I’m certainly empty nesting now that In The Flesh has come to an end. I had planned a few weeks off with just stories and snippets from the archives posted before I began anything major, but my Muse clearly had other ideas.

No, I didn’t dream it, but it bubbled up from somewhere last night about an hour before bedtime, so today I have the first episode of a new serial, literally just finished minutes ago. The Psychology of Dreams 101, is a romp into the sexy unconscious as Leah Kent takes a Psychology of Dreams adult education class, only to discover that the required Dream Journal leads to some seriously kinky night journeys.

I have no idea how long this little ditty will be, nor where it will lead, but I’m willing if you are. Please, read and enjoy The Psychology of Dreams 101.

The Psychology of Dreams 101 Chapter 1

You look beautiful when you dream.

That was the first sentence; that was how it all started. Leah thought it might be some sort of lucid dreaming when she saw the words scrawled across the page of her open journal on the nightstand. She’d had every intention of asking her instructor about it, but then she couldn’t really tell him the dream that had brought it on, could she? It sounded like the sort of thing the unconscious of a pathetically shy introvert would write to herself from the dream world because no one in the waking world would and, while that might be true – the pathetic introvert part, she didn’t want to make it more obvious to her instructor than it probably already was – especially when she had half a crush on him. Besides, it also sounded like the sort of thing a sex-crazed slut might write to herself when her vibe batteries ran down. That made her sound even more pathetic – the vibe and the batteries part, not the slut part.

She had just started a course on the psychology of dreams. She tried to take advantage of the adult education classes whenever possible. It got her out of the house and forced her to interact with other people – real flesh and blood people. With her job, online shopping, online banking, direct debit, grocery delivery, she never had to leave the house really, and that suited her just fine, but she knew it shouldn’t. She knew it wasn’t healthy. Sometimes going to the classes was more of an ordeal than a pleasure, but that was not the case for the psychology of dreams class.

She had to admit, she’d taken that course because she’d overheard several women giggling and talking about how hot the instructor was and how their dreams had become very sexy since they’d started his class. A part of the class work was to keep a dream journal. The women had been sitting at the table next to her in the coffee shop pouring over their journals together and laughing about how they thought Al — Al Foster was the instructor – would respond when he read their dreams. She’d been taking a photography course then, and it had been one of the few times Leah had actually forced herself to initiate conversation, asking the women about the class. They were only too happy to share, and soon she was laughing and blushing and joking right along with them as they told her all about the psychology of dreams course and how it had truly stimulated their dream life. The next term, she signed right up.

A dream journal — that had sounded simple enough when Al – he’d insisted they all call him Al – had explained what it was. All she had to do was write down her dreams every morning when she woke up. But by the time she sat down at the breakfast table with her bowl of cereal and her coffee, dream journal and pen at the ready, she could remember nothing but bits of broken images — nothing dramatic, nothing with hidden psychological meaning – certainly nothing sexy. After a week of drawing blanks from the dream world, Al had helpfully suggested that she keep the journal open by her bed, and that she set an alarm for every two hours. When the alarm went off, she was then to write, just in a few key words of what she remembered, words that would jog her memory in the morning.

The first time the alarm went off, she woke disoriented and confused. By the time she remembered why she’d set the alarm, she also remembered she’d forgot to set the trash out for pick-up. She remembered that she needed to order some more vitamins online. She remembered that she needed to put the clothes in the dryer, but what she didn’t remember was her dreams. The second alarm, she must have unconsciously shut off before she got fully awake, but on the third, she managed a little dream snippet about chasing a big dog through the local McDonalds, a dog who had shamelessly stolen her Big Mac right out of her hand. She hated Big Macs, and big dogs made her nervous. Well that was at least something to analyze, wasn’t it? Though Freud had insisted that sometimes a cigar was just a cigar, surely that didn’t hold true for Big Macs, which she didn’t like, and big dogs, which she didn’t trust. Al would be pleased.

The second night there was a dream about a leather jacket with a huge snake for a collar, a snake that talked — kind of like a parrot. There was a dream in which she’d gone to the supermarket and ended up in a maze unable to find her way out. There was a dream of planting begonias in front of the convenience store around the corner. For the rest of the week, she was excited to see that the setting of the alarms was working. Her key words helped her to remember details, and the rest was easy.

Saturday night she’d stayed up late watching a romcom marathon. She’d had popcorn, polished off the best part of a bottle of wine and there had been plenty of chocolate while she watched The Ugly Truth, Sabrina, Friends with Benefits, and When Harry Met Sally. She loved romcoms. They made her feel like there was someone for everyone, and though she wasn’t unhappy being alone, she liked the thought that somewhere out there, her counterpart was thinking the same thing.

She fell asleep halfway through Sleepless in Seattle, and when she woke up and stumbled off to bed, she’d forgot to set her dream alarms, though in truth she was beginning to remember her dreams more easily now, just as Al had said she would.

Perhaps it was OD-ing on romcoms that caused her to have sexy dream about Al. In truth they were mostly just images, disjointed, arousing, sometimes shameful images – images of walking into his office and finding him masturbating, images of somehow ending up in the men’s locker room at the gym and finding him in the shower, steamy water pulsing over strong arms and a tight ass as he hunched over himself paying particular attention to the soaping of his junk. There was one dream, however, that she remembered vividly. Al sat behind his desk in the empty classroom, clad in his usual polo shirt and jeans. He had asked her to stay after. “I’m not happy with your dream journal, Leah,” he said, looking her up and down. She suddenly felt naked, embarrassed, and dreams being what they were, well she had good reason. She wore only red lace underwear that was nearly transparent; certainly they did nothing to disguise her heavy nipples. “When are you going to learn that all you have to do is just relax and let it happen?”

“I try, Al, really I do, but I just can’t seem to dream about you.”

“Then perhaps you need a little encouragement.” He stood and pulled his belt from its loops around his waist all the while raking her with a critical gaze. “If I lay a few bright pink welts across your nice round ass, do you think maybe when you lie down in bed tonight, when your poor tender bottom touches those clean rough sheets, you might manage to remember me in your dreams?”

“Yes. Yes, I think that might help,” she said. Fuck! What was she thinking? How could she agree to such a thing? And yet, she did, most heartily she did.

Before she could say more, or rethink the arrangement, he yanked her around the desk, dropped back into the chair and pulled her over his knees. He all but tore her panties off her and she woke screaming and begging just as the first lash fell. For a moment she lay in the darkness gasping for breath, struggling with the strange mix of emotions that came from wanting the man to spank her and yet not, but certainly wishing she could go back to sleep and finish the dream. She was wet with sweat and, was she imagining it, or did her bottom actually hurt? She was definitely not imaging her state of arousal. There would be no returning to the dream world until she could make herself a little more comfortable, and that meant fantasizing about just what Al would do after he’d finished spanking her. It didn’t take her long to bring herself over the edge, and then she fell almost instantly back to sleep.

It was the morning sun streaming through the curtains she forgot to close that woke her, disappointed that Al Foster had not returned to her dreamscape, though he had, nonetheless, provided her with a good orgasm. Certainly she couldn’t’ write any of those dreams in her journal. She might have to start a private journal just for sexy dreams – assuming this wasn’t a one-off. God, she hoped this wasn’t a one-off.

As she sat up on the edge of her bed and stretched, she noticed the dream journal open with the pen lying across the page, which read:

You look beautiful when you dream. It was a good dream, the kind you don’t want to wake up from. At last, Leah, you’re doing it right! You can always tell when you do it right by the way your nipples bead beneath the sheet, by the way your lips turned up at the corners, slightly parted as though waiting to be kissed. And, take a sniff, Leah. Your scent is the scent of dreams well dreamed, luscious and ripe. Well done, Leah! Well done!

There was no doubt the writing was her own, though way neater than most of the scrawl she’d written at speed. The thing was, she had no memory of writing it.