"Fragged" - 01/24/2006

"Fragged"

01/24/2006

This dream was in my old neighborhood of Canterbury, again - at G's house, but she wasn't there. T was there, with me, and we were sitting around and just shooting the shit. After a while, I remember hearing something in one of the back rooms. The house was very small, with a hollow floor, so every noise was always heard through the whole house, and we could tell, in this dream, that there was someone in the house with us. I'm not quite sure where we had them hid, but we both pulled out large handguns - like Desert Eagles - and I threw in a magazine, cocking the slide back, to chamber a round. Then, we pushed the door open and went in the back room.

For a room that is a modest size, in real life, this room seemed to stretch on into another house; a dark labyrinth of old wooden columns; and floorboards that seemed more like a massive horror movie attic than the suburban duplex that it represented in waking life. Slowly, we crept around the area, hearing subtle noises and knowing, intuitively, that there was something hidden among the shadows. We ascended a small flight of stairs (that didn't exist in the real house) and into another, darker level - weapons still drawn. Passing an assortment of pipes and wooden beams that were, themselves, shrouded by the lack of light reaching our position, I heard a sound right beside me.

The second that I turned, to wheel my gun toward the sound, the wall exploded out toward me - the electrical wiring connected to it breaking and strobing the once-blackened area with white-hot sparks. I could see a bright red flash of metal, towering in the chaotic lights before me, a large robotic arm whirring as it instantly snapped upward, in my direction. At the same time, a metallic tentacle had launched out of the end of the arm, encircled my body, once or twice, and holding me in place. My right arm raised, as did T's, and we both started busting off rounds into the face (and I use that term loosely) of this huge freaking robot that had me in the grip of one arm. It was all happening so fast that I have no problem admitting I was scared shit-less.

The gunfire was short-lived, however, once the robot's head focused in on me. A number of bladed and spear-headed weapons rotated out from behind the robot's back, all aimed ominously in my direction as my finger squeezed over and over on the trigger. I only had a good one or two seconds to process what was about to happen, staring death in the face, in the form of about 3 robotic-arm saws and 2-3 other nasty-looking, sci-fi weaponry. The arms all lurched toward me simultaneously, and I was splattered beyond all identification, my perspective changing momentarily, into a disembodied view of my remains splashing all over the wall behind me, and hearing T screaming something, even though his words were muffled by the fading of my senses as everything faded to black.

Suddenly, I woke up on the wooden floor, once again hearing the sound of T shooting. Panicked, and wondering what happened, I turned over on my back to hear what the hell all the noise was. Lo' and behold, the killer robot was standing RIGHT OVER ME, and it started to attack me, again, just as before. Jumping to my feet I rolled out of the way, this time, and stood up again. Terrified, after having previously been crushed and quartered like a grapefruit, I panicked, still having no clue what I was experiencing. For all I could see, I was having a bit of a breakdown, and I sprinted for the stairs. T was right on my heels, calling after me and wondering why I was freaking out and running away. (As if it wouldn't have been self-explanatory.) 

I didn't stop running, until I was out of the house and almost collapsed to my knees because I was freaking out. (I've never lost my mind to fear like that, before, dreaming or awake. It was a strange and unpleasant experience.) He was trying to calm me down, and I can just remember shouting something like "oh my god, I fuckin' Died! I just Died! What the hell is going on?!" Bear in mind that we were standing in the middle of my neighborhood at dusk, waving guns around, and I was losing it. T said something like "It's alright, man. You can just resurrect wherever you are. No need to freak out." I stopped for a moment and was like. "....huh?" (Well, This wouldn't have been a good time to realize that I was dreaming....  Oh, well.)

There was no time to even focus on his words. A loud noise seemed to arise from all directions, at once - a sound that was subtle, at first, grew to the roar of a nearby jet engine or something. "Is that...a plane?" T asked. We searched the sky and found nothing. Our eyes were then drawn back to the house, just as the side door flew open. We didn't even wait for anything to come out of the house, breaking into a synchronized sprint as soon as we saw the door open. Rounding the side of the house, we took up hiding places in the open carports of two houses next to each other - behind the house we were originally in - and took aim at the corner of the building, waiting for this big robot to come 'round the corner. Instead, of the robot, though, it was just an 11-year-old boy who used to live in the neighborhood. 

In short: he came around the corner and we simply walked out to meet him, infinitely relieved that it was him and not the robot-thing. He wondered why we had guns and told us that everyone was still waiting for us, inside. Going back around the house, we looked in the window and saw all our friends sitting on the couches, watching tv and waiting for us to come in. I couldn't help feeling embarrassed.

(I also remember a false awakening, after this dream, where I woke up in a conceptual mixture between two different bedrooms, and I still had the gun from the first dream under my pillow. After lying in bed and playing with the weapon for a while, I woke up for real.)