It seems that this would be the appropriate place to post my newest and most averagely spectacular dream. I'll chop through the boring semi-important parts like a rhinoceros through a department story; tolerably fast and frustratingly messily.

If I had to take stab at a guess, I'd say I was in 16th century France or England... but everyone was speaking English with no accent, so it must have really been "The Fantasy 16th Century AtoJams's Special Set A". I had apparently made a bet with the governor of the city, a young man with the look of the devil in his eye (he was actually very nice, though), to a ludicrous fencing match. He fancied my sword, and believed it should belong to him. I fancied his large sums of money, and believed a few of them should belong to me. My sword was disproportionately ornate and stylish for a man of my worth, so whether I won or lost the error would be corrected.

Apart from our complete lack of safety precautions concerning protection from fatal stab wounds, we also placed ourselves fifty feet above ground on a narrow trellis not wide enough to fit two feet side-by-side. Below was the discomforting thought of being smashed against the city's cobbled roads. We each wore a star shaped brooch on our chests and a feather in our hats. The first one to have the brooch or feather removed from their person would lose the match. Falling to death or injury would also count as a loss, but a fatal stab wound would nullify the bet.

The contest was very long, neither of us acted very defensively, but our agility kept that match alive long enough for us to both receive a multitude of minor wounds. I won't go into details, because that would be boring for everyone but me. In the end we both fell off at the same time due to a cross-counter. We landed on the crowd of onlookers and so weren't seriously injured. We decided the match was a tie. I gave up my delicately crafted (and somewhat bloodied) sword, and he gave me a handsome sum of cash.

It was enough cash to buy a large house with enough left over to live lazily and comfortably for years. Instead of doing this, I recklessly placed it all on another bet with the governor's wife... a rumored powerful sorceress. That's right, there was suddenly magic. This contest was much safer, as she wasn't pointlessly aggressive and daring like her husband. The contest was simply to see who could move a twenty ton boulder the farthest with magic alone in a single leap. She went first, and called up a massive geyser from the Earth, launching the boulder right out of the city and into the nearby farmland. There was enough flooding afterwards to cause property damage, but the citizens were so amazed they didn't voice any complaints. The boulder had flown at least half a mile, but we'd measure after I'd taken my turn. I was happy to be far away from the city, as I wouldn't want to cut back to avoid blowing people up. I had everyone get back a hundred yards and get behind cover... in case my spell misfired. I placed what I called a Hintenmann's Ruby beneath the boulder, and proceeded to cast a spell that would make it explode like a shaped-charge. The boulder flew so far that we couldn't reach it in a day to measure it's distance. In fact, we weren't entirely sure we could find it at all as it had disappeared over the horizon while still a thousand feet off the ground. It's entirely possible that it caused someone in a nearby city to have a very bad day. It was obvious I had won, and so I had doubled my money and received an offer from a military academy to educate people in the ways of blowing things up with magic. The amount of money they offered just to accept was staggering.

I now had enough money to buy a large house, a summer home in the mountains, and enough left over to have my every need catered to for the rest of my life. That... or an above-average sized mansion with a conspicuously low price-tag and enough to pay to keep it fully staffed with servants for around ten years. I opted for the mansion, filled with bothersome plot-arcs as it might be. Upon inspection, the mansion appeared to have nothing wrong with it. It was rumored to be "very creepy" even though it was in fine condition (other than some collected dust due to it's lack of residents) and there were reports of "mysterious disappearances" within it's walls. Just in case it was haunted by ghosts or possessed by demons, I cast a powerful spell over it that would cause evil creatures and spirits to be unable to think clearly... and thus giving them away as they blundered hopelessly about. I found no feeble minded demons tripping over furniture or any ghosts mistakenly believing I wouldn't see them hiding under a rug... so I assumed the place was fine. I hired a full staff and went to bed.

When I woke up in the morning I discovered the entire staff had already quit! They'd removed themselves and their belongings from the premises without so much as a word. Only my butler remained, and he had been sleeping when everyone had left as well. I assumed I must have hired a highly superstitious lot, and they had frightened themselves into departure by sharing too many foolish rumors about the place. I went out to hire a new set of servants... this time questioning them specifically about their fear of said rumors. I specifically told them to come to me about anything unusual or frightening they believed to be happening at AtoJams Manor. Within hours, still during the middle of the day, my butler came to me distressed and sweating. He told me he found out why nobody wanted to stay here and asked me to follow him. He led me to a guest bedroom at the back of the house and told me to open the door a crack and peek inside. A maid and a carpenter stood nervously back around a corner. I opened the door a bit and saw inside that all the furniture looked wrong. It was old and of poor quality, some of it was upside down and there was a table and chair apparently nailed the the wall. Then I noticed it... there was what appeared to be a woman in a nightgown... hanging by a noose... and with a leather bag over her head. She had been there long enough to rot, which was bothersome, because she was definitely not there when I bought the mansion one day prior. The air in the room unexplainably hot and humid. Her body was turning and shifting enough to look as though it was blowing about in the breeze, which was not a possibility. The leather bag had what one could see as a large mouth hole sewn into it, wide enough to reach halfway around one's head. As I stared in bewilderment, her head suddenly lifted, turned in my direction and emitted a deep and inhuman exhaling noise. As it did so the "mouth" opened and exposed a set of appropriate to it's size jagged teeth. The noose came loose from what it was hanging on and the body fell to the floor on it's front. With it's torso perfectly flat on the ground, and with the head turned up far enough to break a normal person's neck, the limbs started to reach out like spider legs and the thing crawled around the room... quite aimlessly... it just started to climb up the walls when I decided it was time to close the door and cry for a while. I had NO idea what this thing was. Demon, maybe? Ghost? Sure, why not? Fucking nightmare? Certainly.

Upon interrogation, I found that the butler, the maid and the carpenter had each individually peered into the room. The butler and the carpenter had both seen a rotting woman with no bag on her head sitting in the "sideways on the wall" chair and beckoning them to enter. The maid had seen a rotting man standing by the window and asking her to come look at something interesting happening outside. This is when I realized what was happening and what this was. The creature was actually a Mimic. A very large Mimic. It was, in fact, the entire room. My confusion spell had affected it and that was why everything looked so strange. From the misplaced furniture, to the uncomfortable atmosphere, to the rotting flesh of the fake person inside. The Mimic was trying to get the butler, maid and carpenter to enter so that it could eat them... but wasn't very convincing in it's confused state. It recognized me as being too dangerous to try to eat, though, and had attempted to frighten me away when I opened the door. This Mimic had apparently survived for decades being part of this house... god knows how it got there... and was obviously the explanation for the mysterious disappearances.

Sadly, I woke up before doing anything about it.