Caught Dream

You know how dreams are elusive, how hard they are to remember? You can’t remember a thing the next day unless you can grab hold of even a tiny filament of their story thread, then you have a chance. The deal is not done, but it’s a start. Grab that thread, work it carefully, don’t let go, don’t lose it, don’t break it, and you might be able to pull the entire dream out into the open. Sometimes I can do this, revealing what my suspect brain is doing while I sleep. Often it is interesting, but Friday night was a doozie and I was able to work the thread pretty thoroughly, pulling the entire dream out into the daylight. For a dream it is weirdly coherent, detailed, and complete, almost a short story. Here you go, tread carefully in my dreamscape:

I was crossing through a well-lit warehouse or possibly a parking structure, with metal doors, heavy concrete pillars, and no windows, probably underground. It was mostly empty, what objects that were in it were highly varied and strewn about. Very video game-esque. It is not completely clear what I was doing there, but I was on some kind of a mission, perhaps as a messenger. I knew that I was not some elite A-team spy or commando, more of a volunteer C-team type, possibly part of an underground of some sort. I was dressed mostly normally for me: jeans, t-shirt, running shoes, windbreaker; with a Glock in a high hip holster under the windbreaker. Mostly normally, except for the Glock. The mission was routine, I was not expecting any kind of trouble – the weapon was a precaution only. I was making my way across the warehouse carefully, listening for others in the warehouse. It was empty.

And then it wasn’t; in a flash I was surrounded. By aliens. And I mean literally in a flash, I don’t remember how they got so close to me and surrounded me, but suddenly there they were. I was well aware of these species of aliens, I knew of them, but they were not a part of my plan and I was surprised to see them here. Freaked out, actually. There were two types: one humanoid and four to six – I could never quite tell how many – hmm, jellyfish without the tentacles, but with large human eyes. More on them later, first the humanoid: indeterminate age, petite, female, fit, in a skin-tight bodysuit. Perfect smile, large eyes, should have been attractive, and yet wasn’t. Something was off: chin too long, bone structure odd, and she moved in a way that I can only describe as not quite right, but I can’t explain why. And the way she talked, more on that later.

The giant jellyfish: they were translucent and luminescent. They could vary their size and shape at will, from perhaps one foot to four feet across, as well as glow in a variety of colors. And each one had a pair of very large, but very human and very expressive eyes. They were rubberier than jellyfish and floated. They mostly hovered, but could move very quickly when they wanted to.

When I at first found myself surrounded I freaked. I drew my weapon and trained it on a jellyfish. It slowed, stared at me with its big eyes for a moment and said, “that’s not a good idea”. I knew that it was right and holstered the weapon. They circled me, distracted me, talked to me, with the humanoid doing most of the talking, but I don’t remember any of the words. I was captured, though still armed. The jellyfish would blow up, wiggle, and illuminate while saying something, I don’t recall what, but it made me laugh. I was being manipulated by creatures much smarter than I. Getting me to do what they wanted me to do was tricking-a-dog-with-a-ball easy for them. They never touched me, they never took my Glock, but I was captured. I was out of my class.

I found myself seated in a chair, not tied to it or anything, but still captured. Next to it was a table with some unfamiliar objects on it. They asked me questions and I answered, I don’t remember what I said. After a few minutes the humanoid approached close and suggested that we kiss. I had not previously found her attractive, still didn’t, but thought that this was a great idea. She then sat on my lap and we kissed for perhaps a minute. Though it was enjoyable, it was not sexual, she was too different. After the minute she stood up, stepped back, and looked at one of the jellyfish.

The jellyfish looked back knowingly, “interesting memories. Those would be worth collecting”.

The humanoid looked at me and said, “sorry I had to do that, but our heads have to be very close together for me to scan you”. She then looked back at the jellyfish and said, “we can do it manually”.

The jellyfish glanced at me, then her, and said, “it will take four hours. Or we can use this”, indicating a device on the table. I knew somehow that ‘doing it manually’ would leave me unharmed, but ‘using the device’ would leave me destroyed. The jellyfish glanced at her and then considered me, “we have the time, we can do it manually”.

One of the metal doors to the warehouse clanged open, startling me. I saw three humans come through, one with a sidearm, two with shotguns. These, I knew, were my enemy, here to find me, here to stop my mission. Another surprise. They, too, were not A-team, even I could tell. The shotgun wielders broke left and right, advancing along the walls, disappearing into the jumble as they searched the warehouse; the guy with the sidearm, obviously in charge and looking more competent than the shotgun wielders, advanced pretty much straight at me, damn the luck. I feared him, my mission was at risk. I drew my Glock.

He saw me, advanced, and started to train his weapon, but then the aliens flurried, crisscrossing between us. He was taken aback; I could see in his face that he knew, as I knew, that the mission was important, not getting shot was important, but not accidentally clipping an alien was more important. It changed his calculus. I trained my weapon, but was equally unable to fire due to aliens toing and froing so slid to the right and found myself behind a pillar. In the confusion, he had lost track of me. I slid further right out of behind the pillar, weapon trained, and saw him, scanning, trying to find me, not seeing me, now a mere 15 feet away. I had never shot anyone before, but knew that I just couldn’t afford to miss, I could not miss. I aimed carefully, my sight picture was perfect and center mass; he had no body armor. I started to squeeze. Weirdly, I felt lightheaded and my vision blurred for a moment, a tiny fraction of a second, and when I regained focus I found that my aim was off, but not that far off. He still hadn’t seen me. I adjusted my aim, locked down the sight picture, and squeezed.

The trigger did not travel as I had expected. It pulled back an inch (an inch!) without firing, even though it cannot possibly pull back an inch. I squeezed and released the spungelike trigger several times. It would not fire. This was not physically possible, my Glock has failed in a way that I could not conceive of. I didn’t know what to do. But there he was, 15 feet away, now looking at me. I paused and then put my useless Glock on the ground and raised my hands.

He smiled, squared his shoulders, and trained his weapon on me. I’m done, I’m paralyzed. I’ve got nothing. I guess this is it. After a moment he raised his weapon and said, “Nah, another day”, turned and walked away. I watched him leave through the metal door and pull it shut.

I was alone in the warehouse, it has been 15 seconds since the door clanged open. I did not see the aliens nor the shotgun wielders leave, but they were gone. I picked up my Glock, unloaded it, and tested the trigger. Normal. Huh. Something’s not right, but I didn’t know what. I should have had him, I should have! But something was . . . off.

Perfectly calm, but confused, I sat down for a bit. Why not, the mission was busted. I thought; I went back over the past, what, ten minutes, carefully. There was a lot that had been unusual, starting with the presence of the aliens. Wild, nearly unheard of, but not impossible. The presence of my enemy was unexpected, but not that unexpected. All of that was within the realm of the possible. Events departed the realm of the possible after my vision blurred. What was that? I had him, I had him dead to rights, no way I could have missed, but then something happened and things went sideways. Triggers don’t DO that.

I thought a bit more and came to an astonishing conclusion, a scary one, one I could not shake, one that I became more certain of the more I thought about it: I got him. I got him, I hit my center mass target, I killed a man. What happened to the two shotgunners was a mystery, maybe the aliens dealt with them. Regardless, once the aliens had matters in hand, they must have taken their four hours, but also took the time to edit my memory. They removed the killing from my memory to save me the trauma - a kindness - but they made a mistake: they lacked sufficient familiarity with the mechanics of how a handgun works to replace my memories with physically realistic substitutes, thus my physically impossible trigger pull experience. It was the only explanation I could come up with that matched all of the facts. It sounded like something the aliens would do, it was in keeping with what I knew of their character. Wild. I didn’t know what to think. I started to stand slowly . . .

And then I woke up, no longer in the warehouse, but in my bed. I thought to myself, “whoa! I gotta remember that one!”, rolled over, went back to sleep, and the dream disappeared into the ether.

The next day, while walking back from the Grocery Outlet, a thread of the forgotten dream wafted at the edge of my memory, barely perceptible. Seeing it as if out of the corner of my eye, I gingerly felt for it, trying not to disturb it, caught it, and started carefully pulling. I got most of the dream into daylight, which is what you just read. Evidence suggests that you do not want to be inside my head when I am sleeping.