'Murdering 'This Man' in a Rape Scenario'
Date: 15 August 2019
This dream was as a result of a real life incident which took place the day before this dream - I was out walking alone at night, when I was followed by a group of men. I was in a small, dark wooded area near my house when the men decided to try and find me, while making loud, threatening/intimidating comments which led me to believe they had malicious/sexual intentions towards me. I escaped any harm - but I was unsettled and angry about this incident and in a vlog I recorded a number of hours later, I referred to the fact this might influence my next dream as I have had recurrent dreams of being chased (often near woodland) by a man/men carrying knives. This dream took place during the day (sometime between 07:30 and 14:00 hours).
Scene 1: A 'House of Marble' - Time Unknown
I was in an interior which was made of marble - I don't mean the metamorphic rock, but rather glass marbles - the spherical children's plaything. It was a 'cat's eye' marble (which as a child I used to think of as the most common and basic - and therefore least favourite marble variety, unless it had an odd colour scheme). The walls weren't transparent, although they were made of clear glass (they were too thick to be transparent, so I could not see beyond them). The coloured centre of the glass was a mix of blue and green. I did not question how odd this interior was. I cannot recall any of the decor or furniture, only the actually structure being made on marble. There were some dream characters present, but I do not recall them as my attention was on leaving the marble interior - trying to find a door, which was difficult, as all the walls seemed to be made of smooth glass with no entrances or exits.
I walked down some marble/glass hallway and found a door which would enable me to leave.
Scene 2: An Entrance - Time Unknown
I found myself in a scene from a recent dream - it was the exact same place, which had seemed significant in the original dream - Dream 1031 - 'Bowling Green, Sudsbury' (MY DREAM TOWN APPEARS). It is an entrance of a very institutional building - everything seems dusty and old and solid. I got a distinct feeling of nostalgia when in this location - as if I had seen it in childhood. I associated it with being the entrance to a building in London - maybe the entrance to a solicitors, or tax office, or psychiatrists (I know these are random professions, I just can't describe the strong impressionist reaction I had to this banal location). Finding myself in a dream location I have recently experienced in another dream (and one which I felt was significant in the previous dream) should have been a dreamsign, triggering a reality check and lucidity - but I accepted the reality of the dream and the fact I was back in this location, even though I recognised I had been there before.
I noticed that behind me (on a wall I had not observed in my previous dream), I saw there was a TV monitor mounted on the wall. I knew that this was a CCTV monitor, showing security footage. The screen was showing a showreel of a Youtuber (a male Youtuber, who I think was just a dream character as I cannot link him to any one particular content creator I am aware of in real life). The showreel was basically the thumbnails of his videos being displayed on the screen. I noticed that some of his video thumbnails were diagrams of brainwaves which I had used on this Blog (uploaded the same day as this dream). I knew they were images he had taken from my Blog, and thought it was odd (and unconnected to his channel), but at the same time, I did not question what was happening to the extent that it acted as a dreamsign - even though I was actively thinking about my dreamwork and dream journal, while in a dream scene location!
Scene 3: Countryside, 'Sudsbury' (My 'Dream Town') - Day
I left the entrance, through the big burgundy/maroon door and found that I was in my 'Dream Town' ('Sudsbury') - for explanation of my 'Dream Town' and links to all dreams in which it has appeared, see Dream 998 - 'My Dream Town Becomes Victorian'. I was in a countryside location, but I could not see the building from which I just exited. I could just see a typical English countryside, which was very tranquil and beautiful. The sun was shining and the sky was very blue. I knew I was going to a picnic in the forest (which was where I was heading, walking across the fields/meadows) - I knew my boyfriend AJR would be there to meet me, along with other people (who I assumed I would know, although it is unclear who would be there as I did not actively think about the other guests). I was very happy and excited about the prospect of the picnic and was eager to get there.
I walked to the forest, which was a normal looking forest. I seemed to instinctively know which direction to walk in. I reached a clearing in the trees, which was where I knew the picnic would be taking place. This was in the depths of the forest.
I heard a noise - footsteps through the forest floor, and I think I assumed it was AJR coming to meet me. However, I became aware it was a strange man and he had malicious intentions towards me - he was a sex offender who was going to rape me. I was terrified, but didn't try and run away (I am not sure why - I didn't even attempt to do this, I was rooted on the spot).
The man appeared through the trees and I saw that it was 'This Man' (see my post on 'Have You Seen This Man? (Debunking the 'Dream Hoax'). He looked broadly similar to the image used for this hoax - he was in his 30s and very short in height, and squat in build. He was white, with a vary pallid complexion and a wide, creepy smile. His hair was black and thinning on top. He was dressed in a navy outfit which might have been a onesie - or just matching top and trousers. I instantly recognised him as 'This Man' - and as a viral marketing hoax and urban legend/myth. This caused me to become lucid!
I performed a reality check - trying to push the fingers of one hand through the palm of the other - and found that the outcome was only slightly dream-like and odd - my fingers did not push through my palm, and my hands looked normal to me - the only 'unreal' or dream-like outcome of the reality check was the fact that my palm was a bit like plasticine or dough - malleable to the extent my finger sunk in a small amount, just enough to be impossible in real life. I was certain I was lucid. I began to run my hands together to stabilise the dream, but my hands felt quite numb and disconnected from me so I placed my right hand on the trunk of the tree nearest to me, feeling the rough, realistic bark texture. This seemed to stabilise the dream sufficiently, as I had clarity of vision and thought, and felt grounded in the dream.
This Man stood in front of me - about 5 meters away, or possibly less. The colours of the forest seemed very vibrant and bathed in an intense green light. I began to shout: 'AJ' trying to summons my boyfriend into the lucid dream so that he could help me. At first nothing happened. This Man said to me: 'He can't hear you from the portal'. I perceived 'the portal' to be the big burgundy/maroon door from Scene 2 and my previous dream involving this entrance (Dream 1031 - 'Bowling Green, Sudsbury') which had also involved AJR being present. I said to This Man: 'the portal is in my dream, so I can summons whoever I want through it'. I imagined that the door was a portal to my Dream Town (I am not sure if that is what it does symbolise, but I have now had 2 dreams when it has led to my Dream Town, so I had a deep belief that this was a possibility). This Man started laughing manically at me and said 'you're just another rape victim today' which was a terrifying statement to hear him say. He did not try to get closer to me - he seemed confident that he had me trapped. I began shouting: 'AJ! AJ!' willing him to appear. AJR appeared through the trees, the same direction This Man had come (straight ahead of where I was standing). He was dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans and looked as he does in real life. This was the first point I became aware of how I was also dressed - I was wearing a pink zip-up hoody and leggings and I assume trainers (the outfit I was wearing in real life on the day before this dream). AJR's facial expression indicated that he was annoyed. He stopped, just behind This Man and said: 'What do you want me to do about it?' which indicated he did not want to help me in any way, which made me feel disappointed. This Man said (directed at AJR): 'this is just a one-off' - which I perceived to be him saying that he was only going to rape me once, and therefore it shouldn't worry AJR too much.
I realised I would have to fight This Man myself, because AJR wasn't helping (and I did not want to lose focus by trying to control AJR as a lucid dream character). I imagined summonsing power into myself - I guess this is akin to 'psyching myself up' for a fight. I felt a surge of electrical energy pulsate through my body, which was a pleasurable and reassuring feeling - I guess it was literally a rush of adrenaline. I said, out loud, to manifest this: 'I've got superpowers'. This Man was just smiling at me. AJR said: 'You shouldn't lie to him when he's about to rape you'. He did not seem concerned at all about the prospect of me being raped by This Man. I felt that he was trying to undermine me within my own lucid dream, but then had to tell myself that he is a projection of my subconscious and it was actually me trying to undermine my own power. I felt extremely conscious of conscious awareness (as awkward as that sounds, I mean I was very aware of how much insight and logic I was using to interpret my own lucid dream as it was actually happening, and use that to my advantage).
I knew I had to visualise and manifest a weapon of some kind - and the obvious choice (based on my current Quickshot Dream Incubation Experiment #10) was a meat cleaver - I had held one in my hand, and could remember the weight and feel of it, as well as it's size and shape. I held out my hand and decided to look up at the sky, visualising the meat cleaver and feeling its weight in my hand. I looked up at the sky, and could see tree branched criss-crossing my field of vision. I thought they seemed higher than they should have been. I had my hand held out in front of me as I tried to manifest the meat cleaver I was visualising. I couldn't feel it in my hand no matter how hard I tried to will it. I wondered if I should close my eyes, but I didn't want to, because that can either change the lucid dream scene (this is my association as I have used this method before), or sometimes wake you prematurely. This Man was laughing at me and he said: 'I'm going to get big on you', which made me feel terrified. I still did not have a weapon. I looked at This Man, and noticed that he had opened a flap on the front of his trousers (or onesie? It was like the flap on the back of a babygro, but at the front) and his penis was exposed - it was erect (I knew this, even though it didn't look like a normal penis) and I knew this was what he meant by the phrase 'I'm going to get big on you'. His penis was actually really short and fat, like a large field mushroom, and a very bright pink colour, with sparse, black pubic hair. It looked unrealistic - like it was a badly-crafted sculpture of an ugly 'choad'-type penis, a caricature, rather than a real penis
This Man then did this tip-toeing walk towards me - I don't know it I can describe it, but it reminded me a lot of a cross between the dancing, theatrical movements of the evil presence in the Creepypasta 'The Smiling Man' (I have seen a video made which was based on this story) and also the creepy, overly-exaggerated creeping tiptoe movements of burglars in The Sims 3. This had a really nightmarish quality about it, even though looking back with hindsight, it actually seems really funny! In the dream, my thought was that he was 'playing with' or taunting/mocking me. I looked down at the floor, and saw the meat cleaver was laying amongst the debris of the forest floor, which also had a lot of wild flowers growing. I picked up the meat cleaver and lunged at This Man. I found my arm were really heavy and it was difficult to lift it with the meat cleaver, so I had to will my muscles to loosen. I told myself this is a lucid dream and moving is harder (because I know that to be true from past experience - I often feel the muscle atonia of REM sleep through my lucid dreams). I managed to pump my arm up and down in a way which made movement easier, but in doing this, I chopped off one of This Man's arms. This made me anxious because my first thought was 'now he's going to kill me', so my only option (or at least the only thought present in my consciously-aware mind at the time this was happening) was 'now I have to kill him, it's my only option'.
I guess I knew AJR wasn't going to help me. I had also afforded both dream characters - This Man and AJR - almost full autonomy as dream characters, without trying to use lucid dream control to manipulate their behaviour in any way. The fact I could try and change the dream scene or walk away, or even try to use different superpowers to protect myself did not come into my mind at all in the moment. As I was fully-lucid with a fairly decent amount of lucid dream control, and access to a lot of logical reasoning, I would have assumed I would have thought about a less drastic option than murder, or actively associated this entire scene with the real life experience of what happened only a matter of hours before. But I did not - at no point did I think 'this is inspired by real life events, and This Man represents the fear of a man preying on a woman with sexual malice or violent intent, in a woodland setting'. Or consider that in a lucid dream I had limitless options open to me. I am not sure if I had selective memory here - i.e. my memory or conscious awareness did no stretch to these thoughts - or maybe, it was taken for granted that this was inspired by waking events to the extent I didn't even need to consciously acknowledge it in the dream? I also wonder if the fact I could only imagine murder being the solution was because this is how I'd react if this situation happened to me in real life? In my vlog, recorded a couple of hours before I went to sleep and had this dream, I mentioned the fact that if a man or group of men tried to rape me, I'd murder them and plead self defence.
I started to hack at This Man with the meat cleaver. I went completely crazy. It was the most exhilarating and awesomely powerful feeling I have ever experienced in a lucid dream. I could see blood and entrails and skin and hair flying outwards from This Man, while he looked like a cloud of dust/blur - so the way it appeared to me as I was chopping him up into bits was as it would be depicted in a classic cartoon, albeit probably a lot more gory. I think the dust cloud and the blurring was because of the speed at which I was hacking up This Man with the meat cleaver. As the blade of the meat cleaver made contact with This Man, it felt like I was striking thin air - there was no substance to him, but the meat cleaver was still able to chop him up. I began to laugh at what was happening and how it was depicted in the dream. When This Man was completely hacked into pieces, I stopped. I looked down at the ground, expecting to see his remains all chopped up amongst the leaves and flowers. Instead, I saw a large number (maybe even 100), small square packages of meat piled on the ground - they were about the size of a Rubix cube and identical in size/shape. The packages were in brown wrapping paper, tied with string and I could see the blood seeping through them at the edges.
AJR stepped forward and picked up some of the packages of meat - and I saw he had an empty wicker basket on his arm. He said: 'we can take the meat to the picnic' and then winked at me in a really exaggerated way and said: 'you're halfway to becoming a butcherer now'. I noticed he said 'butcherer' and wondered if he meant 'butcher'. To me, in the dream with my conscious awareness, the distinction was between a 'butcher' working in the meat industry and a 'butcherer' being a murderer. My vision began to go blurry, and then black. I woke up.
I woke up from this dream feeling so happy and satisfied - this was the perfect way of releasing my frustrations at what happened to me in real waking life, when I was feeling threatened/intimidated by men in the forest area. I wish I had been able to use my lucidity for finding out more about Sudsbury and also to explore different sides of my relationship with AJR, given there are real life limitations on our relationship at present, so any chance of interacting him in a sexual way in a lucid dream is a top priority for me. However, in this dream my focus needed to be on dealing with This Man. I am surprised that I didn't become lucid in this dream at a sooner point, given all the dreamsigns which were present, but This Man was the final straw which snapped me to lucidity, just at the right moment.
I feel this dream was extremely cathartic and therapeutic for me. I didn't like AJR's behaviour in the dream, but I am glad that I recognised he was a projection of my subconscious (and therefore not necessarily reflective of himself in a reliable sense - my subconscious is filtering him through a lot of my own anxieties or fears) as this meant I didn't waste time trying to reason with him or question why he was behaving in the way he was.
Additional Notes:
This dream was as a result of a real life incident which took place the day before this dream - I was out walking alone at night, when I was followed by a group of men. I was in a small, dark wooded area near my house when the men decided to try and find me, while making loud, threatening/intimidating comments which led me to believe they had malicious/sexual intentions towards me. I escaped any harm - but I was unsettled and angry about this incident and in a vlog I recorded a number of hours later, I referred to the fact this might influence my next dream as I have had recurrent dreams of being chased (often near woodland) by a man/men carrying knives. This dream took place during the day (sometime between 07:30 and 14:00 hours).
Scene 1: A 'House of Marble' - Time Unknown
I was in an interior which was made of marble - I don't mean the metamorphic rock, but rather glass marbles - the spherical children's plaything. It was a 'cat's eye' marble (which as a child I used to think of as the most common and basic - and therefore least favourite marble variety, unless it had an odd colour scheme). The walls weren't transparent, although they were made of clear glass (they were too thick to be transparent, so I could not see beyond them). The coloured centre of the glass was a mix of blue and green. I did not question how odd this interior was. I cannot recall any of the decor or furniture, only the actually structure being made on marble. There were some dream characters present, but I do not recall them as my attention was on leaving the marble interior - trying to find a door, which was difficult, as all the walls seemed to be made of smooth glass with no entrances or exits.
I walked down some marble/glass hallway and found a door which would enable me to leave.
Scene 2: An Entrance - Time Unknown
I found myself in a scene from a recent dream - it was the exact same place, which had seemed significant in the original dream - Dream 1031 - 'Bowling Green, Sudsbury' (MY DREAM TOWN APPEARS). It is an entrance of a very institutional building - everything seems dusty and old and solid. I got a distinct feeling of nostalgia when in this location - as if I had seen it in childhood. I associated it with being the entrance to a building in London - maybe the entrance to a solicitors, or tax office, or psychiatrists (I know these are random professions, I just can't describe the strong impressionist reaction I had to this banal location). Finding myself in a dream location I have recently experienced in another dream (and one which I felt was significant in the previous dream) should have been a dreamsign, triggering a reality check and lucidity - but I accepted the reality of the dream and the fact I was back in this location, even though I recognised I had been there before.
I noticed that behind me (on a wall I had not observed in my previous dream), I saw there was a TV monitor mounted on the wall. I knew that this was a CCTV monitor, showing security footage. The screen was showing a showreel of a Youtuber (a male Youtuber, who I think was just a dream character as I cannot link him to any one particular content creator I am aware of in real life). The showreel was basically the thumbnails of his videos being displayed on the screen. I noticed that some of his video thumbnails were diagrams of brainwaves which I had used on this Blog (uploaded the same day as this dream). I knew they were images he had taken from my Blog, and thought it was odd (and unconnected to his channel), but at the same time, I did not question what was happening to the extent that it acted as a dreamsign - even though I was actively thinking about my dreamwork and dream journal, while in a dream scene location!
Scene 3: Countryside, 'Sudsbury' (My 'Dream Town') - Day
I left the entrance, through the big burgundy/maroon door and found that I was in my 'Dream Town' ('Sudsbury') - for explanation of my 'Dream Town' and links to all dreams in which it has appeared, see Dream 998 - 'My Dream Town Becomes Victorian'. I was in a countryside location, but I could not see the building from which I just exited. I could just see a typical English countryside, which was very tranquil and beautiful. The sun was shining and the sky was very blue. I knew I was going to a picnic in the forest (which was where I was heading, walking across the fields/meadows) - I knew my boyfriend AJR would be there to meet me, along with other people (who I assumed I would know, although it is unclear who would be there as I did not actively think about the other guests). I was very happy and excited about the prospect of the picnic and was eager to get there.
I walked to the forest, which was a normal looking forest. I seemed to instinctively know which direction to walk in. I reached a clearing in the trees, which was where I knew the picnic would be taking place. This was in the depths of the forest.
I heard a noise - footsteps through the forest floor, and I think I assumed it was AJR coming to meet me. However, I became aware it was a strange man and he had malicious intentions towards me - he was a sex offender who was going to rape me. I was terrified, but didn't try and run away (I am not sure why - I didn't even attempt to do this, I was rooted on the spot).
The man appeared through the trees and I saw that it was 'This Man' (see my post on 'Have You Seen This Man? (Debunking the 'Dream Hoax'). He looked broadly similar to the image used for this hoax - he was in his 30s and very short in height, and squat in build. He was white, with a vary pallid complexion and a wide, creepy smile. His hair was black and thinning on top. He was dressed in a navy outfit which might have been a onesie - or just matching top and trousers. I instantly recognised him as 'This Man' - and as a viral marketing hoax and urban legend/myth. This caused me to become lucid!
I performed a reality check - trying to push the fingers of one hand through the palm of the other - and found that the outcome was only slightly dream-like and odd - my fingers did not push through my palm, and my hands looked normal to me - the only 'unreal' or dream-like outcome of the reality check was the fact that my palm was a bit like plasticine or dough - malleable to the extent my finger sunk in a small amount, just enough to be impossible in real life. I was certain I was lucid. I began to run my hands together to stabilise the dream, but my hands felt quite numb and disconnected from me so I placed my right hand on the trunk of the tree nearest to me, feeling the rough, realistic bark texture. This seemed to stabilise the dream sufficiently, as I had clarity of vision and thought, and felt grounded in the dream.
This Man stood in front of me - about 5 meters away, or possibly less. The colours of the forest seemed very vibrant and bathed in an intense green light. I began to shout: 'AJ' trying to summons my boyfriend into the lucid dream so that he could help me. At first nothing happened. This Man said to me: 'He can't hear you from the portal'. I perceived 'the portal' to be the big burgundy/maroon door from Scene 2 and my previous dream involving this entrance (Dream 1031 - 'Bowling Green, Sudsbury') which had also involved AJR being present. I said to This Man: 'the portal is in my dream, so I can summons whoever I want through it'. I imagined that the door was a portal to my Dream Town (I am not sure if that is what it does symbolise, but I have now had 2 dreams when it has led to my Dream Town, so I had a deep belief that this was a possibility). This Man started laughing manically at me and said 'you're just another rape victim today' which was a terrifying statement to hear him say. He did not try to get closer to me - he seemed confident that he had me trapped. I began shouting: 'AJ! AJ!' willing him to appear. AJR appeared through the trees, the same direction This Man had come (straight ahead of where I was standing). He was dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans and looked as he does in real life. This was the first point I became aware of how I was also dressed - I was wearing a pink zip-up hoody and leggings and I assume trainers (the outfit I was wearing in real life on the day before this dream). AJR's facial expression indicated that he was annoyed. He stopped, just behind This Man and said: 'What do you want me to do about it?' which indicated he did not want to help me in any way, which made me feel disappointed. This Man said (directed at AJR): 'this is just a one-off' - which I perceived to be him saying that he was only going to rape me once, and therefore it shouldn't worry AJR too much.
I realised I would have to fight This Man myself, because AJR wasn't helping (and I did not want to lose focus by trying to control AJR as a lucid dream character). I imagined summonsing power into myself - I guess this is akin to 'psyching myself up' for a fight. I felt a surge of electrical energy pulsate through my body, which was a pleasurable and reassuring feeling - I guess it was literally a rush of adrenaline. I said, out loud, to manifest this: 'I've got superpowers'. This Man was just smiling at me. AJR said: 'You shouldn't lie to him when he's about to rape you'. He did not seem concerned at all about the prospect of me being raped by This Man. I felt that he was trying to undermine me within my own lucid dream, but then had to tell myself that he is a projection of my subconscious and it was actually me trying to undermine my own power. I felt extremely conscious of conscious awareness (as awkward as that sounds, I mean I was very aware of how much insight and logic I was using to interpret my own lucid dream as it was actually happening, and use that to my advantage).
I knew I had to visualise and manifest a weapon of some kind - and the obvious choice (based on my current Quickshot Dream Incubation Experiment #10) was a meat cleaver - I had held one in my hand, and could remember the weight and feel of it, as well as it's size and shape. I held out my hand and decided to look up at the sky, visualising the meat cleaver and feeling its weight in my hand. I looked up at the sky, and could see tree branched criss-crossing my field of vision. I thought they seemed higher than they should have been. I had my hand held out in front of me as I tried to manifest the meat cleaver I was visualising. I couldn't feel it in my hand no matter how hard I tried to will it. I wondered if I should close my eyes, but I didn't want to, because that can either change the lucid dream scene (this is my association as I have used this method before), or sometimes wake you prematurely. This Man was laughing at me and he said: 'I'm going to get big on you', which made me feel terrified. I still did not have a weapon. I looked at This Man, and noticed that he had opened a flap on the front of his trousers (or onesie? It was like the flap on the back of a babygro, but at the front) and his penis was exposed - it was erect (I knew this, even though it didn't look like a normal penis) and I knew this was what he meant by the phrase 'I'm going to get big on you'. His penis was actually really short and fat, like a large field mushroom, and a very bright pink colour, with sparse, black pubic hair. It looked unrealistic - like it was a badly-crafted sculpture of an ugly 'choad'-type penis, a caricature, rather than a real penis
This Man then did this tip-toeing walk towards me - I don't know it I can describe it, but it reminded me a lot of a cross between the dancing, theatrical movements of the evil presence in the Creepypasta 'The Smiling Man' (I have seen a video made which was based on this story) and also the creepy, overly-exaggerated creeping tiptoe movements of burglars in The Sims 3. This had a really nightmarish quality about it, even though looking back with hindsight, it actually seems really funny! In the dream, my thought was that he was 'playing with' or taunting/mocking me. I looked down at the floor, and saw the meat cleaver was laying amongst the debris of the forest floor, which also had a lot of wild flowers growing. I picked up the meat cleaver and lunged at This Man. I found my arm were really heavy and it was difficult to lift it with the meat cleaver, so I had to will my muscles to loosen. I told myself this is a lucid dream and moving is harder (because I know that to be true from past experience - I often feel the muscle atonia of REM sleep through my lucid dreams). I managed to pump my arm up and down in a way which made movement easier, but in doing this, I chopped off one of This Man's arms. This made me anxious because my first thought was 'now he's going to kill me', so my only option (or at least the only thought present in my consciously-aware mind at the time this was happening) was 'now I have to kill him, it's my only option'.
I guess I knew AJR wasn't going to help me. I had also afforded both dream characters - This Man and AJR - almost full autonomy as dream characters, without trying to use lucid dream control to manipulate their behaviour in any way. The fact I could try and change the dream scene or walk away, or even try to use different superpowers to protect myself did not come into my mind at all in the moment. As I was fully-lucid with a fairly decent amount of lucid dream control, and access to a lot of logical reasoning, I would have assumed I would have thought about a less drastic option than murder, or actively associated this entire scene with the real life experience of what happened only a matter of hours before. But I did not - at no point did I think 'this is inspired by real life events, and This Man represents the fear of a man preying on a woman with sexual malice or violent intent, in a woodland setting'. Or consider that in a lucid dream I had limitless options open to me. I am not sure if I had selective memory here - i.e. my memory or conscious awareness did no stretch to these thoughts - or maybe, it was taken for granted that this was inspired by waking events to the extent I didn't even need to consciously acknowledge it in the dream? I also wonder if the fact I could only imagine murder being the solution was because this is how I'd react if this situation happened to me in real life? In my vlog, recorded a couple of hours before I went to sleep and had this dream, I mentioned the fact that if a man or group of men tried to rape me, I'd murder them and plead self defence.
I started to hack at This Man with the meat cleaver. I went completely crazy. It was the most exhilarating and awesomely powerful feeling I have ever experienced in a lucid dream. I could see blood and entrails and skin and hair flying outwards from This Man, while he looked like a cloud of dust/blur - so the way it appeared to me as I was chopping him up into bits was as it would be depicted in a classic cartoon, albeit probably a lot more gory. I think the dust cloud and the blurring was because of the speed at which I was hacking up This Man with the meat cleaver. As the blade of the meat cleaver made contact with This Man, it felt like I was striking thin air - there was no substance to him, but the meat cleaver was still able to chop him up. I began to laugh at what was happening and how it was depicted in the dream. When This Man was completely hacked into pieces, I stopped. I looked down at the ground, expecting to see his remains all chopped up amongst the leaves and flowers. Instead, I saw a large number (maybe even 100), small square packages of meat piled on the ground - they were about the size of a Rubix cube and identical in size/shape. The packages were in brown wrapping paper, tied with string and I could see the blood seeping through them at the edges.
AJR stepped forward and picked up some of the packages of meat - and I saw he had an empty wicker basket on his arm. He said: 'we can take the meat to the picnic' and then winked at me in a really exaggerated way and said: 'you're halfway to becoming a butcherer now'. I noticed he said 'butcherer' and wondered if he meant 'butcher'. To me, in the dream with my conscious awareness, the distinction was between a 'butcher' working in the meat industry and a 'butcherer' being a murderer. My vision began to go blurry, and then black. I woke up.
I woke up from this dream feeling so happy and satisfied - this was the perfect way of releasing my frustrations at what happened to me in real waking life, when I was feeling threatened/intimidated by men in the forest area. I wish I had been able to use my lucidity for finding out more about Sudsbury and also to explore different sides of my relationship with AJR, given there are real life limitations on our relationship at present, so any chance of interacting him in a sexual way in a lucid dream is a top priority for me. However, in this dream my focus needed to be on dealing with This Man. I am surprised that I didn't become lucid in this dream at a sooner point, given all the dreamsigns which were present, but This Man was the final straw which snapped me to lucidity, just at the right moment.
I feel this dream was extremely cathartic and therapeutic for me. I didn't like AJR's behaviour in the dream, but I am glad that I recognised he was a projection of my subconscious (and therefore not necessarily reflective of himself in a reliable sense - my subconscious is filtering him through a lot of my own anxieties or fears) as this meant I didn't waste time trying to reason with him or question why he was behaving in the way he was.
Additional Notes:
- This dream took place after my launch of the Quickshot Dream Incubation Experiments (see video below for QDI#10, and my introductory article - Quickshot Dream Incubations | QDI#1) - this dream was a highly successful Quickshot Dream Incubation Experiment dream - however, it must be noted that I consciously visualised and manifested this dream trigger in a lucid dream rather than it just appearing
- I have been searching for a piece of 'lost media' for some years - since childhood. I have searched across so many websites which aim to track down forgotten books which may be out of publication, and used keywords to find any reference to a children's book which would have been published in, or before the early 1990s. We used to have Book Sales at our primary (elementary) school, where publishers/book sellers would set up stalls in our school canteen after school, and we could attend with our parents to browse and buy books. I recall the book being about a young female protagonist who receives a message in a bottle, which she discovers comes from another young girl - who may or may not have been her doppelganger? The protagonist has a younger brother, who goes missing. She finds where her brother might be by looking into a marble, where she sees a vision of his whereabouts. He has been abducted and appears to be living in an alternative reality within the marble. I had the feeling this book might be called House of Marbles. Due to my inability to find a book with a plot anything like that I I have described here, I began to wonder if this was a false memory and whether it in fact did exist. I had been thinking about asking on social media in the hope someone else might remember this book on the day I had this dream. Whilst writing up this dream, I decided to conduct another online search. I am not sure what different search terms I used, but I found a book which I had not come across before - Amy Herrick, Kimbo's Marble (1993), which is a story about Princess Kimbo who is able to communicate with animals as a result of a magic marble she was given as a baby. Kimbo inadvertently wishes that her mute brother Willy disappears - and must rescue him after he is kidnapped by a troll named 'Grimpoke'. Reading about this book did lead to me believe this might be what I was misremembering - there is a young female protagonist, a marble (in the title too) and a missing/kidnapped brother. Even the reference to him being mute stirred some kind of recognition. The book was published approximately around the time I would have been in primary school and attending the Book Sales, so the time-frame is broadly right. However, there are many inconsistencies between this book and my memory of the one I am trying to track down - for example, I didn't recall the troll, the fact the protagonist was a princess who could talk to animals, or the fact that the book was illustrated. It may be that I grossly misremembered it, or have combined the memory of 2 different books into one. I also have the vague memory of having a dream about this book as a child - so perhaps I am actually remembering aspects of my dream, rather than the actual book?
- I noticed that on my Blog, the 'Have You Seen This Man? (Debunking the 'Dream Hoax' post had been viewed a couple of times on the day before this dream - although I did not look at my own post, I have a clear and vivid visual memory of how This Man looks and I'm guessing I must have mentally visualised him in this moment. Note that in this dream, I did not remember that I had seen the statistic of page views on my Blog, or briefly thought about This Man in waking reality, despite my dreamsign being the fact that I know he does not exist
- On the day I had this dream, I had mentioned in my vlog that I have had recurrent dreams about being pursued with a man with a knife. I had noticed that on my Blog - my post about weapons - 'Interpreting popular dreams themes (5) - Knives & Stabbing' and 'DREAM INTERPRETATION: Weapons & Violence in Dreams (Knives,Guns, Bombs etc)' have always been the most popular posts of this Blog, on a daily basis, and according to my overall global statistics. I think that the fact I had the real life waking incident, then thought about other instances where I have been pursued or intimidated by men, coupled with my Quickshot Dream Incubation Experiment dream trigger and my thoughts of previous dreams which relate to being pursued by a man with a knife (and then acknowledging the fact I have popular Blog posts about knives/weapons in dreams), made such strong associations in my mind, that a dream reflecting that much associated day residue was inevitable - a point I had also consciously acknowledged just before this dream
- The night before this dream I had considered buying a mushroom quiche, shortly after the incident which inspired this dream
- I had watched a Youtube video about the creator's all-time scariest Creepypastas on the night before this dream - although I don't think 'The Smiling Man' was actually on his list
- I had seen a Facebook post on a Sims 3 group about burglar NPCs on the night before this dream
- AJR teases me by giving me the nickname 'Yokey Bear' (based on Yogi Bear) as a reference to how I am disgusted by eggs - Yogi Bear was famous for stealing picnics
