Dream Journal Ultimate
Date: 5/15/2020
By ItsABlackCat
It started with me walking through a crowd, which was in a surprisingly open area; imagine a ginormous grass field, nearly flat, with evenly cut green blades, stretching for miles in every direction; now imagine, in only a 100x100 ft area maybe, a little market area set up. The market area was just a bunch of collapsible ‘walls,’ which separated long plastic tables that held different items on top. There were about two dozen or so people working there, sitting beside their table selling their stuff. There were maybe six dozen other people walking around as customers. I was a customer. I walked around to this girl who was 13 years old at the most; I’d guess she was 10. She had hair cut in at shoulder length, with her ‘bangs’ swept to the left, and one silky, brownish-black strand was falling out of place over her eye. She wore simple clothes, her dress had floral patterns on it. She was standing calmly next to a table which had a few paintings on it. I stopped by her table almost out of pity. She was smiling, only slightly, in a sweet, sad way. She radiated innocence from her posture and body, wisdom and hidden knowledge from her eyes, and something mysterious from her smooth, childlike face, which was so calm it was almost infuriating. I looked over the paintings. They were all handmade by the girl. One painting in particular seemed to be a showcased one, it drew my attention far above the rest. It was of a simple field like ours, with colorful red and gray and blue swirls in artful colors that reminded me of Picasso’s Poppy tree. I thought nothing of the painting, and left. Later, I see someone in the crowd. He has brown hair, tan skin, and eyes that are missing the pupil and iris— they’re all white. The veins bulge from his neck. His shirt is turquoise, with a small pocket over the breast; he’s wearing blue jeans. His face looks suspicious, and, without quite knowing why, I follow him. The man ends up walking away from the crowd into the field, where he jumps down into a patch of grass that was apparently a portal, a hologram hiding an actual hole, or something else of the sort; his body passed right through the ground there like a ghost. I follow him and when I jump into the grass, I feel like I’m being sucked down. The world slips from view and my stomach flips as I’m turned upside down, and land on what should be the sky— after a split second I stop moving and my vision stops blurring, and I see that I went into a world that reminds me of how the upside down works, by which I mean I was quite literally upside down, in a version of the other world that was only eerily similar to the original. The grass is green, but it was greener on the other side (literally, as I find out later). It’s almost grayish now. The sky is covered by thick clouds, though admittedly they’re just white and light gray, it’s not a giant storm or anything. But I can’t find the sun. The little market seems run down. People are standing still, swaying on firmly planted feet; young children are the only ones who are apparently able to— or want to— move, and they hide beneath tables or behind their parents, clutching their knees with wide eyes or hidden faces, shaking, but silent. None are crying, though. The tables themselves have only ghosts of the items they did. Everything is rusted, eaten by bugs, or cobwebbed. Except one thing. I go to the girl’s table, and see that same painting intact. It’s almost moving, when I look at it I imagine (or did I imagine it?) the red and gray swirls whirling about the white sky of the painting. But I blink and it’s normal and so I brush off the strange feeling like a cobweb. The girl herself seems frozen; then, as I go to move away, I see her eyes follow me. She has that same smile. I move away more quickly, and find the man on the opposite side of the field. He’s doing what looks like a rain dance, only more sinister, and chanting things I shouldn’t understand in a language I don’t know. Something about bloodshed, wrath, and fury; about the draw of the promise of glory. Then, a tornado starts forming above him. As I watch, flames engulf the entire thing. In the dream I spend the next few minutes (hours?) trying to stop the man and the tornado. I run at him first, and grapple with him on the plasticky grass over the totem thing he holds in his hand. I eventually get it but he kicks my feet from under me and we fight some more. Finally, I get the totem, for good this time; the tornado doesn’t seem to want to move away from the totem. I throw it as far away as I can and turn to face the man, but he’s gone. I don’t know what to think. My heart sinks, though. I feel something off. Almost like the air is charged. I go back and find the hole in the ground. This time I can see it. It looks exactly like this: 🕳 only the rim is smoothed dirt. I jump back through and emerge in the ‘real’ world. It’s in ruins. The sky is white, like the other one. The grass has been pulled up by the roots in many places, so that the field now looks like mother nature’s balding, earthen head. Collapsible walls are collapsed or just gone, and tables upturned, tossed through the air, or missing. I hear screaming, and smell ash, before my eyes register what they’re seeing. The tornado from earlier swirls around the tables and market area. Fire licks up the sides of the harsh winds, catching everywhere it can. I see bursts of flame accompanied by screams and try not to think of what’s happening. Items are thrown by the storm. Strangely, the tornado is all— no rain, thunder, or lightning; no winds other than its own; it’s obvious that the tornado isn’t natural. I spot the man in the center of it all, grinning. He’d tricked me: while I’d been busy trying to save everyone, trying to play the hero, he’d been busy doing what he really planned in the real world. I forgot where I really stand and thought that I could save everyone, even those still, lifeless shells of another world. I abandoned my own world for them, and they’re probably not even real. I run over and the same thing happens as earlier, but the man doesn’t fight has hard. He’s already gotten what he wanted. Chaos. The world echoes through my mind in the dream, as I snap the totem over my knee. The tornado disappears, and with it, the white-eyed man. I look around at the ruins. A dozen or so people have survived, and they start grouping up, assessing injuries and checking the dead. Only one table is intact. I run over to it. The girl stands there and looks up at me. She doesn’t have to say anything. I look more closely at the painting. The sky’s whiteness matches the one above; the layers of gray and orange and red swirls almost move like the tornado for all their realism. I notice things I didn’t before. How the grass is missing like it is now, torn up by the roots. How little blots of red in the tornado and on the ground are surely those bursts of flame I saw whenever something— or someone, though I shudder at the thought— would catch fire. I even notice how the entire painting has that charged feel to it, a calm before a storm when neither exist. I look at the girl and want to say sorry. She had tried to warn me and I’d charged ahead in the idiocy of heroism and goodness, and forgot to check myself. I go over to aid the people. They seem thankful, though I hate myself for it. I help to organize them into groups of most to least injured, assign parties to go look for whatever they can scavenge from the ruins of the tornado, and help however I can to assist the single doctor of the crowd who was trying to tie off bleeding limbs, tear wreckage from people’s skin, treat third-degree burns with no more than some cloth, and place rags burnt with fire over burning heads. The girl stands off to the side and watches. The painting watches me. In her hands she holds a new one, which she seems to be concentrating on. When someone comments on how she should be helping, I say very forcefully that she needs to keep doing what she’s doing. Nobody challenges me except the fiery painting, which seems to move more than ever now.