Too Much Gaming

01/09/23

I was in the Gungeon. A familiar woman was there as my guide.

Terrarium Head

01/10/23

I'm in the middle of the ruins of what was once a city. I might have caused the destruction, or I might be the result of it and the only emotion I can feel is aggression. I want to fight and get stronger. I'm inhumanly strong and vascular, but moving takes a lot of energy, and I quickly fall asleep.

I'm in a dream within a dream. My avatar here is made of stone held together by wire, with a terrarium jar for a head. This dreamscape is in worse shape than the one I found myself in before. Afterimages of spiders building webs, everything bathed in the glow of a fire that isn't there. In this state, something has made its way into the jar and keeps changing aspects of myself and the world around me. My instinct is to beat it into submission, but it begins to whisper in my head and startles me awake. Even awake, back in the city ruins, it continues to whisper to me. I keep trying to delve deeper into the dreamscape to fight the entity, failing each time. It's beginning to take a toll on my constitution.

I'm approached by a couple who seem concerned. They hear me out when I tell them about the thing in my head. I'm taken to a dining room with familiar faces except for two strangers, both women. One of them is clinging to the other, who looks ill. She's suffering from the same entity in her head. This gives me the courage to delve one more time and find and destroy the entity. But this time, I find myself in a bedroom connected to another room at the end of a hallway. The glow of the invisible fire is bright here, but the light from the far room is blue. In the doorway, illuminated by the blue flames, is a bald shaman in a weathered loincloth. He wields a wooden staff. Trying to force my way in prompts him to point the staff at me, saying he'll curse me.

Feeling too weak to fight, I try to bribe him with money I find in my pocket, but he takes it while laughing and still refuses me entry. I manage to get my money back from him, which makes him angry, and I get kicked out of the dream. I'm back in the dining room, discussing the plan. The girls are scared because soon, the sick one will turn into a vampire.

I quickly enter the dream again, but this time I'm paralyzed and confined to the bed with a TV. It's playing a kids' show that I struggle to look away from, but in my periphery I can still see the shaman at the end of the hall. He backs into the room, and two pit bulls come barreling down the hallway and jump onto the bed, mauling me.

Waking up, having failed again, I can see it's too late. The girl has turned into a vampire, and she runs out. Her friend follows after her.

Paused

01/11/23

in a grey office. nothing moves. I can't move.

Shameful Perps

01/14/23

Trapped in a small house rigged with two bombs, the computer monitor watches me. After days, my captors release me, saying the only real bomb was by the window. They retrieve it and fly off in a helicopter.

Grey Demon

01/15/23

Completing a series of trials inside an underground temple. I breeze through them too easily, like I've done them a bunch of times before. The very bottom room is a large stone basin with stone pillars placed randomly. At the center, the ground is raised, and sitting there is a large, winged, grey demon who congratulates me. He offers me special powers as a reward on the condition that I use them to kill the person who came with me.

This is the first time I realize they're there. I know them but I take the deal anyway. I stab them through the heart with a single finger as I begin to turn into a grey-winged demon.

GIANT ENEMY CRAB

01/16/23

A giant crab is chasing me through the mall. Nobody can see it. Nobody notices how it destroys everything. The layout is starting to confuse me. I can’t remember when I got lost.

Beach, Bed, Breakfast

01/20/23

A long road trip. We stop at a Japanese bed and breakfast by the road. The owner is a kind woman, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm not welcome there. The interior is just outside again, but it's a vast beach with water on all sides. A computer terminal is on the sand, and when I use it, I and everyone else I'm traveling with get teleported to a dark dungeon arena where we're pitted against each other in harmless games. Completing the game would send us back.

We haven’t left the bed and breakfast in a long time. More faces I don’t recognize have been showing up. They all seem to know and like me, but I can’t stop feeling uncomfortable. Witnessing some rainbow-colored ladybugs upsets me even more, and I go to bed early. Everyone keeps trying to cheer me up and is very supportive. They take me to a computer room to write things down, and I start writing the events of the past few days until a light takes us out of the room.

Pizza Blocks

??/??/23

Perfectly symmetrical downtown city blocks. No cars in sight. I only find pizza places.

The Basement

??/??/??

I've been here before. I'm a toddler at my grandparents' again. I'm home alone in one of the upstairs bedrooms until something calls me down. Sometimes a hand, a fairy, or just a voice. The staircase spirals down to the main hallway, where the wallpaper is different every time I'm taken here. Often it's animated with flowers, unicorns, and cherubs. Before I reach the very end of the hallway, the door on my left always opens to the basement. It's impossibly dark, and I can never see past the first step before the staircase turns left and descends further.

Most times, the first step wakes me. Other times, the second step makes the door shut behind me, and I wake up.

Antique Shop

??/??/??

Between the spaces, a family ran an antique shop full of artifacts. None of their shapes, colors, or uses come to mind, but speaking with the older man there was always pleasant.

Closed

??/04/22

The shop is closed for good. The man is still there.

White Coats

??/??/23

Shopping at the strip mall, a store full of white coats in different styles draws me in. The closer I get, the shorter I become. The cashier, a woman, comes over and asks if I need any help. I don’t know what I say, but she laughs and leads me to the heavy security door marked Employees Only. She effortlessly opens it and ushers me in.

Something was down there.

Earth Conquered

??/??/22

Festival night. The aliens are here but there's nothing I can do. Everyone is already under their control.

Cursed

10/??/23

At the college campus. I think I did something taboo. Everyone here is aware of me and they keep staring. Their bodies distort in place as their shadows slowly stretch towards me.

I start summoning portals and jumping through them to get away but everywhere i go, crowds of people stop and stare before they also begin to distort while their shadows follow me. I manage to get away and find my professor. I can't read his lips, but he gave me instructions for creating a potion for some important reason. When I tried to make it, the potion turned black and bubbled over. It felt wrong and he gave me a sad look saying it wasn't my fault but I can't stay here.

Aquatic Ambiance

02/14/23

Vacant mall, dimly lit with blue light. It felt and looked like everything was underwater. I found the bounce house store finally.

Bus Rides

01/25/23

Leaving work, I ran into a friend on my way home. I got on the 27 double-decker. It's very spacious with a lot of standing room and full of more friends. I realized I was on the wrong bus and needed to get the 119, but I missed it by eight minutes. Since it was close to the mall, my friend said we should just hang out there a while longer.

I lost track of everyone as soon as we got there. I wandered alone, aimlessly walking past the casino until I came across a gallery with people painting inside. A sign advertised three dollars for a canvas and a painting competition. I didn’t go back home.

Simcity Ironman Difficulty

02/15/23

Im making a life sized one to one replica of the city starting with the roads, then stores and streetlights. get sidetracked and realize nobody could reach me without making the railroad tunnel through the mountain but every time I try it gets dark and a bunch of shadows led by a witch would beat me unconscious. I had to hide in a run down shack. its the only thing that keeps the shadows away.

The One Piece Was The Friends We Made Along The Way

??/??/??

sailing the ocean in a small wooden boat with a mini cabin. my wife is a big snail. her shell didn't make any sense but it didn't bother me. we would let the currents carry us to different islands where we would have picnics and search for treasure. we never found any but we always had fun. when the storm got bad she kept me huddled with her in her shell until it passed.

Another Mall Dream

08/18/23

Another mall. Weird people. I was acting weird, and everyone knew it but didn’t ask any questions. My feet had no traction, so I couldn’t stop gliding around the aisles unless I started singing.

LAME

09/04/23

Superhero streetfight with what looked like bootleg teen titans. They sucked at fighting but still won somehow...

Don't Even Know.

10/13/23

Research. Two interlocked rings. A homeless slug. Slipping.

Ominous Roadtrip

??/??/22

Back on the road to visit the beach. Impossible geography. Mountains shaped like stalagmites, dense forests the car shouldn’t have been able to get through. Entire stretches of nothing but puddles and quicksand, with a single razor-thin strip of earth safe to drive on. Yet finally, we arrive at the beach.

Everyone goes exploring on their own, and I make my way to a hill on the beach with a ruined hut that offers a good view of the ocean. The water makes me uncomfortable, so I decide not to go farther than the hut. Once inside, I turn into an armadillo and continue to explore, finding more animals.

I curl into a ball and find myself in a dimly lit high school hallway as a human. I’m filled with dread and start running. One by one, the people who came to the beach with me show up, also running. We turn right toward the exit and leave without looking back. The sun is setting as we leave the beach to drive back.

Golden Bakery

??/??/22

I'm early to the party, so I help set it up. Then I realize we're out of snacks and drinks, so I tell everyone I'll be back.

I catch the bus, and it’s a really long ride. It feels like days pass on that bus, and my seat pulls out into a bed so I can sleep while I wait for my stop. Eventually, it takes me to an old street where I used to live, near a bakery. It’s completely run down, with busted windows and no sign it’s been thought about for a long time.

I go to check it out and am greeted by displays of fresh pastries as far as the eye can see. The entire place is made of gold, and the spirit of a very sweet baker girl comes out to say hi. I decide to do all my shopping there, then leave before I’m late to the party. She looks sad.

Inverted Mall

02/26/23

Once more at the mall, but it’s inverted and has four floors. I’m working at a store where everyone wants 152 of whatever it’s selling, so I constantly have to run to the storage area to restock. It takes me so long that people leave before I can make the sale.

I struggle for three days. Every day, the mall has a different layout, and the store sells different things, but everyone always wants 152 or some multiple of that number. I quit at the end of the third shift, and as soon as I punch out, everyone vanishes and I’m alone in the mall. I need to get from the first floor to the second, but the only way is to parkour onto the third floor and find a floating kiosk that acts as a platform between the second and third floors. I run into a friend who’s never been to the mall, so I decide to show them around.

After a bit of aimless wandering, we make it to the fourth floor, which has an alternate exit. Stepping out, it’s late at night. There is no moon or stars in the sky, and my friend is nowhere to be found. I’m really high up. Higher than the exit should have taken me and connecting the door to a silhouette of a bridge that stretches all the way to a distant mountain, which I can hardly distinguish from the pitch-black sky. Behind me, all I see is a spotlight illuminating the door I came from, and nothing else.

Despite feeling anxious, I decide to walk along the bridge, but very quickly I get too scared and turn to head back to the mall. I grab the railing for support, but the whole bridge is is made out of moths. Disturbed, they scatter and fly into me. They’re pitch black like the sky, and eventually I can’t even see the door.

Terrible Detective

09/01/23

Trying to solve a series of murders. Looking for clues in an old town. I sneak into a cellar being used as a prison, but it’s crawling with kobolds. I get out with magic.

I call a meeting with others to pool together intel, only to learn one of us died of poison during their own investigation. While inspecting the body, someone touches him, and the poison starts traveling from his hand up his arm, which turns lumpy and purple before he loses use of it and dies on the spot. Very quickly, even without touching anyone who was poisoned, everyone starts to die, but I somehow manage to swap bodies to get away.

Corndog Lady

09/07/23

At the street festival, enjoying the attractions, when I turn down a street to grab a corndog. The lady running the kiosk is abnormally tall with no head, and her skin looks like it’s made out of the same breading as a corndog.

The Mall Again (But I Get To Touch Grass This Time)

07/08/23

I'm sick of this mall. I'm waiting in line for a slice of pie because I spotted a flavor I wanted to try, but I couldn’t tell what was inside. It was marbled with what looked like blueberry and cheese.

Once it’s my turn to order, I ask the couple selling the pies what kind of pie it is, but it comes out as an awkward mumble that makes the wife look at me incredulously. She tells me I’m going to die alone, which stuns me, but I don’t say anything, because what the hell?

A guy walks past me and I somehow get stuck to him, getting dragged off before I can even get the pie. He eventually notices me and unhooks me while apologizing. I go back to buy the pie, but the husband eats it himself. I leave, frustrated, and wander elsewhere in the mall.

I end up in a section of the second floor with a square hole leading to the first floor, which is still under construction. I chuck a bunch of blue dynamite down the hole and patch it up. By the time I’m done, the mall is closed.

I find another way to the first floor to see how much damage the dynamite did. There are pizza boxes everywhere and all the seats are burned to a crisp. Somebody comes up to me and gives me a flyer for a pizza place that doesn’t sell pizza, but instead sells pizza-themed furniture. We find it super funny.

Once everyone leaves, a bunch of flying bananas start looking at me accusingly and fly in to attack. I fight a few off, but I get swarmed and thrown out of the mall. It’s midday outside and completely empty, except for a few cars that pass by occasionally. I look around and see a tall brown apartment building and a few generic buildings with no clear use. The sky is full of power lines that come from nowhere and go nowhere.

I make my way across the street to a patch of tall grass with tiny wildflowers and weird tree stumps that look knit together in a mosaic or fractal pattern. On my right is a vast ocean that’s in a timezone where the sun is rising. I start to walk toward it but realize I’m already standing at the edge of the water.

I recall the gargantuan eels in the deep green ravine and decide I want to pay them another visit. I jump into the water, but I’m so light I don’t even break the surface and get stuck floating along the very edge, flailing and spinning uncontrollably. I flip, and my head manages to break through the surface, causing my lungs to instantly fill with water.

Old Flame By The Falls

10/22/23

It was a huge trip for a week by the falls. They had us huddled together in a big square theater with no seats, a movie being projected on the right wall. I was taking care of a baby, but I don’t know if she was mine or if I was babysitting for a friend. She was restless and wanted to wander into the crowd, but I managed to call her back for a nap.

A little later, I went outside to walk and see the falls, stopping briefly at a restaurant and a small boutique. By the end of the week, I could feel everything winding down, signaling the end of the trip. Everyone started packing up and leaving, but I wanted to walk along the falls again. I left and met someone I hadn’t seen in a long time. We ended up chilling by the falls, reminiscing about our childhoods.

At one point, she told me that back when we were kids, I threw a unicorn plushie over the waterfall. She even pointed to where it was, somehow still floating in the waterfall.

We continued talking about gibberish until it was time to leave. We promised to keep in touch.

Rat Race

10/24/23

I’m in an even more run-down version of my downtown area, in a barebones house with no appliances, furniture, or decorations. It’s full of familiar faces. My bedroom is more like an open living room area, with a single mattress between two sets of staircases—one going up and the other going down.

I realize I’m going to be late to an interview, so I run out through a false wall and detour around the grime. Someone tries to race me, so I run faster, but I constantly have to take detours around construction.

I still make it to the spot first in the end. It’s a randomly stacked set of scaffolding around an empty building. I walk in to introduce myself before being led to a computer.

Bitter

04/05/23

I was hunting down a team of goons that had weird superpowers. One of them used tarot cards to set up traps. He was one of the more deadly criminals, as the traps would turn you into different materials, killing you instantly. Most of my team was killed because of his trap.

He had an older woman as an accomplice. It wasn’t clear what her powers did, but they involved drawings and photos. I managed to confiscate one of her sketchbooks, which might have contained a drawing of a family. This was considered very harsh of me by my squad, even though she had helped the man who killed their squadmates.

The area was a vast, roomy building with a low ceiling and a dungeon, with only one path that led outside. “Outside” being a single crosswalk that just looped back into the building. There was a foyer where people gathered, and a large table full of goodie bags. I didn’t take one because I couldn’t decide which one to take.

I took the crosswalk, looping back into the school three times. Crossing that third time made the older woman jump me in an attempt to take back the family drawing from her sketchbook. I knew I was being excessively cruel when I looked at her desperate expression as I kept the book out of reach. I couldn’t stop being really bitter about her helping the tarot card guy, so I ripped out the page with the family drawing and tore it up in front of her causing me to wake up.

The Camel is Aggressive

12/22/23

I'm back in the hollow house, but now homeless people keep coming in and taking stuff. The house has a new addition in the center, a huge arena where fights are held. It's the cleanest part of the house, as everything else is coated in filth and half-built. Looking outside, I can see the backyard has toxic waste sitting everywhere, and the front of the house is just an empty lot with a lone tree.

By the tree is a girl petting a baby camel. Suddenly, a mama camel comes out to attack the girl, so I run out to help her, but she refuses to run toward me. No matter how much I run, she keeps getting further away. The mama camel tramples her own baby as I manage to catch the girl and run, but the camel starts gaining on me. My grandpa yells out my name in the distance, and it startles me. I place the girl down, and she immediately runs back to the camel, where it proceeds to catch her and crush her head, turning the grass red.

The Bodega

04/04/23

It's the middle of the night during a full moon. I'm sneaking around the back alleys of a small town. I come across a bodega that seems to appear in every town I visit. Looking through the window, I can see the place looks abandoned, with empty shelves and a fine layer of dust on everything.

I pull out my flashlight to get a better look when two men jump out from behind me, knowing I would be there. I start to run, but they tackle me through some boxes. We fight for a while, and it looks like they might capture me, but the wall behind me gives way and we all tumble through. This bought me enough time to escape through the empty streets under the starless sky.

Costume Social

04/10/24

I'm on the bus headed somewhere, but the driver doesn't stop for me. I pull the cord, hoping to get off at the next stop, but it's hours away from where I needed to get off. I hurry over and beg to be let off, and he just tells me, tough luck.

I end up having to walk many hours back into the city, but it's deserted since it's only open during tourist season. I pass by a store with a tomato logo called "Testicular Torsion," and it makes me laugh a lot, so I end up taking a picture.

A long time passes, and now the city is active with tourists. I stand out, since I'm poorly dressed with my underwear over my clothes. A costume party is happening across the street, so I go over to socialize. I end up hanging out with somebody dressed as the bag an air mattress comes in. We make jokes and have a long talk about mangosteens. It was a good time.

Speed of an Unladen Dragon

04/30/24

I was tasked with fighting a dragon. They can move faster than you can blink when they're irritated, apparently.

Scorched Earth

05/04/24

We failed to stop the machines from carving up the earth to the point of no return. Three of us formed a pact and had our doppelgängers set up a system where we could transfer our consciousness into them in a new world and start over from scratch.

The sky lasers were used for mining, and they looked like forming tornadoes that focused into a beam before carving up the earth. Once they were done with an area, everything would become the same weird muddy sludge with a repeating wavy pattern in it. The dust the lasers kicked up would also linger in the air and turn into a toxic miasma that made the immediate area uninhabitable.

The bus that always shows up for me took me over an underground mall and through a tunnel to a faraway city.

Ant-pocalypse

05/19/24

I created a park in an empty field and infected an anthill with a virus I made that would slowly kill anyone who got bit. I made sure I was immune to it before pushing someone onto the hill to kick-start things.

Very quickly, chaos spread as the ants mutated and grew larger. Civilizations fell apart because of my ants. And as Armageddon continued to unfold, humanity's rapidly developing weapons couldn't outpace them. I didn't feel anything about the events I caused.

Brother?

05/26/24

They cut open a grapefruit and put half in my left hand, telling me that was my baby brother and to look after him. I carried him everywhere, never thinking to let go, but I started to feel constantly drained. As time went on, I would black out more often and wake up in new areas without remembering how I got there. I lost track of time and space. Soon, with every blink, I’d be somewhere new with people looking concerned and my brother still in my left hand.

I passed out again and woke up in the back seat of someone's car getting dropped off at my old elementary school for my brother’s first day. They needed me awake for directions, because without me, the left turn just looped in on itself as if the block where the school was didn’t exist unless I pointed it out. I gave them the directions reluctantly and they dropped me off at the gate.

A bunch of faceless children stopped playing and watched me walk to the front door. They huddled around to see my brother. I looked down at my hand and saw the pulp was filling with a milky white pus, starting at the edge of the fruit and migrating to the center. A circle of green mold acted as the iris and tracked my movements.

I couldn’t remove it from my hand.

The Mermaid

09/26/24

I was checking what my friends were up to online. One of them was posting a bunch of nonsensical status updates that people found hilarious, like “At 21 I’m finally retired to be 19.” Concerned, I decided to pay her a visit at the old mansion she lived in—but there was something else living there.

I was scared being around it, but it acted very friendly. The entity managed to lull me to sleep since it could only communicate in dreams. It showed me that it was dangerous outside and that my friend was in danger, but it told me I couldn’t do anything and that it was there for a reason.

I forced myself to wake up so I could check on her, but when I opened my eyes, the layout had changed and shapeless blobs were coming from deeper inside, forcing me back out the door.

I never found her, but I learned she died and the entity took her soul and turned it into a mermaid. She was still super chill for a mermaid ghost though, and she came and said bye, and I cried.

Fossilized Planet

11/11/24

I'm sitting in a tiny apartment with three people, busy inventing words to chant when my phone goes off. It's warning me about something coming. Everyone else gets the message too, but it's my job to scout with my partner.

I leave with this guy who's super stocky, kind of like a dwarf but over six feet tall. The entire area is in ruins from a great calamity that cracked the planet and exposed a lot of bedrock. A wasteland of stony crags and stalagmites, impossibly huge and reaching past the clouds.

I follow a trail of freshly formed stalagmites and bump into a feral kid. I use the made-up words I'd been working on, and he understands everything I say. I get him to tag along since it's not safe out.

We make our way into a cave my partner marked as a new formation. The stone here is dark and gets darker further in, until it's a solid matte black. The walls look like massive waves of water frozen in stone.

Taking notes, we reach a clearing under a black and red sky. The kid gets scared and refuses to go further, so we decide to wrap up and head back. On the way, a giant gorilla ambushes us. It had long arms, a thick tail, and a body made of coiled stone tendrils and layered plates.

It's too fast to outrun. We dodge through the stalagmites as I act as bait, giving my partner and the kid time to escape. I survive two swipes, but the third hits me full-force in the side, shattering my body.

There’s a ceremony held in my honor. The kid doesn’t understand what’s happening, he only speaks my made up language. He keeps asking my grave questions. I can hear him, but he can’t hear my answers.

Bullied

01/11/24

two of them. Scammed and beat me. Nothing I could do.

I'm Purple

02/05/24

In the jungle with kid soldiers. They are genetically engineered to age fast and fight hard. It’s post-apocalypse, and we're camping, searching for food. But there’s a beast out there. Just getting near it paralyzes you.

It attacks. I make sure everyone escapes but get too close and freeze. The beast sniffs me, then leaves, taking all our food with it.

I recover and return to the group: a gruff old man, a sassy woman, and one of the kid soldiers. We drive to an empty city to hunt giant badgers and replenish supplies.

I’m a purple ghost now with a blank face and tiny bat wings for arms. I fly to the harbor’s edge, where the last of humanity lives. They're thriving. Building high-tech stuff. Making it work.

Four Horse Lads

11/28/24

Big epic adventure fantasy.

It started as a group of three. Eventually, we found a fourth, but he couldn’t bond with a horse, so he walked.

We were chasing a secret sect guarding legendary martial arts. We infiltrated a group we thought was them, but it was just a front. Still, we got a clue about an artifact that led us to a real member.

For agreeing to keep his identity a secret, he offered one of their blades, but we fought hand-to-hand and instead asked him to appraise a ring. It turned out to be magical, summoning a steed.

Now all four of us had horses. We thanked him and rode off into the sunset.

Do I Look Funny?

12/01/24

I’m at a lodge with my family, discussing rat whisker formations and their breeding value. All I brought was a change of clothes.

I head outside to a dense forest park during an event. Some kids crowd around and heckle my outfit.

I try to explain my fashion sense.

I fail.

Shrimp Aliens

12/04/24

There's a cultural exchange happening between humans and a race of shrimp aliens. It involves pairing them and having them swap bodies. It's chill somehow.

Leaving The Dome

12/13/24

There's a global announcement of the end times, but there's no panic. Some people are determined to survive, but most are resigned to their fate. I take a week to hang out with some friends lazily until we have to say final goodbyes once their family gets called to gather at the dome to leave.

One by one, each family is sent out into the cold, headed south, and the weather gets worse every day. People say all the trees will die by next week.

My family finally gets called up to leave. I forgot my red and black shoes, so I run back to grab them. Through the glass of the dome, I see the families that have already left. Three of them are somehow walking against the wind, back toward the city. I wonder how they're doing that.

Meat Virus

12/22/24

I'm browsing online, trying to find a video. I find it, but the browser had a virus, and now everything I open plays a video of writhing meat. It spreads and turns the computer into meat and makes me sick.

I leave to find a healer, traveling with totems. I get hurt again, but a tribe finds me and heals me. I find a drill that I can use as a focus for my powers.

The tribe invites me to watch the yearly tournament, where their strongest warriors form teams and compete in some sort of sports ball. It was hype.

Space Hopping

04/??/25

I figured out how to slingshot myself using gravity to visit other planets. Most of the planets were like mini Earths with a single cabin in a valley.

Eventually, I mess up and launch myself too hard, causing a huge chunk of the planet I'm on to launch with me. I drift past a planet that's just a clear water bubble suspended in space, with colorful fish inside. I drift past before the meteor I created destroys it.

I land on another barren planet that has a single cabin. This time, someone is already there, and they look exactly like me. I don't feel like leaving, even as the meteor enters the atmosphere.

Bound

05/02/25

Woke up in a familiar mansion. I thought I left this place years ago.

My wife was there, short and innocent-looking, but I knew that her being here meant trouble. Against her warnings, I left the bedroom. The place was still actively hunting me.

Colorful puffs of smoke forming faces come down the hall. Doors try to eat me. I make it outside. That was something I hadn't been able to do during previous visits. But the moment I cross the edge of the porch, my vision swims with static and I feel weak.

I run, trying to push past that feeling. I run through the garden to the greenhouse. As soon as I enter, the mansion spirits surround me, and everything fades to black.

I'm in the middle of the city now. I remember everything. The world is ending. Something has cornered humanity here. I have some faceless people with me that I recognize as family.

We pack what supplies we can and leave the city. We make it out to the countryside. There are no animals, no people, no trees. Just dirt and grass that move with no wind. I feel at peace.

I wake up back in my room. Someone messages me asking for pictures of a book so I retrieve it from my bookcase, but I struggle to hold it. The book keeps slipping out of my grip or the pages I look at keep creasing and right before taking a picture the camera would turn off. Frustrated, I leave the room only to find that I never left the mansion.

A Home for All

05/05/25

A new apartment complex had opened up, and I was driving there with my grandpa. But it wasn't a normal building. It didn’t have a front door or lobby area. It was like windows and balconies randomly linked through stairs that led up and down in every direction.

We were going to visit family, but not just a single relative. It was like every relative lived there for some reason. So he parks nearby, and we get out and make our way over to one of the walkways. We see the floor we need is down a bunch of steps that my grandpa isn't sure he can manage because of his leg and heart.

Coincidentally, a few relatives come up and start talking to him. I don’t really know what about, but they walk with him into the building through the wall, leaving me outside.

I manage to find my own way in through somebody’s window. The interior is not what you'd expect. Every floor is wildly different.

The first floor is claustrophobic; narrow halls, rooms clustered together, not a lot of people. The second floor is like the "gay" floor or something. A map (like those “You are here” signs on tourist maps) has the second floor highlighted in a pastel rainbow. But it’s standard otherwise. The third floor is filthy. A low-income ghetto apartment vibe like the ones I grew up in. It's nasty, and the only way to the next floor is through one family’s apartment.

They’re creepy. They have live kittens that have been force-fed until their stomachs are translucent and filled with some kind of glitter. A whole bowl of them, and they want me to eat one. They’re way too soft to the touch, like a thin membrane my finger could puncture, making the glitter ooze out. I have to pretend to eat one or they would’ve kept me there and eaten me.

After that, I make it to the last floor I remember. It’s still inside the building but looks like a giant backyard where all the apartments are separated by fences. The sky is clear, the sun is out. People are reclining and eating BBQ.

Homeless

05/12/25

I was out on the streets looking for something. The city looked sort of like my home. I was hungry, but I needed to find whatever it was before curfew went into effect because then everyone had to be in designated rest spots.

I didn’t have a home, so I always had to hide behind stores, in parking lots, by dumpsters, or with other homeless people huddled together to stay warm.

One time, I ran into two people. One of them I hadn’t seen, talked to, or even thought about since elementary school. She had a large van.

One friend got into the driver’s seat while the other was in the back. I couldn’t get in from one side of the car, so I had to run to the passenger side.

But my friend—well, not really a friend in the dream, it seems. He couldn’t wait five seconds for me to get in and started driving away. I clung to the door and had to practically beg him to slow down so I could get into one of the available seats.

Iron Maiden

05/13/25

I was a Japanese kid living in a village deep in the jungle, on a mountain. I had a pet parrot. I saved this parrot a few dreams ago, and it’s been following me ever since. He’s a little special. He took what should have been fatal damage to the head, but I nursed him back to health. He has brain damage, and the top of his head is bald now. But he’s my friend.

I had gotten together with some other kids from a neighboring village. We were set to explore for some reason and were gearing up. I don’t think there were any adults around.

After that, I was in a gothic graveyard sort of area. I was either myself or this other woman. There was an ogre linked to her husband in another reality. She was helping me escape dark lords and this one crazy girl.

Eventually, the girl captured me and locked me inside a magical iron maiden that basically doesn’t let you die. She was shooting me and cutting me up to extract information, but I never spilled the beans.

I found an opening and used some kind of power to break out.

Headed Up

??/??/??

The boy and I are exploring an abandoned apartment complex. From a top-down view, it’s shaped like an H, with multiple copies stacked on top of each other. We spend our time scaling the building and sometimes outrunning a robot sent to kill us.

We end up at a disjointed staircase that goes way over the top of the building. My friends say they’re going to take a double spiral staircase that joins up with the disjointed one at the top instead.

I turn to them and find they’ve been replaced with my family. My mom is afraid of losing her balance, so I agree to help her cross by taking practice steps. But then I find out that touching our feet on the carpet below makes us lose access to the stairway. This makes me mad at her.

Now I’m in a different building. This one is built more or less normally. A guy greets me there. I think he lives in the building.

While we talk, we hear a shootout down the hall with some cops on the scene. We go to investigate. The guy with me tells the cops to move aside. They warn him that others have died, but they listen. He pulls out a gun and fires into the room.

Ink Demon

05/23/25

I’m part of some sort of special class of culinary students. We each have to prepare a dish to infiltrate a party. The prep is so complex, it takes several days.

There’s a weird segmented wasp. It’s the size of my hand and sort of looks like it’s crossed with a scorpion. Pretty spooky, but it stays on the wall in the dining room and doesn’t seem interested in me.

On the last day, when I’m ready to mix everything together to cook, I find that all my onions are missing. I had chopped them and stored them between the pages of a blank book. All gone. I was so upset.

After that, I go to the bookstore and head down to the basement. The basement is little more than a cluttered study. At the desk is a demon with pale skin and a warped face, lips like smeared ink that he can somehow speak through without a mouth hole.

He doesn’t seem easy to get along with, but we have a history. Apparently, he had tasked me with crafting a very specific book—a leather-bound journal with all these nonsensical properties.

He’s very meticulous in testing it to make sure it’s what he asked for. He rips the book and it repairs itself. He seems satisfied for now.

Wander

05/29/25

My grandparents invited me on a trip somewhere. We were staying on an oil rig on the shore that had been converted into a hotel. The ship didn’t look fitted for it. It looked like being inside a submarine with a bunch of moving parts and areas meant for staff only, but I wandered around to get a feel for the layout before heading downtown for a walk.

I spent some time crossing weird rollercoaster sidewalks when I got hungry. I saw a deli spot at a corner, but I didn’t have any money, so I decided to end the walk and head back to the hotel room to grab something to eat. As I was making my way out of the downtown square, I crossed the street. When I reached the other side, a woman grabbed my arm really hard and started walking with me, sticking close. She was scared and needed me to pretend like I knew her because another woman was stalking her.

The other woman was smug and would appear either near or far at random whenever you looked at her. She left vague threats and said she would never stop following, that she couldn’t wait to see where the girl was headed. I leaned in and whispered that it would be okay because I knew a detour to lose her in before taking her back to the hotel.

We took some paths, and the busy downtown area quickly shifted into a quiet residential block. I kept turning corners with the girl holding onto me, and the stalker always nearby, until I turned onto a dirt path. There was nothing here but grass, and a fence on either side, but you couldn’t see past it. I recognized this area and knew it was a good place to lose the stalker.

When I turned to the girl to reassure her, she was gone. So was the stalker.

I looked ahead, and further down the path, the stalker was lying dead in the middle of it. I heard sirens and got anxious that I’d be blamed, so I ran ahead back to the hotel.

The place looked exactly the same, but when I took the path back to the room my grandparents were in, it wasn’t there. The stairs that led to the hall just didn’t exist. By this point, kids and old folks were coming out of their rooms and milling around the hallway. They kept commenting that just being here meant I was one of them. Every time I asked where my room was, each person gave slightly different directions.

I wandered the same halls, getting more confused, until I woke up.