Lucid Dream Girl

I woke up at 1 AM and spent the next three hours tossing and turning. It was going to be yet another mostly sleepless night. My mind ping-ponged through all of my projects waiting for me at work, and I concentrated on the ones that weren't going well. That was never very effective at getting me to fall asleep by compounding the residual stress from my job. Then I went over the finer points of the terrible date I went on over last weekend. She actually took a phone call at the table in the restaurant from her ex-boyfriend where they proceeded to reconcile, my date acting like I wasn't even there. That led my mind to follow the thread of acknowledging that my life was a disaster. How did I get here?

I stopped staring at the ceiling with the projected digital clock and closed my eyes. My mind went comfortably blank for a moment and a feeling of peace wove through me before I noticed I was sitting up straight, in the back of a rowboat, staring at a woman sitting facing me from the front. It wasn't just any woman, it was Myra, and I hadn't seen her clearly in probably 10 years.

She smiled at me, and then said gently, "Hello, Mark. It's good to see you."

I replied honestly, "It's good to see you, Myra. I didn't think I'd ever see you again." She nodded her head as if she was feeling the same sentiment.

As the shock of seeing her again waned, I looked around. Our boat was floating in a large room that was ornately decorated, royal even, like something you'd see in Europe. Looking over the side of the boat, the water was shallow, maybe a couple of feet deep, but the water was full of shiny, sparkly fish all swimming in random circles.

"Where is this place," I asked.

She responded with a grin, "It's the Hall of Mirrors from the Palace of Versailles in France."

"That's strange. I've never imagined what it would look like, so how did I come up with this?"

"You didn't, silly." Myra looked around in admiration. "This one is mine. Do you like it?"

I was seriously confused. "I don't understand."

She was grinning still, but it looked a little sad. "Do you think you're the only one with imagination? I thought you'd be impressed that I filled a 400-year-old room with water and put pretty fish in it."

She saw I was getting uneasy, so she tried to calm things down. "It's OK, just be cool. I think our connection is very fragile right now. I've been trying to reach you for a long time but there's been something preventing it before now and I just seemed to get lucky that our timing was compatible. I don't know how long this moment is going to last and I need to talk to you."

"I've missed you, Myra."

That seemed to perk her up and she responded, "I've missed you too, Mark. The times we spent together... our fantastic little adventures. Those were the happiest moments of my life."

Wait. That didn't make any sense. She saw my consternation over what she had said so she asked soberly, "Why did you break the connection, Mark?"

The sense of frustration came all over me again. "I don't know, Myra. I didn't mean to. I just couldn't do it anymore."

She nodded her head like she understood. That was one of us. "Mark, I feel our time is just about up. I need you to do something for me. For us. You have to find me. Please. Come find me. The real me. Please."

*

I don't remember exactly when I became aware of just how weird my dreams used to be. I was probably thirteen years old and one morning when I was going over the finer points of one of them to my mother, she stopped me. Sometimes she was patient and would hear me out, but the chaos that preceded shipping me and my sister off to school in the mornings was sometimes too much for her and she'd give me her patented line. "Mark, I think I'll just wait and see the movie," she'd say. Yeah, real funny.

Then one afternoon when I got home from school, Mom had a gift for me. It was a journal and she suggested that I start documenting my dreams. So that's exactly what I did, even years later when I upgraded from the written page to a hand-me-down PC computer that Dad gave me.

In middle school, I was allowed to select an elective for third period. For the first half of the year, I took typing. To this day it may have been the most valuable class I ever took. By the end of the class, I was able to type like a demon. As fast as I could talk even and that would be instrumental to me. The second half of the year, for my elective I took creative writing. It was no surprise that my dreams would find their way into my writing.

One of my father's funny quirks was that he loved catalogs. If he could get a free catalog from something online or even by calling over the phone if he saw one advertised that way, he'd order it. Our coffee table was littered with the things. It got even weirder, like he'd order a catalog from something he wasn't even interested in. For example, he had catalogs on equestrian equipment, and I had never seen my father even near a horse. Not even once.

He hid the catalogs with women in lingerie and sex toys under his bed, but I knew where they were. I'll never be sure if it was Mom who segregated those from the mail and put them there as I never once saw my dad go to the mailbox, but it wasn't like I wanted to know. Eww.

I think I was a freshman in high school when I was picking through one of his catalogs, bored out of my skull. It was published by a purveyor of geeky-tech equipment, something that at least interested me, when I came across a product that sold for $29.99. It was a headband to be worn to bed that had LED lights of multiple colors that supposedly aided in cognitive awareness within a dream that the wearer was dreaming. Something called a lucid dream.

I had never heard of that before and it blew my mind. I called 'bullshit' on the catalog product, most of the things in the catalog looked like the fake things being sold on the back page of Dad's old comic books, like see through glasses and sea monkeys and things. It was the idea of the device that had me captivated. To be able to be in total control of my dream and be able to unfold the narrative per my design.

I took to my school library and searched online. I found out everything I could about the concept and the various techniques that 'experts' wrote on how to do it. Again, I had to weed through the bullshit, most advice sounding fake, but there were others from credible sounding sources that thought it was possible. One recurring piece of advice was to keep a journal, and I was already doing that.

The journal was to help to recognize places and things from a prior dream that would trigger the consciousness that a dream was occurring in the present. That in turn was supposed to allow me to navigate a dream in a conscious state.

I think Mom was suspicious when I started going to bed on time and without complaining or dragging it on for well after my appointed bedtime. For obvious reasons, she was just fine with that.

I don't know how many weeks it was until it finally happened. I was dreaming that I was in a long hallway, the walls, floor, and ceiling made of massive stone blocks, fully illuminated by lit torches at regular intervals for as far as I could see. I had dreamt of the torches in a dream from the night before and I finally experienced my 'trigger' moment. I was dreaming and I knew it.

I understood exactly what to do because I had been hoping this would happen and had a number of scenarios already designed in my head. I started to fly. Down the hallway, slowly at first and building up speed. I picked a spot in the distance and told myself there would be a shaft that would go straight up. When I reached it, I nimbly changed my trajectory and went up the stone lined shaft. I could see stars in the distance and at precisely where I wanted it to be, the shaft ended and I emerged, soaring into the air, stopping into a hover at about a hundred feet above a massive medieval castle. I could see the village surrounding the castle and firelight from all around provided by bonfires and torch lined streets. I took my time taking it all in. It was glorious.

That's how it all began. I soon found that I could do it with regularity and exercised my new skill with impunity. I dreamt the nights away and journaled my experience every morning.

For the next couple of years I had a lot of fun with it. Some nights, I was Indiana Jones, and Han Solo on others. I raced in the Indy 500, winning of course. I jousted on horseback, I flew rockets to alien planets, I swam underwater without needing to breathe and even wrestled a twelve-foot great white shark until it gave up and swam away in defeat. I was Willy Wonka, Captain Nemo, the Gladiator (Maximus Decimus Meridius), Genghis Khan, Captain Picard, the Red Baron, and the Silver Surfer.

One time I was violently taken out of my dream. My mother was standing over my bed with her hands shaking my shoulders, absolute terror written all over her face. My room light was on. "Mark, Mark! Are you OK?!"

It was pretty clear what had happened. I was using Karate to take down a dozen members of the Yakuza and had to use all my moves to prevent the Japanese mob from taking me down. I was winning but I was also apparently thrashing around in bed, nearly knocking my poor mother out before she got me awake.

In my journal I wrote in all capitals, NO MORE MARTIAL ARTS OR VIOLENT DREAMS.

It was sometime during my junior year that I realized that as fun as it was living my fantasy dreams, and as weird as it sounds, I was alone. Oh, there were plenty of players in my dreams and their actions were semi-autonomous, but behind the scenes I had all control. Control of the action, control of the environment, and control of the outcome, or ending. Little to no dialogue at all. No emotion except for my own.

The thrill of it all was waning.

When I took stock of my waking hours, it was not much different in that I was lonely. I led a boring life. Being shy, I didn't have many friends, and the ones I had weren't very close. Just forget about having a girlfriend. My only dates were with a library book and my voracious appetite for reading. Mom had been worried about me for some time and now I was suddenly starting to worry too.

One day I was sitting at the kitchen island doing my homework when Mom came in with an armload of mail. She sorted all of Dad's catalogs into one pile, junk mail into another, and the bills and relevant mail into the final and smallest pile. She held up a letter to get my attention and handed it to me. "Mark, the mailman gave us a letter by mistake, this belongs to the neighbors across the street. Will you please walk this over? Knock on their door and give it to someone in person and don't just toss it on their doorstep, this looks important."

"Aww, Mom," I complained, "they're a bunch of weirdos."

"Son, you don't know that. You've never even met them. What do I always tell you, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

"I'm 16, Mom. You can stop quoting Disney movies now." If only she knew that last year I had a hilarious lucid dream with Dumbo in it. I chuckled in school the whole next day just thinking about it.

"Go on. Please do this for me. And be nice about it." She gave me the look that mothers give that no kid could ever say 'no' to.

"Alright," I gave in and took the letter.

"Hey," she said, "they have a daughter that looks about your age that you never met. Maybe you could say 'hello' and you two could be friends."

"Yeah, right." I stormed out the front door using my mannerisms to show I wasn't happy about it, a move that all teenagers have perfected through natural born instinct.

These neighbors were weird, there was no doubt about it. They had moved in several years ago and they kept to themselves so much it was as if the house was abandoned. As soon as they moved in, they stopped watering the front yard and let everything die. It was now weed infested and pissed off most of the people on the street. The house was such an eyesore.

These people owned only one car which they would pull into the garage and shut the door before getting out so nobody saw their movements. Whoever picked up their mail from the mailbox did it at night or in the early morning, once or twice I caught their shadowy figure in the dark.

Mom had thought that the girl that lived there was home-schooled, so I only saw her from a distance, and it was rare when that happened.

When I knocked on their door, I got a creepy feeling but that was immediately forgotten when I saw the girl holding the door open. She was indeed about my age and she had a nice smile, that was the first thing I noticed. There was something infectious about it because it made me smile back.

Then the next thing I noticed was that she was cute. Real cute. Which should have been the kiss of death for me. This is normally the part where I stammer and embarrass myself, but there was something about her that soothed my nerves and made me want to have long talks hand in hand as we walked along the beach together.

"Hi," I started, "I'm Mark. I live across the street."

In contrast to her family's behavior, she didn't seem shy or uncomfortable in my presence. I was expecting her to be totally anti-social. "Hi, back. I'm Myra. I've seen you around. You go to the local high school, right?"

"Yeah. I'm a junior. I've never seen you at school, do you go somewhere private?"

"Um, kind of. I'm home-schooled." I knew Mom would strut around in her I-told-you-so moment later when I told her she was right.

"Oh. That's cool."

"Yeah, well, I wish I wasn't. I'd make more friends if I went to your school."

I didn't want to tell her that I didn't have many friends and was almost invisible in my school. "Yeah, well don't feel so bad. At least you don't have to deal with Mr. Kleinrath for biology class."

In almost a whisper that I could barely hear, she said, "Yeah, well at least you don't have to deal with my mother for e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g." She looked back to make sure she wasn't overheard.

It also made us both giggle until we were just staring at each other with big goofy grins.

That all came to a halt when a woman's gruff voice from inside of the house shouted, "Who is it and what do they want?!"

She shouted back into the house, but a lot more cordially, "It's our neighbor." Then she looked at me, "Is there something I can help you with?"

I had the letter already held up, finally remembering why I was there in the first place. "The post office delivered this to us by mistake."

Myra was suddenly hip chucked almost into the door by an older lady who just appeared. Looking angry. She grabbed the letter out of my hand and said, "Thank you," as she slammed the door in my face. I wandered back across the street towards home wondering what the hell had just happened.

I told Mom everything about my awkward delivery and she was instantly upset over it. Something to know about my mother is that she is very well liked in the community. It is a frequent thing for her to be in the front yard having a friendly conversation with one or more of the neighbors but having never talked to the family across the street had disturbed her, more so than I had thought before.

Mom started tidying up the already spotless kitchen, muttering to herself, "I wish your father was home. We need to talk about this."

The whole thing was heavy on my mind when I went to bed. That night when I dreamt and got into my lucid state, I decided to make a change in style to how I would unfold my narrative this time. I was going to start with Myra.

I was in my room, and I floated through my wall, across the street, and into her room where she was laying, only in a blink she was sitting up on the bed. She was wearing a lot of black leather, looking a little like Olivia Newton John at the end of Grease. I had just recently seen the movie for the first time.

"Hello, Myra," I said.

"Hello, back," she replied. "Um, where are we?"

"Oh," I replied happily with a smile. "This is my dream and we are in your room for now."

"This isn't my room."

"Yeah, well, I've never seen your room before. This is actually my room, but in your house, and I put pink and white striped wallpaper up since you are a girl and all."

"Oh. Gross. I'm glad this isn't actually my room."

I laughed at the expression on her face. "OK, fine," I told her, "Let's go somewhere fun. How about snow skiing?"

"First," she said, "just where are we going to find a snow-covered mountain, and secondly, I don't know how to ski."

I replied, "Don't worry about it. I got that covered." I made a large open window appear next to me and flew through it, setting down on the top of a Swiss alp, covered in snow. I waited for Myra to follow but she didn't appear. I went back to the window and looked into the room, she was still sitting on the bed with a wide eyed expression.

"How did you do that?" She asked.

"I just think about flying and I fly." I just didn't know why she was questioning me and why she didn't fly through, right behind me when that had been part of my thought process.

"And the window....?" She still hadn't moved.

"Oh, I don't really need a window, I could have just thought of us on the mountain but I think it's more fun to fly through this thing when making transitions to another scene. It's more dramatic that way."

"Because this is all a dream. Your dream." She was acting a little bewildered.

I tried to move things along but she didn't budge. She finally relented, and summoned a little courage, then floated off the bed and through the window.

Joining me on the top of the mountain, she said, "Wow! That was cool." She looked around and the vista before us took her breath away. She looked so cute, eyeing everything with wonder.

Me, I was just impressed with myself. My imagination was running so wild with her that she took on her own words and actions, none of which was at the front of my mind.

I noticed that Myra was shivering and rubbing her arms to fight off being cold. It wasn't actually cold in my dream but the little details, like the visible breath and the falling snow were such a great illusion it made it seem cold. Instantly solved without even a snap of my fingers, we wore jackets and ski gear, snowboards and boots on our feet.

I moved my goggles over my eyes and said to her, "Let's go."

"No wait," she replied, fear in her tone, "I don't know how to do this."

"You don't have to know, it's basically flying, and we just think ourselves down the mountain. You go first and I'll be right behind you."

I heard her mumble to herself, "This is so weird," and then she leaned into the hill and started down with me following.

As we headed down, there were giant chasms and breaks in the mountain and we jumped off and flew from peak to peak, skiing in between. She seemed to get into the experience, I could hear her whoop and holler as she snaked downhill, jumping and flying, making perfect landings every time.

After I got my fill of skiing, we found ourselves sitting in a private Nordic lodge by a raging fire in the fireplace. The walls were adorned with ski artifacts and we were sitting on a giant fur carpet made from a mythical beast I conjured up. Myra was dressed like Sandy from Grease, again, but this time complete with poodle skirt and ponytail.

She said, "That was pretty fun, Mark."

"Yeah, it was. I'm glad you liked it. I've done that before but I've always been alone."

She got a curious look and said, "How are you doing all this?"

"Well, I read up on it and once I recognized certain patterns, I was just able to do it. I did it enough that I'm pretty good at it and try and figure out fun things to do. When it stops being fun, I just think something else up."

"Wow. Really weird." She thought for a minute and got serious, "So you can do, like, anything?"