Ella Scandal
Ever
since I was a child, I’ve been a lucid dreamer. For anyone not familiar with
what that is, lucid dreaming is a situation where the dreamer wakes up inside
their dream. To the outside world they’re still fast asleep, but in their own
heads they’re wide awake, aware that they are inside their own dream and as
such are able to manipulate the circumstances and events that happen there in
countless different ways.
And
this is how I write some of my stories.
When
I have an idea, my mind clings to it in the same way a selfish child clings to
their favourite toy. I think about it as I go about my day, find myself losing
track of conversations because I’ve retreated too far into my own head. And at
the end of the day, I turn it over in my thoughts until I fall into that
magical place where I’m not quite awake but not fully asleep either. Because
whatever story it is has been so large in my mind throughout my waking hours I
find it dominates my sleep, too.
Most
often I have nothing more than a regular dream in which my brain shows me
either what I’ve written and what naturally comes next, or something so off the
mark I often can’t decipher it. When I wake after those dreams I grab the
notebook that lives on my bedside table and record every detail I can before
the waking world chases them away.
According
to some, we forget 50% of a dream within five minutes of waking. Five minutes
after that, we we’ve forgotten almost all of it, only retaining about 10% worth
of broken images, disconnected words and the lingering feelings we associate
with them.
But
sometimes, I’ll wake up in the dream, usually as a casual observer, and I can
literally make things happen. By
tugging a string here or uttering a word there, I can manipulate the
‘characters’ in my dream. I can change their actions, alter their thoughts,
their opinions. What’s more, I remember almost all of my lucid dreams for weeks
after, and this gives me the basis, sometimes even the details, of a story.
I
love having this kind of power over my dreams, because it gives me a power over
my creativity that I sometimes don’t have when it comes to putting fingers to
keyboard to try to make a story happen.
Because
of my experiences with lucid dreaming, I’ve always been fascinated with the
sleeping mind, and one ‘superpower’ that never fails to capture my attention in
books, TV shows, and film is that of dream manipulation.
Imagine
having the ability to enter another person’s dream. To casually observe the
inner workings of their mind and play voyeur to their subconscious thoughts. To
discover how their brain works through their waking issues, or to even help
them reach conclusions just out of their grasp or to show them that a problem
isn’t as big as they think it is.
Sure,
nine times out of ten this kind of superpower is used to abuse and harm in
fiction, but wouldn’t it be a special kind of magic if it was real and in the
possession of someone with only pure intentions?
Do
you know that subliminal messaging is a thing? Hidden communications within
outwardly normal things that are placed there to tickle our subconscious minds
into wanting and feeling things we wouldn’t otherwise want or feel, and to
reinforce messages we haven’t even picked up on.
It
happens to us every day in advertising, music and television. From bottles that
appear to be curvy legs and a round ass, to gasping mouths preparing to consume
long food that are accompanied by the words ‘blow you away’, you’ll find that
much subliminal messaging is focused on sex. The rest? Money. After all, what
is advertising but a ploy to get us to part with ours?
Maybe
you’ve read/seen Fight Club and have squirmed in discomfort at the very thought
of the way Tyler Durden passes the time during his shifts at the theatre where
he works as a projectionist. That’s an example of subliminal messaging, too,
however disturbing it may be.
There’s
a plethora of recordings out there that have subliminal messages layered
beneath music which feed you positive affirmations. Weight-loss techniques,
stop-smoking encouragement, peaceful sleep, etc. Now, these things don’t work
for me (yes, I tried for the sake of this post as well as to sate my own
curiosity) but the idea of it does intrigue me.
Something
else that grabs my attention and won’t let go is the wet dream. Not so much the
ones involving a penis because we all know they happen. The wet dreams that
interest me are the ones that happen to women. Some wake up with signs of
ebbing sexual arousal and evidence of orgasm, others wake up while their
nocturnal climaxes are still in full swing. I’ve experienced both.
When
I was younger, I used to have very strange sexual dreams that usually involved
me humping some inanimate object. The spine of a book, the edge of a mattress,
or a drinks bottle. I would always wake up before dream me managed to orgasm,
and I’d be left feeling frustrated but not understanding why.
When
my sexual dreams started to involve other people, I began waking after orgasm.
My thighs would be damp, my muscles achy, and I’d feel like I’d slept for a
thousand years. Once I learned I could exercise some level of control over my
dreams, I would wake up during orgasm. Sometimes it scared me, but other times
I’d wait until it was over then laugh breathlessly, delighted that my mind had
given me something so intense.
Interestingly,
my sleep orgasms are significantly stronger than any orgasms my husband can
give me. They’re stronger than the ones I give myself, and as a sex toy
enthusiast I can achieve some heady heights of self-pleasure. Sleep – or brain
– orgasms are super powerful, and they’re even better if you can recall what
mental workings made them happen.
And
so, after a particularly filthy dream involving myself (which is an oddity, as
I rarely feature in my own dreams these days) and the 2008 movie version of
Professor Trevor Anderson, my interests came together and I found the
inspiration for my contribution to Sinful Pleasures, the first ever anthology
from Sinful Press: The Dream Feeder, which focuses on dream manipulation through
verbal subliminal messaging. I hope you enjoy it as much as my sleeping self
enjoyed cooking it up.
Excerpt from “The Dream Weaver”
Sinful
Pleasures
Moss covered boulders sit in beds of bright tulips;
daffodils bend and sway. A gust of wind blows over me, sending the dandelion
clocks into a frenzy. They billow around me, moving me forward, brushing
against my tingling skin.
“Half a dozen of them
drift past your face and you gasp.”
They aren’t
dandelion seeds at all! All of the tiny fuzzy things floating around me are
women. The fluff is their hair and the tickles are coming from their fingers.
They smile at me, whispering, singing, stroking my skin. I lift my arm,
watching them dance over my hand, some of them weaving in and out of my fine
hairs, others bending over to kiss me and standing up again with blushing
cheeks.
“This is so beautiful,” I murmur.
When the
dandelion women are blown away by the breeze I’m left standing in a space all
of my own. I want to stay right where I am. The massive white flowers in front
of me are on stems that tower over my head, and I can tell from the gorgeous,
huge bluebottles that fly into the undergrowth but don’t fly back out again
what they are.
Venus
Flytraps.
I’m so
reluctant to move on, but the familiar voice is soothing me. It’s telling me to
walk forward, to pass beneath the pretty flowers. That I’ll be safe because I’m
not alone.
I trust that
voice, so I do as it says. I take a few cautious steps, coming to a stop just
before the first clump of plants. I look up, watching bees land on the petals,
seeing them crawl toward the stamen. The droning buzz makes my mind feel
sleepy, but my body is alert, my nerves tingling with anticipation.
Right here at
my feet are a dozen closed leaves. They aren’t still, though. Rhythmic, pulsing
movements warp the shiny green surface as they visibly shake on their stems.
Curiosity chases away my fear of those snapping pods and I get closer. A hushed
sigh catches my ears just as one of them shivers, and slowly it starts to open.
I cry out in
surprise, startling the bees above me into flight.
What I’d
thought to be a bluebottle isn’t. It isn’t even a fly. Oh, it has wings
alright, but it’s the size of a coconut, and just like the dandelion clocks,
it’s a woman. Dark skinned, green haired with opalescent blue eyes. Beautiful.
When she
stretches her wings and takes off, she zips right past my face, winking at me
and licking her lips. It’s such a suggestive gesture I feel my eyelids lower,
my stomach muscles tighten. She circles my head once, twice, and again,
whispering as she passes by my ear for the last time.
“Get on your knees and
taste it.” It sounds so much like that familiar voice!
Casting my
eyes down I shake my head in awe. It’s not a Venus Flytrap at all. I laugh.
That’s why the blue bottle had looked so smug! She had been sandwiched between
two plump, wet vulvae.
Sinful Pleasures blurb
Sinful
Press welcomes you to lose yourself in Sinful Pleasures.
Join us as we weave our way from mainstream
erotic romance to surreal sex-filled dreamscapes and everything in between,
created by some of the best new and established voices in the erotica
genre.
Janine Ashbless, Ella Scandal, Sonni de Soto,
Jo Henny Wolf, Lily Harlem, Lady Divine, Gail Williams, Samantha MacLeod, Tony
Fyler, Ellie Barker, Lisa McCarthy
Buy links
Support your small publisher and buy the paperback direct
Author bio
Ella
Scandal is a smut loving, sex-positive blogger from the UK. Her first story was
born of an attempt to exorcise a recurring dream and she hasn’t stopped writing
since. When Ella isn’t keeping her family in clean socks and herding cats, she
writes reviews and filthy short stories for her blog.
Website:
www.scandarella.com
Twitter:
@ella_scandal
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