Lucid dream. Get some popcorn; this is a long one.
This was one of the most vivid experiences that I’ve ever had inside the Dreaming. I copied this from my dream log:
I felt before I saw. It was stifling… not hot, but stifling like evil. Like walking into a house where a vicious murder had been committed, only about a hundred times worse. I opened my eyes to find myself standing in what looked like a factory. The floor was made of metal grids that made an echoing, tinny sort of sound when I stepped on them. It was very bright where I was, like there was fluorescent lighting somewhere, but I couldn’t see what the source of the light was. The ceilings were very high up, but for some reason, I got the impression that I was underground.
There were humans all around me, some physical and some ethereal (were they souls?), but all human. They were performing tasks… moving objects, pulling large carts full of… something…, and operating machinery that I didn’t recognize. Whenever one of them would step out of line or fail in their given task, a creature would appear and beat them. I’ve heard the sounds of various things striking flesh… I remember them from when I was little… I didn’t ever want to hear those sounds ever again. Like the coward I am, I turned and ran. It was a foolish thing to do, as I didn’t know where I was going or what sort of things I would attract the attention of, but the only thought in my mind was to get away from the sounds of pain and torture. I ran into a long, large hallway, with more grid floors that looked as though they moved up and down. They were connected to chains, which were in turn connected to a series of pulleys. The pulleys weren’t connected to anything; they were floating in midair. The edges of the floors were painted with black and bright blue stripes. Some were hanging over my head, and I feared walking under them. Maybe I’ve played too many video games, but I had a feeling that they might fall on me.
I stayed as close to the side wall as I could, safely out of the way of the moving floors (and they did move; one dropped down and clipped my elbow. It was carrying a man who had an armload of… something… I pressed myself against the wall and hoped he didn’t notice me. If he did, he didn’t show it and he went on his way. Once he stepped off the floor, it shot upward again). I crept along with my back pressed against the wall, trying to walk as quietly as I could on those metal grid floors. I took my shoes off and left them behind, and that seemed to help. The metal was hot and I felt it burning through my socks. It was comparable to walking barefoot on the tar in the summertime.
Something noticed me. One of the creatures… I heard it start to run at me. I turned around and … shit, I’m not even sure I can describe what I saw. It was squat and fat, and its skin was a color somewhere between purple and green… slug like… it had no feet, but goddamn it was moving fast. It was carrying a trident sort of thing, but the three prongs didn’t end in little arrowheads. They were red and flashing. It was wearing a vest that looked like leather, but when it got closer I realized it wasn’t leather, but some kind of soft, black metal.
A floor came down next to me and I heard a voice (a little girl’s voice) call out, “Jump!”
Without even stopping to think about it, I jumped onto the floor just as it shot back upward. The slug creature somehow leaped onto the elevator from the floor below. I felt my limbs start to get cold and to shake off the fear, I got mad. I grabbed onto one of the chains and started climbing. The slug creature yelled something at me, but I couldn’t understand it. It’s voice was gurgling and liquidy. It started to cut the chains with its trident and on instinct, I let go of the chain I was holding onto. At first, I wasn’t sure why I did that, but when the chain snapped, it zipped up through the pulley… had I still been holding on, I would have been grinded up in the pulleys.
I slowed my fall as best as I could without calling out my wings and when I touched down, I took off running. A ways down the hall, I felt a hand grab me and pull me into a room. I was so startled that I didn’t have time to react, but I’m glad I didn’t. It was a little dark-skinned girl that had grabbed me. She grabbed my shirt and pulled me down so we were laying on our bellies, side by side, on the floor. She put a finger over her lips and I barely nodded, too scared to move.
I heard rumbling, and it got louder and louder as something approached. I was so scared that I held my breath and froze. Whatever it was passed by our door and the rumbling faded into the distance. After what seemed like forever, the little girl let out a breath. She’d been holding it too. She sat up and looked at me.
“You’re different,” she said.
“No, I’m not,” I said. My throat was so dry that I’m surprised my voice came out coherently.
“Yeah, you are,” she said. “The others are on the island. Why aren’t you with them?”
I didn’t know what to say. The others? “How do I get to the island?” I asked.
“I can take you. I know how. Come on.”
I followed her back into the hallway, both of us cautiously looking both ways for any sort of creatures before stepping out of the room. She pressed her little body against the wall and began to move very slowly. She motioned for me to do the same. We turned a corner and she took off in a run. I followed suit. Eventually, she slowed down to a walk and I dared to ask her some questions.
“What’s going on?” I whispered. “What is this place?”
“They’re getting ready,” she whispered back.
“Who’s getting ready?”
"The daemons. They’re getting ready for the fight.”
When she said this, I felt my heart skip a few beats. This couldn’t be right… this had to be just a dream. I swallowed a few times to wet my very dry throat. “And do you know when this fight will happen?” I asked.
She stopped and looked at me, and suddenly I knew who she was (though my waking self doesn't remember). Her eyes rolled back in her head, so that I could only see the whites, standing out against her dark skin. She spoke, and her voice was wispy and far-away. “Another tower has to fall.” She touched my hand and my vision went blurry. And then I saw… I saw it all happen… My throat is constricting just thinking about it.
She let go of me and her eyes were back to normal. My vision cleared and I we walked for a long time in complete silence. We came to a red door, but before she pushed the door open and stepped inside, she said in a very small voice, “I’m sorry.”
I wanted to say, “It’s ok,” but nothing came out when I opened my mouth. She led me into a tiny, dark room and closed the door behind us. She whispered a name and one of the walls opened up enough to crawl into. The crawlspace led into another small room, where a human man stood. He was wearing some kind of uniform, like an old-fashioned policeman’s outfit.
“We’re going to the island,” the little girl said. The man nodded and opened up a… portal sort of thing… in the floor. We stepped into it. I felt a brief cold, like a rush of frozen air, and then I was standing outside on a sidewalk with the little girl beside me. A bus was stopped in front of us. The driver looked impatient.
“Ok, we should be ok now. They don’t like to come out here,” she said. She climbed up the steps of the bus with great effort (I realized then that she couldn’t be any older than about seven or eight). The driver didn’t charge us. He told us to take a seat and we did, somewhere in the middle. There were a lot of people—humans—on the bus. I looked out the window, but I didn’t recognize anything.
We rode for a very long time. I remember everything about it. I remember staring out the window, trying to recognize something but not being able to. I remember a teenager blaring his headphones. And old lady, knitting in front of us. A couple of girls giggling. Some guy reading the paper while sipping on a hot coffee. It started to rain, and the pitter-patter of the rain hitting the roof of the bus was somehow soothing to me. I leaned my head against the window. The cold glass on my forehead felt good, and I noticed then the onset of a headache.
The little girl stood up and pulled the chord. There was a pleasant ‘ding’ sound and the bus driver pulled over at the next stop.
“Are we near the island?” I asked her as we stepped out into the rain, which had built to a downpour.
“Yeah, it’s only a little ways from here.” She answered.
The bus drove off and we crossed the street. My socks were soaked and squishy on my feet. I couldn’t wait to take those off too. We splashed through some grass and stopped in a field that looked like somebody’s backyard, complete with an old car up on cinder blocks and a spare tire laying abandoned beside it.
“We’re here,” the little girl said.
“I thought you said we were going to an island?”
“We are, just a sec.”
And before I knew what happened, we were elsewhere. One moment were standing in the wet grass getting rained on, and the next we were in the center of a large, carpeted room. There were comfy looking chairs all around the room, televisions set up with different game systems and such, lots of plants, a couple of tables, curtains… we were in someone’s house?
Two women, a blond and a brown-haired woman, came running into the room. The blond scooped up the little girl and hugged her and the brown-haired woman immediately came to me. “You’re soaked,” she said. “You look like hell.”
I took her bluntness in stride and glanced down at my wet, dirty self. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Well come on, hon, shower’s this way,” she ushered me out of what I presumed was a living room or den. I noticed a slight southern accent in her words. “Glad you met up with Cass. You mighta been a lot worse for wear if you hadn’t.”
We went into a bathroom that was almost as large as the living room. I couldn’t help but stare as the woman scurried around. “You can use this towel,” she said, pointing to a fluffy green one. “And I put out some extra clothes for you to wear. Take your time and when you’re done, we can talk.”
With that, she left me to do my own thing. The shower was quite nice, I have to admit. I hadn’t realized how dirty I was until I got out of the shower and felt lighter! I dried off and put on the clothes she laid out for me; a too-large white t-shirt and pants that (thankfully) had a pull-string. I found my way back into the living room. More people had appeared. In addition to the little girl and two women, there were now about five men.
“So you’re one of us, are you?” a grey-haired man said.
“I… guess so?” I looked around at them.
“A refugee,” another man said. “Straight from …” (and he named the place where the little girl and I were… but my waking mind can’t remember it.)
Though this dream was one of the most vivid I’ve had, the memory of what we talked about is quickly fading from my mind. We talked about a lot of things, one being that I knew Courteny and Christy. They seemed impressed by that. I think I was there for a few days. I slept and when I woke again, I was still there. I hadn’t yet opened my eyes in the waking world.
On what I think was the third day of my stay with these people, there was a knock on the door. The grey-haired man went to answer it… but he didn’t come back. The blond woman told all of us to hide. I stood there, not knowing what was going on. More forcefully, so that I felt that something was wrong, she told me to hide and I didn’t hesitate. I crawled behind a chair and watched carefully.
More people came in. They were human-shaped, but I don’t think they were human. They didn’t feel human. Two of them were female, or female-shaped, and they carried guns of some sort with a silly looking horn-shaped barrel. One of them blasted the blond woman, and it was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen… the weapon shot out a sort of pinkish beam. When the beam hit the blond, she let out a cry and started to shrink. She got smaller and smaller until she was about an inch or so tall. Then the second female non-human shot her beam, a blue beam, and the blonde’s body went POP and left a small spatter of blood on the rug.
They found one of the others and did the same thing to him. They were searching the room and picking us off. I stood up from behind the chair and charged at them. The pink beam hit me, followed quickly by the blue, and I froze for a second. Nothing happened, other than I had a little purple spot in my vision. I jumped on the female carrying the pink-beam gun and started punching her. The female carrying the blue-beam gun hit me, and I kicked her backwards. Things were hitting me, and I’m not sure what they were… something like a whip cracked along my back. I felt it burning and stinging, and I felt wet blood flowing down my back. I had beaten the woman carrying the pink-beam gun to a pulp, and when I realized that she was no longer moving, I turned on someone else… something else…
Someone or something pulled me off of whatever I was beating on. They set me down and twirled me around so that I was facing them. I was looked up into the friendly face of one of my supervisors at work. But it wasn’t him, I knew that without a doubt. His face melted into something else, and I felt hands pull me to the floor and pin me down. I was scared. I can’t think of a time when I was that scared… Hands and claws tore off my clothes… claws started to cut into my skin. I think I screamed… I know I cried. I started kicking wildly, occasionally connecting with something but more often not. Something like hot pokers pierced my sides. Someone was carving something onto one of my breasts… my stomach felt like shredded paper. Hands lifted me up and began to attack my backside too. I’m sure I screamed… the pain was so great… I’m not sure how I was even still conscious. I highly doubt my tolerance for pain is that high.
There was a bright flash and I heard a noise that sounded like metal hinges grinding together. A metallic squeal, and then nothing but the soft pat of rain. I smelled fresh air. The floor under me was hard and cold. My wounds were stinging and I could barely move. I opened my eyes to see that I was laying on my stomach on the side of a highway. It was pouring. Blood was washing away on the ground in pools. I looked up to the horizon and saw black clouds slowly inching in my direction, wherever I was.
Somehow, I got to my feet. People were staring at me… a naked, bloody girl in the middle of the rain on the side of a busy highway… Trying to cover myself as much as I could with one arm, I stuck out my thumb in the hopes that someone would stop and help.
Someone did. A small car pulled over a ways away from me, then backed up to where I was standing. There were three young adults in the car, two boys and one girl, all about my age or possibly a bit younger. The girl was in the passenger’s seat. She opened the door and I staggered closer.
“Where you headed?” She asked, as though she hadn’t noticed that I was bleeding profusely and in incredible pain. In fact… I don’t think any of them noticed. Or maybe they couldn’t see?
“Um,” I said. I squinted to see if I could read any of the highway signs, but they were too far away. “Where am I now? Sorry, it’s been a long day and I have no sense of direction.”
They laughed. “No problem,” the driver said. “We’re in Boston now. Know where you’re goin’?”
Boston… When I heard that I knew exactly where I was going. My comfort place. “Worcester,” I said.
The girl said. “Hop in.” She leaned her seat forward and I climbed in behind her.
“Sup?” The boy in the backseat smiled and gave me a little wave of hello. I could tell by the glaze in his eyes (and the ‘cigarette’ in his hand, not to mention the smell in the car) that he was probably a little high. There was music blaring in the car… it was from a radio station. The girl adjusted herself so that she was facing me, with her back to the dashboard.
“We’re headed to a party. Wanna come?”
“No, but thank you though. I have to get to a friend’s house,” I said.
The driver glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. “So whereabouts in Worcester are you going?” He asked.
I started to say an address but I doubted they would know where it was, so instead I said, “It’s on the outskirts of the city.”
“Hey, cool, that’s right on the way!” The girl said.
They got me to a place I recognized. They let me out of the car and we said our goodbyes. I limped and tripped all the way to my friend’s house. But at least I got there. I nearly had to crawl to his door and when I knocked on it, I crumpled to the ground. My body felt like it didn’t want to work anymore. Someone answered the door. I heard my friend's voice say, “Oh my god!” He picked me up and brought me into the house. Even if the people in the car couldn’t see my wounds, I knew he would…
He set me down, very gently, on the living room floor and looked me over. The look in his eyes was one of horror, even though he kept his expression stoic as usual. I felt fear rise into my throat. I looked down at myself, and I saw for the first time what the creatures had been carving. My skin was engraved with symbols. I didn’t recognize any of them. Some of them had already hardened to scabs, and they hurt when I moved, but others were still openly bleeding.
“What did they do to you?” he asked finally.
Not ‘what happened?’ or ‘are you ok?’ but ‘what did they do to you?’, as though he already knew what had happened without my having to say anything. I let myself lean on him for a few moments… my comfort place… and I let myself cry without holding back. He just held me, as gently as he could, without saying a word.
“I need you,” I said.
“What do you want me to do?”
I looked up at him. “Kill me.”
Now some expression crossed his face. He looked both angry and surprised at once. “I’m not going to kill you!”
“It’s ok,” I said. I had a feeling that the only way out of this was if I killed the dream body I was inhabiting. I told him so, but still he refused. I begged him over and over. I told him that I would do it myself if I thought I had the strength to. I had to get out of this dream.
After begging him for quite some time, he finally stood and disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned, he was carrying a knife. He knelt beside me and gathered me in his arms in a hug.
“I’m sorry.” He whispered in my ear, and I’d never heard that tone in his voice before. I didn’t have time to think about it, as he plunged the knife into my stomach. I felt pain shoot through my body, but it was quick, and minor compared to the pain that had been inflicted on me by the creatures. There was darkness, and then I finally opened my eyes in the waking world.
