6 Ignited Passion

"It's crazy how I am able to dream like this. I only heard about this stuff online but I never really believed it until now. But now that I think about it, I must've been missing Ginger too much to even dream of him so realistically." Melinda said to Larry, but when she turned to look at him, she couldn't help her jaw from slacking.

Because Larry, whom she was speaking to just a while ago suddenly stopped moving as though he was turned into a statue. He has a slightly grimaced expression while his left hand was positioned at the back of his head.

"Hey! Larry? Laaaaaarry? Oh! For the grinch's sake! You haven't even told me about the village yet. Hey! C'mon!" she said while waving her hand in his face but she got no response whatsoever.

She stared at him for a while, her brows knit together, thinking he must be pranking her, and decided to shake him up but she went through him.

"Huh?"

She attempted to shake him again but the same thing happened, she went through him. "What's happening? I was able to touch you just a while ago."

She tried touching him again and again, but her hand would always pass through the other side as though she was only touching the projection of him. The same thing happened to Garry. It was frozen like its owner. Still holding its blue witch hat. And just like Larry, she would only pass through him.

"There's no helping it. Ginger, let's go. Let's solve this scenario on our own," she said to her cat and walked towards one of the brick houses. "How about we check what's inside this?"

"Meooooow!"

"Oh! Is that a confirmation? Well, thank you, I guess?" And she pushed the door open. It was not locked, but it refused to open any wider than a foot. "I guess it's the widest it can get."

She squeezed herself through the gap. It was dark inside. But not too dark to not see anything. The moonlight passing through the gaps helped her a lot. But as she was exploring what was inside, her surroundings suddenly pulsated followed by a sudden jolt at the back of her head. Her vision blurred and the next thing she knew, she was back in her room. Sitting in her chair in front of her computer screen. She seems to have fallen asleep while playing a video game.

Meanwhile, back in the Old Town Faverside, Larry was still processing his dreams. It was his first time experiencing a hyper-realistic dream while having full control of his action. He had a hard time believing it. But then as a psychology student, it made him feel all excited.

He got down from the bunker bed. Max was still asleep. It's still 4:30 in the morning.

He grabbed the DSM-4 on his desk and went to the kitchen, made a cup of instant coffee, and stared at the maroon cover of the book in his hand before he flipped through the pages to look for things related to lucid dreaming.

He saw the title written in large brown letters. It says, "Lucid Dreams and Dissociative Mental States."

"Lucidity in dreams refers to a peculiar mental state in which the dreamer is aware of the fact that he is dreaming while the dream continues. We have referred to this conscious awareness as 'insight' (Voss et all., 2013). To be able to reflect on the state of arousal, namely to know that one is asleep and dreaming, requires that one can take on a third-person perspective, i.e., to look to oneself as if through the eyes of an outsider…"

'Okay, I get it. But clearly, I wasn't experiencing it from a third-person perspective. I experienced it myself as though I was really there!'

"We label this kind of thinking 'dissociative.' Dissociative thought is heightened in lucid dreaming as compared to normal REM sleep dreaming. In lucid dreams, taking on a third-person perspective often entails not only the dreamer as a person but the dream itself. Dreamers then report having seen the dream sequence from the outside, almost as if the dream were an ongoing theatrical production or motion picture (Noreika et al., 2010; Voss et al., 2012, 2014). We consider this to reflect an even higher level of dissociative thought. In other words, lucid dreams can be considered dissociated states of consciousness in which the dream self separates from the ongoing flow of mental imagery."

Larry continued to read it. No. In fact, he repeatedly read it. But no matter how many times he went over it, he was never satisfied. He felt like something was wrong. As if the book was explaining a totally different thing from what he had just experienced.

And as a psychology enthusiast, he will never let it slide. As if the dream had ignited something inside him.