So.

Last night I had a strange dream.

At least, to me it was a strange dream.

I don't usually remember my dreams, so this one really stuck out to me.

Let's see. There was a lot of stuff in the begining I don't remember, but it was relatively detailed. There were things like those old-fashioned furnaces you see in classic New York city apartments, with little pipes and intricate wiring everywhere. It wasn't important, but the level of detail made me somewhat suspicious through the entire dream. I don't know why.

There was a little girl, I'd guess somewhere between eight and eleven years old. She had brown hair, and it was shorter than mine. Maybe shoulder-length, at most. I think she wore glasses sometimes. She was pretty, and I attributed it to her mother.

Apparently she was my daughter, which is something that surprised me.

My apartment was on top of an apartment building, but not really like a penthouse. More like an extra apartment that just happened to be above the rest. I wore the Trench, and I think I usually had gloves, a scarf, and a fedora on, too.

Everyone said I was cold and distant, but I knew I really felt sorry for this daughter of mine, who lived on her own in a mansion someplace away from me.

No idea about the mother's whereabouts. I guess she had passed away, but the dream-me never even bothered considering it.

So this daughter has some vast mystical power, and apparently I do too, though mine is highly specialized or something. I end up hardly being able to use my own powers to accomplish anything I see in the dream, though the people I do work for tell me that I'm pretty good at it. Apparently, I'm like a meta-human from Read or Die, and this story is focusing on my personal life, where my powers don't matter as much.

She uses her powers once, before I met her, and summons the spirits of every evil being and person that has died in her lifetime, and they all follow her around, invisible to everyone else, trying to take over her mind. I remember finding out about this only much later. I guess I was aware of them, but for some reason I couldn't directly drive them away. Or I could, but something told me if I tried, I'd wake up and miss something important, so I had to keep on doing nothing directly.

Then I found out that the spirits were afraid of me, even though I wasn't doing anything to them, and stayed away from me, even though they were trying to get closer to my daughter.

So I stayed close to her and kept them away.

And I remember holding her, and she was trying to tell me something....

...and I woke up.

Much strangeness.