It all started a few years ago when I saw on TikTok that there were ways to control your dreams and be self aware. I thought to myself how cool it would be to experience the things I can’t in my day to day life. So I watched everything I could on how to lucid dream and how to condition myself.
After trying a couple of times I ended up lucid dreaming almost every night. I could do anything I wanted. It was so wholesome at first…I was falling in love, being a hero, and the best part was that I was safe from everything that hurt me in my daily life.
I decided I wanted to push the limits of my dreams, and see what my mind would do if I let it run wild enough to be unpredictable but controlled enough for me to stay lucid. So I started telling people in my dreams I was dreaming. Telling them, none of this was real. The people in my dreams would look confused but would nod their heads like a bunch of NPCs.
But one day something changed when the person I told put their hands over my mouth and told me to be quiet. Their eyes were wide open and suddenly I felt a chill up my back. They didn’t feel human and upon further inspection of their face, the skin on it looked loose and almost…fake?
“They can’t know you’re awake,”
I was so confused by what they said. I removed their hand from my mouth and paused for a second.
“What do you mean,”
My question was innocent. So why did they look so disturbed.
“No one can know,”
After I woke up from that dream I was a little confused but I passed it off as my subconscious mind trying to be funny. My personality is like that so that’s why I wanted to pretend it didn’t shake me so much.
The next dreams I had were normal. So I slowly forgot what happened, but a TikTok about someone having a similar experience reminded me of it. Then the comments on the video all said they had a similar experience. But the problem came with my next time lucid dreaming. In the dream…
I was walking on a gravel path with some friends whose faces I don’t recognize and I realized as I looked ahead at the road it was so unnatural looking, I realized what was happening.
“Oh I’m dreaming,”
I said it out loud, but unlike the past times where no one would mind anything I said, all my friends look at me in shock.
“You’re not supposed to know that,”
One of my friends said as she reached her hand at me. I stepped back and tried to imagine myself with wings to fly away , but nothing happened. I tried again, but this time imagining a door to take me to the beach….but it failed. My heart began racing, my legs felt numb, but I had to run I don’t know why but I had to go. I tried running away, but I kept tripping. My legs felt weak and my body was exhausted, but I just kept trying. My friends were walking to me slowly, but even so they were faster to me. I was so scared I didn’t know what was gonna happen to me. The last time I tripped I looked behind me, heart racing, to see my friends faces have become blurry. They surrounded me on the ground and I was on the verge of tears as they reached their hands to me.
I wished for anything to save me.
Suddenly my eyes shot open and the sound of my roommates alarm woke me up. I got out of my bed and went to my roommates room to wake him up. He’s a hard sleeper so I do this often.
“Hey Dee, you gotta wake up,”
I whispered as I turned off his alarm and started shaking him. He groaned, obviously displeased that I was trying to wake him up.
Creak
I heard a noise outside his room. Like the sound of someone quietly stepping on old wood. I looked back at my roommate and maybe it’s because it was dark and his electronic alarm was the only source of light in his room, but he looked different.
His skin felt fake and his face looked blurry, and that’s when I realized something.
I was still dreaming.