WARNING: Long, includes extremely mature and upsetting subjects.
I am seriously terrified about what happened last night. First off, there is a theory that, when you dream, you’re actually getting a glimpse of the lives of other versions of you in different universes. For a few years, I’ve mildly supported this theory because of my own dreams seeming to be connected. However, after last night, I definitely support this theory, though I cannot and will not say that it is true, because I don’t know for a fact that that’s what’s happening.
So I’ve already mentioned that my dreams have ongoing story lines, and that there are many things, people, and places that frequently appear. I will now write this entry as if the dream/multiverse theory is a proven fact. If I put an asterisk next to something, it means I’ve confirmed it’s in the same universe as last night’s dream.
Places that exist in one or more of the other universes I go to:
- A bakery- located on the corner of two streets in a town that resembles somewhere in Germany or Italy. There is a dark green metal lamp post, the type you’d see in an old fashioned town, and the walking areas outside of the street are cobblestone like this:
In this picture it seems to have been raining, but in this town, the stones are all nearly the same shade of light grey. I usually find this bakery if I’m walking around a large building, and after I turn a corner, I see it sitting in a big plaza, and directly across from it is a magazine kiosk. The bakery sells many cakes, cupcakes, and other pastries, but they also have cookies, most notably the giant M&M cookie. It’s about five inches in diameter and has M&Ms replacing chocolate chips. I always get really excited when I find it because their sweets are REALLY good, but there’s always a line. Since the bakery is small, the line leads out the door.
- The hotel- I usually go here on a choir trip. It’s very nice, but very big, having one hundred floors. Floors eighty-eight through on hundred are desolate, dark, industrial, rusty, and bloody, resembling something from a Silent Hill game. There are monsters that try to attack you, though they’re pretty easy to run from. The elevators here don’t continue up, but you have to find a completely separate elevator to get to the next floor. On floor one hundred is Pyramid Head, who can also be outrun, and a set of stairs brings you up to the roof. This is the safe spot. The concrete is normal, but the sky is overcast, and it’s foggy. If you look down or in the distance, there are no other buildings, just fog and nothingness. The hotel itself is advertised to be only eighty-seven floors, the rest being for storage or something, but the main elevator can go up one more level, which I discovered by accident when trying to find my room. I always get lost on the floors and in the halls because there are so many, and I don’t have my room key for some reason. The lobby is really nice, large, and has a red and chocolate brown color scheme, the carpet and furniture embroidered with gold colored thread in flattering designs. In the very center is a lounge with armchairs, and in the vicinity are many different shops, overpriced of course, including a Starbucks. Sometimes the floors are slanted, or halls go around in circles… the halls aren’t circles, they just connect in a way where they lead you to the place you started before. During Halloween, there’s a sort of obstacle course in the halls you can go through, and if you make it within a certain time limit, you can win prizes.
- The small school*- the halls are outdoors, and it’s a high school. The front is huge and grassy, and there’s a roundabout for the buses. If you’re looking at the school from the front, there is a hall to the far right, and to the far left are several concrete steps with the library sitting on top. It’s designed like a Roman building with pillars. Immediately after the library is the cafeteria. At the beginning of the hall on the far right are the office, nurse, and a window where you can pick up your schedule or ask to see lost and found. You also have to visit this window if you arrive to school late. All of the halls have overhangs, so they’re all shaded. It’s actually built on an ascending slope, so concrete steps were installed to go up to other classrooms. The slope is decently steep, and there are three levels. On the third level to the furthest right is my Geometry class, and the teacher is male, a bit older, and very nice, funny too. The classroom is large, and his desk is to the left, and in front is the pulled down projector screen. I’ve missed a lot of work because of my time in the hospital, which is also the reason I can’t perform in the choir concert because I can’t learn the music and choreography in time. Sempai is in my grade at this school, but we don’t share any classes. I have a group of four bullies, which I will explain later, and one other friend who is male, though I can’t remember his name. My English teacher is a skinny woman in her early thirties, has long, straight blonde hair, and HATES ME. I have no idea why, because I’m not a bad student save for my grades plummeting due to my hospital stay. I try to focus on my work, but she like… insults me in a very personal way, says I was faking sick, says I’m an ugly little brat, that she feels sorry for my parents (who are different than in this universe), and just acts like an immature bully. If I do the slightest thing wrong, she makes a big deal out of it in front of the class, though no one laughs, all agreeing that this treatment is unfair. In science, the female teacher has shoulder length dark brown hair, and she is much nicer. A lot of my classmates really like me, some of the boys flirt with me, but I’m really shy around everyone. I sit in the back of the class next to a girl with dark blonde hair and glasses. PE has been different for each year I’ve been there; swimming, track, and weight lifting. Speaking of the latter, I was put in a dancing class at the beginning of the year, but it was a mistake, and was transferred to this one. I was unable to attend my senior year because of an accident and another, much longer, hospital stay.
- The larger school- this school resembles the high school I went to in this universe, except much larger, different layout, and it’s divided into three sections, one for elementary schoolers, one for middle schoolers, and one for high schoolers. I was a student here since kindergarten. After I graduated the first time, I took a year to myself, and then I went back to do another four years of high school, because you’re allowed to do that to raise your GPA. I’ve graduated three times, and am currently in my senior year of my fourth run, and it’s nearing exam time, but I’ve slacked off so much because I push myself too hard, and I don’t do my homework. I don’t pay attention in class, and I often fall asleep. I am considering just dropping out because it won’t do me any harm since I graduated the required first time already. The elementary school classrooms are actually in trailers that are painted colorfully on the outside, and the number of students per class is quite small. I’ve tutored the middle schoolers, up until one class of sixth graders accused me of being male, and they pulled down my pants to check. I smacked the shit out of one boy, so I’m not allowed in the middle school section anymore. I actually remember being a student in earlier grades, and in fifth grade, other kids wanted to be my friend, but I didn’t speak much and preferred to be alone. I don’t remember much of middle school.
- The hospital*- I’ve been here a few times. The first time was mid junior year, as I mentioned before, and it was because I kept falling asleep at odd moments in class, and if a teacher tried to wake me up, my vision would be blurry, my body heavy, and I’d hallucinate. I could hear classmates laughing and making fun of me, especially when my French teacher tried to get me to stand, but I collapsed to the floor. While hallucinating, I thought she was a threat, so I told her to “get the fuck away from me.” She thought I was acting or something, but when she tried to send me out of class to go to the principal’s office, I started throwing up this gooey substance that wouldn’t come out all the way, sticking to the insides of my throat and making me choke. I stayed in the hospital for a few months, but I don’t remember it because I slept through most of it. Apparently I had a dormant sleeping illness that decided to wake up. Once it calmed down again, I was released, but every so often, I cough up a large amount of that goo, and sometimes I have to try and pull it all the way out with my fingers. Sometimes I will have relapses where I feel very drowsy, and that doesn’t help my grades. The second time was at the end of summer before senior year due to a traumatic accident I will explain later. The third was a pregnancy scare in early adulthood, which was REALLY strange because I had another sleeping relapse, and the pregnancy was discovered after being taken to the hospital. When they told me, I was still drowsy and heavy, but I told them to take it out, though they said it was too early. I told them that I didn’t care, to open me up and take it out. When they did, the fetus was still a microscopic blob of cells (how they detected it, I have no idea). I looked at it through the microscope, and they said it wasn’t too late to put back in, but I told them to get rid of it.
- The entertainment center- Outside is a small farm that sells vegetables, has only three chickens, one horse, and a goat. When you get inside, there’s an arcade, dimly lit, but the games are all flashing bright colors. The floor looks like this:
Except it has more blue patches and it’s darker. If you go up a ramp to the right, you’ll find a door, and that leads to the next section, which is super colorful, mostly pink, though, and there are fun things you can buy, and other fun activities to do. There’s a maze room where you have to navigate through while being stalked by a guy dressed as a tree, and if he catches you, you lose. You can start over, or leave. There’s a library filled with family friendly books, and there’s also a large area dedicated to more physical games. One is a complicated metal track that you run on. You have specialized shoes that allow you to run at fast speeds without falling. You can run faster than usual, but your speed still depends on how fast you can run normally. There are pads on the track for you to step on, and they zoom you forward even faster for a few seconds, but you don’t run, you slide. It’s not a race, your goal is to beat the highest time scored before you, though you can treat it like a race if multiple people are on it at the same time. There’s a laser tag course with multiple rooms, but you don’t just use a light gun, there are multiple “weapons,” like grenades that will trigger your censor if they “blow up” close enough to you, swords and knives that you have to use to strike the trigger of an opponent, missile launchers that shoot balls of light that can hit the trigger if it hits the opponent anywhere on the body, and a multitude of different light guns that have different abilities. They are all harmless, of course. Then there’s a giant trampoline gym with an enormous cube about ten stories tall. The outside walls are mesh so you don’t hurt yourself. It’s full of trampoline platforms for you to jump on, and that’s the only point, no scores or anything like that. There’s more, but I can’t remember right now, though I think I remember a fishing game. This entire section goes up a few floors, and if you want to return to the ground floor where the arcade is, you can either take the elevator, or take one of the slides that drop you into a pit full of pillows. Near the pillows are “luck and chance” games. Oh, and in the middle of the arcade is a huge digital screen that shows a number of video game trailers on a loop.
- The forest*- There are two things about this forest that let me know it’s the same one, and I just found out last night that both of these things are in the same universe and same forest. It’s a vast forest located on the outskirts of a play park that’s always empty. The further you go, the darker it gets, but it’s absolutely beautiful, rays of golden sunshine falling to the leaf strewn ground through the tops of the trees, all of the plants are very green, and the dust particles in the air reflect light, so it looks all sparkly. The first thing I ever found here was when I got lost in the evening, and it’s in the very center. It’s the biggest tree, and it’s about the size of a small redwood. The trunk is a light brown, and seems to grow in a helix like this:
Except the base is fat and it tapers to a smaller width about six feet up. I get nervous around this tree because there are large openings between the twists where heavy spider webs have been made, and millions of spiders dwell here. However, I can find a spot to climb without getting spiders on me, and I climb up so far, I’m above the other trees. Up here are small houses where little tree nymphs live. They were frightened by me at first, but when they realized I wasn’t going to hurt them, they’d welcome me, and we’d have tea. Apparently it was rare for a human to find this tree since the forest was so vast. The second thing was also discovered by accident at a different date. I was walking around, and I saw a couple of children run passed me, and then just vanished through an invisible wall that rippled everything beyond it. I had my video camera with me for some reason, so I turned it on and went toward where they disappeared. When I went through the wall, the forest became darker, but now all plant life was either pink or purple, the air actually had sparkling particles floating around, and everything looked so mystical. I saw the kids vanish into the trees. I looked behind me and saw two more kids approaching, but they were colorless, right up until they cleared the threshold. One looked at me and said, “you’re not supposed to be here.” Then they ran off. I stepped back out of the barrier, and the forest was normal again, and then I reentered, checking my camera’s display to make sure I was seeing everything right. I definitely was. Despite the kid’s warning, I started to explore, passing by a few human children, as well as some fairies and other creatures that didn’t exist in my world. When seeing the camera, they would whisper to each other and try to conceal themselves. I ended up meeting the forest maiden, and she was very angry that I had found my way into this place, saying that I would expose their sanctuary with the footage I had taken and ruin their lives. She started to throw fire balls at me that didn’t burn anything but their target, and I ran as fast as I could until I was back to my world. Apparently the things that existed there could not come with. I rewatched what I caught on camera, wanting to share it with someone, but I knew she was right; humans are evil, so instead of finding something like this and wishing to leave it be, they’d want to study it and intrude on those creatures’ lives. So I went back in and confronted the maiden, getting to my knees and showing her the camera. I deleted the video in front of her and set it on the ground to show that I had no intention of exposing them. That’s when the maiden explained that not many humans find their way in this part of the forest because you have to have good intentions to pass through the dimensional wall. Anyone else would walk through it as if it weren’t there. This explained why it was only children who came in, and why so few. Since then, I’ve been accepted as one of their visitors, and on more than one occasion have been invited back to play games. One time, a child approached me and whispered that the maiden requested me by name. When I came to her, she told me that there has been another adult who enters the enchanted forest, and she says she’s peaceful, but her behavior is much unlike mine. All of the creatures, and even the kids suspect that she’s some kind of spy, so the maiden wanted me to get acquainted with her and learn what she was up to. It was true, the government had sent her in to observe everything so they could take it over and use the forest and its creatures as weapons of war. She had gotten in because her “good intentions” meant doing good for the benefit of the government, a fluke the maiden had not foreseen. She put extra protection around her forest, and we were able to throw the spy out, and we could see her trying to pass through as a colorless, silent entity, but even though she appeared to be in our forest, she was still in her world. A few days later, government officials came around, and we saw them, colorless as well, wandering around the forest to try and find the dimensional wall with the spy’s help. After many long hours, they gave up, believing that she was lying. Since then, it’s been peaceful once more.
- The library- A large library that’s usually pretty empty, but there is always a hidden nook that no one knows about that’s a paper sculpture, a miniature version of the library. A little paper monk lives there. It’s mentioned in this dream: My Mind REALLY Wants Me to Kill Myself
- The road on the cliff*- in order to get to a certain neighborhood, you have to drive up a huge hill (or small mountain), and there’s this really sharp turn where the road is thin, and there’s no barrier, though, even if there was, I don’t think it would do much. One must take this corner incredibly slowly and carefully, or else your vehicle will fall off of the cliff and into the rocks below. During the day, this turn is scary, and I have to close my eyes and hope the driver has had enough experience, though there have been a few scares with some people. At night, there are no lights, it’s pitch black, and in order to survive this turn, you must have a small car and be an EXPERT at taking it, and I’ve only met one woman who can do this.
- The mall*- I just found out last night that this mall is in this same universe. It’s large with five floors, lots of awesome restaurants in the food court, expensive makeup stores, cool clothing stores, and bright LCD screens as store signs instead of plain old ones. The elevators are half circles with transparent glass walls. There’s a candy store where you ride an escalator up for a few minutes, and candy is hung from garlands. You take down what you want and buy it at the top, though you’re being watched, so if you eat something and not pay for it, they force you to pay. There’s a beauty supply store were all walls, displays, floor, and ceiling are pure white, and their products are way too expensive. On the third floor is a fountain that creates a waterfall that reaches the first floor into a pool, and the water recycles back up to fall down again. There are colorful lights behind the fall so that the water appears to be multicolored. I get lost often because of how big the place is.
- Glitched LSD game- there’s a version of LSD: Dream Emulator that has way more content than the original, and supports multiplayer. One time, two of my friends and I ended up getting sucked into the game and lost in its code, so everything was really glitchy. We’d often get separated if we Linked with something unless we were holding hands, and we couldn’t figure out how to escape. It took us quite awhile to figure out that we’d be let out at random, but if one of us got out, they could reset the game, and it’d shove us out. On days where we have nothing important to do, we play the game with the intention to get sucked in, and we play around until one of us gets kicked out, and that can take from ten minutes to an hour, though if we want to stay longer, we can just go back in. When we get separated, we can still hear each other speak, and sometimes, if we’re spawned in the same place after being separated, we’ll be moving at different speeds or have wonky textures.
- The fountain- There’s a fountain with a female fairy standing in the middle of a circle, pouring water into the circle with a thimble held above her head. It’s in the middle of a zen park full of blossoming cherry trees. Beneath the fairy’s foot is a hidden latch, once opened, it reveals a ring box, black. Opening the ring box, it has no pillow, but is empty, with a heart-shaped locket that needs a key. There is an inscription carved on the back that looks like a Celtic design, but using a magnifying glass, you can read the words that say, “to open the lock, you must find the key. Find the key and you may bow beneath me, but you must search beneath to find the key. Your heart will guide you.” The first time I found this box (by accident), I had to search for days, not even understanding the clue to begin with. The lock was the locket, obviously, and it needed a key. Long story short, I figured out that “beneath me” meant the water in the fountain, and to search “beneath” meant that they key was underwater somewhere. The “heart” was the locket, and after searching many places around water, the necklace fell out of my hand near a fishing bridge, and sank to the bottom of the lake. When I swam down to get it, something under the bridge glinted, and it was a key. I opened the locket with it and found a small, flat, dark grey stone, which I brought back to the fountain. Searched the statue and found a small heart carved in her wing, and in the middle was a round depression that I placed the stone into. Around the base the fairy was standing on, four slots opened, and the water fell into them. I climbed into the fountain to discover I could crawl through one of these (bowing beneath the fairy), which I had to hold my breath to do so. Once I got through, I found myself in a shallow spring in the middle of a gorgeous garden. The only living creatures were the plants and the insects, so it was safe to assume the locket was rarely ever found, let alone opened. I hardly find the fountain anymore, but when I do, I can reach the garden if I locate the key again.
- The city- There’s a large city that resembles LA where I get lost and can’t find my way home. If it’s sunny, I get horribly sunburnt and develop sun sickness, which I’ve had before in this world. Advice: wear sunscreen!
- The attic*- A secret attic I can get to at a friend’s house that only she knows about. It actually exists above the real attic, it just has a secret door. You have to squeeze through wall foam (thankfully not fiberglass) to get to it, but there’s a lot of neat stuff up there.
- The bathrooms- I don’t know exactly where these are, but there are public bathrooms with stall doors that are small and short. They reveal you from the shoulders up when you sit on a toilet, which is tall and hard to get on, and underneath, the door rises high enough to expose right below your knee and down if you’re standing. Not only that, but it’s hard to lock the doors because they’re too small to fit the frames, so sometimes you have to hold them closed. The floors are nasty, and all of the toilets haven’t been flushed since the last time they were used, and they are filled nearly to the top, so I end up deciding that I’d rather just hold it in.
I know there’s more, but I can’t think of them right now. These are people and things that regularly appear:
- My toy box- a very large, plastic crate filled with old toys. I’m always trying to find a specific one, but I never can. One time, Mike teamed up with all of my exes to fake his death so he didn’t have to break up with me, but when I found out, I started picking them off, but when Tyler retaliated, he dropped my toy box from a plane, and I tried to grab onto it and save it by using my parachute, and I hit the ground decently hard.
- Mephistopheles- AKA Satan. I’m his protégé, and sometimes I can call for him if things get bad. Sometimes he doesn’t come.
- Too many rodents- I have cages filled with rats, hamsters, mice, and I have a couple guinea pigs. I thought they’d be gone after I set them free (which you should never do), but I guess not. I forget to feed them, they mate and have babies, some which get eaten or die of malnourishment. I can’t remember any of their names, and sometimes they escape, so I have to round them up.
- The two-way mirror- A mirror that appears whenever I’m in a large house, usually a mansion. It’s at the end of the hall, and you can see through into a room, the mirror side obviously facing away. There’s no way to get into the room, and the mirror can’t break. The room inside is dark and cluttered, looking abandoned, but sometimes if you glance at it, there will be a ghostly girl with your typical long black hair in front of her face. If you see her, you have to look away, for if you look at her too long, she’ll crawl out of the mirror and run up to you, killing you. Sometimes I get brave and let her run up to me, but I’ve never been killed, and no other deaths have been reported, so that’s probably a myth.
- Bad Michael- A version of my boyfriend that’s very fat and extremely mean. He likes to toy with my emotions by threatening to leave me, he purposefully hides my meds so that I’m easy to upset, he cheats on me, tells me he’s tired of my shit and doesn’t love me, and only acts like he loves me when he wants to have sex. I’ve tried to kill him a number of times, but I always fail for one reason or another.
- Good Michael*- A version that resembles this universe’s Mike, but he’s a bit more sensitive. He treats me well, but he’s sort of a coward. He tries to protect me, but let’s me handle things because I’m physically strong and crazy as hell.
- Erin- She appears in many forms, so obviously in different universes. More often than not, she’s like how she is in this universe, but every so often, she will actually be a mother.
- Dad’s side of the family- They are just like the real family, except they don’t pretend to be nice. I get yelled at for having opinions, and I don’t have my meds, so I have attacks.
- Abilities*- Over the course of my life, I’ve learned to fly, though sometimes I still have difficulty and only float. In some dreams, I can pause and rewind as if it were a program. I can point at someone or something and say “burn” or “fire” to set it aflame, and less used are “lightning,” “suffocate,” and “snap” to break their neck. The fire one is most successful, but sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes I can change things into other things, but this is rare. I have increased strength, become upset more easily, can kick almost anyone’s ass, can run for longer periods of time without getting tired. I can play the piano and sing a hundred times better than I can in this universe, and I can also scream at such high pitches, it can cause people to black out for a minute or so, and those who don’t black out are still immobilized by covering their ears, which barely deafens the sound. I am also extremely gorgeous and sexy and attract the attention of many guys, sometimes girls.
- I’m a murderer- There’s one universe where, two years ago, I killed a girl. I’m still friends with Ariel in this universe, and Emma is also there. The girl was in high school, whereas I am not, and she was kidnapped by some guy. I ended up coming across a small, run down house that was poorly taken care of, a Rottweiler behind a flimsy aluminum fence, and the guy has an old truck that looks like this:
He saw me when I was walking by, held up a gun and told me to get into the house. I did as he said, and I found the girl hand cuffed to a vent in the wall. She was filthy and skinnier than she was before, but otherwise appeared unharmed. She was blonde like I was, and apparently this guy was collecting blonde women within our age range. He never told us why, and he never raped either of us. While he was trying to tie me to a chair (not having a second pair of cuffs), I overpowered him, took his gun, and shot him in the head. Then, just for the thrill of it, I found a steak knife in the kitchen and sliced the girl’s throat. I had no other reason but to see what it felt like. I was actually pretty proud of myself. I dragged her body out to the shallow creek and dumped it,believing, for some reason, that it would never be found. However, the creek dried up every summer, so they found her body, as well as the guy’s in the house further up the road. They did not link him as the kidnapper, but another victim. They found little evidence on her body, most washed away by the current, but did find a fingerprint and some hair. When the discovery was televised, they announced that there would be police stationed around the city for random hair and fingerprint checks, which made me panic. The first time they checked my fingerprint, I was nervous, but stayed calm, for I knew how the process of matching fingerprints worked, and that it was very possible for me to pass. I did. Later in the year, I got hair checked, where they pulled a hair, put it in a vile, and sent them to the lab. I still didn’t get caught, though because of my behavior, Ariel started to suspect me. One day, she asked me if I killed the girl, and I said no, but I guess something showed on my face that told her I was lying. She was terrified of me, and knew that, since she figured it out, I could kill her too. To remain safe, Ariel went to the cops and admitted to the murder. This happened two weeks ago in real time. After finding out she’d be put to death, she changed her story to accuse me, but I played it cool and said, “but Ariel already confessed.” I was later apprehended because my previous hair check was a false negative, and I’m currently on trial. I’m hiding my guilt well by acting scared, weak, and crying.
- The weird video game- It’s a small, handheld standalone game with simple, pixilated art, cute sounds and music, and no color. It looks older than a Gameboy, is perfectly square, has a yellow plastic frame with a couple of small pink flowers, and its title starts with an M. The main character is a girl named Chiko that has many animal friends, though the animals look strange. The game only consists of a bunch of mini games, and if you fail five times as a whole while playing them, Chiko says that the game will shut off forever and can’t be replayed. The title screen has a very calm and soothing chip tune playing. However, the mini games are designed for failure. When you enter one, you have to start doing it right immediately, or you lose. The first one is where Chiko is riding a horse-like creature, and you’re supposed to trample over letters to form words that fit in the spaces below, but there is no “three, two, one, go,” you start running right away, and the letters come at you so fast, I trampled the wrong one at the very start. Chiko says (through text), “oh fiddlesticks! You lost! Try again, I know you’ll get it this time!” There’s no option to return to the menu, no saves, you have to play straight through in one sitting. I failed the second time, and she said, “come on! You lost twice at the same game? Do better!” I said to her, “well it’s not fair that it’s so fast and I’m not even ready!” I was shocked when she replied to me. “You just need to be better, you can’t EVER make a mistake!” My third try, I made it halfway through, which took a good five minutes, but I lost again, and Chiko was staring up at me and crying. “You have to be perfect! Why can’t you just be perfect?!” I finally beat the game on my fourth try, and she gave me an unsettling smile, saying, “you only have two more chances! You can’t lose again, you must always succeed!” Her animal friends didn’t look quite as happy anymore. The next game, she was flying on a birdlike creature, once again starting without warning. The point of the game was to pop the black balloons as you flew to the left, but avoid the ones with spikes, which were kind of hard to see. As soon as the game started, there was a spikey balloon literally right in front of the sprite, and Chiko said, “you’re useless! Can’t you do ANYTHING right?!” I got mad and said, “fuck you! That one was impossible!” I turned the game off, and then back on to restart. The animals still did not look happy, and now there were lyrics to the title song on the screen, but I don’t remember them. Even though there was no save data, Chiko said, “welcome back!” I had to do the spelling game, which I won the first time, but I lost two lives to that stupid balloon in the second game. I managed to get passed it by mashing the down button repeatedly during the transition, and after that, I managed to succeed. “Well, finally you do SOMETHING right!” I was getting sick of her. The animals were singing again, showing another verse of the song, but the tune was a bit slower and in a minor key instead of major. In the next mini game, you had to launch little spherical pigs at clouds to hit them, but Chiko said, “sure is windy!” and the clouds went by so fast, I could hardly aim. I shot a pig, which made a horrendous screeching sound in 8-bit, and I missed a cloud, losing my third life. “YOU’RE WORTHLESS! YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT!!” I tried again and missed. “I HATE YOU!! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!” I decided I was fed up, and this time, when I turned it off, I didn’t restart it. I left it on the table to perhaps try again later, but as I walked away, the title screen tune started playing. I came back to see that it turned itself on, and Chiko’s face took up the entire screen, having more pixels to show more detail. She was cute, little circles on her cheeks for blush, and she looked incredibly angry, though the puffy cheeks, pout, and furrow in her brow was still adorable. Then the screen shattered, pixels flooding out like blood from a fatal wound, but the pixels started building themselves into Chiko and all of her friends. Once they were built, their quality increased, gaining color, until they became real like me. I was terrified to say the least, and so were her friends. Chiko’s eyes were red, and she didn’t look so cute anymore, furious and charging at me. I was too shocked to respond right away, and she gripped my arm. I yelled in pain, a small bit of skin peeling easily off of my arm like a wet sticker. Her friends urged me to run, and I did. They would help try to hide me, and while I was with them, they told me that I had to send her back into the game and either complete it or lose to it. It took until midnight to figure out that, in order to return them all to their game, I had to sing the words to the title music. It was hard to remember, but the animals helped me, and Chiko eventually went back into the device. I ended up playing the game until I lost all five lives in the cloud game, and it was true, the handheld shut off and couldn’t turn back on. I threw it away, never wanting to see it again. However, I’ve seen it multiple times. I was in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, and it was sitting on a chair, all alone, staying on the title screen, though the volume was turned all the way down. When I glanced at it in shock, Chiko’s face filled the screen again, happy this time, and said, “play with me!” I ignored it. Another time, I was volunteering at an animal shelter, and I heard the tune coming from another volunteer’s handbag. I inquired about it, and she pulled out another handheld. She said, “it keeps turning on by itself, but it’s so hard, I can’t beat it! I keep trying like every half hour!” Finally, I asked to borrow it, and she agreed, saying it’d be a relief to get rid of the thing, and I took it home. I played for days, carrying it around when I went places, trying desperately to beat it, hoping that it’d leave me alone if I did. It took a good week before I finally beat it, and where the credits should’ve been, the screen played the tune and the lyrics scrolled slowly up the screen. When it was done, Chiko said, “see you later!” and it shut off. I couldn’t turn it back on again. At last, I was at a convention in China, I think, and there was a booth with stuffed animals of characters I didn’t recognize. I saw a round, fat version of the girl, and my stomach plummeted. Still, I asked the guy how much it was (I could speak Mandarin for some reason), and he said he’d never seen it before, so he sold it to me for dirt cheap. Even though I felt like an idiot doing so, I asked the plushie, “Chiko, is that really you?” She came to life and told me that, because I beat her game, we were friends forever, so I had no choice but to take her everywhere I went, though she stayed silent when she needed to, was always sweet, and never got hostile, though she’d get mad if I forgot her. I didn’t want to risk her attacking me, so I made sure not to forget her. I haven’t seen the handheld since.
- Wings*- sometimes I can’t fly on my own, but have these “wings” made of fabric that I wore on my back. I can easily grab the black plastic batons in my hands to stretch them out under my arms, and I can glide or flap, though flapping is very difficult, so I usually just glide.
- My bullies*- (I know there are more things, but I can’t think of them.) This is a group of four guys I met in my freshman year at the small school. There is Max, a boy about my height with brown, curly hair. He looks to be the weakest, and is only a bully because he doesn’t want them to pick on him too. If I ever encounter Max alone, like in one of my classes, he’s nice, and when the guys push me around, he gives me apologetic expressions, and sometimes tries to reason with the others. It doesn’t work. Max has a crush on me. Next is a short Mexican dude whose name I do not know, so I’m just going to call him Jose. He usually doesn’t speak, just laughs and sneers at me. Since he’s small, he can sneak up on me to mess with me in some way. Then there’s a guy a bit taller than Max, and he’s kind of fat and dumb, and he’s the muscle of the group. I don’t know his name, so I’ll call him John. He’s blonde and wears grey t-shirts. The last is the leader, and his name always starts with an R, so I’m going to call him Randy. He’s the tallest, extremely skinny and lanky, his brunette hair is buzzed, dresses in dark clothing as if he were going to rob someone’s house at night, but all things aside, he was actually kind of attractive. I had never done anything to these kids. The first time I saw them in a dream, Randy and his friends got into some trouble with the law, and they were on the run in a car. He had a gun, and Max had bailed, saying he wasn’t part of it. I was sitting on some concrete beneath the overhang of a building, and there was a soda machine, and I was very unhappy, drawing in chalk. I had seen them on the news earlier that day, and though this was the first time I had ever seen him, I now realize that that version of me already knew them, because they were all adults at the time. I was depressed because I saw that it had been them, and wasn’t surprised to see Randy run up to me after crashing the car and killing Jose. Randy was panicking, pointing the gun at me and looking scared out of his mind. He said, “did you see me kill those people?!” The gun pointed at me was shaking in his trembling hand. I looked up at him and said, “I don’t blame you for being the kind of person you are.” I continued drawing, and Randy lowered the gun, saying, “have you… killed someone…?” I took a quarter from my pocket and rolled it to him. “Like Charles Manson said, ‘believe me, if I started murdering people, there’d be none of you left.” I couldn’t remember why I gave him the quarter, but now I do. He stared at me, then snatched up the quarter, and ran. John was nowhere to be seen. I think Randy used the quarter on a payphone to call someone for help, but he was arrested for the second time since I had known him. He had asked if I killed someone, and earlier that day, I used the abandoned school building to lure people in to join a club. I said that we were going to make a change to the way society ran, and directed them to a hole in the concrete where a ladder was. Once they went down, they met a spiked device that snapped closed on them like a giant bear trap. Some of them were still alive, so I’d pull them up to watch them die, just talking to them. I was never happy, and I understand why; That universe, in a way, is worse than this one.
In school, the group would snigger at me if they passed me in the hall. As time went on, it escalated to them throwing insults at me. I didn’t understand. I was pretty, so what could they be laughing at? In sophomore year, the boys would actually push me around, hit me, kick me, or keep me from getting somewhere by holding me until I did whatever embarrassing thing they told me to do. Randy once said I had to give him a blow job, but at the time, Max was braver, and he told Randy that was going too far. After that, Randy was so horrible to Max, he became the coward that he is and could barely stand up for me, let alone himself. I remember confronting Max in Science class in my junior year before I got sick, reminding him of that moment, but he couldn’t bring himself to be brave again.
The harassment got even worse, and during the summer before junior year, I was riding my bike home after spending some time at the empty football field with my friends, and my chest tightened when I saw them under the stone bridge I had to go under. I contemplated taking a detour, but I had to meet curfew, so instead, I sped up. However, Randy was a reckless, dangerous bastard, so he stepped right in front of me and grabbed my front tire, which tore up the palm of his hand pretty nicely, but he didn’t care. I told them to just let me pass (Max was standing far away, not looking at me), but Randy held out what looked like a white Smartie. “I’m sorry,” he said, “maybe I just like you.” I couldn’t help but blush because he was cute, and like the stupid teenager I was, I took the “candy” and ate it. Max summoned his bravery when it was too late. He turned and shouted, “don’t eat it!” but it was already dissolving. I became heavy and woozy, for I had been drugged. Expecting me to soon collapse to the ground, Randy turned on Max and started beating the shit out of him. My determination kept me conscious, and even though my vision was blurry and I felt nauseous, I pedaled as fast as I could to get home. I heard Randy curse behind me, unable to run fast enough to catch me.
I was horrified that I had been drugged, and I had to tell mom (whom I’ve never actually seen in this universe). I got home, which was a small blue house that was second to last on the street, and stumbled inside, locking the doors and windows and closing the curtains. I fell onto the couch and cried until I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I heard the boys’ voices outside calling my name, and I peeked through the curtain to see them in front of my porch. I went upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom. They never tried that again, knowing I would never accept anything edible from them a second time.
As junior year rolled around, I ended up having to ride the bus with Max, John, and Randy. Randy would force me to sit between a window and max, and he and John would sit behind me. Max would stay silent, but John snickered as Randy teased me, but he would play with my hair and rub my shoulder. I hated him, but the actions gave me butterflies. In the halls, the physical violence calmed down, and if I ever came across Randy alone, he’d actually become a bit flirtatious, which made me so confused. I did not want to develop a crush on the guy who has tormented me since I met him! He not only drugged me, but he got in trouble all the time, spray painting walls, picking fights at school, and he had been suspended a number of times for various things. He was in my Geometry class, and I sat behind him in the row next to his. He came back from a two week suspension, gave me an emotionless look, and then sat down.
Later, Max told me to avoid Randy at all costs, and he even tried his best to avoid him and the others. Jose was always sneaking up on me and trying to steal things from my backpack, but I was alert now, and he never got away with it. Randy started telling him off, and John took his flirty insults as harassment, and not the kind of teasing a boy does to a girl when he likes her. I avoided his eyes and never said a word, even when he put his arm around me, or started sitting next to me on the bus and forcing me to sit with my legs over his lap.
Then I collapsed and had to go to the hospital as previously mentioned. Like I said, I slept through most of it, so I don’t remember much. When I got back to school, Randy stopped picking on me. He’d look at me, but he wouldn’t say anything, and he and his friends passed by me in the hall without any form of conflict. Randy had obviously instructed his friends to ignore me. I was in the library one day, and I ran into Randy in the non-fiction section, and he quietly asked me if I was feeling okay. “Why do you care?” I hissed, but his expression was of deep concern. He said, “maybe I just like you,” just like he did during the summer when he drugged me. I brought this up, and his face turned into one of pained guilt, and he said he was sorry. He told me he does bad things without thinking about it, and he doesn’t realize how wrong it was until he gets punished for it. I told him he was fucked up and walked away.
However, my grades were slipping and I’d have small episodes in classes, and Randy stopped hanging around John and Jose. I fell asleep in Geometry, waking up to the teacher shaking my shoulder. He smiled sadly down at me and told me class was over. I apologized to him, but he told me not to worry about it, that it wasn’t my fault. I left the classroom to go to English (my least favorite class because of the teacher), but Randy had been waiting for me outside. I told him to leave me alone, but he walked along side me down the hall, begging me to give him a chance to change. Maybe if he hadn’t drugged me, I would’ve, and I asked what he had planned to do to me if I had collapsed under the bridge. His silence confirmed my suspicion. Still, he told me he had two brothers, one in middle school, and one who had gone to a different high school and had already graduated. Apparently he was too smart for regular high school, so he had been requested to go to one for gifted students. Randy told me that they were really cool, and that his parents would love me. I didn’t see how this would convince me at all, but then he mentioned that he had a cat, and I agreed to go to his house for dinner. I knew it was a bad idea.
I expected his brothers to be like him, and I thought his parents would be white trash with an unkempt home. I was pleasantly surprised. Since this town was so small, practically everyone knew where everyone else lived, and unfortunately, his house was in the neighborhood on the hill, so I had to ride my bike until I got to that sharp turn in the road on the cliff, where I walked as carefully as possible until I cleared it. Luckily, if a car had come up, it would’ve stopped to let me get around it because they too would be driving extremely slow. I finally made it to his home, which was two stories and had chocolate brown panels as the exterior. I was shocked that it looked so nice, and I knocked. An older, very attractive young man opened the door, and he looked quite excited to see me (apparently I was the only thing Randy ever talked about). I’m going to call him Steve. He let me in and said, “wow, you are pretty.” I didn’t respond, unsure if he had criminal behavior despite him not dressing like a rebel. The twelve year old boy had longer, shaggy brunette hair, and he was described by Steve as being overly social, which I found out when he asked me to play video games with him before he even asked my name. Let’s call him Oliver. I then met their parents, a very good looking couple. The dad was strong and exuded an air of protection. The mother looked as though she’d bake you cookies every time you felt sad. Apparently the father was an ex cop, having to quit the force due to a blow to the head that made him ultra sensitive to concussions. The mother had an office job somewhere. Steve was a college student, but he lived at home, and he had a part time job as a cashier somewhere. I saw the white cat and knelt down to pet it, and as I did, Randy came down the stairs and said hello in the weakest voice I had ever heard from him. It sounded like a completely different person. I did not greet him with too much kindness.
While their parents were making dinner, we went to Oliver’s room to play video games, and Randy kept quiet, showing shyness that I didn’t know he had. We were playing a fighting game, and I ended up kicking all of their asses. Steve would tease Randy, saying, “what’s up? You never shut up about your girlfriend, and now you won’t talk at all?” He and I said that I wasn’t his girlfriend at the same time, and we looked at each other. I laughed, a little less angered. I ended up asking Steve if he was aware of what Randy has done to me, specifically the drugging, and Steve shot a glare at his younger brother, saying, “yes, I’m well aware of it. I promised not to tell mom and dad as long as Randy promised to control his anger better.” That explained the decreased hostility. The whole reason Randy started picking on me was because I was pretty, but his friends didn’t know that. That turned into, “well, I like her, but I can’t let the guys know that,” which turned into frustration, anger, and finally, loss of control of his actions. Oliver did not hide his dislike for Randy’s behavior, but he said that he’s been good for awhile now, and he’s really a nice guy.
So I had dinner with them, and their mom offered to drive me home, but I inquired about the cliff. She’s the one who was an expert at taking that turn, and she did it so well, she could do it at night, so I let her take me home. The turn was scary as hell, but she cleared it like a pro, so I felt better. Before I got out of the car, she told me, “Randy has a lot of problems he’s dealing with, but really, he’s a good kid. You’re welcome at our house at any time, my husband is always home.” I thanked her and went to my house.
On the bus, Randy and John would still sit behind me, but Max sat in the seat next to theirs, and they never said anything to me. Max started hanging out with them again, but it was clear he was upset upon realizing that Randy liked me too, though Randy never actually said it. John was too dumb to catch on. We never exchanged words for the rest of the year.
Here’s where last night’s dream starts, and it’s this dream that puts all of the pieces together. At the beginning of that summer, I battled myself and lost. I couldn’t get Randy off of my mind, so I called his house, Steve picked up, and I asked if I could come over. Steve was surprised to hear from me, saying that they missed me, wondering if Randy scared me off. I told him I had felt awkward, but figured I could try again. I rode my bike to his house, and their father was sleeping in a hammock in the back yard, their mother at work. Apparently Steve hadn’t told his brothers that I was coming over, so both of them were surprised. Oliver gave me a gigantic hug, and Randy looked like he was either going to hug me too, or vomit. He eventually forced out a greeting.
So I hung out with the boys, playing video games, eating snacks, and we even watched a movie… I swear I know the name of it, but I can’t remember! It’s not a movie that exists in this universe, but it’s a really terrible horror movie about a man trapped in his bedroom, and the walls are actually the spirit of an evil girl, and the walls bleed, and it was just all very funny. It was so bad, it had a cult following, spawning two sequels that were equally bad. The title was two words, and I can’t. Remember. Oh well. As the day went on, Randy’s shyness ebbed away, and he became more like his obnoxious self, though he was funny as opposed to insulting. I found myself laughing at things he said, and I felt sick to my stomach.
I had an episode while we were playing a game, falling asleep. The next thing I knew, I was lying on Oliver’s bed, and their mother was sitting next to me. She said that Randy had explained my condition. She had me stay for dinner (I had to spend some time in the bathroom to cough up a bunch of goo), but by the time I was about to go home, it was raining. I asked their mother if she’d ever chance the turn on the wet road, and she said, “not if I have a passenger.” Oliver even stepped outside with an umbrella and walked down the street to the turn. When he came back, he said, “it’s so dark, you can’t even see the cliff!” So I was invited to spend the night. The father gave me a sleeping bag to sleep in the living room, but the boys brought down more so they could sleep there too. A firm look at Randy said, “this isn’t appropriate,” but Steve said he and Oliver would sleep on either side of me to protect me from “the raging hormones of the black sheep.” I laughed at that. We marathoned the sequels to that movie, but I fell asleep first during the third one.
I woke up to Steve and Randy whispering a conversation. They were attempting to verbally compare their penises to large, powerful objects, which was humorous. I was very heavy and groggy, but I croaked, “why are you two talking about your penises?” I heard Randy say, “oh shit,” and Steve laughed. I sat up, but my condition was keeping me from waking up all the way. Randy sat next to me and started flirting with me for the first time since before I had visited his house during the school year. It wasn’t mean, but actually kind of flattering, and I kicked myself when I started flirting back. He looked like he wanted to kiss me, but he restrained himself, instead offering to put the sleeping bags back. Oliver, having still been asleep, was poured out of his sleeping bag, waking only when he hit the floor.
While Randy was gone, Steve leaned in to me and said, “Randy really likes you.” I told him that I didn’t want to get mixed up with someone like him, but Steve said that I was changing him. He believed I could fix Randy, keep his anger under control, but I was scared. Still, as I spent another day with them, I seemed to want to make sure I was close to Randy at all times.
A week later, I told the boys that I was going to stay with my aunt and her wife (both of whom don’t exist in this universe), and that I’d be back closer to the end of the summer. Randy adopted his controlling attitude again and demanded to spend at least one day with me alone. So Steve took Oliver to the arcade because their father was home, and we were told to keep the door open when Randy took me to his room. This was my first time being in it, and it wasn’t neat like Oliver and Steve’s rooms. There were clothes everywhere, CDs not in their cases, posters covered the walls, the curtains were closed, the mirror in front of his closet door had been punched, and there was a knife stabbed into his mattress, which had no sheets, a dirty pillow, and a single, thin blanket. He hastily pulled the knife out and set it on the window sill. I didn’t hesitate to express that I was uncomfortable.
I sat on the bed while Randy flitted around his room to try and clean up, but he was just throwing things into the closet and shoving stuff under the bed. I helped by cleaning up the CDs, and found we had a lot of the same tastes in music, most notably Tool. That was our first conversation starter after the room was “clean.” One topic led to another, and to another, and so on, and I learned that he really wasn’t that bad deep down. Maybe I could change him. I even told him about the two secrets in the forest and offered to show him sometime if he promised to be good. I noticed he was fidgety, like he wanted to grab me or kiss me, but I was glad to see him showing restraint. This frustration led him to pouring out apologies like water from a hose, and after hearing him grovel, I sucked it up, moved closer to him, and kissed his cheek. I allowed him to put his arms around me, but nothing more.
We ended up lying on the bed together, holding hands, looking at the ceiling and listening to Tool. He was quiet, but I was singing along, and I think he just liked to listen to me. Part of myself hated myself for falling for him, and I knew that this was potentially very dangerous. He was toxic.
I don’t think we ever established an official relationship, but I hugged him before I left, and while I was staying at my aunt’s house, I’d call him every few days, and we’d talk for hours. But while staying with my aunt and her wife, I found out some things about the city they lived in, which I had never been to before (except for the mall, I found out, in earlier dreams). There was a large colony of Furbies. Yes, Furbies. The toy that came out in 1999 and got a reboot in 2013? Yeah. However, in this universe, they had actually evolved to become sentient, a biomechanic creature with thoughts, feelings, and free will. My aunt hated the Furbies, as did many in the city, and that was because they thought that they were smarter than humans. Well, I later found out that they didn’t think they were smarter than humans, they knew they were smarter than humans.
In their adult stages in life, they could grow to be two feet tall. They still did not have arms, but their feet were more than useful, as were their ears. Not only that, but they were so cute, any creepiness having been abandoned through their evolution. They could actually breed, for they had some organic qualities along with their mechanical ones. They had blood, real skin, real fur, real eyes, and were mostly self sufficient. They were once thought as pests, but eventually, the city’s mayor put in a proposition, and majority voted for the Furbies to be protected and welcomed. Unfortunately, there were still people who hated them, so Furbies lived on the streets. Since their language was limited, people thought they were stupid, but they were able to learn English. People found that, because of lack of food, the Furbies were willing to do tasks for humans in exchange for a snack. Now it was a regular thing to seek a Furby, ask for a favor, and feed them something they most likely found on the ground. The Furbies were so happy to eat it, it was believed that they liked dirty food, but the truth was, they never got to eat anything else. Still, they were happy, though some would assist a person without being asked to, expecting food after doing so. People didn’t like this demanding behavior very much.
I was with my aunt and her wife (who didn’t mind the Furbies), and we went shopping at the mall. We passed a colony of Furbies, and my aunt shuddered, glaring at a pink baby like she was a roach. I thought she was cute, the little tuft of hair on her head striped blue and purple, and she had large green eyes. She seemed to be further away from her colony than was necessary, so I spotted a jellybean on the ground, wiped it off, and approached her. I said, “can you give me a big smile?” She did so, and I offered the candy, which she took with her little beak, looking delighted. As I walked away, I heard her giggle and say, “smart!” It was like how I tell my rats that they’re smart, and I laugh because it’s cute and admirable. She thought that my request for her to smile meant that I was intelligent enough to know that her species wasn’t inferior. My aunt’s wife said she had heard her say that too, but my aunt insisted the Furbies were just stupid and filthy.
When we got back to their home, I was in the room I slept in and emptying my shopping bags. To my horror, the same baby Furby had hidden herself in a bag of stuffed animals I bought, and she gave me a happy cry as a greeting. Sure, I was happy to see her, but if my aunt knew there was a Furby in the house, she’d kick her out. I asked her to stay quiet, and since this counted as a request, I had to find another piece of food to give her. I ended up breaking off a piece of a chocolate bar, which wasn’t dirty, and she liked it very much. I went to my aunt’s wife and asked what I should do, but my aunt called from the other room, “please don’t tell me I smell a Furby!!” She came into the kitchen, spotted the pink fuzz ball on the kitchen table, and threw a fit, her wife sending me to my room so she could calm her down.
Once in my room, I asked the Furby if she could speak English, and she shook her head, saying “no” in Furbish, though she did know a couple words she picked up. She could understand it just fine, however. I asked her her name, and she said, “Loo-loo,” which is Furbish for “joke.” It made sense because she was a little misfit, having hitched a ride back home with me. I told her I wouldn’t let anything happen to her, and eventually, my aunt came in and reluctantly said that I could keep the Furby only if I couldn’t find her parents. So the next day, I took her back to the colony and tried to find her parents, but Loo-loo kept expressing sadness, so I assumed she was an orphan. None of the other Furbies seemed interested in her either. So I kept her, and I didn’t think of her as a pet that did things for me for food, but my own baby that I took care of and fed the proper amount. I told her I’d reward her with candy whenever she helped me out with something. I soon discovered that she liked cinnamon jelly beans the most.
Furbies aged decently fast, though they had long life spans. Loo-loo was learning English like a pro, and I’d spend all of my time with her, carrying her wherever I went, brushing her fur, lulling her to sleep, and so on. People who didn’t like the Furbies gave me nasty looks, but it wasn’t illegal to bring them into shops and establishments if they weren’t dirty, and I kept Loo-loo clean. We developed such a close bond, Loo-loo realized that her people were not meant to live as servants for humans just to have small bits of dirty food, and she told me I was smart because I wasn’t like other people. She ended up explaining to me that Furbies were far more intelligent than humans, and she definitely proved it, learning complicated things without needing books, only repetition, and she learned them quick. Even my aunt couldn’t help but admit she actually grew to like Loo-loo, and maybe they weren’t so dumb after all.
I called Randy and told him about Loo-loo, and he laughed, saying, “I’m jealous that she’s getting all the attention.” I told him he’d really like her, sending him pictures of her with my phone. He said he missed me, and I wondered if he was willing to take a bus up here to visit. He said yes so quick, I almost didn’t hear it, and he hung up. I laughed to myself and texted him my aunt’s address. Loo-loo was excited to meet him too.
I was hanging out at an arcade one day, privately wondering why it was taking so long for Randy to show up, when Loo-loo asked to speak to me for a moment. I told her she could talk to me about anything, and she explained that, in her culture, if a child has lost its parents, it can “marry” an adult or two to be adopted. She said “marry” because the ceremony was much like a human wedding, and it was a very meaningful tradition. Then she said, “will you be my mom?” And, as if I had been proposed to, I excitedly said yes. So, for the next day or two, we discussed how the ceremony worked, and what we needed to get prepped for it. One day, I was surprised by, not just Randy at my aunt’s door, but his brothers too. My aunt wasn’t happy that she didn’t know they were coming, but allowed them to stay until it was time for me to go back home, her house being big enough.
Randy wasn’t quite as excited to see Loo-loo as I thought he’d be. He faked excitement, but he wouldn’t touch her. His brothers loved her, though, and I told them all about the adoption ceremony, and Loo-loo would be my adopted child. We would have a long life together, as she would outlive me, and I felt so happy. She was really the only thing I talked about, even when Randy wanted to converse with me. He wanted me alone, but I took Loo-loo everywhere because she was still a child. His jealousy was more obvious to everyone else than to me because I was blinded by the happiness Loo-loo brought me.
I spent a lot of time with the boys in the city, carrying Loo-loo in my bag. We were at the mall when Randy suddenly wrapped me in his arms and kissed me. I was so shocked, but he said he couldn’t take it anymore, and this made me even more happy. I hugged him back, and then said that he could be Loo-loo’s dad. He didn’t respond to this. No one pointed out his jealousy to me, probably thinking I already knew about it, but was trying to ease Randy’s mind.
There was a day where Randy said he was going out alone, that he wanted to check out some stores in the city by himself. Loo-loo said, “bye daddy!” but he didn’t say anything, just left. That’s when Steve finally told me Randy was jealous, but I was still blind, and I summed it up to him just being shy. He and Oliver looked uneasy about my obliviousness.
Finally, it was time to go home, and I was ready for senior year at school, ready to be a mother to Loo-loo, and ready to make Randy happy enough to keep him from doing bad things. My aunt and her wife road the bus with us because they wanted to see my parents. It was a long way home, so we had to take two different buses. Randy was quiet while I tended to Loo-loo, and he kept glaring at her. He wouldn’t even hold my hand. I was starting to feel strange, but tried to ignore it. I started talking to my aunt’s wife about the adoption ceremony, and the conversation continued as we got off of the bus to wait for the next one, but I was pushed so hard to the ground, I hit my nose, which started to bleed, and Loo-loo yelled as she flew out of my hands.
I looked up, preparing to go get Loo-loo to make sure she was alright, but Randy stomped on my hand, looking angrier than I had ever seen him. “WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP ABOUT THAT FUCKING THING ALREADY?!” he shouted, and to my horror, he pulled out a gun, walked up to Loo-loo, who was crying, and shot her three times. People screamed, running away from the man with the gun, and Loo-loo was nothing but a splatter of blood and fragments of metal and flesh. I was screaming the hardest, crying for my baby, shrieking, “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!” over and over again at Randy. He had a wicked smile on his face that was disgusting, my aunt and her wife covering their mouths in terror, Oliver sobbing, and Steve on his phone to call the police.
I raged at Randy, but he shot my foot, and I fell back to the ground. “You love that fucking thing so much, you bitch? Enough to marry it? What am I to you, yesterday’s news? HUH? I come here for you, and you can’t pay attention to anyone by that FUCKING FURBY!!” I tried to explain that Loo-loo was just as important as Randy was, but he had completely lost control, and he was laughing, kicking me in the face, breaking my already damaged nose. He said that I’ve played him long enough, and he forced me on my knees, held the gun to the back of my head, and though I was screaming and begging, he ripped down my pants and raped me. It was so violent, painful, and traumatizing, I felt like I was dying, I couldn’t fight back or he’d kill me anyway, and I lost Loo-loo. I started choking, throwing up that stupid goo and suffocating from it. I felt like my mind was slipping away, sounds seemed to be louder than before, and Randy was still laughing, taunting me while he committed the crime.
Sirens wailed as Steve was shouting at Randy to get off of me, but no one wanted to try and approach him because he still had his gun to my head. I remember him stand up and shove me back flat to the ground by stepping on my back, he called me a slut, spit on me, and shot me in the spine. All I heard now was a high pitched whine, and I tried to watch my surroundings, but they were blurry and dark. I managed to see the police shooting him in the shoulder so that he dropped his weapon, and Randy kept laughing and taunting me, even as he was dragged away.
I stood up, body in so much pain, but not nearly as painful as my heart. It was evening, the sky purple, the plaza empty, and I stared at Loo-loo’s remains. I had loved her like my own flesh and blood. The man I was falling in love with took her away from me, then took me by force. But I wasn’t crying, I had no emotion. The bus was waiting there, and I boarded. The bus driver had no face, and my aunt, her wife, Randy, and his brothers were all staring at me. I limped to the seat opposite of Randy’s, which was an emergency exit seat, and he was crying, saying he was so sorry, that he didn’t mean it. No one else was on the bus, but it started driving us home.
I stared at the floor, and said in an emotionless voice, “I forgive you.” I opened my arms to invite him into a hug, and he sat next to me. I told him he didn’t have to force himself on me, and I unbuttoned my pants. He was astonished, but quickly undid his as well. He was on top of me, and we were kissing, but before he could do anything further, I grabbed the handle to the emergency door and opened it, taking Randy with me as I fell out, and we crashed to the road, immediately getting hit and killed by a semi that I had seen in the back window.
I woke up in the hospital, confused and unable to clear my vision. I thought I had just killed myself and Randy. I soon realized that had been a dream because I remembered that I had been too injured to stand, and Randy had been hauled away. There was no way any of that happened. I still felt pain in my heart, the loss of Loo-loo taking a heavy toll on me. Steve was sitting next to me, and I tried to ask him what happened, but all that came out was a weak mumble. I had lost my ability of speech, and I also could not move.
Steve told me that Randy was in a temporary holding cell, as they were waiting for me to wake up to appear in court. He was angry that they refused to do it during the four and a half weeks I was in a coma. Apparently all of those witnesses weren’t enough, not for this corrupt justice system. He also told me that, when their parents heard what happened, their father couldn’t handle the stress and horror, and he had a stroke. It killed him because of the prior head injury. Oliver was in a mental hospital, scarred beyond reason, and now it was just him and his mother. They sold the house and were renting a small one a few blocks away from mine. He dropped out of college because his mother was a wreck. He also said he felt like this was all his fault for being unable to stop Randy, and he was begging for my forgiveness, but I couldn’t give it to him because I couldn’t speak. Tears were falling from my eyes. I could not forget.
I missed out on my senior year because I was in intensive care. Both my body and my mind had to be trained how to function again. I will explain this in a moment. The dream skipped to years later. I hadn’t had any contact with Randy since he was arrested the second time, and I was getting old, was married to “good” Michael, but my life was less than happy. I decided it was time to pay Randy a visit, speak to him for the last time.
He was held in a high security prison, was on death row, and was kept in isolation. I was allowed to speak to him through the metal door with a guard present. There was a small window that was opened, and I saw those eyes that had both hurt me and loved me. He started crying when he saw me, and I asked him why he did what he did. He was sobbing, yelling that he didn’t know, that his mind had gone blank, and he never regretted anything more in his entire life. He begged me to see him for who he really was, just like I had before, but I said, “I’ve seen who you really are, and you’re not the man I fell for. You killed my daughter, raped me, and crippled me. I was so stupid to fall for you. I thought I could change you. I should’ve known better after you drugged me when we were young. I hate you, Randy, and I hope the sponge is dry when they put you in the electric chair.” I had the guard bring me back to the prison lobby, and all the way there, I could hear Randy screaming and begging for me to come back, that he loved me, and he was sorry.
I woke up in a cold sweat, shivering, and I told Michael I had a nightmare. However, everything seemed blurry, and I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming or not. I stood from the bed to get dressed, but sat back down and put my face into my hands. I started sobbing, but I couldn’t explain it to Mike because he wouldn’t understand. Even as I write this, I’m crying, and I’ve been in a bad place all day. The pain was real. Part of me was still in that other universe, and I felt Loo-loo, I felt the pain of losing her, and I felt the trauma of what Randy did to me. This dream put the pieces together, connecting previous dreams together and giving me the answers I’ve asked myself for a long time. It took awhile for me to come back to this universe, and it was surreal how everything morphed into this reality and made me realize I was really awake. Still, I feel like that all actually happened, my heart still aches for both Loo-loo and Randy, and it’s scary.
I always knew that Randy had raped me, but I never knew when, where, how, or why. Previous dreams have only given me the information that he did it, nothing else. I even took him to court for it. So now I’ll fill in the holes that connects several events I’ve experienced out of order in dreams.
While I was staying with my aunt, Randy had become bored and lonely, so he started to hang out with his group again. He fell into old habits of tagging, drugs, and drinking. Me calling him to come see me was supposed to be his reprieve.
It was a miracle that I made any progress in rehab, but it was because I agreed to participate in a test with experimental equipment to help people who were paralyzed. It was a weird device that was supposed to bring back functionality of my muscles, even just a little bit. They stood me like a rag doll on these metal things that had platforms for my feet and balanced on a curved bar underneath each one to keep me from falling over. They were like modified stilts, and the top of them went under my arms like crutches. There was a harness that kept me strapped to it, but was easy to pull off in case of emergencies, and the two stilts were connected by a contraption in between them that allowed the user to walk with them.
In order to use this, I had to undergo enough physical therapy for my brain to realize that my limbs are supposed to be moving, but aren’t, so something is wrong. It needs to try and fix it, so if I could get any appendage on my body to move, I could be on the road to curing my paralysis. The first thing to respond was my neck, and when I was able to turn my head, we started practicing with the walker. They had to move it for me, reminding my muscles how to move. This took a very long time, especially since I was also in speech therapy. By the end of my time in rehab, I could walk slowly with the device, and my speech was slurred, but I could form words.
I still had to finish school, but this time, they sent me to one for severely disabled kids. I was the only one with a walker, and I was the worst case in all of my classes, but at least everyone else also had a reason to need special treatment. It took a lot of effort to walk, though. My legs were really heavy and weak, but the walker was designed in a way so that it moved with pressure, so all I had to do was try to shift my weight, but that alone was difficult. My arms were also weak, but they worked better than my legs. It was hard to raise them, and when trying to grab something, I either miss, or the thing drops because my hand won’t close tightly enough. I am practically hanging over the front of the device because I can’t stand up straight, so I’m in a weak slouch, my head is heavy, and it takes a lot of effort to turn it. I have to speak very slowly and try to enunciate, otherwise no one can understand me.
The trauma has messed with me. Before last night’s dream, I never knew what had me so traumatized, but now I do. Sometimes I’d linger in a classroom, unable to sit, so I’m leaning against the wall and crying to myself, sometimes falling asleep from my preexisting condition. A teacher or another student will comfort me from time to time, but otherwise, people avoid me because they don’t know what to say. The school was for mostly physically disabled kids, so I was the only one suffering from an extreme mental illness. A teacher once told me about how she miscarried her first and last pregnancy. She was looking forward to having a daughter, the sex having been confirmed, but she lost her, and has never tried again, literally never dating, marrying, or having sex at all. The father of that baby had left after she screamed at him the next time he tried to make love to her, and he realized she was so broken, she was not the woman he fell in love with. I couldn’t say much. Sure, her daughter had been her own flesh and blood, but she had never spent time with her like I had with Loo-loo.
The justice system was so bad that I wasn’t allowed to take Randy to court until I could speak clearly or move properly. It was a long time before I achieved that, but the walker had been a success. After some time, I only needed a cane to walk with, though I was still heavy and slow. My speech was much more clear, only slurring a little, but I spoke with overly pronounced enunciation to make my words clear. When I took Randy to court, I was appalled to see John, Jose, and Max there. Max was crying, looking like he had been forced to come. My aunt and her wife were there, as were Randy’s mother and older brother. Oliver was still in the hospital. Randy’s friends gave witness and tried to say that he had been with him the whole summer, that Randy had never left. Max had been threatened to go along with this story. Luckily, I had many more witnesses, and even security footage from the plaza, which I refused to watch. He was convicted… for two years.
When Randy was released, his behavior was erratic. Sometimes he’d act like a child bullying me again (we still saw a lot of each other because he lived so close), sometimes he stayed silent and hidden, stalking me, sometimes he’d show me his kind side to try and get me back, and sometimes, if he saw me, he became enraged, hit whatever wall was nearby, and ran away from me without saying a word to me. He couldn’t get himself to admit he had done something wrong to the girl he loved, he couldn’t admit he was sorry, and he took it out on himself and everyone around him. His mother was distant with him, he wasn’t allowed to see Oliver, and Steve looked down at him with disappointment, telling him he blew his one chance to free himself from his demons.
I could move and speak, but I was far from healthy. As I said before, I had been luring people to their gruesome deaths, but that wasn’t all I did. I was really quiet, never made friends, stayed away from family if I could help it, and never felt comfort in anything. No one ever died by my own hand, so I thought, technically, I wasn’t killing them. I was never a suspect because I never left anything suspicious, and I couldn’t emote. The police never even considered asking me about the murders. They actually thought Randy and his gang had something to do with it, but there was no evidence.
Sometimes I’d visit my old friends, usually the one with the secret attic so we could go up there and talk. I never told her about the things I did, but I said I was no less a monster than Randy was. Sometimes when I tried to hang out with friends, I’d just fall into another depression, which must’ve been me dwelling on Loo-loo, her death still vibrant in my mind. Still, I think Randy was more messed up than me.
After a few months, his behavior changed to just stalking, though I thought he had left me alone. I ended up getting attacked by him and his friends, Max bruised from being beaten up so much, and I was held down by John and Jose. Randy said that he just wanted to love me, and he was half laughing, half crying. I said nothing to him, but was able to point at the barn they had dragged me to and say “burn,” setting it on fire. They released me to escape, and I managed to fly away with my fabric wings I carried on my back. Randy shouted at me from below, calling me a stupid bitch, and that he’d kill me the next time he saw me.
I had a dream where he accomplished that. He got me pregnant, and while carrying his child, he tied a rope around my throat, his friends helping him pull it tight, and it shattered my neck. I saw my body being put into a boat and covered with a blanket that was blue with five pointed yellow stars. Then they send the boat down a river that ended in a high waterfall, where I’d drop and hit the massive rocks, ensuring that I’d never be found. Randy’s laughter sounded like laughs of agony.
But the next time I saw him, it was on television that afternoon after I got done killing all of those people at the school, which had been abandoned for a few years for reasons I don’t know of. It still pained me to see Randy, especially since he was going on a panicked rampage. Part of me still loved him. I found out that the police finally had something they thought connected to him and his gang to the murders I had been committing, so he had gone on this rampage out of fear, knowing that he’d be thrown away even though he was innocent. He had already been unstable due to him tormenting himself about his actions in the past, but refusing to own up to them, and losing me drove him crazy because he loved me, but he couldn’t stop hurting me.
I went out with some chalk to go draw on the concrete near a building. I guess I did this often. I didn’t expect Randy to end up crashing here, and I could tell he was hurt and even more scared to see me. Now this all makes sense to me. I didn’t know who he called with the quarter I gave him at first. After he ran away, I finished my drawing, and then stood up, walking to his house. His mother was the only one home, Steve visiting Oliver. I told her what Randy was doing right now, and she was crying, saying he had just called her and pleaded with her like a scared child, calling her mommy and asking what he should do. She told him to come home, so he was on his way. The police had shot John, so Randy was alone.
I told her I’d kill him, but she shook her head and pulled out a gun, probably one of Randy’s. She said, “I brought him into this world, I’m going to take him out. I will take the blame, you were never here.” I waited until Randy came home, and he was shocked to see me, but didn’t get to say anything, as he was shot in the chest by his mother. Then I left. At the time, I thought Randy was dead, but future dreams concluded that he survived. After he recovered, he was sentenced to death and thrown into prison. He had to be put into isolation after getting in a fight with other inmates and killing three of them. I hadn’t seen him since the day his mother shot him, not until last night’s dream when I visited him, and I never saw her or Steve again, for they moved away, having Oliver transferred to another hospital. They said that being around me would bring back painful memories, but them leaving didn’t keep the memories away.
All of these dreams I’ve had out of order have been tied together by last night’s dream, and I don’t know how to feel. If this theory is correct, I believe that, sometimes when we dream, we don’t take the place of different versions of ourselves in their reality, we experience their memories. I can support this theory because, in last night’s dream, there was a point before where I was speaking with Sempai, and a guy was pissing us off. I pointed at him and said, “burn,” but it failed, and I said, “oh yeah, this is a memory, I can’t control that.”
I still feel like that was all real, that it’s been real this whole time. I’m feeling the pain from that universe’s version of myself, having to live what she went through, and I’m scared. I don’t even know what I’m scared of. I keep saying, “I want Loo-loo back,” but I never had Loo-loo, I never knew any of these people, I never knew Randy. So why does this hurt?
And the big question is, if this theory isn’t correct, then how do all of these events connect seamlessly with each other, and again… why does it hurt? Michael is worried about me. If the theory is correct, I’m glad I’m not in that universe, but I feel now how terrible it is for that Kara, and that she could’ve had everything, but one guy sent her entire life into chaos in one single moment. I thought I had it bad in this universe with bad things happening throughout my entire life, but she had a pretty good life that all went to shit at once. Which is better? I couldn’t tell you, because it all hurts right now. Though it’s safe to say that she’s lost her will to keep her mind healthy, whereas I fight each day with a fist full of pills.
I miss Loo-loo. I need to remind myself that she never existed to me.
He said, “I can take you away from this world, you know. I could give you everything, give you power over these filthy pieces of trash that litter the planet, give you the power to live the way you want, instead of the way society wants you to live. All I need you to do is be by my side and swear your loyalty to me.”