I remember waking at 7AM thinking how it was odd that I could have such a detailed, intense dream in such a short time.
It was winter in a city, and my mother and I were walking on the streets. We had just left an ice show, so it was in the evening. She and I were both well dressed, with fur-lined coats and gloves. My mother carried, in addition to her purse, a plastic bag and a camera bag. I walked slightly behind her with no bags, but my Leatherman multi-tool attached to my belt, and the camera in my pocket.
A homeless man approached my mother, asking her for change. “Let me check,” she said, and glanced into her plastic bag. “Sorry, sir, I have no spare change.”
“You lie!” he replied, and grabbed on to the camera bag. My mother carried the bag in such a way that the man could not run off with it without dragging her for a while.
“Get your hands off my mother,” I stated, holding the camera in my hand. I pressed the button on the camera and took a photo of this man attacking my mother. I reached to my side and pulled out the multi-tool. “Get your hands off my mother, or I’ll cut you.”
“I’ll call the police chief!” he said, as if the words would make me back off. I didn’t, of course, and came at him with the knife, grabbing his wrist. I pulled him away from my mother, though he didn’t let go of the bag until the blade made contact with his wrist. He ran off, dropping the bag, and causing me to drop my multi-tool.
I bent over to pick it up, calm, as if nothing happened. My mother was in hysterics.
I woke again at 11AM, thinking good, more time to sleep. I often have dreams of an industrial world. I don’t know whose it is just yet, but it’s there, mechanical, and rusted. I suppose it’s just a distortion of Phyrexia and Half-Life, among other things. I both love and fear it.
Previous dreams in this place have been along the lines of escaping through the machinery. Running past some vats, diving into a pool of water, swimming down until I find a busted piston, and escaping through its cavity.
The most recent, however, included Eternal Darkness into the mix. A creature had been discovered in the lower tunnels. The scientists didn’t want to destroy it until after they’d studied it.
The part of the tunnels in which there was access was a large open room with water flowing in a half-pipe to the far side from where I stood. Where I stood was a white laboratory, gazing through one of the two window/sides of the area. The floor of the water room was far below the floor of the lab. The lab took up two sides, on the outside of the room. Basically, *| like that.
In the lab were many scientists, all from Half-Life. Many looked alike, but they did many different things. Some were testing chemicals, others were at computers. There was one armed guard. And then, there was me.
I stood at the inner corner of the lab, in front of a lift. The lift would lower me to the level of the water room, where I would interact with the beast that was infesting our tunnels.
We, of course, assumed it to be a lesser being, running only on instincts. I was fully armed as I stepped into the lift. There was a cage around me as well.
As I lowered, I caught a glimpse of the beast. It looked like a blue vampyric creature from Eternal Darkness.
I reach the bottom, and the creature looks at me, and I it. We exchanged no words. The beast simply attacked the cage, breaking the bars like twigs. I panicked, and couldn’t bring up a weapon in time. I was the recipient of the next series of blows, and was easily killed.
The beast grabbed something off my body, and the scene cut to the scientists above. They stared in a blank shock as words appeared on the monitor, and a scraggly voice spoke those words.
“Call more, we are more, we will consume, feed us.”
As if to prove its point, more of the species came pouring from the tunnels in the water room. They overwhelmed the place, and soon filled up to the windows. The windows shattered, and the scientists were slain.
At 1PM I woke and decided to finally type this.
A group of students, I included, were exploring some old ruins. We were aged 19-25 years, and there was seven of us. Someone exclaimed that this expedition would be the highlight of their life.
We entered the well-preserved “ruins.” It was once a city, I’m sure, as the foundations remained nearly intact. While we were searching, someone found a marble stairwell. We rushed to descend. At the bottom was another full city. All the stonework was in brown and white marble, shined to perfection, and cut perfectly. What little light we had reflected and spread.
We were the only living beings there. We checked buildings and rooms, and there was no one. There were not even signs of someone ever living there. It was as if the city had been built as a utopia bomb shelter, and the bomb landed before the screening process.
Water flowed freely alongside the buildings in the cave. There was a thing stream of it, as if it were to be the sewage system. The steps into the houses went over the stream, to prevent stepping into the waters, and each building had a hole in which the water exited. The system continually flowed, even though no one was there.
We tested the water’s purity, and it was free of any disease, minerals, or other impurities. “There must be a processing plant somewhere in this underground city,” someone commented, and we began to search for it.
I dragged behind as they moved down the street; two reddish glows down the way had caught my eye.
I soon heard the excited “Oohs” of the group, and went to their side. The brown and white marble city also contained what appeared to be a cathedral. The high ceiling was amazing – I didn’t realize we were that far underground. The seats were stone, but of black marble instead of the brown and white decor of the rest of the city.
As they explored, I returned to the entrance of the cathedral, to check on those red lights. I rounded a corner, and the two red lights were staring me in the face.
They were the eyes of two strange creatures. Each one-eye beast walked on all fours (like the vampyric creature in Eternal Darkness). Their skin was brown and white, and blended with the marble very closely. Their clawed feet were brown, again like the marble.
We stared at each other for a few seconds, and the one on the left spoke, “We told you not to return.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, “I have tried to stop them.”
“We will stop them for you.” The beast replied, and took a step forward before I stopped it.
“Please, they know not what they have done. Let them leave, alive, and they will be too frightened to return.”
“And they will bring others, armed, to kill us, and to destroy our city,” the other chimed in at this time.
“If it pleases you,” I said after a sigh, “destroy me, and speak a warning to them. Chase them off, but please do not hurt them. They do not know the severity of their transgression.”
The two beasts looked at each other, one nodded. The first one stood on his hind legs, and grabbed my hand. The other moved into the cathedral, hiding in the pews.
The one holding my hand guided me to the other side of the pews, and bid me sit. I did, and he hid among the pews ahead of me.
The others had migrated to the apse, and found something interesting. They called me up, though I already knew what they had found. I looked for the beast, to see if it would permit me to go. I couldn’t find it.
I stood anyway, and walked up to them. “Please step away from the podium, and seat yourselves in the pews,” I said as I approached.
They returned blank stares. “Step away from the podium,” I repeated, a sense of urgency, somewhat of fear, in my voice. As if to accent my warning, the beast in the right pews pulled my legs from under me, and drug me under them.
The group panicked, and rushed to find me in the jungle of black marble seats. They were no where near me when the one that had pulled me down spoke.
“You were not to move, and now you will be punished,” he said as the other beast approached us. The beast that had me had laid me out under the pews, which were high enough to allow it to crawl in between I and the pew.
The other beast sat under the pews next to my head, and smiled at me. The first spread himself out on top of me, preparing for my punishment and his pleasure.
“If you do this to me,” I said, “Then you forfeit your right to harm the intruders.”
“After I do this,” the beast replied, “You’ll not be able to protect them.”
“True.”
I ripped a portal in reality in the aisle next to us. I screamed for the others to exit. They didn’t budge, until the second beast went after them.
The beasts were vicious, but only because they were sore losers.