weird dreams

I had a couple vivid dreams last night, a short scary one that made me scream myself awake, and a much longer one that was very cool and complicated. But I don't remember enough about either dream to do them justice in writing. 

I always feel bad for my upstairs neighbor when I have a nightmare that makes me wake up screaming. I think most of the time when I have nightmares like that, I wake up before I do much more than loud moaning, but last night I know I gave a couple short but full-volume screams as I woke up, and I'm sure it was loud enough to disturb my neighbor upstairs. (My next-door neighbor's bedroom is not adjacent to mine, so I think it's less likely to disturb them; also, they just moved out a day or two ago.) Fortunately these are rare events, maybe twice a year if that. 

All I remember of the nightmare is that it started off benignly enough, with me examining some kind of metal spherical device that I think sprouted thin mechanical arms with some kind of tools on them. Then somehow it trapped me so I couldn't move away, and the arms were poking at my head. I think I started moaning when I couldn't move away, and then was jolted into full terror when it poked my head. I wonder whether my cat inadvertently contributed to the nightmare; she was sleeping at my side, so I couldn't have rolled over that way, and she might have pawed at my head as I was moaning—I felt something but that could've just been a dream-feeling and not a real sensation.

The longer dream opened with me overlooking a vista that I recognized as downtown Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains in the background. The mountains looked huge and sharply-defined in a way that I seldom see them; more often than not they're obscured by clouds or just hazy in the distance, in real life. But I had some kind of telescopic vision because I could see them in great detail, and I could see a city over on the peninsula too—it was smaller than Seattle but had skyscrapers too, rather as if Bellevue were moved over there, and even though it was far away I could see it close up. And then I realized there were a couple large structures in the bay up close, some kind of buildings or towers that looked really cool. But suddenly I couldn't get a good look at them because other things were in the way, I think at that point I was in a car driving along the bayside and there were other buildings in the way.

And unfortunately all the really interesting stuff happened after that, but I don't remember it well enough and don't have time to describe it. I was with a couple other people and we went into a building, I think maybe one of the large ones out in the bay, and it was some kind of crypt and art museum for some famous/wealthy/noble family maybe. There were other people in the museum too checking things out, but I realized at one point that I was examining things to figure out how to break in later on, along with the people I'd come there with, and steal something. I never got far enough through the dream to the actual caper part, though.

I like to imagine that these sorts of dreams are glimpses into my life in alternate universes. I think Alternate Me's are living in some very fascinating places and doing cool things, and it'd be neat to know more about that. But then I'm just as happy not knowing what was going on with the nightmare Alternate Me was facing.