I had a pretty messed up dream last night. It was quite long and I’ve been trying to remember the details. It was quite atmospheric. I am also slightly stoned.

I had a look at myself, and the image was of someone like the kid who makes his hands bleed through too much playing of musical instruments, like I am obsessed with becoming the greatest at some skill that is ephemeral and hard to define. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was just to be ‘cool’. I don’t think so though. I think it was something I thought I was good at, but never got around to practicing. There was a ton of stuff that I was good at in school, being cool wasn’t one of them though.

So I inhabit this amazing school, that I attend only at night. I walk around. It is not as though around me is a void, like there is nothing there at all (like there are no forms), but everything is framed as though lit with moonlight. All  the shapes are grey or dark blue, with edges a slightly lighter colour. I can see long corridors with doors all along the sides, and cheap looking tables, and blackboards with metallic plastic rims. They are all dark and hard to make out visually, but I know it is all there.

At some point I come to a huge banner with a Renaissance design on it. There are shapes in the image that remind me of two armies meeting and resolving an argument. The predominent colour is red. It is the red of a red dwarf sun, caught in plastic. It is red paint, I think the red of the paints I wanted to use at school to make banners for my miniatures, but I never got around to doing anything with them.

I don’t know, it was a fucking dream.

Later on, I have this secret area of the school. It’s hidden in the walls. Somehow I am surrounded by acquaintances. They are all friends of mine. We are locked in with the chairs and tables from the exam hall. They make a forest and a black horizon around us. I look at myself and the others over the furniture, lit in gloom for a second. I feel safe. I have no idea who any of these people are. I can just about make out the shape of faces in the gloom. They are all people I feel relaxed with.

We are all staring at a square of light in front of us. The nearest I can come to what it feels like is watching someone else watching a film on a laptop in the dark, or watching someone else play a computer game from the nineties at a distance and in darkness.  I can’t see any forms or movement in the square, but I know the others are watching whatever is going on on the screen. We are all distracted by this magnetic square of light.

At the same time as I experience the dream about the people in the walls and the square of light in front of them, I feel other presences running through the school. They are dark presences; alien, gangly limbed, no facial features except mouths, extremely quick. They have skin like grey wetsuit rubber. They are very quick and I have anxious thoughts about them occasionally. I don’t let it show to the others though. We are all still watching the square of light in front of us.

There is also a paladin walking around the moonlit school. He comes from the banner with all the red and the armies making up their differences. I suppose he must have a sword, but I don’t see it. He is wandering around in a dull metal coif, and a grey cloak, looking for this secret space in the walls. I suspect he wants to break up the gathering, or kill everybody in the space. He pauses before a set of double doors and I know he has found us, but I am not worried. It was inevitable.

The paladin has an army of presences with him as well – they are similar to the dark ones, but are shapes of solid blackness.

I wait for something to happen. The paladin enters the space and there is a feeling of panic as the whole group disperses. We all aim for hiding spaces or tunnels in the forest of tables and chairs around us. I head for a grate to unlock and then crawl through, but a pair of clawed grey hands thrusts out from the opening and an abrupt hissing sound violently warns me away.

While the dark ones surround the others, I crawl on hands and knees to the double doors, make it through them, and then come face to face with two great knights; one of the paladin’s army, and one of the army of the dark ones.

The two great knights face off. The dark one wins. As I watch, the paladin calmly advances through the double doors and faces the dark one as well, but loses. The paladin is destroyed and there is nothing left. There is nothing left of the paladin but a small swatch of cloth that slowly floats away as though it were a piece of ash caught in a cold summer breeze. There is a smaller image of the red banner on it.

The dark one disappears.

Then I woke up. I don’t know what it means. I think the paladin may be the old age version of me, and the dark ones are depressed thoughts. I was probably supposed to resolve something last night. I think I did actually. Please help.