I had a dream recently, I hesitate to call the whole experience a nightmare because some of it was at least neutral and occasionally fun. It's one of the weirder dreams I've had because it was a dream within a dream. It starts slow, but the ending really took a turn.

I'm pretty much nocturnal and when I work on a monday, I get up for work at three PM to leave at half three. I woke up in the dream, not lucid, and looked at the clock. It was three PM. In my mind I thought, "Well, I've got a half hour, I'll just snooze for a while." In the dream, I fell asleep again and started dreaming within the dream, but once again I did not become lucid, and merely forgot the first dream had even happened. I dreamt that a friend of mine went to a fair that was also a wedding. The setting frequently switched between open fields and a white marble town, with close, winding streets. There were tables and people laughing and talking everywhere. The people had brought animals to join in the socialising. They were anthropomorphic and grotesque, sitting at the tables. Horses, pigs, dogs, cows, that kind of thing. I was angry that so many people were talking because in the dream I knew that I was to be married soon and I wanted to get to know my future father in law who was at my table, and we couldn't hear each other comfortably.

The setting changed, and while we were still at the fair, me and my best friend were standing on a huge field with people scattered around, all listening to the father of the bride's speech. Next to us was a gruff old farmer with his horse, both watching intently. Suddenly, two small yappy dogs ran about twenty feet away from the horse and started barking. The farmer walked up to me and told me "Get the dogs away from my horse! They're scaring my horse!" Thinking nothing of it, I walked over to the dogs and shooed them away. Walking back towards the horse, I was happy with myself, when I heard the dogs yapping once again, having ran back to where they were. Before I could turn around and scare them off again, the farmer explodes with anger, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a baseball. By the way, I'm from England. I don't even understand baseball. He runs forward and throws the ball straight towards the dogs, but because I'm in the middle, it hits me in the stomach, and I fall straight to the floor.

This is where things take a turn. The red mist descends and I stand up furious. I shout "What the fuck?" and start running towards the farmer, who runs away from me. By now the field around us is infinitely huge, expanding forever, and all the people around us have gone. We're running, with me just a yard and a half behind him, until eventually it goes into slow motion, we both slow down and he reaches for his belt and pulls out a snubnose pistol, turns around and in super slow motion aims it straight at my forhead from inches away and pulls the trigger. As soon as the bullet sinks into my forehead, my hearing disappears. From the frantic noise of the wind in my ears, my feet running along the ground, panting etc, there is now nothing but the beating of my heart which fills my head. With my heart beating I fall backwards and see the sky hove into view until I'm staring straight up at it. With what has to be the most disturbing, desperate voice I've heard or can imagine, I scream "Help me!" and I see about a dozen rifles slowly float across my vision in the air. In the dream at this point the desperation momentarily disappeared and I thought to myself "Wow, I'm hallucinating!". Back to the desperation, my vision is slowly fading out, becoming darker and darker, and I see a figure standing beside my head, and I wonder if its benevolent or not. And the dream ends.

I wake up in my bed, convinced that I was screaming. When I realise where I am, I laugh and feel relief. Not only because I'm still alive, but because I woke up from the first dream as well, and it was only half past eleven AM, and I still had four hours before I had to leave for work.

Just thought I'd share it.