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.