skeleton
Lurker

I'm standing outside of a huge gold and white castle. The front doors alone are bigger than anything I've ever seen, though I feel familiar with it as if I've lived here my whole life. Inside, the first room is grand, empty, and shiny. To the left, the castle blends in with the dirty outside streetscape; markets, classrooms, and living quarters become one with the castle, as though it had been abandoned and is now being repurposed. I have fleeting memories of sleeping in bunkers below the castle or walking outside in the snow, seeing the castle's golden spires in the distance, meaning this is most likely what I know as home.
Venturing deeper into the castle's grand halls, I come across a small, empty room, with a hole in the ground. I walk over to the hole and see it's filled with water, though I'm not sure how deep it is. I see my reflection, some sort of white, featureless creature wearing blue robes.

The next day, I go to the market. I squeeze past overgrown shrubbery to get to the old stone staircase that leads to the produce stalls. At one of the stalls is an old owl-like creature wearing long brown rags and a broad-brimmed hat. He has his wrinkly talon hands resting on the table in front of him, which is littered with shiny trinkets, fresh vegetables, and other goods. I walk up to him and begin to barter for a handful of carrots or some other carrot-y-looking food, and after a while of arguing I give him some coins and he fills my bag. I take off down the very narrow street, bustling with life, and go up into a sheltered area. The first room I pass through is a kindergarten classroom, where I stop to watch for a moment. 3 tiger creatures are arguing in Mandarin, all wearing quite nice clothes. One has a baby on her lap, and I assume the other two are also mothers of some of the smaller creatures I see sitting at the back of the class. I continue going through other rooms, though I can't remember much after this.
I end up back at the well in the ground. I toss one of the carrots in. After a moment, I hear a deep rumbling coming from within the well, and water splashes up out of it. I return to the bunkers for the night.

I wake up in complete darkness, floating aimlessly, quickly realising I'm underwater. I start panicking, certain I'm going to drown here. Then a light appears above me, and I feel a hand on my shoulder. I look up and see a glowing boy with white hair, a white shirt, and a very long tail, and he's smiling at me. We're talking like we've met before, though I can't remember much of this part, other than I'm slowly floating up and I have faint flashes of some kind of scripture in my mind. It feels like whatever's happening is very important. I start reciting something and I suddenly understand why I'm in the well (of course, can't remember that either). As I get closer to the top of this body of water, the boy's tail begins to curl around me as it gets thinner and thinner, until I've reached the end of his tail. Then it splits in half, and he runs the inside of his tail along my face as a sort of goodbye. I reach the top and am blinded by light, I feel completely at peace.
And then I woke up.


This was such a cool dream, I wish I could remember more of it!

Smaller part of a long dream that I can barely remember.
I'm sitting on the couch scrolling on my phone, when I see a notification appear at the top of the screen. It's from a girl whom I'd had an upsetting falling out with a couple years back - most of my dreams seem to be about her. I click on it, and text back "hey", for lack of words to describe my shock. She starts by apologising, which I return, and we continue chatting for a bit as if not a day had gone by. We then agree to meet up in person.
We meet, maybe in a park or outside her house I can't really remember. And then we just talk some more, and laugh and gossip and share our lives. It's the happiest I've felt in years, I feel closer to her than I ever had been. And then I woke up.
still miss you mads

I'm in a very large, white castle. Every surface is made out of marble, everything is shiny. Me and about a hundred other people are dancing and drinking in the ballroom. I suddenly black out. When my senses come back, there are ants everywhere. Millions of them. You would think the floor was meant to be black if it wasn't moving. There's so many ants some of them stack on top of each other and form mounds. There are giant ant eggs that blend in with the marble.
I'm going around with another person trying to kill them all with bug spray, but it just coats them all in white so they're harder to see. It's so disgusting.
And then I woke up.

A very long, completely non-linear, nonsensical dream. I won't try and make any story out of it, just writing as I remember things...


It was around Christmas time and millions of people had gathered to see a Christmas play in a theater. All of the people, including myself, were large nesting doll type things. I was much older, maybe 40-50, and had a husband. The line to the theater was inside a dimly lit hallway, and was so long it seemed to stretch out forever. By the time we got to the theater, the play was ending. We were the last to leave, the stage and hallway so eerily empty now. At the door to the exit a receptionist told us we needed a key to leave, which would have been given to us during the show. I tried explaining to her that we'd got in late and weren't given a key. The three of us talked like old friends for a while before my husband pulled out a key and placed it in it's lock, and we left the theater.

Then, I was in a shop that had tables and chairs set up like a classroom. Outside it had been snowing heavily, and I was covered head to toe in winter gear. I was also my own age again, human, and had no husband. I'd wanted to go out to ski, but didn't have any skis. At the entrance to the shop was a row of pigeonholes with different footwear in each hole. As I thought about stealing a pair of skis, my inner monologue in the form of a pink fairy flew around me and told me not to, but I did it anyways. Then I went outside and skied up and down a large hill of snow for a while. When I reached the bottom of the hill for the last time, I walked into white light.

Now I was in a shopping mall at night, putting on an interpretive dance performance. The mall was covered in a faint purple glow. At some point in the dance, I had a flashback.

In the flashback, there was a large green hill above a small town. At the top of the hill was a giant oak tree. Under the tree, I saw hundreds of bubbles, every bubble containing a moment in someone's life. In one particular bubble, I saw a young girl asleep at her schooldesk. Underneath all the bubbles is a field of roses covered in thick thorns. I had the knowledge that the girl could either return to her life at her desk and wake up, or remain asleep and pop the bubble, falling into the endless field of thorns.

Then I was in a bustling street, and it was the middle of summer. At an intersection in the street a famous band was performing, and thousands of people were packed tightly around them to watch. I was with a friend and wearing a shirt that had a quote from one of the band members on it. The person in front of me turned around, revealing to be the member of the band that said the quote. He saw my shirt and laughed. After the show was over, everyone dispersed into the city. I was walking along a row of shops with my friend and realised I was wearing shorts, even though I hate wearing shorts in public. We went into a clothes shop and I asked my friend to buy me a pair of pants as I went to hide in a changing room. At the back of the shop where the change rooms are, I saw a row of stalls and 2 bathrooms, each with very specific signs above them. The signs had strange requirements like "for very smart women" or "for hat people". I decided to go into a few of them to see what could set them apart. In each of the stalls, every surface had a fullbody funhouse-like mirror that reflected different versions of myself depending on the sign outside. I saw myself with long blonde hair and a purple dress.
There weren't any bathrooms or stalls labeled explicitly for men, so I went into the bathroom labeled "for very smart women". Inside, instead of mirrors there were screens. As I sat down on the lid of the toilet the screens lit up and started to tell me facts about myself. My star sign, my favourite foods, how likely I am to do certain things than other people in my lifetime. When I stood up, the tiles under my feet lit up. The screen told me my height and weight: 4 grams. When I left the bathroom my friend gave me a pair of pink leggings, and we left without paying.

And then I woke up.

My wife and I had recently decided we wanted a change of pace, and moved to live in the woods. Our house was big enough and was completely removed from the rest of society, secluded and peaceful. As far as we knew, we lived alone out there. A few weeks after moving, I had started to hear a tapping noise coming from outside. I assumed this was from trees outside banging into our walls, as it often got windy out there. Over the course of 2 or so months, the tapping got louder and louder.

We wake up one morning before the sun had risen and I say goodbye to her as she heads off to work. I sit in our room as I listen to her car pull out of our gravel driveway and drive off. A few minutes later, I hear knocking at the door. I'm thinking maybe she had forgotten something, so I answer it. But no one's there. I try to see through the darkness and fog of the early morning out to our driveway, but I don't see anything parked. I look to my left and spot our black dog laying on the veranda playing with his toy, so I assume it was him who had just been scratching on the door. As a soft rain starts to fall, I go back inside.

I close the door. Inside the living room, I hear that familiar tapping on the window, now the loudest I had ever heard it. Like a knock. These taps were too evenly spaced together to have been from any kind of tree being blown about by the wind. The rain is picking up now, coming down hard on my tin roof. Suddenly, from the other wall of the living room I hear that same knock. Outside I see the dark silhouettes of trees surrounding my house thrashing and waving back and forth in the storm's howling wind, and paranoia starts to fill my gut. I try to calm my nerves, reminding myself that I am the only thing out here. As waves of hail and rain come down on my house, I walk back to my bedroom.

I look under the bed, the space between the frame and the floor too small for anything to fit underneath. The closet, full of clothes. Under the desk, nothing but lint and dirt. I go to check behind the curtains. As I start towards the window, I hear footsteps coming from the front porch and my heart starts racing. I pull the curtains back, and peer ever so slightly outside. The sun had started to rise, light creeping across the forest floor. I squint to see who is out there.

A warm wave of relief washes over me as I see my wife and I's dog, toy in mouth, bowing at the front door, his dark coat drenched in mud and rain. He notices me watching him from the window and runs over excitedly, whining at me. His puppy dog eyes put a smile on my face, as I'm reminded that everything is as the way it had always been. I walk back to the front door, but hesitate for a moment. I recall my wife telling me not to let the dog in the house after it had been raining, as he'd get our carpet dirty. But hearing his whines, I tell myself she'd let it go just this once, and I open the door to let him in, quickly shutting it to keep the rain out. I sit down on our doormat and hug his muddy fur as he jumps about in my embrace. He shakes himself clean, now safe inside the warm house. But still his whining quickens, coming out in loud gasps as he drops his toy. The dog turns and takes my hand in his mouth, shaking it urgently. His whines are so loud, it sounds like a faint scream. I pull back from him and look into his beady eyes. As he stares back at me with a fearful expression I try and ask him what's wrong, but he continues to scream. Then his black eyes look somewhere behind me, and his gaze turns wide and white. In the reflection of the door's wood, I see two large, yellow eyes, staring right back at me.
And then I woke up.

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I'm not the best writer but I tried to capture the absolute terror I felt last night after being awoken by the first real nightmare I've had in years. Couldn't go back to sleep after this one.