Epic Dreams of Dirt (+ Announcement)

I eat a lot of hot sauce. I used to put it on everything and get the really spicy ones so that I could be that guy, but I’ve calmed it down a little in recent years. I also used to specifically eat something spicy right before bed, because I noticed doing so gave me really vivid, really strange and surreal dreams.

Now I’ve stopped doing that entirely, but I guess I conditioned my brain enough to think it’s alright to give me strange dreams most nights. One such was just the other night…

Oh! I should put here that I’ve been playing a lot of Deep Rock Galactic recently, and I only say that because it’ll soon become obvious the ways that game influenced the dream. (If you haven’t heard of it and you don’t feel like following the link, in short, it’s a game where you play as a space dwarf mining crystals and minerals out of a giant asteroid-planet-thing.)

Anyway, the other night…

Like most dreams, I don’t remember how I got to the start, but I knew I was being hunted by the Italian mafia. Somehow, at the beginning of the dream, that meant I GUESS that I was in a motel outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico while on the run from them. Of course, one of their hitmen finds me and I’m sure you can guess who it is.

That’s right, Danny Trejo.

So Danny Trejo shows up going full Machete on me, showering the motel in bullets while I run, duck, and dodge behind cover.

^In case you wondered, this is what “going full Machete” looks like.
It’s a fun movie.

Eventually, he runs out of ammo and hops in an old car, trying to run me down. Now my memory gets kind of spotty around this point in the story, but the end point is that I successfully kill him in self-defense. (I think I trick him into crashing the car, or something. Let’s just assume it was something clever.)

That dramatic scene winds up placing me in Witness Protection. I remember they handed me a special form to fill out for, like, my preferences of what kind of Witness Protection I would prefer, and in the special comments section I just wrote “No Italians, please.” Which is several shades of stupid, but made sense in the moment since I was on the run from the Italian mafia.

It doesn’t wind up working.

So Witness Protection places me in a sort of special boarding house that looks like an old Victorian manor out in New England. (Heh, I just noticed the dream keeps taking place in “New” places. New Mexico to New England. Weird.) The boarding house is run by a kindly old woman with red hair and she shows me to my room toward the back of the manor. My paranoia sets in, and on one of the first nights, I remove a couple panels from the floor and I start digging.

The logic at work is that I’m going to construct a series of tunnels to really live in, or at least have as a getaway in case the mob ever finds me. I think I distantly remember reading about or hearing about an either Roman or Chinese emperor who did the same thing with their palace, filling it with a hundred rooms and sleeping in a different one every night to confuse would-be assassins.

Which is basically what I did.

I dug a whole bunch of tunnels into the ground beneath the mansion, and I filled those tunnels with a bunch of dummy routes, dead ends, tunnels that looped back in on themselves. I dug enough dirt to last eleven lifetimes to make sure the mob would never find me.

Along the way, I met another resident of the house, a young girl named Alyssa, who found my series of tunnels and asked to help me dig more because she thought it was cool. At first I said no, wary of outsiders and not wanting to share my masterpiece with another, but ultimately relented.

I also found this awesome, green, furry mole-ferret creature while digging. I never really thought of a name for him, but he was adorable, helped me dig, and loved to snuggle while making this soft purring noise. He was great.

At this point, there’s a bit of a time skip, or a fast-forwarding. I met Alyssa, found my giant ferret creature, at one point we struck ground water and essentially dug out a massive underground grotto or lake. We brought in bamboo from the Overworld (just the regular world, but we’d become underground people) to build scaffolding and walking pathways around this body of water. It was a good time.

But nothing good lasts forever.

One day while I’m hanging out on the big wrap-around porch of the house, I see a car with tinted windows drive slowly by. The window rolls down and a bald man with a scar on his cheek stares me down for a moment, before rolling the window back up and driving away. (No idea why, but I name him Spencer.

My God. I’ve been found.

I have a discussion with the headmaster lady of the house, and she gives me a sort of “Ah, alas. I feared this day would come” sort of monologue, and says she’ll prep the house for battle – or something of the sort. Eventually, it falls to dusk, and a train of twelve cars pulls up in front of the place. Out of each one, a uniquely dressed, themed, and deadly hitman steps out with an intent to kill. They charge the house, and I kung-fu fight with about four or five of them around the house, killing or incapacitating them mightily before I begin to tire and worry for the worse. All around the house, the headmaster lady and other residents are doing their own righteous battle with these (apparently still supposed to be Italian mafia) hitmen.

I’m wounded, and the headmaster lady tells me to fall back, and that they have it from here. So I do, and retreat into my tunnel system. While down there, Alyssa finds me and tells me that our ferret isn’t doing so good, she thinks he’s sick. So I pick up the little guy, he purrs against my chest and neck while I carry him down one of the tunnels, across our underground lake (taking up the bamboo walkways behind us), and into the deepest tunnel that is my Sanctuary. For extra security, I lay a couple of satchel charges in the dirt (which I apparently have) and lie in wait with my ferret creature.

The End

I woke up at that point, but I assume that Spencer the Hitman followed my trail down the tunnels and would have fallen upon me and my ferret, but got blown up by my booby traps. That’s my head canon and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway, if you’ve stuck with it this far or just skipped down until you saw “The End”, either way: The News!

I’ve stopped announcing these sorts of things with any regularity, both because life is busy and because I’m not sure who’s listening with bated breath on this, my tiny, eensy weensy slice of the internet, but we’ve got another publication in the books! (lol Pun.)

Flame Tree Publishing is coming out with their Gothic Fantasy ‘Alternate History’ anthology early next year and are including a reprint of one of my first ever stories, “The Sixth-Gun Conspiracy Letters”, wherein we learn the tragic, twisted truth behind the cloak-and-dagger game which shadowed the American Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

It’s an oldie, but a goodie, and I’m extra stoked about this one because Flame Tree is based out of London, UK, which means ya boi has gone international! And I think that’s worth a nod. -cheers- (<– the polite gesture at a dinner party, not a crowd erupting with applause)

Anyhoo, that’s all for now. Thanks for sticking around. Ciao, everybody.

Lucid [Horror] Dreaming

Guys, I think I might be losing my touch a little bit.

Once upon a time, I used to have a super power. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anything cool like immense strength, ultra speed, or being able to reliably find the last parking spot on a busy day; though I CAN usually guess the time without looking, but I’m consistently a single minute off – which I’m sure is what will eventually drive me to being a super villain.

ANYWAY.

No, my power was that I could, in a very limited way, reliably lucid dream.The way it worked was simple: if I was in a dream, and it started to get scary or in any way stressful, I would suddenly become lucid and therefore decide if I wanted to continue with the dream, or pull the rip cord and wake myself up. One of my favorites went sort of as follows:

I’m on an alien space ship, and it’s sort of a cross between Alien and the Halo series. I’m in a Spartan suit, but I’m being stalked by a Xenomorph. Things are going however they’re going as I look for a battery for the last escape pod, or whatever, and I come to a place in the ship where the lights are out. There’s a break in the flooring, and I know I have to go down into this super creepy spot next, when suddenly, I realize it’s a dream. I hear a snarl over my shoulder, but now suddenly lucid say, “Hahahahaha- no.” And boom, I wake up. Easy peezey.

That ability has given me the confidence such that I’ve made it a consistent hobby of mine to eat spicey food or have a bit of booze just before bed for the bizarre dreams. And that’s landed me with some real zingers.

But I think I’m starting to slip.

Last night, I had a series of bad, scary dreams. I mean, fortunately, they were the kind of “horror/action movie” bad as opposed to “real life tragedy” bad, but still.

I went from trying to escape some kind of compound, stealthily taking out guards and praying I wouldn’t get caught, to – naturally – a zombie apocolypse. From there, the last two softcore nightmares both took place in mansions. The less supernatural one was kind of a Victorian-era murder mystery; which would have been sort of cool, if I weren’t hacked to death at the end of it.

But the last one motivated today’s post entirely. And not even for the whole of it – which, of course, I can’t totally remember anymore because dreams are shitty that way (especially the good ones!) – but for an eerie effect that I remember happening somewhere near the middle.

I was walking up flights of furnished mahogany stairs in a half-covered mansion. “Half-covered” in that much of the furniture was draped in old sheets to protect them from dust. It’s morning time and the sun is pouring through the windows, and I’m looking for something. I don’t totally remember what, but I remember it was important.

I make it to the top floor, search for a while, and make for the stairs again. I’m at the top when I hear a sound, so I look over my shoulder. Behind me and down the hall is a figure, draped in black cloth and wearing a stoic, featureless, white mask (picture a creepier No Face). I’ve never had sleep paralysis before, but I’ve heard it’s terrible, and now I sort of understand why.

I couldn’t move a muscle.

But that didn’t keep my heart from pounding, my breath quickening, or my nerves frying while I fought it. The white mask floated over to me – it didn’t walk – but just coasted over the hardwood like a chess piece, and while it did that, I watched the light in the hallway and coming through all the windows shift. I watched morning, become noon, become evening, become night, become morning again, over and over, so quickly it was like a slow strobing effect. Every time the figure was hidden by the darkness of night and reappeared in morning light, it was different: arms slowly grew out from under the sleeves which turned to claws, it grew taller, the expression on the featureless, plain mask became more and more malevolent.

For whatever reason, my paralysis finally broke free and I turned to make a run for the stairs, but they were suddenly missing, leading just to a sheer drop down four stories.

The rest of the dream was a chase as I dashed in and out of bedrooms and down hallways trying to escape, until I eventually was tackled by something.

WITHOUT WAKING UP OR BEING ABLE TO GO LUCID.

I guess my point is that getting older sucks. (Eh, but it’s kind of cool too, but more on that later. I have to go.)

Ciao.

creak, creak Ahem…

Because it probably doesn’t make sense, I’d like to explain that the title is supposed to be the sound of me setting up a soapbox, because this is about to get a little preachy (for, like, a second).

I’m on Facebook, but I’m not really on Facebook. I pop by, scroll for funny or insightful pictures, “tune in” to certain people’s pages like I’m checking the news or drama, then I pop back off. Not that this is letting any cats out of any bags, but: any longer than that, I find, it can be enough to drive the best of us utterly insane.

I’m only saying that because even from underneath my big-ass rock, I heard about Kobe Bryan’ts death (I almost said “passing,” but let’s be real with each other, he and the several others on board died that day). And I’m going to keep this short, because this blog is two things: 1) a place for fun tales and day-dreams, and 2) thought-vomit and healthy, cathartic rants. What it isn’t, despite the introduction, is a place to be preachy or political. But as I was scrolling Facebook yesterday, I came across…just…too many un-apologists.

Does that make any sense?

Just, several people who took time out of their day to address the current event and be sure to include that while condolences to the victims of the crash were due, they were never going to say they were sorry for calling him a rapist.

Who…who’s asking you to?

When the story broke on the news (before his family was told, which is shitty), did a queue of people just line up asking if you were yet willing to reneg on your years-old comments?

Probably not.

I don’t have a dog in the race, no opinion on the matter, no facts to spew, but it just struck me as odd how many people took time out of their day to proclaim their negative thoughts on a seventeen year old, single accusation.

The story as far as I understand it is that back in 2003, someone accused him of sexual assault.

If true, gross; definitely make up for what you did.

If not, also gross, because that’s the damage an easily started rumor can do, if after two decades you, your daughter, and several others all die, and people spring out of the woodwork to call you a rapist in response.

I don’t really have a direct message here with all this other than to say- nah, fuck that, to ask if there’s room for redemption; any space for understanding; any ground for a moment’s patience prior to judgement anymore? (Trick question. Answer’s “yes.” Why we don’t avail ourselves of it seems to be another issue.)

There are obvious cases out there (cough Weinstein cough), and everything those evil-doers get is probably deserved. But then there’s the gray area of nuance, misunderstanding, of – and don’t think of all this in the context of sexual assault, either; just…anything. Fucking life is full of passing ships, mixed messages, misinterpretations in every area. What motivates droves of us to throw fire, and to slap ourselves with a “Hello, my name is” sticker labelled “Judge, Jury, Executioner” on it (tortured metaphor, but stick with me) is weirdly beyond me.

Just…don’t give yourself a hammer, then call everything a goddamn nail. At least not without looking inward, first. I don’t know if it’s a radical idea to put out there, but maybe check to see you have your shit in some semblence of order before giving your unsolicited sermon. God, especially if that sermon doesn’t do anything beyond showing your colors.

To those folks, and just any of us, three suggestions:

Make your bed every morning.
This one’s pretty age-old, as advice goes. Life can suck sometimes, true; and doubly true when things feel out of your control. So while it seems like a tiny thing (because it is), just making your bed can do a fuck-ton to bring you back to center and turn you towards the right stuff.
Find someone you respect, and memorize their voice.
One of the things that I’m sure leads to a lot of the stuff I complained about above is the emboldening power of the anonymity of the internet. Stories of trolls online being confronted by their targets suddenly turning into apologetic, down-to-earth people are countless. Having a person in front of you changes the interaction. So, if you don’t have someone in front of you, imagine one.
Just earlier today, I was deep into a mission on Far Cry: New Dawn (great game if you love the franchise like I do), had to go to the bathroom, did that, and almost popped right back to the living room without washing my hands. I reached for the light, and Israel Adesanya’s voice just came to mind and went, “Tch, wash your hands, boy. What’chu doin’?”
A minute later, I was back in my game, but my hands were soft and smelled like lavendar.
Hug someone.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Hugs are awesome.

Cool. I think that’s enough to pepper the internet with for one day. Later, gators.

Wisdom from a Vampire Hunter

Happy Tuesday, y’all.

Busily Usain Bolt-ing towards the finish line on this house selling/buying thing, so today I figured I would dive into one of my old notebooks and go quote-hunting for some wisdom of the ancients (I like to picture it like truffle-hunting and I’m the hog – *sniff sniff* *sniff sniff*). I utilized the delicate technique of flipping to a random page and turned up a bit of a gem on the first go.

If you’ve never read Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” I’d SUPER recommend it. I went on a kick of reading old classics a few years ago – Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, etc. – and gained a lot from it.

A lot, like this…

“You are a clever man, friend John; you reason well, and your wit is bold; but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men’s eyes, because they know – or think they know – some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new ideas, beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young – like the fine ladies of the opera…

“My thesis is this: I want you to believe…To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an American who so defined faith: ‘that which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.’ For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of a big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him; but all the same must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.”

-Van Helsing

The Take: First off, I saw the Van Helsing movie with my Lord and Savior Hugh Jackman before ever reading Dracula, and I was COMPLETELY THROWN when instead of a chiseled Wolverine in a trench coat, he was described as a barrel-chested, red-haired Dutchman. Confused. As. Fuck. But eventually, I embraced him.
Secondly (and arguably more important, but pfft), this was the scene where Helsing is prepping Jonathan Harker to accept the idea of vampires, and the idea of one being at the root of their troubles. And I love the lessons herein – about keeping an open mind and not thinking so rigidly you’re not able to learn.

If you’re a fan of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Farenghar Secret-Fire puts it a bit more succintly:

“A sure mark of a fool is to dismiss anything that lies outside his experience as impossible.”

Van Helsing puts it a bit more diplomatically, but the lesson, I think, is in the same spirit. It doesn’t mean “believe everything you hear” (heh-heh, the Internet, am I right?), but it does mean not to write off new ideas simply because they conflict with a previously held idea; judge it upon its own merits. Cognitive dissonance (SMART WORDS) might be uncomfortable, but it makes room for growth.

Anyway, take it easy, everybody. Catch you Thursday.

Ciao.