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.