On Nightmares;
Ever since young childhood, I have always been plagued by incredibly vivid, violent, and partially lucid nightmares. Always aware it was a dream, but unable to wake from it. Most of these were being chased by a something unstoppable, usually a incredibly deformed event, idea, or person that was prominent at that time. Another thing to note, is that even upon death, I would not stop dreaming. If I died in the dream, I stayed dead, even up to several hours of terrible things happening to my dream-corpse, still lucid, but unable to move.
This gave me a terrible fear of crustaceans, from one particularly messy dream, where I had died in or near an ocean, and was picked apart by small crabs for hours, and upon waking, felt there grasp all over my body, in terrible pain, for nearly 7 minutes after the event of waking up.
This nightmares all but stopped, unfortunately along with any other dreams at all, when I began mentally blocking out memories of them, especially helped by the placebo effect of a gifted dream catcher from the late Karen McLean, my now deceased mother.
All the dreams, nightmare or not, had either stopped occurring, or more likely, are completely repressed, making life much less stressful, and easier to cope with, at that time.
I bring this up now, as its come to my attention that this barrier is now failing for new nightmares. I am now beginning to not only recall dreams, but also feel the phantom pain that once made nights terrible.
An example that is fresh in my mind would be a dream from last night.
Dreams always start mundane for me, good or bad, this one started focused on myself, from some time in the future, if I had presumably gotten a job at a cubicle farm at some mega corporation, although the location of the job was unbelievable, being someplace in mid Africa. I was standing making copies, a device loomed in the the corner of the dreams camera angle, a almost lemon shaped device that achieved its curves through smooth bent blades, all attached to a swiveling hinge at the top, the devices obvious design was to sit over someones head, and shred any flesh it came in contact with.
It’s worth noting that this exact scene Is transplanted from a older dream, One I had already experienced, and at that point knew what to expect.
The Dreams angle began to shift, and the metal device began move its metallic mandibles up and down, pulsating with a dark red glow. The lights began to flicker, and strobe, and as before, my head began to drop blood as if It was in the device. Pain began as small cuts slit there way through my flash, leaking red essence down my face.
At this point though, things began to change from the original memory I had experienced before.
Being partially lucid, I found that I was much more keen to act then I was the previous iteration of this dream, and reached above my head, grabbed onto what felt like a malnourished child’s arm, and tossed it off me with as much force as a could, the result was a solid ‘thud’ sound, and then the lights dropped completely, and sounds of surprised office workers, who had been absent before this moment, began to fill the room. Almost immediately, a scampering sound of claws on plastic and plaster filled the room, and the lights flickered for a moment, then remained bright.
A trail of blood, most likely my own trailed up a cubical wall, and up into the tiles of the dropped ceiling above. Scampering and scurrying could be heard from multiple parts of the ceiling, and tiles jarred when ran across. Eager to not have whatever creature it was, naw on my head again, I picked up a sharpened pencil, and stabbed on of the moving tiles, which resulted in lights blinking, and commotion above us, that suddenly stopped, and the scurrying continued. I pulled down the pencil, and the tile crumbled with it, revealing a tiny, severed, surprisingly human, arm impaled by the pencils granite tip.
Upon closer inspection, the arm had been chewed off, as if an animal escaping a trap, but no blood was present, almost like lifeless flesh. Upon removing the pencil, it to was blood free. The scampering above began to intensify, and the lights began to blink again, before several tiles broke, and small creatures rained down, tearing at anything they could find. I began to run from the area, when several creatures attacked me. I used the pencil to impale one, strangely another hit to the arm, and immediately the creature turned and gnawed its way through its arm, rather hastily, before continuing to attack.
Very frightened at the prospect of a enemy, who I know inexplicably knew to be soulless, that could persist attacking, even when dismembered, I began to have a flight response, and booked it the hell out of there.
I burst through an emergency exit, cold, damp night air greeted me, it had just been raining, and the ground was shiny and glossed, several streetlamps illuminated a small road that circle the building, and access path for carpooling employees. I turned in time to see the door that were nearly closed behind my burst open, and several creatures ran at me. It was at this moment, that I was able to clearly see the creatures for the first time, Illuminated by the reflection on the rain slicked pavement, were fairly malnourished, deformed, yet still recognizable, young girls, shrunken down to 1/4 the height of what they should be, by unknown means, many of there faces I recognized, most I did not.
They ran at me, soulless creatures, wanting nothing more then to lash out at anything they could grip, not caring what they destroy, ran towards me on this beautiful night. There was nothing I could do, and they were upon me, ripping me apart, bit by bit at a pace that should have been unobtainable. The road began to run red, and the dreams camera, at this point, a first person shot from my perspective, began to fade. The pain did not.
I awoke at 4:40am this day, feeling deceased, and in pain. I could feel it as if it was real, but my mind was still groggy, so I sat there, wondering if it was real, and fearing it was.
I thank my dad, who I presume checked on me sometime after this, but before 5:30am, and let the family dog into my room, who promptly jumped onto my bed, and plopped down next to me. The locomotion and smell of the new visitor injected his image into my dream, interrupting the current one in progress, which was just beginning. It had to do with spiders, and venom, but almost like magic, and irregularly dreamlike for my night terrors, in pops the dog, who promptly ate the spider that would have started yet another terrible trip. I awoke almost immediately, the dreams plan thoroughly trashed by a lazy dog.
I let him stay with me until my alarms went off, an unusual act, as he tend to growl at the slightest moment. He had unwittingly saved me, so, I could do with not moving for a time. He’s a good old dog.
Still working on Fae!
Not dead, just slow!
A slightly new art direction,
and a new, Darkened out story!
Live long and stuffs!
Don’t know why, every port but 80 Is working fine.
Damn Interwebs.
Most Definitely, but otherwise doing fine, Ill post some assets here in a while for Oil Sands, once Paint.net stops derping out at “Large” canvas sizes. Meh, I though 4000x1000 was medium, but OK, whatever, that’s what I get for using OpenSource Free stuff. If only I could get Photoshop, and get some GPU acceleration.
Introducing Oil Sands, a new game being developed alongside Fae!
Its the story of a group of mercenaries who live and work on a planet dubbed “Sand”, as its a complete desert on the surface, with zero life, but underneath the layer of sand, there is an ocean teeming with life, and under that, is a layer made completely of useable oil, making the planet a true black-gold mine.
The gameplay is similar to a squad based RTS, and you take and defend massive oil pumps, Its going to be fairly short, and cheap, as its an iOS exclusive for now.
This was the secret project I’ve been working on for a bit.
There are more, still, though.
Still doing stuff. Secret Stuff. Fae is still on hold, but Community game is a success, For what is it at least. Other then that, school is wrapping up, and hopefully I will have full time employment by then. Woo.
IN OTHER NEWS:
I’m starting a/an experimental game in my free time, where its entire existence is created and submitted by, err, the Community. Everything in the game will be modifiable, well, based on submissions that it, and it will be primarily flash based. For now. Anyway, Yeah, that’s it.
Thank you, 4 followers, for your keen interest.
Game is not going away, its just hibernating while I look for a REAL job in the REAL world and not in the NOT REAL world of COMPOMPUTERS.
But seriously, I want to make this game, I just need a stable life before I can fully commit to it, and being that I’m in the last 4 weeks of college, and will be Completely unprepared for the real world, I must secure income. Must.
