Ward

It was a hall of beds in a hospital, like it was a hundred years ago, with over two dozen occupied beds in one big room. I know that there were in total two floors like this in the building, as well as two or three hallways lined with smaller rooms, like hospital bedrooms today. This was due to the small size of this hospital, I knew.

I had a bed in this big room, which was bustling with the activity of nurses and the other patients. Sitting up, I could overlook most of the ward, because behind me was only a wall and there were no screens around any of the beds. The walls in front and to either side of me, each several rows of beds away, had large windows with the sunny view of a fresh and summery green landscape with trees and grass.

A nurse, in an oldfashioned robe and hat reminiscent of that of a nurse nun from the Great War, passed through my field of vision and puffed up someone's pillow. People were talking, just about everyone was awake, and there was someone sitting at my right bedside. It was an unfamiliar young woman who was here on some professional business. Maybe she was a doctor, or maybe she was only here to discuss something to do with me.

Unbidden, I recalled something dangerous. Instances of when people turned their attention towards other people, and as soon as they began looking them straight in the face that other person would reveal their monstrous true identity. They were not people at all, but predators to us, who had us without hope for escape or defence once we were looking at their faces. Their faces then turned and twisted into dark, glistening gargoyle shapes with broad, pointed snouts, large, slanted eyes of jet and a ridged, angular surface. Their hands did the same. As you were watching this, you could not move or look away, or even close your eyes or say anything. You could only feel terror.
This I knew, though I had never been a victim myself, and I didn't even know what happened to those people I saw in these strips of memory then. I didn't know whether they were killed, eaten, abducted, turned insane or something else. It didn't matter either way. They were ensnared and attacked in a devious way, and we were all potential prey to those beings.

After these brief glimpses had flitted past, I suspected vaguely that I was somehow responsible for fighting this danger and that the woman sitting beside my bed was here to instruct me on this. (In retrospect, it might have occured to me then that my suspected job of fighting those hostile entities might be the reason for me occupying a hospital bed at the moment - and not remembering why. But it didn't. Maybe it would have if the moment hadn't been so brief.) However, I didn't have time to ask anything or explore this thought further, because a young man with long hair appeared on the left side of the bed. He stood there and looked down at me. My eyes flitted over him absently, then I saw the woman to my right acknowledging his presence without words (no one said anything), but keeping him only at the edge of her vision with an air of unease and suspicion about her. I immediately, automatically glanced back at him and while trying to keep my eyes from lifting to look at his face, I imagined how, if I let them, he would turn and then ------ what then? Had I not seen him a moment ago over the shoulder of my bedside companion, a few beds down the row to my right? Had he not been staring down a middle aged balding man in his bed, who was looking up at him in dumb horror, devouring him with a twisted half-sneer on a monster's face that no one but me and that man seemed to notice?

If he had, then I hadn't reacted.

So this must have been just a wild thought.

(In retrospect again... I noticed it before, but didn't think anything of it. No one seemed particularly sick or injured in this ward. Might I have been insane?) 

Demons and Stars / Flesh Terror

I don't know why exactly, but this man who looked a little like Martin Freeman in a police uniform and was my pretend-husband (and I a person in a yellow raincoat fluctuating between male and female) wanted us to get off the tube at the very last station and hide in a niche at the underground depot. I was pressing myself into a small wallgap to stay unnoticed, whereas he just stood there in plain view of the subway people and no one seemed to care. The subway people finally left and we'd been successful, apparently, but fuck if I know what was supposed to happen next.
Because it didn't, because this was happening next:

In a big old city, I wandered through the inner city at night, past a grand old church and lovely baroque facades, and came across a modern glass-and-metal structure in rectangular shape. It had only a ground floor and was "architecturally" reminiscent of those ugly kiosks and tourist info boxes you may find at some bigger bus station outside of the main building. Meaning it had glass panes for walls, tinted orangered or covered with orangered foil, was framed in metal, and was perfectly straight and angular. And also perfectly ugly and temporary-looking.

A soldier of high rank greeted me. As we passed along the outside first, one of its long sides, I noticed a baneful foreboding, an angry humming and vibration behind the glass wall. It even rattled. The noise and movement were erratic as if originating from a living organism (as opposed to a machine) and did not quite take place in the actual world. It wasn't that the walls were actually growling and rattling, but rather that I got the distinct, unmistakable sense that there was something behind them that shouldn't be contained by them. And wouldn't. I was fairly certain, as we were entering through the main door at the headside, that something really bad was going to break out here during my visit.

The officer (Captain, Colonel ... who knows, who cares - he never said), mistaking me for an inspector of some kind, babbled something about the building's new purpose. He said that since the Doctor had left they had locked down and secured away part of the left side of the building containing the old research - skeptical, I eyed the white glass walls separating said research tract from the hallway. This is secure? - and had turned the rest of the facility into living space for his Romans.
Sure enough, right about then a sliding door (squeaky clean white glass again) opened in front of me in this narrow hallway and I half expected it to spit out a couple of bloodthirsty demon monkeys, attacking me, because it shared a wall (white gla- well you guessed it) with the "locked down" left part of the building. You know. The evilly vibrating part.

But it seemed to be only an elevator. A few women looking ... "Roman" somehow, (it was a mixture of futuristic and ancient in the way they were dressed and wore their hair) stepped into it, ignoring us completely and boredly waiting to go down. Right, there's more underground ... I thought.
It was about then, or shortly after, that shit went down.

It didn't happen in detail, sorry to disappoint there.

However, a high official's lovely trophy wife (looked like Oona Chaplin with jewelry) was sent out during all the ensuing terror to get help. Specific help. So she ran through the city as it turned from nightly to nightmarish, large grating and slithering noises, hollow whoomping and disturbing crackling filling the air, growing, swelling, buildings rapidly dilapidating without actually falling down, a maelstrom of sheer horror and mouths demolishing the small glass building and the people inside, and she looked up at the sky and cried for the Doctor.

He didn't come and she began to call even more desperately, for "Doctor Who!" repeatedly, I looked up at the starry sky as well, and when the terror consumed and blackened up the air around us, obscuring the view and all other senses, I drifted up to a roof to see better. It was actually starry. Not what you usually see from inside a big city, but rather a picture that the Hubble telescope would show you. It was so still. Colourful and glittery.

The Doctor never came.

No one came.

The wife was gone when I returned to the ground.

Out of nowhere a ... living thing as large as an elephant, with a revolting evil baby face and wrinkled, naked skin hopped in front of me and assumed the sitting pose of a dog.

It stared at me.

I was about to say something to it when it suddenly grew tentacles. Thick and leathery, turning it into no more than a writhing, thick sausage, the tentacles grew thicker and sprouted new tentacles. They didn't exactly reach for me but they lunged for and stoppered all doorways and regular walking paths in sight and so efficiently cut off all my exits. I was loathe to touch them but I didn't need to. Managing to avoid the massive flesh writhing on the ground (most of them were as thick as old trees now), I jumped up on a low stone bridge to escape.

When I landed on the railing, another fleshdemondog hopped in front of me and sat. It stared reproachfully.
This time I didn't wait around and just jumped down the other side of the bridge and ran. There was another fleshdog sitting and staring at me, I ran past it, and in the distance by the cathedral I could see another squatting.

It ends here. 

The Lamest Encounter

I walked out into the hallway outside of my room and saw the makeshift bed there by the stairs that lead up to the attic. That made me turn around into my room and start counting the beds in the house, wondering why I'd slept on garden chair upholstery on the living room floor when it was so murderously hot a while ago and not just one of the beds downstairs. I didn't finish my mental count, because my little brother, actually little for some reason, about seven years old and still in his pyjamas, hurriedly put on his house shoes and dashed out of his room and down the stairs. When he came back up he came up into my room where I was timewarpily sleeping again, and he proceeded to play with matchbox cars in a corner by the door. I opened and closed my eyes wearily and imagined that he was being a bit quieter to not disturb my sleep. I could have gone back to sleep but what the hell, I got up and the girl standing in the other corner by the door, in underwear and facing my nightstand with a quiet smile, made me pause on my way out. I had no idea who she was and neither she nor I said anything, but she was in my room in the morning, somewhat undressed, and again what the hell, I just sort of groped her from behind and kissed her shoulder. She seemed to like it. My mind went "Right then," and I went to the shower.

Stone Murderers, God, Ship

I walked into the aisle of a square courtyard at night, with walls at least ten metres high. In the arches on the ground stood dark stone statues of cloaked and hooded people, each with a long dagger somewhere about their person. Most were holding it in one hand. Some stood upright, some were crouched, and none had a visible face or even a mask. Their heads were all hood. They stood in rows of three or four, but some rows had empty places. As I passed and walked between them, one came alive, turned from stone to cloth and flesh, got a face and began moving fluidly out of its stasis. The cloaked person stabbed somebody in the back viciously, hatefully, and moved on. More of the statues turned live, one by one, left their places and began stabbing people in the back. I moved out of their way and saw that there were other cloaked figures who moved into vacant spots in those rows, assumed a stance like the statues and turned to dark stone. I knew, somehow, that were I to do that, I would be relatively safe from them. But I didn't. There was no need, because I didn't think I was in any danger. I went into the courtyard and looked up the high walls, higher than the square court was wide, and saw more of the dark statues standing in alcoves all about these four walls and glowering down, and at me. I hovered up and saw their hateful glares follow me. They were waiting to turn live and some of them did, and they lunged at me but missed and landed on the floor where they went about their stealthy, murderous business on other living people. I wasn't afraid that one of them would get me and didn't hurry upward, but ascended at a steady pace, certain that I'd be able to defend myself somehow if need be. I hovered up into the almost starless night sky and over one of the walls.

Beyond it was deep, black water, with more ancient looking stone structures on either side. The water got wider further on. This must have been a port of some kind. I looked back at the walls of the courtyard, hovering above the water, and saw a ship with at least seven terribly dark blue sails hurry out of that wall - some opening in it - and over the black water.

A shockwave of very unnatural origin or something like that, (a wave of ether,) came out of the courtyard, rippled deep through the water and the air above it, made the water heave and hurled the ship up out of it and forward. It somersaulted and landed on its side. Since I was impossibly large now and felt a mild sort of kinship or loyalty with this something that fled the dark, murdering statues, I took it into my giant hands, lifted it out of the water and set it upright again. The ship immediately sped on as if it had been stuck on something and was now pulled forward by a rubberband. I looked at the still patch of water where it had lain and thought that some of the crew must have fallen out. There was nothing visible on the surface, but I didn't expect any regular human to be conscious after being rattled through like that. They might be further down. For a split second I contemplated simply sieving my hands through the water, but dismissed the idea almost as soon as I'd had it - any reasons for the dismissal would have to be found in retrospect - and instead held my arms and open hands out and concentrated. I tried either magic or the Force or what have you to find and lift anyone out of the black, but it didn't work. I was not disappointed. All my emotions were very dull, I realised, and recalled that telekinesis almost never worked. 

Duck

I was a male mallard and my actual human mother wanted me dead. I fled through the garden because luckily, most of our neighbours had ponds and pools, and some of the shrubbery concealed parts of their surfaces from view from my mother's garden. So I flew and flapped around frantically, trying to pick a good invisible spot in one of the roughly half dozen ponds.

I found one but ended up back in my family's garden after a short while, because they had two bright yellow ducklings for some reason. My little brother (like my mother not a duck) happened to be around while I, now also human, emptied a little cotton sack of its toy contents to put the ducklings in and carry them off. He helped me and carried it with me. He clutched it close to his chest and I held it out by one handle at extended arm's length. I suggested to him to do it like me so he could fly better, but he insisted to hold the duckling bag close like that. We were flapping our arms and hovering awkwardly, and that's where it ended. 

Mattress

A bunch of excellent looking girls in cheerleader uniforms, who were really a college volleyball team, practiced in a half serious mood with hilarious Madonna- and Cyndi Lauper poses, and rounded the unsmiling fun off by pushing one of theirs through the hall in a wheelchair when they left the gymnasium. The girls who pushed the wheelchair bumped it into the legs of the one walking in front, and she began to complain and claim that she was injured now. A cut then showed her in another wheelchair alongside the first. I remember thinking vaguely how odd it was that that school had spare wheelchairs for shenanigans like this.

But none of that had any consequence at all when I got an extremely lovely girl into a room with a mattress. The room was new, somehow, newly renovated or something, and there were boxes standing around. There was also a second mattress.

It distracted me from what I was supposed to be doing on mine, because there was a naked back and bum on it. They removed themselves after a while - they belonged to a young man - and where they had lain facedown was an old woman. She sat up. She was stark naked, too. She was thin and had bright grey short hair. She looked at us with sort of a smirk. I think I asked her something and she replied, her explanation of the situation including something along the lines of: "He wants me to pretend I'm a board."

"What?"
"A board. A wooden plank."

"Why?" I was thoroughly perplexed. She shrugged.

"He likes it that way."

I suspect it was my utter blankness of mind at the realization that this young man got off on wooden boards which switched the dream off. 

Zombie Apocalypse

Two tents have been put up on a hill overlooking the surrounding area which is partly covered in trees and dirt roads. Their respective two openings look out in four directions to ensure maximum visual coverage and relative surpriselessness. There are only two people in those olive tents, a father and his grown daughter. New people arrive and while they are sort of expected, they are welcomed hesitantly and with some grumbling. They all get ready to move on.

We've arrived at a large, derelict public building, probably a decommissioned school. Our temporarily-in-charge guy rallies us in front of one of the doorless openings. "Wir müssen das planen. Bevor wir reingehen, müssen wir uns absprechen."

Then he sent an irritating semi-moron of a blondie in to have her out of his hair, and for some reason I was supposed to go with her. 'Was ist daran der Sinn?' I wondered suspiciously. 'Sie wird alles auf uns aufmerksam machen. Vielleicht will er sie nur loswerden. Aber warum soll ich dann mit?' ('What's the point of this? She's going to draw attention to us. Maybe he just wants to get rid of her. But why do I have to go with her then?')

Sure enough, as soon as we were inside, her constant complaining drew dead people to us, but when we had gone through the third empty room and could see one shambling down the wide entry hall stairs, the others came dribbling in. This strategy confused me. They came in two by two and gathered rather confusedly by the door to the room that blondie and I had just retreated to - a bit like herd animals ushered into a slaughterhouse - while at their backs more shamblers came down the stairs and started snarling. Morons. 

Bomb, Brass, Fox

S: You are all good though?

I: Yeah, totally. Haven't dreamt like that in ages.

S: Oh! Can I hear about it?

I: Listen... there's... where did it start... Doesn't matter, one of the best parts was the bomb.

S: Ooh.

I: There was some sort of ground level seminar room where a lot of police experts were gathered for something.

S: What sort of dream was it? Colors, black/white, emotionfilled, or just action?

I: Colours, and just action.

S: Wow, that's like a movie hehe. I love those dreams!

I: Me too. I usually get to do unnaturally cool things.

S: Ok, what happened?

I: Well, someone opened the door to that room and I was sort of looking over his shoulder into that room, asking for a Mr something.

S: Mmm.

I: That man was there and stood up, and then the policeman who asked said he was looking for his wife, and then a woman got up and said she was it. The policeman then gave her a blue backpack. Said it was hers, she'd forgotten it here.

S: Hmm... Policeman... What did the woman look like?

I: But she immediately said it couldn't be hers because her colleagues would have told her if she'd left it in the seminar room and that was when everyone in there knew immediately that it was a bomb. She looked normal, everyone did, no one was in uniform.

S: wow, so much talking in your dream. Nice.

I: Well, everyone stared at the backpack for a second, and everyone also knew that the colleagues outside would close all the windows and barricade everything so that the fire from the bomb would not get out of the building. That means everyone would die down there. I turned around turning my back to that room and then some yellowish glow started to spread out from it. And it was silent at first, and I edged toward a little sideroom where there was still an open window, but that was closed from outside as soon as I saw it. But that didn't matter. I wasn't relly there in the first place so I could sort of phase through the glass and float away while the explosion stretched out and burned the whole building.

S: Haha, I love it when that happens.

I: There were armored policemen with helmets and everything pushing with their backs against the building, it's complete bullshit, but they did it to hold back the explosion.

Well, I floated away over houses and trees and came to the courtyard of an old red brick mansion.

It seemed deserted, or at least not lived in anymore, and it had a big park around it. There was also a big contraption for water fountain game thingies in the courtyard that opened into the park, with metal pieces on it. One of them was a brass cube with carvings of numbers on it, I was really fascinated and flailed back in its direction when I floated past it. It was about 20 cm long on each side I guess. The carvings were really intricate and... well that's hard to explain.

S: But it was cool.

I: There were leaves on it and... yeah.

S: Leaves? Funny that caught your attention... Ok go on.

I: Yes, carved on the cube. A single oakleaf for the 1, for the 5 a chestnutleaf...

A whole bed of leaves for 10

S: Mhm. *grins*

I: Doesn't matter, it was just really nice looking.

S: Of course it matters! Now keep telling.

I: Well, while I was hanging there holding the cube I heard some rustling out of a bush next to me and a male voice mumbling sing-song-like. So I looked to my left and there was a fox walking out of the bush. Talking to himself.

S: Cool!

I: Haha, totally. He seemed really intelligent. I asked him something and he gave an answer I think... but turned around back into the bush and got it on with a vixen at once.

S: A... vixen? Oh lol. Odd. And then what happened?

I: Uhm, then it sort of phased to something else. Involving dressing up as a lizard and ropedancing over a kitchen table. It was cool, really.

S: Haha, what? Way cool.

I: I didn't do the dressing up though. I wasn't really involved until a boy with a vacuum cleaner came into the kitchen. I asked him if he could put it in front of my bedroom when he was done, and he smirked at me going "Why, what do you have to do with it that's so important?"

S chuckles.

I: And I said "Yeah, you know, whatever important thing YOU do with vacuum cleaners in YOUR bedroom. You know? That thing."

S: Haha.

I: Then he called me a pervert, the idiot.

S: Lol!

I: Between the fox and the vacuum cleaner there was this episode with two friends and one of the friends' sister doing stuff together. It's scrambled. But it had rice and salmon in it.

S: Nice job remembering that much though.

I: Yeah I woke up still dreaming it.

S: Were you hungry when you woke up? : D

I: No.

Forest Cathedral

At first I was following a boy and a giant on a path through a forest, and that became just me and a person I knew (but don't actually) crossing the path of an almost blind man (whom I actually know). I greeted him, he greeted back respectfully and told me something that I've forgotten now. But it's not important. Before us was a giant, cave-like structure. This forest was very tall, and this cave was right in the side of a mountain, with this broad path leading straight up to it, and it was very high-ceilinged. There was the skeleton of a cathedral in there. Just the frames of the high windows and doors, out of pale green-tinged grey sandstone, reaching up all the way, and connecting with the rock at the sides and the back. It was grown over with ivy and dog roses. The sunlight glowed through the plants and pierced yellow rays through the gaps. It was fascinating, impressive and beautiful.
At first it was nature. I mean, it was just there. And then I learned in passing, while still looking at the .. structure .. in complete awe, that I'd been made Colonel for my poetry. That felt strange. In the next moment this beautiful place was suddenly the venue for some exhibition, and two of my poems were featured on a card that they were going to hand out. The new one was titled "The Host/Gas" and was about poison gas and a waiter or something. I don't remember. It was bitter, very good, and my newest. The other one was one that actually exists, but I forgot which it was. A young woman talked to me and wanted to clarify something about my poems, or about my poetry in general, and as she was being all.. busy in her mannerism, and I was just sitting on a small desk in front of her, she spread the printed cards with the names and poems out on the desk and tried to discuss them with me, it turned from a briefing into an interview without questions, somehow, which in the end she concluded with her slight disappointment in me. She said she always liked to .. probe a poet or artist a bit, to sound them out at first, before deciding whether she liked their work or not. And I hadn't lived up to her wishes. Which amused me a little. Because she hadn't actually asked me anything, and secondly, that viewpoint is a stupid one.

So I turned my eyes and attention away from her and back up to the awesome open cave, and that's where it ends.

I'm not going to forget this very soon. The cathedral shell low in the flank of a mountain.