Death's Other Kingdom

03.27.2013

Coughing up Roaches (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I am in a classroom at my old high school with two annoying kids who were freshman back when I was a senior. I take a nap, and when I wake up the entire school has undergone some kind of demonic shift.

My first sign that something is terribly wrong is when I begin coughing up roaches. I am coughing and hacking, with huge live roaches spilling out onto the floor. One of them crawls out of my mouth and scurries up my face to hide in my hair. I am disgusted, but not quite as disturbed as I should be.

Some time passes and I am deep within the belly of the school, in a dungeon-like area filled with row upon row of drying racks. On the racks are the decaying corpses of goblins. I am travelling with a live goblin, and I feel sorry that he has to see all of this. The ceiling is very low, so we are walking hunched over.

We make our way through the seemingly endless expanse of dead goblins, when the ceiling begins to collapse. We quickly evade the falling rubble until we come to an area where the ceiling is a bit higher. There are still rows and rows of drying racks in this area, but at least we don't have to hunch forward to walk anymore. Unfortunately, there are also Giants guarding this section. I imagine that they are on high alert due to the collapsing ceiling, so we flee the area as quickly and quietly as possible.

Along the way, these red bamboo creatures called "Rod Foxes" begin chasing us. I lose my goblin companion, but I make it out of the drying rack area and hide from the Rod Foxes in a classroom. There are a few students in there who are former classmates of mine. One of them looks out the door and says that a teacher is coming. This is a problem, because all of the teachers have become demonized. My classmate says that if we just do as we're told, he won't hurt us.

The teacher enters the room and tells us to sit in alphabetical order. We comply immediately. He then slams a putrid goblin head onto my desk and says that I must eat it, because it's "tea time."

I refuse to eat the goblin head and end up slashing the teacher's throat with dual knives. (Not sure how I acquired these.)

More time passes and my cockroach problem has gotten worse. I can't stop coughing, and the roaches are crawling out of me at an alarming rate.

Somehow I manage to stop coughing. There is a painting of a castle on a nearby wall, and I become lucid while admiring it. I decide that I will go into the painting and explore the castle. I manage to get into the painting, but the night is so dark that I can barely see.

I wake up shortly afterward.

Night of 11/8/12

I am standing in my room when I notice a small yellow jacket flying around. Great, how did a bee get in here? I am looking for something to smash it with, when suddenly a whole SWARM of bees is in the room, covering litterally every inch of the walls. Completely freaked out, I bolt from the room, screaming, swatting bees out of my hair.

Out in the hallway, I realize Alex (my roommate) is still in the room sleeping. "Alex!" I yell. "Alex! You'd better get out here before the bees sting you!" But as I look around the hallway, I notice to my extreme horror that it is also filled with bees! Is it a yellow jacket plague!? What do I do??? There is nowhere for me to walk without upsetting the swarm. I am so alarmed that I jolt into a false awakening.

Now I am standing beside my desk, telling Alex about my dream. Before I can get more than a few words out, however, she suddenly freaks out and points at my wall. There, is a small bee-like insect. "Don't worry," I tell her nervously, "that must have been what caused me to have the dream."

But as I get a closer look, I see that it is not a bee at all: it is a tiny demonic looking fairy wearing a gas mask. The fairy gives me a look that clearly says, "You'd better not tell anyone you saw me."

I immediately grab Alex and drag her out into the hallway to tell her what I saw. Out in the hallway, however, we are alarmed to find the massive swarm of yellow jackets! "This is just like my dream!" I shriek, before doing a reality check.

No wonder. I'm still dreaming.

Another false awakening. Now, I am in the bathroom with Alex, Jake, Sadie (my cat), and Roxie (Jake's dog). Roxie turns into a clone of Sadie. They alternate between hissing at each other and rubbing against each other affectionately. "What's up with them?" I ask Jake.

"Oh, they do that all the time," he says nonchalantly.

I bend down to pet them. At first, they purr and lean into my hand. Then, Jake says, "And that's what demon cats do."

Suddenly, the cats become completely feral and tear up my arm. It hurts a bit, but it is also accompanyied by a feeling so terrible, a feeling of complete and utter horror, that I am once again jolted into a false awakening.

This time, I am lying in bed in my dark room. Freaked out, I instantly do a reality check and determine that I'm still dreaming. A dark skinned girl with long hair sits at the foot of my bed, holding my large HP Lovecraft book. She is rambling about aliens crawling through her ears to her brain. I instinctively know that she's about to enact some sort of dream torture upon me, and I'm screaming at her to go away. I am stuck in sleep paralysis, unable to defend myself.

As a last resort, I close my eyes and let the darkness wash the dream away. I'll wake up in a better dream, I'll wake up in a better dream, I think to myself frantically, but a feeling of utter terror has taken over the entire atmosphere, and I know the next dream will be worse than the last.

I struggle to get out of sleep paralysis and into the real world, but every time I open my eyes, the most terryfying figure is looming over me. He has incredibly long arms which are wrapped tightly around me, pulling me out of reality toward a worse nightmare. His face is the most twisted, demented thing I've ever seen, it can't even be described with words, and he's wearing a large top hat.

Knowing that it is just a dream does not protect me from the agonizing feelings that he is inflicting in me. I am still frantically struggling to wake myself up, but each time I pull myself from the paralysis enough to do a reality check, I am still dreaming!

After what seems like ages, I finally jolt awake, panting heavily. I am instantly annoyed with myself for breaking my most important rule: DON'T WAKE YOURSELF UP.