07/03/03
Abducted By Rabbit Aliens!
I'm not certain if this is all the same dream, but it rather flowed like one dream.
I believe it started with what was apparently an alien abduction. I was lying on the couch on my left side, just as I had been while napping in real life. I'm hazy on how exactly this happened, but I seemed to have a small level of control over it, as if I were roleplaying. This didn't diminish the fear and lack of control I felt, however.
Again, this is very foggy so I'm not certain how it started. But at some point I realized I was being abducted by aliens. I opened my eyes and I believe I could even see them before me--the classical aliens--big heads, small bodies, short in height, large black eyes, thin fingers and such. Their faces were before me so either they were kind of leaning over or they were very short, maybe three feet tall. There were at least two, maybe three or more who were beyond my sight. The biggest thing was, I could not move. I felt this pressure, this restraint, and that was what bothered me the most. I felt a sense of panic that I had lost all control and it was just as real as the anxiety I feel in real life when confronted with a phobia. I don't think I could speak, though maybe at one point I was screaming, trying to get someone's attention. It didn't work.
The lights were all on, just like in real life; and my mother must have been around somewhere, since she was home. But according to abduction reports, the aliens have a sort of way of "turning off" anyone else in the immediate vicinity while the victim is being abducted. I'm supposing that's what happened.
This is where it gets weirder...I think I closed my eyes and tried to bargain with the aliens. Now it was like this was a secondary abduction--like it was happening again. I got the sense that it had happened before, and I said to the aliens, in my head, I think, "I won't panic and I won't fight you, if you just tell me why you're doing this. That's all I want to know. Why. If you tell me, I won't fight you."
I'm pretty sure that's what I asked, though I can't be 100% positive. I believe I also then said, "Could you make yourselves less threatening so I'm not so afraid of you? Can I at least control how you look? Please change the way you look so I'm not so scared anymore." They seemed surprised by my requests, as if they hadn't expected me to use reason of any sort due to my great fear. (They were obviously empathic.) They'd expected me to be irrational with terror, so to receive two very reasonable requests was a surprise. I got the feeling they might tell me later on why they were doing this, but I never got to hear the reason. However, they did allow me a bit of control--the roleplaying part--over how they appeared to me. I opened my eyes and the aliens started to shift form between their alien form and that of...rabbits.
It made perfect sense in the dream. See, I have this toy bunny I nap with in real life, and I'm guessing that, in my dream, to diminish my fear I tried to make the aliens appear as a harmless toy that I took comfort in. The rabbit toy took on some great significance in the dream, greater than it has in real life. I stared at the two(?) aliens standing by the footstool and watched their faces shift into those of rabbits--white rabbits with gray tips to their ears, or some such. Then they kind of shifted back. They never seemed to completely lose their alien form, but at least I felt a sense of control, and wasn't as afraid anymore.
At this point I started thinking about "screen memories"--silly or strange memories which mask deeper, more realistic or threatening ones--and the dream took on a less-threatening quality, as if I were totally roleplaying or imagining it all, now. I thought about screen memories of how some alien abductees, rather than remembering aliens themselves, sometimes remember an animal which takes the place of the aliens--usually a pale animal with dark eyes...a barn owl, a white deer, a rabbit. I probably thought about my characters (I fiddled with some alien abduction fiction a while back), and then I think I compared the whole thing to a ritual abuse scenario. There's a theory that some alleged alien abductees are in fact ritual abuse survivors who are using alien abduction as a "screen memory" to cover up actual ritual abuse, so their claims lack validity. Because for many people it's a lot easier to believe in ritual abuse than to believe in alien abduction, although for many people, also, it's impossible to believe in either.
I should state for the record that, to an extent, I believe in both, and I believe it could be possible for one to be a screen memory for the other. But back to the dream.
It gets hazy again. The abduction part of the dream lost much of its ominous aspect and it seemed to shift into a completely different dream, though based on how I reacted later on I think they were the same one. This dream then shifted into "Escape From China One." It might also have been related to "The Great DBZ Movie."
Escape From China One
This dream continued/shifted out of "Abducted By Rabbit Aliens!"
I don't know how it started, but I seemed to be on a trip with some relatives. I was with Ma, I know that; and one of my aunts. I'm not sure which one; it may have been Aunt Teresa, or Aunt Donna, or Aunt Rose...there are so many of them. Plus there were a few other women with us; we all seemed to be female. We were going to the China One restaurant which is attached to the Glen's supermarket. There used to be two entrances/exits to the place: one on the outside, facing the parking lot, and one leading directly into Glen's. Ma has told me that you can no longer enter/exit from the Glen's side. In the dream, we entered through an odd back entrance which seemed to fill the role of the outside entrance in real life, just in a different location. In real life this would take us right past the buffet and/or into the upper level of the restaurant, though in my dream I don't know if we passed the buffet, and there was no upper level; it was all one level.
(I do sense there was more to the dream before this part but it's lost now.)
The other women were ahead of me, all yapping and chattering as they went. They walked very quickly, which is odd enough in itself since usually I walk faster than my mother. I had to walk faster than usual just to try to keep up with them, but they passed through the kitchen area (which in my dream was just a slightly partitioned area open to the public, on the right) to the Glen's exit and went on their way WITHOUT me!
I grew very frustrated and annoyed; actually this was a moment before they exited. I slowed my step back to normal with the thought, "If they aren't willing to wait up for me, then fine! Screw it! They'll have to wait for me out THERE instead!" I felt that, seeing I was no longer with their group, they'd come back and get me. It didn't work out that way though, damn it! >_<
I waited a moment or two but they did not return. I had been abandoned here! In resignation I started trying to leave the place, but now found myself impeded. In the dream, there were two paths I could take--the right path, which led through or by the kitchen; or the left one, which was the actual exit from the restaurant. They were not really separate as I think they joined at the end, but there was a sort of partition or island between the two which set them apart. My problem was that both paths were on FIRE!
Well, not exactly...but fire was an obstacle. If I took the right path, I had to pass directly by a Chinese man who was making flambes of some sort. He had like a big grill with food on it and he'd pour a liquid on it and light it and FLOOM! He kept doing this every so often. If I walked past that, I chanced getting burned. All I really had to do was step up to him and ask him to let me pass before he lit it again, and I knew he would readily grant my request, but I am terribly shy and didn't have the courage to inconvenience him. So the right path was out.
Yet if I took the LEFT path...I had to walk over a bed of fire!! See, there was at least one, maybe two, smiling pretty Asian ladies standing on both sides of the door, acting much like Vanna White does on Wheel Of Fortune. On the floor in front of the door or covering the threshold was what looked like a big square tarp. I don't specifically remember seeing coals but I think it was meant to be covered with them, and they were hot. I think there was also fire shooting up from the tarp now and then. This was sort of like a Japanese gameshow--you know how weird they can get. Customers leaving the restaurant were invited to walk over this Bed Of Fire just for kicks! It didn't seem to be required, but there was no way I could see around that tarp, and again, I did not want to inconvenience anyone by being a spoilsport. I did briefly consider walking across it (I seemed to be barefoot or wearing sandals), but thought again. No WAY I could handle walking across fiery-hot coals! And all the other customers (who all appeared to be Asian, oddly enough) seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. So...unless I wanted to risk being burned, or to embarrass myself by inconveniencing the cook or the ladies, I was STUCK in here!
I paced back and forth between the two for a moment or so, feeling very lost. I then decided to try to take the back exit out to see if it would somehow lead me into Glen's--or rather I think I was just looking for a third entrance into the supermarket. The back entrance/exit just led to the outside parking lot (it was sunny and hot outside), and that was no good; I wanted to get into the supermarket itself, to catch up with my family. I didn't want to have to walk all around the outside of the store just to catch up with them! So I sought an alternative.
I went into the back and started looking around. I think I tried one door but it didn't lead to the supermarket. Another led somewhere else, or was blocked. I ended up passing through some sort of managers' back room; the walls were all a dull ecru color, like file cabinets, and there were these staggered seats and long tables like in a college class; it was kind of hard to get through, since there seemed to be little floor space. There were two people in here, and they weren't the manager(s), though they had permission to be back here, I suppose. One was a male, teenaged or in his twenties, with kind of shaggy light brown hair and glasses, thin and slumpy looking; I think the other was female, maybe kind of Gothy. Both looked like social rejects, and simply sat in their seats, seemingly doing nothing of any use. But at least they seemed more at ease than I was. I slipped past them with a murmured apology for trespassing and went out the other side of the room; I'm not sure how this all went, what the layout of the place was, but I think I went out another door and still found no exit. Damn it!
I wandered a bit, then passed back through the back room. The layout changed a bit here and it was very weird. I passed through the very back of the room, behind the two occupants, and this is very hard to describe. For a few moments it's like the dream shifted. I appeared to be trying to climb up some slippery surface to get back at the main part of the room; the surface was kind of like the underside of a rowboat, curved and woodenish. And wet. I think there was water below/behind me and I was trying to keep from slipping into it, by grasping onto this boat thingie. While I did this there was something about a bug commercial; it was like one of those funny commercials for that termite killer. You know the ones where the people have converted their houses to drive off termites? One has started a house of concrete, one a house of ice, one a house with high wind, and one a house with blinding lights? I think one of those commercials must have been airing while I slept because in my dream, now it's like I was watching either auditions for such a commercial, or different takes of it. I know there was a goofy guy, sitting up on this boat, and it had to do with a bug killer, but I can't remember the specifics; just that they did it a few times over and it was humorous. I think I finally climbed over the boat, back into the managers' room, and made my way out to the restaurant again.
I passed through where the buffet or upper level would be, feeling very forlorn. I happened to glance to the side into the restaurant itself; it looked like the layout of the upper level--dim lighting, carpeting, good-sized tables spread out nicely. And over at the far side of the room I noticed somebody who looked like my dad. He was seated with somebody who looked like his brother, my Uncle John! I stopped to stare at him and then Dad waved at me--I sensed he'd been waving to get my attention for a moment or two, before I'd spotted him--and I KNEW it was him! :D I felt SO relieved! Here I'd thought I'd been totally abandoned, and Ma and my aunts (maybe Grandma B., her mother, was with them too?) would have no idea where to look for me. But now I'd found Dad and Uncle John so I knew I was safe.
This is where the dream tied in to the previous one, "Abducted By Rabbit Aliens!" When I saw Dad waiting for me I felt this immense feeling of relief and safety; I think I remembered the alien abduction scenario from earlier on, and the thought that somebody was here now to protect me helped greatly to relieve the anxiety. This is very unusual because my parents usually fill neutral or negative roles in my dreams; usually my mother ignores me, and my dad yells at me or gets angry, when I dream about them. So to feel such vast comfort from him was very odd.
I believe that part of the dream ended with me sitting down to join him and John. I think Ma and the others arrived, and I started getting mad at them, telling them everything that had happened, how they'd left me behind and I couldn't find a way to follow them. But despite my anger and upset there were no arguments; they might have been more amused than anything, and I was too relieved to take much offense.
This dream might have been related to "The Great DBZ Movie."
The Great DBZ Movie
This is a tiny dream snippet which may or may not have been related to/part of either "Abducted By Rabbit Aliens!" or "Escape From China One."
All I remember is sitting out by the computer at night (I think), looking at a magazine article (Entertainment Weekly?) which had pictures for the upcoming Dragon Ball Z animated feature. Now...I know of no such project in real life. I've heard that 20th Century Fox or some such is supposed to be working on a live-action version of the anime, but all the evidence I've seen so far is a teaser poster and one news article, months ago; no further word, not even in the mainstream press. In my dream, some big American studio was releasing an animated version which was supposed to cover the Saiyan Saga through to either the Cell Saga or the Buu Saga, I think. I remember that it went very far into the storyline, if not to the end, at least. In the article it said something about the movie, by necessity because of the length of the plotline involved, would run just over three hours long. Like three hours and ten minutes or some such. Yet they were considering cutting more to make it more tolerable to moviegoers. I myself thought that three hours was a very short amount of time to cover such a sprawling story, and wondered how they'd pull it off with any accuracy! They must have cut a lot out.
Accompanying the article were lots of photos. I remember looking at the pictures on the left-hand(?) page. They were near the top but took up most of it. They were all in bright color. I remember one that had Bulma with her short haircut from the Buu Saga; she was smiling and may have been raising her arms in a cheer or something. (There's a scene from the actual cartoon that looks much like this.) I remember seeing Krillin; he was wearing some clothes I've never seen him wear before, but they were pretty normal. He was grinning in a determined sort of way, with his arms crossed, I think, looking as if he were ready to kick some butt. I believe he was bald like he was in the earlier sagas, because I was looking at the tattoo on his forehead to see if they got it right. At this moment it was kind of like I thought it was supposed to be live action, and I was checking for character accuracy, but they were very much cartoons. Something obstructed part of Krillin's face from my view (like something in front of the picture, not in the picture itself--it seemed to shift and move as I turned the page about) so I had trouble making him out. He was standing with a group of others behind him; maybe Bulma, and others I can't recall. The only specific characters I remember seeing were Bulma and Krillin, though Number Eighteen, Piccolo, Krillin's daughter Marron, etc., may have been present. It looked kind of like they were atop Kami's Lookout as there was a lot of bright blue sky behind them and the view was from slightly below them, looking upwards. They all seemed very happy and enthusiastic about something.
Only now did I feel some surprise that they looked almost exactly like the ones from the television version. I think some different studio was working on the movie--an American studio, maybe Disney--so I had expected the character designs to be substantially different. Yet aside from quality--these drawings were of a higher quality, like in certain episodes of Dragon Ball Z they use a very good animator who captures motion and expressions very well, whereas other episodes are very stilted and bland looking, and in yet more episodes the characters' features are kind of exaggerated or warped--the characters looked almost exactly the same as in the TV cartoon. Part of me had hoped to see new versions of them (in real life I've long wished to see how Disney animators would treat the DBZ characters if they were to make a movie version!), but another part of me was relieved that they hadn't changed much. And judging by the excited looks on their faces, I felt the movie was sure to be good. I couldn't wait for it to come out so I could go see it.
2003 Dreams
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