My First Nightmare In Years

The thing is, I normally don’t have nightmares. The vast majority of the time, I don’t even remember my dreams, and when I do, they’re of the largely prosaic, real world sort, where I do exactly what I would do in real life, with no variation from that, like the incredibly boring dream I had where I watched TV and it was all reruns and bad commercials. I’ve only ever had a couple of nightmares before. One was where I was running around with a bunch of marines in a mountain compound that had been taken over by Aliens from the movie of the same name. The other was my infamous Con-Goat nightmare that Karen Chow still believes is one of the more original nightmares she’s ever heard of (But then it’s hard to discount red-eyed, cannabilistic billy-goats that can kill a squad of professional soldiers in nothing flat ordinary).

But this dream… this may be the single bleakiest, creepiest, most depressing dream I’ve ever had in my life.

Maybe it’s because I’m a writer, but my dreams tend to be entire stories with developing plots and such. This particular dream was horribly, vividly real because I spent the entire time trapped in my own point of view, with no third person scenes.

The dream was about the end of the world and evil.

It didn’t start out that way. The beginning of the dream was innocent enough. There was some kind of convention, or reunion of some sort, except that the criteria for going seemed to be that you had to be connected to me somehow, ’cause the vast majority of people who attended this thing were familiar faces from elementary, Junior High, Highschool and university, along with cousins and other people I’m related to. This gathering was taking place in what I can only describe as an arcology; a more or less completely independent, self-sufficient complex capable of sustaining itself no matter what happened in the outside world. It was kind of like a more serious, souped version of West Edmonton Mall; part hotel, part garden, part shopping district, part office complex, all indoors and interconnected with no need to actually step outside.

The theme of this gathering was the 40′s. Although people weren’t actually required to dress in the attire of men and women during the 40′s, quite a few people did, and it added to the atmosphere of the big band music, waiters with pencil mustaches and white dinner jackets with little black bow ties and swingin’ rhythm that seemed to surround the area.

At first, this dream was a lot fun. I saw people I hadn’t seen in years, was catching up with them, even complimented some of girls on their happenin’ clothes, and showed off my cat, who, for some reason, was not terrified of humans the way he is in real life. There was even a big gala dinner with people arrayed at this massive, continuous table that was in the shape of a “U” stretching around the length of colossal ballroom space. Wine, champagne, the low murmur of conversation, jokes, laughter, and the band, also in dinner jackets with the slow crooning of the horns providing a pleasant but unobtrusive aural atmosphere. This gathering/convention thing was for the long haul, apparently intended to span the length of a few weeks, because more people kept flying in, and there would be a big, cheery greeting for them in the main hall, a huge space with a massive staircase and modern art installation in the middle of the room. More people arrived, more fun was had, and overall the mood seemed to be one of pleasant reminiscence and being amazed at the fortunes or failures of the people who had shown up.

That’s when the first hint that end of the world had arrived began to make itself known.

It started with very concerned people talking about what was going on in the news. People were watching the TV and it seemed that on the Outside, things were taking a turn for the homocidally wrong. Murders were sky-rocketing, at first with people who knew each other, usually family, then turning to friends, and eventually total strangers tearing into each other for no apparent reason. On top of that, there were confirmed though still not-yet-understood sightings of… things. Vaguely humanoid in shape, usually not with any kind of similar appearance to each other. They were killing people too, and far more effectively than the people were, but usually disappeared once the slaughter was over.

I remember in the dream watching one of these CNN reports with a bunch of other people, some of them still in their 40′s regalia as the anchorman cut to a scene of tower rooftop that was being shot from a helicopter. From that distant vantage point, looking down, a door burst open, and a small crowd of people–some of them spattered in red, I’m assuming it was blood, though I don’t know who’s–came running out in a panic and scattered around the rooftop of this office tower. On their heels came something black and furry. Those are the only details I could make out, because it was so fast. It had arms and legs, and seemed to be about four feet taller than anything else near it, and it proceeded to first start ripping into someone it pounced on, then another person, and another, and finally it started ripping limbs from people and taking what was left of the screaming, struggling victim (rather like a spider with all its legs torn off) and throw the rest of the body off the building. When it was done, it simply loped back into the building and everything was still.

Needless to say, we were all horrified.

The report went on to say that when the police and SWAT arrived at the building, there was no more trace of the creature, only its handiwork, a long, endless spectacle of slaughter that started on the ground floor and went up, floor by floor to the roof.

On top of this, the report cut to another story saying that the homocidal psychosis was escalating, and that, for some reason, certain people, or even locations were immune to this epidemic. They advised that anyone who was “safe”, or had found a “safe” location was to remain there, because authorities were at a loss to explain–let alone cure–this global phemonenon, and so everyone, for the sake of themselves and those around them, were more or less ordered to remain where they were.

Of course, the complex that we were staying at seemed to be one such location.

There were a LOT of upset, even hysterical reactions to this as the days passed. People were worried about their families, some of them left and were never seen from or heard from again, they just wanted to get to the airport, fly back to their loved ones or whatever. My cat continued to be incredibly friendly and affectionate with quite a few people, although for some reason, there were certain people who just freaked him right out and he would hiss at them. One of them was an old classmate of mine from elementary and highschool named Shawna. And I started hearing voices.

At first I thought that was the onset of the homocidal psychosis that was sweeping the world, but the voices assured me that wasn’t the case. They explained to me that this was it, this was the apocalypse and the that the end of the world would be brought about by humanity itself. No fire, no ice, just blood. It was the darkness in the human heart, magnified to murderous proportions, and that if the fear or anger or hate was sufficiently large enough, it could be worked on, augmented, and eventually turned into a need to kill that would only end when that person was killed him/herself.

There were, however, “sacred” areas, locations which some deed of compasion, nobility, or sacrifice had occurred that tend to shield the effects of this murder-wave, though it could never completely block it out. It did, however, tend to reliably repel the agents of evil that had physically manifested on gone out into the world to participate in the murder-plague. But in the end, it was up to the people to resist or give into the compulsion to kill and humanity, in that respect, had failed its own judgement was being corrupted, one heart at a time, to kill each other off, something it could far more effectively than any rapture from on high.

This kind of information was something that most of the people (Except the die hard Christian or Catholic types) not very seriously, though they had to agree that the arcology seemed relatively untouched by the murders or beasts that were running rampant around the rest of the world, so on that note, they more or less didn’t feel the need to leave. There was food, there were gardens, electrical generators, we had everything.

We stopped watching television when we turned it to the news station one day, and all we saw was the camera knocked on its side, and there was the anchorman, in the distance hanging limply off his chair while something small, gray, with yellow, pupil-less eyes, sat on his chest, eating at his face and occasionally darting its head around as if expecting a bigger animal to come back for its kill.

It’s no surprise that despair, fear and sadness were everywhere by this point. There were suicides. Some people just figured there was no point in postponing the evitable and didn’t want to kill anyone or be killed themselves, so they just took pills, jumped off high objects or electrocuted themselves in their hotel room bath tubs. My cat, for some reason, as one of the only animals in the complex, was given its own room where he would take visitors who came to pet him and be soothed by him. Except for Shawna who he just feared and from every time she showed up.

Out of curiosity, a bunch of people banded together and decided to go outside to see what was happening around the outside of the arcology. From the windows, we had occasionally seen the lights of cars and even helicopters that were headed for the building at night, probably because they could see the lights, but none of them ever made it. There were even a few buildings, office towers mostly, that could be seen to have lights burning in them in the dark, and would switch on and off as if someone, or some people were moving from room to room, so some of the more charitable people in our arcology decided maybe we should try and offer help. After all, our food supply and water were virtually unlimited and our building was “safe”.

I went out on this little jaunt because I was sick of being cooped up, and besides, those little voices had so far assured me I was one of the “safe” ones, and I hadn’t yet experienced any urges to kill.

Huge, HUGE mistake.

It was daytime. Sky was gray, a white haze with no sun visible anywhere. The streets looked like an ancient warzone, dead bodies everywhere, but all of them killed in very physical ways, stabbing, bludgeoning, even tooth marks and limb decapitations. Some people were throwing up, and some of the girls in the group wanted to go back, but didn’t because that would entail being alone, or in a small group, unlike the 20 of us that had gone out.

I think it was my friend Lucas who first pointed it out. He was looking around, and then he said something like “Oh fuck…” and pointed to a building. At first it looked like someone had been burned to death and literally slammed against the wall of the building and left there like a squashed bug. But then it started moving. Crawling, like spiderman down the building and dropped down in front of us.

Two things became apparent at that point, it was huge, and it wasn’t human.

It was very slim, and was probably about 7-9 feet tall, it was hard to tell, because it moved on all fours, with this dark, crispy skin, and its arms and legs were hideously long, like spider legs. Its head was a mess. Imagine someone who has been repeatedly kicked and bashed in the head with a baseball bat. That’s what this thing’s face looked like.

It jumped and landed on one of the people in our group as we scattered. That guy died screaming as it bit into his throat and blood started gushing out. We managed to get back into the van we’d driven out, only after we lost six more people, bringing our count down to 13. Not a great number.

And then people finally started to turn.

It began with Shawna. That’s when we started wondering if maybe Zero knew something that we didn’t.

It was HIDEOUS. I was with another old school mate, Lonnie or something, and we were hanging out in what was the security room of the arcology, a wall of closed circuit TVs looking in on all the rooms and major areas of the place. Shawna was wandering around inside the abandoned grocery store with some other guy. He went off to go and pick at some food (He was throwing all this stuff into a shopping cart) and on the TV, we saw Shawna just stop walking, and break into a grin that looked completely WRONG. She reached over beside here where there was a special on some kind of steak knife and just plucked one off the rack and unpackaged it. Then she walked up to the guy, the knife held point down, stood behind him, and drove the knife, up to the hilt, into his back a couple of times.

Lonnie and I just watched open mouthed.

The guy wasn’t dead. In fact, he even managed to stumble away, and we watched on one closed circuit tv after another as he tried to navigate through store with all that blood coming out of his back. I’m just thankful we didn’t have sound, because from the way his mouth was open, I’m sure he was either crying or screaming. Shawna followed him casually, would slash at his leg or arm, let him hobble away a little more, move in and do it again. He finally got to the end of this aisle where there was nowhere to turn–not that it would have done much good anyway, he was more or less crawling by this point, and his blood was everywhere–and he was on his back, his mouth moving up and down, probably begging. Shawna, with that giant, rictus grin on her face just walked over to him, looked down at him, then put the knife on his chest and ground it in with her foot. She knelt down and started stabbing repeatedly, and we watched until his limbs stopped moving.

She stood up, knife in hand and walked away.

She noticed one of the cameras tucked away into the corner. She walked over to it, and looked up at us, eyes wide, unblinking, that awful grin on her face. Her mouth didn’t open any more, but from the way her shoulders were heaving up and down, it looked like she was laughing. She took the knife and wiped it across the side of her face, doing that over and over again, lauhing at us, grinning, while the right side of her face became streaked with blood.

It took a bunch of people to eventually take her down and throw her into a cell in the arcology dention center. She spent her days standing in the middle of the room screaming. She wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, just screamed and tried to grab at anyone who walked by. I didn’t get involved, I never wanted to see her face after that.

That’s when we all realized that whatever protection we were receiving from the arcology was either fading, or the strength of the murder plague was now too strong to be completely blocked.

There were a few more incidents like that. I don’t want to get into them, they were all about as bad as that, and the one I really didn’t want to see was my friend Godfrey, who more or less devised a way for the environment and security systems to do his dirty work for him. Automatic shutters trigged on people as they walked through and stuff like that. That was a pretty big blow for me when Godfrey turned.

Also, it seemed that Zero, my cat, was a good Geiger counter for this. We learned after a while once he started to dislike someone, that’s when they were probably on the road to going homocidal, so we all paid regular visits to him to see what he thought of us. A few people that he freaked out over even did the decent thing put themselves into exile before the urge to kill hit them. Others had to be contained in the arcology detention center or thrown out. It was just down to a handful of us now from the hundreds that had originally come here.

The things started to arrive at the arcology too. Not the real big killer things, those were still repelled, but the less mobile, more scavenger-ish ones started to manifest in the building.

I was walking down a hallway with my friend Joey. We got to a part of the hotel complex that was abandoned, all the doors open, and I heard this ugly, urgent whisper that droned on, “I want it I need it give it to me give it to me it’s mine it’s mine give it to me I want it I need it…”

At first Joey didn’t hear it, but as he strained his ears, finally he got it too.

In the hallway, from one of the hotel rooms, a bloody arm reached out.

It was as if someone were lying on their stomach and trying to grab something just ahead of them. All we saw was this arm, streaked in blood, grasping around aimlessly as the whispering grew and grew.

I didn’t want to get involved and told Joey we had to get out of here NOW. Joey despite being the veteran of millions of horror films wanted to check it out and I refused to go with him. I turned around and walked away even as I heard his footsteps descend into the hall. I heard him scream, we never saw him again, and no one went into that part of the hotel anymore.

This kept going on. Somehow, my father ended up in the hospital area of the arcology after an injury, but one of our friends was a doctor and he was in intensive care, hooked up to life support. While I was there I saw my brother and some of my cousins playing around with the power supply to his life support and he started talking to me about how this was the way, and everything was so simple now, he didn’t understand why he didn’t get it before, and he was trying to figure out a way to slowly raise the current being applied to our father to kill him. He wanted me to help him.

Fortunately, I’ll never know what happened after that moment when we were staring each other in the eye, because my girlfriend woke up and jolted me out of the dream, and I was just glad the whole thing was over.

I hate having dreams like this. Fortunately, they only seem to happen every few years.