Time Tornado (Adult – 2016)

Photo Source: Flickriver.com

See “The Dream Factory” for a full list of my shared dreams.

I’ve been itching to have another dream worthy enough to include on my Dream Factory page, but either I haven’t been remembering them well enough (I always remember that I’ve dreamt the prior night) or they’re just ho-hum. Well last night I had a cool one I’d like to share.

In this dream, I was playing a video game—sort of. I wasn’t controlling a character on a screen or anything like that. It was myself and a few friends and we were on a rundown road in the slums of some city and trying to get through an area that was laden with dudes with guns who wanted to kill anything that moved for whatever reason. But somehow I knew that if I got shot I wouldn’t be hurt…like it was a game or something. It felt like a video game in that way and some of the physics worked like a video game, too. For instance, we could jump really, really high and almost float at times. We also had guns, though I don’t remember what kind.

So anyway, we started off by hiding behind this small building, like a modular job shack—there was a lot of construction equipment around, though nobody was actually doing any work at the moment. We were devising a plan as the baddies stood, stared off into space and occasionally walked around, as tends to be the routine for baddies in video games. We never got to a plan, however, for one of the baddies spotted us, started yelling and firing his weapon. This prompted a mob of more baddies to come running over and start shooting at us, too (which, in the video game world, is called aggro).

So we’re spreading out, seeking cover and shooting back with our guns, dropping them off one-by-one. We get past the first wave of them, and as the second wave is almost upon us, they stop…the ground starts to shake and suddenly they’re retreating, running as fast as they can in fear of whatever’s about to happen.

From the ground emerges this super tall and beefy badass dude—and that’s really the best way I can describe him. He’s fully armored in something that looks kind of futuristic with shiny, reflective space armor and a helmet that hides his eyes behind a dark visor. The armor is a reddish hue, but seems to change colors a bit as he moves, reflecting the colors of his surroundings. He doesn’t speak, but kind of stands there—or hovers there—as if taunting us. Moreover, when I say this guy emerged from underground, I do not mean he dug himself out of the ground or anything like that. I mean he appeared from the ground, kind of like a ghost. Only, when he was above ground he was notably solid.

When the first of us fires a gun at him, he dodges the bullet easily. Then the rest of us start firing and he keeps dodging these bullets as if they’re moving at slow motion. At a point, he falls back into the earth.

He reemerged behind us, but only up to his sternum—it looked as if he was wading in water, only the water was the asphalt of the road. He was still donning that reflective helmet, only it had changed its shape slightly to kind of look like a wild cat—a panther or lion or something. The ‘cat’ roared at us and there was a flash that came from his body, shooting into the sky and stirring up some intense lightning. That lightning shot back down several yards behind him, striking the ground with a crash. From where the lightning had struck, a small tornado began to spin. That tornado quickly grew until it was roughly the size of a small silo, and a web of yellow lightning spiraled around inside it with the wind. Then this tornado start moving toward us, following our movement as we attempted to flee.

Remember, this is video game laws of physics, so when we jumped we jumped high…well above this tornado so that we were looking down into it. We would descend slowly and could change directions in the air, and this worked for a bit, but ultimately the tornado was faster and more powerful than we were and it sucked us in.

I awoke slowly inside the living room of my house (the old house we just moved out of). Or rather, I understood that this was my old house, but really it looked nothing like it. That’s how my dreams work: the architecture is always understood to be one thing but really isn’t.

Anyway, my two-year-old was there with me, and he must have been there with me fighting the baddies and the helmet dude. He was older than two, however, but still young—maybe seven or eight or even a little older.

When I was fully aware of my surroundings, I realized that this was the past…one year into the past. I also realized that time around us hadn’t exactly caught up yet, meaning the pace of time was still running a little bit at super speed, though our movements felt normal, at least to each other.

Before time settled, I could see on Kyle’s face that he also understood that we were in the past, and he seemed to like this idea very much. His eyes lit up and a huge smile crept onto his face, one that seemed to say, “This is SO cool!” He put his hand up for me to meet it with a high-five. I obliged, but didn’t share in his thrill. I was still in a bit of shock.

A moment later and everything around us returned to its normal pace. We walked through a door that led to the front-most room of the house. My wife was sitting there in a chair, reading something.

“What are you doing home?” she said, looking up at us. I realized then that it was midday. I was supposed to be at work and my son was supposed to be at school. Instead of responding, I just hugged her tight, not knowing what else to do.

“This came in the mail for you.” And she handed me a letter, one without a return address. I opened it and, true to its weight, there was nothing but a scrap of paper inside. It gave an address and said to sit at a table and wait—that someone would meet me there to explain our situation.

My son stayed at home with his mom, and it wasn’t until I had left that I realized what a risk that was: what if there were two of him in this world? Himself from the future and then the one from the past. It was too late to worry about it, though, and continued to drive.

The address led to a restaurant. I don’t recall its name, but inside it was very dark with soft glows coming by candlelight at each table. I was escorted to a table by a waiter. Around me were all these people in dark outfits—actors. They were making odd movements and giving hammy facial expressions that were almost creepy, but only one spoke. He was on the stage with a spotlight on him reading some kind of monologue into a microphone. I don’t remember what he said or what it was about, only remember thinking it was a peculiar thing to want to watch while eating a meal. At a point, these actors pulled out white, almost luminescent feathers from their pockets, each placing the feather on their hand and blowing it into the air. As each feather fluttered downward, another actor in dark would blow the feather back up into the air. This continued until their actions gave the illusion of hundreds of white, luminescent feathers floating about the room on their own. It was mesmerizing to watch.

The speaker had stopped speaking at this point—the spotlight had turned off. There was some non-lyrical music being played, something simple and eerie.

I never met the person who was supposed to meet me—I woke up too quickly—but I thought what I remembered was kind of cool. Cool enough to share, anyway J.