Lucid Time!

I had somehow or other been taken to this remote location that was named to be some kind of summer camp but was really more like Juvy or Prison. The camp was in the woods, on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. The outer are of the camp, all of the property that they owned was fenced off by a chain-link fence with barbed wire. The inside wall was a high concrete wall with four guard towers at the corners.

In the camp there were four Quonset huts that were the different dorms. Each dorm had slightly different uniforms and rules, and was for a different personality type (They were kind of like the Hogwarts Houses). There was a cafeteria building, a couple classrooms, and an administration building where security guards met and guarded the whole building.

The Head Master (who looked kind of like like Kim Jong Un) came out and told everyone that he made a deal with them. Since his camp was really strict, he would use deadly force on anyone caught trying to escape. But, if they made it past the outer fence, he would call off his guards and leave, because clearly, anyone good enough to try and escape and get out was too strong willed for them to contain.

I remember us having uniforms at the camp. Not really much to say about them, they were kind of generic, suit and necktie for boys and dress for girls.

I don't remember much about the content of the camp, what we learned. Some of the stuff was basic school stuff, math, science, etc. Some of it was stuff designed to brainwash us into thinking that our leader (the headmaster of the camp) was great. I also took note of the fact that they fed students very generously and had not physical education program, and that students who had been around awhile had grown to be quite pudgy. I figured this was part of what made it harder to escape.

I do remember going to the class a couple of times. The teacher was a stern old witch and the class was taught in a very old-fashioned looking classroom. I remember class went on for many hours each day, though the material that was covered was fairly elementary.

I remember classtime was important, particularly to people who were planning escapes. It gave us hours where we could plan things. Most of the books we were given had extra blank pages to make them look thicker and more educational, and disguise the amount of actual content in them. These could be easily and quietly removed one at a time giving you free paper to write notes to students that you otherwise wouldn't have.

Others insisted on using mealtime to make escape plans and relay information. Like I said, the food here wasn't the best. It seemed like their intention was to fatten students up with the amount of doughnuts, pies, rolls and mac-n-cheese they were always serving us, and something about some of the dishes tasted really off. There were probably some horrible mind-control chemicals or something in them. Though there were foods I found good, particularly the apples that they always had in a bowl at the end of the counter. They were picked from an apple tree just inside the concrete wall by a small patch of bush. It was the only place in the camp that was not mowed.

And just about everyone I talked to wanted to get out or tried making escape plans. I remember being in the bathroom of my dorm building (It was the only place that there were never any security guards.) A dark, dirty and stinky place. The dorm was also co-ed so there were boys and girls sharing a bathroom. It seemed as though those of us freshman. (People who had been here just a couple months, or had just arrived) Were much more inclined to hatching escape plans than our seniors. Probably because more of the seniors had been brainwashed or realized that escape was futile.

I do remember not any more than a couple days after I got there, the sophomores tried to escape. Nearly the entire class was in on it. I remember watching from the window at my dorm. I knew their plan was to sneak onto the food truck that delivered to the cafeteria and hide in the empty boxes and sit back as the food truck drove them away. They had actually invited me to join as well, but I declined them telling them I would get out later. I was glad I didn't join up with them, because the plan ended up failing, they were caught by the guards.

Did I mention the levels of punishment here? Level one, for just a minor one time thing was just a harsh scolding. If you did something against the rules on purpose, you were paddled. If a big violation earned you public whipping, and formulating or attempting escape plans earned you death. The leaders of the team were put to death, while most of the other students got off with a whipping. (Moreso because they didn't want to kill off the entire sophomore class.)

Yeah, I was going to escape. But I was gonna come up with my own plan, one that I knew could not fail. But first, I was going to need intel and I was going to need to get in good with the headmaster. Intel was the easy part. I remember this short black girl who seemed to know an awful lot about the school and was great at channeling information. I asked her to send all that she knew to me in code.

Getting in good with the headmaster guy took some sucking up. Trying in the classes. I even wrote a short speech about how great he was for extra credit. This got me major points with him, but made me lose trust with some of the students thinking I had been brainwashed. The black girl didn't lose trust in me though, she knew it was all part of my plan.

The one other thing I had to watch out for was the way the school caused people to fall out of shape by serving carb-laden foods and the lack of a phys-ed program. This was easy, I would go into the bathroom during the middle of the night and practice martial arts, that coupled with just staying away from the weird-tasting food kept me in fighting shape for the day of my escape.

At one point, I found out an alternate escape route. Originally I was going to get out the front gate, but I found that by the apple tree and the one area of plant growth inside the wall; if you were to sneak in there, there was a small hole somebody had dug beneath the concrete wall. It was difficult to fit through, but I managed to do so. On the other side was a sheer drop-off about 50 feet of clifface. This was where the camp/prison place drained all of their water and there was a small stream running out of the base of the mountain.

There was also a rope bridge along with many platforms that connected the trees in the forest that lay beyond. You had to jump from platform to platform, but they led you about halfway out to barbed wire chain-link fence. The funny thing was, I could even see a hole in that from where I was standing. I was also paying attention to the drainage pipe. It was more than big enough to crawl out of. It was big enough for someone short like me to walk out of.

There was a male student sitting on one of the platforms fishing with a makeshift pole. He told me that this was an escape route he had made to help students get out. It all seemed a little bit too good to be true, and I thought that there was no way it could be this easy, or many more students would have done it a long time ago. Sure enough, it was a trap to see if I would escape or if I was loyal, and by refusing to escape, I had proven my loyalty.

It was a few days later. The other students thought that my escape had failed and that I had been punished. I told them that was not the case and showed them a drawing of the escape platforms in the woods and told them about the trap. I then went outside and sat under the apple tree. All of the other growth had been mowed and cut down, but the apple tree remained. I helped myself to one when the Headmaster showed up. He congratulated me for remaining loyal and doing well in my classes. He took note of the fact that I was not wearing my uniform necktie, but didn't seem to care.

He got up to leave, but I dropped the apple I was going to eat. He picked it up for me. It was a shame too, he started to seem like a nice guy, and it was time for my escape plan, too.

I lunged at him from behind. I wrapped my necktie around his head, gagging him. I put a couple of sharp pencils to his neck. The guards noticed as I started walking him around to through the dorms to the front gate. I told the guards to open the gate and they did. Just outside the main gate, I let the man go, but left the necktie gag on.

"Good Game!" I sneered at him, and got into my parents' green van that had been left in the parking lot. I got the emergency key and drove off.

...

I was hunted by some of his guards. (He didn't keep his promise.) I remember I stopped at a gas station and the guards tried to disintegrate the van using laser guns. I had to get into an old white car in order to get away.

There was also some alternate part of the dream where the platforms in the woods were not a trap created by the headmaster, but rather the test you needed to pass in order to graduate.