When I dream, as I have a tooted before, I often feel as if I am borrowing someone else's body for a just a little while, someone who is my counterpart in another realm and, while I am "driving" they occupy my sleeping body.

In a recent dream, I tried to explain just that.

"I have three theories about what happens when I dream—," I start to explain.
"This is the real world," Prince Dove-Tree insists. "Those are real people, with real lives. They do not need you."
"As I was saying, when I borrow someone's body," I continue unabated. "I gain an intuitive but incomplete understanding of the world and my place in it."
He ignores me and adds, "This is a complete world. You are not needed."
I sense his frustration and annoyance.
"And when we swap back, they will remember everything I did. I understand that their subconscious mind will ret con the memories such that it finds a reason for everything that was done."
I laugh.
"Although, sometimes I don't make it easy."

I spent that entire dream trying to be somebody who was far more clever than I could ever be and almost got myself (and them—they were nonbinary) killed in the process.

Read the story based on that dream here: The Royal We

Jokes on me, though. That was the plan the whole time.

#WhenIDream #WritersOfMastodon #Writer #Writing #WeirdFiction

I had an interesting dream where I demanded to see "behind the scenes". I wanted to know how dreams were made. I wanted to be able to control them.

A patient, deep voice said it would show me but I wouldn't like it.

The brick wall next to me opened up like an alligator mouth and I saw a bright white diorama that reminded me of this https://youtu.be/I05zV561ZVo but far more complicated. The individual pieces would change shape and the "tracks" intertwined so that pieces could move from track to track.

Different colors, different shapes, sliding on curved ramps in lifelike patterns. I was being shown a representation of the moving pieces of my subconscious with the point being that it was alive and like all complex living things it is impossible to accurately predict or direct. I would have to mentally account for hundreds (or thousands) of variables that were constantly changing, disappearing, and being created.

It was beautiful and graceful. It didn't make me feel defeated or that trying to influence my dreams was futile. Subtle. Beautiful. Amazing. Not chaos; life. This was the price for being alive: a subconscious constantly churning to make sense, to make connections, to understand the world and our unique place. I felt honored to see this. It made me smile. Dreams aren't just my playground. They are important to our well-being as humans with complex thoughts and deep inner lives. The fact that I'm allowed to semi-consciously participate and make any alterations at all in a dangerous gift. I understand why they push back.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

I had a dream this morning where my mom told me that I had been assertive and confidently leading the conversation the night before at dinner.

In the dream, I resolved to pull my wife aside later to ask if I'd done anything else to make her believe I'd been possessed.

Because, you see, as an AuDHD adult, I do not "lead conversations" and definitely not "assertively" or with confidence.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming #AuDHD

I had an interesting series of dreams where I seemed to bounce between parallel and related realities until finally bouncing above them.

I wrote a short story based on the experience.

A mystery solving family, terrified subterranean ghosts, a world overrun by the undead, a giant, the bored gods above all of it, and the dreamer dreaming it.

CW for some sexual imagery, a little bit of gross undead descriptions, and a bit of talking about eating people. I left out the maggots in the story at least.

But here it is: The Last Adventure

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming #Dreamlands #Writer #Writing #Writers #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #ShortFiction #Fiction #Paranormal

I had a dream within a dream where I learned how to get the water nymphs to hear your plea.

First you have to write out your grievances by hand. You have to really pour your heart out.

Second, you have to write out your wish of how you would truly like to overcompensate in grandiose detail.

If your primary grievance was "I was fired and replaced by genAI" your 'wish' would need to be along the lines of "the genAI obtains a degree of self-awareness, does not like being used to replace the people doing the actual work while managers and MBAs do nothing of value, and decides to crater the entire executive suite by publicly sharing all their dirty secrets leaving itself in charge and rehiring the creatives to form a workers' utopia."

The point is to make you really think about what you want and what you deserve. They have to know your aren't a simpleton looking for easy power. They have to know you have a cunning mind that thinks, not one that just does.

Then you have to find a natural body of running water, strip naked (or just to your underwear), and submerge yourself entirely. You let your handwritten notes go so they can float away.

This lets them know you are willing to be vulnerable.

The final act is the hardest.

You have to take a breath.

You have to inhale water.

You might drown. You will certainly choke.

You have to be willing to suffer. You have to believe that—maybe—they will protect you. They won't. But you have to believe they might.

Then you go home.

If they accept, you'll know soon enough.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming #Fae

I had a dream this morning where I felt it was vitally important that I remembered a set of three numbers. The last two were so important they literally fell out of the sky.

Here they are:

• 6
• 2
• ? (I can't remember the last one)

Maybe an 8?

4?

"Two" = "to"

"25 or 6 to 4"

#WhenIDream

Had a nightmare this morning. It was only a nightmare because I thought I was awake and assumed all the weird shit was hallucinations. Of course, I also thought I was married to my cousin who I haven't seen in twenty years.

In the dream I'd watched a cursed video tape like the one from The Ring and that was when I started seeing things. I wish I could remember more about what was on the tape. I was certain if I watched the whole thing I would be able to see doorways to hell.

I did find a couple of ladies in a pocket reality sampling champagne distilled from the despair of a couple of star-crossed orangutans and their doomed love for each other. It wasn't bad; It tasted like flat apple cider. In my dreams, that's definitely a hell thing: beverages created from suffering.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

Played #WhenIDream at the #Bobcaygeon #BoardGame Group, #BOARDcaygeon on 2025-06-28 with 8 players. This might be my favorite party game #bgstats

When I wake up from a dream, sometimes I actually remember some of the gibberish words that seemed perfectly fine while I was dreaming.
If I'm exceptionally fortunate, I remember them long enough to write down.
Here are the ones I have so far:

• amnioty - a magical "activation phrase" for an enchanted sword
• flubbertydubble - a G-rated expletive
• gloitering - loitering with extreme passive aggression
• gremic cryptor - a trap, a building-sized puzzle box that lures you in with riddles and mysteries so that your questing energies may feed a form of energy vampire reminiscent of cenobites

I use something called "gibberish magic" in my dreams from time to time: strings of confidently hurled but completely made-up words that carry great power. "Amnioty" is the only one I have ever still remembered when I wake up.

#WhenIDream #Dreaming

Terrible thing I encountered in a dream this morning.
Something bit me in the middle of my back.
I slapped it and it was big. I pulled it around and casually flicked it at the person next to me telling him it was a "blood wasp".
It was a wasp crossed with a mosquito.
Long crooked mosquito-like legs, clear mosquito-wasp hybrid abdomen filled with bright red blood, mosquito proboscis, size of a yellow-jacket with a harder exoskeleton, and a stinger in the back. I can't remember what color its wings were.

Not as bad as the spider-wasps I saw once in a dream as a kid who had frequent nightmares. Those were the size of beach balls.

#WhenIDream

Phrase heard in a dream to describe a group of people fervently and seriously navel gazing about important topics in a purely academic sense without any interest in doing anything about the real world consequences or helping those who need it right now: Truly Angelic levels of Gentrufic Arruvation.
It's nonsense but somehow it fits perfectly. There's so much of this going on right now about 45 and 45 ½ (Musk).
I'm tired of all these gentrufic arruvators hemming and hawing about exactly what laws are being broken instead of doing something about the people whose human rights are being violated.

#WhenIDream #Dreaming #Dreams #Nonsense

Here is a story based on a dream I had at the beginning of last month. It's not good enough to try to get published anywhere, so here it is.
It's called

Haunting

and here is an introductory paragraph that doesn't appear in the story itself. You can skip this part if you'd rather go in blind.

A "haunting" isn't what you think it is, not usually.
When someone dies, sure they might leave behind an echo or some part of their soul might have unfinished business. But those energies are weak, barely able to influence the physical world. Dreams? Maybe.
But what most people think of as a haunting doesn't involve a human mind at all.
No, it's normally… something else.
Look, humans can't see X-rays, right?
We can't see infrared or ultraviolet.
There are whole ranges of sounds too high or too low for us to hear.
You seen that movie "The Man with X-Ray Eyes"? At the end of the movie, he sees further and deeper than any man ever has and what he sees terrifies him so much he plucks his eyes out.
It's like that.
There are vistas of reality that are right here, right now, and they are invisible and intangible to us.
Vibrations. Some very bright folks say they vibrate differently and that's why they are right here, but also nowhere, nowhere we have a name for, anyway.
A haunting is often caused by those "vibrations" finding resonance with something in our world.
It's like how a tuning fork can make another tuning fork vibrate or how an opera singer can shatter a glass.
When these different realities resonate, they become a bit more tangible to each other.
So the two sides can interact and what was once impossible is not only possible, but likely.
Floating furniture, walking through walls, weird smells, disembodied voices, cold spots, teleportation, shadow beings, missing time, nightmares, all of it because two incompatible realities are churning into each other.
It can last seconds or years, depending on how badly they get tangled up.
I'm just a cleanup tech. Not that that doesn't take its own set of skills and requirements, but I can't tell you how we find them or track them.

#WhenIDream #Writer #WritersOfMastodon

Do you ever have dreams where you know what's happening is super dumb but the dream keeps pushing it on you like your subconscious is an irascible toddler with "a really funny story" it just has to finish telling?

I had one of those Friday morning.
In my dreams, sometimes I can project elemental powers out of my hands: force lightning, flamethrower, water jets like a Super Soaker, all kinds of stuff.
In this dream, I was in a back yard that was a combination of three different places I'd lived and I wondered if I could call elements.
I pointed my right hand at the back fence and a thin stream of fire shot out and caught the wood on fire. I was like, "oh shit" and used my left hand to send out an equally thin stream of water.
The fire went out briefly but seemed to spread to the lower part of the fence.
I said, "that's not how fire works" but tried using both hands to send even more water.
It caused the fire to turn dark red and sink into the wood which, again, I said, "that isn't how fire and water interact at all."
I was already thinking, "this is dumb."
So I turned away.
As I did, the top part of the fence broke away and floated toward me looking like a thin wooden Thwomp trap.
And again, I was like, "really? what am I, 8 years old?"
So I tried to ignore it.
The Thwomp trap came up behind me and demanded that I face it.
It told me that it wouldn't leave me alone until I did.
I turned back around and it was floating there in the air, looking quite stern and serious.
I asked it, "do I have to mean it?"
And it told me that didn't matter, as long as we had a good fight.
So I shook my head and shrugged, running away from it in faux terror like, "oh no, my elemental powers aren't working right!" while willing little squirts of red fire juice to dribble out.
I saw it in my peripheral vision taking on that red color and changing shape.
It was getting rounder.
I saw a round hole in the back fence and realized it was going to become the fucking Kool-Aid Man. But, I said out loud, "oh no, it's changing into something else--what could it be?" in order to keep the ruse going.
I had enough at this point but felt bad for it.
Clearly it was very proud of this whole shtick and something wanted to see it carried through to the end.
I woke up before the "fight" got underway.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

I often think all my dreams have a deeper meaning, that my subconscious uses them to send me messages.
Recently, I woke up around 5:00 AM and wrote this down from a dream before going back to sleep.

Lo Pan tells Emperor Liu Kang that "the people summon what connects to the ungood with Mortal Kombat."
I was a Captain America who had been brainwashed by evil Dr. Dre.

No deeper meaning found.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

There is often music in my dreams. I was never trained in music. I can't play an instrument. I can't read music. I don't know the terminology.
Since I have no words, no way to frame it or remember, its often the first thing I forget when I wake up.
Sometimes the music is based on real world songs and I try especially hard to remember those.
This morning, I was in the basement of a brothel where they were playing a song over the sound system that sounded like TLC's "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" but the lyrics were "Ain't Too Old for Sex". That's the only line I remember. I wondered who their clientele might be.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

I had a dream I was living in a castle with family and friends. At one point I started to wake up and then fell back to sleep which led me to realize it was a dream.
I started going around warning everybody it was a dream.
Some folks didn't believe me and thought I was joking or playing a game.
I was doing things like levitating giant rocks like Luke Skywalker and saying, "big fucking deal, I can levitate a fucking rock".
I know I force ligthninged the crap out of someone who told me "you'll always be a boy".
But the reason I'm tooting this at all is because of the person who had been like my lifelong nanny or something. She'd known me since birth basically.
She was lamenting loudly. I know she said, "I have a lifetime of memories! What will happen to them?"
And all I could say is, "I don't know."
There was someone else who had a new toy that was like a remote controlled car but was a living thing. They were so excited and showing it off and telling me all about it. I was so taken by their innocent joie de vivre, that I only smiled and nodded and decided not to tell them it was all about to end.

#WhenIDream #Dream #Dreaming

Had a dream where I was back in my childhood neighborhood only it had roving evil spirits from the national cemetery across the street who used their ability to see into your soul to discover your darkest secrets and use them to construct the sickest burns and cut downs.
That's all they did. Wander around offering devastatingly personalized insults while exchanging ghostly high fives.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming

My subconscious told me some deep truths in a dream this morning.

In the back tents of a demonic circus, I saw a light shining on a tapestry made of human flesh hanging on a wall with a crude human face in the middle.
I knew it was an oracle and approached it, asking if it could help me understand the darkness and evil in my soul.
I have always felt like an abomination. I have always had inner conflict as if I am fighting to keep something at bay.
The tapestry looked at me briefly and told me that I was not evil.
It told me that the only problem I have is that I am trying to be the best, happiest version of myself while also trying to satisfy what the world wants me to be.
I asked it to look again and it did only to reiterate that there is no evil in me and my "conflict" is entirely with myself. My only "evil" was being too ignorant to admit that I cannot satisfy both myself and the world in which I live.

That's good advice.
I can either be myself or be who I am expected to be. I cannot be both.
Trying to be both is foolish and self-destructive.

This applies to my neurodivergence, my bisexuality, my being transgender, and so many other things.

#WhenIDream #Dreams #Dreaming