09/07/01
From Flesh To Stone


I remembered only one, thank God because it was so disturbing.

In it, I was riding downtown in what seemed to be a huge vehicle, like a camper, of some sort; Ma, Eric, and a group of Eric's guy friends were along with us. We were heading back out of town on Main Street, going past the Lincoln Bridge, and it was late in the afternoon/early in the evening, the light turning golden (the sun was setting over the river, I don't know if that's right or not) and the shadows growing long. I looked down toward the river to see a motorboat with somebody jumping off the back toward the left, into the river (which isn't allowed). "Isn't it kind of late in the year to be doing that?" I thought, shivering.

And all around us, the traffic was utter chaos. The road seemed to have three or four lanes. Some cars were weaving in and out of every which lane, cutting in front, slowing down abruptly, zooming off again. We even passed another camper or something that dragged two men on waterskis behind it, and they jumped over another car, sliding down the windshield to land on the road; we had to swerve to miss them. A huge group of bicyclists zoomed around us and I groused, "It looks like a marathon out there!" There was another car ahead of us, stopped or slowed down, and we were going too fast, just about ready to crash into it. (Well, at least the hospital was right next to us!) "MA! SLOW DOWN!" I screamed, only to realize she was not the driver; she sat somewhere near me and gave me this look. One of Eric's friends was at the wheel. Thankfully he managed to slow us down in time and we avoided any accidents.

By the time we got to Glen's and pulled in, it was dark outside, complete night. And everybody must have thought it was Devil's Night, for the parking lot was complete anarchy. Eggs were slopped all over cars, and groups of teenagers threw trash every which way. The place was an absolute mess. We got out and made our way to the store, ignoring the chaos around us; I know it wasn't normal, but neither was it surprising. "Devil's Night is supposed to come only once a year!" I said aloud. "Now look at this, they're acting like children!"

Perhaps there were some eggs on the doors or something too, as my hands got sticky, and once we'd gotten inside I headed straight for the bathroom--which was now at the left side of the "lobby," where the glass display window is in real life--only to find the door was shut, with some kind of sign on it. I didn't read it--it was like white paint on dark wood, very poorly lettered--but I already knew I couldn't go in there. It was closed for some reason. I went back to the group, holding my hands out in front of me and whining. I HATE sticky hands. <:P Of course, Ma had no solution. She seemed a bit dazed and out of it, not very communicative. I followed her gaze and noticed that instead of the brightly lit store ahead of us, everything was pitch black beyond the glass doors. I could vaguely make out the front desk, but nothing else. There was absolutely no light within.

"Maybe a water main broke," I suggested. "The bathroom's not working, and maybe the water put out the electricity?"

She offered no comment. I started fidgeting. The situation would have been rather cool--had I bothered to bring along my penlight. "How are we going to shop without being able to see what we're taking off the shelves?" I asked. "Ma, are we going to continue and go shopping now, or maybe tomorrow if they've got it fixed?"

"Maybe tomorrow..." she mumbled.

I was a bit disappointed since I wanted to check the place out at night, in the dark, but I couldn't think of any good argument. We WOULDN'T be able to find what we needed. Perhaps my sight had gotten better, perhaps not, but I could see a few people walking around in the store, shopping in the dark; they weren't going to let a little thing like that deter them. Ma started to mumble something else but I couldn't quite hear her, so I told her this, but she didn't listen; at that point one of the store workers, possibly Latino looking with dark thick hair and a mustache, in his thirties or forties, pushing the floor buffer or some other big similar machine ahead of him, passed us (which means he must have been outside or in the "lobby"), and we moved aside to watch him go in. In real life, I HATE that thing; they always seem to haul it out right when we're shopping, and it's like the guy follows us. Very annoying. In the dream, this just gave us an extra reason to leave, but for some reason we stepped inside the doors after him just as he stopped pushing the machine, and turned it on.

And this strange thick, webby, sticky white stuff started spraying out in huge torrents. It hit and covered the few people wandering around in front and they started flailing and thrashing wildly, yet they made no sound. The man, blank faced just like a robot, turned the machine to face the side and the weird white stuff hit more people, who started struggling as well, as if in pain. Ma and Eric and myself and the others, well, all we could do at first was stare goggle eyed. The machine began to turn some more and a bit of the white stuff struck us; I inhaled some and immediately started suffocating. Oh my God! He was killing those people!! I don't know how I knew this, but I knew we HAD to get out of there FAST. We all ran back out into the lobby--we were the only ones to escape the horrid scene. Everyone else was trapped inside, probably dead by now. I knew this stuff was as lethal as poison, and worked even faster. I had inhaled only a tiny bit, and already I struggled to breathe, feeling as if I were smothering to death.

Have you ever seen any of those Holocaust movies where they round the prisoners up into the room and drop the canisters of gas and everyone starts clawing and trying to get out? That's exactly what this felt like. I was living through it!

The dream shifted at this point, thank God. Now it was as if what had happened DID happen, but perhaps in a different reality or some such, as I was distanced from it now. I was still in Glen's, only now on the steps near the front part of the store, leading upstairs, and the lights were on and everything was back to "normal." There were these big bags of stuff packaged like soil or some such sitting on the steps, perhaps with neon green on the outside. It was like I read what was on the bags, while hearing a sort of sportscaster voiceover in my head, and it explained everything. The white stuff the guy with the buffer had been spraying. It was some sort of extremely fast-acting cement, only not meant for use on buildings or whatever. It was a preservative of sorts. As soon as you sprayed it on people and they inhaled it, it would begin to work, petrifying them from the inside out. Meaning, this stuff would first turn your lungs to cement or stone, suffocating you to death. The effects were very quick--within minutes--but very agonizing as well. And even as things seemed "normal" in this part of the dream, I knew I had still breathed in some of that horrible stuff.

How much had I breathed in? How bad was it? Was I going to die soon, too?

I awoke again from this dream upon my stomach, struggling to breathe, so perhaps my face had been pressed into the pillow. Though this is bizarre, as aside from the dream before this, "GET ME OUT OF THIS SCHOOL!!" this has never happened before--especially not two nights running! And needless to say, I felt VERY uncomfortable and upset after the dream; even the dim light in my room was enough to make me want to panic, reminding me of that thick darkness inside Glen's.

This is the closest I've come to having a nightmare in a long time! :(



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