I should preface by saying that my dreams always take place in the same city. It’s a mix of places I know and my own imagination. Every single night since maybe 1 or 2 years ago, I’ve been going there every time I dream. Different scenarios in different places take place, sometimes I’m home, sometimes I’m at the mall, sometimes I’m working, sometimes I’m in high school, just normal random things everybody dreams about, but it all takes place in the same dream city.
Now, the fact I have a recurrent dream city is weird, but it’s mostly funny and something I used to think of as a “fun fact” about myself. I don’t think it’s that fun anymore…
The real weird stuff started a couple of months ago, I was used to the dream city at that point, I’d been there every night for months now. One night my dream was different. It started off exactly the same as usual. I was in the mall of the city, going from one store to another. I don’t know how to describe the vibes of the hall, but I found a picture that gives off pretty much the same feeling, except there was people walking there too, I was not alone.
You know when you spend the night at the club with really loud music, drinking alcohol and dancing and then you have to leave and it’s like you suddenly sober up a little, your ears are ringing, the street lights feel aggressive and it’s like you feel like you’ve been cut from the world for a couple of hours? I had that same feeling. It’s like I was waking up from the matrix, having a sudden moment of realisation that I am in fact dreaming. Everything around me starts feeling more real than it’s ever been and I find myself suddenly completely aware of every single sound or movement is happening around me.
At first I think “Cool! I must be lucid dreaming.” I looked at my hands and my surroundings completely baffled, it felt like real life and I had never felt like that in a dream before. I was like a puppet that was just given free will. I wanted to test my new “powers”, so I did something a lot of lucid dreamers know about, I shut my mouth, closed my nostrils with my hand and tried breathing. When I was sure I was dreaming and being able to control what I was doing consciously, I thought it could be nice to test some things. I started making little things appear and disappear in the mall’s hall.
As I was progressing, I started feeling uneasy. At first I didn’t notice, but I guess at one point it started to be too intense for me to ignore. I remember just frowning, not understanding was disturbing me. It felt like when you do something your not supposed to and you start feeling paranoid, feeling like someone is watching you and disapproving. Thing is, everyone in the mall was just minding their own dream characters business. They were just passing next to me, doing their shopping like normal. So I started scanning around me and that’s when I saw it for the first time. In the form of a totally normal looking businesswoman. Something was off tho, because I felt my belly turning upside down when my gaze crossed theirs. She was the only dream person to look directly at me.
She was “speaking” on the phone the entire time, but she was actually not saying a word to the person on the end of the line. She was just frozen with a disapproving/angry expression. I don’t know how long the staring contest lasted, but just long enough for me to start seeing disturbing things about her. It felt like when you look at yourself a little too long in the mirror at night. Her face was distorting into different expressions; disgust, sadness, fear, anger… Even though I was in a dream, I could feel my heart pounding loudly in my chest, I felt on the verge of passing out. I don’t know why I could not stop looking at her, we were just there, both completely still. When I thought I could not take it anymore, her face started grinning, it was the first time she had a “positive” expression on her face.
“I found her.” She said to the person on the phone. Perfect timing for my alarm clock to wake me up. At first I thought it was just a weird random dream, but now that “thing” is following me in every single dream, every single night… It takes different forms, but I know who they are as soon as I see them. They usually take a human form, but lately, I’ve also seen it take the form of animals and even trees. For now they stay away, watching me from afar, but I don’t know what it wants and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen.