Took a nap. Had a bizarre dream that was shot almost exactly like a computer game. It was a sort of mobeius strip design, like all those old Sierra games–you started at the top, outside, and went into this mountain full of old mine shafts, bridges, weird bolt holes, etc. Heat poured out of one hole, which was built like an old adobe oven, only bottomless. I fell down it. That hole turned out to go to hell, and I had to restore my game.

Anyway, after all these weird mineshafts, it came out into a suburban street, and I wandered around an odd junkyard run by a trio of terribly white trash brothers and a house occupied by three nuns, and some other odd little vignettes.

The game, however, began once I got into this house. I was a princess. (This is unsettling, as I never particularly aspired to be a princess as a child.) I had to go from room to room, collecting and storing any item not nailed down, and using them in absurd ways to do various things. At the same time, however, I had to avoid the red jester.

The red jester was an apparently harmless, giggly, slightly creepy type, dressed in red and looking vaguely like the Noid, that roamed the house making jokesuntil he got in the same room with me. Then, still giggly, generally capering madly, he’d dance around me making amusing innuendos, dart in, start waltzing, and in some bizarre fashion kill me. Then I’d have to reload.

There was no room in the house that the red jester wouldn’t come into, but he moved pretty slowly as long as he was across the room, and I could sense him coming. I could also hear him through the doors, talking with the other people in the house, who were all vague and somewhat drugged sounded–a couple members of my family, and some random fairy tale extras. However, since he was always on the move, and there was no place safe, it was very tiring, and there were plenty of other monsters lurking too. I’m a little vague on them, although at one point, I was sitting on the basement steps in the dark, and the warning message rang across my brain “You are in the dark. If you continue, you will likely be eaten by a grue.” Which of course tells you all about my geekhood that you need to know.

Anyway, so I was going through the house, trying to pick up these weird treasures and various useful objects while avoiding the red jester. It was pretty rough, and the jester got faster and faster towards the end, and dying and reloading was getting pretty hard on me because I could tell I didn’t have many lives left. Finally I had to dart into a room, grab a bottle of thick, clear oil, dump it over my head, and run out again, with the jester hot on my heels. And then I had to run–through the wreckage of the junk yard (I’d blown it up earlier, although it wasn’t all that important) and down through this suburban grid, which I knew would moebius around and bring me out on top of the mineshafts. I only looked over my shoulder once, and he was pretty damn close, and starting to say really peculiar things that were meant to be seductive so that I’d stop, although I can’t remember any of them, and anyway, I don’t much like creepy Noid types. Finally we got to the mineshafts, and now it was practically like a Sonic the Hedgehog game–lots of random objects to grab that would give me more life or something. And apples. I had to avoid the apples, because they’d be dropped by Aphrodite? Persephone? someone kindly disposed up there, since the jester would pause and grab them and I’d get a hair more distance. Finally I ran across the last bridge, expecting to be grabbed from behind at any moment, and voila, with astonishing continuity and introduction of plot device for a dream, up to the hole to hell!

And damned if I didn’t get a cutscene.

Suddenly, wham, third person. I watched myself jump to the brick edges of the hole, which was now ringed with apples, and the jester leaped at me, and I sidestepped, and suddenly he was standing on a little platform going down, and I had a rope.

“You’re sending me to hell?” he said, sounding surprised and hurt.

I said something affirmative, pulled the rope, and sent him back to hell. And then the cutscene ended, and I woke up.

For a dream, the continuity and the game theme was really rather impressive.

Update: Okay, it’s pretty crude, but here’s my doodle of the red jester…
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/7857793/