The one with all the dreams...

So bear with me:
I dreamt I was dreaming about a man who was dreaming, and in HIS dream, he was in bed with his wife and while they both slept someone came in and murdered her. He slept through the whole thing and awoke just in time to see the man who had just murdered his wife run out the door. He got up and gave chase but the guy was long gone. He didnt get a good look at his face and began to freak out, as he was also covered in blood but unhurt. The room was identical to my old bedroom at my moms house, and it was totally covered in blood. I woke up from HIS dream, only to find myself in my old bedroom at my moms house, and the room was completely covered in blood as well. The walls and ceiling and bed were sprayed with blood, but there was none on me. I was the only one in the house at the time, so I began to frantically call everyone and make sure they were ok. After I confirmed they were all alright, I set about cleaning the whole bedroom. I never found out who the blood belonged to and I really didn't want to.
And then I woke up. To no blood on my walls.

The Backstory...

I have been plagued by bad dreams and nightmares since I was about 10. That's when they were so bad I began to actually pay attention. I can't pinpoint exactly what happened to trigger the dreams, all I know is that they have been horrible since then. Some are awful, some are ok, but all have been nightmares. When I saw A Nightmare On Elm Street, I was terrified. I was also given a bit of hope. With every dream I had, I tried to teach myself to control them.After about a year or so, while the dreams were still horrible, I was no longer at their mercy. I was able to control what I did and the direction the dreams would take. I came to later find out this was called lucid dreaming.
That was the good news. The bad news was I was focusing more on the dreams then I was on my waking life. I would actually go through cycles. A period of 6 to 8 months would be nothing but god awful dreams. They were so bad that I would try to not sleep at all. As anyone that has not slept for days can tell you, this was not good. Hallucinations would set in, and it got to the point where I could no longer tell the difference between my waking life and my dreams. During the day, I could have a normal conversation surrounded by friends or family, and at night, my dreams would find me in the same situation, in the same conversation, only it would take a drastic turn somewhere and send me in a completely different direction.
After that, exhaustion would set in, and I would spend the next 6 or so months sleeping whenever I could. I would skip school for the sake of sleeping. Again, the dreams would take over and I was unable to separate dreams from reality.
As years went by, I learned to deal with them. Either I would forget as soon as I awoke, only to have something trigger the dream and it would all come back. Or I would remember every detail as soon as I woke up. I tried keeping a dream journal, but most of the dreams I only wanted to forget so I stopped writing about them.
Having gotten so good at lucid dreaming I stopped fearing the dreams as much. I also began to have what I called "Dream Friends". As wonky as it sounds, over a span of 4 years or so, I had about 5 dreams that had the same group of people. They were not real life friends of mine, and I remember quite vividly the "night" I met them. I was in a different city and I was alone. It was fairly dark and I was walking along a corridor. It was covered with vines and I was admiring the beauty of the walls when a group of guys came around the corner. I said hello, but they eyed me rather suspiciously. After awkward introductions, they showed me a part of the wall that had a secret latch. I was invited in and the conversations that followed were like an exchange between long lost friends. In the span of 4 or 5 years, the dreams were never the same, but when I did meet them again, it was as if we were all aware of the time that had passed and we spent a while always catching up. I met their girlfriends, worked on their cars, or just hung out in the secret wall. It's been about 12 years since I last dreamt of them, and I do sometimes wonder how they are...Hope one day to see them again.
Anyway, I read somewhere that lucid dreaming, and confusing your waking life with your dream state can actually lead to schizophrenia if not properly dealt with. Hopefully, I dealt with it enough to one day not wake up in a mental institution and having my whole life turn out to be a dream. Wouldn't THAT be a mind fuck?!!
I decided to try and keep a dream journal again, as the dreams have gotten pretty bad again.
People who mean well have all sorts of advice, and quite frankly, I'm tired of hearing it. Take it from someone who has been dreaming this shit just about her whole life: you wouldn't kill to have dreams as vivid as mine, or as fucked up as mine. There are only so many ways you can experience and see your friends and family die before it stops being "neat".
Anyway, try not to judge me too harshly.
They're just dreams, right?...

The one with the smell of burning flesh..

I was in some sort of concentration camp or something along those lines, but I wasn't a prisoner. I was somehow allowed in to take pictures and walk the grounds so I could go back and report on the demands of the captors. I was in a different country, as the people spoke with accents, but I am not sure where it was.
The day was pretty bleak, looks like it had rained the day before, as everything was freshly wet and slightly muddy. I could hear some crying off in the distance, but for the most part the place was eerily silent. I was walking with a guard when suddenly I heard shouting, and fighting broke out. People were running, there was some shooting and the guard pushed me to the ground. I tried to get up, as I had seen a group of kids who looked to be no older then 6 or 7 being led by another boy who was about 12. He was holding the hand of a younger boy when the guards tried to rip them apart. I guessed they were brothers, as the older wouldn't let go. They were both kneeling on the ground, and the younger one began to cry. I watched as the guards doused both in gasoline, and began screaming as I saw the guard light a match. The older boy told the younger one to close his eyes and not be afraid. He then looked at me and told me not to cry, that they would be alright. As the guard lit them on fire, I saw as they held each other tightly, but they never said another word. I sat there and cried, and I could smell everything.
When I woke up, the thing I remember vividly were the cool, clear gray eyes of the older boy.

The one with the car in the water...

I must have been at the coast somewhere, but I was supposed to be going to work. I was driving my car, and although I wasn't going very fast, I couldnt seem to control the car very well. Either it was very rainy and icy or really slick, but as I was turning the corner the car skid and I wasn't able to control it. The road was right up to the waters edge and as I turned, I slid off the road and into the water. I knew it was coming so I tried not to panic and braced myself for the impact. My windows were up, so that gave me a bit more time to catch my breath and figure a way out. As the cabin was filling with water, i was trying to time my breaths so that I could hold it when the time came. I am not very good at holding my breath if I'm panicking, so I was focusing more on the people that were trying to get me out. The water was frigid and I could feel myself swallowing a lot of it and at one point I couldn't breath at all. Thomas had been sitting by the edge when I drove around the corner, and he went to get help. Justin was walking up after I hit the water and they both helped me get out. As I'm sitting on the curb, the only thing that was going through my mind was "Oh shit! Oh shit" over and over. We were all happy I wasn't hurt, and thankful the car didn't land in an area that was super deep. The car was completely submerged, but you could see it under the surface. I was pretty sad about my car, as it has been with me through many adventures. After we all calmed down a bit, we got back in the water to see if there was anything we could salvage. There wasn't much that wasn't destroyed, so we decided to take pictures on it instead. For Facebook..

The one that tasted of blood..

It was dark, rainy and hard to see. I was part of a caravan that was leaving from our store to go to another town for dinner, as somehow we all got off at the same time. Sylvester was in his car with 2 other people, Justin was in his truck with someone else, I was in my car, stopped on the side of the road waiting for Liz to get out of the store, Natalie and Martin had gone ahead with two others, and there were 2 more people, but I can't remember who they were. We headed for the town that was about an hour away, and when we got there, it seemed as if there was some sort of festival going on. It was a small, historic college town, and the celebration was almost like Mardi Gras. Lots of drinking, fires and music. Somehow, I got separated from the group when we were looking for the restaurant, and as I was searching for them, I came across a cemetery where the start of the festival seemed to be. It was pretty old and run down and I really wanted to see what was going on, so I went up the short walkway, and poked around a bit. There were drink stands, so I bought one, and decided to keep walking. The drink was some sort of fizzy drink, non alcoholic, almost like rock pops with kool aid. After a few minutes, I could taste blood. I thought maybe I had just bitten my tongue or something, but it was so dark I couldn't see. My tongue was pierced and I could feel it swelling up and I thought I was drooling because of it. I looked down only to see blood was really flowing from my mouth, and it was fizzy as well. The more I walked, the more I bled. I decided to try and get someones attention, but they acted like they couldn't see anything wrong. I couldn't talk because of my swollen tongue and everytime I tried to open my mouth too much blood would flow out making forming any kind of sentence impossible. I decided to try and get a hold of someone in my group and went looking for the restaurant. On my way up the hill I saw a few more girls bleeding from their mouths as well.

A girl that was part of a crowd of people watching the fire dancers told me I had only a few minutes left to get to the guys house that was a few blocks away, or I would bleed out. This was part of some scavenger hunt-like deal that was going on, and I had been picked to play. I was supposed to time my walk up to the house perfectly. If I waited too long I would bleed to death. If I went too soon, I would bleed on their sidewalk and they would kill me. However, they were not allowed to tell me how much time before it would kill me, as it affected everyone differently.

That's when I woke up. With the taste of blood in my mouth.