"Fallen Prey" - 07/27/2006 (Chain)

“Fallen Prey”
07/27/2006

(Dream Chain)

Part 1:

(Wow….)

 

My earliest memory of this dream was being at this lakeside campsite at night. There were about 8-10 of my friends and family with me, and I do remember that my 5-year-old daughter was a teenager in this dream. I know that there was a whole lot of back-story to this dream, but my recollection of it all kicks in after all of the strange shit started happening, of course. 

Apparently, there was this really weird guy staying in a trailer that was close to our campsite. (I believe the camp was in a state park or, something. Anyway...) Over time, we could tell that something just wasn’t right about this guy. I’m not sure what led to it, but, sooner or later, I had snuck into the stranger's trailer while he was out doing something, snooping around to find out more about him, after he had been giving us all the severe creeps. It was dark as hell inside the trailer, but I eventually stumbled onto his secret: 

He was a serial killer, and hidden away in a number of pantries and closets in his trailer were the corpses of other campers. 

Glancing out through the translucent curtains, I could see the man's silhouette. He was on his way back! I don’t know how, but I made it out of the trailer and returned to my group, to warn them, figuring I had gotten away without being detected. ...Nope. Not so much. The stranger was soon stalking us all through the darkened forest, threatening to kill us in ways I can't recall as of now. There was one point, when we were trying to escape on this really shitty piece of broken-up raft that was in the lake. There were about eight of us trying to fit on this one raft, and it was falling apart beneath us. What’s worse is that the murky lake water was ridiculously alligator-infested. So much so, that we had to actually step over the creatures when we waded, haphazardly, out into thigh-deep water, trying frantically to make the broken raft work to our advantage. Once I was aboard, a few of the gators began snapping at us, some of them taking large chunks out of the raft. 

While fighting the gators off, one of the people in my group (dunno who it was) suddenly dropped to the splintering deck of the raft. Dead; shot in the heart from the unseen assailant. 

More shots peppered in, around us. The killer was sniping at us from near his trailer, but we couldn’t see him at all because it was night time, and the trailer was about 50 yards back in the woods. As our attention went more to the bullets than the gators, another friend of mine scrambled into the path of one of the gators and was dragged underwater. Gone. This raft idea was not working. Even if we did keep the damn thing afloat, we’d be sitting ducks on the water. 

We pulled it back ashore and I told everyone to sit tight. Frantically, I sprinted back toward the campsites, zig-zagging, as I could see the sniper-fire sinking into the dirt around me - following me on my race to grab our car, which I knew had a handgun inside. I vaguely remember having a fire-fight with this guy, while running back to pick up the rest of my group by the lake, but don't recall the details. 

(I woke up shortly after this, and was up for about 15 minutes, before going back to bed and falling back into a continuation of the same dream.) 

"Fallen Prey"
(Part 2)

Those of us who remained alive had arrived home, to safety, and were shacked up in my old neighborhood in Texas. It wasn’t long, though, before we realized the house was now haunted. (I swear, I can never get a break :| ) 

It started off, first, as a few strange occurrences. Shortly after the initial weirdness, full-bodied apparitions began appearing. I turned out to be the only person who knew who these ghosts were. They were the victims of the camp-killer, whose bodies I had stumbled upon when I raided his trailer. Not taking the time to stick around, we all hauled ass out of the house. More and more ghosts were appearing. There were about 6 of us remaining, and we all ran to the car. CJ, my daughter (still an older version of herself, in the dream), jumped into the driver’s seat. Without even giving it a second thought, I jumped in on the passenger side and everyone else climbed in back. Come to find out, my daughter was a HORRIBLE driver (which is hilarious because whenever she’s playing my Need 4 Speed game, in waking life, she’s always crashing and referring to herself as the “worst driver in the world.” Haha.), and was constantly stalling out and had no sense of direction. We eventually got far enough away from the house to come to a stop sign and for me to say “Alright, get out, CJ, I’m driving!” As we switched places, I could see people coming slowly down the street. There were too many to count. ...The ghosts were still following us. 

I drove off and we went someplace downtown, trying to stay somewhere in public. There was this bar/pool hall/rec center place that we took up shelter in, but something seemed really strange about it, from the get-go. I was recognizing a lot of the people, here. One guy, in particular, was following me around through the crowd. I vaguely noticed there was a glowing, 2-digit number etched into his forehead. (Ever see the movie The Frighteners with Michael J. Fox?) He was a victim of the serial killer, and much of the crowd was made up of the ghosts that we’d just been running away from, moments before. 

I was about to gather up everyone to get out, but realized that there was suddenly no way out. No way to leave. The doors had disappeared and everyone - including us - was inside was trapped inside. Then, it all began to make sense. The puzzle was beginning to piece itself together. 

These “ghosts” weren’t threatening to us, they never were. They were trying to communicate with us, to tell us what I’d begun to figure out on my own. I stopped at the bar and looked at the bartender. He looked back at me, as if he knew what I was thinking, just by the look on my face. Not quite sure of the words I was searching for, I simply asked him. “I’m…..we’re……supposed to be here…aren’t we? I mean…we’re not supposed to leave….are we?” The bartender shook his head with a solemn look of pity and answered: “No….you’re not.”

My hunch was right. None of us had even made it out of the damn campsite. We were all dead – either killed by the psycho or eaten by gators. I have no idea which. Everything we’d experienced since getting back home (the haunted house; driving; this club) had been taking place in Purgatory. We were only able to see the ghosts because we were on their plane, and their fascination with us was simply that we were the newcomers. There really was no going back. Feeling about sick to my stomach, I sulked around the place, pondering over how I was going to tell the rest of my friends and family of the horrible revelation I'd had. 

The dream carried on a while longer. I let everyone in on what happened and, over time, we came to accept this Purgatory, each finding our own little niche. I'd found this room where a bunch of guys were sparring on a huge, elevated mat, and I started taking on a few matches. One guy pulled out a pair of foam-rubber practice nunchaku and started tearing opponents up with them. I think it was a point system or something because it was all light-contact (which is kind of ironic, seeing as how we were already dead). Some other guy then threw me two pairs of them and I jumped in, whirling them around like a professional and completely dominating just about everyone else that stepped up on the mat. Good times. There was also a huge gym somewhere else in the building, where I played volleyball. I sucked Really Bad at that, though, and some girl, who looked a Lot like my friend Ame, kept giving me shit, every time I cost our team a point. Haha. 

(That’s about all I remember, but damn, what a dream(s)!)