cab, and the driver had the fish hanging in a large bag from the rear view mirror. We were on our way to a big cinema, like the Chinese Theatre, to go to the premiere of a movie, but I didn't see what film it was. Before we could get there, I woke.

Bored Games

I was in a vast building that I later discovered was a school. It didn't look anything like any building I remember, but I knew the day was over and we had to leave. For some reason I seemed to be leading a class of late teens who were sitting around various rooms on the top floor looking bored. Some were playing board games, so I was obviously doing a great job of teaching.

Class had ended and we needed to get out, but most of the building was in shambles. Ruined and falling apart. I remember my wife being there, standing on a particularly fragile bit of floor. She didn't seem concerned, as it fell a couple of feet through to the floor below, held up by the furniture. She simply said that now she didn't have as far to go to get out of the building.

I rounded up the rest of the class, and tried to get everyone to leave, when I woke.

Office of Doom

The building was a mass of strange corridors, short flights of stairs, and doors that seemed to lead into more corridors and stairs. None of it made sense, but I knew there was something I had to do here and get out before I was discovered. The doors were wooden, varnished, and panelled with signs carved into little wooden plaques.

I remember thinking I was half way through giving myself a haircut. I knew it was incomplete, but the task at hand was more important. But it was too late. I'd been discovered. The only thing I could do was to distract them. When the first one opened his mouth to talk to me - a strange, generic businessman in a brown tweed suit and a shaved head - I just acted like I worked there and ask, "Do you know if we've been paid yet?"

As I moved about the place, opening doors that lead into the sides of corridors and stairs, more of these businessmen milled about, flooding out of lifts. I changed my direction over and over, distracting them with "Do you know if we've been paid yet?" and moving away as they stood in confusion, wondering that very thing to themselves.

Trees and Fire

I was in my childhood home. I loved that place. A huge, four bedroomed terraced house. I'd gone back there for the first time in years. I noticed that the house two doors down had vanished, and a construction crew was busy levelling the ground. Outside our old house a group of tourists/joggers wearing brightly coloured safety vests stopped, jogging in place. They looked at the map, but the place they wanted to be was the neighbour's house that had been removed so they simply jogged in place, looking confused.

Upstairs, the house was mostly the same as I remembered it. There was a sudden crash, and I looked out of the rear window to see a crane from the construction crew removing a massive tree. The didn't do a very good job, as the tree toppled and fell across the house. Parts of the branches burst into the house, breaking through the roof and some of the walls on all floors. For some reason (and it seemed totally logical) the tree was incredibly dry and the friction of dragging down the walls and roof made it burst into flame.

Starting at the top floor, I grabbed a black fire extinguisher and started putting out the fires and making my way down, ensuring the fires were all out. I remember thinking that the fires were out and we were safe when I woke up.

Tactical Wargaming

It was like a massive video game. We had to defend ourselves against horrible enemies, but my troops were the native inhabitants of the country, armed only with primitive weapons. We'd lost so many troops, it was getting close to being a lost hope.

Our only chance was to sneak into the fortifications of the opponents, strange yellow creatures with massive eyes, and slip something into their water supply.

We lost many getting in, even manipulating the land to create better defences didn't help, it just alerted the enemy to our presence. But we made it into the strange centre of their fort and we started pouring something from a black bag into their water supply, watching it turn a fizzing blue. The yellow creatures started to lose intelligence and motivation. We'd won, but it was at a terrible cost.

Strange pits and Sledding

Something weird was going on. It was snowing, and I was near Coney Island. I've never been to the States, so this was how my mind imagined it would be - a strange mixture of what I'd seen on TV and the suburbs of Australia. The snow was deep however, deep enough to sled.

There were a group of kids, and they were standing on the sidewalk, jumping up and down. There was a kid sliding down the hill on a sled, and I remember looking like a movie camera, following the kid down until they reached the other kids when he/she suddenly vanished under the snow. There was a hole, hidden under the surface, and the kid just vanished. The others jumped up and down shouting - this is just what happened last time!

I ran over and started digging at the snow, hoping to uncover the hole so we could rescue the child. I started pulling junk out and throwing it over my shoulder, frantic to find the kid.

An old woman came out of the house nearby smoking a cigarette, shouting - "You found his entrance. You better not go down there! That's where he lives. The famous Coney Island Reptile Boy."

Then I woke.