I am sharing this account with your group under the agreement that it is never shared with anyone else. What I’m about to tell you is extremely embarrassing, and I only dare to share it with anyone because I too want very much to get to the bottom of these dreams. They have been with me since I was a young girl, and I am grateful for all that they’ve done, but there’s clearly something abnormal at play here. They’re a mystery, and I live for a good mystery!
As a matter of fact, I’ve written my own series of short mystery novels. Of course, I would never actually publish them. They’re just meant for fun, and I’ll admit that they contain a hefty amount of self-insertion, but who could blame me? After all, they’re based on my dreams, dreams that I experience through the eyes of my fictional alter ego: Dorothy Kim!
You ought to know that I’ve been obsessed with mystery novels for as long as I can remember. In particular, I’ve always adored those “girl-detective” novels from America. I’m a big fan of The Jennie McGrady Mysteries and The Kay Tracey Mystery Stories, but my all-time favourite is Nancy Drew. I was enthralled by the classics like The Mystery at Lilac Inn, or The Clue of the Tapping Heels, and oh my God, I actually wore out my copy of Mystery of the Winged Lion and my parents had to buy a new one for me. Nancy will always have a special place in my heart!
Shortly after I began collecting all the Nancy Drew novels, I found a peculiar letter inside my copy of The Bungalow Mystery. It had a wax seal with a sun imprinted in it, and it contained nothing but this gold sheet. Sadly, I lost the letter long ago. I don’t normally lose things so easily, and I’d actually started to question whether or not it was ever real, but I still have the book that I found it in!
It was after I found that letter that I started having dreams where I was the girl detective. I’m more or less lucid in all of them, but I typically have no control. Have you ever had a dream where you can see everything happening, but you can’t control yourself? That’s how my dreams tend to work. My body moves and my mouth speaks, but I’m really just along for the ride. I still have all my senses, and I even know the thought process behind my actions, but I just have no agency. It’s like I’m a passenger without a steering wheel inside of my own brain. I know it sounds freaky, but it’s not all that bad. It’s not that different from losing yourself in a good book.
Anyways, those dreams were the beginning of Dorothy Kim, and she’s been with me ever since. I always dream about her adventures whenever I’m feeling… excited to do some writing.
Do you know how a lot of mystery authors will come up with the ending first and then write backwards? Well, that’s pretty much how my stories have always worked. I’ll have a dream where I’m dropped into the climax of one of Dorothy’s adventures, and then I’ll write a story about how I got there. I provide the background, the puzzles, and the clues, while the dream provides the um… thrills.
My offer still stands for you guys to simply read one of my complete titles, but since you’re only concerned with the dreams themselves, I’ll just go ahead and describe the most recent dream that I’ve had…
It starts out like most of the other dreams. I’m creeping up to a rickety old warehouse on the waterfront. I’ve come there after school hoping to catch a ne’er-do-well in a sinister act, and this window is the only way I can enter without being seen. I can see my reflection in the window as I cautiously approach the glass, and I know immediately that I am no longer Soo-jin. I’m Dorothy Kim!
(I guess I should tell you about Dorothy before I go on. She’s one part self-insertion, and one part Nancy Drew clone. She looks a lot like me back when I was in school, which admittedly, isn’t much different from how I look now. Just like me, her parents moved around a lot for work, and she got transferred between schools way too frequently to ever make friends. But whereas I turned to reading, Dorothy turned to solving mysteries and getting into trouble. She’s kind of matured alongside me, but she also sort of hasn’t. I’m all grown up now, but Dorothy hasn’t aged since she was eighteen. I guess it’s not that different from how Nancy Drew was a teenager for decades. It’s just part of her identity at this point!)
I’m dressed up in the usual attire: a navy-blue shirt dress with a Peter Pan collar and sleeves that end above the elbow. It has three buttons between the collar and the waist, where a ribbon belt keeps the fabric tucked close to my slim figure. The dress’ skirt goes past my knees, so you can’t see the ends of my high white socks. My signature look is completed by a blue pair of Mary Jane shoes and a cyan hairband. It’s a very vintage look, just like everything else in the dreams. Dorothy Kim’s adventures are never really set in any specific year, but the world is distinctly ‘early 20th century America’. (I personally love the style!)
Anyways, I check the warehouse’s window and find that it is unlocked. Perfect! I check one last time to make sure that the coast is clear before quietly lifting the window open and crawling through the opening. I’m now in a maintenance room. Brooms, buckets, and hand tools can be seen thanks to the light from the window, but the room itself is unlit. However, the narrow line of orange light surrounding the door frame tells me that someone is on the other side.
I press my ear to the door but can barely make out any sounds. If I’m hoping to eavesdrop on an incriminating conversation, then I’ve got another thing coming. My impatience gets the better of me, and I decide to use my eyes instead of my ears. I turn the latch slowly enough to not make a sound. Then, I push the door open slightly, just enough to give me a crack to peer through.
Sadly, the door doesn’t even allow me that luxury. A noisy creak echoes from its rusty hinges, and suddenly, my secret hiding place isn’t so secret.
There are at least three men and one woman in the warehouse. I can see that much through the crack in the door. Every single one of them perks their head up at the sound of the creaky door and shoot their gaze straight at me. I recognize the woman’s face and realize right away that I am in a load of trouble. I gasp lightly and jump away from the door. I’ve got to alert the authorities! I scramble for the window and practically dive for its square opening. I get my upper body through the window and begin clambering the rest of the way out when I hear the creaky door swinging open and feel a pair of big, strong hands grab hold of my ankles.
“Gah,” I scream as I’m forcefully pulled back in through the window!
I hear a gravelly voice shout, “Hold it right there, girlie!”
The next thing I know, I’m hauled all the way into the warehouse with both of my arms held in the firm grip of two brutish men. I try to pull away from them, but they’re just too strong. My heart rate escalates as I realize that I’ve been caught.
“Well, well, well,” a woman says. “What have we here?”
Both of the thugs that hold me answer her. “A snoop, Ma’am,” one says. “An unexpected guest,” the other says.
“More like an uninvited pest,” the woman responds. “And if it isn’t the most bothersome pest of all: Dorothy Kim!”
I gaze up defiantly at the woman. She’s taller than me, and older too, with gaunt cheeks and heavy makeup to cover her budding wrinkles. Her dark, wavy hair doesn’t fall far past her maroon cloche hat. She wears a two-piece suit composed of a long-sleeve jacket and a long but slim skirt, both the same shade of red as her hat. The buttons and belt on her jacket are glossy black, much like her gloves and her heels. Beneath the glove of her left hand, there is a bulge on her index finger. The bulge may be covered, but I know exactly what it is. It is a gold signet ring with a sun engraved into it, just like the rings worn on her goons. The sun ring is the mark of a dastardly cabal that Dorothy has been thwarting since the start of her sleuthing career. It is the mark of the Sun Gang!
(I came up with the name when I was thirteen. Don’t judge me!)
Not only have I clashed with the Sun Gang many times before, but I have also clashed with this woman on many occasions. That is how I know that there’s trouble at hand. The woman is known as ‘The Fabulist’, a prolific counterfeiter and con artist. She’s wanted in over a dozen countries under various monikers, and she’s a high-ranking agent of the Sun Gang.
“The one and only,” I say to her. “The police are already on their way. Let me go right now, and I might just plead for a reduced sentence for the lot of you.”
“Oh, please,” she laughs. “If the police knew about us, we’d have been raided already. Instead, all we have to deal with is a single nosy schoolgirl.”
I frown. She’s seen right through my bluff. “Well, I figured you out easily, and you left more than enough clues for anyone else to do the same! Everybody knows that you were going to try and steal the Jade Tiger before it got moved to a secret location. It follows naturally that you’ll try to steal it again when it goes up for auction tonight.”
The Fabulist slowly shakes her head. “Tsk tsk tsk, I see you’re still too smart for your own good, dear detective. However, you’re only half-right.” She pulls a wad of cash from her pocket and waves it around playfully. “I’m not stealing anything. I’ll be buying it with the money that I’ve worked hard to make.”
I knew exactly what she meant by that. The Fabulist was up to her old tricks again. Plan A had been thwarted, and Plan B was the classic scheme of counterfeit bills.
“You’ll never get away with this,” I cry. “No one will fall for your ploy!”
“On the contrary, my dear,” she smirks. “The auction house doesn’t suspect a thing, and neither do the police. You’re the only loose end of our little operation…” She raises a hand and loudly snaps her fingers. “…and loose ends need to be tied up.”
At the sound of those snapping fingers, shivers tingle their way down my spine, and I feel my cheeks redden. I don’t know whether that reaction is Dorothy’s, or my own. (You know what, let’s just say that it’s Dorothy’s.) I’ve heard that snap many times before in my dreams and I know what it means from years of experience. It’s a non-verbal command for the villains of the week to get to work and do what they do best…
My arms are twisted behind me, and my wrists are crossed together behind my back. I feel rope caressing around my skin as they envelop my wrists in their strong embrace. My wrists are firmly tied up, and the excess rope is wrapped around my waistline, securing my hands to the small of my back. Meanwhile, another goon is wrapping rope around my chest. Four strands run above and below my breasts before he cinches them between my arms and my ribs. This causes the ropes to hug my arms even tighter, ensuring that I won't be using my hands anytime soon.
With my arms all bundled up into a neat little package, the goons turn their focus to my legs. I feel the ropes slide across my ankles, as well as above and below my knees. I know that my legs will soon be welded together from top to bottom, but that’s not where I’m looking. My eyes are on the Fabulist, who bears a devious smirk as she reaches into her pocket and whips out a silky handkerchief. She balls it up, and my heart races as she approaches me.
She raises the wadded cloth to my mouth and coos, “We can’t have you running your mouth about our little operation, so let’s put a cork in it, shall we?”
I can hear the goon behind me, ready to force my mouth open if I don’t comply. I know that the result will be the same no matter how hard I resist, so I open my mouth and allow her to stuff the gag in. I try to maintain a defiant staredown with my captor, but I’m startled by the quick and rough treatment that my mouth receives. The instant she pushes the stuffing through my lips, a white scarf is forced between my teeth. The cloth stretches across my cheeks, pushing the stuffing further into my mouth as it is tied off tightly behind my head.
“Mnm,” I groan with discomfort.
The gag is already working wonders on my voice, but the bad guys aren’t done yet. Another crony folds up a second white scarf and ties it over top of my cleave gag, forming an OTM gag. (I’ve heard that they’re also called ‘detective gags’, which seems pretty fitting in my opinion.) Both gags are tied beneath my hair. This combination of stuffing, cleave, and OTM is the Sun Gang’s most common gag in these situations, and I can see why. It always does a great job of taking whatever I have to say and muffling it down into these humiliating whimpers.
By now, my legs are fully tied up in three different places, and I’m completely helpless. The Fabulist’s cronies have done their job excellently. She cups my chin and lifts my head up so that we lock eyes. She looks down on me and smiles her dominant, derisive smile before saying, “This is how I like to see you, little miss sleuth. At least now we can trust you to behave yourself.”
I twist around in my ropes and snarl into my gag. “Mgrrmn mmph.”
That display is meant to demonstrate defiance and vigor, but all it does is demonstrate that I really am her helpless little prisoner. She throws her head back and lets out a triumphant cackle that makes me feel half my size. The Fabulist may be campy, cliché, and outdated, but she has a commanding aura about her that makes her such a great villain of mine.
“Oh, how I do love that fighting spirit of yours, but it’s something that we could all do without for a while.” She turns her back on me and saunters away, and as she moves away, she loudly says, “See to it that our guest doesn’t cause any more trouble while I get her quarters ready.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” says one of the goons.
Those two words are the last thing I hear. Shortly thereafter, my ears are stuffed full of cotton, rendering them as useless as my arms and legs. A hulking thug with a wide jaw and coarse stubble approaches me, snickering as he folds up yet another white cloth. The wicked villain is deliberately toying with me, allowing me to see the blindfold coming before he presses it over my eyes and drops me into a world of darkness and silence.
(I don’t know quite how to describe a dream devoid of my sight and their hearing. It sounds so out of the ordinary, but I swear, it felt 100% real! I could still feel everything from the ropes against my skin, to the silk that filled my mouth, to the intense pounding of my heart. Of course, I couldn’t complain at all. This was quickly shaping up to be one of Dorothy Kim’s most thrilling adventures to date!)
Last edited by TomYi2 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
I pull on my ropes every now and again to test them. I don’t make any progress, but then again, they’ll just tie me up even tighter if I am successful. I may be blindfolded with my ears stuffed, but I know that I’m being watched. I can feel their heavy footsteps resonating through the floorboards. My captors are circling me, watching diligently to make sure that the great Dorothy Kim doesn’t pull off another great escape.
Of course, I’m not deterred at all by the extra security. I do so love a challenge!
After several minutes, I’m swept off my feet by a pair of strong arms. I involuntarily moan with surprise into my gag. The warmth of human flesh presses against me, and I determine that I’m being cradled in someone’s arms. I bounce up and down a fair bit, and it feels as though I’m being carried up a flight of stairs. Are they taking me to the ‘quarters’ that the Fabulist had mentioned?
“Mnmh,” I moan into my gag again as I realize where I’m going. The warehouse must have a loft in the attic space. They’re taking me upstairs like a princess locked in a tower.
I feel my carrier come to a halt, and I am gently lowered down onto some manner of stretchy tarp. It feels like a cot. My first instinct after I’m laid down is to sit back up, but I stop myself. Without my eyes and ears, it won’t do me any good. Better to lay still like a good little lamb and hope that they eventually let their guard down.
No such luck. By resting my foot on the cot’s rigid frame, I can feel the footsteps of my lumbering captors, just like I could downstairs. It feels like they’re pacing nearby. It’s one thing to be bound and gagged, but they won’t even grant me the luxury of being left alone. They’re really going out of their way to deprive me of every tool in my arsenal and render me completely powerless. However, there is still one thing that they underestimate: Dorothy Kim’s uncanny attention to detail!
The Sun Gang is after the Jade Tiger, which is the largest jade statue in the world. The thing is practically life-sized, and it’s about as heavy as it is valuable. The Fabulist only has four lackeys, so she’ll need all of them to help her deliver it from the auction house to its intended destination. That means that they’ll eventually have to leave me to my own devices once the auction begins, which is at six o’clock tonight. At the time that I was blindfolded, it was 4:06 PM, and twelve minutes have passed since then. That means that I have to wait an hour and forty-two minutes.
One hundred and two minutes.
Six thousand one hundred and twenty seconds.
That’s how long I’ll have to wait before I can make my move. Until then, the Sun Gang’s tight security means that I have little choice but to pass the time in bed, tightly bound, thoroughly gagged, and deprived of my senses. Fine. I can do that. I can do that all day.
In a predicament such as mine, any sleuth of a lesser mind would have surely gotten distracted and lost track of the time before long, but there’s a reason that I am such a stupendous sleuth. Despite the chafing of the rope on my bare skin, despite the pressure of the gag on my lips, and despite the aforementioned feelings being amplified by my loss of sight and sound, I am able to count the seconds away. It’s quite challenging, but as I’ve said before, I love a good challenge.
“Hmmph!” I jolt in my bed when I feel a soft and slender hand stroking my hair. It’s the only physical contact I’ve felt in over an hour, and it catches me totally off guard. My hair is stroked a couple more times before I feel a pair of soft lips press against my cheek. I obviously can’t hear what is transpiring, but it’s surely the Fabulist. It has to be! She’s come to gloat one last time before bidding me farewell. I imagine she’s smiling down on me right now, saying something that would make me feel helpless, humiliated, and weak if I could hear them. She doesn't need to say anything though, because the kiss makes me feel all of those ways. With nothing but a kiss, that woman is able to exert so much power over me. She’s so awesome (at being a villain, I mean!)
The lips pull away, and the hand soon follows. I’m once again left in my empty void with nothing but my countdown and the unwavering clutches of my bindings. Sure enough, around the five thousand mark, I notice a change in the pattern of my captor’s footsteps. They’re more active now, more distant. A moment later, I can’t feel their presence at all anymore. They must have left early for the auction house. Still, I might as well wait another minute or two for good measure. I can stand to wait a little longer after all.
Finally, the time has come for me to make my move. I twist my bound body around and shuffle around the cot, feeling with my head and my feet. It has a rounded steel frame, but I nevertheless find a corner that I’m able to use to rub the blindfold off of my head.
The room is nearly pitch black. Luckily, my eyes are already fully adjusted to the darkness. I can see where the walls are, and there’s a silhouette in the darkness that I can assume is the door. I sit over the edge of the cot, rise to my feet, and start hopping towards the dark shape. I reach it before long and find that it is indeed a doorway. Sadly, it’s locked. Of course it is. The scoundrels probably boarded it up too. I’ll have to find another way out. I begin shuffling along the wall and am lucky enough to find the light switch.
At long last, I can see again! That is the good news. The bad news is that the bad guys have given me literally nothing to work with. I look around and see that I have indeed been moved to an empty loft; And when I say empty, I mean empty. In fact, the cot is literally the only object in the room. There’s nothing that I can use to break free of my ropes. At least the room is very well lit. Bright lightbulbs hang from the ceiling and thoroughly illuminate every detail of the sprawling room. The lightbulbs are too high up for me to ever reach, and there doesn’t appear to be any loose nails or sharp corners that I could use to cut the rope. The most promising thing by far is the window.
There’s only one small window, and it’s on the opposite end of the room, but hopping on bound legs is a skill that I have years of experience with. I am able to hop over to the window in a matter of seconds without ever losing my balance. Unfortunately, all I find there is disappointment. The panes are completely opaque. Wide brush marks cover the panes, which have been lathered in a coat of matte black paint. They've actually gone so far as to paint the window! Now no one on the outside will ever see me through the glass. My next move is to check and see if the window will open. It certainly looks like it can, but it won’t budge. I look more closely at the window and notice a number of hammer marks in its wooden frame. Sure enough, there’s a bunch of nails pounded into the frame, preventing the window from sliding open.
Well, phooey. It looks like I’ll have to try escaping the old-fashioned way.
“Nn grrrmph. Mm, mm, mmph!”
Grunts of exertion pass through my gag, no doubt coming out the other side as kittenish moans. I strain and struggle until I’m red in the face and damp with sweat, but I’m forever at the mercy of my masterfully bound ropes. Those dastardly crooks have truly made a helpless little damsel out of me.
“Mmnnnmph!” I throw my head back and groan pitifully to no one in particular. It’s hopeless. The Sun Gang has me bound and gagged for as long as they want.
I overexert myself during my struggles, and I have to take a moment to lean back against the wall and cool myself off. I lean next to the window, breathing heavily through my nose and taking in the smell of curing paint. It is then that I get a bright idea…
I hop back in front of the window and try to reach for its painted glass panes. Unfortunately, the window is just tall enough that I can’t each it with my bound hands. Laying down and trying to use my feet won’t work either. I need some extra height, and so I hop back over to the only item in the room: my cot.
It’s one thing to transport yourself while bound hand and foot, but to also bring a cot along with you? I certainly make quite the fool of myself as I clumsily scoot the cot along the wooden floor. I stumble and tumble more than a few times, but I am indeed making steady progress. Before long, the foot of the cot is pressed against the wall beneath the painted window.
I lay back on the cot and stretch out my bound legs high above me. My plan is working! Just as the smell indicates, that black paint has been recently applied. That means that it hasn’t fully cured to the glass yet, and the low heels of my shoes are hard enough to scrape at the paint. Sure enough, flakes of black begin to peel off the window and stick to the base of my heel. It isn’t much, but I’m not actually aiming to scrape off much.
I remember from when I first approached the warehouse that the only window on the upper floor was on the north side of the building, facing across the street. That would be convenient if there were any other windows facing it. Sadly, it faces nothing but a blank brick wall across a narrow street. Even if I take the time to remove every square inch of paint, the odds of me being seen are slim to none. Instead, I go for a simpler approach. Less is more in this situation.
With the heel of my right shoe, I carefully carve a narrow trail through the paint, forming a squiggly line. Next to that squiggle, I carve a circle; and next to the circle, I carve another squiggly line. My work is now complete, but I have yet to see if my plan has really worked. For that, I’ll have to wait until the sun sets.
By what little light there is in the window, it looks as though the sun is setting into a cloudy night. When I feel that it is dark enough, I lean up close to the window and peer through one of the lines that I’ve carved.
“MMHmhmhm!”
I squeal giddily into my gag and fall back into the bed, tossing back and forth in a well-earned celebration. My plan worked! I saw it for myself! I’ve taken the Sun Gang’s efforts to hold me prisoner, and I’ve turned them on their head! Those lines that I’ve carved are in fact backwards letters, and when the light from my brightly lit loft passes through them, they transform the painted window into a projector; A projector that casts a massive message of orange light onto the blank wall across the street:
S O S
I cut my cheering short when it dons on me that I’m not out of the woods quite yet. I have only completed the hard part. The rest is a matter of luck. Just how long will it take for someone to see my cry for help? Will I be saved in time to stop the Fabulist from stealing that prized statue? There was no way of knowing for sure. After all, there’s no guarantee just how quickly the auction will move along, and I’ve already used up a lot of time waiting for it to get dark outside.
One way, or another, I know that somebody will inevitably come knocking on my door. Who it will be is still up in the air. Until then, I might as well try to wriggle out of my bondage some more. That’s as good of a backup plan as any.
An hour passes. Fifty-eight minutes to be exact. I’ve been struggling vigorously, but the ropes still hold me as tightly as ever. The Sun Gang members sure do know their knots. I still haven’t even managed to unplug my ears. I have nothing to hook on to the cotton, and so the only thing I’ve been able to hear since my capture is the sound of my own muffled voice. I don’t even sense that other people are in the building until they start trying to bust down my door.
At an almost rhythmic beat, the doorway to the loft jolts from a series of forceful blows. I assume at first that it’s the police, and my spirits soar, but then I remember that my captors could just as well be trying to barge in and erase my SOS. I sit up in the cot with my knees against my chest, holding my breath and awaiting the moment of truth.
The door shatters open, and a squadron of police officers spill into the room. Boy, am I ever glad to see them! I perk up with excitement and call out to them. My call is muffled, of course, but they still notice me right away. A handsome officer rushes to my side and unties the cloth from my face. My time with that gag has come to an end.
“Are you okay,” he asks? “Who did this to you?”
I spit out the wet stuffing and say, “I’m fine. Untie me, quick! There’s no time to lose!”
It was at that point that I woke up. Of course, that wasn’t the end of the story though. The dreams normally stop in time for me to decide how it ends, and I typically write it so that the bad guys’ plans are foiled albeit they manage to avoid arrest. I love Dorothy enough to always make her the winner, but I also love her villains enough to want to keep them around for more adventures, and this case was no exception. (Spoiler alert.)
And speaking of alert, I woke up feeling unbelievably invigorated. I wouldn’t call myself a morning person, but whenever I dream of Dorothy Kim, I can’t help but jump out of bed and run to my journal. I was writing non-stop for hours that day, penning the first draft of Dorothy Kim and the Clue of the Painted Window!
Of course, the rest of the story is of my own fabrication, so I guess it isn’t much good for the Golden Dawn Project. However, I still have some information that I think might be useful to you. I may not be as amazing as Dorothy, but I too have my observant moments.
You see, those policemen that came to my rescue in the dream, they were all wearing gloves even though that’s not part of their uniform. In fact, just about everyone in my dreams wears gloves. It may have been in style during that period, but the dreams take it to a whole other level. The only people who let me see their hands are members of the Sun Gang.
I think the dream is trying to hide those gold sun rings from me. It tries, but I can still see them. I think it does that because my headcanon is that the rings are only worn by the gang’s members, so it wouldn’t make sense for everyone but me to wear them. The obvious thing to do would simply be to not wear the rings, but that’s the thing, you see, I don’t think that’s possible. I think that everyone in these dreams needs to be wearing those rings in order to exist. That’s my theory, but I have no idea why it would work that way.
I hope you guys at the Golden Dawn Project have better luck deciphering the clues. Please send me a message if you do! Oh, and feel free to ask for another dream if you think it’ll help. I’m willing to do everything I can to help solve this mystery!
