sanity is relative

(from a chat transcript which sums it up nicely because the details are ridiculously-full of dream logic errors)

tirsden: the weird dream I had, I was part of a space army, like Halo or the marines in Alien or whatever... and we attacked this bad guy base and our guns ran out of ammo almost immediately and we had no backups... so I made it further into the complex cuz the enemies had pulled back and [I] yelled that I wanted to surrender... and my commander shows up and goes "O.o?" and I said "I'm gonna pretend to switch sides because you guys are... incompetent?" and he was like "ah okay" XD ...turns out the place was actually a neutral hospital.

(This is apparently what happens after I spend 3+ hours on Skype talking to someone I met via Cry's video game livestreams, before going to bed. That someone would be Hiro, who you will be seeing here shortly. O.o )


I was playing some kind of coop multiplayer Amnesia-like game with Hiro via both the game client and chatting with Skype, except that instead of normal Amnesia: The Dark Descent with its medieval castle interior, the concept was to run around a modern day mental hospital plagued with monsters (the zombie ones from the Amnesia game) and avoid being caught by them or the regular staff while looking for books. Hiro's character was an Asian boy in his early teens and I was a girl with long-ish blonde hair; I think I'd gone with Alice for my character's name.

The building's layout was bizarre for an actual hospital. Hallways were ridiculously skinny, had maze-like branches all over the place and interconnected rooms, and you couldn't do anything about the lights that were always on. Everything was painted white, so there was no real chance of hiding anywhere in the open. Not only would the monsters cause you to pass out if they caught you, but doctors and nurses also wandered the hall and any of them including the monsters catching you meant waking back up in your room. I can't remember if the rooms were locked by default, I just remember it being so much backtracking that you didn't want to get caught, plus there was a feeling of impending doom like something bad was going to happen if you couldn't escape the place in time.

The point of the books was that they somehow unlocked doors. The books were hardcover, red, and had gold filigree designs on the covers that were all the same. If I remember right, they all had a four digit number on the first page while the rest of the pages were blank, which had to do with how they opened the doors. Some books were fakes and only the right ones would actually open a door at all, and only the door they were meant to. The books could be found in closets or refrigerators that were otherwise empty of anything else, and if you had one that worked with you when you opened the right door, the door would just automatically unlock itself.

I remember being in a small room that had a fridge and two closets, and Hiro took a book out of the fridge while I grabbed one from a closet. At this point it was becoming real as opposed to a video game, although I still had some odd fuzzy concept of an inventory system so that I wasn't literally carrying the books around (I had several by now), they just vanished but I still "had them." I remember hearing a monster grumbling out in the hall right at that moment. The hall went around the room outside past two different doors on opposite ends. Hiro told me to go one way and he'd go the other and distract the monster.

I didn't like this idea but he was already out the one door so I ran through the other. I realized somehow that he'd been caught by the staff and I kept running, as for some reason they were assuming Hiro was the only patient not in his room. He'd bought me some time, but now I had to figure out how to put it to good use and if I stayed in the halls I still ran the risk of getting caught at random. I found a nurse's bathroom and hid under the sink. The idea was to burn some time so the staff would get complacent and maybe enough would go to sleep after-hours so I could finally escape.

Logic really started falling apart at this point (apparently if you stay in one place in a dream for too long, small constant changes start building up into ridiculousness). What started as a long counter with sinks in it and one big cupboard area underneath with several doors (my hiding spot was as far into the corner opposite the entry door by the far end of the sinks as possible), slowly turned into just a counter without the cupboard underneath, and then finally the counter had some kind of tablecloth which hid me better. I remember spending a lot of time trying to make sure I was as squeezed into the corner as it got, and that the white dress I was wearing was staying hidden with me instead of flared out partly so it was visible from beyond the counter.

This whole time I was dreading that someone would actually come into the bathroom, and yes, eventually a nurse and a nurse's assistant walked in, both women. For some reason, they had a bunch of dirty dishes on a two-tiered rolling metal cart. The assistant started shoving dishes under the counter and it was obvious she could see me, but I sat there and thought "You can't see me, you can't see me," over and over. At this point I vaguely understood that I was in a dream and that logic had broken enough she shouldn't have seen me right off the bat.

She didn't say anything to her superior who was blathering on about various gossip and directions for the next shift or something, and I realized it wasn't because I was desperately trying to insist in my head that she couldn't see me. The assistant wasn't evil, and knew this place was way more than just some honest asylum. She kept glancing at me but only crammed more dishes under the counter (I could hardly move for all the dishes). Suddenly the nurse in charge started saying really crazy things, like she was hallucinating and what she saw was no longer what anyone else in the room saw. The nurse stood still and started staring off at nothing as what she was saying rambled to a halt, and the assistant looked at me and mouthed the word, "Run."

I managed to extricate myself from the dishes without making any noise and ran out of the bathroom, not noticed at all by the crazy spaced-out nurse. I found a new hallway that led to a large closet, and inside the closet was a whole lot of hanging lab coats. I couldn't see the back of the closet, so I kept pushing through and the lab coats gave way to winter jackets and I found myself suddenly breaking out of a very thick display of such coats in a clothing store at a shopping mall.

There were tables just beyond, possibly for a cafe in this same store (logic, what is this concept? we don't do logic in dreams). There were randomly dream created family members there who recognized me and greeted me only like it was any old day, not like I'd been locked away in the funny farm. They didn't know, and I myself wasn't even sure how I'd gotten locked up there now. While they asked me mundane questions I said something to the effect of, "Listen, I've just escaped from a mental asylum up there on the hill," and pointed off in the general direction of where the hospital was (you couldn't see it from inside the mall).

They were all like, "Yeah right, very cute ha ha," and I said, "No, I'm serious, and I'm not even sure that I'm really out of there at all." I had a bad feeling that I was still somewhere in the asylum while hallucinating what I was seeing now, or somehow had my "spirit" split between the places and maybe I could actually tell these people something useful before waking back up in the asylum. I just hoped I was still hidden somewhere instead of stuck in my room again. I remember one dark-haired guy who was a random family friend looking off in the general direction of the hospital, he was starting to be convinced there was more to this.

Then I woke up.

I think I was either playing a video game or watching something on TV, and it was getting into WWII history stuff... either whatever I was doing, or the conversation around me. Then on the TV screen was a guy in a Nazi uniform throwing a torch at something. A moment later I became that guy who'd thrown the torch, and I think at first I might have been Karl (one of my roleplay chars inspired by Karl Kroenen from Hellboy)... but shortly thereafter I was one of the men on his squad instead. Mind you, this was pretty much with the complete mindset of a Nazi SS agent/soldier.

What we were throwing torches at was some long wooden building, and it was daylight and wartime. I think I realized the thing was going to blow up and I told everybody to run and started booking it across the field surrounding that side of the building. The whole thing did blow, and the shockwave was so strong it threw me several feet and I landed tumbling. I stayed lying down for the moment and put my arms over my head trying to protect it. Stuff was raining out of the sky from the explosion and some did hit me on the head just as I was trying to cover it, but not too badly.

I'm not exactly sure what happened next, but I do know I got up and got further away, and I was looking for Karl and couldn't find him. There was some nonsense about a train and some nurse lady who I asked if she knew where Karl was and she kept saying other stuff so I asked again and she said yes. I followed her quite a ways to some building and up into it several floors. I kept looking around and didn't see him, and the place didn't look right at all. It looked like a doctor's office, and around this point dream logic decided I was in a hospital.

Getting frustrated, I asked the nurse again where he was. She said, "There," and pointed to a hat that would work for the uniform I was wearing. Supposedly it was my hat, she thus informed me (*shrug* dream logic strikes again, it could have been; I wasn't impressed even if it was). I said something to the effect of, "No, you moron, I asked you where my Commander is!"

Then my alarm clock woke me up.

It started with thinking I'd woken up from the previous dream. I was in my bed in my place except it in no way resembled my real bed/place (yet my brain was convinced it was all normal). My kid sister showed up and wanted to play a complicated card game with me which at first I said I didn't know the rules to, so she said she'd teach me or show me, and then later seemed more like some sort of "magic trick." So she was dealing the cards and making piles out of them and asking me to pick a card and kept doing whatever it was she was doing. I was so out of it, I felt like I was really doped up on medication or perhaps I was still trying to hold on to the feeling of sleep.

My sister suddenly admitted as she combined most of the cards together again that it had been quite a while since she'd actually made sure all the cards were there. She dropped a card and said something like, "Oh mannnn" as it slid between the bed and the wall. I said I'd get it, and I think she said not to worry about it right away but I was determined to do it. I followed where the card had gone with my hand, then the bed was further away from the wall for some reason and I could keep following the route down to the floor which I did with my entire body. (Now that I think about it, the bed was sort of hospital-institutional with nicer bedding.) On the white-tile floor now, under the bed looking for the card (which was nowhere to be seen) and then I saw a length of thin chain (larger than necklace chain but smaller than the sort of chain you'd chain a gate closed with... the individual, round links might have been about 1/4 inch in diameter or maybe a touch bigger).

I wanted the chain, and I remember my sister saying something that I should leave it alone or get back to what she was showing me but I didn't care. There were other bits of chain too, two of them but in the end I stuck with the original one. It was at least two feet long and one end had a clasp, like a basic round jewelry clasp except larger, the same size as the links. I was out from under the bed by now and made the chain go around my right ankle, securing it there with the clasp and letting the other end trail. For the moment I let it drag on the floor and left the room, going out into the hallway. I don't really remember the hallway very well except that it was long and there were other doors leading into it, like a dorm floor or perhaps a hospital. There was a lot of white. I think one reason I'm having trouble remembering is because at this point I realized I was dreaming and I wanted to make the dream interesting.

I had been looking left down the hall but now I went right, starting to run a bit, holding on to the end of the chain so it wouldn't trip me. I wanted to get away, I wanted to escape, I didn't want to be here anymore, and I was thinking it's because I'm crazy and I'm in an asylum but I know this place is actually evil and I have to get out! Have to run, have to try. As I was thinking this stuff trying to convince the dream to take that plot concept, I could see the hallway ahead of me literally merged into a different-color hallway, sort of dingier with some sepia-tone to it and it seems like some puke-green color. There were wheelchairs and I knew that I could run into it and the dream would change properly.

So I did, still with the chain around my ankle (which as the plot went now was something I'd been secured to my bed with and had broken). As soon as I was in the dingier hallway I was completely in the mental hospital, and it wasn't really very easy to run or think because of the medication I was on... that had failed to keep me properly in bed. Up ahead the hallway got wider before going back to normal size, and in the middle of the wide part was a room that I couldn't see any details about except that its walls were made of the same painted-over cinder blocks as the hallway walls. There was a man sitting against the hall wall on the left on almost the far side of the room-thing. I knew he was a patient too, but I remember thinking I shouldn't trust anyone in my little escape attempt and then it seems like I remember another patient who was a friend (or at least someone I kinda trusted) saying this guy was bad news... that he sided with the staff.

Then a nurse came out of where there was apparently a door on the left side of the room-thing and I panicked because I didn't want her to see me. She was going to talk to the man or something, and although I thought for sure she'd see me I managed to go to the right without her noticing. Although the hallway continued I knew I couldn't go that way at least right now, but there was a smaller hall where I had headed to the right, and there were a couple of little staff-related rooms there, one to the left and one to the right.

I was totally lost because I'd never seen these rooms before (I'm not sure I'd seen much of the hospital before). It seems like I realized there was someone on the left side, meanwhile the lady back out in the hall was heading my direction so I went into the room on the right and at this point was only really looking for somewhere to hide. It looked like a storage and equipment room, things laid out on shelves, some of which had no backs and were spaced out in the middle of the room. I kept along the right-side wall seeing that it had a nook in it in the corner (that went right again just a little) where maybe I could hide.

Diagram time! Mostly because if anybody can see what the heck I'm talking about by now, you're doing good.

,--,______,   ,
|                 |
|                 |
|                 |
---------------
The open space on the upper right is the door I came in from, and the nook is in the upper left.

When I got there I noticed that there appeared to be a door on the right side of this nook (when standing in front of it with the main room's left wall to one's left as oriented in the diagram above). It looked like a very ordinary door, a bit worn and uninteresting and painted white like the rest of the walls in the room. It wasn't locked as I opened it, but right behind was a very obviously not normal door. It was a light brown color and had no door handle. I was scared now that the nurse was going to show up any second, and I had no idea if there was some sort of special trick involved in opening the second door. I tried just pushing on it, and it actually just pushed inwards. It was almost like it was a very light piece of wood that I then had to hold onto so it didn't fall because it wasn't attached to anything. Maybe it was broken... because it had sure seemed like the first major sign of "things aren't right here in supposedly-honest asylum land."

So anyways, beyond that things were a whole lot less finished-looking, either like creepy Silent Hill mode in one of those games, or a very unfinished basement. I could hardly see, it was so dark, but I was still thinking the goddamn nurse is going to find me if I don't do something fast. For some reason I couldn't do anything about the first door I'd opened, and dream logic was failing with the second door barrier thing as it was turning into a much smaller piece of plywood. How was this supposed to help block off the doorway? Then there was a second piece, and I remember trying to prop them up one against the other in an inverted V shape and hoping that would suffice.

For some reason it did, and the doorway was completely blocked again (which makes no sense considering the two pieces of wood came up to about my waist), as if I'd just shut the first stupid door in the first place. Either way, the dream was happy to be convinced I'd succeeded at least in that step, so whatever. It was even darker now with the door properly closed, but after a moment's confused thoughts (yay meds and fear) I realized that this was a place people went and it should have lights. There was a light-switch box to the left of the door and I turned it on. I saw that the little passage I was in went to stairs downwards shortly, wooden steps that still had that very-unfinished and old look to them.

I think I then realized that having the lights on was a bad idea, as staff would guess if they showed up that someone was there that shouldn't be. So I turned them off again and moved towards the stairs. I could now see a little better as further down the steps was a large open area that was again very much like an unfinished basement. Uneven dirt floor, concrete brick walls, very high indications of perhaps windows because of little bits of light, daylight! But I knew that I wasn't that close to freedom yet. Closer, but going to those light sources wouldn't do me any good, they just helped me to see right now.

At the bottom of the stairs, to the left was some more shelving and stuff and it didn't seem like a useful way to go. The basement opened up even further to the right, so I went that way. As I was working my way along very uneven ground that looked more like I was entering the very beginnings of a subway construction sight or something, I heard people shouting behind me. They knew I was there, and also that I was quite possibly on the correct route to get out of there. I was trying to move faster, the chain still there, but as I dared glance back (even with my brain screaming don't waste the time looking back) I saw there was already a nurse about thirty feet behind me.

I kept running (or trying, I was having issues running as I seemed really tired and the air really thick) and glanced back again after another moment and I saw that the nurse was wearing red (maybe it was a different nurse, or the dream decided to change her on the fly). It was more like a fancy red dress. I had only glanced at it though, back to running, and suddenly I had a memory of someone saying the lady with the red dress was the worst possible nurse you could encounter, that if she was on your tail you had no hope. It had the feel of a hospital myth, like some people didn't believe she even existed... and yet it appeared she was now chasing me. Well, whatever, I wasn't going to give up. Another glance, oddly enough, showed the nurse's skirt was red and maybe her collar, while the rest of her outfit had turned back a more normal white.

I managed to get myself corralled into a corner finally, choosing the wrong direction to run once I got closer to the far side of the huge bizarre area. I was so close, the other way had gone to a door but meanwhile I had one very big nurse ready to sedate me. She already had the syringe in her hand and even though I begged her not to hurt me she was very determinedly going to inject me. There were a couple other nurses in her wake as well. She moved to strike and suddenly I asked her, "Are you crazy too?" and she said, "Yes." The look on her face as she said it was a brainwashed/insane but determined combination. I thought I felt pain in my neck, but then she was still holding the syringe and I was still feeling the same, not getting sleepier.

The other nurses were now standing around, and it seemed like they had sort of decided they weren't sure they wanted to be doing what they were doing anymore. They were talking about the head doctor though, and how it was pretty much impossible to cross him. I don't remember if I encouraged the thought of breaking loose, but they decided to give it a shot, and now there were other patients who had apparently followed us down here. Someone opened the door I hadn't gotten to and we all filed outside, straight out into bright, warm sunshine. We found ourselves in a little walled-off sunken area with metal steps and a catwalk leading out of it, so we followed that.

We knew we were now free, and following this path would take us to further freedom. I stopped part-way across the catwalk though. I said something like, "What about the other patients in the hospital? They don't deserve to live like that. We should try to get them out." Some people didn't want to risk their freedom by going back in there. I thought we had a chance, if we worked together, whoever wanted to go, and I did say that I understood if people didn't want to risk it, but that whoever wanted to go back in should give it a shot. Also, the dream suddenly decided that maybe some of us had Heroes-like powers. There was one teenager who looked like he could have been in My Chemical Romance the way his hair, makeup, and clothes were, and he said he had some sort of ability (I don't remember what it was). He wasn't very confident in it, sort of like a minor thing he could do as opposed to something truly impressive, but he was volunteering to go on the rescue mission if I wanted him and I definitely did. One of the nurses agreed to help, and a handful of others were thinking about it.

Then I woke up.

At first I was a young lady of some sort who was in the hospital and this other family member came up, another woman a little older. I was supposed to be unconscious but I could see this woman inject me with like three or four syringes full of morphine. She was overdosing me, trying to kill me!

Then my perspective was switched to the evil girl and the person "I'd" tried to kill became the elderly grandmother of the family, a very important person in the heirarchy. (The attempted murder scene repeated from the new viewpoint, with a few dream-logic-messed-up differences like having problems with one of the syringes.)

Apparently I failed to kill the old woman, and now people were trying to figure out who'd OD'd her. So far I was coming up clean and appeared clueless as the rest. I was worried about some apples in her room tho, as I'd apparently also injected morphine in a few of them. I also remember eating one during a family meeting, so it'd look like someone tried to attack me too. But I was worried that would come across as too obvious, that I'd set myself up but I was really the criminal.

The apples were still in the grandmother's room (and tons of them, along this odd counter with little sides on it so the apples wouldn't roll off). I was trying to think of how to get rid of them all entirely, or figure out which ones I'd poisoned before someone else showed up (I think the grandmother either had been moved from the room or was still completely out of it)...

I don't remember the rest.