Don't Drink the Water

I was running away from home because nobody would believe that my blood being able to trigger an allergic zombie reaction in dogs, was serious. Our own dog (we don't have a dog) was one of the allergic ones.

They didn't need spilled blood to react badly to it, either, just the smell of it rushing in my veins would set it off, and the people with this kind of blood would be the only target. My family insisted it was just a phase, no matter what the news said. Of course, they weren't the ones constantly in danger of being maimed, so...

After a bad night where the beast had me backing up with a chair and a skipping rope like a toddler pretending to be a lion-tamer, and me bleeding from what was left of my left ear and some puncture wounds in my cheek, I finally decided to run. ("Oh, come on," whined Sibling, behind me, "Stop being such a drama queen...")

I ran from the apartment to the garage of the second house we moved into back in Manila, as Anjie sauntered out to the garage with a dog at her heels-- our dog, acting perfectly normal and playful.

I begged her for a ride, and, upon seeing how Puppy turned into Zombie Hellhound of Doom at the sight of me, she raised an eyebrow (wondering if she should care, not really disbelieving that the trouble was happening-- she's like that in waking life, too ;p) and then told me to squeeze into the front passenger seat of her car with her. She doesn't have a car, in waking life. Let alone a driver.

And then I woke up, but only enough that I could think it was a dream. Sleepiness dragged me down again, without even time to deliberate the hypnogogic imagery...

"This should be far enough away," said Anjie, "but familiar."

We stood, Anjie and Anjie's driver and I, across the road outside the gates of my Jakarta neighborhood. Though lucid, I didn't feel any difference between this and the Manila apartments and houses. I didn't want to go back home, to any "home" where those awful people would know where I was hiding and would bring in that treacherous dog and sing, "It's just a phase, it's just a phase," as it feasts on my intestines!

It was sunny in the dream, so teleportation to the Lucid Crossroads should have been easier. As we walked forward, I willed the texture of slate chips under the soles of my feet, and closed my eyes, and keeled over in what would be the middle of the street-- but would not be anymore, because I was completely in control of this world, and expected to touch water instead of asphalt.

I opened my eyes. The water was black, in a pool with no border of wood or chain mail. It held a steady reflection (all the more gruesome for it) of a severed head, its face like melting wax. To its right sat a caped monk, to its left a woman in red with her legs sawn off.

I had just enough time to grasp that Something Wasn't Right when the edge of this pool seemed to expand, the reflection gaining color and dimension...

... and I was in that pool, without getting wet. No, actually, I was in my bed. The same bed I fell asleep in last night, on the same side, in the apartment I live in now, but with a perfect view of the monk and the head and the legless woman sitting at the corner-- and I couldn't move. Also, there was a stick-figure frame with melting skin crouched over my bedside. AND I COULDN'T MOVE!



As we've covered, the main reason I got into OBE's and lucid dreams in the first place were because of my episodes of sleep paralysis. These episodes were worse than nightmares to me, but, nobody I asked (but Google, eventually) had any clue what was going on. I came under the impression that OBE's and lucid dreams were supposed to help.

Almost a decade later: I've had OBE's, and I've had lucid dreams, and sometimes the scenery would get weird and I'd consider that a lucid dream from an OBE, but I've never managed to OBE from an lucid dream (although I have reason to suspect that I've OBE'd from a nonlucid dream)... and I've never, ever, after all this time and practice, been able to do anything at all to/for/with sleep paralysis!

I'm not aware of sleep paralysis during an OBE, (which, if OBE's are dreams, then natural sleep paralysis or Rapid Eye Movement atonia, should be happening naturally,) because by the time I come to... I'm totally unconcerned with my body being paralyzed or not because I'm --floating, flying, and teleporting --already experiencing being out of my body. Not "trapped inside" it. I tried going out of my body from a paralyzed state this time, but instead of rising I could only sink backwards. Since I usually can't change my sense of location at all during SP, though, that actually made a nice change.

The thing is, the apparitions said that the only direction for me in this state was into the underworld with them. So, I sunk further backwards, into the mattress, to see if it was true...

... and then I could move again, so I guess it wasn't.