So, as some of you know, I often have very detailed dreams. I've posted one of them here before quite some time ago.

Well, last night, I had another of my usual ones. But this one was lengthy. And very, very detailed. I'm going to post it in parts as I write it all out properly (i wrote down all the major points in point form, am just going to be expanding on them)

Of note, this is obviously not from my perspective. I was not in this dream at all.

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They say a war story is one that can be used to show bravery or courage in the face of death. What comes with that war story, though, is a survivor - the man who tells the story. I am that man, and I present to you my story of fighting for the allies while I still care to retell it. I was a nobody at the time, just your average soldier that nobody could tell from any other soldier, and to preserve this, I will tell it in that sense - I am nameless.

I was born in a small city. We didn't have much here - wasn't exactly an economic powerhouse. What we did have, though, was factories. No matter where I went, I could always smell the effects of heading toward industrialization. These smells were, obviously, prevalent through much of the world, but ours was gunpowder and metals. We produced munitions. It was this fact that shaped a lot of my life, and those around me.

I always wondered why all we did was produce guns and bullets. To me, it seemed like nothing was really changing for the better. Now, though, it seems obvious; but, I'll get to that later. We had only one school - it taught all levels of education with several different grade levels being taught by any given teacher at the same time. It was small enough that everybody knew everybody else. Yet, impersonal enough that anybody could have been anybody else.

It didn't really matter how well you did in your studies - very few of us ever left to pursue further education. The man who owned most of the factories here paid us pretty well. He and he alone put food on the tables of most families here. He would occasionally be seen out and about striking up conversations with whoever he passed by in the streets. His accent, being one I couldn't recognize at the time, was never a bother for anybody - he was just such an influence over everyone's lives that nobody even viewed him as a foreigner.

If his factories weren’t around, though, I might not have been stuck growing old and thinking of my home as a bleak place. I might not have been stuck, for many years following, being served with a permanent reminder of home - in the smell. Gun powder. Soon, little did I know, this smell would be well known to the entire world - and the whole world would associate it with war. I, and everybody I knew, would be stuck associating it with home.

In a way, though, this may have been our blessing. No matter where we were, everything eventually smelled like home. It never felt like a foreign land, and as such, we could always be fighting, in a way, for our homes and our soil, whether we were there or not. This may just be why I'm still alive telling this story.

I had been working in one of the factories for about four years. I had bled, cried, breathed fumes so thick it hurt to breathe, and yet I remained. My family needed it. I needed it. One day, though, we were all awoken mid night by the drums of war. The entire town shot out of bed, grabbed their arms, and ran to the city center - our pre-determined meet up location. One man never came.

Our eyes heavy, and our bodies cold, we were told that our town would soon be invaded by a German militia. We already had the smell, and soon we would have the sound to go with it. Only fitting, I suppose.

Apparently, we had an informant stationed in Germany who had been found out. He fled, but the Germans knew who he was and where he was from. Upon his arrival, he told our Mayor that the Germans would surely follow him.

We felt safe, because of all the arms we had in our factories. We would have been able to hold off the Germans for quite some time. We split up into teams to gather as much stuff from each factory as we could, and agreed to meet at the one closest to where we figured the Germans would come from.

When my team arrived at our designated factory, the farthest from where ground zero was thought to be, we found the factory empty. That is, all of the assembled ammunition, all of the parts needed to make more, all of the guns, and all of the other equipment. All that remained was the large and immovable manufacturing equipment.

Our team was, thus, stuck with only what we had in our rooms when the alarm sounded: shotguns and handguns. We decided to help out the next team, and headed to their designated factory. They, though, were not there. And neither was any of the equipment. Knowing it was impossible that they had emptied it themselves, we were starting to get a little worried about our plan.

Each factory we visited, the story was the same. Everything was gone. The few teams we ran into had found the same thing we had found at ours, and were deciding what to do next. As a group, we opted to just head to ground zero. There, all the teams that we didn't find were waiting. Everybody confirmed the same thing - all of the equipment had been removed. Even in this one.
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I wish my dreams were simply normal enough like that (yours are obviously normal by comparison, anyway). ^_^ The last time I had dreamed of anything war-related, I was commanding an army of orcs from Lord of the Rings and somehow the war was taking place inside my grandparents' house.

I think I saw this movie. Excellent writing.

My dreams usually involve more symbolism and smattering of nonsensical things.

Part 2.

I did not re-read part 1 before writing this, so if I messed up any continuity please mention it. Same will go for all future parts, as well. Enjoy.

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There are only so many moments in your life that you can reflect on and point out, plainly, that this particular one or that particular one had the most impressive effect on your life, whether for the better or worse. Being that we were a relatively close-knit community, what was about to happen here would send shockwaves rippling through our lives until we can't recall it at all anymore.

Some of us turned face and ran west. Others pre-empted the inevitable and turned their barrels to their skulls. To me, all of these people felt like traitors. Spineless people who, until now, all of us had relied on to keep our friends and family as well endowed as could be done for the time. Now, though, I'm left holding them all in contempt that they would spit on the years of friendship and kinship that we have shared - doing so by turning their back on the one time our homes and our land may need us to come to its rescue.

This specific act on the part of a large chunk of our people was the first time that I could see, tangibly, the ugliness of human behaviour. It left a bitter taste for me to remember my home by, as I would never again return here. It shaped who I was to become, and how I would react to a certain event much further down the line. Before my war even started, I already wanted it to be over. It brought out the worst in the people I thought would always be there.

Those of us that remained set out to barricade the building as much as could be done. We spent the rest of the night moving food and water to the roof of the building, blocking the doors with any machinery we could manage to move, and then setting up our camp up top. This would become our one and only stand for everything our lives have stood for, and we were determined to make it work.

Our informant warned us of the amount of soldiers the Germans could strike us with. He warned us of the military technology they would have, of which were things we had never seen here. We produced guns, bullets, cannons, and many other smaller weapons. They were reported to have large armoured forts with belts to move them, tanks, and winged ones in the sky. Our defense consisted of a building they could plow over in minutes, and arms that wouldn't even scratch their tanks. We were all doomed to be buried by the destruction that comes with the smell so familiar to us.

We sat on our roof apprehensively awaiting the arrival of who would soon become our enemy. Looking into the eyes of any man or woman who held a weapon was enough to know not one of us belonged here - in one, you would see fear of what is to come. In another, you'd see doubt that any of us would walk out of this alive. Some, you could see hope for the dreams they had for their futures. You could see on those faces, though, the despair that comes with having those dreams torn from you.

Tears. For those who already died. For the hurt felt from those who turned their backs. For the children who would never grow old. For the homes we may never enter again, and the memories that reside within them. They are a universal sign of everything we stood for - a true reminder that we are, in fact, in this together and for all the right reasons.

The sun eventually arose one last time. This was the one time in my life, to this day, that I would ever appreciate the sight of a reflection off of a person's tears. Although, it wasn't the only reflection we would see on this day. Looking far out toward the horizon, we could now clearly see the approaching military. Not a single thing we could see resembled a human - it was a wall of metal lined up side by side and layers deep that ushered in our final day at home.

We sat, poised, waiting for it all to come into range of everything we had. It wasn't long, though, before the winged variety came up over the horizon and approached much faster than anything we could see on the ground. Bombers, we were told, would come in and rain death on our land before anything on land would arrive. For this, we had nothing to defend ourselves with.

We all stared toward the sky at the sheet of black that resembled a large flock of crows - not a word being spoken, our hands trembling. I had a handgun in my belt and a shotgun in my arms - some sported cannons, which had been left behind, with small amounts of ammunition some of us had in our homes. Others had a shotgun. Behind us laid a large pile of other guns and munitions, but obviously not enough to defend against what slowly approached us.

Time passed in what seemed like hours to each second. The bombers nearly here, and us with our guns aimed toward the sky, our lives would in mere seconds change as we knew them.

As soon as we thought we would be able to strike the bombers, we began firing. I've never heard something as loud as dozens of shotguns, rifles, and handguns firing in unison. Nothing I ever heard in the factories even compared. And, yet, the Germans didn't drop a single shell on our heads, despite the one or two we managed to render incapable of flight - they quickly and loudly fell from the sky and crashed on our homes behind us.

The numerous many that we couldn't bring down flew straight over our heads. They began dropping their bombs on every other building that was behind us, quickly and effectively destroying many buildings and, in their eyes, killing anybody who was not a sitting duck with everybody that had been firing at them. We watched with disbelief as everything that any of us had ever known instantly came to look nothing like what we could remember. Nothing in my life, ever, had been as difficult to see as memories being crushed by the impossibly heavy weight of war.

After the rain of bombs finished, there was nothing to be seen anymore except rising clouds of blackened smoke and dust. Our entire lives reduced to rubble, and anything smaller rose into the air to be carried away wherever the winds felt like taking it. The bombers turned around and flew off back toward the horizon from whence they came. Our building, where we make our stand, was the only one that remained standing and undamaged.

We turned our attention toward the mass of tanks that much more slowly approached us. Many of us had exhausted our supply of ammunition, and I was left with only my handgun with six bullets in it. By now, the tanks were nearly here. At any moment, they could begin firing onto us a volley of metal that matched our production in a day every few seconds.

But they didn't. I fired four shots at the tanks, and everyone else unloaded everything that remained. If it wasn't insult enough already, the cannons we had didn't even function - it's no wonder whoever emptied everything out left these and only these behind. The tanks never retaliated. They parted when they reached our building, passing us by entirely.

They began firing on everything that the bombers hadn't already destroyed. They trampled on and over anything small enough to not move for, and destroyed everything else. After all the noise was finished, one last cloud of blackened smoke rose into the sky, carrying with it the last of our history. I realized at this moment that they never intended to kill us.

What they wanted was to crush us. To destroy anything and everything that we and all of the other people in our country stood for. This was the cold, unforgiving hand of a bitter nation - all because they discovered one spy in their ranks. They were doing one thing and one thing only - sending a message of domination without knowingly ending a single life. The only options that remained for us were to run and hide, or submit to the Germans.

I would do neither. This was my first day of war, and I had already seen enough of how disgusting our race is. I would spend the rest of my time on this Earth fighting for my land, my people, my history, my dreams, and anybody these Germans would seek to harm. I vowed that I would do it the exact same way they have done it to me - without firing a single round at a living being. They will experience my emotional pain, not physical pain. One passes with time. The other does not.
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Part 3:

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I traveled for a while. Though, looking back on it, "wandered" is probably a more appropriate word. The only thing from home that I had left, other than the clothing I had on my back, was this one handgun. Despite my unwillingness to use it, I still kept it. It would forever serve as a reminder of why it is I'm still walking. Nice as it was to have that, though, there's never anything quite as useful as something to tell you what to do next.

Being that we as a nation were, apparently, now committed to war, I had to think long and hard about how to cast an equal reaction back on them for what they've done to me and my friends. For that reason, I wandered. Carefully, of course. The object, for occupied cities, was to stay unnoticed. Otherwise, it was to simply stay quiet and blend in. Key to observation is to not make your presence known, as even that alone can change the outcome short and long term of any event regardless of significance.

Some cities weren't as fortunate as we were. That is to say, we lost minimal lives and were not occupied. I could see the same things I saw in the faces of the people back at home on the faces of people everywhere I looked now. Some were too shocked, and produced it in a nullified form. Others showed it vastly amplified. Some were used as slaves, others murdered on a whim. Some were used as entertainment only to be discarded - the equivalent of a dollar store toy, easy come, and easy go.

Some hadn't yet been attacked, and carried on their lives as normal. Envy would sometimes float around in my head when I saw these places. They did what any normal people did - woke up, got dressed, worked, ate, conversed. Idle conversation became something I quite missed, though the subjects often insulting. Complaints of work conditions were a popular subject. As were rumours of events in occupied cities. That one I particularly disliked - people were divided. Some were genuinely hurt that their people, whether known to them or not, had suffered as they had. Others theorized that it never happened at all.

I couldn't possibly convey how angry that one made me. I often thought of becoming the messenger for these people and telling them of my story, but mine being as unreal and unprecedented as it is was enough to convince me to keep my mouth shut and continue with what I was doing - now was not the time to make myself known. I couldn't do much more than speculate about what everybody else had opted to do. I ran off on my own to pursue my eventual revenge, and they had split into a few different groups and went in equally different directions. Dead or alive, they were worth the same to me now.

That realization was a powerful one. It made me, without a doubt, conclude I was now no better than the people who turned face while our walls still stood - the only difference is that I had backed off after the fact when my presence may have been even more needed than before. Even more fodder for my fire - it's often said a man with nothing has nothing to lose. For this, I thought I had become stronger. A nameless man with a burning desire for revenge and nothing to hold me back - I would eventually become something that was feared, little did I know.

My travels lasted months. Long enough for me to see more faces than I'd ever seen in my life prior. The amount of information you can get from a person without even being seen by them can be quite substantial, I learned. A very valuable lesson it was. I learned how to clearly read signs of anger and contempt, and everything between and across the spectrum to sincere concern for another born of total selflessness. It teaches you very quickly how to tell who can be trusted and who simply can't.

Along with that, I learned very well how to stay unseen. For months, I had associated with nobody and had been noticed by no more. Fear combined with desire is a fearsome combination - it forces you to learn to calm your nerves. Knowing that any miss-step could make a sound that could get you noticed causes you to tread carefully. Knowing any unexpected person could be around a corner or hiding in a tree forces you to breathe quietly and widen your ears. It turns you from a human into a predator waiting for the absolute most opportune time to strike.

I said I was a soldier. Never officially, but in fame and in costume I most certainly was. There came a day where I found a handful of German nobodies and a single high ranking officer "playing" with a small family of three. By this time, I had seen quite enough of people's hurt - caused or received. It was time to take the leap and put my new skills to the test. I pulled out my handgun and snuck my way toward them.

My eyes scanned the ground for anything that would make unnatural and noticeable sounds. I listened to the breeze, to the leaves, and to their stomping boots. I thought to myself that I could really use some new boots. I snuck up while staying out of sight of all the Germans and the people entertaining them, and at one specific moment where the captain took one step too far backward, he fell directly into my hands.

My gun being pointed squarely at his skull prepared to make a donut out of his face surely made him realize he had made a mistake. I gripped him firmly to ensure he could not trip me, turn around, nor draw arms. His troop turned, and I immediately told all of my people to flee. The four nameless Germans all drew arms and pointed them toward me and, consequentially, their captain. They tried threatening me, warning me, dealing with me, pleading with me, but they failed to realize I was no longer somebody capable of backing down.

I forced the captain to have his entire troop drop their arms, and then lift their shirts over their heads. As I had hoped, they were too thick to see through. I kicked some rocks around, dragged the captain carefully side to side in varying amounts, and prayed none of those soldiers kept arms and had the same skills I do. Now the gambles began.

I told the captain that I would soon release him, and that he was to move two paces forward, disarm himself, and join his comrades without turning around. He was to do this as quietly as possible, as any dissatisfaction on my part would result in him and, as far as he knew, all of his men dead. I let him go, and he did exactly as I asked as if he were listening to a school teacher and wanted a gold star.

My next order was for him to, one by one, remove all of the military attire from his comrades, ending by turning them to face the other way before taking off the shirts. He was to then do the same to himself. He complied with all of these diligently. Quite admirable, really, but I was sure his boss wouldn't much like to hear about this.

My next order was for them to walk left as if to walk around the circumference of a circle - without ever turning around. I would do the same. The end result, of course, was for us to essentially trade places, leaving their arms and clothing on the ground for me to pick up. I then told them to run into the trees from whence I came, and that anyone who turns around would be shot dead.

Four of them, one of them being the captain, did just that. One of the nameless decided he wanted to be a hero, and turned back around just before reaching the trees in an attempt to take me down. I dug my foot into the dirt and waited patiently for him to reach me. As he did, I kicked plenty of dirt up into his face and hit him a few times in the head with the back of my gun. The other four never turned around.

This one, I had decided, would be the one to start my story on their side. I instructed him to tell the story of what happened here to every German he met who he knew did not have a direct connection to any high ranking officer - and to never give his real name in so doing. The captain who ran off would surely lie about what happened in order to save his own skin, and probably force the 3 soldiers under his command to do the same. This one, though, now owes his life to me and is too far behind to be controlled by his captain during the debriefing. Rumour of me would begin to spread and become grander and grander the more times it gets passed from ear to ear. I gave him one of the suits and sent him on his way - he knew his life as a soldier had come to an end.

I picked up their arms, the remaining four military uniforms, and hopped into the vehicle they had ever so nicely left me in ownership of. From today onward, I would act and speak as a German, and rip their entire existence to pieces from the inside out. Before turning on the car, I slipped into the captain's uniform and drove off into the city. The family of three, who I had told to flee, fled only so far away and remained to watch the rest. I hadn't planned on this, but it would eventually work to my advantage.
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To give you an idea of how long this is going to be..

So far, I haven't added anything to this that wasn't included in the imagery and content of my dream. I said it was detailed, and I meant that. In writing it all out point form, which were several sentences each outlining very basic key points to remind me what happened, it took up about a page and a half alone. I've only gone over the first five points.

If you have any interest in this, I suggest you don't fall behind. I need to keep writing at a pace that will allow me to not forget certain details that the points are supposed to be reminding me of.

Gotta say Stythe, I'm absolutely loving this story. Please keep it up.

On another note....how do you have such long and detailed dreams? Mine are always so abstract.

Thank you for commenting on it, I appreciate that.

Pretty sure dream content differs from person to person, not a single clue what exactly makes them be random or orderly, but, I'm lucky in that mine are rarely random. =/

Anyway, here's part 4:

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To be truthful, I hadn't planned much further than this when I attacked those Germans. There is now a man driving a German vehicle, wearing a German captain's uniform, and clearly hasn't had a decent shower or a shave in months. Only slightly suspicious. Knowing full well there was no way I could possibly pass for a real German citizen with my skill of the German tongue, I knew I would have to get what I need through ways appropriate of a German: intimidation.

I, to this day, regard this very hour as one of the lowest in my life, and do wish there were another way I could have gone about it. I found a side road with few eyes on it and moved all the guns save one into the trunk, hiding some of the smaller ones under the seats. I kept the Captain's Walther on me, and my own gun tucked away under my shirt. After this, I hopped back into the car and drove to a nearby home - one that appeared to be vacant.

Slowly walking up the door, my collar flipped up, it became clear fairly quickly that the house was not in fact vacant. The curtains in the windows drifted unnaturally at one point, more so than would be caused by a draft. There was at least one person inside. Upon declaring the order for whoever is inside to open the door, the voice that came back was in the same tongue as my native one. I fed him a very obvious lie that my station had been compromised and I arbitrarily chose this house to temporarily set up camp. My fluency in his language was probably enough to give myself away, which is something I had counted on happening so as to invoke some amount of sympathy.

The man opened the door, and stared me in the eye for several seconds too long before I was forced to treat him as being disrespectful to a German official - I pushed him backward and walked directly into his home and closed the door behind me. Without wasting a moment, I had him show me to his pantry in hopes he would have some form of food in a tied bag - counting my stars, he did. I promptly tied him up and had him tell me where his bathroom is. It was painful to be a German in the eyes of someone I should be protecting, but my gamble on his ears was a loss.

Being able to stand in one spot and feel water instead of mud between my toes had never felt so wonderful. Almost as if I had just made my way out of a trek through the desert, this water somehow felt more glorious than all the rain that struck me in my time outdoors. I found his razors and a pair of scissors and proceeded to groom myself into a look appropriate for my wear, and then got re-dressed and found the man still sitting where I left him. His expression was drastically different - with a fear unlike what I'd seen in quite some time, he directed me to go to another room by nodding in its direction.

It instantly became clear to me. He knew that I wasn't German, but had to act as if I were so as not to draw suspicion from the German who had heard me speak so fluently in the language of the people being persecuted here. He was giving me an opportunity to salvage my own life, rather than throwing it away for me by showing a sort of racial companionship with me.

Another man called to me, in my tongue, with a German accent. Couldn't run, won't kill him - my options were few. Pausing for only a couple of seconds, I untied the man and pocketed the rope after wrapping one end of it around my right hand, and then walked toward where the German voice came from without a gun drawn - I had hoped this German hadn't already decided my fate for me.

Slowly going around the corner, I looked first for hands. He had no gun in his hands, and had simply placed it on the counter in front of him. His clothing was that of a lower rank - and he greeted me as such, with a stern salute. I gave him a much less confident one in return and made the assumption he could not tell from my fluency that I'm not German. He asked, simply, what I was doing here, and I replied by saying that it was an arbitrary search of the house. He didn't question any further, and simply motioned to place my gun on the counter the same as him and that we have a drink before parting.

Mutual show of respect, he said, was the reason for it. I didn't question this, and did just that. He, however, immediately began to have questions fly around his head and he shot up, and reached for his gun. Never in my life have I had to move as quickly as I did here - my right hand flew out of my pocket and whipped the other end of the rope around his arm, and my left hand grabbed that end of the rope, and I promptly shifted to behind his back pulling his arm along with me. I pulled it far enough and fast enough to make him drop the gun, and then kicked him in his lower back to force him away before picking my own gun back up off the counter.

He turned around, giggling, and told me that if I wanted to succeed with my disguise that I would have to act according to the rank I've chosen to wear - I should never have heeded his request to disarm myself. A sharp boy, this one, making me think I wasn't in danger only to test me shortly thereafter when my guard is already dropped. "Not everyone wants to be fighting", he insisted, before telling me how impressed he was with how quickly I acted on his attempt to re-arm. I was puzzled, really, why he was giggling through this.

No words came to me. I just stared at this man, with a gun in my hand and a gun at my feet. He explained that my choice to simply disarm him proves that I have no intention of killing him, and that if I were to succeed at what was obviously an internal attack on German military I would need to act accordingly and not obviously refrain from deadly force. He was absolutely correct on this - I wanted to instill fear in the hearts of any German I come across, but I have no idea how to do it. That is their speciality, not mine. He fled the house, leaving me to ponder the truth of his statements.

In order to do to them the same kind of harm they have done to me, I would need to either come up with some emotionally devastating ways to strike at them without harming anybody, or I would need to employ the same mentality that lead me to the point I stand now - a mentality that reflects the suit I wear and the car I drive. To do harm to a devil, you have to become a devil... even though I would not let this happen. I was determined to reconcile my ideals with their cruelty to form a brand of revenge they would never expect.

The man who lives here walked into the room, and gave me the only words he would speak - he told me to strike at their hearts. How, exactly, would I manage such a task without killing people, but still strike fear into every man that walks outside their home walls and hurts my people? This didn't seem very obvious, so I decided the first task should be to get out of this city. I can survive, very well, but I had no idea how to be a military official for a country I'm not even a part of. Right now, though, I knew I had to exercise that survival skill and get out of this city before anyone hears about both of the incidents that I caused today.

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Very delayed. Was busy with school/games.

Part 5:
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The roads weren't particularly friendly to me. The tires below me were becoming worn out - no destination was in mind, and no idea what step to take next. I did know, though, that in order to exist under the guise of a German, I would need to be at a level of power that answers to nobody except the highest authorities. As it stood, I would need to state my name and station to any commander, or any Gestapo officers, and any of their superiors. So, for now, I would stick to smaller towns where these people are unlikely to be.

The nights that followed were long. My fear of running into another German like the one from just a few days prior had kept me from finding rest in any building in a town with a German presence. Along the way, I'd pick up blankets from buildings with nobody in them; the people residing in them had likely been relocated. In them, I couldn't find much. They were a reflection of what laid outside, only with slightly more color. Signs of life could be seen in here. The difference between inside and outside felt as distinct as that between cat and dog, black and white, and only for that reason. Food was scarce. This was an issue I didn't have much of before, but the destruction of the land was becoming more prominent as more time passed.

Fueling the car became an exceptionally difficult task. I didn't want to leave it behind, and I had no money to purchase fuel. Instead, I found some plastic containers and did a rather unhealthy deed - siphon gas. If I ever found an unattended car, especially at night, I'd stop and try my hand at it. It was fairly messy at first, as I'd often get it wrong and end up with a mouthful of gas. For a while, that always meant I'd gag and let go of whatever tube I was using. Starting over was dreadful each and every time. Eventually, I got good enough at it to have the process complete in a minute or two.

I'd find places to hide the car at night. To be extremely careful about it, I'd find quiet roads with puddles on one side, fairly large ones, that I could drive the car through and not leave visible tracks - it wasn't likely that anyone would look much further than the width of the puddle, and leaving visible tracks going in some random direction would look awfully suspicious. After leaving the road in this way, I'd drive off a ways into wherever it lead me and park in some inconspicuous location and sleep in the car.

These nights gave me a significant amount of time to think. They weren't the warmest in the world, I was always quite nervous of having parked somewhere that would be seen before I wake, and my thoughts on what to do next were all things that would keep me awake long into the night. After many nights of going through this process, I decided I was carrying a lot of dead weight around. Weight I could lose in favour of feeding myself, or establishing myself, or both. That would be my next move.

It didn't take very long, but I eventually found a small town that had a market. At this place, I sold the guns I've been carrying around. All of them except mine and the Walther. Whether the people wanted them to arm themselves or to sell to someone else was of no concern to me - my only concern was to gain some funds. Funds to use for my transportation, for food, for anything I may wind up doing. It was most interesting, however, what looks I would get from people. I did, after all, sell arms donning German attire to non-Germans. Nobody dared question it, though.

This gave me an idea, though. I could probably make a considerable amount of cash selling arms to the Axis' enemies. It wouldn't do much in the way of seeking my revenge, but it would ever so slightly disarm one side and arm the other. This was an acceptable idea in my eyes. The only problem, though, was doing it on a level that would be capable of making a dent in their level of arms while, at the same time, giving me a workable cash flow. The next issue, then, became who I would sell them to. I wouldn't have time or the ability to seek my own revenge if I had to travel from town to town selling small amounts of arms I steal from somewhere or somebody.

I had to be centralized. It had to be near a military compound. Worse yet, it had to be near an Allied camp, as it was unlikely I'd be able to get away with selling arms stolen from Germans back to Germans. I changed back into my original clothing, and drove away from all German influence. Eventually, I found an ally controlled city. I left the car outside its boundary, and went on foot into the city in search of a leading military officer.

The discussions that commenced weren't easy. It was as if they were interrogating me at first - questioning why I was so filthy, where I'd come from, who I am, what I'm doing, how I got here, what I'd come for.. the questions were endless. Before they finished, they had probably decided I was insane, but not a threat. They let me plead my case - I put an offer on the table. The offer was I would provide them with quantities of German arms in return for cash. The terms I offered, though, were that it had to be anonymous. They were not to know how or where from I would acquire the arms. I was to have no knowledge of what they did with them afterward. And, I would not be required to stay within their walls.

Whether they were humouring me or not, I will never know. Maybe they really did think I was insane, and accepted simply on the grounds that I would never provide. Perhaps they thought the concept was attractive - they could get an extra supply of arms, if small, and it would be coming from German reserves which helps two of their causes, saving allied lives and lowering German numbers. I told them I hadn't much of an idea when my provisions would begin arriving, or in what intervals, but that they could expect me at some point in the future.

With a place to send my spoils secured, my next task was to find a place to centralize myself. Somewhere relatively near to here, and somewhere otherwise unoccupied. After returning to the car, I drove to various nearby towns that weren't directly controlled by either power in search of an unused building of a considerable size.
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I was concerned that this was forgotten after how long the hiatus was. Thankfully that's not the case! This is a very interesting read, and I await every new installment.

Question Stythe. Is this one dream you had, or a series of connected dreams? It seems rather long for just one dream.

I took a break from work today and read all of these stories. So far, I'm really intrigued by this story. You've done a good job in painting the area and the times, if not for a rough spot here or there.

This:



The thing is, in the time period, you could buy a loaf of bread for a dime, so the thought of a dollar toy store takes you out of the period. Probably saying a "nickel and dime toy store" would be better.

That said, this is my favorite line:



Really powerful line. I could feel the abject despair of the narrator.

Just one. I have a history of extremely long and/or detailed dreams. =/
Thanks a lot for reading, though.




The reason I used an expression that post-dates the events is due to the time period that it is actually being told from. In the time that the narrator currently lives, these stores do exist. It weaves in later.

Exams over. Sorry for the delay.

Part 6

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There were many options available to me. Most of the nearby towns were small, or had been evacuated. Looking around, you could tell when a place had been evacuated by will or force. This tiny fact, small and obvious enough to be available by common sense, was enough of a thorn in my side that I would regard this period of time as a life changing one.

That thorn, slightly different from others, would grow with each passing day. It would get larger, sharper, and push in deeper with each mile driven and each yard stepped. All it took was any sight that reminds me of all the hardship I have seen so far in my journey - it became enough to make me choke. Enough to smother the very life out of my body. There were fearful faces, crying faces, broken buildings, bullet casings, people's baggage strewn about the streets in some places. It was enough to make any man stop for just one moment and wonder what his place really is. All of these things, though, contributed to the pain in my side. Although, somewhere in my heart, I knew that the biggest factor in that pain may have been knowing that I would be attempting to make money off of all this.

Something wasn't quite right with my head. That knowledge, the bare-bones truth of what I am soon to undertake, would one day become a huge weight on my shoulder. Through everything I've seen and done, this one conscious decision, outshining all the rest, felt like a betrayal of everything I had believed I stood for. It was my contradiction, my necessary evil, my own corner of hell I would breed a future from. Despite all of this, the problem was never convincing myself to do it. I knew I had to if I was going to accomplish something with the resources, as limited as they were, that I had.

Each place I checked was never quite good enough. Windows too low, too many doors, broken walls, or some other complaint that somehow seemed arbitrarily decided on the spot. This pattern repeated for weeks as I drove from town to town, as if I were waiting for some sign that would tell me to use a certain building. That sign would eventually come, but it would come with a price I had no desire to pay.

I arrived at a certain town some 6 hours drive from the allied base. It was in a direction I had been avoiding, as I knew each mile driven this way would be one mile closer to walking into a lion's mouth. With weeks spent searching and all other options exhausted, I had concluded that this was the only option I would have left without searching in yet further distances.

After putting on the officer uniform, tucking my gun away in my belt and the Walther in its holster, I opened up the door and stepped out of car. It didn't take long for me to realize that this place had recently been under occupation, as the dirt under my boots was far from settled. Belt tracks, probably from some tanks, could be seen all over the place. All the buildings I could see, however, weren't very badly damaged. Most were untouched. Two things crossed my mind - this was either a German town that had been relocated, or the people that lived here had abandoned their homes before the guns marched in.

Either options wasn't particularly pleasing to my stomach. In either case, my death could be waiting for me at any turn if anybody realizes I'm here. My only hope was that the authority this uniform provided me would be enough to keep me alive. At least with this, a sniper might thing twice about pulling his trigger. I steeled my nerves and decided to quietly venture into the town.

Each step was taken as if I were stepping as if to not fall off the edge of a cliff. I stayed out of direct view of as many windows as I could manage, made sure I was only stepping on solid ground to avoid unnecessary noise, and listening as closely as I could for any sounds that weren't me. If I had a blindfold on, it may as well have been a peaceful sunny day while sitting on a porch - if the circumstances were different, this may well have been a relaxing little place. Perhaps so much so that I may have been willing to make my grave here.

It's really quite amazing what a difference of circumstances can make. I was by no means willing to have this place become my grave, nor was it in any way relaxing. Any mistake in judgement may well have resulted in my grave being a pool of my own blood, and this fact buried itself deep into my consciousness.

After a short while of exploring, I happened across a large building. All the windows and the giant front doors were closed, and there were no vehicles that anyone would use outside of a factory. I decided, to be safe, to do a simple check for snipers. I picked up a rock, looked for a tree, and hurled it at that tree as hard as I possibly could. My hope was that it would be too fast to see the rock itself, but the movement of the tree would be noticed.

After throwing the rock, I poked my head around a corner to check for movement in any windows. After what felt like an hour, but was probably closer to 20 seconds, I decided there was nothing. I ran from around the corner over to the building as fast as I could manage and got as close to the wall as I could manage. After a short rest, I peeked around the corner to see if the door had opened. There was no movement, and no change.

I walked around the corner, slowly stepping toward the door, and then pushed it open. As if this were an act of instinct, I looked over my shoulder, away from the building, before taking the step inside. No amount of preparation could have prepared me for what I saw then - behind a corner I couldn't have seen from the building I was hiding behind shortly ago or from the side of this one, there was a car, almost exactly the same as mine, parked and empty.

Panic rose in me to a degree higher than I had experienced ever before.
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Just wanted to post to let you know I've caught up with all you've wrote thus far. And I wish I would dream something a fraction as awesome as this. I am really impressed with this story and look forward to reading more of it.

...stupid cliffhangers.

I'd trade my dreaming habits for normal dreams any day. Lots of people have told me they'd love to have dreams like these.. but there's always opposite extremes, too. I experience pain in my dreams, and I've died in countless horrible ways in my sleep.

Couple of weeks ago, my dream (or nightmare, whatever) exaggerated a problem with one of my teeth that grew in slightly crooked (one of the wisdom teeth).. in the dream, it grew a bit more and dug itself into my cheek. When I opened my mouth, it literally ripped a hole in my cheek that I felt happen. It gushed blood, so far as to give me that wonderfully iron taste that blood has. Slowly opened my mouth further trying to get the tooth out of my cheek and it just slowly made the rip larger, ever so slowly tearing layer after layer of skin apart. Eventually there was just a huge hole in my cheek and it hurt like hell.

More recently was a breaker causing an explosion that sent debris flying with such force that I was impaled through the left side of my face.

Another fairly recent one had me being woken up by cops arguing outside my window. I got up and looked out the window in time to see one of them shoot the other two in their heads and then walk off. One of the two didn't die immediately, and ended up pulling out his gun to try to return fire. He missed, hit something in the house, and the house exploded. I survived and went to school the next day. At school, sh*t was extremely f*cked up. There were gardens, but no plants. Instead, there was thin slices of dead animals, like cross sections, lying around. People threw them around like food fights.

I was angry as hell at something. Probably my house being blown up. Either way, some dude in the halls bumped into me so i grabbed him by the hair and smashed his face into the concrete wall until brain matter was dripping out. Bit later, one of that guys friends came up to me and punched me in the back of the head, so I got up and had a fist fight with him. He ended up with two broken legs. I then grabbed him by the hair and pulled him into the nearest bathroom that happened to be a females washroom.

In there, limbs were hanging out of trash bins. Piles of flesh, probably organs, were sitting around in corners and under sinks. I dragged the dude from stall to stall looking for a decently clean one. Each one either had a dead body hanging over the toilet, was overflowing with sh*t/piss/blood mixes, or looked like someone had been beaten to death with baseball bats.

I ended up making him open his mouth up on the edge of the sink and drop kicked the back of his head as if to curb-stomp him on it.

Yeah.

On top of those, I can't even count how many times I've fallen off cliffs, starved to death in some forest (this one was recurring through most of my childhood), been shot/impaled/otherwise had some kind of hole in my body that wound up fatal, committed suicide, been murdered by anything from natural death to brutal murder lasting days, or some other stupid sh*t.

On another note, I've also never once had a lucid dream.

On the topic of Black Smoke, thanks for reading it and double thanks for appreciating it. More will certainly be coming. The next few chapters will be hard to write because there was a lot of time skipping going on in this part of the dream, which sucked. I want to avoid doing that if at all possible, so I'm stuck with reworking bits to fit better.

Sup.

Part 7!

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There wasn't a lot of time to decide what the right move was. I never was sure if I made the right decision. Reviewing the options, the car was in a place where the people that had been occupying it could have entered any number of different buildings. They may already have had eyes on me and weren't firing simply because of my uniform. Regardless of that, the way I had been acting would be enough to pique the interest of even the most common foot soldier.

Given how little I knew of the area, I opted to take the step into this building. Even not knowing the layout of it, or having surveyed any other possible exits, I'd likely be safer in this one than fleeing the city out in the open. And so, that first step, as defining as first steps always are, would be one for the books.

All around the building, little could be heard other than the ominous sounds you'd expect in such a building. Drafts coming in through cracks in the walls or windows, chains hanging from something and clanging from hitting each other in those drafts, a possible mouse or two squeaking. In all, little more than a slight sense of uneasiness was felt.

I looked around and found old machinery that hadn't been used much. Some clothing probably supplied for people who worked here was hung up in a small corner - it smelled of old sweat. I wasn't sure if the stairs were safe enough to be walking on, but there was little of interest on the floor I was on. They led me into a slightly brighter area, having been more open than the floor below and closer to windows. There wasn't much here other than desks and papers.

However, there was a room with a light coming out of it. I could hear no voices or see any signs of recent human activity in here, such as clear footprints in dust on the floor, but this light was unnerving. I drew my Walther and said, with as much authority as I could muster, "Is anyone there?" in German.

Silence followed. I said it again yet louder. Still silence. I crept closer to the entry, listening as closely as my ears could manage. As I got closer, I could see ever so slightly more of what was inside the room until I could see a small candle inside of a glass container. This sent my nerves into overdrive - there is now no chance that a light was accidentally turned on, and it was done fairly recently. Worse yet, I gave myself away.

As I got to the entry, I decided to leap into the room in hopes of avoiding any shots being fired directly at the entry. After preparing my nerves, I ducked down as low as I could and put as much force into a leap as I could get without a running start. It got me into the room, flustered, but unharmed. I scanned around looking for a person, but no one was present.

The candle was resting on top of a desk. Beside it laid a stack of newspapers. I thumbed through them, checking dates, and found that none of them are in any kind of sequential order. I did notice, though, that the sections immediately visible all spoke of a man who the SS is seeking out - one "likely" wearing German military uniform in places where there should be no German presence. One who humiliated several German soldiers in front of "people of interest" to the regime.

At the very bottom of the whole stack was a newsletter. Propaganda, in all likelihood, but clearly not belonging to any official press. Reading through this one, there are no specific names or locations mentioned. On it, there is only clear anti-war sentiment and mention of the very same man mentioned in every newspaper in this pile but expressed in a more sympathetic light.

It seemed fairly clear to me. I put away the gun, picked up the candle, and headed back out to the more open area of the building to explore in better lighting. I found little of any interest to me, except plenty of space which I had been looking for. If I boarded up all these windows, got some good lighting in here, and removed all the large machinery it would probably work very well for my purposes.

I decided the best bet for me would be to worry about that car outside. It seemed that there was nobody inside of this building, so I worried less about my immediate safety and more about surveillance. I approached the front door, which I had left open, and peeked outside. I could see the car from this vantage point, and it had not moved. It was also still empty.

I took a few steps back and began looking for a side or back exit. There was one that I could see - it was behind a large pile of stuff. Not entirely sure what purpose this pile served - there was no order to the objects. Some clothing, some bags, papers, little pieces of metal were in this pile. It all seemed like trash. However, it was all in front of this one exit - much bigger than the one I came in from - that is probably meant for getting machinery into the building, not entering or exiting on foot. So, I cleared away as much as I could as quietly as I could. I looked for signs of locks, which I could find none of, so I simply pushed on the door. It was a heavy door - clearly not meant to be opened by hand.

Nearby, I could see what looked like a steering wheel with a chain wrapped around it. The kind you would see big ogres pushing to open a massive door in a movie these days. I examined the chain, looking for breaks and where it leads, and it did indeed lead to the door. Turning it, it started to make a lot of noise. The type that could easily be heard for quite some distance - loud enough to make me realize this was probably the second mistake I've made today.

I got the door open enough to step outside, and then headed toward it. The light from outside hurt my eyes - it was, in fact, much darker in here than I thought. The tension must have distracted me from this, making it harder for me to tell as my eyes adjusted. Even so, I carefully approached the exit and stepped out into the outside.

In a game of Russian roulette, there is nothing more cut and dry than the feeling you have when you're about to pull the trigger. There are only two conditions under which people will pull the trigger: they are absolutely certain that they will not get a bullet, or they are absolutely certain they will get a bullet. In these cases, the feelings are polar opposites but have the same value: you either know you will live and are carefree, or know you're going to die and are met with a short moment of panic before you accept it. In the gray area of these two, almost every single time, nobody pulls the trigger. The moment I took the step out of the room, that very same panic came over me. I knew, accepted, that I had literally just killed myself.

I turned to my right, and sure enough, there was a German soldier with his shotgun aimed directly at my chest. He approached me, cautiously, telling me not to make any sudden movements. I could hear another coming from behind me, but knew there was no way for me to react to it. That acceptance is powerful - in these moments, you know there's nothing you can do. You've set sail, and are completely at the mercy of the waves. The only thing you have in your favor is a sail - that sail is you.

The two men apprehended me and slowly dragged me to the car out front. Before seating me in the back of the car, they searched me for weapons and took both of the guns I had on me. They then blindfolded me and hopped into the front of the car.

We drove for what felt like hours. I lost track of the directions they were going, had absolutely no bearing, and no idea what the agenda of these two men were. They never spoke a word, and answered none of the questions I ever asked. For some reason, all I could think of was that smell that reflected everything about this place in time, but reminded me only of home.
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And here I was thinking he was about to set up this bad ass base filled with all sorts of traps and sh*t. I'm really curious where this is going.

I'm going to start this up again after I brush up on the story and the writing style I was using.

LOOK FORWARD TO IT b*tches.

Maybe also brush up