My Father and Immortality

Dream Info: March 7, 2009
Realism Intensity: 2
Content: PG-13

I had spent my life studying potions and elixirs and had become a very powerful wizard. One day, after years of study, I discovered the elixir for immortality. But on that very day, before I was able to finish the potion, my father came to my chamber and attacked me. Wounded, I fled and managed to seal the last ingredient of the elixir of immortality in my personal safe within my secured vault. As I sealed my magic safe, my father found me in the vault and cast a spell on me.

He didn’t kill me. He zapped me back to my youth. He allowed me to flee and then watch as he took over my life.

He lives now in my mansion. He has altered it, added to it, making it his own. He raises my children who now believe him their true father. He sleeps with my wife, who out of fear for the children’s safety, has remained silent.

I am a young child again.

The years have past and I have watched. But I have not forgotten.

I decide the time has come. I leave the small neighboring village I have sheltered in and return to my estate. I am 16 years old now; old enough for my magic to have some strength.

I hire on as a servant in my own mansion. They take me willingly. I am strong and ask a low wage. But the mansion has changed. I hardly recognize it. It is darker inside and feels more like a fortress. My father has added rooms and passages and even a dungeon below the chambers of my vault.

I spend the first week relearning the layout of my estate. In so doing it becomes very apparent that my memory was damaged by the spell that made me young agian. Many things are hazy.

I am the same age as my oldest son. During this first week I have quickly become friends with him.

On the eighth day I find my way down to my vault. No one is around and the chamber is silent and cold. I enter the code on the control panel but the door does not open. My father has changed my vault password.

Walking out and into the hall, the moment came that I have been desperately working to avoid. I turn a corner and come face to face with my father. My only disguise is my disheveled hair and a dirty smudge on my face. I gasp and stop. My body is rigid as he approaches me. His eyes run up my body, taking me in. I try to plan some sort of defense but can’t think clearly. He scowls at my appearance but doesn’t recognize me. He comments off handedly about the weather and continues on his way.

I exhale and lean on the wall for support, my legs quivering. I must avoid a direct conflict. I am too young and remember my spells to poorly to overcome my father.

But he doesn’t recognize me, his own son. And that fuels my hope.
That evening I head into the city seeking help. Carrying the nicest gift I can afford I go to Steve Johnson. His servants usher me into his sitting room. The years have been hard on him. He is balding and heavily wrinkled. But he is still Steve Johnson and caries with him the kind light I know so well.

I explain who I am and he believes me unquestioningly. He immediately calls his allies and within the hour we are in council. Brother and Sister Coveo have come, along with some younger couples I do not remember. They are all looking for a way to end my father’s tyranny.

Steve Johnson’s children, McKay and Terran, are good friends with my son. They convince my son to give them the code to the vault which they then give me. I wait until the weekend when my father is having a feast to sneak down to the lower chambers. I punch in the code and the door to the vault slides open.

As soon as I enter I hear my father coming down the hall. I close the vault with myself inside. I push myself deep in one corner, burying myself behind the hanging VGA and power cables. The vault opens and my father walks right to me. He talks to himself as he hangs some more VGA cables on the wall. His hand brushes my head. He doesn’t seem to notice and he mutters something about the Coveos. He walks out but stops in the doorway. I quietly slide from behind the cables and along the wall to the far corner. I am exposed but in shadow. My father steps back to the cables and parts them looking at the wall. His eyes narrow, but he exits without looking around.

I wait for a very long time and finally open the vault and slip out. My father has activated the security systems. The display on the wall shows all alarms and cameras online. He even activated the Dragon, a large robot built into the outer wall of the mansion. There were several new robots I didn’t remember as well.

I cautiously step into the hall from the room, trying to remember the placement of my cameras. I freeze. Standing at the end of the hall watching me is my son.

He rushes and tackles me and we fight on the floor. We argue and I finally convince him that I am mostly harmless. He sits hunched on the floor, panting. I tell him my reason for snooping, the elixir of immortality. Himself Curious, he then agrees to sneak into the vault with me and see if we can open the safe. There are three circles in a triangle on the cover. I cannot remember the incantation to open it.

On a table is a large lasagna on a blue plate. I take it out and we eat it. Suddenly the vault shuts itself. I can’t get it to reopen. The house security detected the vault open for too long and has locked it down.

Steps in the hall send my son and I under the table to hide. We leave the plate on the table and too late I realize my mistake. Father enters the room.

He does this and that, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. I sit in agony waiting. Finally he notices the vault has been sealed by security. He rubs his beard and turns, seeing the blue plate on the table. He gasps. He knows I have been in the vault. He is putting the pieces together and he rushes out of the chamber.

I am no longer safe in my mansion.

I make my way through the estate to the servants’ quarters. He is already there. Pushing away my fear I enter the squat building. Amazingly he doesn’t kill me. We argue. During the argument I suddenly remember the key phrase to the safe. It is simple, very simple. I give up the argument and flee abruptly, tipping Father off. He knows I know.

The code is so simple, given time he will deduce it. There is no time to waste. The next time we meet he will kill me for daring to hang around.

Sneaking through the estate grounds a large robot scorpion finds me and attacks. I defeat it only to run into a large metal gorilla which lunges for me. I am wounded by manage to disable the machine.

As I approach the mansion, the top of the outer wall unravels into the arching spine of the Dragon. This is the last and ultimate defense of my property. Its head swivels towards me. Fire flickers inside its jaws. Large metal claws rise from the earth in front of the house. It attacks. I dodge. The Dragon is using its default defense program which is fortunate for me. It is predictable and I have a chance of getting by as long as my father does not assume control of it.

I run away and catch my breath behind a hedgerow. My son appears. He is frantic. I try to calm him, but fail. How can I explain the reasons for the estate security targeting me? He won’t leave and he won’t allow me to insanely attack the Dragon.
As fire from the Dragon consumes the hedgerow I explain my history to my son. I am his father. His father is his grandfather and wants me dead. The last of the elixir is inside my safe. I must get to it. It will not only give me immortality, but will restore me to my right age.

I leave my son confused and in tears. I rush the dragon, leaping through its claws. My hair is singed off from its fire. I manage to enter the mansion.

I close the chamber door behind me and jam the lock. I barricade it with furniture. I then enter the vault, say the magic phrase, and open my safe. There, wrapped in cloth, is the last ingredient needed for immortality. I gather the other ingredients from the vault and brew the potion over fire in the chamber.

A pounding starts from the door. My father has come for me. Frantically, I move the fire and potion into the vault and seal the door from the inside. My Father breaks in to the room and then blasts the vault door to pieces. He has grown more powerful over the years. My wife slips into the room and stabs him. He beats her down and leaves her unconscious on the ground and then pulls the knife out of his side. Facing me, he drops the knife which clatters to the ground. All ingredients but the last are in the potion. I hold it in my hand above the fire. I weigh my options: pot, my father gets immortality; fire, he will eventually be defeated but I will be trapped young. Either way he will kill me now. We stare at each other.

And I wake up.

The Griffin

Dream Info: 1997
Realism Intensity: 5 (out of 10)
Content: PG-13

A small group of my friends and I were hiking along the ridge of a small canyon with a creek trickling at the bottom (Like Gold Creek / Webb Canyon). The trees were tropical: palm Trees, large ferns, and such. There was the peak of a red tiled roof stabbing out above the trees some distance away.

My friends and I were moseying down the ridge when one of them noticed a parasailer gliding over head. The man had a large lime green parachute and was wearing a dark green jump suit and a yellow helmet. He careened over the canyon and plummeted into the foliage on the other side with a large crash. We stood there waiting to see any sign if he was OK, but he was completely hidden. Seconds later there was a quiet rumbling; a few of the trees started to shake. The rumbling grew louder. The trees ripped from the ground and fell over. Some flew into the air along with chunks of dirt and roots. An enormous head poked up. As the rubble and dust cleared, we could see a great green body under it. It was the yellow head of an eagle with the green body of a lion.

We stood in awe as the griffin spread its wings and screeched angrily. It lifted into the air with a leap.

My friends and I took off into the forest in the direction of the red roofed house. A large group of hikers had been in the canyon and had seen the griffin emerge. They too were running to that house. I stumbled through the forest to the dull roar of the griffin’s wings. A log caught my foot and I fell. In every direction around me people scurried through the woods. Without warning the constant roar stopped. In a heart beat the canopy above one of the stragglers erupted. Trees around him splintered and the ground shook with an awful force. In a flash the griffin was back in the air. One less hiker ran on to the safety of the house.

I jumped to my feet and ran with a renewed fear.

Many of the runners were dashing through a clearing as quickly as they could manage. Right when I made it to the middle the griffin plunged into the ground just to my left. The force of the impact knocked me off my feet. I looked over and saw the griffin pounce on a few more unlucky hikers, a body or two hung out of its snapping beak. Five people (a group of friends probably) lay mangled and dead where the griffin first landed. I jumped under some dead fallen logs, hoping to hide. The logs over me shuddered and cracked. Large talons probed all around under the logs to find me. Some one screamed, saving me. The griffin leapt away at once in pursuit. Taking a risk, I sprung out from under the logs and ran hard.

I rounded a hill and the forest ended. A giant mansion (Like a giant hotel) lay in front of me. I rushed inside; the people who had already made it were running around crying and hugging everyone else. The roar of the griffin could be heard outside.



- 2 -

I found my friends in a large theater room. It was at least four stories high, and three hundred feet in length. A crash sounded from one of the higher rooms. Someone had foolishly walked in front of a window. The griffin had rammed through the wall to get at them. It must have started an electrical fire for soon, flames appeared on the ceiling. The outer wall collapsed in on itself suddenly. By the time the dust cleared, the griffin had already killed six people. I grabbed my friends and pointed to a staircase we had not previously noticed that went to the basement. We rushed down and into darkness— safety.

The basement was huge but had no lights. In the dim light from cracks in the ceiling we could see the walls had only been framed. The middle had shelves through it like those in a grocery store. Other areas had boxes stacked high, but most of the basement was empty.

I could no longer hear anything from the room above, so I walked to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. The griffin was running past the top of the stairs and my movement attracted its attention. There was a coat rack full of coats at the bottom of the stairs, and I jumped into them right as the griffin rushed back to the top of the stairs. It squeezed down the stairs but couldn’t fit through the door. Never once did it even acknowledge me hiding in the coats. It could not smell well.

I ran to one of the corners in the basement, far from the door we had come down, and stopped below a crack. I climbed on some boxes and pushed one of the floorboards up. It broke. Some people cowering in the room above saw me and came down into the basement with my help. Others to follow. After the last person, I jumped from the box and ran. I felt the now familiar thud. I turned to see the griffin pounce through three wall frames and snap someone in half. My crack in the ceiling was now a gaping hole.

I ran, and ran, and ran; the griffin was careening out of control behind me. Its huge outline could be seen attacking boxes and anything else that attracted its attention. I ducked behind an object, stopped to catch my breath, and tied my shoes. Someone hunched over next to me in the darkness. It was one of my friends. We patted each other on the back, afraid to talk, but we did let out a little laugh. A piercing screech came from behind us and a talon scraped around the object we were against, catching my friend in the chest. I panicked and ran. The griffin jumped through the ceiling. The clatter of broken boards falling to the ground echoed behind me.

In the sudden light from the griffin’s hole I found a semi with a giant parade float on the flatbed. Someone was already starting the rig so I jumped onto the float trailer as he took off. The truck flew through a garage door and we were bathed in sunlight.

Two others were on the float, which was a giant bed with posts at each corner with a thin canopy. It had many decorative pillows strewn about it and small flags were attached to the top of each post.



- 3 -

We were on a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere doing about eighty. Behind us rose the mountain and mansion. In front and all around were small rolling hills. No fences, no trees— just luscious green grass, the sun, and no sign of pursuit.

I was standing on the head board when the roaring sound or wings caught my attention. I looked behind me as a gigantic green dragon flew over the semi. Its yellow head pointed down, looking at us as it cruised over the float. I quickly hid under the pillows and urged the others to do the same, but they said that there was no reason. The dragon had passed us by. I snuggled deeper into my pillow nest with a growing sense of anticipation. The dragon suddenly flipped back at the rig. It smashed head-on into the bed, crushing it and killing the two boys on the float. The dragon roared back into flight, blood dripping from its mouth. It circled the semi. I lay under the pillows in pain from the impact.

For hours the dragon circled, occasionally diving against the truck, almost knocking it from the road. I stayed hidden under the pillows waiting to die. The dragon became more aggressive. I mustered my strength and dove off the float and into a ditch. The dragon kept its attack on the truck.

Later: my family was in our family room watching TV. I was on the couch, tired and sore. The News was reporting on an accident where a semi had somehow been tipped over in a river with the roof ripped off. The entire steering column and driver’s seat were missing. The driver had still not been found. A shadow passed in front of the side windows. I looked nervously at my sisters. Suddenly Lulu, our green and yellow parakeet, flew in through the spa room and landed in his cage.

Mom yelled, “Quick, he’s in! Shut the cage door. Make sure you never let him out again.” Looking at Janean and Kristin she added, “and you had better obey this time!”