Weird dream last night:
I was outside at this ranch. It was sunny, the grass was golden, and the main building/stables/barn thing (it was really all of the above) looked slightly delapidated yet well used. Everything was very picturesque, really. I walked inside and there were a few people in this room and they were chopping at these practice dummies with some kind of blades that I couldn’t really identify. Inside, everything was mostly gray and there was hardly any furniture, just a table with some stuff on it. The setting reminded me of ranches from my childhood.
Anyways, as I’m watching them, this wicked looking bald dude turns and very stylistically chops this guy … not really in half, but from one armpit up through the other shoulder, so that the head and one arm hit the ground. After he swung he kept spinning so that on the backswing he chopped off the first three fingers of the severed arm before it hit the ground. He caught the fingers in mid air and returned to a ready stance, all in one fluid motion, and smiled at me maniacly (one of my own smiles. It looked AWESOME!) As I started to back away he non-chalantly tossed the fingers (all still connected) onto the table and as they hit I noticed there were many more fingers on the table. Quickly I glanced out a nearby window into a courtyard and there were fingers all over, on display, in glass cases, on littering the ground. At this point I turn around and walk determinedly outside.
A group of people are outside and one of them (a leader?) approaches me and welcomes me warmly, very glad to see me and how am I doing and such and such. It seemed genuine and practiced. He went on to explain that this was all part of the organization behind non-denominational churches and how they had influence over just about everything and what not … the whole time I’m trying to just walk away without getting on anyones bad side.
Well, eventually I just up and leave and he starts following me, so a break into a run/jog and he just keeps coming, not really running but still catching up like a villain from a bad horror flick. I make my way into some kind of church/school and this guy is holding a lecture/sermon/class of some sort, and the guy following me isn’t anywhere to be seen but I know he must be close. Before I can sit and try to blend in the class is over and people start leaving. So I slowly get up and before I can even start moving to the door the guy holding the lecture approaches me and says hello. I ask him what this group is all about and he says that they’re mormons and that they can protect me from the people following me if I become a mormon too. Before I can really give a response, the guy from before walks in the side door and starts heading for me, so I walk out the opposite side door and escape again.
Now it’s night time and I’m in the city (it seemed like a cross between S.F. and Portland meets The World of Darkness) with (of all people) Cassie. We’re having a good time, out on some walkway between buildings (looking over the edge, there are a lot of these between the buildings.) We’re laughing and having fun and being silly like we used to be and she starts randomly playing with the railing, hopping up on top of it and holding on with both hands (scaring the piss out of me, I thought she was gonna fall) and then hopping back down and turning to me and smiling. Then it looks like she’s gonna try to do it again, only with a 180 degree twist so she can look at me while she’s up there only she loses her grip and actually falls. It takes me a split second to register what had just happened before I’m over the edge after her. Only I let myself hang before I drop to the ground below, where she is laying incapacitated and non-responsive. I kneel down beside her quickly and start doing CPR. I check for breathing first, and then for blood (unfortunately she wasn’t breathing, but she wasn’t bleeding either.) I try frantically to get her breathing again, one deep breath in, three hard pushes on the sternum … it doesn’t work and I finally start to lose my nerve and gather her close to me, petting her and holding her. I kiss her and start to cry and that’s when I wake up.