A speculative mind

  Lucid dreaming is where a dreaming person is aware that they are dreaming, and may be able to influence the direction of the dream. (Cue Silent Lucidity by Queensryche) In the course of my life, I have not had many lucid dreams. Most of them were very minor affairs when I sort of had the impression that I was dreaming right before I woke up. But one time –just once-- I had a spectacularly successful lucid dream. I was very young, maybe four or five years old. Intermittently, I had been having a nightmare where a skeleton man was chasing me. It was terrifying. I would be in some fantasy or other and then this skeleton would appear. The hideous toothy grin pointed at me. My heart would race. I would run and scream. Afraid to look back because the skeleton man might be gaining on me. Any moment I would feel his cold skeleton fingers touching the back of my throat. Then I would wake up, panting, with my heart racing. My dark room with shadow upon shadow concealing who knew what, d...

  I was rather alone. I had just travelled across the country to eastern Idaho to go to college. I had been given a partial track scholarship, so I knew the track coach (sort of), but I knew no one else in the city. My parents had helped me move into an apartment and had left to return to the Oregon Coast. I was alone. But I had my music. My recently acquired Pat Benatar album kept me company. Pat, And Tom Petty, and Pink Floyd, they were all my friends and helped me while away the time and made me forget that I was alone. Soon I would start attending classes, start getting together with my fellow track team members, and start my part-time job in the cafeteria, but until then, the hours were empty. I had scarcely been there a day, my stereo blasting away, when I heard a knock at the door. It was a pretty, dark-haired woman with a kind smile. She explained that she lived directly upstairs and the previous tenants had been known to play their music at all hours of the night, and co...