Is it Tuesday Yet?

Date: 4/1/2017

(Disclaimer: This is a bit of a longer one, but [in my opinion] is super interesting. I'm actually writing a story about this scenario now, and I'm creating a whole back story to it because I was so intrigued when I couldn't get it out of my head. So yeah. Enjoy.) I woke up really with a sharp gasp like you always see in the movies. I was on an uncomfortable prison bed with one pillow and a thin sheet. The entire room was white and completely empty except for one mirror on the wall. Looking down at myself, I could see that I was wearing a hospital gown but it was tied around my neck like an apron and I was wearing my clothes underneath. There was a blood stain all down my left shoulder, and it looked like the source of it was on my back. As I got out of bed, I realized that I could actually feel something on my back, and it itched more than it hurt. I reached back with my right arm and tentatively touched my lower neck, only to hiss in a mixture of disgust, pain, and shock. There was a rough patch that didn't even feel like my skin, and all around it my skin was irritated and bleeding and it felt so foreign and disgusting. My fingers were slightly damp and sticky from the blood that hadn't dried yet when I pulled my arm close to my chest. I all but ran over to the mirror and paused for a second once I saw my appearance. I looked terrified, which I was, but something about seeing my frantic expression and appearance made my heart skip a beat and my feet go cold. I learned in closer to look at my eyes and frowned at what I saw. My eyes looked deep and haunting, like a soldier back from war. I couldn't remember when I had gotten so old and weary. Brought back to my original task by the itching on my neck, I quickly untied the hospital gown (the contrast of the blood on the white fabric was also eerie to look at) and wrapped it around my fist. With nothing more than a small breath that sounded more like a gasp, I slammed my hand into the mirror, shattering it. Then I quickly bent down to pick up a shard that fell and held it behind me, so I could see the back of my neck in the remains of the fractured mirror. What I saw made me feel sick, and I still felt nauseous when I eventually woke up. There was a barcode in place of my skin. I looked around the room desperately, grasping at straws to find answers and means of escaping. On the opposite wall there was a bunch of tally marks. Like, a lot. They filled the wall. I don't remember counting them, but at some point I came to the conclusion that someone had been here for at least a year. I can only imagine how long 12 months would feel like trapped in that place. I don't really remember most of what happened next in the dream, but I know that I wanted to scream just to break the silence of only one day trapped in that room. I even found a loose screw in the bed and added my own tally mark to all the rest. I spent the whole time working desperately to get out, and I guess I found a bunch of clues that led me from one this to another. I do remember (vividly), however, when food was delivered from a slot that opened under the door. Sad. Anyways, I managed to get out of the room and crawled through a tunnel to reach a long, terrifying corridor. It was really dystopian and echoey and spooky. At some point guards must have came and I think we shouted at each other, and then eventually things led to a death for me, and all the while I was screaming, begging myself to remember. This never quite made sense to me, though it probably should have. And then I woke up. In the prison bed. Surrounded by white walls, with nothing but a mirror. Except I didn't remember what had happened the previous day, so I was terrified to find blood on a hospital gown that I was wearing for some reason. I frowned at how old my eyes looked. I stared and counted all of the tally marks on the wall. But there was one more line than I had counted the previous day, and I thought nothing of it. Because I didn't remember. All of those hundreds of tally marks were left by me. I had been trapped there for weeks, months, years. I just kept reliving the same day over and over, gradually getting more and more insane as I discovered the same secrets to some twisted government society every day. Over, and over, and over. I almost expected Heat of the Moment to play when I actually woke up in my real bed. Groundhog Day type dreams are really terrifying though, because for a while after I woke up I kept thinking that maybe I was still dreaming and I would find a bar code on my neck and wake up again after dying. Scary.