I rarely remember dreams, but this one's stuck in my mind

I know there are as many different opinions on dreams as there are dreamers. My partner - a writer - tells me she can't read in her dreams. An old friend told me he only dreamed in shades of black and white - never in color. For me, remembering dreams is so rare already that some of those kinds of details seem like a luxury to be able to recall.

I've had violent dreams in the past, dreams where I was threatened by some form of malevolence, and responded with violence. Previously, my most vivid experience was a dream wherein an old friend had 'turned' on me, stalking me through a basement, dusty and dimly-lit by half-windows high on the wall, and filled waist-high with cargo boxes over which I could see him coming. I had a gun - my sidearm - and in the dream, I could see the rounds I fired bouncing harmlessly off of him, like soft rubber pellets at low velocity, as he plodded relentlessly closer, hemming me into a corner.

I woke before anything else happened, though. I don't remember anything more about it; the legacy memory of the dream is only a reminder of how powerless I felt to change the situation in the dream. (I wish I could remember what my waking life looked like, then, because I suspect parallels were there for the observing, if I'd just 'opened my eyes' to them.)

So fast forward to last night.

Different scene entirely. My partner's asleep in bed, but it's daytime, maybe afternoon-ish? We live in an apartment, maybe a loft, someplace with a rooftop patio - no place familiar to me in my waking life.

I remember a man talking about sight, clear lines of sight towards a nearby airport. Dream-me remembers laying on that rooftop with my partner, watching airplanes on approach or takeoff passing by over our heads. As the man is talking, dream-me becomes aware of the fact that he's talking about an attack, and that my life and my partner's life are over, because there's no way this guy will let us live. Its obvious he knows he's planning to kill us, because he's openly talking about perpetrating some evil - he's relishing the fact as he tells us he's going to start a war, as if to twist the knife before it's even in.

I find myself back inside the french doors to our apartment, where my partner is in bed, slowly waking up. I find myself fishing the same gun as in the above dream from its holster in my dresser, shoving a loaded magazine into the butt and another into my hip pocket - in the dream, I remember how acutely I felt the weight of the magazine against the side of my butt. I pulled the slide, chambering a round, remembering that in my last dream (this was dream-me, remembering real-me's dream as a dream), that it didn't do anything, but be-damned, I was going to die fighting to protect my love if I had to, and this was all I had to fight with.

The man walked back into the apartment through those doors, with a wicked black shotgun (SPAS-12 maybe?) and an easy, casual stride. He had another man with him now, that dream-me vaguely remembered from the patio - that man had a similar shotgun. I tried shooting the first man, and the gun only cliked at me. A second try and it did the same. The man smiled, then sent his partner to the opposite door (at the top of a long staircase) to go lock the door to the building (at the bottom of the staircase). Dream-me knew our time was about up, and I was about to die, as was my only love.

I remember looking at the pistol, seeing the barrel sticking out further from the front of the slide than it should have, then seeing that the first round has stovepipe-jammed in the chamber, preventing it from doing anything. I remember racking the slide back - I could feel the stuck round pop into the palm of my hand - and then seeing the slide return all the way forward.

I brought the gun back up and fired - six times it fired - and the man threatening us took all six in the chest as he fell. The other man popped out of the door at the top of the stairs just in time, and I remember giving him two or maybe three more.

This time, the thing worked exactly as you'd expect a functional handgun to operate in the waking world.

And then the sun was shining in the window, the air conditioner was humming, and it was time to wake up for work.

I don't know why I'm writing this here, except that I hope my writing it, it'll kick-start some of the brain-dump I feel like it needs. If anyone's insight, I'd welcome it.

Cheers, dreamers!