"Politic.....tick.....ticks"
03/14/2022
The first thing I can remember is that I was lying in bed, in my old Lake Mary home. My bedroom light was on, and I couldn't tell whether I was drifting off to sleep or just waking up, but I had that sort of "in between states" feeling that tends to come when right on the cusp of sleep. Suddenly, the bedroom door slammed open, and a group of what I can only describe as "prominent far-right pundits and politicians" came trudging in. Apparently, they were being ushered in by someone who I'd identified as a "rival from work" (though I don't think this person represented anyone in waking life), and they all began ransacking the room, supposedly looking for something of value. By their hurried and almost cartoonishly-sinister demeanor, I could tell that they were right on the verge of some gargantuan plan coming into fruition and, for some reason, they needed something in my room to make it happen.
As they searched, I tried to pull myself out of the bed, in order to confront them. I found, though, that I could not move. I was pinned to the bed by some unseen force and, no matter how I tried, I could not come to move any of my limbs, or even raise my head far from my pillow. (It felt very much like sleep paralysis, though I couldn't make the connection, at the time.) All I could figure, was that these intruders had some apparatus of control over me, that was making me unable to move. I struggled against it, for the entire time they were in the room, and it wasn't until they all filed back out of it - leaving me unsure of whether or not they'd gotten what they were searching for - that I broke free. Now, able to throw myself out of bed, I ran to the door, to go after them. The moment that I opened the door, however, the scene completely changed.
I was, now, in what looked to be a hotel room. My fiancé and I were making the bed, and I was telling her about the events that had happened, as if they'd happened the night before. As I explained the events to her, she seemed to be familiar with the person that I'd supposedly worked with, from the story, and it was then that I realized the events I was describing to her never happened, because she doesn't really know any of my old coworkers. Because of this, I realized I was describing a dream to her, rather than a memory (though it wasn't enough to realize that I was still, in fact, dreaming as I told her this story). We hurriedly tidied the rest of the room, knowing that we were, apparently, running late to get to some important show or function, within the hotel, and that we had to leave as soon as possible.
My recollection of the dream skipped ahead, and we were coming back from whatever gathering had taken place. My daughter was with us (though she was younger than in waking life), this time, as we returned to the hotel room. Before bed, I'd noticed that she was writing something in her binders, quite intently, but I was unsure of whatever it was that had her so wrapped up in it.
Flash-forward, once again, and I was waking up in the hotel bed. (It wasn't a full-on 'false awakening,' because it was still continuing the narrative of the current dream.) Just as the first time I'd 'awoken,' though, I found myself caught in paralysis and unable to raise myself from the bed. My fiancé and daughter were nowhere to be found. Suddenly, as before, the hotel room door burst open, and in flooded the same group of far-right provocateurs from earlier. The ransacked the room with the same fervor as they had in the first scenario, and one of them went digging ferociously through my daughter's papers. I kept trying to look over this one's shoulder, to see what might have been so important that could be found in a child's notes. However, I was still pinned to the bed, by an unseen force, and couldn't get a good vantage point.
Before long, the intruders gestured that they'd found what they were looking for, and that they were ready to "begin" whatever it was they were looking to set in motion. As if prepping for some sort of cult-like ritual, they all took up various positions, around the room - one of which was right next to the side of my bed - and laid down on the floor. They closed their eyes in unison, as if preparing to fall asleep, and remained completely still. Still pressed to the bed, I had no idea what they were doing, but I could not shake the feeling of dread creeping over me.
Abruptly, I 'woke up' again, still in the hotel bed. Though I was no longer paralyzed, I immediately knew that something was terribly wrong. My fiancé was nowhere to be found, but my daughter was asleep on her own bed. Fearful that something big was going on, I hopped out of bed and woke my daughter, taking her by the hand and rushing out of the bedroom to find my fiancé.
The moment we opened the door, though, everything 'stopped.' Rather, I should say that everything 'slowed to a crawl,' in terms of time, itself. No matter how hard we ran through the hotel hallways, we were objectively moving in slow motion. It wasn't just us, though. Everything in the hotel was happening in slow motion. People were rushing out of their hotel rooms with the same degree of urgency as we were, yet everyone was observably trapped in the same bit of temporal distortion as the two of us. Still able to think in real time, despite my limbs not following suit, I immediately knew that this was a part of whatever political masterplan was being put into effect. I noticed that the hotel architecture was changing, as we rushed through the corridors at a snail's pace. Normal hotel room doors were suddenly transforming into heavy, riveted metal doors with no handles or knobs. It was as if some entity was changing the landscape in order to try to either trap us or funnel our escape in one direction.
Up ahead, I could see the hallway opening that led to the central courtyard of the hotel. We were a few stories up, and I was pushing my legs as hard as I could, fighting through the debilitating sluggishness that we were somehow locked in, preparing to start a painfully-slow descent through the staircase. It was then that I noticed wave after wave of other hotel patrons leaping from their respective balconies within the courtyard - generally plummeting to their deaths as they fell in completely submissive positions as impacted the ground with the full force of gravity, despite their slow motion freefalling. Still in a belabored sprint, panic washed over me. I only had a moment to ponder what was happening, before I reached the threshold of the open staircase. Since I was still able to think in real-time, I felt confident that I had enough control of myself to take a leap of faith and, clutching my daughter's hand tighter, I took one leap, to clear the first section of stairway, landing with one foot on the pivotal railing before launching off of that one and descending the full four or five stories in a single bound. We touched down, softly, in the grass of the open courtyard and continued our slow-mo sprint toward the nearest exit, which would take us back through the corridors but, instead, on the ground level.
It was around this time - running into the closest covered hallway - that I began to notice the music that was permeating the environment, as if it were being pumped directly into my brain. (This dream took place in the middle of a Wake-Back-to-Bed attempt to induce a lucid dream, and I had meditative binaural music playing in my headphones as I slept. I believe that it was the slow, ambient tone of the music in the waking world that prompted the time distortion in the dream. It was very "Inception"-like.) Ahead of us, a young boy was standing outside of what seemed to have been his hotel room. Running in slow motion gave me a moment to take in his expression, and I could see that he was frantically confused, almost to the point of sobbing. In a manner that sounded like an audio tape played at a fraction of normal speed, I could hear the boy talking to himself about how he "had been in one position," and then found himself instantly shifted to "another position," as if he had witnessed a time-jump or teleportation of some kind, and could not figure out what was happening. It was in hearing this boy's bewilderment, that it solidified in my mind that this was some sort of time-loop or time-manipulation plot that was coming to pass. This was not real life. I had to be trapped in sort of "pocket dimension" or something (ala "Dr. Strange").
Continuing passed the boy, my daughter and I ran through subsequent hallways, unsure of exactly where we were going, at this point, but just running and trying to escape this horrible, surreal, situation. The further we ran, and through each subsequent room that we passed, everything seemed to be getting darker and darker, until we finally barged into one room that caused my vision to go completely black. The feeling of being in an enclosed area faded away, and all I could feel was a dark, empty void. I felt disembodied. Then, I remembered being paralyzed on the hotel bed. I remembered the invaders who came in and did their strange ritual of laying down and seeming to lose consciousness. I remembered that one of them had laid down right beside my bed.
With that logic, I had the feeling that this was a dream. However, I thought it was a dream that I was having while rendered unconscious by the political terrorists who might still be asleep, next to me, in the hotel. Still in the black void, I felt that wave of paralysis wash back over me. I could no longer feel my limbs moving, and I was surrounded by darkness. As last-ditch idea came to me: I figured that, if I could just break free of the paralysis, and roll out of bed, I might be able to land on top of one of the sleeping assailants and break whatever ritual they had going on.
Fighting against the full-body paralysis, I started trying to rock myself over onto my left side, straining against the invisible force pinning me to the bed. Finally, with one desperate push, I jerked myself off of the bed that I could, now, sense beneath me in the void, and I got the brief sensation of falling before bringing an elbow down and feeling it smash down upon the body of the personal lying unconscious on the floor.
Immediately, I awoke from the dream, and back into waking life, still in darkness before removing my sleep mask from my eyes.
(When I awoke, I was somewhat relieved that I didn't actually act out that final gesture, which - even though she sleeps on the other side of me - would have a real problem, if I'd have accidentally rolled over and dropped an elbow on my fiancé, while she slept. LOL.)
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