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| Artist: Kishibe |
As I have stated before, I have always been a vivid dreamer and now that I take a Vitamin B Complex capsule before bed, my dreams have become even more so. Something about the combination of the various vitamins in the B family trigger vivid dreams and any of these dreams has become a seedbed for future stories. However, I advocate caution. Dreamscapes are inherently boring for readers as the power and symbolism are highly subjective. To use a dream as an idea for a tale is to invite massive revision with a heavy emphasis on plot and character. Very few writers can communicate the visceral punch of a dream as the dreamer experienced it.
Last night I had a rare lucid dream where for the first opening scenes, I actually knew I was dreaming.
It was a dream city I had visited many times before. The street I knew the best contained a number of quaint shops, bistros, and bed and breakfasts, delightful destinations for a nocturnal wanderer, but I had not revisited this locale in many years. I was well aware that I was dreaming and the certainty of my destination and the joy of seeing again a place where I had idled away many a night brought me both joy and fond memories.
The sun had set and a gentle snow had started to fall when I finally reached my destination. I looked forward to food and rest, but the landscape had changed over the years. The street was deserted, the shops were all closed, windows were dark and boarded up, and some buildings had actually been torn down. My sorrow at my loss became so great, at this point, I lost the power of lucid dreaming and became trapped in the flow of the story unable to affect its outcome.
With great sadness, I turned and walked away from the deserted street, now determined to find some other form of shelter from the snowstorm. A payphone must surely exist somewhere. A block away I found a public playground where children, bundled against the snow, were enjoying a final frolic before heading home for the night.
I approached one small child, a pretty little thing of around 12 years of age. Dressed all in white, she was shielded from the cold by a little white cap, a woolen dress that came to her knees, and warm white tights that protected her legs. Dainty white leather boots completed the picture.
She told me she did not know where a payphone was, but instead, she would introduce me to her parents who could certainly help me.
Her parents sat nearby on a bench, her father nothing more than a typical stereotype of an English laborer: unimaginative, typically phlegmatic, and totally practical.
Her mother wore a close-fitting black cape with a hood. However, she was an anthropomorphic cat, some five feet tall, her eyes a bright blue that complimented the brilliant white fur that made up the gentle feline face, the only part of her body visible.
I followed them to their home where the husband told me that I could use their phone and we walked a block or two making it to their front door as the snowfall increased in volume.
The house was in shambles. The foyer actually had drifting snow on the floor as well as snow coming through gaps in the ceiling, but the house proper was warm, cozy, and dry though a jumbled mess of bric-a-brac and worthless junk.
The husband discovered his old rotary phone was not operable and he instructed his wife to walk me down the block to the home of an acquaintance in hopes I could find a working phone there. That was when I noticed that at no time had the cat wife ever spoken, nor had she taken off her shawl. Even inside, she kept it on with the hood pulled tightly around her face.
We walked back into the ever-deepening snow. Taking her arm in mine, together we made it safely to their friends' house some blocks away. By this time, many of the row homes stood dark, but without even knocking, my silent companion opened the front door and led me inside to a home that was neat and tidy. It was immediately clear nobody was home and I was concerned that with the deepening snow we would be trapped for the night, unable to return to my companion’s residence. At that point, I awoke leaving my furry companion behind for a more mundane waking world.
You might want to try my Vitamin B experiment for some nocturnal adventures of your own, but I make no guarantees as to the subject of your dreams. One's subconscious can be quite fickle in its affections.
