At one point or another -- I don't exactly remember when, and honestly I'm not even sure if I ever had these dreams (at least in a non-nested sense) to begin with -- I dreamed on two separate occasions that I participated in some rather strange adventures with witches and, in the second dream, even descended into Hell to sit and chat with devils (but not the Devil). Assuming I even had them, I remember exceedingly little about these dreams, but interestingly enough they're recurring points of discussion in other dreams -- which leads me to believe that I possibly dreamed them within a dream, for that would explain their strong presence beyond the veil of consciousness. I seem to remember them slightly better there, too, though I couldn't tell you if my recollection of them is consistent from dream to dream because I never remember these details when I rise.

Those previous dream adventures came up in last night's dream. I don't exactly remember how it got started, but there was a lengthy first part to the dream in which I recall being at a dimly-lit bar at a restaurant within a mall, discussing various topics with an old friend/acquaintance of mine who appears in my dreams on occasion and never fails to bring weirdness and horror with her, when somehow or another the conversation turned to those two dreams. She, for whatever reason, appeared very anxious to talk about them; I on the other hand seemed filled with dread at the thought of them and had no desire to delve any further into the matter.

I forget what happened directly after that -- there was something involving me wandering around in the green, grassy areas outside office buildings comprised of shimmering blue glass -- but eventually I came to the second major part of the dream, which I remember a little better than the first. Here, I was sitting in someone's backyard with a little boy and a little girl, and we were playing a "truth or dare" game of sorts. Now, I say a little boy and a little girl, but actually they were my age -- I just can't remember how old they were in the dream. If they were children, I was a child as well; if I was as I am now, then they were in their early twenties. And while I'm certain that this segment of the dream began with only these two playmates, somehow or another a third girl was added to the party, for she was the one who posed the following question to me:

Have you ever been with a ghost?

Upon hearing this question, I was immediately overcome with a wash of fear. It's such an odd question, I know, and it came out of nowhere, but it seemed to strike at some distant, repressed memory I had no desire to recall, much like my friend's questions at the bar. I froze for a moment and then, trembling, asked for clarification -- "What... what do you mean?" -- whereupon the girl grinned, thrust her face several inches from mine, and hissed, "Have you ever sucked a ghost?" Yes, sucked. What she meant, I don't now know, but in the dream I sprang back several feet and ended up on my back in the grass. At this point, the first little girl started giggling as if she knew the answer to the question and found my embarrassment to be amusing, though other than the dread I felt I had little idea what this girl was talking about. So I stood angrily and demanded that she tell me what she knew, since she knows so much.

Now here's the part that terrified me such that I woke up. There was something she said earlier, and I think it came up at the bar as well -- or at least in the dream I seemed to recall it being mentioned earlier -- which was this: "The winged whispering willow knows." I had no idea what it meant then, but the girl repeated it once more before white stitching seemed to undo itself around her mouth -- her mouth hadn't been sewn shut previously -- and her mouth opened to allow a cloud of black smoke to issue forth. From the midst of the smoke, then, came a tiny, winged creature about the size of a moth, which was covered in a flour-like substance and came fluttering towards me at an alarming rate of speed. This, no doubt, was the winged whispering willow. It came to rest by my ear, and, flitting up and down, began to whisper something to me -- something that I evidently didn't want to hear, for with this creature's words and the uncomfortable feeling of something tiny and winged moving about my ear caused me to shake my head violently in an effort to drive it away. When I found myself in my bed several moments later, I was still thrashing my head about. 😯

And now I must be off to work! Ja ne.