An Incredible Machine said 8 years, 8 months ago:

**Warning… disturbing descriptions, especially if you are one who can easily picture things as you read them**

Let me preface this by explaining how my dreams tend to work: No matter the content, I tend to be mainly viewing the dream almost as a first person character, but occasionally switch to either observing the dream from above, or in rare cases, I become another character in the dream. I also have a tendency to change channels in my dream, though usually the different dreamscapes have a similar air. Kinda like a CSI episode, where there are 2 cases being swapped back and forth. Finally, I will wake up from some dreams, whether they were obviously nightmares or not, with this overwhelming feeling that something terrible is about to happen & I’ll need to text my closest friends & family to make sure they’re ok, and that I can’t move (not in a sleep paralysis way, but that I won’t want to see what’s behind me for some reason)

Now on to the lovely masterpiece I dreamed up last night:

It begins innocently enough, I was apparently working on some sort of photoshoot competition, in which we were supposed to create the effect of a black hole purely in one frame, without any photo editing, and I did a damn good job of it. Plenty of black fabric, strange lights, glitter, and dry ice.
Cue channel change. The scene changes to the place I work, with the people I work with on Sunday mornings. My dream self is aware that the setting has changed but assumes she has blacked out, or fallen in to another dimension (which is suprisingly normal in my dream state, and doesn’t phase me) we’re all setting up the store to open, when things start to go dark. (picture the room filling with a black haze similar to how demons are depicted in Supernatural when they are ejected, combined with the effect you get when you look at a bright screen too long in a dark room and suddenly shut it off) All of us are aware of this, not just me, and are all panicking that we’ve gone blind. We rush outside and watch as this strange black haze, which is never really explained in my dream, takes over the entire store. From the outside, it looks as though the most vicious thunderstorm possible is inside our store, but without any rain. Just blackness and flashing lights and what sounds a bit like screeching metal.
Then suddenly, I am in what appears to be a morgue/defunct early 1900′s hospital room. There are bodies in various stages of decay just piled everywhere, dangling off tables, lying on one another. (it is never explained in the dream, but somehow I know that these bodies are being studied as examples of the effects of various addictions, toxins, expirimental surgeries, and other off the wall medical anomalies. Some have been exhumed after several years, while some have died within the month) Muttering is heard in the hall, and what appears to be the mortician dumps one more body directly in front of me. I don’t appear to be visible, though it feels like I am in first-person view at this point and can sense that I am standing amidst all this decay.
Scene change – back to the store, but it is as though I am in the mddle of the news report for it, as a blue text box like what news stations put footage in while the reporter is still on screen appears above the store, flashing through the possible explanations of what occured here, sort of like I am a living being inside the computer as they are editing the footage. Very strange, and my dream self only is slightly concerned at the floating graphics overhead. Possible ideas make absolutely no sense, and they are almost listing them off in a game show fashion, having callers call in their ideas and offering prizes for the most creative. Meanwhile, a coworker has fallen blind offscreen.
Scene change – back to morgue/hospital: My dream self is still aware of what happened at the store, and doesn’t understand how I ended up in this room, surrounded by all this death. Muttering is still heard in the hall, though none of it really makes any sense. I look down at the body the mortician had previously thrown at my feet. It is by no means fresh, yet I see the right hand twitch slightly, and hear a slight groan.
Now, remember how I said I can switch characters in my dream? Well sometimes I have no control over who I become. It is at this point that I become the most recent body: a severely decayed, 60-something year old woman who “died” after too many botox treatments. (this is never explained either, but somehow I just know) Problem is, her greatest anomaly is that she has used so much botox, that somehow her brain is still wide awake, despite the condition of the rest of her body. Her face has less damage, though the jaw is stuck open. her arms are just falling apart, her torso appears to be in a state of decay that is less horrifying than that of her arms, but more than that of her face, and her legs are somehow buried beneath another body, despite being the most recent addition to the room. And I have the most unfortunate luck to switch my conciousness to this character.
Imagine the way it feels to wake up on the worst night of the worst case of the flu you’ve ever had (for me, this was back in february/march. I woke up feeling as though I’d been beaten and thrown in a fire, and all I could do was lay there, incapable of moving, barely in control of my mind, desperately pleading with people who weren’t even in the room as if somehow they could somehow take the sickness away. It was probably the closest to insanity I’ve ever been.) Now combine that feeling with the way it feels to have an open wound and have a rough fabric drag across it, and imagine that feeling literally everywhere. That is what it felt like when I switched to being her. I could still see all this happening though, since a this point, something that had never happened in one of my dreams before occurred: I split in to 3 (arguably 4) people. I was still on the floor as botox lady (persona #1, I guess), barely capable of twitching my fingers, and slightly moving my jaw, whimpering things like “please just make it stop… im sorry… why…” but it all came out of course as unintelligable gurgling on account of a screwy jaw and basically being a zombie. As this character, I felt an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and insanity, and a deep desire to die.
Persona #2 at this point, is a sick, snarky version of myself that could be considered psychopathic. Not visible, mind you, but more of a collection of thoughts making awful jokes at botox lady’s expense. (they made no logical sense, but to this persona, they were hilarious. Things about how shes really becoming one with the bodies around her, singing that “I’ll stop the world and melt with you” song as her arm detiriorates more in to the body beneath her. and laughing hysterically afterwards)
Persona #3 is, at my best guess, the actual me, but as a collection of thoughts as well, thinking things like “What is wrong with you? How did you even create all this in your mind? You sick freak why are you taunting yourself when you’re in this much pain?? Wake the fuck up!”
Persona #4 (arguably) is the same as I was when I first found this room, standing there, observing. I can sense Persona #2 over my one shoulder, and #3 over my other. I stare emotionlessly down at botox lady, feeling vaguely foggy and in slight pain. Things start to go dark, as they did in the store dreamscape, but it doesn’t phase me. I remember thinking about how the set of dreams began, just working on some photo project, wondering how it ended up here, amongst the dead/should be dead. I’m oddly at peace, though the colliding energy of the other personas feels like an electrified cage around me. Everything goes dark, and I wake up.

When I wake up, I don’t want to turn around. I feel as though I could be sick any moment and that every nerve is both numb and rubbed raw. It takes me about 20 minutes to break out of this before I can muster up the courage to pick up my phone and check on everyone. As is normal when I have a disturbing nightmare like this (though it’s a rare occurrence) my first thought had been “you need to make sure they are ok” (they, in this case, meaning my family (who has this same phenomenon happen to some of them sometimes) my roomate, and my potential boyfriend (who, despite me never explaining any of my weird dreams/need to check on people, took this very well. I was honestly scared I’d freak him out by texting him as 4am asking if he was ok b/c of a strange feeling, but fortunately he actually reponded in the cutest way possible saying he’s fine but he wishes I were there with him) So some good came out of this, but it still disturbs me that I, for one, created all that in my subconscious, and two, actually split in to 4 personas in one dream, and that ¼ of my dream self is sick enough to find the pain of another ¼ of my dream selfe absolutely hilarious.

So… you know. There’s that. Thoughts? Comments? Emotional scarring? Any meaning to this whatsoever?