The most recent dreams have all involved my getting someone close to me killed. A long-haired redheaded guy I don't know appears in my parents' greenhouse in their back yard and starts messing with some stuff (experimenting with mutation or something?). My dad and brother and myself eventually go out there to confront him. We get there, and the guy is deceptively friendly; I'm the only one who knows he's faking, apparently, and I don't say anything for some reason. Instead, I just back up out the door and run away. I can see my dad and brother get stabbed to death before I turn around. For some reason, I can suddenly super-jump, and I use this ability to escape.
At this point, I actually felt the crushing guilt of my family's deaths. I knew I could have warned them, and it feels like I could have stopped the redheaded man, too. I knew I had to go kill the guy and avenge my dad and brother, but I was still horrified. So I went to commune with spirits (don't know where that came from either). Basically, the spirits appeared in woods near my home. They took the form of some kind of spectral hawk/owl hybrid. They said something incomprehensible to me, but it gave me resolve.
Following that visit, I tracked down the redheaded man and attacked him. He managed to stab me in the lower abdomen, but I dodged his killing blow and disarmed him. We ended up fist fighting violently in the dirt until I finally elbowed him in the neck and crushed his windpipe. While he was down I found one of the swords/knives one of us had and took off the guy's head.
That was an unusually violent dream for me. I'm no stranger to painful or creepy experiences in dreams, but there is rarely gore or even blood, even when someone does get stabbed or maimed or whatever.
