Ever had a dream with someone you know in it? Maybe your crush proposing their love for you which you know will never happen in real life or your teachers prepping you for a test you haven't studied for. It's pretty common as far as I am aware to dream about familiar faces which makes me wonder why I don't.

Sometimes dreams feel familiar. I'm at school or at home, places where people I know tend to be. But they're empty or filled with strangers.

I dream of a mother who isn't mine. I dream of a friend I have never had. It's always so real, a sort of barely memorable earth.

In most of my dreams, I am alone. There is a calm about that, no angry voices, no desperate longing to be seen, no desire to fit in.

The people I do meet in my dreams are human, kind of featureless but undoubtedly human. They mostly just walk around my mind like robotic extras in a movie. I am the cameraman. Looking on at a scene I have never lived through, a reality where I do not have to hide behind the person those around me see.

Every night I disappear into that world. One night I don't think I will want to come back.

A million things immediately force themselves into my brain. The air smells like sweat mixed with heat. There’s the slight murmur of a crowd somewhere in the room and I’m sitting on uncomfortable plastic bleachers. Where am I?

“Okay guys, so today we’re going to do that test that you guys have been preparing for all semester,” the voice of my high school gym teacher announces. I force my eyelids open, fighting against the bright, fluorescent lights. The high school gym. No no no no no no...

Someone passes around thick testing packets that I flip through with bemusement. Nothing looks familiar. I start to panic. Suddenly, ethereal music begins and I jerk my head. A tall brunette, wearing a tutu and pointe shoes, dances perfectly across the grimy floor. She spins and leaps with perfect form, something I could never achieve. I start to feel nauseas, so I sneak to the bathroom, accidentally taking my test with me.

When I enter the gym again, it is dark and desolate. For some reason, instead of feeling alone and panicked, I finally feel calm and safe. I decide to attempt to complete my test, since I will be locked in the gym all night. Sometime between anger at the confusing questions and the beginning of apathy towards this whole situation, I slowly drift off into slumber.

I sit up and look around. Sunlight dapples the dirty, gum covered bleachers. I find my way out of the gym, and realize I am in the middle of a forest. After forcing myself through a corpse of thorny bushes, I come upon a group of teenage girls. Oddly enough, they are wearing pajamas and rolling up sleeping bags. Huh. I continue walking, until I arrive at the school building. Inside, hundreds of police officers with guns and riot gear crowd the entrance. I immediately wonder if this is somehow my fault as I walk past them without them acknowledging my existence. I wonder who they are waiting for.

When I get to the front office, I ask the front desk people who I can talk to about leaving school early. This has been an awful day. I just want to go home and rest. “Um...” one woman says, while looking at her computer. “You can go talk to your guidance counselor. Maybe she can help.” She waves me away dismissively and I trudge out of the office. I wish she had let me go to the nurse instead.

I knock on the guidance counselor’s door. Her voice lazily lollops through the wood. “Come in,” she says. The door sqeaks open and I glance around her small office. She is at her desk, playing Candy Crush while eating m&ms. I sigh. “I want to go home. I’m not feeling well.” She stares at her computer screen and nods. “Mmhmm. Hmm?” I try to hide my annoyance, and respond politely, “May I call my grandmother, please?”

“No...no,” she mumbles. “You’ll have to go to the front office for that. Also if you don’t need anything else, please leave. You’re being slow.” I groan inwardly. I want to scream, “You’re the one being slow!” but a line is forming behind me, and I don’t want to embarrass myself.

I force my way past the other students and angrily kick a rock. It tumbles down the hallway. No one is around, and I just don’t care anymore, so I start talking aloud. “I hate this so much! Everything seems to be going wrong. This is a nightmare!” Wait a second... what if this is a nightmare?

I open my eyes and I am safe in my cozy bed. It is morning. It is summer. I sigh. I am okay, for now.

i've been dreaming of

the swimming pool with no bottom,

breath in my neck but we were laying in my dead grandma’s bed,

drinking and drinking, everything blurry and green, and thinking

that it isn’t bad,

being haunted by the task to take care of the kids,

all those kids that i've never had.

the worst day of my life to rehappen~ just a little worse.

being caught under that mosquito net, screaming but no one hearing

it.

i don’t know, maybe it’s not

the typical nightmares,

it's just an exhaustive battle with my head.

A muffled voice, someone talked to me as I worked.

My careless hands ignored the danger that lurked.

They closed fast on that most dangerous wire.

Oh, pain immense, electricity to set muscles on fire.

My scream echoed as I couldn't let go and couldn't run,

Body shaking as breathing halted and my life seemed done.

A scream again as a kick jarred me loose, a gasp of air.

Running into the next room, I gazed back with fearful stare

Then a burst of sparks as I howled with desperate fear.

Only a roll out of bed saved me from a death most severe.

Pitch; can't see my hand in front of my face. Arid terrain. I hear my steps scratching the ground. The heat is oppressive. 

When I get to the edge of an abyss, an endless ocean of fire.

At the horizon, a figure dressed in white bids me, "Come."

I walk above the flames. Within, the lost.

The figure in white turns me to see where I had been. A vast crowd walks unfocused to the edge, not noticing until, falling, they scream.

"If you don't tell them, who will?"

I've had only about 4 dreams about zombies but they're always so weird. The last dream that I had, I was with a random goup of people and my two dogs and we went outside to try and escape but then the zombies had me cornored. They bit me and I turned into a zombie. I always have the most random, weird, unrealistic dreams. Another dream that I had was about me being in a store and I heard a phone ringing from a freezer. I went, opened the door and I pressed the red butoon on it and put it back in the freezer. It was weird.

I was running while sobbing; frightened, helplessly. I needed to run fast; even though I was screaming inside, my wobbly feet couldn't handle more. I felt on my knees.

Suddenly someone tried to choked me behind my back. I tried to loosened the hands with trembling hands.

"Wanna rescue your life", I heard so many people laughed out around me. "You should follow our rules".

"Never". I stand-up while screaming; tried to chock back whoever chocking me.I felt the slightly loosening of hands on my neck. So I tried hard. I realized there was a chance to win against them.

Arhh..I felt unbearable pain from my back. When I turned, people with blood soaking draggers laughed out behind my back.

A treadmill is preferable to these damn dinner plates. They’re slippery and staggered upwards like steps. I don’t know why but I’m running upwards like my life depends on it.

Except they don’t end.

Below me I hear a feral mews and I look down to see I have company. Three mangey cats are now running after me as we all climb higher.

What is this? A Salvador Dali painting? No. If it were, the plates would also be melting.

I slip!

I wake up in an empty room and I see a snake with it’s face turned away from me. The patterns on his skin remind me of my ball python. Except he’s . . . green?

“Ramses?”

He turns to give me this look. I don’t know what I’ve done! He looks at me like I’ve betrayed his entire family.

“Is this because I didn’t hold you today?”

I never get my answer because now I’m running down a hall. Wait. It’s not a hall! I turn to see a giant boulder rolling after me. I begin to run.

If I ran this much in real life, I’d probably be in shape.

#dreams