I once had a dream that I lived in this mansion-like house. I was all by myself there for some reason. Anyway, I went to sleep in my room, which looked almost identical to my late great-grandmother's room, but I guess at some point during the night, I was awoken by the presence of intruders in my home. I tiptoed across the hall to a small... well, what can only be described as a part laundry room, part kitchen. I took a large carving knife from the room and quietly made my way to the next door in the hall, where voices were coming from. By the way, I seemed to be somewhat aware of what was going on around me-- able to make choices to a teeny extent.

Well, I stood outside the door of the room for a second, then threw it open and jumped into the room, knife held high, and yelled something to the effect of, "AHA!" About four or five men looked blandly up at me. Though none of them seemed to really care that I was there, I noticed that they all had guns and immediately thought better of my choice to confront them, dropped the knife, and bolted from the room, down the hall, and into my own room. Somehow I knew that one of them had been sent after me, so I dived over the side of my bed (which, like my great-grandmother's bed, was a few feet from the wall).

I sidled under the bed as I used to during hide-and-seek and called my friend Liz and not the police because, in the dream, I had talked to her earlier that day. I apparently called her house phone because her mother answered, groggy and vaguely irritated that I was calling at two in the morning. I whispered urgently and nearly incoherently my situation, as I was terrified the robber guy would hear me. He entered the room and proceeded to walk around it just about the time I was satisfied that I had got the best part of my point across to Liz's mom, who I barely know in real life. Fearing that the man would inevitably find me, I took the initiative and popped out from under the bed, and yet, thinking that it was all over anyway, I proceeded to taunt him and I chucked my cell phone at him.

He walked around the bed to face me. I stood there, frozen with apprehension. He pointed his gun at me, right at my face. I surprisingly found it in myself to put fear of death aside and closed my eyes, simply for the reason that I didn't want to be looking at the bullet when it passed between them. The man just stood there and finally said, "Open your eyes!" and something like, "I want to see you when I kill you," or whatever. We stared at each other defiantly for a minute and he said, "I hate you." This is where everything gets a little hazy. This dream isn't exactly new. To the best of my memory, I lunged at him, knocking the gun out of range. Somehow, that stupid pair of orange kitchen scissors my great-grandmother always kept around, materialized out of nowhere. I grabbed them and attacked the man, but he caught them and we began wrestling for control of them. He managed to get me around and was trying to gauge out my eyes while I tried desperately to hold him off. Just then, I noticed that his gun had fallen on the end of my bed, so I finally decided there was nothing else for it and, giving him an extra hard shove, made frantically to retrieve the gun. I got it and pointed it at him. We stood there looking at each other, not sure what to do. At first I think he laughed because he didn't think I could use it, but I made sure it was loaded and he shut up. By this time in the dream, I must have been barely half asleep because it was becoming less like a movie and more like a video game, where I had control over my dream self. For a long time we stood there and the dream sort of faded away because I couldn't decide what to do. I didn't want to kill him, so I considered shooting him in the kneecap, but I knew that however the gun went off, his friends would hear it. That's about it.

By the way, thank you, Sweet Slumber, for your thoughts on my other dream!

You're welcome.

The dream could be your way of dealing with authority figures in your life. Since the main culprit is male, maybe you are having a conflict with a dominating male figure--father, older brother, teacher, etc. ? You refer to him as a "robber." Do you feel you are being robbed of something?

My brother is driving me nuts. He quit his job and came back home because he was depressed because his girlfriend was a... um... not very nice to him. He takes my stuff and doesn't care what I think. Lately he has gotten an apartment and I haven't seen him in a while, but he still has a couple of my things. I can't stand the way he does that, but you can't chastise him for it because he'll act all offended, like he's done nothing wrong.

Also, my mother is always calling me naive for being too trusting of strangers. She says if I don't start paying attention and stuff, I'll get kidnapped or murdered or something. Seems like she had lectured me around the time of that dream.