A nightmare I had today morning (1 May 2022)
I was in a gathering in a school, sitting with a group of kids of different ages but mostly young. All were foreigners so they were speaking in English. I don’t think anyone knew each other that well. The only person who knew Urdu (My language) was sitting behind me. We were all joking and laughing about different things.
So some kid made a joke (I don’t remember what), so in its response I told the friend behind me a joke in Urdu about how if this were to happen to me “to mein ek rak ke maarta” (I would’ve slapped the shit out of em), while also gesturing this action with my hands. The group went silent right afterwards
They couldn’t understand what I said. As I began explaining to the group, the other kid on my right spoke up in a very serious tone, “It was something about hitting kids”, and got up, “I am going to tell the principal.” He rushed into the office outside our room. I was sort of calm up till this point because I thought the principal would call me in and I’ll have a chance to explain the situation.
Meanwhile, the other kids in the group started staring at me with disgust. I tried to tell how this was just a joke, but none of them favored me and we all went back to awkward silence.
A moment passed, the door of the principal opened, I didn’t know if this guy was a principal or not. He came towards me with a very angry look. He was bald, with a gray trimmed beard. He said, “so you like hitting kids?” And without even letting a second pass he tried to slap me, I took a step back and avoided the slap but the sound of me getting hit still echoed across the room. I told him to at least listen to me but he didn’t. He ordered his men who were standing behind him to take me downstairs.
They took me to a door which led to a spiral staircase. The men told me to go downstairs, I asked hesitantly, “what is downstairs?” While also getting myself ready to avoid an another slap. But they didn’t respond violently, and just said that there are people whom you can explain your situation to, like the Press, Lawyers etc, without further explanation they went outside, closing the door they came in from and leaving me at the spiral staircase.
As told, I went downstairs. The staircase had pink carpeting with gray stripes, the surrounding walls were also carpeted with the same colours. After quite a few steps, the colours changed, the pattern was still the same but the pallette, this time, was orange (walls) and white (stairs). I assumed that the staircase seemed never ending, but of course they can’t be! So I started sprinting down now. I could see the colours of the walls and stairs rapidly changing as I ran down the stairs.
Finally, I reached a point where the stairs ended and saw a hallway, the colours on the walls were yellow and green. I went inside. Although there was only one way to go, it seemed like a labyrinth to me because I felt loss. The passageway had unnecessary left and right turns, it again seemed endless.
After a while, I saw an opening right in front of me to another passageway, the opening was a narrow rectangular slit at the lower end of the pink wall in front of me. I had to lay on the ground to continue in, so I did.
This passageway seemed less roomy than before, but it had the same colour and patterns. After a while of sprinting, I saw another opening on the left end of the wall, this rectangular slit was narrow enough for me to barely pass through. And so I did.
The passageway continued to trim down as I proceeded on. It came to a point where I couldn’t walk anymore and instead had to crawl my way in, the lights in this cave-like passage had started to dim as well. And I was becoming tired to go on.
The narrow openings on the passageway were getting smaller each time leading to narrower passageways, and finally, I reached an opening which was nothing but a small hole at the upper right corner of a wall. I realised I couldn’t proceed anymore. My journey seemed in vain. I felt as if I was in here for days and all this amounted to nothing at the end.
Realising my failure, I decided to head back. I turned and started crawling the same way I came from. I thought I must see an opening which was wider, but what I saw was another small hole at the same spot as the one I had seen before. I couldn’t pass through this one either. I realized I have no way out. Panicking, I turned around again and started to crawl as fast I could, I reached the hole that I first saw unusually quickly. Are the walls moving? It took me just one more turn to realize that they are.
I was trapped in a square box with two small holes on opposite walls. Not only were the holes too small to pass through, I couldn’t even see through them because of how they were placed: at an upper corner of the walls. I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t move either. All I could do was scream.