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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.
I've followed my boyfriend C into a tiny restaurant, it has a single prep bar in the middle of the establishment and a second, separate room with tables. I have never been here but once I go inside I suddenly work there. I don't know where anything is, what we sell, or how they sell it. C is nowhere in sight. Of course.
The restaurant has a garage door that takes up an entire wall, and they open to let it know they are ready to take business. But all the other workers are so placid and lacking urgency that it's hard to tell we're open. I go to help a woman who insists that she just wants 2lbs of ice cream. No one will listen to me, so I can't figure out where it is, and when I final see someone prepping the ice cream bar, I ask her if what's prepped is for my customer or someone else?? And she doesn't acknowledge me.
All the other employees talk around me instead of to me. I start to scoop the weird oblong chocolate ice cream onto....a plate, when someone says "That's not even ready yet."
"What do you mean?"
They don't answer me. I set the plate down. She picks it up and scrapes all the ice cream from the plate and the bar onto a flat tray with some milk, sugar, and butter and mixes it all together. She sets it down on the counter and I weigh the ice cream...it's 1.7lbs, plus a literal ice cream sandwich? Some shavings of ice cream on a bun. And a super weird mashed potato and ham biscuit thing.
I'm so confused, but I take it. It's they're 'standard plate' apparently. I take it to the woman and I try to ask if it's okay but she won't talk to me either, but also somehow makes me feel completely worthless.
Finally the work day is over and we're all trying to leave at once in a tidal rush for the side exit. I feel like I should have asked more people what I should have been doing. Maybe tomorrow will be better. There's a tallish, pale man with a cap of black curls, and big black-brown eyes. He's wearing a navy blue sweater over a sky blue button up. As we're leaving he looks down at me. Right into my eyes. And I can tell he really really sees me. I'm not forgotten or invisible, or talked over. He offers me his hand in a casual gesture, and I take it, wondering what my boyfriend will think if he sees me holding hands with another man.
But he's a hypocrite in these matters anyway. Should I care?
The hand is comforting and the man only means to be companionable, he's not coming onto me.
"It was a rough first day. Will you be back tomorrow?" He asks. I pull my hand free as we move out onto the patio, 7-8 other employees streaming past us.
"I think so."
"Good. See you then."
He leaves me behind and I spot my boyfriend C across the way. He's a distant figure and doesn't appear to consider me directly, though he raises a hand to let me know he's seen me...he still gets in his truck and leaves.
Which incites a dull sort of panic in me, because for a second I'm certain we rode here together. Did he just leave me to walk?
No...that isn't right. I dimly remember parking.
Right?
Where the fuck is the parking lot?
Uncertain, I go down the stairs to the fine gravel driveway. It's long and hooks toward the highway. I get almost to the end when I see the lot, on the other side. So of course, now that I'm trying to cross, there are a bunch of cars turning into the driveway.
Well. Not all of them are cars.
Some people are on bikes.
One woman is on a motorized tricycle? I only barely avoid her when I rush across the street, and she nearly hits another person on a bike...but she revs the tricycle, pops a wheelie and swerves out of the way.
It's so unnecessary and bloody stupid that I can't stand it. All of this pisses me off.
"Yeah, Karen! Rev your stupid tricycle, it's super intimidating!" I yell, disproportionately irate. Then I start laughing. It's so stupid that it strikes me as funny. I want to tell C about it so badly but he's not anywhere.
I my heart sinks back to its regular place in the hollow of my stomach, sad and cautious, and I find my car.
There's a lapse and I'm with C, I try to tell him about the funny thing that happened but he's not really listening, and when I tell the story again I know he doesn't believe I shouted at a stranger.
I'm having an argument with Jess Day from New girl in a weird little kitchen. She's supposed to be me, and I'm supposed to be C.
"Well yeah! that's how things would be if they were balanced! But they aren't, are they!" I snap.
"What do you mean not balanced?!" She cries.
"You really want me to bring this up here, in front of our FRIENDS? our TWO FRIENDS?" Who won't leave the fucking room.
I move around to the far side of a tiny, oddly shapped island that has a cork bulletin board running down the center with all sorts of maps and notices pinned to it. K, someone I haven't seen in forever is loudly observing a map and trying to throw thumb tacks at the board to make them stick.
I really want to get into it, so we can have a fight about something that bothers me, but the others won't leave the room and it's too personal to discuss in present company.
I'm traveling with my boyfriend. As usual, we are in separate cars and for some reason I have borrowed his. It's a sleek Porche in gunmetal grey. It's a cold dark night, we stop for gas and I leave the car at the pump (but pocket the key) and go to look for him in Walmart. I don't find him but we somehow return to the cars at the same time.
Something is wrong with the car but it takes me a minute to figure out it's a completely different car. It's a dented silver Toyota sedan. I fish the key out of my pocket and find it matches this dinged up mess. What?
I'm so confused.
How did this happen?
My boyfriend C comes up and asks what happened to the car.
"I guess someone stole it? I don't understand. I had the key in my pocket the whole time, but now it's the key for this car??"
"It was just a rental, we'll use this one for now and figure out the rest later."
Without a second thought he gets into the second car and leaves me there.
I frown at the Toyota. The top of the car is pressed down even with the hood. I open the door and push a button so it unfolds, then get in and try to catch up with C.
It's suddenly daylight and I'm on the highway in front of my childhood home in Welling, OK. Driving the car is oddly like running, in that I can't keep up a consistent speed if I get distracted and keep lagging behind my boyfriend so that I can't even see him anymore. There's a man on the shoulder of the road yelling for help with a floppy brown and white puppy. I help him catch it, and he convinces me to take the dog to it's mother in the next town over, since I'll be driving through.
I took a nap on the couch, and because my cat decided to sleep on my chest I (obviously) didn't want to roll on my side. I'm more likely to have SP when I sleep on my back. Anyway, the following SP dreams were super weird. My sister was visiting and trying to talk to me while also talking on the phone but I couldn't hear her because my cat was also talking to me in a high, human voice. The cat was complaining about something and asking for permission to do something and though I couldn't work out what she actually wanted, I was unsettled that she was speaking to me and so loudly that I couldn't hear my sister. I managed to reach up, sluggishly due to the SP, and grab the cat's face in both my hands, squeezing it in a playful gesture of frustration.
Then, the rest is a mess of drifting where I never really managed to get all the way to sleep. Out of the corner of my eye I keep noticing a blond woman in a long white dress sitting on the edge of my coffee table. She is serene and motionless, ankles crossed, wavy blond hair tucked behind one ear, she's giving me a small small. Noticing her always startles me, and I can only see her from a few angles. Occasionally the room shifts and mirrors itself. In my new apartment I've draped a red blanket over the loft railing. In my mess of SP I kept seeing it on the opposite wall, over one of the wedge shaped window.