Long, vivid nightmare

[Jacqui]

About a week ago I had a rather strange, vivid nightmare. I'd love to see if anyone here could analyze it and help me understand what the meaning behind it is. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. I'll warn you now: this dream is LONG. Its actually a two-parter since I woke myself up in the middle of it, deciding I didn't like where it was going (I am a lucid dreamer but the extent of control I have in my dreams vary)

The dream: I’m in a room with a guy who I assume is my coworker. We’re movie-editors for “Saw 4”. I inform him that last night I edited one scene a bit and go over to the computer to show him.

I watch what happens next as a spectator watching the movie, unattached to whats happening: a boy and a girl are in what appears to be a school gym, though it’s very dark and has lockers running off from it. Theyre trying to look for a friend of theirs. They find a bloody sword on the ground near his locker. They open it and find his body stuffed in it, his head halfway sliced. The boy and girl scream and start running, but are stopped by an older man. He is their gym teacher or coach of some kind and is holding a gun. They boy and girl then start running up what appears to be a fire escape with the guy following them.

I now “enter” the movie. Rather than feeling like I’m a character in this film it is like there is no movie anymore and its just my life. I’m standing at the bottom of the fire escape looking up at the boy and girl running. The man with the gun stops chasing them and looks down and sees me. He points the gun at me and I run away hoping he’ll continue to chase the boy and girl and let me be. I’m wrong. The man runs down the stairs.

I’m trying to run out of the gym but its turned into a very long, dark hall. A woman comes out of nowhere with her gun pointed at me, and I’m at a loss what to do because Ive got the woman in front of me and the man behind me. Luckily I look down and there’s a gun lying on the ground. Even though Ive never used a gun before in my life, I pick it up and try shooting at the woman. I either have really bad aim or the bullets aren’t coming out, because shes not getting hit. I want to check if my gun has any bullets in it but I don’t know how to do so. I can't even tell if its loaded or not so I stop trying to shoot and instead run out of the gym/hall via a door that had mysteriously appeared to my right.

I’m in my old high school quad now. I tell everyone to run for their lives because there is a crazy man who is trying to reinact a horror script he read. (I dont recall this ever being mentioned in the dream before then, but I just know its right) I tell everyone to get out of the school but then I turn around and there’s the gym teacher/coach smiling at me with his gun pointed right at my forehead. He’s standing there for a long time not pulling the trigger so I start to move around a bit. I move my head a little to my right, a little to my left etc in a vain attempt to let the bullet NOT go through my brain. The man catches on to what I’m trying to do and laughs and then starts pointing the gun at places like my kneecap and my shoulder, knowing that shooting me in those places won’t kill me, just hurt me. At this point my subconscious catches on that there isnt going to be a happy ending to this and I force myself to wake up.

I remember looking at the clock and noting the time. I then fall asleep almost instantly and enter the very same dream.

This time I’m running out the school with a swarm of people. From what people around me are saying there are quite a few people with guns in the school now. Across the road from my school theres a mall and everyone is crossing the highway to get there. I’m in the middle of a huge crowd when I cross the road, but when I enter the shop theres no mob behind or in front of me. I walk through the mall not aware of what I’m looking for or where I’m going, when two women who are in line at Starbucks smile at me and say at the same time “I’m Jerry Seinfeld.” I smile politely despite being a bit freaked out and keep on going. I start taking the escalators up. There’s a group of men behind me who I find attractive. I start flirting with them on the escalator, which appears to be never-ending. All throughout the conversation I have with them, the escalator keeps on going. All four boys in this group have brown hair and wear blue shirts. They tell me theyre heading to some place and invite me to come along with them.

They lead me to a weird store in the mall I had never noticed before. The process we go through next is very similar to one you go through at an airport when you’re waiting to get your carry-on bags checked. We’re waiting in a queue when we finally reach the desk. The man behind it asks for us to go through “the scanner” which is a frame we walk through (similar to metal-detectors at an airport). I go through “the scanner” but it isnt working. The man behind the desk asks for my name, which I give to him. He says “But your drink says ‘beauty and the beast’.” And sure enough, from the scan I’ve just gone through, they’ve made a drink from it. Apparently the drink that’s made from the scan should match your identity. The man insists that the drink says ‘beauty and the beast’ and NOT 'Jacqui' and this means I cannot be granted entry into the next section. I start arguing that maybe I AM beauty and the beast if thats what the scan came up with, so who was he to deny me entry based on something that explicitly stated my identity. One of the blue-shirts I was flirting with defends my point and the man behind the counter eventually lets me through, passing me my drink and telling me I’ll know when I’m supposed to drink it.

The guys and I are now walking to the next section when one of them states out of nowhere “You go to my school, don’t you?” I say yes, and tell him about my encounter with the crazy man with the gun. (This is the first time in the second part of the dream that I acknowledge the first part) Theyre all amazed I’m alive. Then one of them turns to me and says “I’m writing this movie script. Do you want to read it?” He pulls it out his bag while we’re still walking. I look at the title and I somehow instantly recognize it as the script the crazy gun man was trying to reinact. I stop in my tracks trying to piece all of it together, and the four guys smile at me while they pull out their guns from their jeans. I start running the other way with the guys following me.

For some inexplicable reason I run back to the school across the road. I run up to my old homeroom to hide and it appears that I have lost the blue-shirts, as I dont even hear their footsteps. I open the door to check out the hall and it turns out that the blue shirts are nowhere to be seen. I start running the same way I came hoping to get out of the school again and back to the mall. I turn the corner and run straight into the four blue-shirts. They cock their gun and I BOLT back to my homeroom. I can hear them shooting but they never get me and surprisingly dont follow me.

In my homeroom I decide to leave the school another way. At that moment all four blue shirts and myself were on the third story of the school. I figured if I could use the fire escape to go to the second story I could safely exit the school without running into them. I make sure that I’m walking calmly when I do this, not running like a lunatic and drawing attention to myself. It works. Though on the second story I see some more guys in blue shirts waiting around with guns (not the guys I was flirting with and ran into before) they don’t notice me because I’m blending right in with the rest of the crowd who are trying to escape the school. I make sure I’m always looking down so they cant identify my face but I hear someone sniffing beside me. I look up despite myself, and see a girl crying. I say to her in a Texan (!) accent “Dont be scared, youre gonna be home with your Momma soon” She looks at me and smiles wiping away her tears.

All of a sudden it jumps forward in time and I’m at my high school again. I’m going to Drama class and a few of my old high school friends are sitting on the veranda waiting for the teacher to arrive. My friends and I discuss the events of “yesterday” so I assume it’s the next morning. I tell my friends how I can’t believe I’m still alive considering the people with guns were targeting me specifically. My friends are confused so I start to explain the story to them when in my peripheral vision I can see a group of people approaching the Drama room. Its the blue shirts. They stand on the veranda with us and one of them says to me “You didn’t think we'd leave without saying goodbye?” and pulls something out of his pocket. I presume its going to be a gun but instead he pulls out a sharp, long compass (The one you use to draw circles) He smiles as he walks towards me, the compass pointing directly at my face. I dont want to know what they’re about to do to me so I force myself to wake up again



Some things that may or may not be important to note:
- Despite having went to a school that strictly enforced a uniform, everyone in this dream including myself is in normal, every-day clothes.
- Despite all of the guns in this dream, the only time I distinctly hear a shot is when the blue shirts start firing after I run into them at school for the first time. Guns are pointed at me a lot, but never actually fired except that one time.
- I’m Australian, NOT Texan. LOL I have no idea where the accent came from when I was talking to the girl; I speak in my normal Aussie accent when I talk with the blue shirts.
- Despite getting the feeling that I was a student attending the high school in this dream I actually graduated in 2004.
- Despite the man telling me I would know when to drink the beauty and the beast drink he made, it didnt come up in my dream again.

[Jacqui]

I appreciate the feedback, but I am afraid I may have missed your point. Or rather, you might have missed mine. Your reply focuses on the lucid aspect of my nightmare, and I have to say I don't even really consider this dream to be lucid. The only times I remembered it was a dream were the two times I made myself wake up. And just because I did so, does not mean everything else that happened in the dream is meaningless. I don't think that assumption is correct at all.

The only distinguishing feature of this dream that sets it apart from other ones I've had is not that it was any more or less lucid, it's that I have no idea what it could mean. I think the lucid aspect has nothing to do with my dream, to be frank, because that's how I always am when I sleep. It's not like I went, "I want to escape from this dream, I'll make it lucid!" and I don't agree with the suggestion that even if I were to do that, the nightmare would suddenly become meaningless. There was a reason the things in my dream happened, that's why I'm here.