Okay, here it goes. Even though a few days have passed and everything has seemingly returned to normal, I still can’t seem to get the details of that dream or the events that followed out of my head. It feels like my sanity is slowly slipping beyond the event horizon towards that swirling singularity of darkness and collapse that one has only seen of characters in movies. To be honest I can’t even tell you definitively if the events of that night actually occurred or if it was some symptomatic leakage from my sleep-deprived imagination. I so wish I had kept up those cameras used to monitor my dog in the apartment. What exactly did I see? As I go on with work and school I have been hesitant to talk to anyone about this, even my roommates. I fear I will be labeled as one of those people that I see during late night paranormal shows. However, I have decided to document my experience, as a story. I hope that by writing down my thoughts and feelings during that night I will be able to work past whatever fear is holding me back. And if people I know ask, I’ll just tell them it’s made up.
Part 1 9:02 pm – My room
*As I woke up I could feel a light sweat on my forehead. The dream felt so real. The faces and voices lingered on my mind with surprising clarity and retention. I glanced at the digital clock next to my mattress. It illuminated “9:02 PM.” These after-work naps were murder on my body. I had begun taking naps as a way of compensating for my growing insomnia during regular sleep hours. I had started about a month ago. My circadian rhythm was taking a beating on a routine basis now. Usually my dreams dissipated so quickly that by the time I “wake” up they are mostly just a jumbo of distant memories, but this one remained. Both my roommates, Kyle and Remy, were there in the dream. We were in an amusement park which had a series of rides themed as snakes. They hyper realistic serpents plunged through in the air with no apparent supports. I can't seem to remember anyone actually on the rides. In the middle of the park there was a mountain of shoes. No guests were allowed to wear shoes on and everyone deposited their shoes at the entrance of the park, which I’m having a hard time remembering. All the shoes were the same: generic brown loafers. For some reason my roommates and I got to keep our shoes. We never did any of the rides and merely walked on some brightly painted path which ran through the park. Beside us visitors chatted and kids screamed and played. The only conversation I remember having was one surrounding those coffee K cups. Kyle was trying to explain that if we keep using them that we would soon the world would be overwhelmed be buried alive by those cups while I merely remarked how much coffee sucked.
There was the girl who followed us. In the dream she was Remy’s sister but I wasn’t aware that Remy had a sister in real life. She followed us at a distance. She never spoke and initially was very pretty. I remember because I kept looking back at her. She had shoulder length brown hair and large piercing green irises. She wore a bright yellow sundress and carried in her left hand a white and red calcite rock like a purse. Then as the dream went on, she began to alter. At first it was minor changes like her hair growing longer and her dress changing colors. But then things turned stranger. She became bony like all the fat had been drain from her body. The dress she wore turned to rags which drooped over her skinny figure like a cloak. She no longer walked, but rather seemed to float above the ground which moved under her like those airport moving walk-ways. Her hair was now knotted and white, flowing to her feet and ending indiscriminately with the ground. The most unnerving change though was her eyes. She no longer had irises, instead, from where her eyes were there emanated a black cloud which partially covered her gaunt face. At some point in the dream everything became silent. All the voices of children were gone. So was the noise of the rides. Kyle and Remy, as well as everyone else around me seemed oblivious to her. I continued to look back at her as we walked but now fear that crept inside my mind. I began to walk faster but the distance between us remained unchanged. After a while I broke out in a sprint leaving Remy and Kyle behind and pushing through the crowd and that’s when I woke up.
Now completely awake, the face of the girl in the dream seemed imprinted in my mind. Upstairs, I could hear my roommates in the kitchen talking. Our cats were chasing each other around the sofa which was in the living room directly above me. I stood up and walked down the hall and up the stairs. The voices of my roommates became more distinct. They chatted about Kyle’s upcoming bike race. Our living room was lite up by a Christmas tree that we had yet to take down. Maya, my black lab, looked up as she saw me approaching. Her tail wagged furiously against the wall. Goddamn she was cute, curled up like that I thought. Maya made me momentarily forget about the girl in the dream. I went over gently stroked her back and behind her ears.
As I walked toward the kitchen, Maya followed me. Remy was just about to head upstairs when I asked him if he had a sister. He replied no and asked why. I went on and described the dream.
“That doesn’t seem that weird,” Kyle said while he prepared ingredients for what looked like a strawberry banana smoothly.
Remy laughed and asked, “Do we make it?” “I don’t know, the dream just kind of stops once I start running.” “You should head back to bed and see how it turns out,” Remy joked. “I do have a cousin.”
Before I could reply he was up the stairs already. I was feeling quite a bit better now. I grabbed the extendable leash above the refrigerator and prepared to take Maya out.
The outside air felt great. The Minnesotan spring had arrived quite early this year. Maya ran towards the small wooded area beside our apartment. The yellowish light on the side of the building illuminated the ground next to it, casting shadows from the elms. After Maya did her business she began to sniff the large pile of leaves – this was the official “doggy business” area of the community. A scent caught her attention and she pulled me from the cement ledge to the ground which crunched under my slippers. I felt a small pebble get under my feet and did my best to shake it out while holding on to the leash. And that’s when it happened. The shadow behind of the largest elm tree, which kind of looked like a large Oscar award, began to sway. At first I thought it was just the breeze but I was sure the tree itself wasn’t moving. I looked more carefully and yes, the whole shadow was swaying indeed. Everything was silent except the hum of cars in the distance and the soft blowing of the wind. Then all of the sudden, the shape of the shadow began to change. The Oscar shaped shadow was growing. Maya continued to pull me, seemingly obvious to the sinister change happening beside her. I could feel fear begin to manifest itself in my stomach and crawl up towards my brain through my throat. I fought the hesitation to turn and kept my eyes on the shadow of the tree which now seemed to spread across the ground only 15 feet in front of me until it was just a black blob . I did my best to calm myself but the urge to run overwhelmed me. I pulled hard to the leash and heard Maya whine to my right and scrambled back inside. The last thing I remember seeing was the shadow darken and stretch as if something was trying to get out of the ground under it.
“Jesus Christ you guys are not going to fucking believes what I just saw!” There was no immediate response. The house was completely dark and the kitchen where I just saw Kyle no more than two minutes ago was empty, the blender was neatly tucked in the corner of the counter, seemingly untouched. “Hello?” I was now completely spooked. Did everyone just go to bed? “Remy? Kyle? If this is some stupid prank then fuck you guys!” I yelled in desperation. Still no response. Why was it so quite? Maya looked at me excitedly, waiting for the treat that usually comes at this point during the night. Maybe I’m just psyching myself out I thought. I didn’t have my glasses on outside and I had just gotten up. Maybe Kyle and Remy had gone in their rooms, listening to music with headphones on or playing videogames. Relax Michael. Whatever you thought you saw outside is impossible, probably just your imagination.
I took the purple leash off Maya and gave her a soy bone treat. She grabbed it and ran off merrily. I sat down and turned on the television. I kept flipping through the channels without really thinking about the shows, my mind still trying to put behind what I saw outside. It couldn’t have been real. I said it out loud over and over again until the words began to lose their meanings. Some strange reason my incantations did make me feel better but I still couldn’t resist from glancing at the front door every couple of seconds. It remained shut. After a while I landed on a show about giant Anacondas in the Amazon and I pretended to watch that for a while, while the faint odor of doom hung over me.
End of Part 1: 9:09 Living Room
I did my best to stay true to the facts although I did try and describe things imaginatively. It’s bizarrely comforting to actually be able to share this experience to you guys. Since I don’t know any of you I have no reason to lie, which I would have certainly done with a friend or even a professional counselor. Even if no one reads this I’m glad I could write about it.
Submitted April 03, 2015 at 01:55AM by TheBigMeatBall http://ift.tt/19NUkSJ nosleep
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