A Strange Dream...

I just awoke from an approximately two-hour nap, which I orchestrated to give me enough energy to take care of all of my last-minute chores before I leave this stinking faeces-plastered hell-hole I call...well, actually I don't call it 'home' at all. Anyway, I took the nap so I could revive myself in order to get the hell out of here at midnight (vacation). Yes, I only travel at midnight; I don't trust anyone who's out and about under the light of day. So...I was about 3/4 through my nap when I -decided- to wake because I was having an intense and eerie dream. With the full co-operation of my memory, here it is [note: I wrote all of this just after waking, so I wouldn't forget too much]:

I was living in (but apparently as a guest, or as a resident in not very good standing, or just a relatively new one) some community. It was like a wooded commune that you may have seen in the Wicker Man, or that I imagine might be on the Pitcairn Islands. Everything was very nice and rustic, but small enough to lend it its eerieness and that menacing aspect brought about by ages of isolation.

Earlier in the day I had been in the cemetary and had overheard a heated debate about the lately deceased caretaker (?) and his importance in the community. It seemed that he had a special duty (a supernumerary duty), beyond his mundane groundskeeping, which was the care of an old, crafted wooden box. It seemed that some of the conversers were agitating for the late caretaker, while others were just as rabidly against him. I recall that a fleeting suspicion crossed my mind that, with enough enemies, any man can be set-up and murdered. This idea crossed my mind fleetingly, as I said, the way stray thoughts are wont to do in any active mind during the course of events and the vicissitudes of the day.

The sense was of a deep social divide in this community; that was the milieu, if you will.

The next scene that I recall was directly from my own perspective, but my identity was unclear; whether I was the same precise character from before or a different one, or some degree different, in some way, was what was unclear.

I was on a road, an unimproved road as we would call it, that is, cleared completely, but just a dirt road nonetheless. I would imagine that all of the roads were of this kind, if not undeveloped altogether. The road passed through the thick, wild forest which comprised the greatest area of the--I want to say island, but I don't know that it was an island--land.

I had paused at the side of the road, to pick something up perhaps (this is not clear right now). Suddenly, from the opposite side of the road, from within the woods but not at ground level, about 15 feet in the air, just high enough to be extremely threatening, a bizarre, 'alien,' slightly anthropomorphized flying insect-man came wheeling straight at me. The creature's intention was immediately clear, without ambiguity: to kill me.

I immediately reached somewhere on my body, maybe to where my boot ended at the ankle, and grasped a knife which I brandished for all my life, with adrenaline flooding my nervous system with the survival instinct. The creature made a frighteningly close pass at me (it may have grazed me, or not, I'm still not sure about this); perhaps my brandishing of the knife had thrown it from its course.

As the creature readied to wheel and make a second pass at me from where it first emerged, I was startled by an approaching noise that quickly increased in volume, coming from my left, not quite from the road but approaching the road from the woods on my side. A line of at least 10, possibly as many as 20, bizarrely clad warriors with strange swords stormed from the woods and headed straight for the creature. Their intention was as readily apparent as the creature's had been when it first made its appearance: to kill the creature; I did not understand whether these characters were friends or enemies or neither, but I was relieved utterly to see them (temporarily, at least) rescue me.

I omitted that the creature, in addition to two wings, had a sort of stinger-tail, like that of a scorpion, with the point stiffened and ready to strike, beneath it.

The battle scene was not epic, as they seemed to have chased it off (although they may have killed it, this part is foggy).

The rest is very bizarre and lacks continuity, but I'll record what memory offers.

I had been escorted (they were allies after all) to a sort of stronghold in another area (not necessarily a different realm altogther, but this place did not fit in with the original land). This place had a strange, futuro-archaic blending of old-fashioned and ultra-modern and high-tech, like the warriors had seemed with their armor that looked like platinum, who also carried modern-seeming swords. Anachronism is the word to keep in mind now.

This place was like an ancient, fortified city of Europe in external design, in outward appearance that is, but had very modern, even futuristic capabilities and equipment.

There was a strong hue of orange all around, either emanating from the fortress-city itself, or indicating that the sun was setting (you know how ambiguous dreams can be, at least when trying to recollect them). There was a great bustle all around, and people were obviously getting prepared for a battle.

I recall the air becoming full of and teeming with creatures like the one from before, but some were larger. There was also a great 'mothership' (this is the word that just fits now) hovering high above in the air. I am not sure whether this belonged to the creatures as some staging point for their assault, or if it was 'ours' ('us' being the humans, I suppose).

The next and last scene I can recall is that I was flying myself, high up in the amber air, exulting in the thrill of flying, then I noticed that I was flying straight towards the 'mouth' of the earlier-mentioned 'mothership.' It had a wide-open sort of loading zone, like a mouth that was wide open, and this was clearly my goal.

I forgot to mention, and this may make things somewhat clearer, that the aforementioned caretaker and that wooden box had been related to the ensuing events by someone at some point. I think it was directly explained to me after my rescue -- then again, I may have heard it when I overheard the conversation in the cemetary, or even when being escorted by the strange futuristic knights who had saved me from the stranger flying-scorpion-insect-man.

The box held some secret or power of some kind, the guarding of which was a sacred duty by the people of the land where this whole tale began. The caretaker had been charged with this duty, as I mentioned. But this was very important -- this was the sense I got. So, I inferred that the caretaker's death somehow brought about this whole war because he was the only one who could fulfill this duty, and thus things were no longer as they should be; or, conversely, that he had been mismanaging things somehow, and that those dissident ones who argued against him during the conversation in the cemetary had conspired against him (maybe murdered him) in order to get the box into the care of someone else's hands.
These two conjectures are what I really thought during the dream, but again, you know how dreams are, so I seemed to be thinking in multiple directions at once.

Interestingly, this all took place in a slightly lucid state. For example, when I reached for the dagger that I had, I remember that I actively considered my options and 'remembered' that I had a knife on me, thus prompting me to draw it.

Unfortunately, this is all of the detail that I can remember about this dream, and as you can tell, much of this detail is highly ambiguous, so every scenario has multiple directions it could have taken, each one with the potential to completely alter the tone and mood of the later scenes.

Considering this point, I suppose it's not too much of a stretch of imagination to say that, in a way, -all- of the possible twists and turns had happened, simultaneously, or synchronistically. There are many brilliant people [i.e., Buckminster Fuller and Robert Anton Wilson] who argue for a multi-dimensional universe with parallel realities, so...why not?