Dread, decay, and dead animals

Was a passenger in a car, driving down a rural road, turned off the main road to the left, onto a smaller road, not as well maintained. Going somewhere I/we knew of, but hadn't been to in a long time. The road got bad, the occasional structures near the road were dilapidated, everything had a strong feel of decay and neglect 

rotting food and dead, partially decayed animals. Felt a strong wash of dread and fear, urge to flee, to turn around, but I am the passenger. 

Off in the distance are shambling humanoid shadowy shapes, I notice one at first, then another, and another. I realize there are many, and they are moving towards us. Need to run - driver is trying to turn around, but there is no good location

I become aware of the dream, decide i don't want to see more, and wake myself up

Graveyard zombies (incomplete)

You should always lock your car doors, especially in a graveyard. Some zombies know how to open them"

write what I remember later

Dad

It was evening, Dad was having me help him diagnose something wrong with his car. Most of that is a blur now. I was sitting in the driver seat, reaching down and fiddling with something around the center console. Then i remembered the brake issue, so I put the car in gear, let it roll the the parking lot a ways, then tested the brakes, which were bad. Dad listened to me babble on about any idea I could come up with that might have been wrong, taking each seriously but not adding any of his own thoughts. There were a couple of children in the parking lot, I made sure to drive extra carefully, acutely aware of Dad in the car with me. I pulled the car to a stop.

“Well, I am not sure, Dad.” I put the car in park.  We get out.

“Yeah, I am at a loss. I might try pulling the codes.” Dad responds, standing in front of the car, his shoulder at my eye level. His hair is a tad on the long side, wavy, streaked steel grey.

“Oh, I have a code reader!” I begin to feel excited that I might have something that can help. Dad looks interested. “I even have two of them, I can go get them!”

Dad thinks for a moment, “No, tomorrow maybe. I am going to pay for this as it is” He rolls his shoulder, seeming to be referring to some physical activity done earlier. “I need to be heading up the hill”

We are standing outside the house, in afternoon light, under the awning, the slightly rusted white scrollwork support to my left, Dad standing a step down off the cement in the grass.

“Ok Dad” I get ready for my goodbyes, I will see him tomorrow. The light falls across his face, and I thinkoh, he hasn’t seen me like this!And I start to feel excited. I know he will be proud, he was always so proud of my athleticism, and so hated my weight gain. I started to mention my fitness...and realized, though he was standing here in front of me, feeling so real, that he was gone. I am dreaming. And with that realization my dream starts to slip. It felt so real, I grasp on to it, and hold on to it as hard as I can.

“Look Dad, my arms are doing really well” I hold out my right arm for him to inspect, he glances at it a bit distractedly. “Yep…” 

I flex my arm slightly, leaning my shoulder in to better showcase the definition. This grabs his attention.  “Damn, it starts all the way up here…” He cups my shoulder with his large hand, testing the muscle, then grips my arm lower on the bicep, testing the hardness there. “Nice” He steps back, ready to go. I am not ready to let him go.

”I love you, Dad”

I step down off the concrete and wrap my arms around him, the dream fading more, and I am holding onto it desperately. He is wearing a white T-shirt, I press my cheek to his chest, his arms wrap around me. He rests his chin on my head, and I hear his deep voice rumble in his chest: “Love you too…” And the dream is gone. And I am awake, in the dark. And I feel his loss so acutely.

No hon, everything is fine. It was just a dream...I am ok...I just need to go write something down...

Zombies and Invaders

I lived in a house in the countryside, zombies were starting to get docile, scientists were making it so, with the aid of people who were sympathizers. There was a fence to keep them out.  A male family member and I were in an open barn thing by the fence. Apparently two zombies were on the other side watching us, he got mad and pulled out the hose and started spraying them. A woman stepped up behind them, a sympathizer and said "No, don't!" He didn't listen to her, but went on a rant. One zombie left, but the other one began to talk, first she put her hand on his shoulder and he shut up, but then he grew tall and more monster like, and is mouth looked like a grill, and his voice boomed. He yelled that humans ate: "you eat in front of me, she eats, and I Need to eat!" Then his neck grew tall and he grabbed the sympathizer and he bent his head down and opened his new beak like mouth and bit into the top of her head. She went limp. At the same time zombies broke through the fence and poured out, scientist zombies still holding the syringes that they were using to treat the zombies. I ran to the house...

Time has passed and there is no fence, many fewer people. I am up on the roof, apparently a zombie was on the roof trying to get to a cat, but we had thought it might have been trying to get in through the chimney. I was standing on the roof and I watched her down on the ground, she was a young girl, maybe 12, still trying to find and eat the cat. Then she spotted me, and I knew she would be after me in a flash. I ran across the ridge of the house to above where I had left a sliding glass door unlocked. As I slid down the slant of the roof, she crested the top of the roof. I hit the ground and jumped up and frantically opened the sliding door, closing it behind me just as she hit the ground. She got up and went to the door, right as flipped the lock. She looked at me with her bloodshot dead eyes and I pulled the drapes closed, scared that she might break through the glass now that she knew I was in here.

The zombie banged against the glass. Suddenly a black rectangular object hanging from a brown rubbery tube hit her in the back of the head. She stumbled and fell forward. A man in a brown rubber suit with a weird back attachment swung and hit her again. The black attachment seemed to be some sort of electric shocking device. He smacked her with it a few times, and while she covered her face, she didn’t quite cower like most zombies did, she was one of the smart ones-the dangerous ones. He decided it was time to pull back and regroup. He ran away a few steps, then pulled a rope on his suit. The zombie girl got to her feet. Air started feeding into a balloon that extended from part of his suit, and soon he was achieving some lift - just in time too.  The zombie girl recognized what he was doing and quickly went after him before he could rise out of her reach.

[Perspective shift]

Just barely I managed to achieve enough lift and I grinned down at the zombie girl in triumph, escaping her hungry clutches to the safety of the air. Until she threw something, that is. A silver needle with a papery black flag attached to the end pierced the tube feeding into the balloon just above my hand. Using the tube I pulled myself up and grabbed above the needle and pinched the airflow off from the leak by wrapping the tube around my hand. I couldn’t add more air now, but at least I was at a safe height, and the upward momentum was still pulling me up. Then I noticed the black flag - it was an explosive! Frantically I plucked the needle from the tube and dropped it. But the air current of the balloon rising pulled the light needle and its sail along, instead of the needle quickly falling back to earth. The explosion boomed, a bright flash and loud noise to confused and temporarily blinded me.

When I could see and hear again I realized my balloon was damaged and I was going down. I had been blown to the coastline while I was airborne, and I realized I would fall into the sea. I wasn’t sure what the safety protocol for zombies was in the water, I frantically considered the possibilities. Soon enough I hit surface and after detangling myself from the suit I was able to assess the situation. Zombies were indeed in the ocean, quite a few in fact. But they couldn’t swim. They dragged themselves along the bottom, being tossed as strong currents pulled to towards shore and then back out to sea. As long as I stayed afloat in deep enough waters where they couldn’t reach me, I should be relatively safe. Except I was stuck out at sea…

Time passed as I tried to concoct a plan. Night fell, and eventually I saw a ship - a large steel monstrous ship. At first I thought to wave at it and try to get saved, then I thought it might not be the best of ideas. Instead I stayed back, silently in the water and observed.

Inside the ship, deep in the belly, thousands of humans were enslaved, shackled together and connected by long chains. Their captors appeared human too, but a different kind of human, maybe modified. They were beautiful, taller, fierce. They had strange technological devices. As they approached shore they began pulling their slaves out of the chamber they had been in, some resisted. I was one of the resistant. I had managed to get free, like some others and I fought to stay back as others were pulled forward. The captors laughed at us. As they cleared the room of the chained they locked us in. I looked at the floor below us, as water started filling the room. I realized my mistake, and why the laughter. This floor opened to the sea below. They would kill us in here! The huge slatted floor opened and water rushed in, currents pulling us down into the cold wet darkness…

Up on the shore, a group of the captors jumped the edge of the ship to land on shore and clear the way. A woman landed; face to the ship, back to the land, her long wavy blond hair streaming behind her. Her landing caught the attention of the nearby zombies. Many zombies were prowling the beach this night. She smiled as they approached her, thinking to have found a meal. She pulled out weapons and spun, quickly dispatching the approaching zombies. Around her, her companions were engage in similar activity. From the air large weapon-bearing humanoid vehicles dropped, manned by others from the boat. With the additional firepower, they beach was quickly cleared and they pushed further onto shore, where they met the resistance of the smart ones, and some human survivors who were drawn out of hiding due to the commotion. The invaders attacked all, taunting the humans “Is that just one heartbeat I hear?” and other comments about human physiological inferiority (apparently they have more than one heart). The invaders were a more advanced race, they were faster, stronger, more physically capable, and had much more advanced technology.  “It is useless to resist us! This land is ours now!” one exclaimed.

Back in the ocean I floated, in shock. I saw a few human slaves had surfaced. The ‘me’ from the ship had survived being sucked out the bottom of the ship, and gasped for breath as he reached the surface. Others had died as they were tangled in the propellers of the ship, but a few had made it to the surface. Though we had nowhere to go. I thought of trying to reach my house, maybe my family and I could hide from these new invaders. Though I did not know how with the zombies, and we couldn’t stay in our house for long. I swam to the shore, now free of moving zombies. As I walked silently through the sand, looking at the aftermath of the fight, I despaired the future, and I woke up.

Needles and violence

We had jobs in a new town - I had gotten a research job, and Ted got a job at the same place, but as a worker, a driver maybe.  It was a bit of a drive, we had some trouble finding the place, had to dive off into a gravely looking area near a beach, and between tall sandy red brown rocks. After we got around some of the rocks we could see a few other cars parked.  We got out of the car.

M: “Ready?”

T: “Yeah, I suppose”

 I was wearing a denim button up shirt and a denim full skirt, which looked sturdy enough for the roughness of the site, yet set me apart as not one of the workers. Here was a plank that extended out over the water and up, then met another plank leading up to the left, and to a large deck over the water with buildings on it. We began to walk up the wooden plank and a woman came out – giving the sense visitors were definitely most unwelcome. We said we were arriving for our first day of work, and her cold demeanor became more welcoming, she asked our names and what positions, she seemed a bit dismissive of Ted after he stated his, sending him ahead into the building, but asked my name, which I told and that I and a science/mathematics position (I had temporally forgotten the position I’d applied for, how embarrassing) she didn’t seem to think anything of it, but seemed interest as if she heard of me and was trying to clarify what she knew, she asked what college I’d gone to. I responded Scripps. She said “Oh, yes,” and led me to a desk.

Ted was already there, talking rather seriously to one of the ladies at the desk. I went to another lady who was free and put my papers up. She looked them over, approvingly, then flagged down a man who came over and introduced himself. He was friendly and smiling and took me off to meet some people. I was really nervous. First he introduced me to an auburn haired man, with a slightly weathered face – I realized he’d been a boyfriend of mine in college, before Ted. In some ways we looked strikingly similar, we both had a similar color of red auburn hair, but he had brown eyes, while mine were a dark turquoise blue, pretty with my creamy skin and warm coloring.  He took my hand and smiled at me and said “this is a nice surprise.” My introducer said he’d be right back and left the room. I was frustrated – I really needed this job, and this was an unforeseen complication. There was a nearby locker, I stepped in it. He looked at me puzzling as I pulled the door closed. I needed to be alone for a min, he opened the door.

“Close the door please.”

He did. A second later it opened.

“Please close the door.”

He looked at me a little confused but did again.   I stood in the dark looking at the light through the slats, just for a min, and realized I had to get myself together. I needed this job for both of us. I left the closet, my ex seemed to have left, and I walked back into the front, where my introducer had returned, he took me off immediately to another office, to meet the big boss.   He greeted me a bit distractedly – and said “so you met your research partner…” apparently implying my ex, “…at least you two match” he says, noting my similar hair color.

“Actually we know each other” I respond.

“Oh, so you like him?”

What do I say to that? I really was not looking forward to working with him.

“ Er, yes he is a good man”  and that was true, regardless of our past, he was a good man.

“Yes, yes he is. Well let’s get on shall we?” He turned around and got back to what he was doing – dismissing us. The introducer and I went back to the lobby.

Ted was still talking to a lady there and was agitated, I could tell by how he was standing – even though I could only see his back. The introducer asked me about how I knew my research partner.

“He was my ex in college, actually.” And more to myself added, glancing at Ted’s back “and he is not going to be too thrilled with this.” I think the interviewer heard me but made no comment.

Ted was apparently being told he didn’t have a job after all, he was annoyed. I could see the paper the lady had printed out in front of him - something about his driving record and falling asleep while driving. It was BS. He looked at me, and walked out – in his quick glance the understanding that we’d have to talk about it later – we needed at least one of us to have a job – and I couldn’t start out on the wrong foot.

I was shown more about the office and it was a bit of a blur.

…

Its lunch time – I’d been here for maybe a week, enough to know some of the ladies in the office but I was still very new. We all were going out to lunch, we piled into two cars, both belonging to office girls, so they were of poorer quality. There were a couple of us research girls, but for some reason none of us had our own cars.  We were driving down what seemed to be a main street with lots of stores on either side. I was thinking of Ted, how he was really uneasy being here, and of me working with my ex. I wanted to make things ok, and I wanted to push forward with our wedding plans.

We were coming up on a store that had Easter supplies – and I saw something in the window that would make Ted very happy – could save all my plans, I had the girls stop – and rush into the store. It was something to do with bags of jellybeans and balloons – and only certain bags had them – maybe it was a trip you could win to somewhere Ted would really like? I was more watching myself then experiencing first hand, and I had no idea what the plan was or why I needed these things. My dream self had the girls go through bags, emptying the jelly beans trying to find what I needed. It was a flurry of activity and I didn’t care that we were breaking store rules. We started putting them in a cart, along with some balloons.

There had been a bunch of kids in the store, and not sure whether our actions had excited them – or they were already up on sugar highs or something - but they started a riot, all grabbing ball type things and throwing them around. They were going to close the store but I needed my things! You couldn’t go through the registers anymore, so I just aimed the cart for outside and ran for it.  This seemed to excite some of the kids even more, they also started running outside, taking all kinds of balls with them – sports balls, big plastic balls. A worker, manager there, seemed to think it might be my fault or something because he was hot in pursuit of me. He was a very attractive man I thought grudgingly, and I seemed to know, had this been some silly movie, he’d be my love interest and this would be the wacky way we met – him chasing me down the street as I tried to escape with a cart of stolen Easter goods.

I was in good shape and had a head start, so even pushing the cart managed to stay ahead of him.  I was getting really tired but ahead the street sloped down, so I pushed it to there knowing I could rest as the slope did the work for me. I got to the bottom  - one of my girlfriends had managed to keep up with me, I grabbed armfuls of the stuff from the cart and ran up a grassy hill into a opening of a courtyard wall. It was an old wall – that seemed to be part of an old building – white with terra cotta tiled roof – but only this outer wall was left, and the inside grassy hill open to the next street.

My blond friend was right behind me, and we could hear him behind us. He’d been singing, his singing becoming more breathless as he ran, but just after he passed through the opening in the wall, to the floor area before it went to grass, we heard a ‘thunk” and the singing abruptly stopped. I was worried, I gave my stolen goods to my friend and told her to take them to safety. I went back to find out what happened to him. He had fallen, thigh deep in a hole – I put my arm under his and pulled him up. I examined him and thought he’d had a broken toe. He seemed a bit amused and exasperated with me.  I could tell he was really attracted to me, in some weird way like we were meant to be.  Silly movie plots, I thought. I heard the sound of a screeching car, I opened my mouth to say something to him. But suddenly the world was gone.

I was now my friend, the blond girl given the items to put to safety. Having just put them somewhere I was worried  about my red haired friend. I went back to find the guy looking very worried and angry and heading out to the street.

“They took her.”

“Huh?”

“Some blond guy and his pierced friends.”

Oooh that was boyfriend’s friends. They were not good men, and she tried to stay as far away from them as she could. She didn’t know why he was friends with them.   I followed him jogging down the street, where the road had come down and then turned there was a wooded area – a stream running just below the bank where the road was. Down a way from that was a driveway and the car was racing up the driveway. We slid down the bank to a path below- which traveled under the bridge that the car had just crossed to get to the large estate ahead.

“Wow, they must have moved into the manor” he said, “I use to work here, oversee the maintenance.” He turned to the bank that rose even over our heads. There was old wooden curved door hidden among the vines that covered the bank.

“We can get in the back way, if I remember right.”  He pushed open the door with some difficulty.  The door opened to a ledge under the street – there was water flowing under here as well, and only a narrow path hugging the side for us to walk on. Apparently this led to a labyrinth which was the back way into the manor, and was booby-trapped. He led the way – through another door, all the while talking about the people who use to work under him to keep up the manor.  “Cedric was supposed to keep this place clean, but I’ve been gone for a long time, I don’t know what happened to the place after I left. It was never this filthy”

We went through a door, he motioned for me to stay behind him.  “Now there were all kinds of traps here, the guys were suppose to have disabled them,” he named some of the traps as we passed them, a dagger trap, a pit trap, another hole that was already exposed – everything was very dusty and old looking. He stopped abruptly and a second later something thudded into the ground before him. “Ah they missed the poisoned dart trap, they’ be in trouble if I still worked here”.

Up some stairs and we were in a room above ground. He described how men would try to come and sneak into the manor this way - old gangster types. And by the time they got to the end of the labyrinth they’d completely forgotten why they even came, they just wanted out. In different places you could see cigars where men had spit them out, or gold chains and jewelry that had become caught and discarded. Each of the obstacles we came too – that must have been a painful trial to invaders - he knew how to disable or go past safely.  In one room the only apparent way to continue was to squeeze through one of the various oddly shaped openings in the wall ahead, each with rather sharp edges. But Guy knew a spot to touch on the wall that opened a door for us to safely pass. By the end I was very glad to have never stumbled upon this place on my own, it was creepy and awful.

Ahead there was light- we’d reached the end, it apparently ended just above the door of the manor – in the attic space that extended over it as an awning.  There was a space he indicated we should drop through, which we did, landing on our feet before the door. Almost amused sounding he said gallantly:

“Drop and the doors will open”

Sure enough the decorative glass doors slid open at his lightest of touch.  We walked through a forayer, terra cotta tiles, there was a low daybed before us. In it She was sleeping, we could just see her red hair. “Ah there’s our sleeping beauty” he says.

Screaming. Repeated, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand, and cold fear iced through my stomach. Before we get to the daybed, a girl swings down from the ceiling. She is tied upside down by her legs we didn’t see her before since she had pulled herself up and was kinda trying to untie herself. Now she just swung limply facing us – and says – “She’s knocked out – but he has Sally”

The girl’s cheetah print shirt was pull up, exposing the expanse of her belly to sternum. Sticky out of the girl was hundreds of tiny needles, from her belly to her arms, but the majority at a similar downward angle at her belly, the kind you use for piercing tongues and eyebrows and the like.  All different bright colors and some tipped with decorative crystals and jewels. Not inserted enough where she’d have much blood loss, but you could tell she must have been held down and had them inserted one by one, careful, to give her pain.

Screaming…screaming… screaming… the girl in the back had been screaming this whole time, short quick screams over and over again, but I’d blocked them out. Guy ran forward before me – She was unconscious the bed – bruised with maybe a few piercings – as if the torturer couldn’t help himself, but he tried because he knew he’d be in  trouble for marring her too much. She lay in the white bed – one arm stretched out and exposed, brown and purple bruises forming where hands had gripped her.

To the left we see another girl, needles sticking from her back. She is breathing we can see – but not the source of the screaming – we can see her face and we run by, making a left at the next door. In here is a room that looks almost like a personal salon. Hanging from the ceiling, through a square opening is a girl with hundreds of needles sticking from her legs, from the knees down going up to the ceiling where we can see a man in the bright florescent light in the space above, sticking more brightly colored piercing rods into the girls feet, with quick sure jabs. Each jab elicits a scream from the girl, who appears to have given up fighting back, though it looks like she had been previously. Now she hung, her arms just barely making an effort to grab something to pull herself up.

Guy grabs the girl and pulls her from the torturer and quickly lays her on the floor by the wall, then manages to grab the man and yank him through the opening.  He scrambles to his feet and throws some sharped piercing rods, larger ones, at Guy, but none stick, they hit at angles and bounce off or miss completely. A few hit me, but I jump back and none stick. Guy tackles him and has him on the ground on his belly.

Guy pulls over a cylindrical hair curler heater - it has about a 1 foot diameter, and is maybe 2.5 feet long, He turns it on and puts some curlers on it. As if by some unspoken agreement we both know this man should pay for what he did to these girls.  I said “not like that” my anger was too hot and impatient for just doing this slow. I grabbed the cylinder with both hands – it was a pretty sturdy thing, and brought it down hard against the back of the blond man’s head, and shoulders. He made a satisfying “umph” I brought it up and hit it again and again, ffffrummmthwack ffffffrummmmthwack. After a couple hits the maddening fire in my head had decreased some I put the cylinder back by Guy. He seemed a bit impatient with my need to quick violence, but he said nothing, just secured the guys body leaving his hands stretched before him.

I sat on the man’s upper back, holding his arms down, Guy was starting to stick needles, thinner needing – sewing needles some with thread trailing their ends, into the blond man’s finger tips.  The man was trying to grab small hair trimming scissors and other sharp tools lying about to stab Guy with, but I kept grabbing his hands and holding them still.  I had a mental flash of what would happen if he got a hold of one, sinking it deep into Guy’s thigh. I held to his hands tight. I grabbed a needle in my right hand and helped to stick him.

He now had needles sticking out of his fingertips, very deep – through his fingers even. He fumbled with his hands again trying to get free, my hold on him slipped a little, and he managed to stick my hand with two of the needles sticking from his fingers, and squeezed, pushing the needles into the fingers of my left hand. But I’d managed to secure his hand again. He could push the needles into my hand some, but he couldn’t get away or do more damage than that. One needle was just barely sticking the side of my finger; the other was embedded deeply right into the center of my middle finger, middle knuckle, and deep. It must of hurt him to squeeze – using the needle being in his own hand to stick it deeper  into mine, but he wanted to hurt me, and so did it through the pain.  I knew I was taking damage, but I ignored the pain – there was nothing I could do right now, he must be secured.

I grabbed a long embroidery needle and jabbed him in the palm, again, and again. Stick, stick, stick, into the fleshy part of his palm. In some part of my brain I knew this wasn’t quite right, and I knew that my hand hurt, but it was so satisfying to assuage my anger with his pain. Stick, stick, stick..

Parasites

Was in car with Khara, thanking her for bailing me out ( I had been in jail?), she said it was nothing – she was going to borrow it from a friend who was a vender but she didn’t have it at the time, she’d had nothing, so Khara had to do a bail bond. I told her I’d pay for it and she didn’t respond, just smiled. We pulled in for gas, it was dark. Got gas and then was driving, daylight. Stopped and did something, back in car, Khara in back seat –asked if she wanted front, she was comfortable, noticed ants in front, figured it was best she be in back. Got in car, friends showed up – not close ones, but acquaintances and they piled in car without asking.

We drove down a badly paved street – country outskirts of town, right on another to a stop light and train tracks, then left.  Then left down a road I was usually knew, but it was unfamiliar today, they were doing road work, the asphalt was deep and sticky, car wouldn’t go through it, I had to put foot out and push.

Road went into a building sort of thing, the chambers were separated by flaps. Weird since it wasn’t that way when on this road before.

We ended up in a room, lost the car somehow, maybe we just got out of it

Instead of going straight went kinda to the side, there was grass

And there were some pixies, all green they were asking for something in high pitched voices

“please give me some ___ just some ____ please”

We went past them – we ended up on a school ground – at first I thought it was San Joaquin Memorial High School, looked like Spanish style catholic school. We were walking through the school grounds’ I was trying to figure out what street it would let off on. The walls were covered in spray painted looking versions of the mascot and school name. We ran into two men, one a janitor. He asked what we were doing there, I said we were trying to get home. He and his coworker tried to give us directions. They said to go out there the ally was – the bus would come by, one guys was freaked though saying something like the “Chula” were out there – or they would be, it was their ally. The other guys said, no not during daylight, it was 2pm we’d be fine.

They walked us out. The guy asked us where we were going; I told him I was trying to get back to Clovis

He looked at me funny – there was no Clovis anymore. I said yes there was – I lived on Bullard and Villa. He looked kinda haunted, no there was no Clovis, he picked up a nearby phone, here try to call any Clovis number. I just asked what direction is it, he waved his hand out before us and to the left. He said it’s there sometime but you’d have to crocodile to it and it was getting dark. I noticed he was right. There were kids playing basket ball next to us, the ally had the side of the school one side, a fence then chain link fence on the other there were strange tagging everywhere. Chula he said, he walked with us to the end of the ally and pointed to a street running left

Street lights were on – in the road was a strange creature with a flat sort of head, it was huge – a clam head with tons of teeth, what the hell was that? The guy with us took of his jacket, “I’m not a as young as I was, but I’m still a warrior” and he attacks it, kicking its face and punching it, it flips over. He starts talking about them, these things that have invaded and things haven’t been the same since, how he use to be one of the ones who fought them. He beat another, we followed – with others sneaking behind us

He said to get into a house up ahead – I think he knew the lady he was fighting another- blue looked like a short worm with a huge head and mouth, or maybe a fish. We were trying to keep back some others, when I looked back the fish had swallowed the guy, he was screaming

A friend and I tried to grab the fish and pull its mouth open, but it had turned into a fuzzy toy version of itself.

I grabbed it by the tail and smacked it against the wall, we could still hear him as if a long ways away, but  it was just a toy now, small even. He was not were inside it, only thing inside it that was stuffing was a ball thing that squeaked when you squeezed it, and it sometimes talked, saying ‘touch me again’ in its weird monster voice.  We ran for the house he mentioned.

The door was open we went in and closed it.

There was another beastie in the hallway – two, we took one down, the other hid. Khara had stepped back into the bathroom while we were fighting the beast – I talked to her. Should we try to stay here tonight? And hold down the house till morning, or go back to the school and trace our steps. She wanted to do that, she didn’t want to stay here. So we all went back outside, ready to fight. One of the clam heads was blocking our way, I kicked it and punched it ineffectively. Then one of us hit it on a soft spot on its head and it squealed and went away – it jumped on the back of another clam shell, a black bodied one – the one we just hit was yellow and red.

Some of other times of creatures were barring our way – but there were children in the ally – one girl stood side by side with the monsters facing us. She turned to the monster – ‘so you are going to invade OUR turf?” The monsters backed down, we walked down the ally – lots of kids/preteens about. We started up to the window, they were all laughing and giggling and going about their business. There were tons of them.  And there wasn’t anything right about them – some were talking to us, but I ignored them, deciding we just needed to focus on getting back, nothing else mattered. As I went to climb the steps through a glass door, the girl who was following us talking was near behind me, and there was a mirror to the right on the wall, I looked in it, and it reflected me, and all the kids who were alone the windows to my left, in groups, and they were all monsters – brightly colored blob like almost florescent and slightly transparent creatures. They were taking our bodies as hosts

She and I were talking as I went -  was distracted – in response to something she said I asked, so you pick the opposite gender usually? She says sometimes, sometimes the same, but sometimes they are asexual. I make it through the room, some of the children are grabbing my arms and smelling me, my friends too. They are all trying to follow me

A boy latches himself to me, the girl says he will go with me and show me the way. I don’t trust that but I’d just go the way I wanted anyways

Went ahead of me, pulling me along, fingers biting into my hand, he kept looking back and me and smiling, had light brown hair and lanky build. I made a right and pulled him with me since he wouldn’t let go of my hand. Down some stairs, he was smelling my neck, and it felt like he bit my shoulder lightly. Down another hallway past some adults, they weren’t right either, and looked confused as to what do about us. I made a left into a large near-empty room, I remembered this room. There was a stage or raised part at the end – went on to that and through another door – my friends each had a ‘child’ with them, but now I didn’t see them – just the ‘children’ who were with them. That can’t be good – went down again into a close room with miniature store fronts, the second one or so was a tea shop and there was light coming from inside, I remembered it – and that down the way was a wood toy shop – it might have been that one… no it was this with the bright light, I went into the set, pushing past the table and through the back doors to the kitchen, it was all small sized.

My ‘child’ tried to pull back on me but I kept going – I didn’t care if I brought him into my world, we’d kill him. I pushed through a door with a bright light under it and through the cracks, and I was in the last chamber of the road construction – where we had made a left to go see the green pixies, I thought I’d be going into the road but instead I had to go through ha chamber of the pixies, and then some other color pixies, and some bright white butterflies, all calling out to me, and somehow I now remembered them – that we had gone through them to get there but I had forgotten. Then I got to the doors right before the sticky asphalt, and through there  - where the workers all looked at me, and back through till I found the road and my world.

I remember getting back to a familiar place, and telling them what happened, and apparently my friends were all there in a coma, they were found – and I had been missing. I told them what happened and they figured out it was a parasite disease or something, and they were able to get it out of my friends, who all woke.  So we’d never been there -  it had been a parasite hallucination? But something (I don’t remember what – my close? Marks on my arm? Made me think it was real.)

Air Planes, Head Shaped Chicken, and a Picnic

We were in an air plane competition, a girl was sitting next to me in the plane. She had more experience then I, in fact, it was her plane. I was piloting it part of the time. We were competing with the girl in the other plane, to see who could do the more difficult tricks. We'd each do some trick, and the other plane then had to do it to prove they could also. Her last trick had us now stranded on some island out in the middle of a large lake.

       The island was long and kind of narrow, with two rows of trees, which we were now hanging between, the plane’s wings resting on the trees on either side of us, holding us up.  I decided as my stunt to take off from the island. I managed to get the plane backed up to one end. I blasted forward as fast as the plane would go, its wings slicing off the top of the trees on either side as we went. The plane got to the end of the island, having risen up some, but not enough.

       As we went out over the ocean, we started losing altitude. We dropped down, almost to the water's surface when I felt the pressing of the air beneath the wings strengthen, we had enough speed for lift just in time. We circled around, cheering our victory. The girl beside me said, "Now let’s see her do THAT!"   Now we were supposed to go land on the shore somewhere and watch the other plane attempt my trick.

        I realized we were almost out of fuel. In fact, I wasn't sure we had enough to reach the shore. We were going to go down in the water. I didn't want the other girl to realize my neglect of the fuel, so as I went down to land in the ocean, just off shore, I told her I felt like a swim. She looked at me and shook her head. She actually believed me, and was muttering something about my crazy hair brained ideas. Splash! Into the water we went, she and I surfaced, and got out of the plane.

       I grabbed hold of a wing and started pulling the plane with me to the shore. I couldn't get it all the way up, and it began to sink about 15 feet from shore. We landed nearly in front of the girl's parents' house. They were outside with kind faces. I assumed we'd get the plane later so we walked up to the house.

        She explained to her parents exasperatedly that we landed in the water because I felt like going for a swim. They laughed at this and said that she should have told me that planes were not meant for the water. She paused, and then nodded her guilt; she had indeed failed to tell me that. I added that I wouldn't have done it this time, if she had told me that it was bad to do after the first time I landed in the water, earlier that day. She said that she had thought I knew that after the first time, but agreed that she should have told me.

         We all looked at the plane. She asked me if I remember if it was oily inside, I said it wasn't, so she jumped back into the water and opened the door of the plane. She reported it was all wet inside. I helped her pull it onto the shore. It now looked like a Geo Metro. I told her about the time my boyfriend drove his Geo into a ditch and it got all wet. He let it dry all night and it was fine in the morning, so I figured if we let the plane sit all night, it might be fine in the morning. They all nodded. As soon as I remembered it was supposed to be a plane and not a Geo, the plane stopped trying to look like a Geo, and was just a plane again.

          Inside a friend of my dad's was cooking. He knew that I didn't cook so he was being really nice and cooking extra so I could take it home with me. He cooked a bunch of chicken, like 15 or so. He lined them up along a long table, one at each place setting. He went back to the kitchen. I looked closer at the chickens. They all looked like gaping human heads. It was gross. The skin was all spongy looking and bleached white. One was partially eaten, so I could tell it was chicken in side.  I took a fork and stood in front of a head/chicken that looked like a large woman with dark eyes, a large open mouth, and full cheeks. I jabbed the fork into the forehead and ripped away. Yep, it was chicken inside. And it was rapidly getting cold.

          I took a bite, it tasted good, but I didn't think I could eat a whole one, particularly while it was looking like a lady's head. So I decided if I had some freezer bags, I could rip the chicken out and put it in it in pieces.  There was one bag on the table, so I used it first, pulling at the chicken from the forehead, stripping it from the bones and putting it in the bag.  I was suddenly worried that maybe he didn't mean for all of the chicken/heads to be for me. Then I thought, he wouldn't have left them all out to get cold if they were for someone else. I filled my bag and went into the kitchen to look for more. I opened a drawer, and found some bags along with boxes of 'fun sized' candy bars. I took a snicker bar and then noticed the sodas that were in there. I already drank one of his cokes, so I grabbed a generic soda. I pulled out a bag, but it had a rip in it. So I started pulling out another when I heard a knock at the door.

         I walk to the door and realize that the front of the house is my mom's country club. To the left opened the Garden room where they serve breakfast and lunch in a room that over looked the golf course. I noticed they had green and khaki table cloths instead of green and white. Some of the workers work green shirts with khakis as part of the daytime uniform, perhaps they were changing the table cloths to match the servers. Then I realized that the servers wore the tuxedo outfit, so this was unlikely. Probably just changing colors.

        I walk past the garden room to the heavy wooden front doors and open them. There is a man outside with a young boy. I see behind them the sky has gone stormy. The water was turning like a stormy ocean, wind blew hard at the sandy beach, and the light of dusk had a sickly yellowish grey look it sometimes gets before a nasty storm. The man asked me if he could borrow a table cloth. I noticed the picnic basket in his hand. Apparently he was going to have a picnic on the beach with his son. I didn't really want to give him a table cloth, but then realized he might be a member of the club. So I went back to the Garden Room. I took one of the khaki table clothes, figuring it was most like the color of sand and so least likely to show stains. I took him the table cloth and he thanked me, turning back toward the beach.

      I shut the door, turning back toward the kitchen. Half way there, I woke up.