The Blood Thing
I had a dream that also didn't feel like a dream. I woke a bit before 5am on Wednesday July 16, 2025 and transcribed the experience:
I'd been walking with someone in a city. It felt like my love but I didn't actually see her.
Suddenly everything turned strange: the trees were made of sea foam. A spray foamed version of the entire landscape. The colors were the same but the trees were larger, more cartoonish. The environment felt uncanny.
From our right, a solitary grey-brown horse trotted to the intersection we were about to cross, turning to go down the street in the same direction we were walking. "Okay," I thought. I watched the horse near the end of the block, where it trotted up to a stationary rhino and began sniffing it.
Then a herd of a dozen or more wild horses ambled onto the street from the direction the first horse had come. These horses seemed shaken or confused as they slowly approached. We pulled out our phones to take photos of all of it — the horses, the rhino, the weird foamy trees and landscape.
As I aimed my shot, from the sky emerged this helicopter-like thing, zooming toward me fast and smooth, at a sharp diagonal. From my view from below, I saw four whirring, whirling pads. The shape of the thing reminded me of the feet of frogs. I pointed my phone up at it but as I was about to tap to take the photo, I saw the craft emit a bright white light precision-pointed at me
And I was aboard it.
Everything was red. Red lights. Red tones. There were 5-6 "people" around. The vibe was serious. I had the strong impression that I "wasn't supposed to have seen what I saw" (the seafoam trees?), and I wondered to myself, "Are these really people?"
Then, the Blood Thing:
"We need to take some of your blood," he stated matter of factly.
"For what purpose?" I asked aloud.
"Testing," he replied.
It was then that I noticed the young woman seated to my right. I knew in that moment that she had been placed there strategically to apply a sense of ease in me. I could feel this. I knew this. And yet, by her friendly nonchalance, at ease was I put. I knew She had been through it, the blood thing, and she was still smiling, so...
I knew I was being emotionally manipulated, but I felt put at ease regardless. I felt like my emotions had been hijacked, overridden. I was aware, and I felt the logic of fear around these strangers "needing" to take my blood, but the feeling did not touch me, and that's just how it was.
I asked another question of the man who seemed to be the leader of the group. He looked a bit like the guy who played Dr. Caldicott in the film Disturbing Behavior, a moustache, and he was wearing a deep red (by the light anyway), form-fitting spacesuit, no helmet.
It became clear to me then that beneath the politeness of verbalizing succinct responses to my questions was a tacit yet undeniable threat. No, not a threat exactly — more like an inevitable eventuality, beyond certainty... I would be giving an unchosen and inescapable yes.
I could feel that. It scared me, so I made light of it, cracking some joke riffing on their reply to my unremembered question. And they all laughed. And I was feeling better.
I don't recall what came next. There's this gap. There's this feeling of deja vu.
The next thing I knew, I was "exiting". But it felt like my presence there had been a return somehow, a return without having gone away, a return with no gap. And it felt as if I was exiting a building rather than a craft.
Outside, there were all of these "peers" around, chatting in small clusters. I knew that they had all already been through the thing too and they were all very excited to see me.
They became particularly animated when they saw that I was carrying one of the bags — white and paper-like but with tremendous tensile strength, like spacesuit material maybe, folded up and intended for some later use beyond my knowledge or understanding.
As I got back near my vehicle one guy was particularly happy to see me. "He got the bag!" the man hyped to the crowd as he high-tenned me. There was this deep deep feeling of camaraderie.
And I blinked my eyes open in bed.
During the time I spent transcribing the above into my phone, I was trying to really focus on getting all the details. It was difficult because it felt like there was this sort of radio signal there at the edge of my just-awake consciousness, like words wanting to pulled in. Kind of like how poetry feels when it comes to me. Allowing myself to finally tune in, I heard:
"A thousand days from then is so—"
"Salubrious"
"Celebration"
"Starlight"