nightmare

Non-dreamnon-lucidlucid

Kit had described to me a nightmare she had in which there was a family who lived in a home in the middle of the woods. She described that the family overall behaved normally, but that something seemed Very Very Wrong about them. I asked her if, upon waking, she had pinpointed any of the subtleties that might explain the undercurrent of malaise. She mentions that there was melted snow on the lawn, and in the distance the forest is covered in snow, even though it's autumn. They also keep the fire roaring constantly even though the house is sweltering, and the mother is constantly swaddled in down comforters. The bright young daughter repeatedly reminds everyone to 'keep your shoes by the door, just in case!' It's implied that 'something' will come into the house if the place isn't kept very hot. I ask her if she's ever considered revisiting the dream to find out what It is. She says no. I joke about finding out for myself.

My father and I are driving down a long road. As it progresses, we begin weaving through trees. It becomes snowier and snowier, until the veil of white is so encompassing that we can't see where we're going. He stops the car, and we're barely able to see a house off in the distance. He says he's going to go and ask them for help, possibly use their phone, stay right here. When he opens the door to get out, he zones staring into the snowstorm. I ask him 'What's up?' and he says, 'I just... Got a really bad feeling. Bah, nevermind... Hey. Just. Keep the heat running in here, okay? I'll be right back.' I agree and turn the heat on high.

He vanishes into the snow. Inside the car, the heat begins to die. My breath steams up inside. It grows darker, I notice the snow looks less like snow, and more like a blizzard of frozen ash. I hear something moving; the sound of footsteps echoing like stones thrown to the bottom of a deep dry well. They begin circling the vehicle, getting closer. I squint out the window and notice that all around the house, up on the hill, the snow is melted. I realize I'm in Kit's dream.

I pull out my father's business laptop and log on to AIM and start freaking out and asking her what I'm supposed to do to fend off the creature. 'DUDE. I'M IN THE FUCKING ICE PLACE. WHAT DO I DO?' 'wut' 'GOD DAMNIT IT'S COMING FUCK' I hear a strong wind blowing at the door, reaching out for the handle to open it. I slam the lock down. Realize there are three other doors, all still unlocked. It goes for the one behind me, I lock it- but as I'm pushing the lock down, it's already circling around the front and going for the front left. I push that one down, it's already going for the far rear. I hurl my body across the backseat to reach the lock, push it down, landing with my face inches from the window.

What the fuck ARE YOU? A face SLAMS against the window and smears across it. It looks like Ambi(girl who has been behaving like a stalker toward me), but it's more like her corpse, inhabited and puppeted by the ice, partially frozen, blue and wet with rot. Her eye contorts as it smears across the window. I begin to sob. 'There you go, Kit. There you fucking go, it's a SHAPE SHIFTER. It manifests in the form of whatever you're most afraid of, whatever you're most paranoid of, in the moment you see it.' Now that I know what it is, I'm scared thoroughly shitless. Realizing I'm scared has a snowball effect because it means I'm going to lose lucidity, and my ability to steer the dream before I go under.

I have to get out and face the blizzard, and 'fix it' so I stop having this nightmare before my chance is up and I go under. I'm getting rapidly distracted by fear. I open the car door and step out into it, and in a split second I feel my will being whisked away by the blizzard. 'ohfuck ohfuck I have to turn it into something else... Turn into a... a... shit! TURN INTO A BAR OF SOAP!'

I lose control right as the transformation happens. And for a moment actually can't remember why or how the monster turned into a bar of soap, or even that it was a monster. For a few moments I'm terribly confused and start to cry, because 'Oh my god, something is turning people into bars of soap... What the fuck is going on?!!' (note: my non-lucid dream self is usually a blithering idiot) I then remember that 'I'm the one who did this, I turned Ambi into a bar of soap!' despaaairrr, whiiiine! I start beating myself up over how stupid I am, how could I do such a thing- also, I am 'an idiot for choosing a bar of soap, because when the snow melts it will activate the soap, creating liquid soap and suds, the melt will carry it into the gutters and it will travel out to sea and HURT THE ECOSYSTEM OMG'. I bawl on my hands and knees in the snow like a moron. The dream ends.

Now the world is gone, I'm just one...

I wake up in my bed. I am naked, I wonder at the fact that it's already time for me to awaken, since it feels as though I've only just fallen asleep. I'm about to leave my room, but on the way out I lean against the wall near my door, pressing my forehead against it. 'How can I know whether I'm dreaming, or awake? It's all the same... How can I know any of this is even real... Keep sleeping to dream, because I hate my life, hoping I'll come out of it better, with some shred of something I can use, something to inspire, to move, to find an answer, an escape. But sleep just seems to install new bars into this cell. How can I even know I'm not dreaming right now.'

For the fuck of it, I flip the light switch just beneath my head on and off. Nothing happens. I look at the ceiling, the walls. Everything is here. The mask hanging from my door, the books, the silvery rays coming in through the window. I realize I'm not awake, but still asleep. I reflect for a few moments on how detailed and vivid everything is, how 'real' it is, nothing missing. Realizing this doesn't make me happy or excite me, but instead fills me with a feeling of isolation. The walls no longer real, just pictures of walls, the idea that beyond them, isn't a real city, no apartment, no livingroom, no father... Beyond these walls there isn't a home, because these walls aren't real. They're just my memory of them. And what of the real walls? Those don't build a home, either. I'm upset by the lack of comfort, familiarity, of reality, since this 'room' is just a 'ruse'. My malaise deepens as I reflect on how, 'the real thing', isn't actually any better. What was I expecting?

An anatomically correct digital rendering of someone's face, speaking, crying... The 'realness' of it isn't moving, but disturbing, soul-less. It looks so real, it's 'correct', but it isn't. It isn't comforting. It's unnerving, you become suspect of something so... Accurate, but, lifeless. A doll.

I pull on a pair of jeans and start to slide my belt through the loops. I stop partway through fastening the belt, realizing the pointlessness of getting dressed in a world that consists of only me. I think, I don't want to know what's outside of these walls. And I don't have to, I can leave another way. I open the window and remember how I'd been thinking about jumping out of it. Well, now I can. I remember how much I think about punching it until it breaks, when I'm mad. I slide the window as far open as it'll go, but it refuses to open far enough to let me jump out of it, it jams.

So I punch the window. It doesn't give. 'This is MY DREAM, and you BREAK.' I put my fist through it, it shatters, shredding my knuckles open and raking the flesh off my arm as it goes through. My arm is 'reforming' as quickly as it's being torn apart, as I need to thrust several times to knock out all of the leftover shards. Knots of scartissue creep up my arms like ribbons, replacing the gashes. I rip the frame out of the window and toss it behind me.

For a moment I question whether I'm really dreaming, or just having delusions of grandeur before I jump out of a window and kill myself. 'I'm going to fly,' and I close my eyes and rocket out of the window, or so I think. Turns out I actually just jumped REALLY HIGH. I float back down onto a building lined up right beneath my window. Looks like a warehouse. I am alone. I consider making someone to travel alongside me, consider summoning a DC. I start forming one, particles aligning in the air. I delete it before it materializes completely. There's no point. She's hollow. A shell. Like building a robot of a woman. I can't bring myself to do it. I have to just move forward and hope there's something at the end, hope I'll find someone, find somewhere.

The fastest way to the other side of the warehouse is 'through', so I slide the door open and go in. Inside is a 'panic room', the walls made of steel. I hear the door behind me bolt shut. It's silent, just like outside. Nothing, no one, is in here. I shake my head and laugh, egging on my subconscious. 'I can't be kept in here. Is this supposed to make me afraid?' I go to the far wall and sock it. It leaves a huge dent, but no opening. I take my finger and use it as a laser cutter, slicing out portions of the wall until I have a square opening big enough to step through.

It opens up into a roof top. It's a beautiful day. The sun is out. Everything is clean. Deserted. I look down onto the empty streets below. I snap my fingers and people appear. Down below, their cellphones go off, chewing gum, laughing, signing each other, driving, eating, biking, unknowing. I want to believe they're real, that I can save them, have a meaningful interaction with one if I just greet with selective blindness, be the king of ants. But I can't swallow it. I snap my fingers again and they disappear.

I have to keep moving... Find something, anything, other than this horrible quiet, or the alternative- synthetic companionship. I jump from roof top to roof top, on and on for miles... The buildings slowly become more and more decayed, crumbling, wisteria growing through the old concrete and splitting it. I reach the last rooftop. I've reached the 'end'.

It's a white sand beach, with colorful shells scattered about, and then the ocean, all around. This is the land's end, the very end, and there is nothing else. I look around for someone else, some sign of life, evil, good- either, something other than just.... This. I can't stand how beautiful it is, the perfect waves, the flawless sand and sun, but my heart drained of all enthusiasm. The 'perfect day', unthinking, fills me with agony and isolation. I drop to my knees and thrust my hands out in frustration, reel back and start to scream at the sky. I want to eject this pain, vomit all of it out, be capable of feeling something besides 'empty', 'broken'.

My scream starts out as a human scream, faintly echoing back to me through the hollow corridors of the buildings behind me. I keep screaming, and the scream grows into an otherworldly roar, screeching into the perfect blue. The scream develops earthquakes, the sea shoots up around me in spikes of black water, jutting into the sky, which grows dark, and the wind begins to howl. The clouds and the waves, claw at each other, meeting in the air. Lightning snaps all around, dead sea creatures rise, cooked, to the surface. Cyclones form, hurling debris around me. The tide creeps up and fills all of the sea caves, swallows the buildings, swelling higher and higher, engulfing the land, then, crushing it in a fist of water and black ice. The sky has opened up into the sea, reaching into it, an enormous gaping maw.

I get a view of myself from within the mouth of the sky. A tight cylinder around my body upward, is the only space that is dry, a beacon of sand and light in the havoc. I'm on my knees, still screaming, long hair coiling and snapping like snakes around my head. The rest of me is frozen, fingers curled in agony and frustration, as the scream just rolls on and on out of my body. I'm trying to eject everything, purge it, but it just keeps going. I keep screaming hard and harder, waiting to 'run out' of pain, run out of the need to scream, but the pain doesn't go away. I'm trying to 'let out' something that's endless. The world is destroyed, but the pain goes on, never emptying. The cup continues to fountain and overflow.

This is pointless. I stop. The sky reforms, the tide sucks back into the sea, the sand dries, the buildings reappear, the sun peers back through the clouds. There isn't any trace of what just happened, anywhere in sight. No sight of the pain. It's hidden again. Perfect again. Quiet. It feels the same. I lay on my back in the sand, motionless, wishing my life, my dream, would make up its mind. Please start, or just be over with. This isn't living, and this isn't dreaming. It's over. It fades to black.