Visions in the Dark

I am living with my parents in a run down townhouse apartment, in a small town, amidst a heavy temperate forest. I am younger than I am now, appearing in my early teens. The town house has three levels, but each level is not directly on top of the other, but rather in a cascading design, going down a slight hill:
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The living room is on the top level, the bedrooms on the middle level and the kitchen and bathroom on the lowest level. Outside the lowest level is a small clearing in the forest with a creek. The main door is on the top level which opens to a path to the other houses in town. The entire house is an open concept building that has no roof and the walls only go up to waist level on the two highest floors and ankle level on the lowest floor. The house contains all of the amenities of a regular modern house, but some of the tiles on the floor are cracked and being pushed up by foliage growing underneath.

The dream starts off with my mother and I in the kitchen. I am sitting on the stairs that lead to the second floor and looking at some of the broken floor tiles. I see a different coloured pattern in a crack that does not match the surrounding blue and white tiles and go over to get a closer look. Before I get there I can see that is a large brown and grey snake that looks thick and stubby, but it quickly disappears into a hole that I guess goes underground. I identify it as a "bushmaster" in the dream, even though it looks more like a cottonmouth because of it's stout body shape. I tell my mother what I saw, but she does not believe me and says that we have never had problems with animals in house (desipe it being so open to nature).

I see the snake several other times in several other places in the house, but no one else ever sees it and they never believe me when I do. One day I am in my room on the second level while my parents are in the living room on the top floor. I have been sleeping in a small dark blue tent so that the snake cannot sneak up on me in my sleep. I crawl out of my tent to find some of my laundry all over the floor in front of the tent. When I pick some of it up the bushmaster is hidding under some shirts. I try to scramble back into my tent but the snake quickly slithers underneath it.

I try to scream but I cannot and want to run but my legs are like deadweights and I cannot even stand up. I try to move and scream but all I can manage are pathetic gasps because my throat is dry and I cannot create any intellegible sounds. I am so scared and I want my parents to come and get me, because I know they are so close, and though technically they should be able to see me over the low walls, I am ignored and my distress and terror go unnoticed.

The snake lunges menacingly at me and I try to crawl away pulling myself along the floor with my arms, but I cannot get very far. My parents finally notice me dragging myself on the floor and crying but when I tell them of the bushmaster they do not believe me and tell me to stop being silly and get up off the floor. For some reason they cannot see the snake, or rather I feel that they choose to ignore it for some reason. I am still desperate to get as far away from the snake as I can but I am exhausted, physically and mentally.


I was then mercifully awoken by a ringing telephone.

(There is a "trigger warning" on the content of this dream.)

I am in a ruined and abandoned building that looks like it used to be an office or conference center of some sort. I am hiding on the inside from "bad people" on the outside who I fear will try and force their way in if they see me. I scavenge materials from around the building to create a shelter for myself in the front of the building in a room that looks as if it was once a lobby. Most of the material is an old ripped up tent or peice of canvas that is coloured yellow, which I throw over a table that is leaning to one side.

I hide myself inside my makeshift shelter to get away from three stray dogs that have suddenly appeared and are sniffing around and will not leave me alone. The biggest of the dogs, a black lab, forces its way into the tent and starts ripping it to shreads. The dog does not attack or threaten me in anyway but I grab it by the scruff of the neck and force it into a submissive position laying on its side. The dogs leave me alone after that and soon disappear.

Now that the tent is completely destroyed I gather together chairs and small tables to hide under even though I am aware that if anyone looks inside the building through the lobby windows that why will be able to see me. I notice shadows and shapes of people moving near or past the windows and freeze in terror. Then it happens. A man in a blue military uniform passes by a window and looks in. I try to hide myself behind a pile of furniture but he sees me and starts trying to bust the front door down, which I tried to barracade with a few chairs.

The man marches in and beelines to where I am hiding. He grabs me and ties me to a support pillar in the middle of the room. He uses a large bowie knife to cut off my shirt. He then foddles my breasts before raping me. A line of similarily dressed military men file into the building and do the same, one after another. They all ignore my screams of protest and terror.

A lone soldier dressed in green suddenly appears in the door way, weilding two handguns, and with lightning speed shoots all of the blue military men before they have a chance to retailiate. He then gently removes my shackles and carries me out of there. I do not know how long or how far we walked but he takes me into a lavish suite in a ritzy hotel and lays me on the bed. The hotel apparently has its own hospital and the soldier summons the hotel doctors to come and care for me. He dutifully waits outside my door on guard and carefully scrutinizes everyone who comes to the room. The soldier does not hesitate to kill anyone who he thinks is suspicious and the people he does kill happen to have blue military uniforms hidden under their doctor coats.

After a while the medical staff leaves and the soldier and I are alone. Despite being horribly brutalized I feel extremely grateful towards him and I lead him to the bed and we make passionate love to each other. The next day he is gone and I cannot find him even though I search every floor of the hotel. Indeed the hotel iteself is now devoid of all people and staff, even though all the lights are on and it looks as if it should be full of activity. I am alone and feel confused and abandoned.

I cannot remember the beginning of the dream but at some point I am with several random dream characters by a large silty pond, deep in a thick tropical jungle. Because the jungle is so thick on either side of the pond, the only way across is through the water. I cannot remember why now, but I knew in the dream that it was imperative that I get to the other side. All of the DCs except for one get into the water and start swimming or playing around, but none make an effort to cross. I know I have to do it, but I am hesitant. I cannot immediately place my fear but then I notice something floating in the middle of the pond. At first it appears to be a large peice of wood or something, but it suddenly blinks and I realize it is an alligator or crocodile. I stand on my tiptoes to try and get a better look at the reptile and I can see that it is an absolute giant. It appears to be 20 to 25 feet long, though my measurement is possibly incorrect since the bulk of the beast is beneath the water and it is likely much bigger than it appears. I feel very afraid and do not enter the water. The DCs in the water seem oblivious to the presence of the creature and continue to happily splash around the pond.

I suddenly find myself in waist deep water, but I am kneeling so that water is up to my neck. I stare frozen in fear at the the giant grey alligator and it looks right back at me. The eyes of the creature feel very menacing as it stares at me and ignores the DCs that are swimming and splashing around him. It suddenly disappears underneath the surface of the water and I panic because I cannot see through the thick silt and fear that it might be coming for me, so I dash back towards the shore. I cannot get out of the water for some reason but there is a neatly stacked pile of red brinks just beneath the surface at the water and stand on it to get as far out of the pond as I can. When I stand on the brick pile, the water only comes up to my ankles and I fear secure enough that the giant alligator cannot reach me without me first seeing him approatch. I am still terrified of it though and make no move to enter the water again.

The lone DC that did not get into the water tries to coax me to cross with her. She is a teenager with brown hair pulled back into a pony-tail and looks like someone I used to know in waking life whom everyone called 'Bean'. Like the other DCs, she cannot see the alligator and does not understand why I do not want to get into the water. I am sure that at any moment one of the DCs who are already in the water are going to be eaten by the huge gator who is quietly laying in wait near the bottom. After some time Bean somehow convinces me to get back into the water and says that we will cross together. She is swimming beside me and I am trying to make large strokes with my arms with as little disturbance to the water's surface as possible.

Bean and I are about half way when I scrape my right leg up against somethine hard and bumpy under the water. I stick my face in through the thick silt I can make out the outline of the giant alligator floating directly below me. If I reached out my arms down below me, I could have easily touched the gigantic creature's back. My entire body stiffens in absolute terror and I begin to panic. At that very same moment Bean decides she's had enough of swimming on her own and jumps on my back and wraps her arms around my neck in an almost-chokehold. I am immediately forced under the water by her weight and my body's refusal to move because of the terror I am feeling. My fear frozen body slams into the back of the alligator and the mind numbing terror I felt is difficult to describe. I was sure that the gator would turn and snap both Bean and I up in one gulp when it felt the pressure of us on it's back, especially when my body's function suddenly returned and I used the beast's back for leverage and struggled violently to not only surface for air, but to wrench Bean off my back. When I surfaced I kicked and splashed and screamed at Bean to "Let go of me! LET GO OF ME!!!"

I was certain that the alligator would definately be attracted to my paniced spashing on the surface, but the creature did not make any move, though I could still feel it below me. Bean got upset with me because she could not understand why I had gotten upset over her jumping on my back without my conset and starting swimming back to shore with great indignation. Many of the other DCs turned to watch the commotion I was making and I was very frustrated that none of them knew about the giant alligator floating just below me. The dream gets fuzzy but the last thing I remember is making a mad dash for the otherside of the pond, and though I was still terrified that my kicking and splashing would attract the gator's attention, I could not swim calmly because I was still panicking.


Woke up ina cold sweat, had chills the rest of the night and could not get back to sleep.

Generally, in nature, if a gator is even slightly disturbed it will turn and attack anything that touches it. The fact that it wasn't "acting normally," like I expected it to, is possibly one of the main reasons why I was so scared thoughout this nightmare.

Image courtesy of Marathon Books.