Date: 11/13/2016
By naansequitur
I enter a packed dirt cave. There is a man with me, telling me the tales of the cave. "Do you want to see where the children claim to have found the slender man?" he asks. I nod. We walk to a very small pool, hardly more than a puddle. "Here." We look down into the reflections. He is taller than me, and in the reflection his body stretches ever taller, and he's wearing a black suit. "Oh my god, *he* is the slender man," I realize. But then he steps to the side and I see an even larger, more ominous reflection of a figure hanging from the ceiling, like a corn husk doll, arms stretched to its sides, a wooden bucket on its head. "Buckethead," the man says. I run. The cave opens to a wood. Up on a little ridge there is a desk. It belongs to someone I know. Under the desk I notice some dirt has been dug out, so I bend down to look further. There is a clear burrow. Something has made its home under this desk. I see some sort of animal that doesn't live around here, but I can't remember what it was. Then I see a porcupine, it's quills back. It is mostly white. I start to move away, before it sees me and feels threatened. I'm terrified of it shooting me with its quills. It starts to follow me. I move more quickly. So does it. Then I'm running running running and the porcupine is following me, just behind. I run out of the cave and into the daylight and across a sort of low levee or sea wall, right next to the water. I run to some sort of building where there are people I know. Family? My uncle Bill, maybe? I tell them there's a porcupine trying to hurt me. They are unconcerned. The porcupine must be frightened by the crowd, and leaves. I'm back in the cave, at the desk. There is scat near the mouth of the burrow. It is large. I don't know what kind of animal it's from. Maybe a wolf. I think about taking a picture of it and sending it to my mom to post in her "scat identification" Facebook group, but then I see the porcupine again. I try to move around the desk to get to where I can run for the exit, but I lose my footing and slide down a steep embankment. The porcupine doesn't follow. There is a house in the valley. Long and low. There are other signs of life, too. There is no way back up the slope, so walk forward into the settlement. There are people there, but they aren't real. They're animatronic. There seem to be real people there too, but it's hard to tell which is which. I realize I'm in Westworld, in a small settlement somewhere at the edge of the park. The people there feel non-threatening, but I don't know how to leave. I want to get out.