"Prepare to Enter: The Scary Door"

    My husband, let's call him Marshall, and I were shipwrecked and the only people left alive.  All we could see was a high, muddy cliff surrounded by a swampy mire, much like the Swamps of Sadness.  

I would've liked a better picture but all the Internet had was Artax
giving up on his horsey life and letting himself die while his best friend begged him not to.
Too depressing.

We were trying to decide what to do next when a horrifying deer appeared and started moving slowly toward us.  It looked slimy, like it was rotting, and had red eyes.  So we frantically began to attempt to climb the muddy cliff but it wasn't really working out.  Yet our furiously scrabbling caused something to shift and we fell through part of the cliff, dropping about ten feet, landing on a polished wooden floor.  As we stood up we saw we were in a long, very neat hallway basked in very dim light.  There was an ajar door very near us and we decided to take a cautious look.  The room was dark but some daylight seeped through from behind some curtains.  The room was very large and had several beds and plenty of furniture; is also had several dead people.  One was hanging from a ceiling fixture, another had his throat slit over a sink, someone had been strapped to a bed frame and carefully tortured; the list went on.  Horrified, we scrambled back to wear we had fallen and decided we had to try and get back out.  I climbed onto Marshall's shoulders and scrabbled for the hole; it was gone.  "That breach is gone now," said a voice that made me jump and fall to the ground.
    Behind us stood a group of men dressed in black and red uniforms pointing imposing guns at us.  "It was an accident!  We didn't mean to!" I blurted out uselessly.
    The one who spoke smiled grimly at us and then nodded.  Two others grabbed us and forced us down the hallway while the rest of them filed into the room of dead people.  They led us up several floors and into a vast, stately room whose walls were mostly windows.  Behind a large and shiny desk sat a man in a suit and off to the side there was a leather couch occupied by two bored-looking, brunette women in their late twenties.

Like this but with more windows.

The view of the window was of downtown New York City, but something about it was awry.  First of all, there were hover vehicles, like in The Fifth Element except with bigger windows.  All the buildings were curved and the Statue of Liberty was a nude statue, just the way the French intended.  The man introduced himself as Mr. Frederick and explained to us where exactly we were.
    Mr. Frederick decided that he would like to start his own version of New York City, so, in secret, he built an island, then a dome, and created an indoor New York City that he liked better.

This would've happened if  I had gotten my hands on a boat.

Then he populated New New York City by pretty much creating a cult that promised a new and better society and he also brought his family, his two daughters, the ladies sitting on the couch.  His laws were very specific and very tedious and must be followed day to day; the rules were strictly adhered to by the aptly name Enforcers, those were the guys in black and red.  They implemented physical torture to keep people in line; the rule book was as thick as an Oxford English Dictionary and had many rules that made sense, but were unfair given the punishment for breaking it.  Adversely there were also a lot of rules that just didn't make sense.  Marshall and I were then sent back to pick up groceries for our new home in the same building; we were to begin to assimilate.  But before we were escorted out of the room and to the ground floor shopping market, Mr. Frederick said with a smile, "Those people you saw in that room, they were trying to find a way out.  We see everything."

"I see you."
Mr. Frederick's portrait and favorite saying.

    Marshall and I roamed around the grocery story, too stunned to say anything, when a middle-aged woman ran her cart right into Marshall.  "How dare you!" she shrieked.  "Apologize this instant!"
    We were flabbergasted and stammered out mixtures of protests and apologies but she continued to shriek her outrage.  Quite silently an Enforcer emerged from behind the woman and gracefully and gently carved a thin, bloody line across her throat.  "It was your fault," he said monotonously, "and you will apologize."
    The woman stood completely still and her face turned white as she expressed her deepest apologies.  The Enforcer pushed her away but left the knife where it was so that it cut her more as she moved.  "You can't do that!" Marshall exclaimed, looking around at the fellow shoppers.  "You can't let them do this to you!"
    "Stop it!" I begged him.
    But the Enforcer was there and he grabbed Marshall and dragged him away.
    This can't be happening, I thought to myself.  This can't be happening.
    I needed to save Marshall, I had to find him and find a way out.  I figured if I could find him, a way out of this building, and a vehicle, we would be free.  So I decided to find the very first room we saw, and eventually I did.
    The room was still dark but the bodies were no longer there.  I sneaked around the room checking under the bed, in desk drawers, but found nothing.  I was going to move on but I heard a bizarre slurping noise punctuated by crunching.  I looked around until I saw it; two glowing red eyes and the faint form of the dark, rotting deer creature from the shore.  It was standing among the bloodied, cut up body parts of the former tenants and eating them.

You can't tell me you would not have been scared of a zombie deer
which also had odd supernatural powers.

It saw me and in the horrifying yet slow trot came after me.  I can't even begin to describe the terror that this thing instilled in me but I couldn't even think straight and ended up in a closet instead of going to the main door.  I climbed up racks of clothes and onto a top shelf where I found a hole which I squirmed into without even pausing to think.
    I held my breath as I crawled through layers of insulation; I had no idea what direction I was going or how long I was in there.  Suddenly something grabbed my arm and yanked me out; all I could do was scream and thrash around.  When I finally opened my eyes I saw that Mr. Frederick's daughters had yanked me out.  "We thought you might try this," the shorter one said.
    "We didn't tell daddy about that breach because we wanted to see if you'd find it," the tall one said.
    "But there's some bad news.  There's no way out.  Well, there is, but only we know it.  Daddy was so impressed when we found it."
    "You'll never find it, so go on and try.  Your husband will be dead soon and it's fun to watch you scurry around."
    So I did.  But while they weren't paying attention I was able to find out where Marshall was by watching the Enforcers log reports.  I caught an even bigger break when I found out that Enforcers were controlled by some kind of microchip that was easy to shut down if you knew how, but it did result in the death of the host. So instead of trying to find a way out I made a way out by shutting down Enforcers.  Soon enough I was out of the building and found the platform that has the hover car Marshall was in; it was guarded by two Enforcers but I shut them down easily.  I saw Marshall of the hover car and yelled, "Start moving the car! If you go straight up there's an exit!".  And he did, so as it was moving I leaped in through the open window and landed quite hard on my head.  Exhausted and relatively safe I fell asleep.
    I awoke to a pounding headache and looking at the back of Marshall's head.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  "Are we home yet?" I asked.
    I sat up and looked out the window and saw New York City.  But wait, those buildings are curved.  We hadn't gone anywhere.
    Marshall turned around, fresh microchip imprint on his neck.  "We are home."

Rod Serling should've narrated this.

And that is, no joke, exactly when I woke up.
   

Jubilee's Colony for Mutants with Crappy Powers

I hate her so much.

    Imagine, if you will, being on a lovely, relaxing vacation; you're walking down unfamiliar streets alone and doing some light souvenir shopping.  This is is where my dream begins.

    I felt that sensation you get when your back feels bizarrely exposed and vulnerable.  Someone was watching me.  Several times I peered behind me to find the same person following me; at first I thought it was just a coincidence, I was being crazy, but every turn I made they made.  I began to panic and kept making wild turns without even thinking about where I was going and eventually I was hopelessly lost. 

My dream self needs to pick better vacation destinations.

Finally I stumbled into a small, deserted square with a fountain in the center and two other passages that led to it.  At the same time two other frightened looking people came out of the other entry ways.  One was a boy of around fourteen years and the other was a man who looked to be in his thirties.  All we could do was stare at each other imploringly as we watched a shadowy person come up behind each other and shove a rag into our faces.  I smelled a vaguely sweet scent as I fell into unconsciousness.  

    We each awoke at different times in a small room lined with cushioned benches and the one door was, unsurprisingly, locked.  The boy's name was Will and the man was George; none of us knew each other but we were all on vacation.  The stories of our captures were all incredibly similar.  We deduced by the gentle movement of the room that we were on a boat of some kind but we were unable to find any clues to help put together what exactly was happening.  We decided that when someone eventually came to get us we would attack them at once in hopes of escaping, much like the heroes in The Three Ninjas.  

This is exactly what our captors saw and they ran away in terror
while simultaneously knocking each other out.

Somehow we were successful and the ship has also conveniently been docked.  So we took off together into a tropical paradise of sun, sand, and palm trees while being furiously pursued.  Our escape was still going quite well until our path was blocked by a some very weird sculptures.  We navigated around them to our best abilities but they were enormous and the wooded areas beyond the paths were just too thick to even attempt to go through without a machete.  After we made it past the sculptures there was an outdoor set of upside down and somehow inverted sets of staircases all connected.

Did...did I watch Labyrinth before this dream?

But we got around those eventually too, they didn't slow us down too much.  Ahead of us the path was wide and clear and at the end was an equally wide rope bridge.  Suddenly, my limbs felt like they weighed dozens of extra pounds a piece; Will and George looked to be having the same trouble to, we all appeared to be in slow motion.  Soon enough, we actually began to be dragged backward.  I felt compelled to look behind us and saw a blonde woman with angry eyebrows in a suit with a hand outstretched to us.  It was at this point that I somehow also noticed the three of us all were wearing a shade of red shirts.  I slowly took my own red shirt off, and since my dream apparently had a G rating I had a white tank top on underneath.  As soon as the red shirt was no longer touching me I felt normal again and almost face-planted at the suddenness of it.  I helped Will and George shed their red garments and we were off once more.  I didn't think of it then but this woman obviously had a color-based power, which was lame, but good for us at the time.

Her power was much like the Power of the Red Shirt on Star Trek.

    But shortly after we were stopped for one last time by a wall of bones.  This guy was basically the Magneto of bones that were not attached to any living organism.  So he just stood there in front of us and used his power to find any and all bones in the area and ripped them from out of the ground.  I imagine it took some time to amass the whole wall since a lot of the bones must have been very deep within the ground, unless of course there was a cemetery nearby.  I had thought it was the end of us, we were doomed.  But like the son of Poseidon Will blasted the wall with a wave of water.  

Will does NOT belong in this colony.

George and I were baffled, since we didn't have an powers that we knew of, but apparently Will knew of his all this time.   Boneto essentially waved a white flag and requested to have a chat and Will consented.  Boneto told us about the colony that our captors belonged to and explained that they were recruiting us.  We wouldn't exactly call kidnapping "recruiting" but we listened on anyway and he showed us around the place.  We saw people who could control books, eat rocks, and one who could turn into a working fountain at will.  Apparently this colony was competing with another colony for extra special recruits, except apparently the other colony didn't know it was competing.  Boneto insisted that George and I would eventually come into our hidden powers and also asked that we stay with them.  None of us wanted to, but in the end we decided to stay for a day or two, just to check it out.  Everyone was really nice but we began to notice that the place was more like a prison for us, because they kept extending our stay.  What made it even more terrible was when someone tried to make no-bake cookies, but with rice instead of oatmeal; it was disgusting and we just wanted to go home.  

But we could never leave.

    And that's when I woke up.

Titan A.E. ... But With the Aliens from V

    Well, the aliens had finally invaded and everyone was going crazy; mostly because the aliens were not peaceful, once again, just as all the movies predicted.  The people in charge were dealing with it the way we always imagine a zombie virus would be dealt with: not well and with evacuations for only so many people.  Where were people being evacuated?  To space, much like in Titan A.E., except that there was no new Earth, no hand/ring map, no real plan at all.

But it didn't matter because everyone wanted out in a hurry, especially when people realized what the aliens were doing on Earth.  Apparently, humans tasted really delicious.

This is how sure everyone was of the plan.

    I found myself among a mass of people trying to get into one of several helicopters.  These helicopters were different from the ones you're used to, they were bigger and more passenger oriented; some even had windows you could crack open.  Somehow I ended up in the front of the crowd and the two pilots grabbed me and a black-haired girl and instructed us to climb up.  So we crawled into the passenger area of the helicopter and the pilots lifted us into the air.  One of them stepped into our area and started asking us questions, weird questions, like how often we worked out and what our diets were like.  Eventually he went back to his seat and the girl and I talked over what was happening.  I brought up how odd the questions for, but she assumed they were just picking the people who were best suited to survival, which did make some sense.  But if they brought us on the helicopter already what would they do with us if they decided we weren't fit enough?
    I heard the pilots whispering excitedly to each other and, curious, I inched closer to the door of the cockpit.  "One works out more often than the other, she will be much tastier," the pilot who interviewed us said.
    "Well, it's a long flight and we can devour them on the way."
    Aside from some sporadic Zumba-ing the most exercise I get is from throwing controllers while playing video games, so I knew they were talking about the other girl.

My exercise routine.

But I also knew that normal people don't usually use the word "devour" unless they're trying to impress someone and most people don't eat other people. These pilots were obviously the aliens from the TV show V and there really was no hope left for escape.

Best alien weapon ever:Human skin armor.

I sat back and started panicking, while quickly weighing our options.  There really weren't any.  The pilots were armed, my strength obviously only extended to my thumbs, and the other girl didn't seem to believe me. So the big question was whether I wanted to be eaten or just find a way to kill myself.  As I was thinking this over I saw one of the pilots peer back at us with a smile and then lick his lips.  I instantly decided that my last action alive would be to make this alien hungry.
     So I shoved the window open and the alien's flashed with anger as he jumped up and stretched out his arms.  I slipped myself out the small opening and let myself fall.  I saw the helicopter above me making its way elsewhere; then I had an out of body experience.  I saw myself falling toward the trees of a forest, limbs slightly raised and grasping.  I wondered how long it would take for me to hit the trees.  And then I did.  I saw my broken body tangled in the trees.

And that's when I woke up.
 

Gotta Catch 'Em All: The Truth Behind Pokemon Poachers

    This dream is more an example of how detailed my dreams are, because there's no real plot except for me running around, trying not to kill or be killed, in this alternate reality.  When I dream my dream self is typically knowledgeable of the world it's been dropped into medias res.  So this post is really just a description of a bizarre alternate world my brain created; consequentially, this is a short post.
   Imagine a world where the Pokemon games, films, and TV shows never existed; it's a sad world indeed.

Admit it.  You're making this face right now.

But in this world Pokemon are very real and very coveted, but only the rich because they are the only ones who can afford the means to get the Pokemon.  You see, unless you have a specific gene you can't see the Pokemon, because they vibrate at a very high speed that most people can't see.  So killing the Pokemon makes it visible to everyone else, and everyone else wants to get their hands on a Pokemon.  The wealthy hire out those with the gene, called descries, before they are hired, and poachers afterward.
    Mostly every mother wants their child to be born a descry because of the ludicrous amount of money they can make as Pokemon poachers.  But some descries, like myself, have a hard time considering killing these creatures.

Especially when they look like this.

    But the demand for stuffed Pokemon has become so high that descries who are not working are hunted down and forced into finding Pokemon for the hunters and the rich.  If they refuse to comply they are tortured and their families are threatened.  You may ask why descries don't just hide what they are, but genetic screening has made that impossible.  So, having real Pokemon actually causes a lot of bad things to happen; they're just too cute and awesome, and until recently have had no natural predators so they never saw the "gotta catch 'em all" attitude coming.    

    So I suppose it's a good thing that the closest we are to having real Pokemon are these things:

Night Terrors: Reasons Why Stress is Bad and We Should All Be More Like Hedonismbot

    This is going to be a different post.  I have plenty of dreams to write about that I've had in the past but lately I've been getting night terrors, which are much harder to talk about because you never really remember them.  When I told a friend of mine I was having night terrors she said, "Oh, I hate those.  I have the craziest dreams sometimes!"  But those aren't night terrors, those are nightmares.  So, this post is going to be about night terrors.

This is the best explanation science has to offer for night terrors.

    The worst night terrors involve sleep walking which I haven't experienced yet and hope not to; a lot of times people will cause damage to others or themselves.  What I get when I'm really stressed out is much simpler but still ruins my night's sleep.  I wake up in a panic and I have no idea where I am; when I say "panic" I don't mean "holy crap I forgot my paper that's due today", I mean my brain has somehow convinced me that I just narrowly avoided dying.  And it feels like dying meant I was being chased by a murderer and was saved because a bear chasing us ate the murderer and then I had to run away from the bear and only survived because I fell into a hole it didn't feel like climbing into because it was already pretty full of murderer pieces.

I suppose my would-be murderer was more out of shape than me.

So essentially I wake up sweating and sometimes crying, shaking and my whole body feels like its beating with my racing pulse.  On top of all that I remember absolutely nothing.  It's not like when you wake up and you sort of remember things, like, "I was at my house, but it wasn't really my house, and there was magical book involved or something", there's just nothing, nothing but fear.  Shortly after awakening I can't concentrate on anything and I'm still in a state of confusion; I can't put my thoughts together correctly and I can't calm myself down.  Usually it takes about 20-30 minutes to relax enough to play Futurama on my phone and it takes about 3 or 4 episodes to be calm enough to fall asleep.

Yay sleep!

    One night this week I had one of the aforementioned, but then the following night my brain decided it wasn't trying hard enough and stepped it up.  I've done a lot of research on night terrors and everything I'm writing is pretty text book, I'm just thankful I don't have what the worst cases are like.  This one night I woke up and I was in a specific position staring up at a specific spot above me; quietly floating and spinning in the air was a gyroscope, which has no significance to me.  Imagine if you were just sitting on your couch and something bizarre like this happened, something you couldn't explain at all, how would you react?  Terror is the best word to describe what I felt then.  But I blinked and it was gone, I was awake and I was feeling what I always do after a night terror, but even more so.  I had never experienced this before.  I noticed it had only been 45 minutes after I had gone to sleep, which is very typical of night terrors.

No...not creepy at all....

  The next night I woke up in the exact same position staring at the exact same spot but this time there was a small, shadowy figure of someone running in place on the wall, then I was awake and it was gone; it was only about 30 minutes after I had gone to sleep.  The fact that I had never experienced these before and that they had happened two nights in a row made the experiences even more terrifying for me.  The next night I refused to fall asleep.  I took some Benadryl to knock me out but I fought it all the way.  I researched night terrors some more and felt a little better knowing I wasn't alone, but I still wouldn't sleep.  The dread of experiencing it again was too great, greater even than the horrors of TV at 4 in the morning.  I even watched 10 minutes of Khloe and Lamar which, instead of being sickeningly embarrassing, is really just boring, which I suppose is good for them.  Finally 5:30 rolled around and some part of my brain decided that since lots of people are getting up now it doesn't count as night terrors anymore so I wouldn't get night terrors.  It worked.

This is a perfect example of a nightmare.

    Now, I know the more I fret about having a night terror the more likely I am to have them, but they're so scary to experience it's hard not to freak out about them.  The past two nights I've been sleeping with my head at the foot of the bed, much to the chagrin of my husband, with the logic that if I can't end up in that particular position from the previous night terrors then I won't have them.  Silly, I know, but it's been working so far, as long as I don't give myself a panic attack over it.
     I suppose the main difference between night terrors and nightmares is that if I had a nightmare about being chased by a murderer which then got eaten by a bear and I fell in a hole I would probably really enjoy thinking about how ridiculous it was when I woke up and would easily be able to calm myself down.  Instead I wake up and don't remember anything except that my brain is convinced that what just happened was real.  Yay side effects of stress!!!

Self-explanatory.