The One With the Movie About Violent Sleep Disorders

I was in a large department store in the men's department looking at some sandals that were just basically regular black shoes with lots of the leather cut out to make them strappy - there were lots of straps.

I was trying to find a pair that was 1/2 a size smaller than the ones I tried on but I was surprised that the size 31's fit me as well as they did - they ran small obviously because I normally wore a 29 or so.

Being in a department store in a normal situation turned into it being night, after closing, and instead of being the retail sales floor, it was the warehouse or storage area of the store.

It was after closing, but there were a number of people in there looking around.  I remember a girl and a blond guy in addition to me.  I think the girl either had a bike or was looking for one.

I had a weird role in the dream.  The idea of the dream was that it was actually a movie.  I was kind of at the same time just a 3rd party observer and one of the main characters, it seemed.

The premise of the movie was some people that had sleep disorders so when something in life bothered them (say, being touched by other people), they would react in their sleep (like sleepwalking).

One guy with dark hair (I couldn't really tell if he was me or not) didn't like to be touched and would kick people in the head (I think he explained it that he would kick you in the eye) in his sleep.

But, I also remember "being" a different person (feeling like what it was to be inside them, kind of) and his reaction was just less-specific violence.  I remember the feeling picking someone up by the neck and holding them against a wall.

There were two other guys looking for shoes (sneakers) but they were moving stuff around.  They put stuff really high up on a fixture in the middle of the floor, and I remember while looking around some of the shoe boxes fell on me.

These two guys were up to no good, unlike the rest of us who were just looking around.  Once the boxes fell, the bad guys got agitated and wanted our contact information.  We questioned that and the blond kid explained that they wanted our e-mail addresses, etc. so they could place us in the warehouse to prevent us from snitching on them.

While the bad guys were agitated, they were pushing us around and grabbing our arms and stuff and at least one of us warned them not to touch us because of the disorders.

Next thing I remember was being "inside" another guy - a black guy - who was walking home.  I think he was in the warehouse (good guy - one of a total of 4 good people in the warehouse who were the main characters in the movie with sleep disorders) but don't remember seeing him beforehand.  He walked by this hooker who was lying on the sidewalk and people were pouring gas on her and set her on fire.  She was strung out on heroine so she didn't know what was going on.

They tried to lay another hooker (not as strung out) next to her and do the same and they snuggled up to each other, as if to protect each other from sleeping on the sidewalk.  They were both on fire, but it took a while for the first hooker to exhibit some distress - she was waving her arms around and the second wrapped her in a the foil lined blanket they were lying on.

The first hooker died, but the second was fine (even though she was exposed to the flames), so one of the bad people (I think it was a short woman that reminded me to Snookie) stabbed her in the stomach with a really big kitchen knife - shaped like chef's knife but much wider.

It seems as those the bad guys in the warehouse were in a gang or something and were killing people to establish a serial killer or something - maybe as something to implicate us in?  I think they wanted to find six people to kill.

The dude I was inside kept walking toward home, up a hill, when some guy jumped him from behind, pulled his hoodie over his head and tried to tie the strings.  I remember thinking this was a normal risk in his neighborhood - to get mugged this way.  The guy/me ended up throwing the guy over his shoulder, Judo style, kind of down the hill.

The guy left because there was a cop car whose dash camera was filming the whole thing.  The car belonged to the guy's uncle or dad, who he lived with.

He got to the porch where his aunt or mom was with his dad, and they were like "What the hell's going on?"  In his head he knew these bad people were trying to get something or had something on him.

Dream Symbols: Guns

I've had several dreams involving guns.

One of the theories out there is that the gun represents a penis or male sexuality. More generally, it can represent fears or anxieties - threats in general.

Weapons in general can represent conflict, anger or resentment in life.  It's interesting all the weapons that have shown up in my dreams are phallic in nature, though:  wooden stakes, guns, knives.  I wonder if women have dreams of different kinds of weapons.

Many of my dreams involve me being shot at, or other people being shot or shot at.  According to my dream books, this can represent fear of being hurt or being threatened.

I don't recall ever having shot a person in my dreams - most often both the shooter and the person being shot / shot at are not me.  I'm not really sure what it means that I'm removed from the action.

[Update:  I polled some people to find out what weapons have shown up in their dreams.  I'll keep adding as I hear more:]

• babies in canons [male dreamer, used against others]
• giant chopsticks [male dreamer, used against others]
• used iPhones [male dreamer, used against dreamer (thrown)]