The cannibal

Age nine, lucid/sweet.

The title of this is cannibal because that's what I was.  It must've been a nightmare for someone else, but for me, it was sweet.

This dream was very monochrome.  Everything was washed in this stark, violent shade of orange and sepia.  This was a very short dream but I still remember it to this day.

I dreamed I was walking down the halls of a public school that I had called, in my head, Terry Fox public school, which was a neighbouring school to my own (Kennedy Public School) back in Scarborough.  I imagined that I was walking down these halls, but there were students on all sides, jeering at me, laughing, stabbing me with their pencils and howling like hyenas.

They kept calling me names and laughing.  I knew I was completely alone because the shadowy friends I was walking with soon had left me to join with the crowd of laughter, of cruelty.

I was tired.  I felt empty.

I was actually... alright, with the situation.  To me it felt normal, this sadness, this ostracised state.

Then, this little girl--about my age, for I had this dream when I was ten and still little and still very much broken--tripped me.  She tripped me while looking at me with this condescending smirk.  She had very dark brown skin, and malicious eyes, and she smiled at me from above where I was sprawled on the floor.  She looked a lot like a bully I had from when I was little.

So I snapped.

I jumped on her and knocked her down, pinning her down on all fours like an animal.  My scream tore the school apart, literally, for the windows shattered and all of the previous laughing students were crying out in shock and fear.  I remember opening my mouth, and all my sharp, sharp teeth came out, and I bit into the little girl's throat.  I felt her gurgling scream vibrate through my skull, silenced when I tore out her windpipes and her blood started squirting everywhere.  Everyone was screaming because I had her throat in my mouth, and I laughed as I pranced on the nearest people, pinning them down, eating them, killing them.

When I woke up, it was to a shiver of delight.  In my dreams I had, though violently, triumphed over my enemies.  That was all I wanted.

The book cover decoration

I can't title this dream.  I just woke up from it and am frantically trying to recall it.

I dreamed I was at a mall with my mom, and she bought me bubble tea for breakfast.  For some reason I also bought myself bubble tea and we met up at the same time, so we shared half and half of the drinks.  Then, after we left the extremely bright and colourful mall, I was taken to the top of a building--though how I got there completely escapes me--where a girl who looked a lot like Silvana's older sister came up to me, and very severely looked me over.

"Good luck," she told me.  She led me inside, showing me a room that looked like a regular office, except there were books everywhere. Old books, new books, all of them with empty covers, or little boxes where illustrations should have been on the cover.

She showed me while talking--and I forgot what she said, for I was so focused on her hands--how to make the decals.  It was a long and gruelling process, something that I must have made up in my unconscious.  She took paper with colour on it and was pressing the colours onto the books, and then slowly pressing more colours, pressing and pressing until an image formed.  I was amazed.

She finished the books by pouring additives onto the books, which were little jewels or glitter or even sprinkles.   She then left me to myself, warning me of upcoming danger if I didn't learn quick enough, so I nodded and set to work, pressing and pressing.   Soon I had two covers, both pretty women, and I was about to add these little blue gemstones, but I spilled them. I tried using green and white sprinkles, then pink and pale yellow jewels, and for some reason, none of them would stick to the cover.  I was trying to pick them up by tilting the little pan I had put the two books in, but as I tilted, the eyes of the women on the covers moved and kept staring at me.  I was not unnerved, though I was plenty annoyed that their eyes wouldn't stay in place.

Soon enough the girl came back to see my progress.  I showed her the two covers, finally wrestled so that I could  put jewels on them, and then she showed me how to put the eyes back in place; I had to stare at them and then right the covers, and then keep staring at them as I put the books into the oven to bake the decals on. When the books came out, the images on the cover were slightly warped,so she showed me how to peel it off and then re-press the image back on the book cover.

It was a strange experience.

I was at this sort of "book" decorating job for several days.  I was an apprentice to a magician, you see, and this was a very important job because only a select few were allowed to take this job.  But I was warned by the girl that there was a dwarf who wanted to come and destroy the books, so I decided to go and kill the dwarf.

What is unnerving about this was the absolute calm way that I had decided to kill this dwarf.  I simply took a sword and climbed the tall tower at the back of the decal office,making my way up until I saw this black, dwarvish figure.  We began to battle; he had made the first move, so I assumed he was my enemy, and I stabbed him multiple times without sustaining any wounds myself.

Then I went back with the dwarf to show the girl, but she stared at me in horror.  "That's not the one," she told me, and I stared at the black dwarf who had attacked me, now standing on the table with a dark expression.  He was strangely uninjured, but I felt guilt course through me.  "You can hit me," I told him sincerely.  "I'm sorry."

He took his claws to my face, and his claws clinked against my glasses.  Then when he took off my glasses, he took out my left, good eye.

It didn't hurt but I screamed because I needed my eyes.  I stared at him, clutching th dry skin of my missing left eyelid, and he only stared back at me in contempt.

These are all the details I can recall.  Little bits of extra detail are still floating in my head, but my mind refuses to give them back to me.  Lately all of my dreams have been very bizarre and brief and fleeing.  Perhaps its just me feeling tired that I can't seem to remember everything...

The ocean yard

Seventeen, strange.

I had this dream last night.  It's hazy because I recalled all of it upon waking, and the details crowded out each other.

I dreamed that my mother had left me at this breakfast shop to drink tea, and she had to go to work.  But she warned me about people who were chasing after me, so I was on my guard. I watched her drive off with a worried face, out of my vision in the window.

  The people at the tea shop were  my allies.  I watched the men who were chasing me park outside the shop in their black, black cars, and walk inside. I pretended to read a book while they sat down, observing me.

I took my stuff and I went to the corner where the stairs and bathroom doors were.  Above the shop was the house of the landlady; down the stairs was storage, and I went down the stairs, knowing the men were following me. The landlady was in the basement, doing laundry, and when she turned around and saw me, I asked for her help.

She directed me to a storage room, saying "You will find useful things there."

They thought I had gone upstairs, so I hid myself in the storage room.  I took a silver rod, gripped it in my hand, and waited.

One of the men came over.  I slammed the rod into his head, calmly.  My heart was racing but my movements were sure.  He fell. I took the longer, thicker, black nightstick from his belt, and waited for the other one. 

The other man came in and saw his companion on the floor, and grabbed the nightstick before I could plunge it into his head.  The rod flew away, but I grabbed a silver wire from nearby, and scratched his face with it.  Then I grabbed the silver wire and hit him with it, too.  I took keys from his belt, mechanically, as if I knew everything I was doing.

I took this opportunity to run upstairs and out the door, taking one of their cars.  It didn't matter to me which one, I tried both.  The men tried to follow me but I floored the gas and then off I went.  It was driving through this small, curvy, green town that I wept, wondering where my mother had went.

I crashed through the town--even in my dream, I can't drive.  Oh well.

So I stopped at this little yard, fenced off and abandoned.  I went to the middle of the field after abandoning the car.  There, I started stripping off my clothes until I was in this white dress, and stepped into the beach and ocean, all encompassed and encircled by the vast fence.  I washed my hair in the ocean, and it came up soft, almost fleshlike, and pale.  The sand was white, and I looked up at the sky, and felt overjoyed.

I walked so long along the edge of this ocean, feeling safe.  Soon I began to see people, and my sense of safety wavered.

I don't remember clearly the rest of the dream.  There was a casino, and sex, and getting lost amongst other people.  This was a very strange dream, very realistic, and impressive.

The forgotten dreams

Lately I have been forgetting my dreams.

Last night before I went to bed, I listened to the tap in my bathroom dripping.  Each drip sounded musical, the beat composed and pretty.  I thought for a moment it was someone in my basement, singing to me with their tongues, but I found the faucet and closed it.

I had a very vivid dream last night but I have forgotten it.  It works like this a lot nowadays, where I recall having a sweet dream, but for the life of me, trying to remember it is an impossibility.

I remember colours, mostly.  Blues.  Lots of blues.

There were sepias and pinks and grays, beautiful spectrums and yet...

and yet...

The blue concert

Age fourteen, sweet/lucid dream.

The first time I saw Lale's face.  In a dream.  At last.

This dream's theme was blue.

I was rushing through this old, breaking, musty house.  Everything was drowned in blue, blue and black, and I felt distantly that I was in danger, though I wasn't sure.

Voices guided me;I couldn't see them through the blue and black.  Madeleine's hand held me as I ran through the dirty carpeted halls, clinging to the banister so I didn't fall downstairs into the darkness.  She kept mumbling "You have to go, have to go.  Get lost in the crowd.  Get lost there, he'll find you."

I touched Skye on her bare shoulder, and she glanced at me.  Her eyes were cyan, they glowed in the navy of the musty house.  Madeleine was ahead, her hair black with my dream.  They were ushering me forward, guarding my back, but I felt cold, like they were not there.  I heard myself weeping but felt no tears.

As I stumbled into a room, I realized it led down to a mosh pit, filled with blue lights and screaming people made of darkness.  Music blasted but I only heard the rhythm, the bass.  People with pure black skin brushed against me.  Some grabbed me, but I kept stumbling, looking up to see that we were in an open concert garden.  There were stage lights, and speakers, but I could only make them out faintly in the dark.

The moon shone silver-blue.  The sky was a deep, impenetrable navy, and the stars were pinpoints of white scattered around the Moon's glaring face.    I didn't really think about how I was moving, only that I was being followed, and that Skye and Madeleine had left me.

I felt frightened, lost, powerless.

Quietly I cried for help, without speaking.  I leapt over the crowds, trying to climb back into the house; they were at the stage, they were coming to me.  They grabbed my legs, my arms.  I felt burning fire as I tore away from the shadows.

Then, Lale was there.  I knew it was him, right away, even though I had never seen his face prior to this dream.  Before this dream, I couldn't draw him.  I couldn't understand him.  And then he was standing there, his black coat reflecting the navy of the sky, walking calmly over destruction of the crowd.  He brought the moonlight with him, illuminating the masses of shadows.  Each of the shadows hissed, then turned into a pile of nothing, dust at his feet.  The silence of the stage, then, was deafening.

He caught me when I ran into him, spun me around.  I shuddered, looking into his face--it was so white, broad forehead and cheeks and clear, red eyes.  His black hair was slicked back, but some was falling on the left side of his face, and it gave his mouth a deep, ominous shadow.  His hands--he wore the gloves I imagined him with--and his touch was hot.

Behind him, I saw Colleen.  Her eyes were silver-blue, like the moon, and then the moon was gone.  I understood.  She was the moon; she guided him to me, but I knew he wasn't really mine.   She wore white and her skin was white, and she looked at me with a solemn glance.

He looked me in the eye, and said "I'm here.  I'm here."  I looked back into his, crimson in all of that burning blue.  His brows were drawn.  He glared at me, not with hate, but with accusation.  I looked behind him, at Colleen's sadness.

Then, we switched places.  I was behind them, where Colleen had been standing, seeing Lale's long, black hair mingle with hers.  She looked over his shoulder at me with smiling eyes, and I felt at peace.  She curled into his arms, and he carried her.

Then I woke up.

The shaking eyes

Age seven. Nightmare.

I was running around the street of barrington in this dream, playing on the sidewalk. It felt just as if I was awake. I ran in and out of the old house, looking at Grandpa's paintings. Then I wanted to get out of the house, which suddenly felt so oppressive that I couldn't breathe.

I could hear my parents shouting from upstairs. I ran out of the house, down stairs that didn't exist for that house, and out into the sidewalk.

When I went to the sidewalk, my father's father--Yie Yie--was standing there in front of our neighbour's house. I looked at him and froze. His body was convulsing, his mouth was foaming. His eyes were shaking, changing colour in the sockets--not like the irises were changing colour, but the whole eyeball. He spoke words I didn't understand and was falling apart, and I was terrified. I wanted to go help him but I had no idea how to even walk to him because my feet stopped working. His eyes went from cyan to magenta to yellow to orange to blue to red to white to nothing.

I woke up in cold sweat. Downstairs grandfather was sitting and reading the Chinese newspaper, and when I hugged him tightly he was very confused.

The rape of the dragons

Age 17. Nightmare. This dream was dreamed on February 28th, 2011.

Copied from my art blog:

"I was running with the Ensemble. I think I was Colleen. Maybe it was that I'd been thinking about her for her birthday (the 22nd of February), but I was her, and I was flying while being buffeted by the wind. I was killing dragons.

Maddie kept screaming something. In my dreams I see her a lot, screaming always, pointing and warning me of danger ahead, her red hair billowing. Silver was hitting the dragon, Skye was dancing below it with daggers in her hands; I don't know where Valor and Aidan were. And Yoshua would not be there; he had refused to hunt them with us.

I think Lale was there, but not wholly. I could feel him at the edge of my vision.

He doesn't exist in my dreams where there is a lot of light.

These dragons were not good. Ethically, they were not good. They were not sentient; they did not think. They were cruel and unjust and fought for the sake of fighting, killed for the sake of killing. I was flying and panting and there was so much sunlight in these marble-pillared ruins that I felt ill. Chaotic grass littered between the fallen Roman pillars, dropping off into a sheer cliff into Poseidon's sea. But I kept fighting them amidst blue sky, white clouds, and crumbling rocks. There was nothing in my hands; I commanded my friends below, and killed with a thought.

Somewhere after we killed a red-scaled, slithering dragon, it writhed and shot a beam of fire. I saw Lale then, just a dark shadow, slicing it's belly open, but I saw a claw come down to crush him, so I shouted. The shout tore the dragon's talons in two.

I felt something extremely heavy slam into my side. I careened and tumbled forward and was flung into darkness.


When I woke up I was on a yellowed street in the dark, lit with nothing but street lamps. The yellow stung my eyes. I was afraid. I kept trying to call the Ensemble, dashing between buildings, knowing that they were also frantically looking for me. At home (oh, home) they were celebrating the defeat of the dragons, yet Maddie kept anxiously calling out for me, also searching in the darkness. I spoke to myself to drive the fear away. Come this way, they won't follow you here. Stop. Run. Go.

But something was chasing me--dragon riders? Who knows? There was a girl with blackened eyes and skinny limbs like a jack-in-the-box, wearing monochrome clothing, twins with red flaming hair and wide grins, and a man with short silver hair and wide shoulders and a malevolent smile. That was all I remember of them. There were many.

I kept running between the buildings, my heart beat crashing like a dying bird in my chest. I felt naked, vulnerable. I could not fly. I think my wings were broken. Colleen's wings, at least. I was pretty sure I was dreaming as her.

And then they cornered me at a school building. The silver-haired man grabbed me, slammed me up against the wall with these bright, grabbing things, like a mass of white shadows. The jack-in-the-box girl was laughing hysterically, like it was the greatest joke, and I saw the red of the twins pop like a bubble of blood. The man was upon me and I watched him as he rammed into me, and spears of pain shot through my womb, and he was laughing too.

And then they were screaming and screaming, and I felt no more fear. There was pain and nausea in this dream, even though the pain was muted. I collapsed on the ground, too tired to move. They were screaming and running because he was here. He tore the darkness to pieces with his own darkness, his eyes black with rage. He gathered me--her, now. I was no longer her, expelled at the height of her pain, the rape. I was watching them, anxious and relieved that he found her. She was crumbled in his arms, barely breathing, weeping, and he kissed her brow and held her close.

Lale found her, a minute too late. But he would be there to sew her back together.

What a strangely romantic dream.

Sorry, Leen. I put you through something weird again. XD No rest, even in my sleep, hmm?"

The violet ghost

Age seventeen, strange dream.

This dream was last night's dream.

I was running through Castle town--it was a very crowded, dirty, and dingy place, filled with scraps of colour amidst swaths of oppressing gray. I could hear people shouting as the evening market was drawing to a close. In my dream, it was night time and it was getting colder, and I was looking for someone very specific.

I was running down an alley between two brick buildings, shivering in the dampness. I stopped in front of a stall, shouting "Cat soup!"

In the cauldron that the woman was stirring, cat heads stared at me, all of their eyes green. There were tabbies and spotted kittens and cats, all of them with their flesh open to the boiling water, all of them looking up at me. One of the cats shook it's head and meowed in a warning, pointing to the back.

Aaron was sitting amidst the living cats, stroking their fur and holding them to him. He wasn't the one skinning them and killing them, only speaking to them softly. He looked up at me and his face bloomed into a very beautiful smile, and he looked like he missed me. He said "You're alright!" as if I had been in danger, and I felt sick to my stomach, because I really was in danger. Aaron let me sit down beside him and hide in the cats, all who watched out for me--but slowly they were getting cooked by the woman who sold them as soup. They did not look resentful, only solemn and alert, and I felt only a slight wallowing sadness when they were pulled away from me.

I crept out of the alley, heart pounding, looking up and out at the gate of Castle town. There were so many more gates--it was like a repetitive wall, one lined up after the other. I felt safe in there, but I knew that something was looking for me.

All of a sudden this violet tendril grabbed my foot. It dragged me out of the gate, one, then two, then three. I screamed for help for just a second; suddenly I was the princess, terrified, not helpless but definitely helpless in that situation. But then the scream stopped, and I felt furious. I pulled a sword out from my rib, and cut the violet ghost that was trying to take me away.

I kept pulling backwards, back into the gates, and the ghost followed me as I backed away, looking and laughing at me. It was a swarthing, magenta-lavender mist in the gray of my dreams, and it advanced on me.

I cut it. Once. Twice. Then it was gone. Then these crystal skeletons charged through the gates, glittering light blue and without visible skulls, but I cut those down, retreating farther into the gate and farther into the castle. I shook with delight, feeling the chorus of happy voices around me spur me on as I protected the place with my sword.

Then I took the remains of the violet ghost, and started shaping it with my hands. Suddenly, a cake of brown and lavender formed between my fingers--higher and higher, it was plain and undecorated at first, but the cake grew like a staircase climbing up. The icing was lavender, like the ghost.

A little fairy--some kind of little person, at the side of my vision, floating in the grayish sky, excitedly laughed and said "We're almost ready!". It started to decorate the cake with fruit, making it go higher. The cake was sagging under the weight.

The people started eating the cake, cutting from the top down. And for some reason, I didn't eat. I only backed away as the scene faded into darkness, feeling at peace and empty and knowing that I will sleep more.

Then I woke up, after a stagnant period of darkness.

The cathedral choir

Age seventeen, sweet dream.

I had this dream last night, so I am recording it as it's fresh. This week I have been dreaming and this one is the most turbulent yet.

I was following my friends through a claustrophobic forest, where I couldn't push into the black-green trees--I had to weave through the branches where I could, following the shadows of my friends in front of me as I struggled through the yellow bark. Eventually I followed them down a set of stairs, all made of leaves, and they led me into a cathedral where light was finally shining in through the doors.

I left those doors so I could breathe a little. Outside, I was on top of a building that showed a pretty little courtyard, but I saw in front of me an old ghost that haunted the courtyard. She had a rotted face and sallow cheeks, gray and yellow hair and missing teeth, and she grabbed for me with long claws. Immediately I fled and went back inside, without panic but a little frazzled because my thought was "I don't want her to catch me".

When I tried to escape through other doors, more vermin like her showed up, and I was frustrated. The friends--I know them all in real life, but for now I can't recall who was in this dream for the life of me--were starting to panic, and I slammed the door repeatedly on the head of the witch who haunted the courtyard. Eventually she withered away, and I felt a deep sadness, touching her oily hair and saying a prayer to her to rest in peace.

Then we ran deeper into the building, and I realized we were in a cathedral, and we were late. The choir was already starting. The cathedral's center was wide, with gray-and-white marble floors and a shadow that fell over everything. No candles were lit; no people sat on the benches in front of the giant, black cathedral organ, but I could hear singing (the Promised Land, from the final fantasy advent children soundtrack, strangely. I remember the song, the lyrics, how I wanted to sing with them).

Then the candles came on. A boy who sat beside me, with emerald green eyes, looked at me with this bright smile and held my hand and whispered, "Here we go." I think I was in love with him... (sorry, Aaron, love, I don't mean to be unfaithful. I fall in love a lot in my dreams, girls and boys and memories alike.)

A burst of angelsong broke the silence and the cathedral shattered around me, all around were lights and music and I slid down a bamboo bridge into darkness. The music was beautiful, it was everywhere and bright, and as I slid I wanted to go back up into the shattered cathedral of black and white marble, of yellow flame, but I couldn't go back up. I only realized that I slid back into the forest of black and green and yellow again, and I sighed, missing the boy with the emerald eyes.

I woke up to a phone call from mom. I couldn't go to sleep again.

The warehouse werewolf

Age six, nightmare.

Through this dream I was running as fast as my short legs could handle.

The sky was as red as blood, with clouds that looked like soot. I was dashing between warehouses and I couldn't quite get away from whatever was chasing me, which made no sound but this strange humming noise. It was a terrifying escape, one that I couldn't even perform properly. I rounded a corner of the warehouse and the wolf caught me.

It's eyes were red and yellow, and it's fur was gray. It didn't have teeth so I don't know how it bit me, but it jumped on me like a man and started to eat me. I could feel my ribs popping in it's fangs. This I started calling the Man-wolf, who would visit me so much when I slept, terrorizing and teaching me.

At that point I decided I had had enough of this dream. In my physical, waking body, my hands raised up and yanked my eyelids open, and all the chaotic noises from my dream suddenly muffled and died away. The sparking light of noon hit my eyes and my world fell quiet, me seeing nothing but the orange of my eyelids.

I got up ten minutes later, proud that I had woken myself up from the dream by force.

...Retrospectively, I'm a really weird kid...

The subway

Age three, nightmare.

My earliest dream.

I was three years old and I was asleep in my mother's bed. In my dream I was wandering through a grey crowd of strangers in a subway stop, being bumped into and much too small and terrified. I distinctly remember the setting as the subway at Dong Shan Kou in Guangzhou, China, but the ceiling was extremely high and the lights were bright, until you looked away. Then the crowd of strangers were dark.

I was trying to grab onto the hand of my mother, but she gave me a contemptuous look and shook me off into the crowd, leaving me behind. I kept yelling "Mama!" but she wouldn't turn around, and eventually disappeared out of the crowd. In my dream I started screaming, legs wouldn't work.

I woke from this dream crying, and mom found me like that an hour later after she got home from work in the afternoon. She comforted me for another hour before I could calm down.

My analysis of this is probably from a deep-seated fear of abandonment and helplessness. When I was young I didn't feel secure from circumstances in my upbringing and would continue to have dreams of being abandoned or left behind, all of which would carry on into my waking hours.

Quite an old dream, but I still feel shivers to this day. It must've been that hateful look on my mom's face that stunned me.

The beginning

I love introductions. :)

I started this blog today after finally putting a rest to one of my old ones--a scary, dark one that I would visit in my saddest, angriest moments, whenever I was crying. And I'm tired of being sad; so here's to a lighter, cheerier, dreamier one.

My brain never stops working–which is good, if the brain is the supposed center of the being that keeps me alive, but it keeps me awake, too. It’s a tiring thing to think all the time. Especially at night. ...Especially at night.

If and when I go to sleep–I love you, hereditary insomnia, with all venomous sarcastic undertones intended–I don’t even rest much. I dream.

I dream so much that it’s troublesome to remember them all, so I’m going to dump them here. It makes for good art and writing fodder, I think. (Which means I can finally take advantage of that stupid organ of mine that controls me in my skull, and finally tell it to shut up and do what I tell it to. Like come on. I don’t ask you to dream of me dying all the time, right?)

Maybe you can enjoy it, too, if anybody’s ever reading this. (but oh god, this was loads of tl;dr. Nobody reads this long, right?)