Advancing the Art of Oneiromancy

I'm riding the bus home from work when it drives right past the street I lived on for most of my childhood and turns down the next street. No worries, I think, I can get it to let me off here, walk down this street, cut through a yard and be home. But the driver assures me that he'll turn around at the end of the road and take me back to my street, so I stay on. When I finally get off, my boss follows me. I say goodbye and go to give her a hug, but she indicates that this would be inappropriate. So I awkwardly say goodbye again and turn around to head home. I'm on campus now, so I begin running, a full out sprint, hunched over, with my hands near the ground. I make a 90 degree turn to my left, dragging my hands across the ground to slow myself down faster and propel myself foward in my new facing. I can feel the dirt running through my fingers. I round a few more corners with the same ferocious quickness and find myself facing the dorm. It's a very open building, with s

I walk into a carpeted, nicely furnish, well lit basement, where some people are playing a game. Among them are my ex-girlfriend Aurora, and two people who I retrospectively recognize, my youngest brother and a guy I met this thanksgiving. It's a roleplaying/storytelling game. They give me an existing character and I join in. Only events unfold too fast for me to keep up, having joined in medias res , so I mostly end up observing things unfold. As we wrap up and head up the stairs, I'm told that my character contracted Ford's disease, which famously struck Henry Ford, but just as famously only affects Latinos.

After what felt a particularly reckless bus ride to the center of downtown (yes, the bus is supposed to drive through middle aisle in that building, I remind myself), I step into the elevator. I stumble over to the corner. Man, I'm dizzy. What have I been drinking? A girl sways about the elevator, obviously drunk also. She's talking, on and on, I'm not sure about what. Man, she's hot. She drops something from her hair. The other guy in the elevator picks it up and hands it to her on their way out. I follow them, not really intending to, through the enclosed market, over a chained off brigde across a little stream running through the street, towards my destination: a bar/restaurant. Only it's closed. They blunder through the chain and are warned that the place is closed, that they're just serving the rest of their customers, and if they choose to stay there they could be forced to leave once they kick out the last of their regular customers. This is a little weir

My friend got to the end of level three but didn't want to face the boss. So I step into the room grab my sword, and get ready to work my way past him. The boss looks at me, sort of sighs, and gets ready to do his routine. He doesn't seem to have anything against me. He just seems to know what this is about, what he has to do, and wants to just get to it. I dodge in, take a swipe, dodge out, and repeat this pattern, knowing it'll eventually get me past him. But I get bored with the battle and walk out of the room outside. I see my cat sitting outside the gate, right where he's not supposed to be. This always happens; let the cat out onto the deck, and he squeezes out the gate. So I yell at him to get his ass back on the deck, but he just sits there relaxing in the sun. Before I can go out and pick him up, a huge cougar wanders up. I start to worry, but my cat just lays there, relaxed, not worried about the big cat that could tear him to pieces without breaking a sw

I'm running. A giant is storming through our peaceful valley, and if he finds me, I'm dead meat. I duck behind something, whatever's closest, and wait, in a panic, hoping he passes by without looking behind it. The giant passes. I stand up, the panic gone. All that's left is urgency. I have to get the village ready to deal with the giant and fast. So I'm back in the village, making plans with Dave, figuring out what to do if the giant comes back. I suggest that we take out boats and get all the villagers to the middle of the lake. But he doesn't understand. Why should we go into the middle of the lake? He's thinking of the wrong lake. Or rather, the bay near our little village. What we need to do is get everybody to the middle of the large, farther lake with as much supplies as we can. The giant probably can't swim, and the lake should be deep enough that if he tries to wade out to us he'll probably drown before he can do any real damage. Meanwhile,

Don't steal charms from the dead. This can bring retribution from swamp things, which, for a far-too-honest necrothief, can make these charms very difficult to give away.