Dream
Journal
Terrarium Head
01-10-23
Ruins of a city. My sole focus is to become strong and engage in combat; no other drive, want, or need. I boast incredible vascularity; every time, the veins on my forearms become extremely prominent and visibly red through the skin.
I sleep. I've experienced the dream within a dream many times. My avatar is an amalgamation of various natural elements with a mason jar terrarium for a head. Each time I sleep, I find myself in a place in worse disrepair than when I'm "awake." Spiders construct webs by my desk at incredible speeds, and the surroundings appear to be burning down without any visible fire. A malicious entity gains access to my terrarium head, altering aspects of myself and my "awake" world. Despite trying to fight it, the entity whispers loudly in my ears, startling me "awake," but the whispers persist. This doesn't discourage me from entering the second dream many times. At some point, I wake up drenched in sweat. A couple find me at some point and I recount the encounter with the dream hacker to them. The scene shifts and I find myself in a dining room, where I'm sat with people I recognize as my family except for two strangers—two women, one of whom is also affected by the dream hacker.
I sleep again to confront the dream hacker. In the second dream, I find myself in a room with a bed connected to a hallway and a second room across from me. The doorway of the second room is guarded by a shaman—bald, wearing a weathered loincloth, and holding a wooden staff. Everything is bathed in the usual glow of a fire despite its absence, except for the guarded room—it glows blue. I attempt to gain entry, but the shaman forcefully points the staff at my face, threatening to curse me. I try to bribe him with change I find on myself, he laughs and pockets the money wihle still denying me entry. I take my money back, making him furious. I give up trying to reason with him and wake up. I discuss with the two girls what to do, and the one experiencing the hacker dreams reveals she has become a vampire (perhaps hoping the hacker would cure her vampirism, unsure if he gave it to her in the first place). I enter the second dream again, but this time, I am paralyzed and cannot leave the bed. A TV at the foot of the bed plays something like a kids' show, capturing my focus. Still aware of the shaman in the room across from me, a pitbull suddenly peeks out, causing me to hide under the covers. It stares at me for a long time before charging and jumping on the bed to bite me. I struggle with the dog, attempting to fight it off before it punctures my skin. I get kicked out of the dream, and the vampire girl apologizes, running out the front door, expressing concern about succumbing and potentially harming someone that night. Her friend follows after her with a large sledgehammer.
Shifting Beach
??-??-22
In a car, on the road to some beach with some strangers. We crossed impossible geography—tall mountains like perfectly cut cones, dense forests where the trees were tangled into a mesh, a stretch of land made of puddles and quicksand that were all connected by a narrow path barely wide enough for the car we were in.
Once we reached the beach, everyone went off in their own direction without another word. I was left alone at the foot of a sandy hill with a ruined hut at the summit, overlooking the waters. Uncomfortable with the idea of going into the water, I decided to explore the hut. After stepping inside, something peculiar happened—I transformed into what I assumed to be an armadillo. As an armadillo, I wasn't too bothered with the outcome and decided to continue exploring the beach, where I encountered other animals. They assured me the change was temporary and invited me along to play while the sun began to set.
We played until the sun was halfway below the horizon. I blinked and found myself in a dimly lit hallway lined with lockers, sort of like a school at night. I note that I was no longer an armadillo but didn't have time to dwell on it as I felt a sudden urgent need to run away. A wall of shadow had begun moving down the hall towards me. I sprint as fast as I can and as I round the corner, I find the strangers from earlier. We all ran down the hall towards the exit on the right. Pushing the door open we found ourselves in the car on our way back from the beach. We managed to escape before whatever was chasing us could catch up, initiating a long drive back home.
Midnight Bridge
02-26-23
I found myself working, doing some sort of packaging tasks inside of a giant inverted mall. I received massive orders from customers coming out of the walls. They were asking for amounts that weren't physically possible to keep in the store, necessitating multiple trips to the storage area. The number 152 recurred frequently, with customers consistently wanting at least 152 units of a whatever weird boxes they wanted.
By my next shift the layout of the mall changed drastically, forcing me to spend a significant portion of my time navigating the shopping area and making customers angry by how long it took. At some point the place closed before I could finish an order and I was left to wander the empty mall. I frequently ascended to the third floor, where I would vault over the railing onto the roof of a kiosk on the second floor, eventually leaping to a peculiar, inaccessible area. I carried a backpack with me, but I would always leave it behind at that kiosk.
After wandering in loops for a bit, I ran into a friend of mine and we hung out as I led him through my usual route to retrieve my bag. Eventually, we made our way to a new section of the mall.
We found ourselves in front of a door that looked like a fire exit. Once we stepped out of a door into a night. The sky was devoid of light. no moon or stars. I look to my side and instead of my friend, someone else was standing next to me. We found ourselves on an elevated bridge, taller higher than where the top floor of the mall should have sent us. It extended so far we couldn't see the end. Moths kept bumping into my head as we made our way down the bridge. In the distance was a mountain that was darker than the sky. Pushing forward into the pitch-black stretch of the bridge we started to get scared. I reached for the rope of the bridge for support, but it was made of moths and touching them made the bridge disappear. I started falling.