I had the neatest dream last night. There was this organization and it was preparing for its annual hunt. They would steal shadows, and later that night would release them. The shadows were actually people’s spirits, and the group would hunt and kill them. The people would mysteriously die in their sleep, and no one would ever suspect the group.
The main character was a kid who had a stuffed bear. Or rabbit. Or dragon. It kept changing, and I was too busy watching the hunters’ shadows stalking the kid, trying to take his shadow, to pay attention. The kid tried to tell his mom what was going on, but like any mom in a horror movie, she didn’t believe him.
The attempt cost him time, though, and the hunters caught his shadow. With the afternoon fading into evening, he tried to gather information on the group, and prepared to run . . .
That’s, of course, when I woke up.
I have to finish that story, I thought, heading on-line to look for it.
As the sleepiness faded, my certainess that I’d read it somewhere began to fade. I found several articles about the Wild Hunt, the Most Dangerous Game, and an episode of My Little Pony, but my story did not pop up.
Impossible, I thought. This story has to exist. It felt so real, there was a story to follow and everything. What did I do, plot in my sleep?
Um. Kind of.
My subconscious gave me the images and the story threads. Dream-logic filled in basic dialogue and background on the hunters (they either want to kill you or sleep with you. Sometimes both), and my own personal mythology made up stuff about the kid’s life (single mom, means well, parents never believe, bad guys can move through shadows, I want a stuffed bear. No, tiger. No, rabbit. It should talk, though).
Since I’m currently in the midst of two revisions, I wrote the story idea down. In a couple months I’ll decide if I want to keep the kid young or make him older. Will the stuffed animal actually be someone’s shadow who became trapped in the form? How long has the organization been around? Besides killing people, what do they want to do?
It looks like it’d be a fun project. Hopefully my next dream will offer a title; Shadow Hunt, sadly, is already taken ;)
Written by Luisa Prieto
Dark fantasy writer by day, dark fantasy writer by night. I'm charmingly dull that way ;)
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Kimber wrote,
OMG! That sounds awesome! You totally have to write it because I want to read it.
I think I must do some subconscious plotting when I sleep too. For one thing, I often wake in the middle of the night with conversations going on in my head. Conversations which I then have to jot down before they evaporate and disappear forever.
Second, I do my very best, read as freshest, writing first thing in the morning, before my brain gets a chance to fully wake up and before my internal editor gets to work. (I think she gets in around lunchtime, the lazy slut!) Lol!
So even though I always say I’m not a plotter, the truth is my subconscious might have other ideas.
Now, hurry with the revisions so you can write this story!
Link | July 13th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Jet Mykles wrote,
Now that sounds like a really cool story!
Link | July 14th, 2007 at 10:07 am
L.M. Prieto wrote,
Thanks!
*fights off plot bunnies*
I want to read this story too. It felt so cool :)
Link | July 19th, 2007 at 11:47 pm