Skip The Budgie

There is a moment when I think that I am going to be falling out of the window too. I have already been shot in the leg, but you grab me and pull me back in. Let him go! you scream and I pull off my jacket and the Russian falls.

I don't know why he's Russian. I have forgotten why they were here in my flat, waving guns about and demanding money. I remember the blur as my best friend tackles the biggest one and the two of them fall ten storeys to the cold hard pavement in a shower of glass and gunfire.

We panic.

What else is there to do? We have just murdered three people, albeit in hot blood. We'll be okay, you assure me, we'll just explain what happened, they'll understand.

...

My father narrates the story, as if reading from a children's book. Apparently we run, there are a series of close encounters, I manage to get an automatic weapon from somewhere and am too afraid to use it. You remain strong, by my side and our companion is foolish and wayward.

There are arguments - he resents our love - as if we do it to spite him, feels that we cut him out of command decisions. Reluctantly we hand over responsibility for a shopping trip and nearly die in the process. They catch up with us at the train station and we have to leap from the moving carriage onto a train going the other way. I nearly lose you, but manage to haul you inside before we hit the tunnel.

It all ends with the three of us spending days and days in the basement of a huge old house. We live comfortably, but inevitable the little group fractures and our companion, embittered by constantly being the gooseberry, sneaks out one night to give our position away.

There is a final stand, we are cornered in the playing fields of my old school and I am consumed by the need to exact revenge on our betrayer. As he falls I can only watch with regret and realise that we are now truly alone at last.

The scene fades, the camera zooms out and the narrator takes over. You and I are safe, apparently, but not without cost.

I wake up in a small white room. There is a tiny square window high above me, a small bucket, and I'm lying in a cold, hard bed. A faint rectangle in the opposite wall indicates a doorway, almost invisible in the blinding whiteness of the cell. I feel terrible. What did they do to me? I struggle to stand the bed on it's end and climb up to look through the window.

It is hard to make out, but as my eyes become accustomed to the gloom I see a small courtyard, a lawn, several storeys dotted with other windows like mine. I see light glinting off a thread that spans the gap from high up to just below me on the left. As I watch, a brown package shuffles it's way up the thread. I sense dissent, and begin to plan my escape.

...

In my dreams in my dream I have a horrifying encounter. A great demon demands something of me, something I could give, but at the expense of my life and loved ones. Of course I refuse. This is not the kind of man who would give up so easily. As he rages, contorting his jagged purple figure into horrible shapes, he shows me what he will do if I don't give him what he wants. I see mass destruction, cracked earth, death. I see planets disintegrate, the inevitable future of the universe, only trillions of millennia premature.

When I wake in my dream I am being carried through unwashed corridors a dream of Silent Hill proportions and I pray that my nightmare is only that, knowing in my stomach that it isn't.

There are flashes of torture, visions, pain - do we feel pain in dreams? It seems so, reinforced by my screams and now I am back in the cell.

The package goes up the wire tonight, and I see a face at the receiving window, long hair, a child, a young girl. I have to get out there, we have to get out of here.

...

Outside (this IS a dream you know) I sneak up to the lower window and whisper greetings. A little boy, about five or so is inside. He cannot speak. What have they done to you? He point up the wire, there are two faces now, two girls, scarred and scared.

There is a pool of black tar, which writhes and pulsates like a living creature, the boy indicates that I am to scoop some out and put it in his mouth to heal his throat. The stuff nearly kills me, I shove the stick into his mouth and the spoonful of dangerous goo attacks his voicebox.

Now that he can speak, he tells me of the atrocities that have been committed against him, he climbs onto my back and I am to carry him through our escape, to the labs, to free the girls, to fight the demon...

I am driving a huge truck through the laboratory complex. There is a horrible accident, the boy's grip tightens around my throat, I am caught up in some kind of uprising against the scientist, I am shot...

There is chaos and destruction as the demon rages, we fight across counties and eventually he is sent packing. The boy loosens his grip and leaves me. His power leaves me. I am drained.

...

When I reunite the girls with their mother, it turns out she sold them to the lab, one of them is terminally ill and trying to find out when she will die. Her plaintive How long have I been ill, mum? Tell me how long you knew! is ringing in my ears when I wake up.

I dream of Zombies.

Not the usual green and rotting kind, these ones seem healthy, cruel (and naked for some reason). They are quick, dangerous and they are what is left of my friends.

It all started with an invasion. Yes, this is the future, yes it's a sort of Industrial Distopia and yes it is still a dream. One of my more elaborate lucid dreams. The first future-bomb falls some way away but it is not long before there is fighting in the streets. On the way to work I am ambushed and have to fight my way into the office, which is a perfect Zombie-movie set.

I creep down the shadowy corridors and back into a classroom. I have acquired a weapon from somewhere, which is just as well because the ceiling collapses and hooked claws swipe at my face. Of course I pull off some amazing moves to avoid certain zombification.

The building is slowly destroyed and I climb down the iron skeleton, to a place that used to be the cellars, but is now an infested cave. I am unarmed and frightened. I find you in a corner, you are terrified that I will give away your position but I need help, we will survive longer if we stay together.

...

Later, I find myself with some hardy companions dragging along a string of zombified friends, tied and gagged (and naked) of course. We manage to get on a boat and sail round the coast to the enemy city.

As we draw near, I sense that something's wrong. The place is too quiet. A gate swings on its hinges with that Hammer Horror 'gate swinging in the wind' sound. A realisation occurs.

I look up and see the battle in the sky, futuristic dogfighting over the last safe place on the planet. They weren't invading, they were running away, but they brought the disease with them! I look at my zombie friends, starved of brains and crunchy fingers and open my mouth to scream.

You Maniacs! You destroyed it all(sic)! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

The alarm rings, it's time for work again.

I dream that I wake up and it's the future.

Of course this happens regularly, every day when you wake up it is the future, but in this dream the future is three months beyond the time I went to sleep. An old old housemate comes in, whom we shall name 'BitchX' and she is shocked to see me.

I fully realise the horror of something like this happening, I learn that all my friends and my girlfriend have long gone, having given up waiting for me and now this evil woman who hates me is packing up all my stuff because she's bought the house! She's going to throw it all away!

We argue of course, but there's real fear here, I feel the mounting panic, something I've never felt before, not in real life, at least not since doing a stall turn in a rattly old Chipmunk in fourth year RAF camp. The loneliness washes in. Everybody's dead Dave.

I realise I must get back to the present as soon as possible...

I dream I'm in a game, it's a game in the real world, like a day trip to a National Trust property, only there is a frightening mystery. I get ahead of the others and find out the dark secret, but then have to go back and tutor them through the opening stages.

We end up in some sort of beach scenario where a naked woman is crying - watching her is a kind of guilty pleasure but I see an amazing storm in the sky. There are two big clouds with a huge, beautiful and deadly fork of lightning arcing between them. I fumble for my camera, struggle with the light settings...

I seem to have a great need, a strong desire to get my socks out of a trunk which is on a boat out on the choppy sea. I am derided for the size of the trunk, we are only away for the weekend and I have everything in there. I grab the socks and watch, horror struck as the boat pitches and my trunk slides into the ocean. Getting back to shore is a race against time and the boat, which is a tanker appears to bear down on me faster than I can swim...

I know what this all means, the 'future' thing is a result of watching Heroes, which is a great TV series and my brain just put it into a myLife sort of context. The game is from, well a lot of my dreams are about games - since I like playing them (NOT mind games) and the context is related to the National Trust properties I visited over the Easter weekend. The storm could be anything I suppose and I love my camera.

I've no idea about the socks! Some things will have to remain a mystery.

My dreams flow into each other across periods of waking. At the beginning there is a town like in Half Life 2 - all wooden buildings, broken and deserted. There is an underlying fear of the machines that think and their destruction of the world we live in. Huge insect-like metal creatures roam the land and we live underground, creeping, hidden. As I enter the story, I am in a barn which has been turned into a makeshift bar. My friend at the door nods towards a lone girl, given a wide berth by the other drinkers, long leather coat, big boots and short black hair. Go and talk to her, he says. She needs you. I recognise her from the films.

I am confused. I hadn't realised I was important, still best play along.

• - Hi, I...

She looks at me, eyes wide. I blurt out a foolish anecdote, desperately trying to ease into the conversation, to let her know I am on her side and not just another sleazy guy trying to get under her coat.

• - Shh! They're watching.
• - Who?
• - Ssh!

She takes my hand and we leave, to a safer place, a more private place where I learn...

Later on we are running across rooftops, dodging bullets, surrounded. She is taken and I am unconscious. When I wake I have to rally the gang and launch a massive assault on the base where she is held. While the rest of the guys battle the evil robots in the street I am sliding down the roof, jumping, falling. Breaking the window and I am inside, see her there curled up and bound in the corner.

Of course there is a showdown, the details are vague but there is an evil man who mocks me. Less so when he is falling out of the window after our epic struggle.

When I set her down, safe at last, she clings to me fearfully. We share a moment.

Get the book, she says, you forgot the book!

...

The next night I am back there again, only this time we are negotiating a maze of dark corridors. When the inevitable splitting up happens I find myself alone and in a small room with a vortex that looks not unlike a toilet.

I flashback to our conversations about this place. This is where we end. When you enter the vortex you die and are reborn somewhere else. A baby with a new life, a different life. Is it still you? Will you still have your memories? Can you remember your past lives now? We are young, not even thirty and it is time already? I mourn the adventure of the night before. If we are to die now, what was the point?

I spend an eternity staring into the swirling nothingness. I don't want to do this. Everybody else has, I can feel it. I will never see them again. I will never even know that any of this existed. I don't even know if I WILL be reborn. It might all be lies.

All I can do is hope. I take a deep breath, and jump in.

Somehow we end up on a train, my brother and I. There was a chase, I recall something about bats... It's all a bit hazy, but I am overcome by the feeling that something is very wrong, that the world is going to end if I don't do what I have to do.

It's not a huge train - from the outside, anyway. Like one of those not-mini but not full-sized steam trains. My brother hangs off the back of the engine, shouting at me to get inside.

Inside I am confronted by the driver, but am distracted by the d??cor, like a hotel foyer - all plush red carpets and chandeliers. My bro sorts out the driver, persuades him to concentrate on going as fast as possible, to stay ahead of the shadow, keep on the rails. The bats are getting close now.

Space.

There's lots of it and I begin my methodical search of the rooms. I sense a darkness approaching, time is getting short and finally, there in the fireplace I see it. An ornate wooden box, about a foot square with a complex locking mechanism holding it tightly closed. I know what's inside, I can feel the Majick trying to escape, it could save the world but in the wrong hands... I shudder.

Inside the box are 12 candles set into a mandala carved on the base. I know I have to light them all in the right order and I used to know what that was, but first I have to engage in an epic battle with the Warlock of Firetop Mountain him? Of all people, it's HIM? Why?.

I wake up, struggle to phase back into reality and begin the long cycle to work.

My first dream was of being back at work in St Pauls, only we were in a different building. I was telling the dumb blonde one exactly what I thought of her, when someone came through the door. Blondey disappeared, as she was wont to do when work came a-calling and I was left to do my job as receptionist. The man was very afraid, it appeared he was running away from the Police. - I've killed a man he said. I tried to get him out of there, then decided to call the Police. He attacked me.

I woke up, and drifted back into the same dream.

This time the rest of the team were there. I tried to tell them about how blondey hadn't helped me and we had a fight again. Everyone went home and I was left to close up. Someone came through the door. He was a big man, Tony Soprano type, but English. Very friendly, his associates secured the building. He had armed guards outside covering all the entrances, hidden from sight. They pretended to be interested in my work, but soon demanded that I give them everything in the building. - We don't have anything, I said. We're closing for good this time. - What, no furniture, no money, no FOOD? - No. - Well you'd better find some then, he yelled, throwing me against the wall.

This time when I returned to the dream they were downstairs, talking. I found a freezer full of cheese and sandwiches, like the one in a newsagents. The building had grown, and I knew that I could not tell anyone why they were here, or who they really were. J9 came into work, for it was the next day. - We have guests, I said. - They're having a meeting. But I knew it was much bigger than that. I wanted to tell her, to call the Police, but I knew they would kill me so I said nothing and took them some food. He acted like my friend, like he trusted me and told me things I didn't want to know, asking my opinions on things I didn't understand. They were waiting for something, someone.

One of my friends had disappeared. I panicked and woke up, gasping for a drink.

She'd gone alright. One of the lackeys looked particularly smug, a Nikita-type assassin. She smiled at me. - You're next, her smile told me. I realised if we were going to survive this, I'd have to do something on my own. After gaining his trust, I got to spend more time with the leader. Sure, he threatened to kill me often, and I knew that they couldn't leave me alive, when it was all over. I began to fomulate a plan. When everyone had gone, I would sabotage their work and get help.

The building had grown again. They left me in charge, knowing I wouldn't try anything stupid. I ran down the echoing halls underground and bumped into K, who demanded to know what I was doing. This would ruin everything. I had to get her out. If everything else failed, I had to at least save her. She followed me as I scoped out the building, sensing something was wrong. I took down the guards and called the Police. In a quiet moment, we sat down and I explained to her what was going on and what I was going to do. A shadow materialised into a man. He'd been there the whole time! - You have betrayed my trust and now I'll have to kill your girlfriend like that other tramp you blabbered to. I went cold, swallowed. - she's not my...

A loud explosion indicated the arrival of the Police. Special forces. We ducked and covered, dodging the falling masonry as best we could. I took her hand.. - Follow me! I shouted and leapt across a three-storey drop. I could see light ahead. The ceiling buckled and split open, shells rained down and we ran towards a girder that had fallen through the hole. I pushed her up in front of me as camouflaged arms reached in and pulled us out...

I think I'm quite a laid back person. What I write is a far cry from what I say. Not that I'm two-faced, just that when you are writing you can really lay out the fifty different thoughts your brain is having at the same time in a coherent way. Mr Prosser in Hitch Hikers guide has 40,000 angry horsemen shouting at him. I'm like that. While my brain is going, you fucking ignorant fucking twat how can you get up in the fucking morning and have the fucking balls to even look yourself in the fucking mirror and think you are an okay person, I say well... I'm not sure that's true - this is how I see it.

A few nights ago I had a lot of things to work out and while staying awake with all this yelling going on inside didn't help there was a Revelation. I wrote it down... to make sense of the madness. I talked it out, to ensure I wasn't going mad. That night, I dreamt for the entire night that we had this huge fight, and because it was a dream, I really shouted my arse off. She shouted too, but I won. Of course I did. It was my own little internal fight on Dagoba with the Dark Side and I kicked it out. In the morning, I was refreshed and have been / felt entirely different since. More in charge again. I don't have to have that fight in 'real' life, because I feel like I have. And I won. I wouldn't win in real life.

I have the Angry Horsemen at work as well, Most people around here don't really have the ability to keep them silent, and it gets them into a lot of trouble. Banned from offices, hit with baseball bats, shot with guns... Maybe I do think to much, and don't say enough, but really, I've noticed that most people are too enamoured with their own voices to really listen to anyone else. Not that I'm saying they should listen to me, but at least listen to each other.

She told me it was okay to be angry. It isn't. It really isn't worth it. I hate it when people complain for the sake of it, about things they have no control over. Do something about it, or shut the fuck up. And so on.

During the night, there was an earthquake in Peru.