Chase Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

April 18, 2024April 21, 2024

The Woman with Antlers

She’d followed me through the council estate. She wore a white dress that glowed in the dusk as she chased me, and I thought I had lost her, when instead, she surfaced once more.

I was lying on a grassy bank catching my breath, when she pushed her head out from under the grass behind me. Like how could that be? Like the grass was a blanket of sod, parting at the seams to reveal her head first, then her shoulders.

She had antlers that poked out from her long blonde hair. And when I got up to get away from her, she rose up out of the grass and set off after me again.

The grassy area was in the forecourt of the council estate, but instead of double backing I took another route, following the line of the grassy bank towards a brick building that had an entrance into a small dark narrow corridor.

The corridor bent right immediately upon entering, and at far end was a second door that turned right again; and the corridor was only wide enough for only one or two people to pass each other side by side.

As I stepped through the entrance, I saw a small space to my left where I could hide.

Another woman with a plain brown sackcloth dress stepped in after me. She saw me duck left as she continued rightwards along the corridor towards the second door. She looked back at me and I winked at her, winked furiously, trying to signal that she not give my position away. She looked back at me uncertainly, as if she didn’t get it.

Then the glowing dress woman with the antlers entered. She turned right without looking at me (at the same time as I was winking at the woman in brown), then the antler woman disappeared through the other door without looking back. She followed close behind the woman in brown.

“What do you want for Christmas?” Siobhan asked, as I tried to write the story down.

“I don’t know. Why you asking me?” Siobhan pushed a mail order catalog towards me, pictures of beach wear.

“Do you want it?” She pointed at a blue tote bag.

“I’m trying to write, stop interrupting me!”

“Well..?”

“I don’t need to decide now, do I?” I stopped wring.

“OK then fine. Yes,” I said.

“No don’t tell me if you don’t want it,” she replied.

“But I’m trying to write, it doesn’t have to be done now.” I pushed the catalog away.

Fine, I thought. If I don’t wake up to write this dream, I’ll forget about the woman in the glowing dress chasing me.

All images generated using DreamUp AI from Deviant Art.

April 20, 2023May 2, 2023

Attacked by a Drone in the Old Fort

Attacked by drones in the old Moroccan fort.

Siobhan, Liam, Lizzie and I went on holiday to Morocco or a place like that and after we had arrived and settled into our hotel, we went wandering around the souk. It was nearby and still filled with people in colorful costumes so we took lots of candid pictures.

The souk was quite open plan but still dusty, and had rich ornate rugs swung over the wooden frames of the stalls to protect the shoppers from the sun’s dusty glare.

The locals’ costumes were many striped, in reds and orange, golds and blues, the colors of the rainbow, and you had to be fast to get the pictures but I played with the iPhone buttons instead of the app button and snapped them really fast. I was not even looking to frame each picture so that even if a head got in the way I would still snap it.

I looked at one photo and sure enough I had frozen it in time. The focused head of a man captured through a blur of people. I was proud to have gotten a good picture just like the kids showed me.

And later on we walked over to an old fort which had a broken wall and an old blue door; you could walk around the right side of the wall, to the other side without opening the door. Behind the wall was a moat and a series of steps that went down to the water line and then came back up again to the rear side of the door. And intersecting the moat was another wall that acted as a bridge, that you could walk across the top of, that was quite wide and able to accommodate all four of us side by side.

We walked along the bridge and a drone flew by; and the drone was bowl shaped and black with a yellow trim up by its wings. It hovered briefly over the water before snapping out of sight.

And once we turned back and were returning to the fort’s front wall we noticed the water level had risen, perhaps because of the tide, and the drone was back again. This time it was a bit more menacing. It flew closer to us, just missing Lizzie and I, and then it went after Siobhan who had walked ahead. She was up by the intersection where the bridge and the wall’s steps met.

Siobhan ducked down to avoid the swoop of the drone and dived into the water which now covered the steps. Then she surfaced where the steps rose up close to the door. Only her head and right arm visible, she was holding onto the top step, but also she looked dazed.

Liam and I ran back along the path and I thought to walk down the first set of steps and up the second to where she was. But then I would have gotten my camera wet because all but the top steps were covered in water. I didn’t think it would survive that amount of time in the moat.

Then Liam had an idea. “Why don’t we try the door from the front?”

And so we walked back around the wall. And the door was old with chipped paint and we weren’t sure we were allowed to open it. I turned the heavy round silver knob of the door and we stepped through.

No one stopped us.

“Good idea, Liam,” I acknowledged as I closed the door behind us.

Next to the door sat an old cart leaning with its wheel barrow handles on the path. It was right next to where the steps began, where Siobhan held on.

But there was no trace of Siobhan.

A few bathers were paddling out in the moat but she was not one of them. We looked out across the water, and briefly one woman in the same dark brown bathing suit as Siobhan surfaced, but she had long dark brown hair.

Perhaps she had slipped unconscious while holding onto the step.

We peered into the water but it was murky and there was no way to see anything deeper than a few feet. And this time I thought to dive down to see if she had drowned.

Then Liam cried out.

“Mama,” he wailed in a plaintive voice.

Photo from Wallpaper Flare

April 5, 2023April 13, 2023

The Last of the Fairground Events

As the fairground sights wound to a close, the sun hit the stalls with the setting shade. Up on the hilltop ridge, the students piled back heading home, cast in shade, shadows of bodies.

April 14, 2022October 22, 2022

How to Avoid Terrorists

When I got into the elevator at the Castleton, others piled in too. We were stuffed side by side when the doors closed but then the elevator started to shake, then tip, then free fall.

I was standing on top of others so it would be ok; I would be cushioned once we hit the bottom. And the fall was quite slow, the side of the elevator scraping metal against the walls of the elevator shaft.