Category Archives: anxiety

jeanette:
i’m with my friend adam and on our way with another guy (didn’t know him) to adam’s “friend’s” house. yes, pay attention to those quotes! so apparently, we get there and i’m clued in — this isn’t just a typical friend visit; there is a mission. so, adam is a con-artist. he meets people in the “industry” (in real life he is in the movie business, ish) and then cons them and steals from their homes.

we head inside this amazing, expensive condo building in los angeles and head to the victim’s place. he is an older white man with an asian wifeey. almost immediately the guy says he is going to go take a shower and the wife talks to us. then it begins. adam is there in sight, with me. and his extra friend (who didn’t come up with us) sneaks in the back door and starts to steal valuables. then as we’re left alone, adam gets a signal that the other guy is done jackin shit so we take off. i, the newb, go for the elevators and lose the guys. we reconvene street level and adam is like, “YOU NEVER TAKE AN ELEVATOR IN THIS SITUATION!” shit, how was i to know!?

we just get in the car and see the dude run out after us. we get away but the rest of the dream, i’m straight freaking out. like, we are going to jail, this is bad bad bad! then as we’re driving away, the guy calls adam and i look at adam when he’s on the phone with the guy he just stole from and i see a look on adam’s face i’ve never seen before. i remember in the dream thinking, man, he looks so… different… sinister. adam is calm and talks to the guy, saying, “what are you talking about? i didn’t take anything. i was with you guys the whole time,” and goes on to continue to be convincing. such a thought-out plan.

jeanette:
i got a huge new tat on my tummy of a mushroom and a big square of dots and other shit. i like it. but i’m freaked out because it’s huge and on my tummy, and when i get preggers, eventually it’ll stretch out and shit. in the dream, i feel that conflict of emotion. happy because i like ink, but stressed that it’s huge, and yeah.

vivian:
i don’t quite remember what the dream was about at all, but i do remember essentially being in a house or a room and trying to keep people from coming in. at one point, i was in the bathroom, and the walls were all white and stuff, and this man starts banging on the door, and i lock it, but then apparently the door opens on two separate hinges (which makes no sense in real life), so although i locked one side, he opened it on the other side. it was so scary. i screamed… and woke myself up… and screaming in my dreams is something i haven’t done since i was a wee ladette… at least prior to 3rd grade.

vivian:
i’m in a maze-like building. green color palette. there’s a play going on. on both sides of the rooms where the play is going on, there are these raised bleachers… far up above beyond the walls. hard to explain. but the seating is high up above where the play is being held — kinda like seating at the roman coliseum, but not in a circular shape, if you can imagine that.

anyway, i’m on the top area, running into the seating area to meet up with my mom and some other female. we’re in the far right corner of the room and no one is really around where we’re supposed to sit. i dunno how it happens, but my mom accidentally pushes me off the side onto the bottom section, and i try to hold on but fall down. it doesn’t feel like much of a fall, but now i’m in the middle of the room. the play spans three rooms and actually the cast is in one of the other rooms right now.

i try to find a seat by the side so that i will no longer be in the center of the room. but i can’t find one. there’s one man sprawled across a table… like, his stomach is on the tabletop, and his legs and arms are hanging off. a lady is sitting on the ground near him and she says i should do the same thing that guy is doing. apparently, that is less inconspicuous. i am a bit uncomfortable, though, so i try to look for a seat.

before i know it though, one of the guys in the play has walked into our room and he is spouting his dialogue. but i’m still in this weird public spot, and people are angry that i’m ruining the vibe of the play.

i freak out and run out. get lost. arrive outside. it is a maze, after all.

there’s a group of guys. one of them starts to make sexually abusive comments and seems to be rather threatening. the other ones don’t actually say anything; it seems that guy is the bossguy. i start to run away or something but one of the guys grabs me back.

he picks me up by force, in the way that princes pick up princesses in fairy tales, though. his arms are under my knees and supporting my back, and i have my arms around his neck i think. a little odd. for some reason, i decide to kiss him. he’s not even particularly good-looking, but that surprises everyone there. they tell me i’m messed up. the guy puts me down.

i say to the group, “if i go with you, will you let me go back safely?”

no one answers quickly. one guy nearest to me has a grim face and shakes his head slowly, so i run away. some follow, but no one catches me. i get lost trying to find my way back to the room the play was in, but no luck.

jeanette:
i can’t remember all the details, but i do remember one large portion of the dream, i was swimming indoors. the whole entire house (apartment building? mansion?) was filled with water. it was sort of like a water slide (like not A LOT of water but more than just enough for a water slide to operate — enough to swim in). i swam up the stairs, down the hallway etc. and i remember at one point when i think i was searching for my room, i lost my bags and my pillow. my pillow was the same one i was sleeping on (same pillow case at least) and when i found the pillow, it had shrunk. it basically was just the case and because there was so much water soaked into the actual pillow, it was like… non-existent! so weird!

part two of the dream is sucky, i.e. scary. i was with some friends somewhere — no idea where. and my friend carmie and i were walking home from a friend’s house. all of a sudden, we noticed this weird sketchy guy following us. as soon as he got closer, i wanted to SCREAM, but nothing came out. i just told her to run, and we jet back to our friend’s place, since we were just down the street from our friend’s house. i ran straight back to our friends who were still at the house and went behind our guy friends who were on the sidewalk. carmie apparently didn’t run, and i guess he was getting close to getting her or i think at some point, he DID get to her. she ran into a public men’s restroom where there were people. i guess the “creeper” didn’t go in there?

i remember panicking in the dream and screaming at my guy friends, telling them to go get her, but no one really understood. after a while, someone FINALLY went to go get her. we all went together actually, and i opened the mens’ room door and i yelled for her to come out and that it was ok. she had been sitting in a locked door stall and was SUPER traumatized. i can’t really remember the details following this, but i felt SO BAD because she was like, “WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?”

alex:
so i had gone on some sort of roadtrip to a small city on the water (about the size of edmonds, wa).  i had parked my car and some people and i (i’m not sure who exactly) started walking into the small city.  we took part in a few activities that involved rafts and going along the waterfront side of the city, most of which was accessible from these little zodiacs we had been rented.  the city had a cement/rock pier that went out to sea the way some lighthouse piers do, but at the end of the pier, there was a building that didnt look much like a lighthouse.  it may still have been a lighthouse, but really it looked like a short version of the space needle, and had a disproportionately large disk (though a short ver of the space needle was still very tall).  it was obviously a tourist attraction and was some what nautically themed, or at least it reminded me of a ferry.  the sun was mostly set as we (still not sure who ‘we’ is…) walked through the downtown.  despite being small, the downtown had a few skyscrapers.  this whole city would’ve been very odd looking if viewed from any particular distance.

i had been walking along the front of a very beautiful cathedral, admiring its stonework as well as the large park across from it, when i noticed a really old industrial building across the other side of the park.  its most notable feature was one giant smokestack that had a twisted look (in all senses of “twisted”). though it went straight up and down, its surface was the pattern of an upwards spiral, like a coiled snaked or a candy cane.  really it just looked like someone had chopped off the leg of an ornate dining table and turned it into a chimney.  i could see heat distortions at the top of the smokestack.. i was admiring these and the colors of the post-sunset sky when the dream took a dark turn.

i heard/felt a really deep wooosh which shook the ground.  dark black smoke started pouring out of the smokestack and obscuring the oranges of my sky.  ‘how un-green,’ i thought to myself.  a funny thought cause i had clearly not yet detected the change in flavor of the dream.  the smoke poured out heavier by the second, and there was a perceivably growing rumble.  i looked around to see if anyone else seemed to think this was odd, or perhaps this always happened in this already strange city.   the smoke grew, and there were flames visible from the top of the tower… a huge quadrant of sky was missing in the blackness.  this can’t be normal.  another deep woosh shook the city, and a pillar of flames shot out the top of the tower.  i had been walking slowly towards the industrial building up until this point, but ash and actual flames were raining down on me.  something started pelting the area around me.. it was as if i was being shot at.. i wasn’t sure what was happening, so i started to run.  everyone in the area started to run.
i had made it around the corner of the catheral and the smokestack was out of site.  the rumbles and explosions were still audible.. and it sounded as if something large was lumbering through the city.  something had emerged from the factory and was ravaging the city.  i fled back to the rafts and gathered a few people and tried to make it back towards where i had parked.  from the raft, i could see that the ferry space needle was getting evacuated; people were dropping rescue rafts comically off of the top along ropes as if it were indeed some sort of ferry.  the rafts landed in the water surrounding the pier.  i awoke here briefly, and when i fell back to sleep i returned to this dream and things had changed quite a bit

<i>dream part two: the cake is a lie (lol…)</i>

i hadn’t made it back to my car; instead, one other person and i were hiding in some strange building.. the demon thingy was still going through the city.. i only call it demon because of its fiery emergence from the factory, and the feeling it produced around it. you could feel it in the distance as if it had some sort of aura of dread around it.

my friend and i decided the building we were in was just gonna get crushed eventually (the sounds were coming closer), so we should take the the street.   we began trying to descend the interior of this building. i use those words cause there were no stairs ot typical means to get out.  the build was ultra strange, it was a multi-level bathhouse / climbing wall.  from the top, you just looked down on many uniquely shaped pools and hot tubs at varying heights, crudely simulateling small pockets of water found on a cliff face.  despite this strange array of things, an escalator ran from the bottom floor to the top floor amidst the tangle of organically shaped pools of water and man-made cliff (complete w/ an occasional fake plant).
the escalator was out of our reach, so we kept climbing down.. at times, we would make it right over one of the pools and we could drop form one level to the next by falling into the water.. at other times we just climbed.

the muffled sounds of destruction were getting nearer to the building, and the feeling of dread was mounting.  we weren’t going to make it to the bottom before the demon made it to our building.  i could see the bottom floor .. the whole thing was a giant gift shop.. but it was too late. whatever was outside was already here — albeit still outside.

and then all the noise outside stopped.  i looked up at my friend confused. we didn’t question our luck. we just hurried to the bottom floor.  there were strange things in this gift shop, mostly clothes.  there were also these small trickles of water that had come all the way from the top of the buidllding. they were clean and uniquely colored, each flowing through a small ceramic track.  at the first floor some of these things came together, and there were labels… turns out each of the colored liquids was a different type of syrup.. lemon..orange.. coffee… carrot.. lots of flavors.  where the flavors came together there was a label breaking down what flavors came together at this point and what the new resulting flavor was.  this was the weirdest place ever.  i tried a coffee one as i walked by.. and then i found this odd one made out of 6 different ceramic paths.. it was labeled “carrot cake.”  i tried it too as i went by, and sure enough, it tasted like carrot cake…if carrot cake was a liquid.

my friends (there were 3 of us now..) looked around the gift shop for anything we might need and then we reluctantly made our way to the front door.  the city was perfectly silent.  the front door was a revolving door surrounded by LCDs, showing some graphic of a small pool of water on a cliff w/ a bonsai.  the LCDs also thanked people for visiting.

one of us started out the revolving door.. and i became once more conscious of the aura of dread.  there was no way we were gonna get away from whatever it was.. even now, it was just waiting.  i felt a surge of panic as the last guy entered the revolving door.. and i ran for it too.  as i ran, the monitors changed.. i don’t remember exactly what message was written on them — something about having caught me or my death.  the structure looked as if it took a breath right then.. everything solid lifted and clenched and then returned to rest as i pushed hard on the revolving door.

the previously ornate lattice of metal making the windows of the structure thickened and doubled, effectively growing a metal cage around all the windows.  the revolving door stopped in mid path, with me stuck in it.  i felt the pressence of something.. but i was so trapped that there wasn’t much to do.  the creature manifested behind me.. i could see it because all of the LCDs were just an image of the intetrior of the revolving door. it definitely grabbed me by my hair from behind, exposing my neck, and ran its hand along my throat.  i didn’t feel anything painful.. i just felt heavy..  and i felt my body fall away from my spirit.. if that makes sense. i felt something in real life.. i felt as if my muscles all unflexed after having been tensely flexed for quite a while.

i looked down at my body and i felt suddenly confused about why i was still here…it was quickly apparent that dying was banishing me from this dream.  i turned to face this particular manifestation of the demon, and he and everything started to fade… as my dream body died so did whatever thread of consciousness felt entitled to be there.  my real body seemed most important, and i woke up.

jeanette:
so i was having an e-party at my parent’s house in danville. (the old house, not the new one) and i was hanging out with people in my (old) room and i think like half the party had gone by and i realized omg. i haven’t even dropped yet. ha ha. so after a while, i did and then soon after, the cops showed up. ps peewu was selling to me. ha haha haa so random. anyways as soon as i did, the cops showed up and other people went downstairs to deal with them. i remember hiding the little baggie of 4-5 pills in my closet. and i remember in the dream i remember, if they have dogs i’m fucked. but i hid it in a tupperware shelf in the closet and ya. so after a while of “avoiding” them, they approached me in the house. and i had to say, yes my parents own this house. and i was walking around with them in the upstairs. then i remember asking them if we were in trouble, and they said no, or something along those lines. but said, your parents are going to have to pay 33,000 dollars because we have been inspecting the house and they need new drains and shower heads.

aHaH um wtf.

anyways. i cant remember if this next (part of the?) dream was at the same time, before, after, same dream etc. but i also have recollection of being involved in this work thing. where i had to give part of a presentation on new media stuff (which i do at work) – and that i was totally fucking it up. basically before the actual presentation someone from another office (who was pretty senior, i think) called me for some background info and i started bs’ing shit and i think he totally called me out on it. then all i remember is during the actual presentation i was fuckin’ shit up! fsu.

inspiration: my friends have been trying to get me to go to EDC (a rave). and i’m just not sure i want to go. for a number of reasons. and the best word to describe my feelings on going is, “uneasy” – for some reason, i just am! it could be a number of things. the atmosphere, the age of the crowd, what i’ll be doing there, how i’ll feel the next day, etc. i’m sure it would be fun, just not sure if i’m looking to partake in that kind of FUN anymore. anyways so last night had dinner with some of the girls and that came up, whether or not im going. i still said, i don’t know. i said that if i could find cheap tix the day of off of craigslist, that i would…but im not too sure i’m down for that.

vivian:
trendi is now a totally different kind of beast. it’s like a big office with more workers, although jenny and i think summer are still there. i’m at the office later in the evening and it is darkly lit. everyone has their own little office with a door. some girl is wearing a purple leopard-printed type top that is really low in the middle. people are complimenting her.

i’m freaking out. i apparently just got the new issue of redefine and the printer completely fucked up. they put in a bunch of ad pages in the very beginning that weren’t supposed to be there (like 8 pages total) and also stapled in a set of pages completely crooked; they were poking out the top of the book. and there was another set of pages that also wasn’t supposed to be in there. freaking out and trying to call them. wake up in a sweat.

vivian:
escaping from zombies. i’m in a house, and some guys who look like cops are coming. there’s one really tall and buff guy, in particular. not really sure how i know what he looks like… think i see a movie-like third-person shot of him outside my house and somehow put together that he is this bad dude who is coming for me. i don’t know who i’m with, but it’s a boy. i crack open a window and kick out the mesh and leave from it. the boy hesitates because he wants to see some new dragonball z game. i shall not tolerate that ridiculousness and tell him he needs to come. he finally concedes.

we run through the streets — but perhaps i am now alone — and now zombies are frothing at the mouth and trying to beckon us (or me) to join them… they have kind of a goo trail from their mouths and the second you touch it, you turn into a zombie.

before i know it, i’m at this house. i guess my parents live there? it’s this really nice house up on top of a GIANT hill. like giant. like a mountain. when i first get there, there are no zombies. soon, my mom sees them approaching down below on our giant garden / lawn. she tells this to my dad and he is less angry about the idea than he is about the idea of zombies trampling his garden. (both of my parents are white.)

inside the main entry way of our house are all kinds of pots… of the gardening variety. they are empty. they are arranged in some fancypants way. soon, zombies appear at our door. i decide to use some of the giant gardening porcelain pots to attack the zombies with. on the walkway in front of our house, there is basically a giant cliff. the stairway up runs along to the right side, but immediately in front of the door is just a space for standing, and behind that is a long ways down to the ground below.

zombies come solo for a while — a lot of girls, i think — and i use the giant pot to push them off the cliff to down below. some fall in a pool. some splatter to their death. they certainly all die. i hear some zombie mentioning that ## of zombies are dead out of ## who have been converted, and the number that was dead was sooooo small compared to the number that had been converted.

the zombies keep coming, some in pairs, and i keep pushing them off. it seems my parents have disappeared. i’m running out of pots, because i would sometimes throw the pots off with the zombies.

but soon comes this guy that doesn’t look like a zombie. it’s extremely surprising. he is this extremely good-looking dirty blonde guy wearing a white shirt and grey jeans. i pretty much forget all about the danger, and my first words to him are something like, “if i can be a zombie with you for eternity, i’ll do it.” i reckon he is amused by this sentiment, and comes in. the zombies have gone away for the evening. he tells me he’s a ‘turner’ and somehow i know exactly what that means — he can turn zombies back into humans.

this is a thought that fascinates me. so he tries it on me. we kiss. he turns when i turn. i guess he has zombie in him, but it’s dormant. the process is slightly painful and i feel a little “green” and like i have boils on my body. it’s a little dizzying. but that’s about it.

my new lover takes the time to try and turn some mega harmless girl zombie who is in the corner of the house, not attacking anyone. he puts his hand on her leg and it is quite obviously painful to transform from a zombie to a human. he turns human as he’s doing this, but it’s difficult for him to heal her because she’s being a pussy and can’t handle the pain. she brushes him off and shakes her head at him. she’s content being a zombie.

more kissing turns me back from a zombie into a human. he doesn’t turn from a human back into a zombie. it also doesn’t really hurt — perhaps because it hurts more the longer you’ve been a zombie and i’d only been one for a very brief time.

we spend the night cuddled up on the couch with two other people there — presumably tinwin and karen — and zombies don’t come in the night for some reason. i am amazingly content.

come morning, zombies stir me awake. so up until now, when i had been attacking zombies at my door with pots, i would open the door to greet them — to surprise them — and push them off the cliff before they ever got to the point of knocking on the door or breaking it. this morning, i see two zombies outside my door and open the door to do what i had done before. (there is like, one large brown porcelain pot left in the house, not including the one i have in my hand.) to my surprise, there are more than two zombies in front of my door. the other ones are being sneaky, and have wrapped themselves around the side of the house, near the stairs. oh shit. they’re forcing their way in, and force me in by pushing the pot.

and then i sees it. zombie lenny. zombie lenny is holding a broken piece of ceramic plate and is threatening me with it in some way. he breaks off another small sliver of the broken plate, making it more dull than it previously was. not sure why.

he kind of corners me back into my room, which happens to be on the same floor, and kisses me. i turn. apparently he has had this all plotted out and has this book with him. after he turns me, he pulls open the book. it’s like, a death book of sorts. before us were two other people — two males — who had died together. perhaps members of his family. now he filled in some empty spots within these red stamps with my name and his name. and then he proceeded to die / pass out…… fully expecting me to do the same right next to him. but as always, lenny passed out with the quickness, and i didn’t even feel close to wanting to die. i guess in this world being a zombie was a sickness, and the longer you were one, the more likely you were to just die.

so while he passes out i grab half of this giant human-sized donut that had been sitting in my room. no idea why. i guess it’s so old part of it had molded black and was flaking off. a thin shell of the glaze type stuff remained and i carried it to the living room, part with donut, but most of it was looking like a piece of snakeskin (flat). not sure what i intended to do with it. make the zombies sick with mold somehow???

when i get back in the living room, i drop the mold donut in shock. karen and tinwin are on the couch, looking like they are asleep. my nameless lover is on the couch next to them, also ‘asleep’. it’s fucked up. they’ve attached some kind of mechanical pump to him that looks like a bunch of koolaid type drink packets strung together. a girl is sitting on his lap, also asleep, and his fluids are being pumped to her for some reason. two “head zombies” are to the right, supervising. i’m not sure what they are doing, but i somehow have the idea that they are going to be using him to sell some kind of soft drink that really rich people can buy to keep themselves from being zombies. i guess zombies need money too…??? i feel completely helpless because i can’t do anything to help him. it’s completely disturbing. i think about touching him to hopefully turn him into a zombie, but am afraid of killing him since machines are attached to him. in retrospect, i think i should have put him out of his misery, but there surely must have been a selfish aspect to that too.

pwny:
i’m in a group of people that is training for some specialized game/contest. the group is very large (everyone that will be competing in the constest) but within that group, there are smaller teams that will be working together to win when the contest gets started.

i’m training with my team. this is very video game like. the room has many levels of which i can seemingly fly between each. our weapons are balls and i have one softball, which seemingly is better because it’s bigger. we basically go around pegging opposition teams.

eventually we learn the details of the contest. it’s a race to find some water which has some magical properties??? this water could be stored in any type of container, and i don’t recall any hints about where it is to be found, but i am not concerned. we are also upgrading from balls to guns and i get the sense that this is now a battle to the death.

the teams start running. my team strategically chooses to take cover immediately as the start will be the most hectic as all the teams are in close proximity. gunfire goes on for awhile. when it seems to settle down, we start off. there are lots of dead bodies at the start line.

we make progress without seeing many people. the ones we do see are fighting amongst themselves so we pass them by. we occasionally shoot one if we had deemed them to be quality competition (based on our training).

we eventually get to a church/clothing store. there are pews etc, but also tiered displays with racks of clothing.

i see a can of surge on one of the pews. i’m highly suspicious of it. i go to taste it to see if it is in fact surge. it is not. it certainly must be the magical water! All of a sudden a swat team floods the macys/Chappel. i hide the pop can in my pants. the other teams have arrived, but obviously are not shooting because of the swat team. oddly enough they don’t seem to care that we are all carrying fire arms. they start searching people. i’m very worried that they will find the surge can, or expose to the other teams that i have it (thus resulting in my doom). As i’m being inspected my teammates give me nervous looks. i somehow pass undetected and walk out of the building.

as i get about a block away, the building explodes. i run back to the hideout with more swat hot on my tail. i run to the room where our main organizer/leader normally is. he is not there. the swat team is in the house looking for me. i look through the desk to see what’s there. there are HUNDREDS of pictures of me and my team. Plans drawn out. it becomes apparent that i was the focus of the entire contest. the guns had been fakes, and the entire group had been in on it (including my team). it seems i was being set up as the fallguy for this explosion.

i submit to being arrested by the swat team, telling them that they will find all the evidence they need to prove my innocence in the room. the begin searching for the leader of the contest, but continue to hold me captive until everything is cleared up.