April 12, 2021

Turns out if you take nortriptyline, tizanidine, and 10 mg of melatonin all in one go, you get weird dreams.

Some of these make more sense than others.

* * * * *

On top of a wooded hill, under a starry sky, group of faeries were saying a blessing to the elements.

They got fire, water, wood, wind, and earth, and then they looked at me smugly.

I said they forgot one, and the black night dragon broke out of the valley for the first time in millennia. He was so dark, the only way we could see him was to see his black outline against the sky where the stars were blotted out.

He thanked me for remembering him, then said he was going to eat the entire world, but he owed me a gift first.

I asked if he could be made an egg again so that I could hatch him and raise him properly so he wouldn't want to kill everyone.

He agreed.

* * * * *

The city was made from towering sky scrapers that caught the light, but only the wealthy were allowed to live in them. Everyone else made do with an Industrial-Aged middle town built on scaffolds around the towers, with Venice-like canal roads running between the buildings.

People start spraying each other with water hoses. It started as a commentary on the Covid Mask mandates; someone sprayed a news drone, then became a whole thing of people spraying others without masks in public, then getting sprayed in retaliation. But then people just started spraying because it was fun.

A lot of the hoses were powerful enough to knock people off the railings and into the canal far below, and not everyone survived the fall. Shopkeepers started using the hoses for security. Noblemen had their valets use the hoses to clear the riffraff away from their windows. But when commenting on how all these street kids were dying, people said "it's the cost of doing business in this town."

I got bored of that and went to my shitty apartment. I climbed the series of ladders and scaffolding that led to it. A bunch of dudes were sitting on the railings outside, their legs dangling over the open air. Most of them were drinking. One held up a sketch of Garfield the cat, but a Garfield who was standing on two legs like a human.

"Watch out for this one," the dude said. "Or he'll find you."

"Oh no," I said, heading inside. "Then I'll have to fuck him."

Inside, several people and a giant Garfield the cat were sitting on the couch, smoking weed. Garfield was laughing uproariously in a deep, booming voice that is nothing like his cartoon voice.

People are telling him to shut up so they won't get caught, the lawyers are looking for them, but he says, "but that was funny!"

Then, his laughter is too contagious, and everybody breaks into giggles, even as they try to shut him up. I go to the next room and I can't stop laughing, either.

I overhear a dude say, "Dammit, can you see why his laugh is gonna get us subpoenaed?!"

* * * * *

Powerful sorceress-in-training goes to the capitol of the kingdom to work in the castle. She befriends another trainee witch who is head over heels in love with the handsome, spoiled, and very dumb prince. He's also a lesser son that the royals don't care too much about, and rumor is he's going to be sent to some abbey somewhere to be a monk as soon as his brother is older.

Eventually, she curses someone on accident, and she needs someone of royal blood to go to a party at midnight on the full moon to kiss them and break their curse.

The only royal she can get to talk to her is the prince, because he likes attention and people asking him things (though it's mostly so he can say no and feel important). But he agrees that he'll go to the party and kiss whoever to break the curse, and he agrees to a magically sealed pact to do it. But he didn't actually understand the terms of the deal and upon having them reiterated, he immediately reneges on the deal.

Because of the magical pact, he gets transformed into a three foot tall yellow frog person, still wearing a crown and the velvet cape.

But the sorceress figures this is okay, because the ritual is supposed to break ALL kinds of curses, and figures the problem will solve itself when she gets him to the party that night. He doesn't seem particularly frightened, and is clearly trying to order her around imperiously in weird frog language.

She locks him in the room and figures now she just has to wait it out until the party, but then later encounters her friend. Her friend is furious and terrified after having found the prince turned into a frog thing, and the two fight, and by the end of it, the friend has also been turned into a frog.

Sorceress sighs and takes frog friend up to the tower room with the prince, figuring it's just one more curse to break at the party.

(I think all of her magic was frog based. That was what she was at the castle trying to learn; how to do non-frog magic).

* * * * *

Our family is ridiculously wealthy, and we were visiting dad in his giant mansion.

Then we go home to our own mansion.

Time passes.

Then I find out that Mom had cancer. She found out far too late to do anything about it.

So I do the reasonable thing and go back in time to the day we visited Dad and I try to convince her to seek treatment earlier.

She's very drunk and I need to constantly needle her into doing it. When she does finally go, it's a better prognosis, but still not good.

She then asked if I wanted to watch a movie with her. I said no, because I had to go farther back in time to convince more past-moms to get their cancer treatment, or else it wouldn't work.

I need to convince at least 50 past versions of her to all go to the doctor, or the one I care about will die.

I cannot match Zeph's recent post of beguiling, eldritch dreams, so I've made a game of mine.

One of these events really happened. The rest are recent, bizarre dreams. I kept them personal, resisting the urge to post a second true event that was just some specific item from recent news.

I didn't want any of them to sound too unbelievable.

1. The war raged on. Our troops advanced, but a small group from the other side had positioned themselves on the hill and shot at us. I provided cover, after becoming convinced that bullets could not hit me. The delusion proved quite successful, until the end of the movement, when a bullet hit my lower leg. I had to convalesce in a home occupied by two young women (one of whom had medical training), the mother of one, and the daughter of one. The little girl was about nine. Later I walked back to town to pick up some supplies and get transport to the front. We could see it, just beyond the next town, in the form of distant explosions and drifting smoke.

2. I joined a game of 4 player chess, but complained that in this particular, peculiar variation two of us started with fewer pawns and pieces. The game boasted impressive, detailed pieces, gold and silver in colour. The chess champion on one side proved unsympathetic to my concerns, arrogant and dismissive in his attitude. In all fairness I was not playing entirely fair with them. The other shortchanged player was also me, using another account online to send messages. After I left, I heard someone sucker-punched the champion. He had, I reflected, a rather punchable face.

3. I biked around campus after deciding to enroll in some classes as a mature student. I even biked down the halls of an apartment building where most of the renters were current students of the more typical age. Since I was older, they asked me for advice on various matters, and what the place was like back in ye olden days.

4. I awoke before midnight to hear shouting outside my window. Six young women were practicing what appeared to be cheerleader routines in the middle of the street. They dispersed when the rain came.

5. A new technical school opened nearby, and I was invited to attend the ceremony, where everyone largely ignored COVID-related safety protocols.

6. The world experienced disastrous events. Some folks hoped to soldier on, while others planned to leave earth in a SpaceX space-ark. My brother and I assessed the viability of both options, and pondered how things might have been different. Social media and social/political divisions in the United States figured prominently in our sense of how the situation developed. A childhood friend whom I have not seen in this century joined us.

7. In an alternate reality, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated either before or after April 4, 1968 at the Lorraine Motel. The killer was an insider, someone who had infiltrated his entourage. The specific date of his death had to be kept secret; the public had to believe he died a day later, or a ripple effect would lead to a global conflict in which many innocent people would die. My job was to hide his shoes, as mud traces on the soles would reveal the actual date of his death.

Thanks for your messages. They do help, even if I sound like a despaired fuck when replying.

I almost snapped explaining mom that it's actually common for companies to just ghost you after sending in your resume. "These days---I said---if I get an actual rejection email it's a miracle". I wish to avoid waking up to more ghosted applications, and to a few rejections every day.

I shouldn't snap at her, I know that she asks out of love and out of genuine concern. I also know that she hasn't looked for a job in a few decades.

You know how a therapist tells you that the room is a safe space to talk? I don't feel that safety here. Many of my creative plans require me talking and I don't want her to listen. Many of the things I want to do require multiple takes and I don't wish her knowing about me in that way.

A friend texted me the other day and I told her about these things happening in my mind. She said something like "focus on something good, like the fact that you don't have to cook". Which is a fun thing to say, given that I do have to cook, or otherwise I'd feel even more useless.

I have insomnia, and I wake up at the same time every day because I'm terrified to even propose the idea of "treat yo self" days in this household. If the conversation of breakfast quickly turned into a lecture, I don't want to discuss truly important subjects here. So I write them to strangers on the internet.