I Make Nightmares

These are nightmares I have. They are quite frequent, but these are the more vivid ones. This is a vent blog. You may follow and use what I describe or illustrate if you like. If you do, I’d love to see what you do with them.

[imakenightmares]

In five hours, I was subject to a series of dreams. They were incredibly detailed and colorful. It began with a giant octopus laying babies onto our boat. We had to escape before we capsized and the gravity and pressure xrushed our bodies. We made it onto a tug boat and spun the sinking ship around and around as fast as we could. It spun like a top and angered the octopus. She gave us rude looks for a moment, then proceeded to leave peacefully.

The woman had eaten the eggs. She hadn’t been feeling well. As we walked through the halls, she fell to her knees. Confused and silent, she began to turn inside out, transforming into an alien bug of skin and delicate bone.

I was a help desk manager with no access to the internet. My job was to help translate languages over the phone using a shopping catalog and phone book. I had to tell a depressed japanese woman that we did not offer japanese [language] classes, and she hung up disappointed.

I was trying to ride my bike down a road of red dust between hilly farmlands on a beautiful spring day. It was partly cloudy and the colors were vivid. I caught up to an old witch trying to crawl through the same road. She muttered to herself and kept alone, but we managed to help each other into town. Down the hill I rode, the sides lined with people standing and kneeling, bent on all fours. They called it “The Shimming.” It was an abstract gruesome event wherein these infected men and animals shed their weight in off-white taffy-stretched skin. It hardened fast into holey walls of wailing flesh all along the road, curling over into a tunnel. I passed a dog. It was trying to shake it off like water; the more it shook, the more came off.

Inbetween these dreams, we came back to a sports bar. It was late night and it was myself and some friends. For whatever purpose, we were the size of mice to a house of spiders, annoyed with our rambunctious behavior. It was good times until an uncomfortable aura came in to join us once again. It was a man, some scruff and an air of alcoholism, but he was trying to be better. He held a large bottle of wine, appropriately. He claimed he pawned my laptop to afford it, which had all my art on it. I took the bottle by the neck and smashed it on the table.

I awoke to the sunrise.

[imakenightmares]

They called it “The Shimming,” an abhorrent ritual on the outskirts of a farm town. Dogs, coyotes, cats and monsters of men would make their way to the long road of people knelt and stacked against each other where they stayed in forced prayer through tears and wailing. Nobody was there to stop them, nobody obvious. While they screamed and were torn apart by animals, their skin began to stretch and thin upwards and over each other, sticking onto other’s skin and becoming one great wall of flesh and tears.

As I drove through the Shimming, I watched a dog flail its head around. I thought it was maiming someone, but the more it flung its head the more of that skin flew into the air in long stretches of sinew-white taffy. Nothing seemed safe. I was on a bike. The road leading here was nestled in green hills surrounded by beautiful farmland, but it was a dusty road and I found myself clinging to dirt. As I fought against the burying dust, I caught up to a witch attenpting the same thing. She was quite elderly, mostly mumbling to herself, but the mire I tried to push past her the more invigorated she seemed. It was mutual, her frequent tilts of her head towards me felt benevolent. Perhaps I was spared because of this.

[imakenightmares]

I had a dream brought on by sun burns and stress. A completely unrelated to the dream stress. At one point, I was in some kind of submarine, hunting something fruitlessly. I received a call, and then I was on a bus to a training camp, flanked by tired women who were nervous about the training. I instilled confidence and reassurance with my actions and words, and the training went fine, a lot of running and paper making.

After so long, I was in a house. There was another woman with a newborn child. It was huge and heavy for its age. The mother was strained to her end, the verge of colllapse, of giving up. Whoever the father was had gone. So, I quietly walked up and took the crying baby out of her hands, sleepily walking her and cradling the child into a bedroom, and sat down as they both went to sleep.

I thought about singing, coming up with something new. I tried something, the melody was alright, soft four chords, but the words were rubbish. I was never good with words. So, I sang “You are my sunshine,” like my parents did. When I did, I could see them as they were so many years ago, singing to me when skies were gray. I thought about how, through all of the fights and bad times, there was always that love sitting under everything, incorruptible and genuine. I thought about how I reciprocated that love over my lifetime and I wonder if I ever really did; that kind of love... it can never be matched, not really, not to the same people, the ones who gave everything.

Then, I thought of my siblings, wrought with depression, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, the stressors of great change both personal and societal. They were all given the same love, more-so even as I had given more than I remembered (according to my parents). I took all this and thought, “well, I can’t pay it back,” and there was no finishing of the sentence. Love is not a debt, you are not an investment, nothing is owed. The respect we give back is to show that we recognize their efforts, their love, even if it may seem things are going wrong.

I know this won’t speak for everyone. I hear a lot from friends, friends of my siblings, word on the street, that some families are just plain toxic. Parents do see their children as an investment, a caregiver, a chore worker, much worse, sometimes they don’t see them at all. And here I sit, 5:19am, crying on the john because my dreams have given me more clarity than a years worth of contemplation and alcohol ever could. Nothing happened irl, it was just a dream that turned sour, one that hurt where it matters most.

[imakenightmares]

Have I ever talked about the shower demons? They are the reason I always put alight on in the bathroom, a 28 year-old bulk man. Not that I am scared of the dark, that I have no problem with, just the dark of a bathroom.

It was in a friend’s old house in Delaware. We had frequently experienced unexplainable events at this house, such as the moaning vision in the basement or an attic that creaked with footsteps. Normally, we would be too preoccupied with Smash Bros. to care. Well one night, during a sleepover, we were playing and I had to pee. So I went in to the bathroom, started taking a piss, the lights were off.

I look up because a cold breeze passed through the ceiling vent and there are two glowing red eyes staring at me behind the shower curtain. I froze, still pissing, I couldn’t just stop. They didn’t seem to move, or get bigger or smaller, but I panicked and wrapped up fast as I could, bolting out of there. I told my friend and he took it as a joke, spooking me by saying it was his uncle and that he was bringing a tornado. That guy sucked, I realized later, but the red eyes are as clear now in my mind as they were then in that shower.

[imakenightmares]

I was in an unfamiliar home. The place was a mess wherever you went and I couldn’t stop messing with the lumps on my arms. They didn’t hurt, but there was a big fuss about them from my family. Mother seemed to be the only one invested in researching it. The father had tabs and tabs of porn open on a tiny laptop, my brother was playing with cats and spiders hanging from hemp ropes (the small kind you find now and then). My cat was there, downstairs all on her own. She doesn’t stray far from my room because the cats gang up on her. Maybe they died.

After so long, we figured out that I was in terrible danger. We discussed this outside, where the sky was an angry gray, clouded without clouds like a world soon abandoned. A massive thresher in the distance was devouring hills, hills covering what lay beyond. We were in a basin. I was never told what the lumps were or why they were severe, I was simply told to pop them and that they were caused from eating the tops of avocado. I had eaten avocado, so why not.

I took a dirty steak knife and held it like a pencil, popping each one and compressing with a napkin. Lifting it, they were deflated with minimal blood, leaving a bright concentric ring around the area. As I pierced the last and largest, I awoke, hungover.

[imakenightmares]

I lived in an empty pod deep in the inner city, below the subway rails and the city electrical grid. A lot of people lived here, many did so on purpose. There was a certain pride in the anonymity you could create with the new newspaper pods: our walls were a constant feed of information made by ourselves and each other, not quite a news feed but not quite a bulletin board. If an article became old news, the article threw itsslf out, so you would frequently see well-written articles with pictures next to one-word sections in the middle of the night. It was whatever was on their mind, just meant to patch it until they woke up again. It never stopped raining down here.

After a while, I started noticing a pattern, signals led to clues about a particular activity people could barely keep up with. Pictures of a robed cyborg, more machine than man, haphazardly covered my wall when I woke from a new article reading “becoming.” Another roof-cover story, but the rest of the articles focused on the numerous sightings of the robot man. Usually, the walls talk about “where to find food cleaners in X sector” or a variety of horoscopes based on the whistlings of the pipes. “Two more disappear in Father Tech’s rampage” was not common around here. In other sectors, maybe, but we had a community that someone wanted to crumble.

I went out to investigate, but did not go far. The cyborg was after me. I think he got me, because I found myself blinded into darkness by some Dr. Doom-looking robot jerk. He was staved off by a lady, or so it sounded, as I coukd only hear. I saw cuts in the air as my mind tried to imagine everything. It stopped eventually, and I was left with two clues: a razor wire and a picture of a woman who’s clothing barely sat on her. The back of the photo was blank, but a message was made. This must be a calling card. The walls around me changed with excited flurry it doesn’t normally see, old pages turned yellow from disuse now crisp white and black with the new lady in multiple articles, all with one phrase: “Find the Buxom lady.” I felt a sense of urgency, the cyborg must be hunting her down. His murders were already implied, this must be the justice everyone prayed for, but can we keep justice alive long enough to work?

[imakenightmares]

I had this amazing, terrifying display of images this morning! I had been struggling to get a few extra hours, with the sun beaming into my window and my cat trying to get me to go to school instead of skipping it. It was REM sleep, but it felt like my brain was firing wildly, every synapse sparking at random to leave me feeling exhausted.

What I saw was uncanny. Robots, perfect Herculean specimens of bionics and machination, living sculptures of silicon and marble carved by Boston Dynamics. They looked at me with empty black eyes, one after another, marching and lifting things around. They didn’t make any noise, though i hadn’t been listening either. Looking closer, I could see cracks, things nobody would see at first glance. There were people in them, blackened and stretched. They were crying, though their reasons were varied. It never seemed to relate to being trapped in automatons, for that was their choice. And how could it not be? The poor men and women trapped within their plastic shells, moving through the uncanny valley like afterimages against a background of light.

There was one who stood out among the others, with all their passing glamour and shadowed neglect. She stood as if being judged, a body in shambles. A terrible tear into her right belly exposed everything, gray metal ribs and colorful organs exposed to the elements. Everything was covered by her head, which was removed by the neck rather cleanly, placed and wired with tenuous dedication. The face was marred with damage, her own right eye holding a hole placed clean through. The eye she did have was larger than normal, not quite Anime, but not grotesque either. In the hole of the carbon mask I could make out a small, blue eye, wide awake and looking in any direction with terrified fervor. She wanted to stare at me, to gaze into my eyes and beg for escape, but something compelled her to always look away.

At any point, when I would awaken between these images, an hour would pass. I feel asleep on my phone four times in a row, twice while it was still on. I felt like I had never truly awoken, my mind fired sporadically and constantly to get me back to sleep.

[imakenightmares]

It has been a while since I’ve posted a nightmare, though I have been experiencing them. There haven’t been many bad nights, mainly due to sleepless nights, or they simply haven’t been eventful enough to record.

I killed three people in this dream. I just got a job working in a wood shop. We had some kind of disagreement about my writing, so when we came off of break, I reached for a twelve lbs. sledgehammer. At first, I was incredibly weak, barely able to pick up the iron head. My first attack was a light thump, barely registering on the first guy’s back, but it got his attention for sure. He was alarmed at first, thinking it was a joke. Then, I slammed it into his head, cracking it open like a watermelon. Brain matter splashed out like grilled chorizo onto the concrete floor. One of the others saw me, and tried to walk away to tell, so I did what I could and swung into his spine. He fell paralyzed, probably dead, and began emitting odd sounds, like glitches in his vocal cords with a brain not quite working right. I hit him again on the neck. It gave a crunchy snap and ended the potential suffering. 

The third man walked in and I just slammed the top of the hammer into his head. It was over quick.  I got away with it with my dad’s help. He drove me around and told me it was going to be alright, like this was something everyone did/does in their lifetime, like a manliness goal. I was mortified at what I had done. I ended up leaving him, fending for my own in a spectacular, colorful wild of hostile beasts and prey. I made myself a home within an abandoned library, built into a cave under a lighthouse.

There, I found a girl with amnesia. She struggled with everything, from self-control and obvious ADHD issues to basic speech norms. I did my best to teach her, and it paid off after many hard (unseen) years, but the work was arduous and I began to lose faith in myself. The past was coming back to haunt me in a surprising manner: the successful third Chinese war.

We changed residence, feeling it was better to live in the propaganda tower on the outskirts of town. it certainly wasn’t the first place anyone looked, for nobody came looking for us or were suspicious of our activity. We began thinking about what to do: integrating meant getting a job and losing ourselves and each other, all independence; running would ensure we never could stop being pursued. She brought up making homebrew porn, which we almost tried, but I couldn’t get into it, too great a fear of bring a child into our unknown, terrifying future.

There was a mind-jump machine retrofitted into our tower. We used it to place ourselves into a parasitic “moon worm” and a red panda. We tried to make our escape during a parade, where we watched people graduate, march to designated towers, then transform into scientists and astronauts as flags and confetti flew from the banisters and the adults and scientists looked on from the balconies of the converted churches.

We were caught by a young boy. He questioned why we were leaving such an important ceremony. I, the leading foot-long moon worm, told him we weren’t interested, so I jumped in his ear and took control of this young adult Chinese man. My red panda friend and I went into the town. It was empty, mostly, with the occasional person who asked us to stop so they could congratulate me or a passing patrol helicopter we had to dodge. Eventually, we made it through to a safe place: the closet of a two-story house owned by some underground American teens.

I remained as a worm, the possessed man left in an alley to recover and leave. This wasn’t what I had hoped for for my friend, and she felt the same. It was why she did not follow with me for long. I had a nice thing going in the top of this closet. My residency was soon to be discovered. The male resident, a strong white guy in mid teens with a red-lined tank top and a white hate, was looking for something, oblivious to my presence until I panicked and knocked over a statue of a mannequin head, which broke open. The boy looked around, but could not find the worm which was stuck, frozen in fear, at the top against the wall and over the space. It must have been the cobwebs I left around, but he knew something was here. He left and quickly retrieved a flashlight, but it did not help as it never shone onto me in his frantic search. The resident girl came by, a young adult back lady wearing denim coveralls with a striped green-brown polyester shirt, who looked like she worked in a steel mill but still loved curls in her hair. She was amused at her friend’s finally paying attention to something, believing she was about to be pranked. She aided his search for me, and I was still paralyzed with fear of being discovered and killed.

Lo, I was saved! There came a ghost in the hall, hovering above the girl’s shoulder in broad daylight. They did not notice until a familiar voice spookily got their attention. When they noticed, they ran in fear, to where did not matter but nobody ever acme back. The ghost was a clever hologram reflected off a wall-hanging painting, made by my red panda girl friend. We decided to celebrate by hanging up the now-established new world order flag in the closet to hide my place of living, a light-blue flag with a white-blue line border on all sides and a white-line rectangle in the center with a white circle, red star, and a wreath. It was no American flag, because we thought it would be too suspicious.

And then we lived happily ever after, I assume. The dream ended there.

[imakenightmares]

I was at home, alone, sleeping off a night of drinking from a casino bar. It was a very spartan home, not much happening on anything. So I was on my bed, lying on my back, and snoring. I dont normally snore but this was a prominent fact. I was stuck in sleep paralysis again, as if I were still asleep but could see a bit.

And then came up, so silently, was a black-robed man. A hood hid his face, which wore a mask that shifted from a plague mask to a shy guy mask, yet i never really saw it. For some reason, I wasnt scared, and he just stood (maybe sat?) next to me. Then he punched me in the gut.

Yea! A sudden hit to my stomach, a thump, it hurt! And I was still asleep, paralyzed, but now snoring through gasps and breathing quickly. I was terrified, the pain in my stomach lingering. Then he just watched as i struggled to awaken. It lasted a long time. Eventually, it felt like I was making progress (but who knows, right?) by bringing a hand down to my stomach, but he gently and effortlessly and maliciously holds it back. I kept losing breath and suffocating, then a gasp of air would bring me back. I think he got distracted because, though I felt paralyzed still, I grabbed his pinky. I grabbed it fast, then he lunged his face at mine to headbutt me. He misses, and I get a second hand in. He misses again, struggling to keep me down, and I jolt awake. The dark painting on the wall, combined with the black computer chair, looked like the man standing above me, though I was alone.

Writing this at 4am, I am filled with fear. I have never been hurt in a dream nor seen a monster in sleep paralysis before. I fear sleeping ever again, I was on my side when I fell asleep but woke up on my back (very dangerous). The sleep I had afterwards was amazing, and I am not hungry all the time anymore.

[imakenightmares]

It all started with mechs. It was just a fun dream about running around in colorful robot suits and playing with some guy. We stopped playing when we noticed he had a baby napping in the house. It was all so fun and wholesome, like a TV program.

Then, I awoke in an ocean, vast and unknown. A giant lady was making her own sea on top of it with giant donuts and pancakes. There were these doughy balls floating about that looked ready to deep fry, everything was bigger than me and floating like lilies. She offers me food and I take something or other.Swimming along, I find land in the form of four towers aimed above the other, ominously piercing the sky. My mind told me in somber tones, “Towers of the Four Dragons.” It made me think back to home earlier, where an old dragon statue in our backyard was. It was kind of unkempt and bits had chipped, but as I stared I began to lose myself.

I was now a cyborg. My left arm was a series of screens, text and imagery of unrecognizable binary screamed of mistakes I must undo to this dragon I was restoring. My partner as overseeing me, looking for flaws to correct as well. We were feverishly attentive, an unknown threat from failure loomed in the back of my mind. The dragon was metal, the mosaic scales and pieces not merely pieces but filled holes with circuitry and purpose. It was difficult to remember each piece, but the realism was vivid.

And like that, I was back at the stone dragon, worn stone chips in hand. I started thinking of home, fears of home invasion clouding my mind. My weapons were a bat made of sheets or a papier-mache vase. I supposed the wine bottles would be enough.

My old boss (the good boss) was here. I was in a room filled with people from work, people I knew would not be there. It was a memory, and we were in a corner of a room tucked away from the eyes and ears of our easily-angered bosses (bad bosses). He was showing the forty of us some music video, scandalous due to some naughty language on it. It was alright, but what I wanted to know was how I’d lost sixty pounds because my belly was flatter than the giant pancakes from earlier. (Much to my dismay, I am not so.) A bad boss approached, the good boss laying in his coffin, his place of work. He mostly just watched videos though, but the bad bosses never cared.

I had gotten back into the pretend mecha suit. I had my brother and sister join me. We were to assault the house of our villain and raid the pantry for snacks. But alas, sleepy baby, so I called off the mission. My sister was around the house though, she could not hear so I crawled on all fours like a fucking CGI demon and snuck underneath the windowsill, around the house and into the half-fenced backyard. I made a motion at my neck signaling “abort mission.” She understood and left.

I went back to the porch. I grabbed my arm; my robot arm was aching. I shouted at the man in the rocking chair who had not existed previously, dining on pickles with a face of infinite darkness. I comprehended only the belly and below... and its straw hat.

Danger. Real danger! I was called into action, my giant mecha with two others fighting some unseen threat. I fiddled hard with my controls, they seemed to be doing something productive against the enemy, but it was not easy. I managed the problems with great experience, but was stunted by this woman whom passed by. She was as big as we were, not that I could tell because of the thick rain and fog. She was late for something, and quite upset. The battle was effectively halted.

I found myself with my brother in a large church. The walls and ceiling, the pews, everything was covered in red, muscly mass, white and blue sinews branching out everywhere like overgrowth. The pews were flooded with girls centered around one, where she held her mouth wide open as another attempted to reinsert a fallen tooth. She showed me the tooth, tried to put it in, but two more fell out. We left and I heard screaming, lots of screaming. The next thing I know, I have her still screaming... head in my hands. What could I call it? The brain was held by my brother, the entire skull cleaved in half vertically from neck to vertebrae. it flopped to both sides like rubbery sheets, occasionally letting out a short gasping scream like it was startled or trying to cope. With each scream, the ribbed flabs would jiggle. I took the body to find a priest, to show what had transpired, but could not find one.

It was there I awoke. Words were stuck in the center of my vision, white against the darkness of my room. They were scratched letters, like crude knife streaks on wood, “youfreak”. I gave it the bird and made a face. It would not go away until I found my phone and let the light of my screen reset my vision. A bathroom break was in order and I was thirsty. It was about 5:15 am when I wrote this down on my phone.

[imakenightmares]

Often, whether waking up from a nightmare or having difficulty getting to sleep, I see faces and images form in the darkness. I can tell they are in my eyes, for they “travel” where my sight does, and yet they stay in place. If I looked away, then looked back, they would still be there in the ether but slightly distorted.

Mostly, it is faces. Nobody I ever recognize, not that they stay long enough for me to recall them, but they still fill me with a sense of anxiety, as if I should avert my eyes but I fear insulting them by doing so. Sometimes, they try to talk, others give melancholy or judgmental faces. Pictured here was something which woke me up. It was merely a flash and I don’t really know what it is supposed to represent, but there it is.

[imakenightmares]

Once upon a time, way back in 2008, I read a story on the internet about a saint who had terrible visions of Hell. I read other’s stories of people who were dead for a few minutes and given glimpses into the suffering beyond. I tried to find the story again recently, and I found the article which had all of the stories, but I could not find the vision which haunted my mind since high school. So, here is my vision:

I was dead, this I knew. This was all I knew, as I could not remember who I was, how I got here, what I had done. I was bare naked and magnetized to this large marble sphere. It was infinite within, a darkness so deep I could not comprehend light within, and I could not move. For fleeting moments, I could see myself and others out of body, and I could see others also magnetized to orbs of marble darkness. Each were over a pit, the orbs suspended above a needle stalagmite.

Robed spirits gathered around me, conversing between each other in whispered prayers. I would try to look at them, fearing what they could want, what they could mean. The closer my eyes came upon them, the louder their prayers would become. The spirits would become angry that I dare see my beholders.

All fell silent upon the arrival of one, its presence quelling my every emotion. My fear turned to perception, though my understanding was absent. It came to me, and let me gaze upon it as I lay paralyzed to the marble darkness. I would cry, when I was able, as the vast abyss within the cowled robes stared into the depths of my soul. Time would be lost as he studied me.

After so long, the lead spirit would do something. I could not see, but its manner had changed. A great pressure would come upon me, my flesh pulled outwards as if caught by hundreds of hooks. Bones would compress, everything pushing hard into the marble. It was without agony. In fact, I felt calm, as if I were in surgery watching doctors operating. The dwelling, stressful, numbing moment would pass, and from the bottom of the marble would collect and fall a single drop of blood. The blood falls on the tip of the needle, splitting into multiple droplets as it rolls to the bottom of the bowl.

The spirit would relax, its inexplicable tension released so quick as it was noticed, and it would turn and leave as silently and solemnly as it had arrived. The other spirits would approach me, one by one, in a cluttered line. Some were more eager than others, though never were more than one spirit with me at a time. They would do the same as the first: study me for a moment, tense something happens, then they relax and leave as a drop of blood falls. The spirits left me tense and scared, I felt less I was being healed and more like I was being harvested. The pain would come more and more, and with every spirit that passed I wished and prayed for the first one to return. Its unique compassion gave me a moment of peace I knew would never return until the pool had filled.

[imakenightmares]

I often think about what Hell could be like. I don’t believe that a place of punishment, especially one for a species as creative as Humans, could ever be so simple as burning for a long time. Sure, it would suck, but I think the real Hell would be losing myself, forgetting what I once was. To become twisted and malformed, in constant agony as I desperately try to adapt and survive the divine gauntlet until someone from far away tells me I get another go at the whole “life” thing.

I always imagined that in Hell, you could just never die. You felt everything like normal, you just wouldn’t ever go to sleep or blackout or die. The body would be constantly healing, fast before your very eyes. Against the madness of other sufferers, one would be torn and stretched in barbaric manners without thought, and sometimes the healing would simply compromise.

Illustrated here was my take on a monster called Doga, a boss from Final Fantasy 3 who was one of two mages who became monsters so their magic blood could become a badass sword. It... stands out amongst the others. I thought of taking the idea for my story that demons, those who suffer the deserts of the abyss, simply have to take on what they take until, after so long trying to survive, they lose focus on what they have become.

[imakenightmares]

What a strange one.

I was in a bed, and everything around me told me I was captured by an enemy force. I had my pants, shirt, and rank and remembered nothing else. I was being watched by some kind of tan guy, I think he might’ve been Turkish, and his two subordinates. They would all come and go freely, but were rude and physical if I said anything. Outside a lone window it was blue, cloudy, and cold. The walls were gray. The floor was concrete. The chairs were cheap steel.

When they were all gone, called to a routine formation, I had begun making my daring escape. For you see, my bed was barred like a half-crib. The only way out was through the minefield past the gate, but I couldn’t get past them. What would Harrison Ford do!? Of course, the caramel ice cream carton I had! I took scoops out and threw them onto the glowing red lights in the snow. They exploded once I turned around, so I got cocky and brought out the tennis balls, stood up straight.

Then the usual officer walked back in as I was standing on my bed. He gave a very concerned look, fiddled with a clipboard and just sat next to me, rather close. His subords were in as well, merry and chipper, speaking to me with secondhand english. They were trying to get me to salute the officer, who was completely preoccupied beside me until I raised my hand. I struggled hard, my fingers would bend or straighten beyond control as I tried to make it flat and 90 degrees, palm facing them. I struggled to say the word, it had a rolling R to it, “R-rilam, ril, ril, RRRRRRRILAM!” He stared in apathy, but I could feel a slight tinge of satisfaction. I wasn’t betraying my country. I wanted them to like me, and they asked me to try.

As I struggled with the salute, a new officer and her posse entered the room. She was white and platinum blonde, maybe in her 40’s, her age begun to show, but her beauty was unique and her experience was obviously vast. She was the highest rank in the room and it showed, she deserved to be there. The Major sat in the cheap steel chair, talking to me about me. She said she wish she knew who I was, what I did in the Air Force, that she couldn’t get a word out from what I told her last time. I thought I did though, it was clear in my head and recently happened, maybe two weeks ago. With a quiet, raspy voice, I told her I was an engineer. She leaned in hard with an evil smile, she already knew I was an engineer. “I wasn’t just an engineer though, I was THE engineer, the one people went to when they needed help.” She was enraptured, and after I told her a familiar face, a blonde lady whom I knew, was telling me to go on, tell them who I was, they need to know.

I wake up. My teeth hurt and I need water. The sun is about to rise, a cool morning for a 3-digit hot day. Despite what I wrote, it all felt like I was there, that everything looked normal and made sense to why it happened.

[imakenightmares]

There I was, driving my red convertible down a bright sunny highway outside of town. The highway curved all the way up and I was run off, landing in a wheat field. I became delirious from wandering around dehydrated. I stumble into a suburb town where a fat lady and some kids were walking. They avoided me, but suddenly the black kids started panicking. It wasn’t me, it was the sun setting how and fast on the horizon. He ran into some kinda bathtub on the street and curled up into a ball. Other kids were running around trying to find hiding places as well.

I stumbled onto a playground while I chased kids down trying to find out what was going on, but I got the message, it was spray painted and chalked everywhere: “DOnT mOVe.” I got on top of some kind of net structure with bendy frames, and then the sun set. Them came a guy in a typical green urban hoodie with a tan cloth inner-lining. He was charging at kids with a carving knife in a striding fast-walk. I was still trying to stabilize, but the damned frame kept shaking the nets when I adjusted, so the killer came at me. I kept climbing, which he didn’t seem to want to follow, but I was also swinging a bare foot at him (I could not kick). The foot got cut a lot, clean straight cuts including ones I actually have on my feet (I don’t trim my toenails often, so I scratch at night sometimes). 

Then, I was in some kind of manor that had been renovated for rich guest renters, like a weird hotel.  It had all sorts of strange, hedonistic devices and workout machines, like a running machine that rubbed your belly with cooling gel and fed you nachos all at once or a TV that could play SNES games (up to 12 depending how much you paid) and it listed them in a polite, cursive restaurant menu style. Otherwise, the TV played silent films made by Nazi documentarists about Hitler and his war machines.

I started recording everything on a big camera, the kind you carry on a shoulder, and I look at everything. I found one of my cats chilling on a love seat with too many pillows on it. There were other tenants, some excited about what there was to offer, but they wouldn’t buy anything. I entered a closet through this labyrinthine maze of rooms and walkthrough bathrooms (shower bathtub with no curtain in a room in the middle of a hall, so you’d have to walk through this exhibitionist shower to get past).I found a blue and dark room, cold to my soul. It was unkempt and left alone, but unintelligible writing on the door and walls had me understand I was about to enter some shit again. So, I opened up the cellar door in the floor to see what I could find.

About halfway down this ladder, a retarded man with a melted face and bits of burlap hanging off his cheeks comes by and hollers at me. I take the message and go back up, which seemed fine with, but then I get stuck in the face with a piece of rebar by some fat angry lady. I stopped talking suddenly, lost my grip and fell down. The camera breaks before I wake up.

[imakenightmares]

Futuristic Dystopia: 100% accountability.

I was a woman, small with straight platinum hair. I had a girlfriend, but she was a bitch. She threw me out of an apartment and sold me out to Recollections. I was on the run for my life.

It started with me leaving work to go home. I had a self-driving truck and it was not handling the heavy snow and slippery roads well. People were weaving into my lane enough that I thought something was up. Paranoia intensified as I started getting boxed in, the only way out was into the ditch. I got a video call from my girlfriend, confirming she was about to run me off the road. She somehow hacked a remote control into those trucks! I could not get control back, but I could recalculate a bad GPS path to get home. It works, taking me into a residential area and pulling a tight u-turn. I never do get home and end up finding an alley to park in.

Some time later, I go to buy things to get off the grid, convinced I will be hunted down by Recollections because I did not come home and I never showed up to work early like I half-promised my boss! I was at a mall, looking for clothes and things for weapons, when I found that one of the walls was a hologram. Nobody seemed to notice or care that it was not really there. It led outside to a warehouse wherein were criminals of all callings yelling in a forum about what to do against the Recollectors. I was at the tail-end of the conversation though, everyone was beginning to leave, so I did as well. Anxiety had begun to grow again, but this time I had a grill skewer in hand. I felt brave and hid behind some nearby hay bales. I wanted a companion, to not do this alone, to not be scared alone, and I considered people as they passed out of the warehouse.

A grumpy old cyberpunk, long retired from the normal way of life; a slightly fat, nervous young adult who tore paper, now on the run because his nervousness led him to tear up all of his punishment cards, which apparently were huge stock paper cutouts of the man on bathroom doors. They were covered in orange-bronze reflective stuff, the same material that covered items tracked by Recollections GPS. I decided nobody could be trusted and I fled. The sun was setting, and not far away people in black form-fitting suits, their heads and faces covered, came to capture everyone. Gunfire erupted beyond the haybales and I could hear the old cyberpunk yelling in annoyance as he cut down the assailing Recollectors. Two were coming their way to me on the steep slope of a snowy hill, and as the sun set on them darkness swept over like a light switch. Odd shadows approached in the twilight, they hugged the ground. They became a group of college sports players, glowing as thy walked past me, acting sheepish. They picked up the fat boy who was trying to hide with me, in a very nonchalant manner, as he talked to them in relief. It was a holographic ruse.

Later, I was reaching for scraps, finding gloves and scarves, bundle clothing at the closing hour of a Goodwill that was run by a bartender. Kids were there, scrambling for clothes alongside their parents. I was friendly, but they merely glanced at me. Paranoia struck again and I looked for signs of Recollectors. I saw nothing. Looking back, everything and everyone was gone, as if the past half hour had all but disappeared in a moment. They could control time too!? At least I had some small cotton gloves.

I was aimless, walking the streets with new smarts and a tinge of confidence in the morning sunrise. The streets leading down the hill to a lake were covered with fresh snow. Snow falling from a branch caught my attention from the corner of my eye. Then again! A cloaked Recollector, coming right at me through the snow! I throw a shard of ice at it and miss, diving into a snowbank on the sidewalk to try to hide in my frozen state of fear. The bounding footsteps break through the snowbank near me, faltering in step slightly, before striding away to a distant location. I lay there, gasping for breath, wishing it would all be over. I considered burying myself into the bank and waiting out the oxygen.

[imakenightmares]

Not so much a nightmare. My old house was haunted; They lived in my room. Sometimes, a shadow would occupy my closet. Light nor dark could not remove it from my sight. Almost all the time, a spot of light would be on the ceiling. It had no light source. My friend could see that one too. Lights on, off, doors closed, window blanketed, flashlight shone on it. Pitch black. It would be there, beneath the shining light we put on it, faintly. Good thing I moved. I hate being watched.