Paralyzing

Date: 8/22/2017

This dream honestly freaked me out, and dreams don't usually do that...it's also really long, sorry. It's dark, nighttime. In the dream I'm a high school freshman girl, and I'm with some other friends of mine. There's this kid who must be in six grade or something, who despite being really dorky and annoying, is the one who has all the connections and can control just about anyone if he wants because he knows everyone's secrets. I'm one of those annoying popular snooty girls, so I guess I'm determined to put him in his place and prove that I'm the best. And my way of doing that is to apparently make out with him in front of my friends? "I'm going to show him the time of his life," I say. My posse of friends are ready to film it all since it's gonna be "totally hilarious". He's up on this deck behind a building (I think a restaurant), and it's partially covered with all the string lights hanging and everything. Everything goes according to my plans, and my friends all get the video. Me and my posse leave, and now I'm in the POV of one of the friends, a different middle school/high school girl. I've managed to stay behind without the mean girl noticing, because I really never liked her anyway. I'm trying to console him, saying not to worry about it. He accepts that his social status is going to be shot, since now he'll just be the butt of every joke. He's digging a hole (sometimes the ground was deck, sometimes it was grass) and putting a bunch of stuff in there. "What are you doing?" "It's all the things that relate to her, so I don't have to remember her and she can't use them against anyone." I'm sympathetic, I hate that chick too, so I pull out some trash from my pockets and it's little notes from the mean girl. I hold one up with my name on it. "See, she calls me Weed Addict" (or something along those lines, something that insinuated I was always on drugs). He starts to see that this chick was as bad to me as he was to her, and that I'm on his side, so he lets me stay. Eventually some of his friends show up and they help too. We are searching around the deck, looking for anything else to put in the hole. When we look through the planks of the deck we keep finding stuff down in the dirt, and my hand is small enough that I can just barely reach through and grab it. After a while we're done with the hole, so now we're just seeing what cool things we can find. I spot something shiny, so I grab it and yank it up to the light where we can see. It looks like a belly button ring, except it's got a lot of extra parts that fold and hook together. If you move it right it looks like a fish hook and is crazy sharp. It's silver with diamonds on each end. There's a feather charm that hangs off one side. I think it's pretty, but the other friends are gasping and pointing, telling me it's a such and such hook, which was from some legend and had something to do with a pirate who killed people. We argue for a bit about what we're going to do with it, and everyone wants to look at it and hold it. Finally we decide to take it to the headmaster of the school or whatever, but before I can, one of the school teachers (stereotypical bony faced evil looking boarding school teacher woman) comes out of the building demanding to know what we're doing out there at that time of night, and with THAT. I open my mouth to explain, but the next thing I know I've passed out. When I wake up, I'm at this huge school wide feast. Students I don't recognize are running around putting plates of food out. There's a huge platter of I think turkey and gravy in front of me, and there's a gravy ladle in my hand. I try to ask what's going on, but I can't seem to speak. I can't move either. I can blink, and breath, but I'm essentially paralyzed. I try to scream for someone to help me, but no sound comes out. The teacher lady is sitting right next to me, eating a very strange food. It was in leaves like an unshucked corn, but the inside was all green and looked like an aloe plant--but huge. I focus as hard as I can on moving, but I can't even make myself ungrip the ladle. I'm in a chair, but essentially laying on the table because I obviously can't even hold my head up or anything. I can't understand why the teacher isn't doing anything, can't she see that something is wrong with me? I focus on speaking. Words are impossible, but if I work at it enough I can get a grunt out. It takes so much energy for me to do this, and I know she has to be able to hear me, but yet she ignores me. Then she gets up and walks away, leaving me feeling hopeless. I am starving, but despite my face being inches from a whole buffet of foot, it's impossible for me to eat. Tears roll out of my eyes, blurring my vision. I force myself to pull it together. I've got to find someone to help me. I put every ounce of my energy in focus into moving. My some miracle, I manage to get to my feet, except that it doesn't feel right--something is still very wrong. I can't really control anything, but I can slop my feet forward a few inches. My mom is sitting up ahead, beside the school nurse. That's it, I just need to get to them and surely they'll help me. I fall to the ground, exhausted and without coordination. No one cares. I try again to call out for help, but it's only a tiny little groan. Through a ton, I mean a ton, of effort, I get over to them, mostly by crawling inch by grueling inch. Along the way, I try to get bites of food, but every time I get it in my mouth I am incapable of swallowing, and thus I nearly suffocate myself. Pitifully, I'm trying to get the attention of the nurse, or my mom, anyone. They give me dirty looks, thinking I'm some gross creature. The only garbled, half coherent word I can get out is "help". They push me away, saying I'm faking. I feel completely hopeless. I'm going to die like this. My mind is so alive, and I have a thousand words I want to say, but I can't voice any of them. I can hardly keep my eyes open. The next thing I remember, I've managed to get away from everything. I'm in this empty playground that's in the middle of absolute nowhere. I've fallen at the edge of it, laying on the outer barrier of all the sand. I have some sort of device, an iPad I think, and I'm playing this game that I remembered always playing before any of this paralyzed stuff happened to me. I can play because it only requires me to move one finger as it's mostly an intuitive game and I can control it with my mind. I'm starving. Every breath takes so much energy, and I wheeze every time. I try to just focus on the game, not the tears running down my face. No one is going to help me, so I'm just going to escape to this game. I'm shocked to find that all these tasks and goals in the game, which would have normally taken me days to beat, I'm now beating in a matter of seconds, with essentially no effort. It has to mean something, but I can't think what it means. The school nurse, my mom, and some other teachers and students are running towards me. They're all worried. They've finally realized that I wasn't faking and that I really am going to die unless they do something. I'm silently crying, unable to move. They drop to their knees, apologizing and saying they're going to help me. As soon as they touch me I'm sent into convulsions and black out. I open my eyes and find myself in this beautiful city. It has a lot of western qualities, but also has a lot of Eastern vibe to it, maybe like a Himalayan country or something. It's all a little bit shimmery, ethereal. I can't believe it, I can move! And nothing hurts, I seem...normal. Something tells me I know this place, but it doesn't quite seem familiar. Then the flashbacks start, and they hit with such intensity that I'm immediately thrown to the ground. I'm at an airport, with my brother, and they're asking all the passengers for our flight if someone wants to give up their such and such voucher for these other compensations. The things they want to trade us are all very unnecessarily convoluted and confusing, and none of us are interested. Essentially, what we'd get in return is an extra "friend voucher" which you would use to become "gal pals" with any stranger you chose. Finally, I'm like "ugh fine! I'll do it! You can have my such and such thing. But I don't need your stupid friend voucher, I'll just make a friend on my own!" Which I did, and that's the next flashback. I'm meeting what's her face from The Magicians (Marina I think?) and it's in this city I woke up in, but obviously many years earlier because it's not as advanced. We're laughing and joking. I snap back to the present, gasping for air. I'm still trying to piece everything together, as little bits drift back to me. Rubbing my head I walk through the city, next to this big fountain in a pond. Up ahead is this dude, who looks so much like the sixth grade kid from the very beginning, except he's a good ten or fifteen years older now. "That's strange," I think to myself. I'm so excited to see him though, someone I know, that I run to give him a hug. Ever since that night on the deck I'd really grown to like him. I had all these memories of hanging out with him and everything, and I rather had a crush on him. I remember wanting to marry him one day, and wondered why that had never happened. I couldn't remember. He's somber, smiling, but only weakly. "Do you remember what happened?" My smile fades. "What do you mean?" More flashes of the past cloud my vision. Me and Marina, getting into weird areas of science--brain science to be exact--and conducting experiments of our own. I'm in a chair, anxious but excited. She's behind me with a cap thing full of wires that looks kind of like a colander. She places it on my head. We've come up with the perfect experiment. It'll work, it has to. We've studied endlessly for this. It fades. I look to the boy. His face is apologetic, melancholy, sad. "No. No I couldn't have done that," I say shaking my head, knowing what's next. Flashes to Marina, using power tools to put long screws through the cap into my brain. I'm screaming. "But you did," the boy says, the words swirling in my head. In the flashback, my eyes roll back in my head and my body goes limp. The flashback disintegrates and I'm left standing in the shimmery city. "I'm so sorry," he says, then begins walking away, unable to look at me. "You shouldn't have done it. I should have stopped you." I stand there with my face in my hands, sobbing. I understand now. This city isn't real. This body I'm in isn't real. Somewhere out there I'm in a wheelchair, paralyzed, and hopeless. That's where my friend is, and that's why he's grown older. He's only here in the city now because he chose to come visit me. I've been stuck here for years, and I'll be stuck here for eternity, because the virtual world is the only world where I can have a semblance of a life--even though none of it is real.