Undisclosed - Zach Bo1inger
Dream: The Church
I go into a church to placate my parents. (They are not my real parents, they are some fictional device of the dream) The scenery of the church changes as I look around. It always feels as though I just turned my head a little too late to actually see walls moving or tapestries changing. Still, I know that as I look around, I'm not seeing the same thing I saw moments ago.
The priest is very dramatic. He makes grand gestures as he speaks, but it seems mechanical to me. He has a very deep voice that seems to come from an echoey chamber much larger than he is. It occurs to me that I can't actually understand a word he is saying. I'm more entranced than actually consciously listening. I look at other congregation members to see how they are affected. They hang on every word he says. It's like they are eagerly anticipating the answer to some question that has been plaguing them and he promises to address.
Then I feel like I can look at them with a second pair of eyes. If I blink slowly, when I open my eyes, I will see an alternate reality that is no less legitimate than the previous. I slowly close my eyes and notice how it feels to lower my eyelids over my eyeballs. When I slowly reopen my eyes, it almost feels like I am in a different body. My eyes are about twice the size that they were. My eyelids are like dried paper. They are purple and somewhat transparent. The feeling of opening my eyes is so radically different, I consider the possibility that I am in a new body, but nothing else feels different, it's just the eyes.
I look around. I have a sense for where everything is according to the previous reality. I see other parishioners. It's like I can see transparent shells of their bodies kneeling and looking to the priest with desperation. At the same time, I can see their other selves looking around at each other with a different kind of desperation. They all want to leave, and they are hoping that nobody else notices. They frantically look around at each other. They need to know if anybody suspects they are not really focusing on the priest's words at all. I realize that their biggest fear is that somebody has opened their second set of eyes and is seeing what I am seeing. They know that this is something they should be afraid of, but as they desperately scan the room, they have no idea what they are looking for. They all look right past me. They are much more concerned about senior members of the church.
Then I look at the priest. He is not a person at all. He's a wooden frame covered with a ghostly robe. His face is a black void. I realize that the deep echoey voice I heard in the other reality came from somewhere else, through this portal. He's not a real person, and his robe is not fully materialized, but he strikes me as the most real thing in the room. "All the other people are fake!" I think to myself with quite some panic. The priest could feel that I just came to that realization. I looks at me, and I can tell he knows I have my other eyes opened. His face is a black void, but somehow it's so much easier to stare into the void and know what he is thinking than it would be to look into his eyes and read a facial expression.
The congregation can read him, too. They all know something is horribly wrong and they scatter to the edges of the church like roaches when you turn on the lights. They press their backs against the walls because they know something is horribly wrong, but they are not sure what. At least with their back against the wall they only have to worry about a threat that will come face on. They notice that I have not backed against the wall, and they realize that I am the source of the priest's concern. This relieves each one of them a little, since they know that the priest's anger will not be focused on them. They are still scared and stay pressed against the wall for fear of becoming collateral damage.
I look up at the priest and take a deep breath. The ground starts to rumble and the people cower. The church gets very dark. There is a circle of light on the floor between the priest and me. It's about the size of a manhole cover. It looks like sunlight is shining on that circle, but as the rest of the church darkens, I wonder if there is still a sun outside. The spot gets brighter and brighter until I think that piece of the floor has turned into pure energy. The energy disk starts to sink and leaves a hole in the floor. The hole gets bigger and deeper and the ground trembles louder. The whole goes deep into the earth and is filled with bright light. I upsets me to think that the scariest thing in a dark, haunted church is the light. I don't want to see this reality anymore. I close my dry, papery, purple eyelids and open my natural eyes. To my horror, the hole in the floor is real and still filled with hot light. I see the people in the reality that I am used to and they are scared beyond belief. I take another deep breath and realize that I am paralyzed with fear. I haven't moved since I opened my other eyes for the first time.
The hole continues to grow, and if I stay where I am, it will consume me. Still, I don't know what to do. I've never had to run away from a portal to Hell. Where do you turn when you are in a corrupt church. "It's an old church," I think, "and it must have catacombs. Perhaps the corruption has not reached them yet." I run for the nearest door that looks like it might lead to stairs. I pick the right door and run down a set of stairs. Sure enough, it leads to catacombs, and I am convinced the only way to avoid being drawn into hell is to reach the lowest level catacombs as quickly as possible. It starts to feel a little like a video game.
Then, just like a video game, zombies come from all directions and try to herd me back to the gaping hole. I can't bear the thought of being touched by one of them. All I can do is run. They all have the very simple goal of walking toward me wherever I am. I kick one, but it's doesn't really affect him that much, and the contact between his chest and my foot feels like it sucked energy out of me. I just start running to get away from them, I have to duck below their outstretched arms and dart between two of them approaching me head on. I can run faster than them for now, but I am not sure how much longer I will have this kind of energy.
I crouch down, cover my head with my hands and crash through a stone wall. The zombies are confused. It's like they knew the layout of the room when they were alive, but they cannot process the new information and they don't know how to get to me. The ground in this new hallway slopes down and I decide to follow it downward. I walk through an arch into a room with blue phosphorous glowing on the stone walls. The temperature is cool and I relax a little. I walk through the room and stumble on a stone. The noise as I kick the rock echoes through the room. I realize for the first time how huge the room is. I hear large rocks grinding against one another. Each of the glowing blue spots on the walls was a huge rock golem embedded and sleeping in the wall. I woke them up and now they are coming for me. They move very slow, but obviously they can easily crush me if they get their timing right. Their faces are round rocks with deep holes where eyes and a mouth would be. The lack of facial features has become quite a terrorizing feature on my enemies in this dream. I feel like the priest can watch me through each golem's eyes. They chase me, slower than the zombies did, but with more intelligence and with a much stronger threat of violence. I felt like if the zombies touched me I might come down with some kind of debilitating infection. With the golems, I picture them dropping a fist on me and instantly killing me. I try to predict where each golem will end up after pursuing me for 15 seconds, and I plan my escape accordingly. I run an odd path to the door opposite the doorway where I entered. It does the trick and I just barely get out. I push on a chain and a heavy rock door drops between me and the golems. They pound on the walls and door as I continue to run.
I run into a large lizard. His scales are orange, yellow, and red. I notice that the scales change color, and its almost like he is wrapped in a fire animation. He stands and he is at least 4 times as tall as me. Despite the immanent threat, I am fascinated by the dynamic skin. I feel hypnotized. He opens his mouth and leans down to bite off my head. That's when I woke up and thought "I cannot be dreaming this. It's too weird."