Killer ents

I haven't been sleeping much lately, but I still remember a dream now and then...

I was driving down a narrow road somewhere in the woods, with a few vague friends.  We came upon a huge estate and a run-down three story Victorian house.  I'm not sure if it was our intended destination or not, but we got out and started exploring as night fell.

As I'm sure you can guess, it was a pretty good set-up for some kind of supernatural horror to start hunting us down.  Two of my vague friends disappeared, and were presumed killed by the strange apparition that first night.  We fled to the car out front, only to find it completely destroyed.

Forced to stay in the house, we explored the entire structure room-by-room.  Most of the rooms were mildewy and grey with dust and cobwebs, but we did find a few old guns in a broken case.  (somehow, they still worked and were already loaded)

The second night, the creature returned.  It came from the surrounding woods, and looked like a cross between Jason and a treant.  It had grown since the night before and towered over all of us.  In its knarled hand, it dragged a massive club that could have been a tree itself.

Another friend was crushed by the giant, and the rest of us were forced to retreat into the house.  This didn't deter the giant though, and he simply started bashing through the walls to get to us.

Then I woke up.

Sputtering restart

Wow, it's been quite a while since I last posted.  True, there's been a lot going on, but in truth it hasn't been so hectic that I couldn't have sat down to write a few posts.

The truth is that it seems like a lot of my friends have been starting their own blogs recently, and I felt left out.  So, revitalized and limping bravely onward!


I've been hitting comic conventions lately as I try to promote ViVaVi.  Unfortunately, unless they're totally mainstream, webcomics almost always start out small and accumulate an audience very slowly.  And I don't want to make a mainstream comic.  I want to do something that I enjoy and that I like to read.  So, bit by bit...

I've managed to meet most of my webcomic heroes, including the Foglios and the incredibly awesome Shaennon Garrity.  It's incredible to me that it's possible to make a living off of doing this kind of stuff, but somehow, they manage it.

Man, I'm out of practice writing these posts.  I'll be more coherent next time, I promise.

I resist the urge to gripe, and to submit to my subconscious

Not gonna gripe today.  Just gonna write about dreams.

  I was working at a computer in an office building somewhere.  My right hand was robotic and functioned better and much faster than my left hand.  I had lost it in a battle and it had to be replaced.  I'd grown to despise my left hand and its inability to keep up with the right.  Unfortunately, the only way to legally replace body parts was to have lost them in combat.
  As discreetly as possible, I went out to the fire escape and traveled down several floors until I reached the parking garage.  In a shadowed corner of the concrete basement I met with a grizzled old man.  "How much," I asked, "would it theoretically cost to replace a body part with cybernetics?"  The old man smiled.
  Then I was on a starship, which was docked at the central space station.  Standing from my seat in the cockpit, I walked up to the windshield.  With a powerful molecular knife, I carefully poked a small hole in the super-reinforced glass.  Once that was done, it was a simple matter to twist the knife enough to enlarge the hole to about a two-inch diameter.

My perspective shifted to another member of the bridge crew.

  "What are you doing?!" I yelled at the man who had just cut a hole in the forward window.
  "This!" he cried and struck a key on the control panel in front of him.  Everyone was thrown backward as the rockets fired and the ship lurched forward out of the docking bay.  As we left the artificial atmosphere, there was a sudden roar of air rushing toward the hole in the window.
  Through the other viewscreens, I could see that the attitude rockets of the space station had begun firing.  With horror I realized that the man intended to fly our ship through the super-energized plasma flames of the station rockets.  Normally the ship would be able to take it, but the hole in the windshield would expose us to the raw energy.
  The world outside the windows disappeared in a wash of purple-white plasma.  Laughing madly, the man held his left hand in front of the two-inch hole and let the fire burn away his flesh and bones.  (Thinking back, it seems like there might have been an easier way for him to cut off his hand.)

  My perspective shifted again, this time to myself, watching the man incinerate his hand on TV.  I was in bed.  C was next to me asleep.  It was about the same time that I realized I wasn't wearing pants.  That isn't right, I thought to myself, and pulled some on.
  C rolled over and tried to pull me closer in her sleep.  I tried to pull away, but she only snuggled closer and kissed me.  As nice as it was, it still wasn't right.  I broke the kiss and got up, leaving C alone in the bed.

Then I woke up.

  It's happened more than once that a girl has told me she had a dream about cheating on me like I'm not allowed to get upset with her about it since it was a dream.  But I'm still me when I'm dreaming and that means that I'm still not going to cheat.  Even when I'm not me, something still makes me act as if I'm in a relationship (when I am in one).  Of course, it's been my understanding that my dreams aren't really normal most of the time...

Spies, or possibly just freelance trouble-makers

I've been watching a bunch of old-school Doctor Who episodes lately.  As usual, it's just a smattering of episodes across nearly four decades, but I almost managed to keep them in order.  I think some of my favorites are those that involve the other Time Lords, where the writers were challenged to come up with not just theoretical technology of the future, but technology that lies at the outer edges of reason.  They didn't always succeed, but it's always interesting to watch the attempt.

Agents
    I was somwehere in Europe with Audrey, my friend/partner.  It may have been Nice, France.  We were in a coffee shop discussing our search for Julie, who had gone missing in the area under mysterious circumstances.  Concluding we should search her usual haunts first, we left the shop.  On the way out, I got another latte to go.
    Audrey drove through the winding cobbled streets while I sat in the passenger seat enjoying my coffee.  The steering wheel was on the wrong side for Europe, though it may have just been an American car.  The third location we visited was a bar.  It was very similar to a wonderful bar in Cork, Ireland, but had three stories.  Audrey climbed the stairs to the second floor and called out that she'd found Julie's table.  The bartender eyed me and my latte suspiciously.
    We sat at the table and Audrey closed her eyes, laying her hands flat on the tabletop.  After a moment she opened her eyes.  "I know where she is."  Audrey was psychic.
    I touched the table too and got a faint impression of a map with a vaguely orange splotch on it in the general location of where Julie was.  My psychic powers were nowhere near as strong as Audrey's.  Normally I'm the protagonist in my dreams, but this time it seemed I was letting Audrey take the lead.
    Hurrying to the street, we leapt into the car and raced to the place.  It tyrned out to be an old overgrown garden with a large stone fountain in the center.  The metal gate was locked but the stone wall surrounding the area was old and crumbling, and it was easy for us to climb over it.
    Julie was sitting by the fountain, apparently no worse for wear.  "You made it!" she exclaimed happily when she saw us.  She was unable to say more before a helecoptor flew overhead and she jumped to her feet.  "How could they have followed you?" she cried.  "You should have been able to lose them easily with the directions I gave you."
    Audrey and I looked at each other in confusion.  I said, "We didn't get any directions.  We followed your psychic trace."
    "Oh.  We might be in trouble then."
    The three of us ran to the gate where Julie took a moment to unlock it.  Our car had already been overturned on its side and was immobile.  I walked calmly toward the six waiting men and women, waving Audrey and Julie away behind my back.  "This may take some time to explain," I said slowly.

Then I woke up.

Dreaming of driving

  I've been watching the new Sherlock on BBC, and it's all kinds of good.  With the new season they've introduced the modern Irene Adler.  She's cunning, manipulative and everything Holmes could ask for in an adversary.  It might be an attractive thought to some that they could find someone who matches them so completely, but while Sherlock and Irene may not have exactly been enemies they certainly weren't friends.  Whatever mutual understanding there was between them was also paired with the knowledge that they could never completely trust each other either.  To me, the prospect of having that kind of relationship develop with someone is synonymous with losing a friend.

I've been dreaming a lot of driving lately.

  I was driving through town, while at the same time trying to drive the truck ahead of me by remote control.  It was difficult, but I was managing it suprisingly well.  Until a traffic light turned red just after the truck passed through the intersection but before I could make it through.  Driving the truck without being able to see it was much more difficult, and within a few seconds I'd managed to crash it into the median.
  When the light had changed again, I drove within sight of the truck again and was dismayed to see that a police car had already pulled up beside it.  I was forced to drive past the accident.
  I next found myself entering a lab of some sort.  It hadn't been apparent before, but I then realized that we were doing various experiments in vehicle control.  Julie, my blond partner, and I were working under a dark-haired supervisor.
  Julie immediately pulled me aside and whispered, "Something's wrong.  I haven't heard from the home office in more than a week."  I shushed her as I saw the supervisor heading our way.
  "I lost the truck," I said immediately, to divert his attention from Julie as she tried to look busy.
  "I saw," he said, waving his hand dismissively.  "It doesn't matter.  We're going to Phase 3 now."
  Julie turned toward us from her computer.  "It isn't ready!" she cried.
  "I don't care!" the supervisor exclaimed.  "This is our last chance to make it work or they'll shut us down."
  Personally, I wasn't so sure that would be a bad thing, but I kept my mouth shut.
  The next thing I knew, both Julie and I were being hooked up to a machine via wires inserted into our arms and the backs of our necks.  "Julie isn't prepped for this!" I protested, but the supervisor ignored me and activated the machine.
  Julie became unnaturally pale as connections were made between her and the car.  I knew the same thing was happening to me.  Suddenly, I became aware of the car as an extension of my consciousness.  It wasn't quite a part of me, but I could easily tell where it was and direct it with my mind.  It was parked outside the building, next to the black car that I could somehow tell was Julie's.
  Inside the lab, I looked under one of the tables from my seated position and saw that the connections to the home office had been severed.  The supervisor hadn't received any orders to start Phase 3, he'd been acting on his own.  Next to me, Julie was getting worse.  Her skin had taken on a grey tone, and she was much thinner now.  She was dying.
  So was I.  I couldn't stand to stop what was happening.  So I did the only thing I could think of, and drove my car through the front windows of the building.  The supervisor ran to the door just as my car crashed into it from the other side, killing him.

Then I woke up.

Dreams of an airport

  I was in Denver last week and W deliberately tried to set me up for embarrassment.  I'm starting to get tired of it because it's not even really in good fun any more.  Like she's only doing it for her own private enjoyment.  Fortunately, it didn't work out correctly for her and only ended up being confusing until I ran the whole scene out in my mind again and realized that I hadn't reacted the way she'd wanted me to.
  Yeah, I'm venting again.  I shouldn't try to write so soon after these things happen, but it's been a while since I remembered a dream clearly.

Dreams...
  This one was really more like two different stories that happened in the same location at an airport.

  I was waiting in an airport for something.  I'm not sure what it was, but I know I wasn't flying anywhere.  Maybe I was waiting for someone to arrive?
  The airport itself was a vague amalgamation of all the various airports I've been in over the last month.  Stone pillars, uncomfortable plastic seats, and lots of big windows looking out onto the airfield.
  I was reading a webcomic on my laptop, and mentioned to someone about all the fan-produced poetry and songs that appeared in the comments sections.  I talked mostly about how weird and inappropriate it seemed.  The woman I was talking to somehow got the impression that I was saying I could do better.  She totally agreed with me and said that she couldn't wait to hear it.
  Over the next few minutes, things quickly got much worse.  The woman somehow spread the word around the airport that I was writing a virtual symphony based on this comic.  There were other famous musicians and poets present too, and she roped them into performing the amazing symphony I was supposed to have ready in just a few minutes.
  I frantically tried to tell her, "It's a webcomic!  Look, it's just a collection of individual comic strips with goofy humor and sight gags about mad scientists and explosions.  There's no way to do anything musical with that!"  All any of them had to do was read one strip and they would immediately have seen that what they expected me to do was impossible, but nobody would.
  The crazy woman even managed to find some kind of Eastern tea master, who served us all some kind of exotic brew before we were to perform.  I thought, Well, all these guys are so good, maybe we'll be able to fake something half-way decent.
  It didn't happen.  People crowded around us as we all prepared to play, and I finally had to step forward and admit that I had nothing for them.  I tried to explain again, but no one would listen.  They were seriously angry and offended. A red-faced man said to me, "No, no.  Get away from me.  Don't even talk to me."
  As far as every person in the airport was concerned, I had let them all down and completely failed at being alive.  Rejected and ostricized, I wandered outside.  Finding a grassy patch of lawn, I sat down and gazed up at the clear blue sky.

Something shifted and then I was back on that same lawn.  Time had passed, and something had changed, even though nothing was different.  Looking back, I think that the strange shift was actually me, leaving REM sleep for a time before falling back into it.

  I looked up into the sky and saw an odd black spot in the blue sky.  As I watched it grew larger, until it was as big as the moon in the sky.  People were already pointing and running around in a panic.  Then the black spot split apart into five seperate black shapes.  They were all vaguely human-shaped.
  Aliens were invading.  Huge featureless black aliens.  The fact that these aliens were gigantic, could fly, and had all kinds of dangerous weapons didn't deter me in the least as I ran toward the nearest one that had just landed on the runway.  It kicked over an airliner, causing the plane to explode.
  I didn't have any strange inexplicable super-powers or weapons that only now became apparent.  There wasn't even the expectation of any.  I remember just assuming that somehow, I would defeat them.
  It had almost reached the airport itself when I got to it's foot and, without hesitating, began climbing.  I somehow made it up to the neck and encountered the pilot.  As I fought him hand-to-hand, I was vaguely aware of the other giant alien machines encountering resistance as well, though I'm not sure what it was.  After a few minutes of fighting I managed to kick the pilot in the neck.  I felt something like bones break under the black muscles as my foot connected, and the alien fell.

Then I woke up.

Why can't drawing be as easy as writing?

    I probably shouldn't be surprised.  I've been writing for the last 20 years (two-thirds) of my life.  During that time I've produced maybe about 1% as much visual art.  Oh well, practice practice practice...  Maybe one day I'll be able to get drunk and draw even better than I do sober.
    Not that I write better after a few drinks... I just write about different things.  It's just that I've been writing for so long, I don't need to think clearly to do it.  Hell, I could probably write in my sleep if you put a keyboard under my hands.  Hmmm.... there's a thought.  I could call it RFM (Rapid Finger Movement)
    Yeah, I've been drinking a bit.  A did her usual drink heavily/pass-out early routine.  So in retribution, I'm using her computer to gripe anonymously about her online.  I generally try to keep my current relationship issues away from here, but I'm bitter and needed to vent.  Sometimes I wish I could play these stupid relationship games.
    I guess that's not quite true.  I can play the games when I want to, but that's all they are to me: games.  It's all too often that A and I are arguing and it devolves into this verbal duel over who's right and who's wrong, never mind whatever it was that we were arguing about in the beginning.  And inevitably I just make it worse by not taking it seriously enough.


Okay, that's enough griping.  Dreams!

    I was one of four archaeologists, exploring some kind of huge underground temple.  We were all completely kitted out with tools, weapons and body armor.  I wasn't sure at first what they expected ust to need body armor and weapons for, but as I entered a great hall, one of the massive stone pillars nearby suddenly broke at the base and tipped toward me.
    I was barely able to dive out of the way... directly into the path of another broken and falling stone pillar.  At the last second one of my team was able to pulle me out of the way before I saw fully crushed under the weight of all that stone.
    We looked ahead uncertainly at the dozens of grey stone piillars that filled the hall.  Another of my collegues shrugged and aimed a grenade launcher at the nearest pillars.  before I could stop him, he fired several shots off.
    "Some of those might actually be holding up the ceiling!" I shouted at him as all the nearby pillars toppled.  From the massive stone blocks that fell down from the roof of the hall with them, I could tell I was right.  The entire chamber was caving in.
    I and the other three teammembers quicklly secured our helmets and huddled in an alcove as stone and earth rained down on the tomb.  As sunlight began to spill down from above, I realized from the direction we'd been traveling that we were almost certainly underneath a populated area.  Dragging one of the other archaeologists behind me, I ran in the direction of the collapse.  We had to help the civilians as roads and foundations collapsed beneath them.  Then I woke up.
    Unfortunately, I never got the chance to help anybody.