One for the records, even for my weird dreams. Zombies, Man eating Dolphins, I am both myself and a blonde girl. My dreams always have a certain level of "rules". For example, I might be on Earth in the Renaissance; in which case the basic laws of physics all apply, even if there is magic and we have dragons. Or I am in space on an FTL cruiser, so outside without a suit = dead, and a zero-G zone on the ship means we are in zero gravity, and things behave accordingly. I might be able to fly, but there are always limits of some sort. I can't fly supersonic, or out of the atmosphere, or I can only fly if one or more conditions apply, like I have to jump hard; and it might also have to be dark. Or I can only fly for short distances, like 100 yards at time.

Or else I am in "wherever", a place that may or may not be earth-like, and anything goes. Even there the "rules" remain constant. If I can fly, I can always fly. If ghosts can walk through walls but I can't, I can't ever walk through a wall. Other things can be wildly variable. I am not always me; I'm not always in First Person mode. I'm not always male. I can be female, a film or TV character, and watching from a spectator POV. Or once in a while, I body hop; I am always "me" then, but my persona can hop from person to person within the dream, changing POV each time.

This dream falls into the "wherever" category. The place is earthlike, has gravity and air, and transportation and tech are all modern day. We also have zombies, man eating land based dolphins who can swim through the ground and through floors, but rather like they are swimming through molasses; and a few women have "abilities" that both attract the dolphins as well as slowing and to a degree controlling them. We have to travel from place to place in cars, trucks etc, but we cannot stay outside for long periods, especially at night, because something will happen to us; and inside buildings is where the zombies and dolphins can hunt us. We seem to have no weapons such as guns or flamethrowers, though we can use bats and edged weapons. I am part of a group of three people; a woman I don't actually know who is brunette, me as myself, and also me as a blonde woman, also not a person I actually know.

It's after dark, and we are racing to find shelter for the night. I (from now on "I" is always me ion the woman's body, and "Scott" is me in my own body... make sense? Good. Explain it to me later) am not just looking for any old place; I know that a friend, Heidi Levin, is in a local hotel taking shelter, and that she is in trouble there. Heidi and I both have an ability to slow and control the man-eating dolphins, an essentially psychic power that lets us impose our will for short periods, but requires touch to initiate. Heidi is with another woman like me, and possibly one or two men.

Our van, which Scott is driving, swings around a corner and we have to swerve wildly, because there is a wreck directly in our path. Whatever danger haunts the night has upended a motor home, and is wreaking havoc inside it. We veer over the edge of an embankment and find ourselves careening down a hill ( went lucid here. the van doesn't crash, though it takes damage and can't move any further). Surprise, there is a Mustang Blackjack conveniently close by with a full tank and keys in the ignition. time to go! We race off from the now alerted dangerous thing, leaving it far behind. The powerful Pony, which Scott is driving, easily climbing back up to the street and tearing off.

Scott suddenly hits the brakes again and makes a hard right turn, tires screeching but holding on to the road. He has seen or sensed where Heidi and her friends are, the multi story apartment complex just a few blocks ahead. We roar in to the parking lot and stop underneath a balcony. Without touching the ground we jump atop the Mustang. Scott leaps up and grabs the balcony railing and pulls himself up, then grabs me and helps me up and over, then the other girl. Inside the apartment we can see Heidi and her group. At least a dozen zombies are in there, and half a dozen or more dolphins are circling around on the floor, diving and then trying to thrust up far enough to get one of the people, who have taken refuge atop a pile of sofas and chairs and tables. Heidi is reaching out and touching each dolphin any time one comes close, keeping them controlled and at bay, but she is clearly exhausted. There are two men and one other woman, who are using tables legs and one two-by-four to fend off and bludgeon the zombies.

We yank open the door and race across the room, knocking over several zombies as we go (they are the nice "slow" kind) and even stepping on and pressing under the floor briefly a pair of dolphins. Just as we reach the safe zone of piled furniture, a zombie gets a grip on the hand of the guy with the lumber, and pulls him off balance. He hits the floor and is taken immediately by a pair of dolphins and several zombies. Heidi is too weak to keep going, and sags into the brunette woman's arms, and it's up to me to take her place for a while. Scott take over where the one man went down, and lays into the zombies with a vengeance; he hasn't been fighting them off for an hour already, and has an aluminum bat. I turn and touch three dolphins in rapid order, sending them flopping back under the surface of the floor, and then smacking two other zombies with my own aluminum bat, hard enough to take the head off one (yay, threat ended!) and knock the other completely off its feet.

For a while, we just fight off everything that comes at us. Through the walls we can hear other people fighting and dying, and a few more zombies and dolphins now head our way. While this is going on the brunette manages to get some food and liquids into Heidi and the woman with her, and the remaining guy as well. We need Heidi to help control the added dolphins though, so her rest is short. Scott has a plan, and after getting us in specific positions Heidi and I bring six dolphins up at once, touch them rapidly and send them thrashing a path through the zombies. Scott jumps to the floor and I follow him, touching more dolphins, while Scott presses four zombie backwards, out the balcony doorway, and over the edge. They hit the ground, and that ends them as threats. We spin around and race back inside and now we are grabbing the zombies by clothing or arms and tossing them over the edge as fast as we can. We only have about 90 seconds before the dolphins shake off the effects of my touch and come after us. Heidi shouts at us, and we realize that we need to stop tossing out zombies. There is a threshold level of zombies to dolphins, and if we go below that more dolphins will join in.

Back inside, and I come up with a plan; if take the arms, legs and lower jaws off the zombies they stop being any kind of real threat; then we only need to deal with the dolphins, and they have limits on how high they can reach (they can't leap out of the thicker floor medium, it seems). "We can also cover more of the floor space with a double layer of tables!" Heidi shouts, and we have a measure of safety. Racing from room to room in little parties, we manage to drag back a motley collection of tables, a couple mattresses, and some dressers and another pair of sofa's and armchairs. We flip table upside down, then place tables atop them right-side up; this prevents the dolphins somehow from getting through underneath. We form a ring of sofas and armchairs with the backs facing outwards, and lay the mattresses in a double thick stack in the middle of the circle. One woman can now sleep or at least rest while the other patrols the perimeter, and one guy can stay with her to fend off zombies. Scott takes calculated risk and races out to the hallway to find a fire ax; and when he gets back has an extinguisher as well, so we can now blind the dolphins with CO2; we can't safely kill the dolphins, as doing so sends them into a frenzy, and the psychic charm doesn't work until the frenzy passes. But we now have a way to make a place safe overnight, and even create larger havens.

Never make a Gypsy girl mad.....

Like many of my more epic dreams, this one began in fairly mundane fashion. I was back at my old San Jose office, and was looking out my window and having coffee, watching it rain. Our QA manager came in and was talking to me about an upcoming ISO audit, and was followed by our HR guy talking about a celebrity he had driven around in a limo (his weekend/evening gig), and then our AP clerk Gabby, who was trying to voucher stuff and having problems. Ho hum.

I noticed that in a rather large departure from my normal attire, I had on my black boots, and one of my black silk "poets" shirts, usually worn only at RenFaire or clubs. Hmm. Obviously, it was time for some mischief. I puttered about the office for a while, then made some absurd excuse and left. It had stopped raining but was very overcast outside.

From here on I began a series of small adventures and encounters. The first involved tracking someone who had done something reprehensible (and who I had actually worked with, a real sleaze named Bruce Bartley). My task was to verify he was the culprit, and inflict a suitable punishment. This began the weird; because what I did was use a bit of ritual magic, and make his "three times three" both literal and immediate. He had been treating a subordinate badly. On his drive to Los Angeles, he got stopped three times by police who treated him the same way. He rolled through a red light, and then narrowly missed getting hit three times. Each crappy little thing he did came back on him within minutes. I really liked that one.

A few similar types of events then, with total strangers. Then it was time to do some of my own karmic cleansing, and make a full-on effort to find a former girlfriend, Marge Balla. My little Romany lover had dropped out of touch almost twenty years ago; it was time to find her again and see if she was OK. To my great surprise, it turned out to be almost absurdly simple; some internet searching, contacting some people she had gone to high school with, and paying a PI to get her social security number from a former employer. Plus a bit more magic.

Step two didn't go quite as smoothly; actually talking to her was frustrating, to say the least. She was willing enough to talk briefly on the phone. A face to face didn't go as well; she was polite for about three minutes. Then the facade fell away. She blamed me for never staying in touch (not completely invalid) and for crushing her self-esteem by not keeping in touch with her, not being around when she needed me, which then escalated to never really loving her in the first place. "uhh wait, what? I ...." Hell hath no fury like a woman. She stormed off , and subsequent attempts to reach her were ignored. Fine then.

Not being one to give up easily, and hating to admit defeat.... I cheated. Off to see her mom, who had always liked me more than any of Marge's boyfriends. Easy enough to find mom; she was still living in the former home. This was now a three story San Francisco Victorian, rather than the actual Palo Alto Eikler. Crowded in amongst many similar, the "new" home had a gorgeous stained wood panel exterior rather than paint. The inside was like a cross between "Antiques Roadshow" and movie set for a Gypsie camp. Her mom was in full blown Romany clothing, something she never wore. Marge's room was draped and had an altar at one end (very Wiccan) and the rest of the house had fetishes and lace and candles galore. As I was exploring, listening to her mom lecture me about how I never should have let Marge get away, the atmosphere changed.

One minute it was dimly lit and atmospheric; the next it was dark and ominous. Something was approaching, and not from the Northwest. This was descending like a shroud over the whole block. Her mom instantly began a chant and warned me to take cover or run. As I moved quickly down the stairs, a spirit began to form almost directly ahead. A quick ward deflected it away from me, leaving it lost and confused; but I wasn't going to be able to that again and again. As I reached the room where her mom was sitting, telling a rosary and muttering a spell at the same time, I saw one quick option that might work. Some shawls and lace work that belonged to a grandmother were draped over a sofa. Like a kid hiding under the blankets, I wrapped the shawl around my head and shoulders and then literally dove under the lace work, pulling in even my feet. I could feel the heavy presence of something searching, and it so intense as to be nearly visible, like a purple searchlight sweeping the room.

After an interminable ten or twenty seconds it just vanished, like a circuit had been cut. The spells from Marge's mom perhaps, or whatever had sent it ending the summoning, or else it had simply given up, for now. Her mom insisted it wasn't the type of working Marge would ever do, or even could do; it was time for me to go talk to her again however, no matter how angry or unwilling she was. Her mother had me take one of the small lace objects, a black doylie, as a bit of deflection magic. Summoning both my rather frayed courage and a handy ward, I slipped off again into the night.