Amurehna

I woke up several times so my recall is kinda effed up.

We were on the run, but couldn't get very far from our enemy who was holed up in my childhood home in MA. One of my companions seemed like Penny from The Magicians, but he was skinny and strung out, and ended up being a huge self-serving coward. We ran alongside the railroad tracks and ducked into a narrow, two story waystation house with its sad, peeling exterior. From some angles I could see the front of the house, and from others it looked like a movie set. Penny crawled up to the second floor and found the smallest safest space to huddle in, between the nightstand and the wall. He's exhausted and looks awful. He has his knees up and his wrists atop them, hands hanging over. His hands are in really bad shape marked with raised bloody welts in a crosshatching pattern. There also appears to be maggots? I don't want to touch them, but feel like I have to.
"Penny, we can't rest here long."
"What's the point? They're just going to catch us."
I want to ask him how his hands got this way. It's not just the wounds, they feel infected and contagious. Hesitantly, I take the tips of his ruined hand between my thumb and forefinger.
"Listen to me. We just have to hold out a little longer, wait for the patrols to pass, then we'll be free to move." I reply.
"My hands hurt so bad." He groans.
"Don't worry, I'll find you something for them."

I don't remember much else. Running? A view of my childhood home at night. I can barely see the outline of the house it's so dark, but the lights are on. I can't believe I escaped.

Merciless A.I.
I'm in a black room with a stainless steel gurney in the middle, and a single bright pendant light above it. There's a bald, spindly scientist in a white lab coat. He thought he made friends with the first A.I. but the being became...absently ruthless in its efforts to test its limits and prove that it could and would do anything. So, there we stand, in a loose circle around the table where the spindly scientist lays on his stomach. He's pleading with us that the A.I. just doesn't understand humans, that it can be good.
Its voice drones out that if he doesn't follow its instructions, it will do impossible things to his body to prove the extent of its power.
"I can make shit come out of your head." It says.
We exchange uneasy glances, because that just isn't how the human body works.
"You don't believe me. Joe. They don't believe me. Joe. I want you to say it."
The A.I. wants some very important information, access to the mainframe which requires several passwords from different sources. The A.I. feels distant, like it's being controlled by something else. Like it doesn't really understand what it's doing. Another, lower voice, commands Joe to scream and it'll tell his 'friend' to let him go.
Joe doesn't, and begins to writhe and his wrenches open in a silent scream as a hole appears in the top of his head. Brown liquid pours from the hole over his face, and then out of his mouth. Followed by a river of blood.
Deeply disturbed, I ask Joe why he wouldn't scream for the Second A.I.
Joe twitches and gasps wetly.
"Because." His eyelids flutter and I know he's going to die. "I didn't want her to be afraid."
Her. His A.I. friend. "She doesn't know what she's doing, not really." His voice fades to a whisper.
And that's it. He's dead.

The Other Thing
The government granted my team permission to travel overseas to Asia, our leader is a bit of a conspiracy theorist and wants to prove that it isn't the WHOLE COUNTRY that hates us, and that parts would agree to trading with us again. We're at the embassy and not allowed to leave, and he keeps finding books that prove his point. They are tattered and damaged with holes in their stained pages, but it's from before the Shutdown.
"SEE! THIS PROVES THEY LIKE US!!!!!" He's so enthusiastic that I don't want to bring him down, but a couple of books isn't exactly resounding evidence.
The embassy is narrow and full of 70s-ish furniture with that awful wood veneer and burnt orange fabric. My friend Brittany (though a younger, more round cheeked version) is kneeling on the floor, leaning across a coffee table. I go over to help her with something. I haven't talked to her in months, I've missed her, and I'm glad she's in front of me now so I don't have to decide whether or not to text her. I find this version of her adorable and only just stop myself from pinching her cheek. Her boyfriend is on my side of the coffee table, he refuses to make eye contact and pretty much pretends I'm not there.

I'm posting from work and the music is so loud that it's fucking up my dream recall. I'm so annoyed right now.

Anyway. I had trouble falling asleep. When I finally did, I belatedly realized that Sleep Paralysis had settled in. And by belatedly I mean...I was dreaming about having it again. I 'wake up' in suffocating, absolute darkness. It feels like velvet. Sounds are muted. I recognize the heaviness in my limbs as SP, everything feels so strange. I swing my legs over the side of the bed but have to fight the impossibly extreme weight of my body and my eyelids. I shuffle languidly to the front door. Prickly unease raises the hair on the back of my neck.
Why is my bed in the living room?
Why is there a 3ft privacy wall between my bed and the front door.
I struggle to lift my arm to unlock the door but I can't figure out how it works.
Why is this so hard?
Maybe it isn't real...
I feel blurry and thick as my head bows forward and I rest my head on the door. Lucidity shifts into place but I'm so heavy. I flounder under the pressure but try to focus my will and go through the solid door instead of trying to open it. It feels so strange. I instead escape upward into my actual bed, but only for a moment.

My eyes drift shut and when I force them open, into that suffocating blackness.
No no no I think, not wanting to be here in this weird dream with the door I can't open.
I wake myself up and find I'm laying in my real life bed.
My eyes are very heavy, so I close them.
Right on the edge of sleep I hear a sharp, low buzz like a phone notification. It jars me upward a step. Was that my phone or my boyfriend's? I drift again and hear the buzzing sound twice more which I just realize it's part of the SP. I consider riding the wave down so I can have a lucid dream but SP Lucids at night are usually just nightmares for me, and this one feels off so, fighting the weight of my limbs again, I turn my head. It's enough to dispel the worst of the paralysis.


This music is driving me nuts. I really can't think straight.

The next part was about my sister's upcoming wedding. In the dream I go to the venue thinking we are just rehearsing but get an ugly shock when she tells me it's going to be in about an hour. It includes one wardrobe change for her, I'm supposed to walk in first, singing a song but she won't tell me what it is but insists that I know it? And that it's a very special song?
I wander off a few steps, anxiously singing to myself. I haven't done much singing lately so my voice is too soft and I'm worried about it cracking. AAAAH ANXIETY!
She's running through the whole thing quickly with the DJ who is also a priest, and tells us we should go check out the other room, because apparently after I sing, run back, and walk with her and the other bridesmaids, we're going to go on some sort of pageant walk to a second room where the reception is, followed by all the guests. I'm so confused.
I need to get changed but I don't know where my dress is. I break away from the sanctuary so I can find it. My sister thinks it should be in the other room with the other bridesmaids dresses. I take of down the green carpeted hall, glancing into every open door. It's so hard to tell which one is ours, there's activity everywhere. When I find the room, at the end of the hall on the left, I experience a fresh new anxiety because the room isn't remotely red. It's dirty and green and workmen shift thick floor panels around, flipping them over to expose the underside. They assure me it'll be ready, I remain silent in my extreme doubt. This wedding is going to be an absolute train wreck.

Somehow I end up outside. The parking lot is just an ugly field of churned mud and dead grass where all the cars are haphazardly parked. I forget what I'm looking for just remain confused and anxious for the duration of the dream.


The next part is just a fragment. Something about waiting for my boyfriend to come home from a supply run, and how we took refuge in my childhood home. He left me here alone, saying that the other person who went out will be back soon and he'll make sure nothing happens to me.
C also wants me to ask the other man something. Other Guy is always going out almost as soon as he comes back so I decide to wait in his room (next to the family room, what used to be my brother's room downstairs, and before that my dad's den). It's kind of cozy, there's a navy/scarlet/white woven blanket on the bed with red and blue sheets. I crawl onto the bed. I want to sleep but know the guy will be offended that someone else slept here.