Dream Time

By Gary Alan Lahner

Lucid Dream, The Naga, and The Evil Genie, PLUS eight more tales of nightmares and the supernatural complete the Dream Time anthology of short stories. Read of a Vampire that invents diabolical tortures, or about a realm that rains blood to quench the thirst of the damned—spirits familiar and unexpected that haunt the living and journey to the past through the remarkable abilities of the mind. Exotic and compelling, let the master number eleven be your guide into the gruesome nightmares of Dream Time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Alan Lahner
• Release date: Oct 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370203949

Book preview

Dream Time

by Gary Alan Lahner

Copyright 2017 Gary Alan Lahner

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a factitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Lucid Dream

The Naga

The Evil Genie

The Fiendish Flower

The Egyptian God

The Blood Demon

Grandpa’s Ghost

The Animist

The Laundromat

The Vampire Dream

The Banshee

Lucid Dream

Before I sleep, I ponder past events of the day that more often are a hazard concoction of disjointed if not disturbed people I have the extraordinary misfortune to share my waking hours with. Am I any better living my shallow and selfish existence in the shadows of my own fears, creating a lonely purgatory? I like to think so, considering the event review of the tortured souls that exist outside this murky psychosis, need the most merciful help in becoming anything near, what can qualify as human. To harsh, perhaps, but not in comparison with how I think I should have been treated. No matter. It is just the day-to-day disgust of an imprisoned existence in a world enslaved by money—money that seems to have eluded my genius, and the genius of like, creative spirits. Fortune crushed by pieces of paper that escape the grasp of my hands as I reach out to the empty air, and fall at the doorsteps of those that have fame based upon a Hollywood or musical birthright, forcing them to share their pathetic reality within my dark, mechanical, and soulless cable box.

Cool sheets comfort my cluttered thoughts as I cover myself up from the cold air of the world. Do I continue my frigid existence lying as a corpse in its icy serenity, detached from the useless babble of life, cozy in a dull, steel box somewhere in the dark morgue of a hospital peacefully unaware? Or, do I face my troubled days like a starved zombie, hands reaching out to brush my rotted teeth, and slide short footed to another day of the useless, unsatisfying drudgery called a chosen profession.

At times such as these when uninvited ghosts swirl within my head, I take to the singular talent I have of reaching into the mysterious world of dreams. A search for answers with the help of an altered state of consciousness to be out of body, or awake within my own demented landscape. All I need to do is give the suggestion before I close my eyes, and somewhere in the tangled mess of the brain, the thought will implant itself to be triggered while I sleep. Which will it be? The future? I hope for more of the moving picture type of future dream, where people and places tell a vague story, a mystery story of events yet to come. A dream as my own crystal ball or will I wake inside my head to shape what I see with the Lucid dream? A playful, virtual voyeurism?

The eyelids get heavy. I am almost certain these abilities come from a damaged and twisted part of my physiology. A twisted mess of neurons clumped together, knotted, like a knot on the brain. I laugh to myself and roll onto my side as I think: a bump on the head to see out of bed or dance with a whim in a dream, goodnight cruel world as the dark unfurls and I wait to awake with a scream.

Frozen! It happened. The instructions implanted before sleep executed by the mind. I am sitting on the floor by the kitchen door aware that this is a dream. I can tell. I’m inside my head, claustrophobic with the images before me, tangible yet, inactive, until I, the master of this realm, reach out to set the elements in motion.

Why I found myself on the floor is left to the mechanics of the mind. In such instances, and from past experience, the entry into this fancy initiates the introduction in the most peculiar fashion. Maybe I missed the chair next to the table where I sat, and it was this action that startled the shift to the dream reality. The dream world normalizes with furniture and books neatly arranged in a balanced order in the small apartment where I spend my days. How odd to be close to my sleeping self and not somewhere grand like Paris, or Vegas, or the Riviera, sipping a glass of wine waiting for a conjured beauty to walk by making the adventure more lurid. Instead before me a simple room and a large, blank, canvas I seem to be holding, having now just noticed. This is to no surprise for I am an artist. A painter. The aberration conforms to the tricks of the mind reminding oneself of the work left undone. Great! Even within my dreams I must be tortured by my waking troubles. Colors screaming as if in agony while I smoke myself into oblivion, trying to decide how to place them. It could be I can make a picture with just a thought, and it would instantly appear on the taught fabric—but I won’t! I refuse to give into the unsettled part of my subconscious as it intrudes into my night dream. I would sigh or laugh, but what is strange about the reality is that I can do neither. Such a movement may break the concentration, and I would be wrenched back to the cold bed staring at the ceiling. Commands cannot be spontaneous, but require the utmost focus written within the parameters of the dream, or do I imagine this, afraid to continue? What else to do? Let it play out.

I look around the room thinking how quiet, and solitary my life had become. A rumination left for waking hours as I pondered over the objects placed on tables and walls—memories to remind me of better times.

While perusing my little cache, my eye caught a glimpse of a small, gray statue of a figure by the other end of the sofa. I didn’t