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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 2 years

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Asylum

Wandering through hallways of stark, featureless white. Every door secured with a little glowing red marker showing no-entry allowed. The doors were like sci-fi doors, slightly pentagonal, or skewed hexagonal, that looked like they slid into the wall. Everything seemed heavy, with no echoes or sounds. Military? No. Too white. Too sterile. It was like an armored hospital.

View shifted to someone else. They were in some service hallway with more grey and less lighting and lots of angled things – panels, hatches, ramps. They seemed to not belong there and were in a rush to get out, prying a cover off what looked like a ventilation duct large enough to walk through. Two football-sized spheres fell/rolled from someplace above, grew sticklike appendages to raise up to about waist height, then simply stopped. They were some kind of security robot and had been deployed due to the movement in the restricted area. The person was gone, though, escaped through the duct just before they activated. The duct cover seemed to shimmer a moment, then the entire view was a poor-quality image like seen on a security camera.

Back to me. Walking to a door that popped open to the side of the hallway. The room I entered was like a lobby in some office building, the type with a clear view up several stories. Also elevators and stairs.

I was holding something in both hands, as if I were holding a lunch tray. It wasn’t a lunch tray (I think some kind of platter like a very large clipboard, but held like it was a tray). I was only allowed on the stairs to get to the office to deliver it.

I went up the steps and around the first bend, then up the next steps to the next floor up. I turned to go up to the next set of steps but they weren’t there. Just the rail extended up into the open air. There were no steps. It was a nifty security setup. Can’t go into a restricted area if there are no steps. Of course, if I had been allowed, the steps would have been there. I turned and shuffled into the only available door, which was an actual door with a knob and made of wood (or looked like wood).

(I do not exactly remember this part of things, but I think I had delivered the platter thing to some administrator, as part of some power and control game by the staff. I was the dog sent to fetch something, and leashed into delivering by way of all the restricted areas and single path to go, for the amusement of the ruling body in the place.)

Because I didn’t deviate from the delivery or mess with the platter/tray I was granted a reward. Access to the cafeteria.

I entered that cafeteria room and people were mulling about, all dressed in white uniforms with minimal added striping or colorations. I think the colors were some type of segregation coding.

People were also floating in the room. The room was fairly large, about half the size of the theater, but cube-like in dimensions. The floating people seemed to be in zero-G, while the ones on the floor seemed to have gravity holding them down. It was not interesting to me or anyone else. Just routine.

The walls were white, but there were vending machine things around on the floor in shades of white and grey, with access to whatever they dispensed, food-court style. There were a few tables, both long community tables and small round tables, scattered about the area. Some were occupied, but for the most part there was a lot of empty space.

There were several security guards standing or floating in the room. They wore light grey uniforms with some padded vests and leg armor. Riot control type of stuff. They were observant but not actively aggressive. They wouldn’t act unless there was a problem or they got orders to do something.

I floated up and grabbed an actual food tray from a dispenser in the wall, then floated to a short line that was in front of a small opening near the ‘top’ of the room. It was basically a food service window. A guard was anchored to a spot just to the right of the window. The people behind the window were busy shuffling about and adding food to the trays. There were only 3-4 people in line ahead of me.

As I got closer I recognized the man in front of me. He was elderly and some kind of corporate giant at one time. I didn’t think they’d put him in this place, but then again, I was there too. I also noticed the food ‘service’ was mostly a front, another way to torment people. The servers were doling out meager portions of nasty food things and making sure whoever got the serving was going to be miserable. They even withheld food from someone just out of spite. I noticed one man behind the window was dressed differently. He wore a darker grey suit rather than a uniform. He was also tormenting the people if they said anything, both the servers and the line at the window.

The man was next and they were giving him a hard time. He was saying that he was some special guy and needed special privilege, and they were sneering at him. They were going to withhold all the food from him to be evil, and the man in the suit pointed at him and said some pseudo-psyche phrasing.

“This one is suffering from delusions of frontal lobe loss. He needs less food to keep his head clear.” (paraphrased, as I don’t exactly remember the wording)

I pointed a finger over the man’s shoulder and added “Or a classic dissociative disorder coupled with hallucinations!” (also paraphrased somewhat)

The man in the suit nodded while laughing, liking that mess of wording as much as what he had spat out.

A woman appeared to the far right behind the window, leaning on a doorway frame. She looked way more casual than everyone else, and was dressed in a white jumpsuit with blue lines on it. She cleared her throat and everyone stopped and looked her way.

“He’s legit. Give him the serving.” She said.

They gave him the full serving of ‘the good food’ without saying anything at all.

Then it was my turn at the window.

They were moving to give me some meager stuff when someone seemed to get some kind of note passed to them. There was some shuffling and I was presented with a small plate with a thick soup on it. I said nothing and just drifted down from the window. The soup wobbled but stayed in place on the plate, as if I was really in a zero-G environment.

Ah, yes, my reward for being a good dog earlier.

My feet met the floor with a soft bump and I was held down by false gravity. I had no utensils for this, so I sipped at the soup from one side of the plate. It tasted … like onions, and spices, and real broth! This was really the good food, and not the mush they gave out on a regular basis.

I noticed I had landed right next to the security guard on the floor level, but had been distracted by the flavor overload. He was staring at the plate of soup with wide eyes. I offered him the plate with a slight gesture. He glanced around then took a quick sip of it. The look on his face echoed my own reaction to the flavor mix. Guards don’t get the good food either. I knew this. He knew this. It was just a moment of shared amazement. Between his next deep sip and my sucking at the soup it was all gone. We pretended nothing happened and I went to the other side of the room.

I picked up a tiny plastic cup from a dispenser and also got an empty food tray. There was a sort of fountain drink machine with the cups, and I poured some into the tiny cup. It was small like the cups used for administering medication. The liquid in the cup was a sort of pinkish orange color. Some kind of artificial juice. I sipped at it and backed up to the wall. A door was on my left, sealed with a red glow on the patch of it.

I flipped the tray, spun it a few times, batted the plastic cup with the spinning side and made a grab for it as it launched across the room, the oddly-colored fluid spraying out in a fast arc. The tray itself spun into a dispenser port and threw a warning. Tampering? Damage? Something like that. It was all a distraction, though.

I slipped through the sealed doorway and into a service hall. It wasn’t really sealed. It was set up to appear sealed and set up to open when it detected my DNA signature. It was quick. Open, out, shut. Maybe half a second at most.

I crept along the hallways, dodging around equipment and things that had right angles. Nothing here was rounded and padded like out in the living areas. This was industrial stuff. I only had a few seconds of head start. By now they would have noticed something wrong. In another few seconds they’d figure it was me who was missing. Another few seconds after that, they’d figure out how I got out. Then there would be security following to attempt a capture. They didn’t want me maimed or killed. I was being held there alive and only alive. I could get roughed-up. Just not dead.

I went into a large ductwork area and found a weapon. It was a pistol glued to an inner corner of a small access hatch that had been pried open. It was a decent one. One setting was a plasma discharge. Good for burning things in a short range. The other was a concussion setting. A slug-thrower? More like a directed energy weapon. Useful against soft targets, but it wouldn’t chew through machinery or heavy walls.

I went further along the duct and heard noises behind me. Fairly close but not too close. Security guards coming up fast. I went around a corner to find a holographic projector stuck to the duct. It was on and projecting a closed duct panel onto an opening. I could just make out a small service area with two spherical security robots parked there on extended sticklike legs. I set the weapon to plasma and fired a single shot through the projection. The red hazy blast hit the furthest robot, simply knocking it over. It was more than enough to wake both up and they popped to life, one righting itself from the scuffing damage and the other extending up on legs. Both extended weapons ports and headed towards the faux duct cover. One had a blind spot from the plasma burn.

I was already gone from that spot and around several corners. The security guards, however, were not as lucky and got to that section just as the security robots figured out it was a holographic projection. The maimed robot got into a firefight with the guards, unaware that they were not valid targets.

I was out of the ducts and into some other service halls. I found an open panel on some sort of machine cabinet. Inside was a small tactical box. I opened it and there was a medical kit and a little container of flesh-colored gel.

I was being tracked. The keepers of this place had injected me with a tracking device a long time ago, when I had first arrived. That thing was still in me and was giving them info on where I was and my condition. Heart rate. Body temp. Oxygen. The vitals. They wanted to make sure I was alive no matter where I was at, and also wanted a way to get to me quickly and easily.

I used the kit to pinpoint the tracker. Right hand above the middle knuckle. Damn. Would have been easier if it was on the finger. I used the kit to painfully amputate the finger and knuckle and midway down my palm. It was messy and quick. I dressed the wound and stuck the dismembered hand piece into the gel and attached a ring-sized device to the finger on it. That would keep body temp normal, and provide a false signal for vitals. I put a similar ring on a finger still attached to me, as a memory backup, then stashed the box back inside the machine, as far out of reach and as hidden as possible.

Then I was running some more. Found a few places of zero-G to float through. It was hide-and-seek time and now I was truly an unknown hidden thing in the facility. They would eventually get to the tracker and realize it was a decoy, then they would have to manually search everything. There would be guards in much better armor, and security robots, cameras all over, sensors. The usual stuff. Easy to evade.

Change in view. A crew seating in a small room, like the cabin of some kind of space capsule. Stadium seating for four or five. All wearing some kind of form-fitting space suit. They were having a bored discussion. It was about me. It was about waiting for me. Lots of “She is taking forever” or “Well. Where is she then?” Some of it was also concerned discussion of how to deal with being found, as they were ‘parked’ in a place they weren’t supposed to be (I didn’t see it, but the feeling was they were in a small, flat shuttle-like craft stuck on the sloped outer hull of some kind of large vessel or space station)

Back to me. I was cornered. Found. Trapped. I was in a service hall that appeared to be an airlock, or had some kind of access port to the outside without any safety measures for keeping atmosphere in. A long airlock with a side exit? Regardless, I had one hand sticking through a hatch that had apparently closed on my wrist. That hand was ‘outside.’ The rest of me was in the hallway pointing the small weapon towards one end where there was a sealed hatch and a viewing port. Several armored guards were there, on the other side of the port, watching. There was also some suit over there with a few lackeys around them. I could only really see their faces as they gestured and beaconed to me. They knew they had me. The weapon I had couldn’t penetrate the walls, not even that clear viewing port. It could do some damage to the guards if they were prompted to go in to get me, but not enough to prevent them from actually reaching me. It would be painful for them, and they were reluctant to deal with that for the moment. It was a waiting game now, trying to decide the best way to get me. Maybe switch the atmosphere in the chamber to knock me out? What about my hand? Probably lost as it was ‘outside.’ A small detail. Hands could be re-grown.

One of the suits started to talk to me. Give up. Get my hand fixed. Be a good dog again.

I had already set the pistol to concussion, with maximum charge. Deadly to an unarmored face like that talking head in the port. I smiled at him with tight lips and raised the weapon to my own head, then fired a shot.

Gratuitous head asplodey.

A second shot rang out. Random nerve impulse in that hand. It scorched and tore at the wall insulation but nothing more. There was a deep thunk a moment later. Everyone on the other side of that viewing port just sagged with disappointment or turned away quickly to not see the drifting bloom of gore.

I woke up with a gasp. Deep breath. Another deep breath. Blink. Ache.

Someone standing nearby. One of the people in the shuttle thing.

“You ok, Commander?” That voice came to me. Manly voice, but soft. Concerned.

I felt myself nod and I stretched a little. More aches. Muscles sore. The usual.

“That always hurts.” I croaked out.

It wasn’t the first time I had died. Almost every time was painful. Waking up afterwards was the worst. All the memories flooding in all at once.

The ring I had worn was a memory recorder. My hand was a DNA set. They had waited while I murdered myself, my hand in the airlock of the shuttle, trapped, but still part of me, still recording my last moments. Then they dutifully snipped my hand off and escaped. I was grown back again, my DNA a blueprint, my memories imaged into the new meatsauce in my new skull. Every memory up through the flash of the weapon and the disoriented tumble of one eye that wasn’t instantly popped, as it drifted into the red mist, for just a second before it no longer worked and the part of my brain it was attached to no longer processed visual data, and the signal to the ring stopped recording.

No one escaped The Asylum. It was the maximum-security private holding prison they stuffed people into when they wanted them to vanish, but needed them to stay alive. A private space station hidden away, paid for by political money.

No one escaped.

I didn’t escape.

But I did.

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

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Back home and need for peed

I'm back at home. It's been so long that I had forgotten what it was like to have a place. Well, it's a place, even if just an apartment I lived in back in the 80's. It's nostalgic for me. I pace the small bedroom. The bed hasn't changed, and the closet is way too close to the doors won't close properly. There's a desk at the window and some old curtains limply hanging to block out the light. There's no need for privacy curtains since it's on the 2nd floor and facing a sort of blank-walled alleyway. I flop on the bed and stretch out.

I wake up. Didn't even realize I had fallen asleep. I'm surrounded by plastic garbage bags full of my stuff. I'm sort of late, too. There's a family thing I have to attend and it's way sooner now than comfortable. Ugh. And I need to pee badly. I flop out of the bed and stumble into the hallway and to the bath a door up the hall. To my shock there is no sink and no toilet. There are just empty fixtures and holes where they should be. Only then do I remember they had been removed some time ago so my stepbrother would stop using them to do drugs.

I trip and stumble back to my room and fish around in the trashcan by the desk. I find an empty 2l soda bottle. That will have to do. I relieve myself and fill it to the brim, even overfilling a little and wetting the carpet. How do guys do this so easily? Then, I remember I should close the door to the hall for privacy. I jump over without any pants on and slam the door shut, only to find there is a door that was hidden behind it. That door doesn't even have a lock so anyone can just open it and walk in from the other room. It's annoying. No privacy.

I dig through various garbage bags of stuff, looking for clothes to wear, but am having trouble finding anything that matches. On a whim I slide open the desk drawers. There are tools in the desk drawers. It makes sense as I had needed a place to store tools not long ago, so they ended up in there. But it's no clothes so not helpful at all. My butt is starting to feel cold.

I hear something sounding like running water coming from the window. A sprinkler running? More like pouring water. I lean over the desk and slide the window open to take a look. The hedges below in the alleyway/walkway are glistening wet. The water is pouring up from below and over the tops of them.

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

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Bursauto 2

It's party time! We are all at a beach, or a reasonable facsimile of one, on lounge chairs with splashing water nearby and umbrellas to keep the sunburn at bay. Even though we all have the chairs to flop onto we have gathered in a group between umbrellas to compare some notes on something.

Some weird, creepy guy slithers over and gets up close to me. Like, uncomfortably close. He even gets right up and leans his sweaty cheek on mine. He's whispering and groping at my arm and starts asking me a question, over and over, slowly.

It's about a Tax ID.

I can see the ID format in my head. It's a number and alphanumeric designations, sort of like [0000-K7]. I simply say what I am thinking out loud and the man stops being as creepy as he started off, and actually seems interested in the information I am saying about the Tax ID.

Meanwhile, he starts to make food on a large platter on the ground. It looks like he's layering sauerkraut onto some round flatbread with some sour cream over it, and large links of wurst. It kind of reminds me of someone making a burrito. He even rolls it up like one and sets it next to several others on the side of the tray. Some seem to have other kinds of sauces leaking out, like orange and red, instead of the sour cream stuff.

He stops and it's time to eat! Everyone in the group grabs for the food, including me. Children even pop up out of nowhere and grabs some. I bite into the one I have. The flavors are tart, but it's very edible.

#dream #beach #party #poolside #water #sun #shade #lounge chair #umbrella #warm #fun #group #creep #man #whispering #cheek #sweat #tax id #explanation #making food #eating

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

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Fire Rocks

I was at a gun store, and had completed my shopping trip by buying a shotgun. It was a nice one with a semi-automatic action. I was on my way out the glass front doors when I changed my mind. I really didn't want it. I really wanted a pistol instead. I turned around and went back inside, and walked all the way through the maze of shelving to the counter at the back of the store. I set the shotgun on the glass countertop and asked to return it, and that I wanted a pistol. They asked me which pistol I wanted, and I suddenly couldn't remember the name of it. I just blanked out. I kind of described it vaguely and the clerk started looking through some boxes behind the counter to see if he could find something similar. Of course, there wasn't anything close and he just shrugged helplessly. I still wanted to return the shotgun, regardless.

I left the store and found myself in a forest near the riverside. My stepfather and his friends were wandering around, not quite the party animals they usually were, but more investigative of the surroundings. I joined in and eventually fund my way to the side of the river. Many things had happened to me looking over the side of the river like this. I just stood there remembering them. Something in the dirt caught my attention and I dug it out with my fingertips. It was a small metal toy that reminded me of some old metal military tank toys that used to be make, that had little rubber tracks, with the cheap metals easy to bend. The sound of the river water flowing is soothing to me, but I have to leave.

I ended up at work, in some tech shop in the back of an office building. It's all cubicles and wood paneling and featureless white walls. I'm not doing anything, really, just waiting. It's almost lunch time and my family is supposed to be coming over for lunch. My plan is not to join them. Their arrival is just a trigger for me to leave on my own and forage for lunch. They arrive in a group and I quickly exit on my own.

It's now evening and dark. Mother and I are walking along the city streets. We are having a laugh-filled, animated discussion. We find some diner with yellow, glowing windows and head inside. It's a pizza place, so we order some pizza. There are a lot of tables and chairs in various shades of dark brown. It looks kind of cheap but classy. A crowd arrives. They are all older men which heavy accents. I think they might be Italian. They are loud and boisterous and drown out everything else. I listen as one tells some kind of joke, then realize mother has walked out. I quickly thread my way through the crowd and leave.

I catch up to mother outside and a light catches my attention. There are small embers falling from the dark sky. Shooting stars? I point them out to mother. We walk home in the dark and end up on some small-town backstreet. The place looks familiar, like a neighborhood I might have lived in back in the early 90's.

Something feels odd. The wind is picking up. The night isn't as dark as it should be. Everything seems to be slightly tinted yellow. It's almost bright as a sunrise, or sunset. But then it's not. It's like a sudden shadow swept over everything. That's when I finally look up and notice a large thing in the sky. It's both blocking out the sky yet seeming to glow in crimson veins. It's way too big to be a meteor. It's huge. Could it be another planet? I realize it's filling more of the sky, even as the sky itself starts to glow yellow.

Everyone runs into the house and I end up with mother in a back room, starting out the window. I can feel everything vibrating just a little, and the wind is becoming crazed outside the glass. I get scared and run into the hall then into a small utility closet. There is a water heater on the side and it's dark when I kick the door shut, except for the glowing streaks of yellow pouring in through the cracks. The air is hot and the light feels like it's stinging hot to touch.

There's really nothing to do. It's the end of everything. Hiding like this isn't going to help. There is nowhere that is safe, not even the deepest caves or the coldest poles. Everything on the planet is going to burn. I know that the thing is going to hit, disrupt the planet, crack it to the core, maybe. But I also know that before that happens the compressed air is going to burn everything. The air will turn into pure fire for a few moments, before the final impact.

I shove myself back into the corner. The air is hurting. It burns. Everything is smoking around me. It hurts so bad. I am screaming nonstop from the pain. I know the buildings and everything outside the house are already on fire, burned black. I'm screaming more. The pain just gets worse. I can see the air on fire in front of my eyes. I can't scream. There's no air to scream with. Just fire. Pain.

I feel like I am being pulled, stretched, ripped apart and torn. Then there's darkness as parts of me seem to fade and stretch away.

I wake up on the floor of the house. I'm in the living room. There are a lot of cats in the room, and dogs. I recognize a few. They are my pets. All my pets. Every pet I have owned all my life. They are all around me.

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

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Bursauto 1

I was on my way past one of the university building blocks when a sharp series of crackling sounds filled the air, and little whizzy noises were all around me. I instinctively fell to the ground and crawled behind cover from the barrage of gunfire. As usual it only took a few seconds before it ended. No one has an endless supply of bullets.

I'm fishing around in my shirt and jacket and calling out over the barrier, "Who the hell are you and why are you shooting at me?!" I'm not being polite. I'm getting ready to shoot back. Well, If I could find my gun. Where the heck did I put it this time?

A group of men in various types of clothing, from suits to jeans, comes out of hiding from behind a doorway in an open hallway of the building. They are snickering at me and saying there is nothing I can do. They are not going to be caught for shooting at me. They are totally free from responsibility and the law. So I just ask if they've bothered to even clean up all their bullet casings that are all over the place. There's a long pause, then they start scrambling and crawling around to pick them all up. I peek over and realize the casings are .22 caliber.

#dream #university #night #gunfire #hiding #men #silly

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

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The Long Road

I'm at work. It's a jobsite behind a large building made of dark grey, painted cinderblock. I guess battleship grey is the better description of the color. There are a few mechanical things along the wall. A bandsaw, a grinder, something else off to the side. I'm at the grinder, sitting on a stool and working on grinding and polishing bronze bangles. I've been so caught up in the work that I spaced out on the time. It's past quitting time, by quite a bit. I shut things down and get myself going. Pass a clock. It shows I'm there a half hour longer than I should be. Boss is there closing up the building, making sure lights are off and doors are locked. We exchange a few niceties as I scramble out of his way and head to the parking lot. He's closing up for the night, but it feels like it's going to be closed permanently. This is the last time anyone will ever work there.

My Jeep is at the far end of the paved parking lot. There are no other cars there, just mine. It's an old Jeep, from the 1970's, and has a metal hardtop on it. I pull the door open and flop myself inside. It's raining, or snowing, or cold. It is something that I want to be out of safely dry and warm inside. But for some reason the door won't stay shut. I slam it a few times. Then I brace myself and close it and pull it extra hard until I hear the latch click. It's a really weird latch, more like a house door thing than a normal car latch. (Real thing that was on my actual Jeep)

I secure the things closed using a bent nail in a small hole on the deadbolt-looking part. This puzzles me. That was the passenger side door. Why did I get in through there? It should have been secured already and I couldn't have gotten in from the outside. Oh well. I'm in, in any case.

I end up driving quite a long way. Started off in the city, waiting at stoplights or taking slow suburban streets to get around traffic. Then it's a short jaunt near the outskirts of the city, with the longer straight highways and sparse stoplights, transitioning from the foresty areas near the river to the scrub and dirt desert areas beyond. Finally it's the open highway and decently high speeds and traffic just zooming right along past the high desert landscape. Except until I reach the bend in the road that leads though a local tribal land and reservation area. The road is narrower and for some reason the shoulder, the dirt and sand and scrub, looks swollen and puffed up. I stop and take a closer look. The ground is like a swollen bag. It wobbles a little when I poke at it with a stick. I stop and make a phone call to the authorities. Something weird is going on with the ground and maybe they should come take a look at it. I have to wait for them, though. I poke at the wobbly dirt with the stick and accidentally put a hole in it. Like, a real hole, like ground is a burlap bag and I tore a hole in the fibers. Perfectly clear water pours out. No flooding, not squirting, just sort of pouring up and out. Some gets on me and it is ice-cold water. I back away. It could be contaminated. It's not safe to drink. I go back to the Jeep. I need new tires for it, though I have great tires. Had. I could swear I just got new tires, but when I look, they are old, worn tires that need replacing.

I end up leaving and just driving some more. I head back the way I came, back towards the city, though it feels like I am headed away still, just using a different highway, or a different part of the same highway. I change lanes without looking, until it's too late. I forced a white 80's type of van off the side of the road, or at least, onto the shoulder. That was totally my fault. They are back on the road and riding my bumper. I speed up. They continue to ride my bumper. Hyper aggressive. So I decide to see how dedicated they are to their road rage and lead them off the other side of the road at highway speed. Right into the reeds and grass. Good thing I am looking down from above at this point because there is no way I could have seen anything from under all that brown and yellow grass. They still try to stay on my bumper but they can't keep up off the roadway. I end up losing them and finding my way back to the paved street. Then, it's more driving, along city streets and industrial areas. It almost feels like I am going to be driving nonstop. Forever.

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

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Juliet

We had stopped for a rest in a dusty little town out on some unknown desert backroad. It was hot and bright and the air was making me itch. While my girlfriend was getting her nose powdered inside a small grocery store, I was outside admiring the dust and dirt. Maybe "admiring" wasn't the best wording for it. Some young guys were hanging around an old walk-in phone booth on the side of the building, dressed in t-shirts and jeans and talking oddly enough that I had to focus on them to listen. I really couldn't understand what they were saying, at first. It sounded like gibberish. After a few moments it sort of all straightened out in my head. They were speaking in Shakespearean prose. I just stood there, stunned by it, then wincing to myself. Last thing I wanted was to be trapped in some 1980's retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

Inside the store it is relatively dirt-free and a lot cooler. My girlfriend has taken up residence in one of the employee breakrooms in the back and I join her. If the locals don't like it then too bad. We've robbed and murdered people for less reasons than an irate store owner wanting us out of the employee areas. We couldn't stay though. This was just a pit stop on a long drive. In fact, we probably already stayed too long. Time to get moving again. Can't stay in one place too long or else someone will eventually send the local cops to check on us, or they will get way too nosy for our own good.

We are back out on the road. It's a dirt lane among sand and scrub and rolling dirt hills. It's all bleak and eye-searingly shades of dirt. I hear it before I see it. There's a cop car right behind us, lights and siren on, hidden in the dust cloud behind our car. Crap. I was speeding? Yeah, probably. I pull over. We are going to let this one play out and see what happens.

The cop walks over and leans into my window. He's got all the stereotypical cop looks going on: Mirror shades, brown uniform, thin moustache. He stares at me while I give the best non-nervous smile I can muster. Then he lifts up a large green ball and pushes it through the window to me. It's a head, like a vaguely monster ridiculous oversized carnival head. He tells me he'll go easy on us if I put it on. I glance over to my girlfriend, expecting to share a "get a load of this guy" look, but she is already wearing one and bouncing around in the seat, looking utterly ridiculous and enjoying every second of it.

The cop walks back to his car to do the cop thing of running plates and license info. My girlfriend is still bouncing about but has a little different tempo to her movements. A tractor- trailer big-rig slides by us in the narrow roadway and comes to a stop up ahead, then starts pivoting to do a u-turn on the far-too-narrow-for-it roadway. The sand up ahead on the road is too much and they don't want to chance getting stuck there.

My girlfriend is bouncing vertically, like that bounce when she has to go powder her nose. She still has that ridiculous head on and it muffles her voice as she goes on repeat with "We should go now."

My hand is rubbing the gear shift knob as I glance into the rear-view mirror. The cop is still looking at whatever cop stuff is in the cop car.

The semi pivots some more, turning into a very large, fancy L shape along the road.

"We should go."

The cop looks up.

My hand is on the ignition switch.

The semi inches sideways on the road.

"We. Should. Go.”

"NOW"

The engine coughs to life and I have my foot on the floor, kicking up a cloud of dirt and raining rocks down on the cop's car and on the cop with his open door and window. My girlfriend is laughing as she tosses the monster head out her window. She's so excited now that we are running from the law again. And this time it is a hot chase, not just hiding. She's bouncing and laughing maniacally. I guide the careening sedan onto the shoulder, or berm, or whatever they call these piles of sand and dirt that line the roadway. Somehow I plow past the semi as it fills the roadway, then scramble hard to keep from losing it in the soft sand until I can force it back onto the harder dirt road. I can't even believe we made it through that without getting stuck or crashing into the front of the truck. But here we are speeding away, with the cop somewhere back there, blocked from following for a few seconds, or even minutes. It's all we really need to make a quick escape. We just have to get out of sight before he can catch up.

We end up back at the grocery store, stopping lightly behind the back of the building to keep out of sight from the main road in front. We pile out of the car and I grab the phone cord leading from the phone booth to a hole in the wall of the store. I yank the cord hard. It's a signal to those inside. A yank on that cord means big trouble is coming and to bail. My girlfriend and I rush in as the group of gangland friends inside is scrambling to grab stuff and get out.

As we are packing I am replaying the getaway in my head; the surprised look on the face of the cop, the screaming engine sound, the gravel bouncing off the car wheelwells, the chrome grille of the big-rig close enough for me to kiss as we slingshot our way past it, and the truck itself, this time hopelessly suck in the sand and completely blocking the road with the helpless cop standing there and yelling curses into the desert heat. It all makes me giddy with excitement and I am laughing.

My girlfriend shouts from the doorway and I go over to look. There are some motorcycles on the paved road, in the distance, coming our way. She's sure they are more cops, but different ones that have been trying to follow and catch her for her own doings before we got together.

I take a long drag off a cigarette and toss it to the ground. No time for playing around, now. We are going to just make a run for it and hope we can make another clean getaway. Or, we are going to die in a rain of bullets. They both sound exciting.

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Into the dark

Mother and I were driving around the south area of the state. We stopped for a break at a small town. It was big enough that it was on the maps, and a central hub for the rural routes in the area. It had enough traffic that it had a few tourist type eateries and gift shops. One of the main attractions of the place was that it was sitting over a massive cavern. We knew this even before we stopped there.

As the story went, way back before the age of automobiles, some prospectors were poking around in the area and accidentally found a cavern they couldn't find the bottom of. In modern times there was a large round stone structure in the center of the town, at the convergence of two main streets, marking the supposed location of the entrance to the cavern. It looked like a watering trough for horses, except in the center was a small stone bubble that reminded me of a sink grate. Under that was supposedly a vertical shaft leading down into the unknown.

And then I was there, in the bottom of the cavern. It was very much the opposite of what a cavern would be. There were halls and doors with various objects strewn about. It looked more like some old stone temple from thousands of years ago rather than a cavern. There was no light, but something was glowing near me, perhaps a flaming torch, giving enough lamination to see nearby things. Oddly, I could even see stuff further away, but it all seemed to be hidden by darkness and indistinct. Ahead was a large stone fascia. The pillars were made of large single cubic blocks, and the face was smooth. All was light tan in color. There was a door in the center, tiny in comparison to the pillars. There were also trays and bowls on the sides of the steps leading up to the door. Maybe they were there for fires to burn in?

I walked through the door and entered a long hallway of similar materials. At the far end I could just make out what looked like chairs, made of stone, set up against the farthest wall. It didn't take long before I was standing at the base of them. They were thrones. Two of them, tall and thin and much taller than any person could reasonably fit into. They were huge. But still I could tell that they could be sat upon. The hugeness was for effect, but they were definitely usable. But I wasn't interested in that as much as feeling about on the brickwork behind the two stone thrones. There should be something here. A secret brick or lever or divot. There was some way to open the secret doorway there to gain access to the hall behind the thrones. I just couldn't quite figure it out.

Then I was on the far side of the wall and of the entire structure. Someone was talking to me as I regained my bearings. We were in a hall flanked by black stone leading up and out of sight. Skyscraper sized stones. They seemed to converge slightly overhead, perhaps leaning in towards each other. The hall was maybe twenty paces wide, and further than I could see. Something on the wall caught my attention. There was a light tan area that kept fading in and out of sight, like a badly clipped object in a video game. That was part of the hall behind the thrones. I guess when someone built this area they didn't think anyone would be back here to see the messy view of bricks occupying the same place.

Now I was back on the surface, inside of a house. I was young, like in my teens, with someone else about my age. Maybe a sister? Not sure. We had found a broken square in the floor next to an unused bed in an unused room of the house. Underneath was a shaft leading to darkness. I had already fashioned a rope and lowered it down and found there was a floor below. I had already gone down once and the room was bare and made of dark grey stone, and dusty. Very dusty. There were no windows or doors that I could see in the darkness, and there was a pile of rubble directly under the hole. It was also really hard to climb back out, as the ceiling of the place was maybe five of six times taller than I was. I had enlisted the aid of the other person in getting both a tape measure so I could find the exact distance to the bottom, and some better rope with maybe some footloops or at least knots I could grip. It didn't take long to gather a few things and get back to the hole in the floor. But something was different. I couldn't see the bottom any more. I dropped the tape measure into the hole and it didn't seem to reach the bottom. Also, the hole was much larger, more like someone had dug up the stone and peeled back layers of it to make a sort of stepped area around the center square hole, and make that larger and more broken. We didn't get too close for fear of falling in. I used a glowstick, breaking it and shaking it, then tossing it into the hole. At least we would hear it hit bottom and the light would let us see a little bit. But it never hit bottom. The room that I had been in was gone, replaced by a cavern of unknown size and depth.

#dream #mother #cavern #town #las cruces #dias #architecture #stone #dark #exploration #rope #3d #bad build #game #thrones #secret entrance

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Firehole

I was at my house.

Well, the house in dreams that's out in the far suburbs of a little town near the city, with the front yard big enough to have a driveway up one side, across the front by the door, then back down around the other side. Sort of a U-shaped deal. There's a garage on the right side of the house where that driveway leads to, while also turning across the house front.

My Bronco is parked on the lawn inside the U area, partially in some snow. I am looking at it from the wavy blur of a window with sheer drapes. I had gone outside a few moments before and started it so it could warm up. I could feel and hear the throaty V8 rumble even from behind the front wall.

I needed to go very soon. It felt like I was late.

People seemed to come into focus outside. Some were on the sidewalk in front of the yard, others in the street. None were moving. I went outside to take a look and found many people standing still. Too still. They were in mid-step or wave or activity. One who was closer to me was in the street with a torch, the type used for sealing tar on roadway cracks. Even the flame on the torch was unmoving. It was like something stopped them all, like a universal pause.

Until I got closer.

As I stepped past some unseen boundary they all suddenly started moving again, doing normal daily stuff as if nothing had even happened.

I didn't have time to be puzzled. My Bronco was spewing flames and smoke out of both rear exhaust pipes. It only lasted a moment before it was gone. Maybe it had some reaction to the people suddenly moving again?

I went to the garage and inside a door that was beside the garage door. It was dusty and cold and gloomy inside, lit only by light coming in through a single small window. And the cracks. The entire side of the garage seemed to be a thin sheetmetal door, and there were cracks and peeled sections all over it, letting in little slivers of light, and also some drafty cold air.

I ignored it and went outside. It was time to get in the Bronco and leave.

#dream #house #driveway #grass #snow #street #country #suburb #bronco #people #engine running #frozen #garage #cracks #fire #exhaust

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Rain

This apartment is small but belongs to me. It has a few problems. The walls are really thin. Not metaphorically. They are really just like cardboard thickness. So are the windows.

Management installed some air conditioning units in the windows. Three of them. I only have four windows and all are on the same wall. Now there are three air conditioning units on that wall blocking the windows. They aren't even spaced even. They are just haphazardly placed.

Then the rain. I mean, it rains. That's a given. But the rain, like right now, always leaks in around the windows. It pours down from the someplace around the windows themselves. Only now, more is coming in around the air conditioners. It's like watching a waterfall sheeting down the entire wall.

But I can fix it. I think. The rain has to stop, like it just did, and I can get some caulking to fill in the invisible gaps where the water is coming from. Except I have to do it naked, because there is so much water it doesn't make sense to get my clothes soggy.

But what am I going to do about that ceiling? It's starting to bow downward near the closet. There must be a leak in the roof someplace. I'll have to climb out onto the roof and figure out where the gap is on the asphalt tiles. Naked, of course, for everyone to point at in horror.

#dream #apartment #air conditioner #windows #rain #leak #water #caulk #glue #ceiling #water damage #naked

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Disorganization

I was out of work again. No job, no money. It was just how things were now. But I had a fallback. One of my previous jobs would allow me to come in if I wasn't working someplace else. It didn't matter if I was on their payroll and didn't show up for years without notice. If I stopped in they would have something for me to do as if I had never been gone.

That was how it usually worked.

This time the old job was an audio-visual outfit I worked at around 15 years ago. They definitely did always need extra hands on board if nothing more than to just move heavy roadie boxes. So, I walked across the city to the place I remembered it being located at, and simply opened the heavy steel door at the top of a short, metal staircase (only like 3 steps), and invited myself inside, completely unannounced.

I didn't expect the place to be in a state of complete abandonment. It was cluttered and dusty. No lights were on, so it was really gloomy. It was also small, just barely enough room for the equipment on racks and maybe three people to not step on each other. That is, if they could step at all. There were also piles and heaps of piled up dirty laundry on most of the floor.

I know I'm not in the main office. I'm in some satellite office. I just totally had a mental moment of not knowing where I was going and went to the wrong place. I should head out and get to the real job site building. There is a clock someplace, maybe just in my head, that's showing it being a little past 8:00 am. While I am not late because I am in the building, it's the wrong place, so I am kind of late for not being at the other building.

Instead of running out, I instead check deeper into the building. There's a door at the back of the room that's unlocked. Behind is an equally large space with bright white lighting, white walls, a refrigerator, a small table, and two cheap chairs. Breakroom area. Lunch room. That sort of thing. There is another door at the end of that room and I open it. It is dark and messy, but I can tell is it a bunk area. There's a small bed or futon against the far wall, and assorted clothing and stuff all over the place. There's someone tangled up in messy orange sheets on the small bed. They move a little, but I go back out and close the door. I really don't want them getting up just for me being there, since they are doing such a good job of sleeping during work.

The time is now like 8:15 am and I really need to get going. Except that guy in the back has come out. His hair is sticking up and he looks like he's been taking a lot of mind-altering drugs. But he's also wondering who I am and what I am doing there. I start to explain and pick through some of the piles of laundry, trying to clear out some of it to be able to get near the equipment racks. I realize this dirty laundry is actually my old clothes. Actually, most of the trashy stuff laying around the area is mine from when I worked there, back over a decade ago.

I head out and stop outside the door. It's bright and cold with patches of snow on the gravel parking lot. I suddenly have no idea which way I need to go to get to the main office. I think I recognize some small boulders that line the edge of the parking lot, but the layout of the street and the next vacant dirt lot are out of place. I just start walking in one direction because that feels like the right way, and I hope that I can figure out where I am and where to go, because I am already running late.

I finally have found the audio-visual shop. I was having trouble because they had changed buildings, so they were in a different building than what I remembered. But I did find it. It was a smaller building than I was used to, with a small loading bay and almost no room to move around. Plus, there were many employees packed into the small room, in a crowd.

I don't recognize anyone there. One guy is carrying a clipboard and spots me in the small pile of bodies. He starts asking me why I am there and who I am. At first I think he's just trying to check my name off a list, but after he gets annoyed and asks me several more times I get the idea that he is being literal. Who am I? Who am I to just walk in and expect them to put me to work. They have no idea who I am. They have no record of me on the list. Why am I there? Literal. Why am I in the building? Is there some special purpose that I am there for? What am I going to be doing? I have to let them know what I can do.

All I can say is that I was helping to pick up old trash from the floor of the field office.

#dream #unemployed #work #audio-visual #late #dark #trash #junk #dirty laundry #office #equipment #break room #worker #messy #dirty #dusty #bright #snow #boulder #gravel #lost #strangers #questions #why

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Blanks

I was inside of some local big-box style gun store. It felt small even though it had a maze of aisles and islands with sale items and displays. There weren't many people inside, but the people I did see weren't wearing any face masks or trying to take any precautions against the current pandemic. To be honest, I expected as much. It also made me depressed and anxious, because it meant that I was probably going to catch a plague or several diseases after being around them, and there was nothing that could be done to stop it from happening.

I walk around, browsing things, looking at the displays, but I really just want to get in and buy a gun and get out. I end up bumping into a clerk who is near a small counter near a pile of sporting goods supplies. He's dressed in a dark blue outfit that reminds me of a fast food server at some burger place. I barely got a chance to tell him what I was long for when he pushed an oversized silver pistol into my hands and said I needed to prove I could shoot before he would entertain ever helping me find a gun to buy. He turns and briskly leads me to a center area of the store that is an open gun range, reminiscent of a bowling alley.

He just smiles condescendingly at me and waits. It's a set-up. I know that he's trying to play some practical joke. The gun is too large and he's waiting for me to fire it and have it hit me in the face or something spectacular so he can laugh at me.

I take a closer look at the pistol he forced into my hands. It's like a brushed silver Desert Eagle, but is actually longer, like it has been stretched. I drop the magazine out and find it has bullets in it. I pull back on the slide and there is one already chambered. The idiot handed a live firearm to me in the middle of the store without telling me, and without even going over the gun itself and any safeties or anything. Real class act, there. I look at the bullets and they are odd. They look like aluminum 9mm shells, but they are also longer than normal, stretched out.

I don't say anything and just reload the magazine and make sure no safeties are engaged. The end of the "gun range" is a wall with what look like movie or concert posters taped to it in random directions. They are actually targets, though, just carelessly stuck on the wall. The sights on the pistol is a ghost ring that's actually easy to use. I line up on the center of a crooked target and squeeze the trigger. It keeps moving under my finger without doing anything, until it suddenly gets stiff. What a crappy long trigger pull ...

CLICK

It doesn't fire. I drop the magazine and cycle the slide to clear out the bad round, reinsert the magazine and check that a fresh round has chambered. Line up. Squeeze.

CLICK

I do the same, but this time I also check to see if there is some secondary safety I missed. There is none. It should be firing. Can it be a batch of bad bullets? I aim and try again.

CLICK

I drop the magazine and clear the round then drop the pistol in the clerk's hands with a disappointed glare. I can tell by his expression that he was not expecting that to happen. He looks away while trying to wave it off, saying that these guns are used a lot by everyone so it is reasonable that they would sometimes just not work like that. It's a load of pure bullshit.

He tried to scurry off into the maze of aisles but I am following close behind him so he can't escape easily. He does distract me by handing me a cordless drill. I stare at it for a moment in confusion, while he managed to vanish amid the stacks of island goodies. I set the drill down and start to just aimlessly wander around, looking at the piles of ammunition boxes and random "tactical" things hanging on hooks or piled on stands and tables. It's all just silly garbage, really, with very few useful things in the mix.

I catch a glimpse of the clerk at a sales counter but he vanishes again before I can get there. There is a computer at the counter that has been left on and my information is on the screen. I guess he was going to run a background check on me.

Instead, I notice he has logged into the system and has gone to edit the info screen, adding a note at the bottom in all-caps [PROBABLE – SNOWFLAKE – DON'T SELL].

Well, now I am pissed. Editing my legal info to add that crap. Was it because he handed me a broken gun from his own store? Was it something else? Was this jerk being some kind of weird racist? It filters through my head and I key in on the word "probable." I get it now. They are adding these notes in on random people they want to hate for some reason or other, so everyone in the store will know to also mess with them and give them a hard time and do asshole things and not let them shop in the store.

I'm pretty upset and I start looking through the store to find the clerk. Not sure what I am going to do or say but I have it in my head to give him a shake-down for this. I spot him at some tables in a back corner.

The tables are folding tables and they are full of desserts. There's a lot of banners and streamers and things all over, making it look cluttered. It's distracting me from getting to him to yell at him. Just then he shouts out "Happy birthday!" Well, that's confusing as heck. It's not a birthday for me, nor is it my birthday by coincidence.

I make my way around gathering people and corner the guy, giving him an angry talking to with my voice lowered and controlled to not interrupt the festivities. I'm still there to buy a gun, and I still would like to test fire it on an actual gun range. He just sneers at me and hands me an oversized silver revolver. I don't recognize it at first, but I notice the cylinder is stamped with .357 Magnum. He's laughing now and dismissively waving at me to go away. He's giving me these high-power hand-cannons to make fun of me and laugh when I am unable to handle the recoil when I try to shoot. Instead, I shove it back into his arms and tell him I'd rather use my own handgun, since I know that one actually works unlike any of the garbage they have in the store.

Or better yet, I continue, I'd like to buy an actual, working, reliable, non-broken junk item. Something like a nice 1911 clone in .45 ACP, because those shoot smoothly and feel good to fire. The recoil is just easy and relaxed. I describe it as I lean towards him, as the recoil is easy as a "whoof" in the hand. He's staring at me in anger. I wave dismissively at him and walk away. Going to find a clerk who actually knows about firearms.

I find a different worker and ask about bullets. I want a box of the ones that were for the Desert Eagle-looking, as they were really odd. I just want to take a close look at them and what the heck caliber and type they were. He finds a box and hands it to me. Some are already falling out. It's probably the box the other clerk got the bullets from to put in the gun before he handed it to me. The bullets do look like they are made from aluminum. They even weigh too light in my hands, which doesn't make any sense for a bullet.

I still want a handgun. I tell the clerk, as I give the box of bullets back that I would like something in .380 ACP.

#dream #guns #gun store #asshole #clerk #troll #trolling

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Going Under

I am at a construction site inside the city. Everything is plowed up and it is just a series of huge dirt lots, some deeper than others, like a terraced open mine. It's night time so everything is mostly just darkness, but there are areas which are slightly brighter. I can see the roadways leading in and out of the place, and some buildings in the darkness. I walk from the bottom of the site up one of the roads. The ground is hard packed and the slope is fairly gentle. I end up at a building and walk inside, even though I didn't go through any doors.

There is a young woman in the building, in the dark. She is sitting on a rock on the side of the dirt of the construction site inside the building. I think there were one or two others in there as well. Even though I didn't recognize them I had a feeling they were co-workers of mine. They are all in agreeance that things are not going very well, for some unknown reason. They don't even state what is going wrong. It is just banter that I am not really involved in. I overhear that there is an open pit, probably at the bottom of the lowest level of the construction area, and people keep falling into it. Then they do seem to address me, but not directly. They need help with something and I am being volunteered for it. I don't want to do anything because it would put me in danger of some kind.

I leave the building and am walking along the bottom of a cliff. In the dark it looks black and melted. There is some kind of animal nearby, perhaps a dog. I am not sure if it is following me or if it is someplace ahead of me. I just have a dread fear of meeting it. There is no place I can really hide. I can't find anything to hold onto to climb the cliff. I think part of the building is also part of the cliff. The young woman is looking down at me as she sits on a rock on the cliff, high above. She tosses something to me that is supposed to help.

I am sitting with a white canvas over my lap. It is what I was volunteered to help do. I have no idea what I am really doing, other than seeing some small rips in the canvas and adjusting it so they don't have stress and tear more. I am not happy being there and doing any of it. I feel uneasy and trapped.

It is bright daytime and I can see the surrounding construction site is like a shallow bowl with terraced steps leading up the sides. It's really not all that big. There are several buildings in it, almost like it is a town inside the bowl, with hard dirt roadways all around them. My old Jeep is nearby and I figure I will just leave, since I do not want to be there. I drive along a wide, dirt area behind the backs of some buildings. Something is wrong with the Jeep. If I try to speed up the engine chokes and sputters. I have to keep a moderate speed instead of rushing out like I want.

The road is fairly direct once I get past the buildings. It turns left then goes straight along the side of the construction site. The end of the road is a very sharp, steep climb up to some construction signs. The road is almost round there, like it is the top of some vertical cylinder and dome. That is the way out. The signs on the top are the street signs warning of the construction area I am in. I wasn't ready for the steepness of the road and the slightly less packed dirt and gravel. The Jeep slides back down after getting about ¾ of the way up. I stop and lock the hubs and shift into 4x4 then try again. This time I almost crest the top but still slide back down. I back up and get a run at it. It takes moment before the Jeep claws up and over the top.

I am tumbling into darkness. There is nothing around me. It is like I am curled up and floating inside of nothing. A void. I fell into the hole. I don't know how. It was supposed to be at the bottom of the construction site. Did I go there and fall in? Did I jump in?

The darkness around me feels oppressive. It's not cold or warm, but it feels like it is pressing in on me from all sides. I feel like I pass through some boundary and enter a deeper part of the void. I don't feel like I am falling, or moving at all. I am just surrounded by nothing.

It feels harder to breathe, like I am under pressure from all sides. I try taking deep breaths but it's like the air can't get in. I want to panic but I force myself to be calm. There is a sensation of slipping into some 3rd level in the void, and now it is very difficult to breathe. I want to struggle and fight but I can't. I am straining to suck in slow breaths of air against some kind of overpowering pressure. I strain my body as if trying to move and reach out.

I find myself on some dirt in the dark. I am in the construction site at the bottom of the lowest area, at night. I am laying on my back and straining for breath. It still feels like I have a huge weight over my chest and can't even draw in air. I feel starved of oxygen and weak. I look around and see no one around, no buildings, nothing. There is just dirt and cliffs glistening as if melted and wet. The pit has claimed everyone and everything.

The wolf is standing in the dark nearby, barely outlined as if lit by weak glimmering lights. A shadow of a wolf in the shadows of darkness.

It speaks and slowly says, "There is no one else left."

I wake up.

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Fire rocks

I've been shopping at a gun store. It's a small shop with tight aisles and a very wooden, hand-built feel to the displays. Ended up buying a shotgun. It's semi-auto and snazzy. Walking out with it and I've changed my mind. I really wanted a pistol instead. I went walking to the back holding the shotgun. Back had a desk or counter with hazy old glass over rows of hard-to-see pistols. At the back desk I asked for pistol. I couldn't remember the name of it. It had a specific name. I told them the name after some careful thought. They were digging through boxes to find a match. They couldn't find it. I still wanted to return the shotgun even without getting the pistol as a replacement.

Stepfather and his friends were with me in the forest by the river. We were wandering the forest area. Eventually we found the riverside. I was thinking about various things that happened there, like my Jeep getting stuck in the mud, or the dogs running through the tall grass. I found some stuff buried in the ground. They were toys, all dirty and smashed. They reminded me of old die-cast toy tanks they used to make with little rubber tracks.

I ended up at work, waiting. It was almost time for lunch. Family should be there in a few minutes. They finally arrived and I immediately left with them. I went walking out at night (lunch was at night) for food with mother. We ordered pizza at some walk-in diner. I was separated from her by other people. Maybe a group of loud Italians? They were older than me and were talking over and around me, ignoring that I was there. My family was leaving and I stayed behind to listen to a joke from one of the older patriarchs of the loud group. Then I left. I noticed shooting stars like fire embers in the sky, and pointed them out to mother.

We walked home to a small, old house similar to one I lived in back in the early 90's.

Something was wrong. Something felt wrong. A huge shadow was over everything, like an eclipse was happening. It was a giant … meteor? No, something way bigger. It was like a planet was colliding with earth. It was a huge black disc in the sky. Except the front of it was starting to glow in fiery reds and yellows. We all ducked inside the house. At first, I hid with mother in the back room. But then I ended up in a small closet, maybe, or just someplace else like next to the water heater. The air was hot. I knew that it was only a few moments before the thing hit, and the air itself would be on fire just before that. I curled up in a ball on the floor.

I felt like I was burning. I was screaming in pain and it wouldn't stop. I knew there was nowhere else to go to get away from the burning pain. Everything outside was already burning, blackened ashes. I felt my skin burning and melting away from just the heat in the air. It hurt so bad and wouldn't stop.

There was a moment of feeling like I was being torn and stretched while every part of me was screaming in unending pain. I saw myself being pulled apart like taffy and hurled into darkness.

I woke on the floor of the house.

There was a bunch of cats and dogs around me.

I remember them.

They were my pets through the years.

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Of Mice

Living in a huge cavern. Lots of interconnected caverns. Strangely each one is cube shaped. Ceiling super high. Lots of room. We came there generations ago. I could still remember the main way in, like a long slide, coming in from one cavern rooftop area. One cavern dark, like a wall of darkness. We could go through the dark barrier, but our tiny lights only saw so far in the darkness. Big things in there. Monstrous. Things that flew. It was frightening. Turns out they were just humans, and we were just mice. They were just a family who was working on renovating the house, and had a door to a garden.

Walking with friends. I was on some kind of skateboard. Entering different businesses through front and exiting through back, or through kitchen. Also doing laundry with friends. Not a contest of who is done first but we kind of are all at the same pace. Except we don't have the fabric softener. Maybe we could steal a little from someone's unattended pile.

Driving Jeep with no roof. Need to get out of the town. Storm is coming. I can feel the wind. It is bitter cold. I do have the doors in the back so I can put them on for some shelter as I drive. It seems I am driving into the storm.

See old cars, from like the 1920's. Two almost hit each other at an intersection. One does crash against a wall after going out of control from swerving to avoid the other. We all run over and block the road with just the sheer number of people. Someone put up pole barriers. They are black.

More walking with friends into an industrial area. Back alleys. Find others lingering. We start a band using just the industrial equipment laying around. Trombone sounds from a metal portable staircase, etc. Singing some kind of blues/rap.

#dream #mice #humans #random #driving #jeep #cold #friends #skateboard #laundry #sneaking #cars #accident #wreck #crowd #music #industrial #signing

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dreamsinthefoxhollow · 3 years

Text

Shafted

I was at work, in an old office building I was in during the 90's. Except it was modern work. Typically, for that job dream situation, I was roaming the halls and trying to figure out where I was supposed to be. Typically, I was on the wrong floor. I was on the 8th floor and I was actually supposed to be on the 7th. Or, maybe the 6th. There was a lift station at the far end of the building, and I found it at a fast jog. The doors were open and I jumped in and landed on one of the two lifts inside.

The lifts were some kind of cradle/seat with handlebars and foot pedals below. It was like an upside down "t" with an old style metal farm implement seat attached. But it did have a link on top affixed to some kind of cable system. The pedals were linked to it. I wasn't sure if they were bicycle type pedals or some kind of push-pedals. But it was definitely manually operated by the pedals.

This is where everyone in the office area pretty much screamed at me, and screamed in general. The lifts were supposed to be in a little lift box or room, or supposed to have something else with them for safety. But these were dangling freely above nothing. There was no floor or walls. I had leapt the gap, about 2 meters, and landed on the lift seat. I was rocking back and forth on it. Instead of a floor below it was just an empty shaft leading into nothing but darkness. Everyone screamed because no one was supposed to use the lifts in that condition and I had run in before anyone could stop me. I just held on as the lift was slowly swinging back and forth. I was concerned about the lack of floor and lack of the lift being secured to anything AND now being stuck there with no way to jump back. But I wasn't scared at all.

I was at work, out in the field. I had one of the company exploration vehicles - something like an HEMTT outfitted with some kind of science station box on back. I was in a very cold region. It was sunny out but there was ice and snow on everything except the road I was on. I think it was a road. Maybe it was just a sheet of ice. It was lightly-colored and not dark, but asphalt can look like that, too. Around were just low rolling hills of white and nothing else.

I was messing with some kind of handheld equipment. Maybe it was a sat-phone. It was decided that I should set up camp right there and then, and unpack any more gear inside of the tent so it would be out of the harsh conditions.

I lugged some kind of heavy box off the side of the vehicle. It was similar to an ammunition crate, but wasn't too heavy to carry alone. I walked back along the roadway, or iceway, and simply yanked hard on a circular opening on the side of the box.

There was a loud "pop" almost like a shotgun going off, and this large, grey-green tent was unfolding just in front of me. It only took a few seconds to assemble itself. I wouldn't call it an inflation. It was more like the interior supports were moving around inside and pushing out at all the right places. In another moment it was unfolded completely and ready to use.

Somehow, without help, I moved a bunch of gear into the tent, which was large enough to easily stand in and roomy enough to be a small house. It wasn't all science gear, it was mostly just crates and boxes in dark greens or dark greys.

I was busy checking a box for something when I heard a rustling noise that was a bit louder than the normal background wind and flapping tent parts. I turned around and was faced with a polar bear that had wandered into the tent and was within arm's reach. I did the only nonsensical thing I could do when faced with a mountain of murderous muscle.

I woke up.

#dream #work #office #COE #USACE #elevator #out of order #pedals #dangling #darkness #screaming #warning #trapped #stuck #HEMTT #ice #snow #frigid #arctic #road #cold #wind #equipment #tent #polar bear

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