Thefts of the Succubi

Dreams of Michael J. DeLuca

November 03, 2006 - Dream Déjà Vu in Bogotá

I am making my way through the hauntingly familiar streets of a South American city. There are landmarks I remember: street corners, alleys, shortcuts I know I have taken before, though perhaps I can't recall in what order they ought to come or where they lead. But I have been here before. It isn't just a feeling. I know I've been here. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2006 - Battle at the Desert Tower

Erin and I and some of our friends pull off a desert highway into a small, dusty parking lot. Above us, beyond an embankment overgrown with sage, a tower looms: an iron scaffold red with rust, with a stairwell spiraling inside it. We are piling out of the car, stretching and preparing ourselves for the ascent, when a thin young man with sandy hair and a windburned face approaches us. He welcomes us and inquires after our drive in such a way as to encroach upon the boundaries of our personal space. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 02:32 PM | Comments (1)

July 03, 2006 - A Library in the Wilderness

On the trail ahead of us is a hulking, weedgrown structure of adobe and standstone, like an Anasazi ruin lifted from the deserts of the southwest. Awed, disbelieving, yet half-remembering, I lead the way forward, through a long, arched corridor, open on one side to shadowed woods scattered with boulders. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

June 04, 2006 - Gang Mentality Aboard the Ruined Corsair

Myself, my cousins, friends and others fall into Lord of the Flies tribalism when we find ourselves adrift at sea in a ramshackle three-masted corsair. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 01:23 PM | Comments (3)

June 02, 2006 - A Vast, Indoor Mockup of a Sleazy Medieval Slum

A vast, indoor mockup of a sleazy medieval slum, shrouded in perpetual darkness, in which a vast and perpetual game of live-action D&D is played. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2006 - A Bunny and a Monkey Vie for My Soul

I am writing/reading/experiencing a story/film/dream written by Neil Gaiman/myself/a mysterious third party, in which the main character, a college student played by myself/Tom Cruise, is haunted by by a series of increasingly intense and insidious specters, including a befuddled, gray-bearded homeless man, a guy in a white bunny suit and a guy in a black gorilla suit. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006 - Practicality in the Face of Destruction

A ramshackle, dust-coated world filled with tradition and suspicion, a la that of the inestimable Cathy Perdue. In the woods, dark and choked with clutter as though long abandoned, a brown clapboard house, low to the ground, but many-gabled. I'm lost, wandering, with no idea where I am or how I got here. I find the door hanging loose from the hinges, clear myself a place on the floor in the living room and take up residence among the mice and spiders. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 07:39 PM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2006 - The Half Bereft

Half the people disappeared from the world. Inexplicably. There was no apocalypse. No alien invasion or war to end all wars. People were just gone. Streets empty. Maybe it was more than half. Those of us who were left had no way of counting. At first, we couldn't have if we tried. We were all too busy grieving. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 10:46 PM | Comments (2)

December 13, 2005 - The Scrimshaw Knife

I ran my thumb across the blade. There was a catch at the very tip, a tiny, sharp burr I could never get out no matter how many times I tried to burnish it away with file or stone. That burr was what had pricked her. But I needed more than that now. I got a good grip on the handle. I held her wrist tight against the floor, positioned the knife just over the marks of the bite, right along the meat of the palm. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 10:26 PM | Comments (3)

December 06, 2005 - Old Dreams

I posted twelve more dreams from the back catalog, most from the period between Spring 2003 and Winter 2004, including some of my most profound experiences with lucid dreaming, superhuman powers and dream control. I particularly recommend The House Was a Clockwork Automaton, perhaps my most thematically coherent dream ever. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 07:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005 - Neo-Tribalism in the Trackless Fen

Lost in the Roxbury/Jamaica Plain area of Boston (terraced rows of streets along diminishing ridges, brown multi-family houses , busy streets and little corner stores), I somehow stumbled across the Orange Line rails and into a trackless fen where dwelt a neo-tribal society bent on bringing down traditional civilization. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2005 - Possessed by the Puce Jewel

A clandestine pseudoreligious order offered me a substantial sum of money and hinted at information leading to the recovery of a mysterious puce-colored jewel, if in exchange I would courier a certain black hardcover book to a contact in Atlanta, GA. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005 - Kung Fu Treetop Expressionism

Our family in transit over hilly fall countryside. The leaves that rich yellow that seems lit from within. The air a faint blue as though the world is caught in perpetual morning just in time for the frost to disappear but the chill and the damp to remain. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

October 08, 2005 - Nuclear Winter

It snowed in October. It didn't just snow, it blizzarded doomsday. Airports shut down. Cars utterly ceased to function. Nobody said anything about fallout, about the electromagnetic pulse result of a high-altitude nuclear detonation...but the effect was the same. It felt like losing a limb--like an important part of my body had disappeared. I kept trying to flex fingers I didn't have. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2005 - Of Riding a Storm Wind

I dreamed of riding a storm wind over the campus of St. Anselm College. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2005 - The Frost Deadwood Cathedral

I am walking with Danielle on the frosted dirt of Woodland Road in January, sharing nostalgia for landscapes that no longer exist in a landscape that never has existed. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:13 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2005 - Tandem Bicycling in Rhine Hill-Country With Naked Babes and Madmen

Really the title says all that need be said. The obnoxious comments of the gentleman sitting in the rear seat of the tandem bicycle behind mine induce my biking partner and I to sing "Those Damn Blue Collar Tweekers" at the top of our voices as we huff and puff our way up the green hillsides. We are joined by a blond elfin girl in a blue dress who is so inspired by our performance as to remove the blue dress and hike along with us in glorious nudity. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2005 - Away from a Dream in Anger

Something drives me away from a dream in anger. I am being harassed, at a summer camp of which I have dreamed before. There are riots. I escape in a canoe and get back to campus, but it isn't far enough. The mob is coming after me, blasting me with questions, grabbing at my clothes like stinging gnats, a cloud of mosquitoes. What do they want? I knew at the time. I can't remember. Something innocent, at least by comparison. What ever it is, I want it to stop. I want to shut them out, to bury my head in my arms so I can't hear their voices. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2005 - Bond Clone Bewilderment

Rand, an angular, dark man in a long gray suit, descended a featureless flight of stairs into a hall made up of long corridors divided by oversized square pillars. The whole setting resembled far too closely a map from Goldeneye. Visibility was terrible. Rand was tense. He held a gleaming silver sword at the ready in two hands, parallel with his body. The film style was strangely two-dimensional, not quite cartoonish, but hovering at that edge. The villain emerged without warning from a side-passage, decked in ostentatious jewels and a golden robe, in both garb and manner somewhat resembling Zaphod Beeblebrox. "You are finished, Rand Zanningham," he announced. "You cannot defeat me!" Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2005 - Refugees on the Red Desert

I dreamed of war on the outskirts of the red desert. They were hunting down the last of us, through the dusk and dust and fog over the steep hillsides. I dreamed in repeated, diminishing flashback. The first scenes I experienced were the most recent; the last were the oldest. By then there were only two of us left: Bruce, the weatherbeaten, giant survivor, and me. Why was I still alive? Out of luck, I had to assume, or because Bruce had kept me alive. But it was over now. Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2005 - Tsunami Wedding Wizardry

Stephanie and Ian were getting married on the beach. They had rented out rooms for their guests at a lovely seaside resort, all white, with a beautiful colonial facade and a steeple. And in the most far-fetched and unreasonable of... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2005 - Blood Soul Atomizer

What do the Succubi steal from me, exactly? There were those among the earliest of mages, the likes of Ptolemy, Pythagoras, Agrippa, who believed ejaculation was a sacrifice of creative power. A mad, foolish sacrifice, considering the things of which... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2005 - The Sheriff, the Dog-Woman, and the Dead

In a little hill town of perhaps eight hundred people in northern New Mexico, a new sheriff has just arrived. Who knows where the old one went? Who knows what everyone is so afraid of? Certainly not the new sheriff,... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2004 - The Art Contest

I'm in an art studio, hunched over a creamy-white sheet of paper with a charcoal pencil clutched in my fist, sketching furiously. A contest. The challenge: to create some kind of fantastical landscape, to outline a fictional space in... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2004 - A Restless Night of North Woods Gothic

I went to Maine to visit Dan and Emily's new farm. It looked a lot like the house in Brownfield. I wore out my welcome watching horror movies late at night, and went out the next morning looking for other... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2004 - Collective Dreams of a Sentient Mountain

I climbed a desert mountain of red sandstone and black-needled cedar, like the gate to the land of immortals. My family climbed behind me among strange tunnel-like formations, trenches carved by wind in the stone, but I outdistanced them, and... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2004 - Lost in the Woods for Eight Days

I emerge from the green summer woods onto a shaded dirt road where a dozen bedraggled refugees are standing in line before a tall barb-wire fence. "You look terrible," one of them says to me. "I've been lost in... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:40 PM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2004 - Lions, Pith Helmets and Bears

Erin and I were planning a small party at the Maine house for my parents and sisters, Purpura and the Sheehys. I was driving Oona up the long dirt road from Maine 4 towards the Mouse House in pitch dark.... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:41 PM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2004 - A Rod, a Staff, and a Wand

Explorations of a huge, mysterious museum on Cape Cod culminate in the uncovering of a bactrachian cult and a magical duel between myself and its lord, in: A Rod, a Staff, and a Wand - August 1, 2004 Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2004 - I Duel Metallic Ravens

A gothic tale of urban renewal: a deranged prophet leads our heroic sorcerer through a decaying victorian manse in search of malevolent spirits, in: I Duel Metallic Ravens - July 8, 2004 Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2004 - The Zombified Monkey

Ben Schmidt and I are sitting at a bus stop in downtown boston somewhere waiting for justin and damian to show up so we can go out for a summer's eve of drinking. The bus stop is crowded, the buildings... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:47 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2004 - The Deadliest Poison Known to Man

A Quake/The Stand/Resident Evil dream. I do hope this does not become a common genre. The young cast of the Daily Show and I (which happened to be composed of such people as Brian Sheehy, Matt Lucas, Todd Miner, etc,... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2004 - Frantically Writing a Plot

Dreamed I was frantically writing a plot for a play that would go on at the end of the day. It was a wonderful fantasy plot, full of heroes and heroic deeds and exotic settings. And I was in an... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:53 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2004 - Radical Psycho Machine Racing

I am sitting beside Matt Lucas in a large green SUV. We pass through a gate with a banner overhead that reads "Bouncing Mountain Racetrack" or something like that, where Matt gives a ticket to a man at a window.... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)

April 27, 2004 - Witch Nemesis in Lover's Form

Thoroughly interesting post-vegas two hour nightmare. Everyone in my neighborhood, including the purpuras, yosh, andy lucas, several of udi's friends and others, were all involved in the production of a massive and complex rpg/performance art piece in a horror vein,... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2004 - To Wander the Orange Night as a Naked, Madman Vigilante

I traveled back in time to a hallucinatory and romanticized version of my first few weeks at Tufts, with the specific purpose, a la Back to the Future or the odd flashback jaunt in Final Fantasy VII (which I had... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2004 - Thwarting the Hillbilly Torturer

Me and about a dozen other people were being held prisoner by a grizzly ex-military hillbilly in a big old southern farmhouse on a hill in the middle of nowhere. This hillbilly enjoyed the occasional bit of amaeturish torture, but... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 06:42 PM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2004 - A Venus Fly Trap Grows Out of My Shoulderblade

I attended a holiday dinner at the House of Purpura. For the occasion they had procured an enormous case of a light port wine, of which everyone seemed to be partaking generously. Michael was gleefully, sloppily drunk for the first... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2004 - Valhalla

Having lost some sort of Norse-influenced epic battle of huge, oversized swords and immensely heavy armor in the distant past, our family was fated one day to have to fight again. We spent all our lives in the kitchen and... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2004 - The Ever-Devious and Unfathomable Damian Harris

I was the patsy assassin for a rather cleverly and smoothly operated, Sopranos-esque crime organization, of whom my immediate contact was the ever-devious and unfathomable Damian Harris. He placed in my hands an m4 automatic assault rifle with wooden stock... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2004 - Las Dias y Los Noches de Monsignor Martinez

An old couple in Westwood was running a scam where they let on to certain parties that they were interested in funding the production of independent films. They continued to encourage and demand results from those involved, promising again and... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 07:10 PM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2003 - The Dumbek

Last night I returned in dream to a place I had not gone in years, that of a very strange non-existent DeLuca relative. She was big and round and didn't care what anybody thought. She was somehow estranged from her... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 07:05 PM | Comments (0)

August 03, 2003 - Elephants with Four-Fingered Limbs

I saw the Plieades in a dream. How long has it been since I have seen them in waking? I had forgotten it, and only remembered upon perusing the numerology primer given me by Purpura some months ago. They were... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2003 - I Get Kicked Out of a Matrix Clique

I walked out of a brownstone apartment building onto a street corner in a city like Boston. Across the street was an italian bistro/deli type place. I was wearing all black -- black jeans, black leather motorcycle jacket, black boots.... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2003 - A Clumsy Clandestine Society

In a tent in Daniel Boone NF. Incoherent action/mystery farce. I was exploring a small museum/zoo, very odd thing, that had some kind of artist or musician living in it. People came in, on a select basis, and got to... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 06:56 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2003 - The House Was a Clockwork Automaton

I came out of General Dynamics into a dark, overcast summer's night, much like the one that was passing rapidly in the waking world. I was wearing the same clothes I had worn that day, purple shirt, dark shorts. I... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2003 - Individually Wrapped Green Mushrooms

Very late night work in a snazzy red velvet upholstered movie theater. Ren and Stimpy clips. "I got to go home and get some sleep," I tell the girls whose discussion of popular animation has kept me after hours. I... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 09:48 PM | Comments (0)

June 15, 2001 - Yggsdrasil in an Elevator

I drive across a long bridge in the fog. I am driving Oona. It is late at night. Danielle and Diana are in the car, and we are looking for a pub whose name I knew in the dream, but... Read More>>

Posted by mjd at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)