sanity is relative

(Inspired by watching Annihilation Earth and Twilight Zone last night, definitely.)

I don't remember the first parts clearly, but this was a really long dream. There were several characters stuck on an island that was having major volcanic activity by surprise. Something had happened to mess up the entire island's geographic ecosystem. Also, there was a factor involved with live dinosaurs being in the park on the island, although it was not until later that the term Jurassic Park was used in conversation. I think maybe in this plot that original concept had failed and somebody else later had tried to "do it right."

The characters that survived the lava and earthquakes managed to get a large black jeep or SUV type vehicle to a complex where they were hoping to find an option for safety or communication or the like. At some point I became a young woman character amongst the others, and there was another lady older than me, a man and a teenage guy, and a little girl of about eight and a boy of maybe five at the most. Their parents were already dead at this point.

In the complex, we were discovering things like rows and rows of empty cubicles and lab rooms that were completely empty of staff and had stuff strewn all over the place. Somebody found a dead body, so we were afraid that something like raptors were loose in the building. The older guy with us had a gun, but was low on bullets. By this time we were realizing that being stuck inside was a bad choice, but had a bad feeling we couldn't go backwards and had no real idea now how deep we were inside the building.

We came across this odd hallway where it branched at a cross-ways, and straight ahead past the intersection there was a thick glass pane set like a wall and we could see very dark hallways beyond. In the hallway to the left, there was a door set into the wall on its right where maybe that weird dark hallway could be accessed through whatever room was inside the door. I told the others to wait, and the kids were all "no don't go, it's too dangerous!" but I went carefully into the mystery room. I don't remember anything specific about it, except that it did lead into that dark hallway, close to the far side of the glass.

I remember feeling very exposed in that hall, and walking back towards the glass to investigate if anything might be worth seeing there, there was a sudden flash of quick, white light somewhere behind me, probably from the ceiling. It reminded me of the speeding cameras at intersections, but it also spooked me and the kids on the far side of the glass were yelling at me to get out of there.

I made it back into the connecting room without incident even though I feared something would get me in that dark hallway. There's a bit of confusion to the dream plot/logic here as I'm not sure if what I saw next was in that connecting room, or in another room near the main hallway intersection. Either way, in whatever room I was in now, I saw a lady with a black evening dress on that had no shoulders, and a bodice made to look a bit like two black flower petals covering her chest.

I think the two kids were in this room with me now, but none of us thought this person was actually here to help us, and she started pulling the top of the dress down. Somehow the older guys out in the hall knew about this, and wanted to see, but the kids and I couldn't get out of that room fast enough. I had a baaad feeling that what was under that dress wasn't human (I remember thinking evil vine-plant-like monster) and from the sounds of gunfire I was correct as we fled down the main hallway (having gone right this time from the original direction we arrived, or in other words, putting the glass-walled dark area to our left in passing).

The other lady in the group had decided to stick back with the dudes even though we told her to run, so it was just me and the two children as we turned a corner left and found two sets of glass double doors side-by-side that we realized could be closed and locked. This doorway would also put us into hallways connecting to the dark area, and the little girl was upset because she said she saw a ghost in the hall with me when the light had flashed earlier. I couldn't figure out what she meant by "ghost" and if she had seen it on the glass or actually in the hall with me, but we were running out of time. I'd rather face a mysterious "ghost" that hadn't killed me the first time (to the point that I hadn't even known it had existed) than get eaten by something.

I told her it would be okay, that we at least knew there was danger where we had been before, including the dinosaurs we still assumed were around somewhere, and we needed to lock the door. We had no idea if the others were even alive at that point, and if we sat around and waited we'd all die. So we started working on the doors, which was really messed up by dream logic and required being closed juuuust so in order for the locks to catch, and of course the doors didn't want to stay shut properly. Then when they did, the locks had turned from more simple rotating latches to something more like the plastic belt connectors you see sometimes on backpacks or amusement park ride seatbelts.

We had just gotten the doors properly locked when the man and the lady arrived on the far side. The teenage boy wasn't anywhere to be seen. They told us to open the doors, and he was being really mean about it, not really pleading but demanding it. I had a really off feeling about him (and I already did from the stupid "hot" lady episode), and if I opened the door for the chick who was stupid enough to hang out with him, I'd be letting him through too. He felt like a danger right now about as bad as the other stuff. At least it seemed he was out of bullets, so they didn't have any real option to get through the door.

As I was debating for a moment, he suddenly made a sort of "boo" face at us through the glass, including spreading the fingers out on his hands next to his face. I realized at that point that my impression was correct, even more so... we had no value to this man. I shook my head, said, "...sorry..." and took off with the kids.

As we ran quickly through darkened hallways and rooms that had absolutely nothing in them, I held the girl's hand and she had her little brother's. I told the girl to hold onto her brother's hand like their lives depended on it (which technically they did), and that if I had to I would hold both their hands but it seemed like I needed one free right now. I was using it to open doors at this point, and we were making fast progress even though we had no real idea where we were going. At this point it was mostly just knowing we were getting away from previous problems.

Suddenly one of the doors led us into a room crammed with office supplies and other junk, but more importantly, there were windows around the back-right and back walls. Daylight! There were desks along the back wall (also piled with stuff) but with enough room to climb up and open the windows. I opened one, and found that there was only a simple window screen between us and freedom. I could see that we could make it to the ground below, as we were on the second floor, but we were going to be okay! I was thrilled, and somehow could even tell that the surrounding area was relatively safe... that's right, it was raining. There was something about rain making the environment safe, I can't remember why. The dinosaurs were allergic to rainwater? Who knows.

In the meantime, suddenly a gust of wind blew what seemed like a whole bunch of mosquitoes into the room. The kids freaked out and told me to close the window, and in confusion I remembered the screens and then noticed that the lower half had much larger, almost artistically-placed holes in the screenwork. (I think the dream was just trying hard to fill a plot hole on the fly.) Then I noticed where the breeze was whipping stuff outside past the other windows, and that it looked a whole lot like tiny fluffy-ended flower or tree seedlings gusting around.

I told the kids this, that it wasn't bugs, and that held in the logic and vanished from being a dream element. At this point we were preparing to get the heck out of there, and thinking maybe there were a few things that could be scavenged from the room (like rain jackets or plastic trash bags to use as such) although we weren't going to take more than a moment or two. For some reason I had taken my shoes and socks off to get up onto the desk, or so now the dream decided. So I was fishing around in the junk on the floor for my shoes and started putting my socks back on.

The girl told me she thought I should bring the (possibly Pokémon?) cards with me, as she said she had a feeling they would be on the mantle in the new place we would get when we got free of this. Suddenly the plot element was added that I had been carrying (...how?? lol) a pillowcase with the cards as well as other regular playing cards and something similar. The entire thing was a bit on the heavy side, so I asked about the other cards, and she giggled and said they weren't necessary or entirely optional.

I said something in agreement to that, I can't remember what, and I think I was about to clear the bag out so there were only the cards cute lil' miss possibly-psychic wanted to see in the future home we were apparently going to share... which did seem right, I'd built up a connection with these kids during the adventure...

Then I woke up.

All the people in this dream kept changing a lot, as in the person who they were (whether I know them from real-life or not) even if an entity representing that "character" remained in the same spot all the time. The first part I remember, it was daytime and I was wandering around and into a bunch of rundown buildings that didn't have much space and were crammed really close together. The rooms were tiny, most of them open to the air in some way, and the hallways and doors were often crooked. The general state of decay reminded me of Silent Hill and I said something about it, other people around me (tourists, apparently, like me?) also finding the place creepy. I didn't think it was creepy, I loved it, but the others didn't appreciate the reference.

Then beyond the buildings there was a field with hills and trees beyond, and a river to the left. A guy was hitting on me, but a guy that I liked came to my rescue and told the other one to beat it. I think the guy I liked actually fought him too, but logic was failing hard (as it will continue to in this dream). At least my guy won. This started getting a bit like The Island as it felt like we were going to get in trouble for being near each other for too long... except that the concept of guard-type people coming after us was mixed up with the concept of my real-life parents (how appropriate).

We decided to make a run for it, leave all that behind, and yet we weren't running... just walking quickly up the hill into the trees. There were still other people around, and the reason why we were moving kept getting mixed up with my still being a little upset about that flirty jerk we'd left behind. Like maybe he'd come after us.

There was something about the river... and I have forgotten whatever got us to the next areas. There was a bit where it was like we had gotten to the edge of an MMORPG world map, and yet we were in the world physically and it seemed real enough except for a bit of a CG-texture-over-topography effect when looking down past the edge of the world. The area we were in was large spaces of tall golden grasses and the area beyond where we could get to was very desert-like yellowed ground/rock. The place where we were had a bit of a rise, a little bit taller than us, and when you crawled up it and looked over, the chasm beyond was so incredibly wide and deep it created some serious vertigo. The other guy was really weirding out over the thing, and I remember almost clutching the ground where it was safe on the other side of the rise because the feeling of fear of heights was so incredibly strong when peering over the edge. I looked more than once.

At any rate, we knew we couldn't go any further that way. There was a bizarre moment in my head where I wondered if we could jump off and start back at our "home points" wherever the heck that was (like in World of Warcraft, and actually the edge of the map where we were reminded me a little of the Night Elf home island except the landscape type was wrong). But I didn't want to risk actually killing ourselves as that might hurt and it might not work. And damn but that was a really effin' long drop.

More is missing from what I remember, but the next bit put us in a WWII era car and it seemed to be that time period, as if it always had been. I think we'd hitchhiked or something, and then the plot changed, where the boyfriend type person didn't exist anymore and I was part of a team of possibly-American soldiers. We were in Europe (the terrain was still really dry), supposedly going to France and/or England to escape the German invasion, and we had started in southwest Europe which in the dream failed to recognize the concept of Spain completely (even the word). Anyways, I was sitting in the back right seat composing poetry on a printed sheet of something else (yeah, modern-day printout sheet in black and white and a typical ballpoint pen).

There were three others in the car, one guy in the back seat opposite me and two up front. The guy in the back with me, none of the rest of us liked him. The two others were my friends. I read the poetry out loud, it was some sarcastic thing that if read between the lines was a direct insult/slam on the guy nobody liked; he didn't get it, and it's possibly because some of the references were in-jokes with my friends. After I read it, it was like we knew he was some kind of double agent and it was actually a bad thing to have him in the car... and it was like he was somehow in control of the situation so we were all kinda screwed if we couldn't figure something out. And he thought that was impossible.

I wrote something else on the edge of the paper and showed it to the driver. Also, I was magically now in the front passenger seat. I was trying to make sure it didn't look like I was passing a message, and also be sure the driver saw it. He nodded and smirked and the other ally got the message too cuz he saw the paper and yet somehow the bad guy didn't. The bad guy was getting suspicious that we were planning something but still, he thought he had the upper hand. What I had written was something to the effect of "drive the car off a cliff?" Somehow it was like we'd survive this and he wouldn't, or it would screw up some master plan bigger than us and it'd be worth risking our own lives. Those words I had written also totally matched with something I'd inadvertently written at the end of the poem. (I wish I could remember that poem!)

So now the driver was looking for something steep to drive the car off without the bad guy noticing. This wasn't going so well, and then I'm not sure exactly what happened but there was something about a bridge, and possibly using that since it went over a steep drop, and yet the next thing I remember is we were safely in the middle of a road surrounded by fairly flat terrain. I was now in the back left seat and the driver changed as well to someone I know in real life and would rather not mention. He was one of the allies at this point though. The passenger seat held the other ally, and the bad guy and a new bad guy (which the dream just sorta decided had always been there) were sitting in the back with me.

I whispered up to the driver, something about trying to do something about our predicament. This was also the first real time where it felt like the bad guys were actual Nazis as opposed to some other nonspecific enemy. I remember the driver saying something... agreeing with my concern but not really sure we could do anything. I was left with the feeling that if I wanted to do anything, I had to do it myself. Maybe the other ally would be more open to trying something direct if I started it...

Now the driver changed to someone else from real life who I won't mention, and he was the main enemy in the car. Dream logic got really confused over who else was who at this point, but my memories focus on what I was doing so let's stick with that. I decided to try and jump the driver, grabbing his neck and partly moving over the seat so I could get more leverage. I was trying to break his neck, and it was really hard because he knew I was trying to do it. Also, dream logic gave his neck muscles more strength than any normal person should have (grrr). I may have had a moment of lucidity where I just kinda decided "okay, you're dead, let's move this dream plot on please." Either way, the next bit defaulted to him being dead or no longer an issue. My ally from the front seat I do believe managed to get whoever was in the back seat under gunpoint to help further my own ability to subdue the driver.

The car had stopped and I think I had kicked the driver out the door or something. That left one bad guy in the car, in the seat behind me, and it was, I kid you not, Hitler himself. For some bizarre reason we just told him to get out of the car. I don't think dream logic was matching up the importance of the person with the situation in which we were in. It was like he was just another one of these bizarrely-changing characters, with slightly more realistic ties to the time period. Whatever, we told his ass to bail and left him on the side of the road all dejected-like. We foiled the master plan of whatever the hell was going on in the car! YAY!

We were still worried that the bad guys would track us down, as we had this new overriding idea that we had to get back to Allied territory and be truly safe. Maybe we had some sensitive information stolen from the bad guys. Maybe it was just the fact that they'd tried to kidnap us instead of kill us, and that meant something, and even if they just flat-out killed us or recaptured us now if they caught us... uhhh, I think we wanted to live. So yeah, meanwhile, I'm the driver apparently. There are still two random allies in the car (both guys, I was the only girl in this whole segment), one in the passenger seat and one in the back.

After getting the car started again I noticed and mentioned out loud that even though we were in Europe, everyone was driving on the right side of the road and even the car we were in was American-style with the driver seat on the left. I wondered if we were in a country where this was specifically the rule, or if some weird conformity thing had hit while we were not paying attention. We thought it was funny at any rate. What was not funny was the first major intersection I came to, I realized the brake pedal didn't work! A thought flashed through my mind that this might have been an extra safety measure for the bad guys, in case we got away... we'd end up dying in a car crash or at least wrecking the car.

I knew the bad guy had stopped the car earlier though. My memory of that was very fuzzy, but I got an image of him using the emergency brake. I pulled on the handbrake and it sort-of worked. I did manage to get the car to slow down and/or stop, the next bit was just a lot of stupid dream-logic-failed driving and modern day traffic situations mixing in where they shouldn't have been. We were also trying to find a town to hide out in and rest, and that was failing badly too. I remember towns that looked like toy houses literally, or CG renderings that we obviously couldn't visit, or things like that. Also, I got an image of a map showing sort-of-Europe (if most of southwest Europe had been squished up into one small almost-island-looking thing) showing a line where we'd actually been driven by the bad guys (going east towards Axis territory, at least that part made sense) as opposed to north. So the idea was to go north, and that at least was happening.

Eventually it was getting dark and I think we were thinking we should have been getting to Vienna soon. Vienna was, magically, some sort of shipping port or something in the north of France. (Vienna is actually in Austria, quite a bit to the east of where the dream thought it was.) We still didn't seem to be in friendly territory, as apparently the Germans had taken all of France already or something. We did find a town finally that we could stop into, but it was spread all over hills and it was still kinda not making sense. I think it might even have been Vienna, but all the buildings were mostly just really small houses and there was possibly a ferry dock on the north end by the water.

It was starting to rain as I headed the car towards that north part of town and suddenly my allies were no longer in the car. The original idea seemed to have been that they were going to look for food, but then it seemed more like I'd almost misplaced them. At that same moment, what had helped me discover that they were missing was that the car wasn't a car anymore... it was a plastic-fabric duffel bag I was dragging along the ground. An empty bag. No passengers. Meanwhile I was pulling the thing up a wet, dark hill that didn't actually have a road. (Logic bailed totally. Bye logic.)

I decided to find somewhere that we all could stay, and sort of hoped that the guys would find me or I planned to go find them after securing a room. Right by where the ferry was supposed to be (more logic fail, it was possibly a bridge or a broken-down bridge at this point) was a building marked Hotel with a red neon sign. When I got in there, though, it appeared to be a very small room with some old guy in charge of it. I asked if he had a place where we could stay, and he showed me a closet in this room that was basically a broom cupboard with a simple sleeping mat or two on the floor, a barrel, and yeah, a broom. There were also rats, and he said we could brave them if we wanted to sleep there. At first I was really worried about the rats and then I think logic decided it didn't like that bit of the story, so the rats were friendly, and one of them was on the top of the barrel just being cute. (It looked like saphiresdreams new rat Blob, a black and white pattern to the fur. ♥)

Okay, fine, I decided to take the "room," and there was some issue over money (and logic related to it, I'm sure) but either way I reserved the thing. Now I had to locate my buddies, and I remember thinking maybe I could put the car lights on high-beam and blink them over towards the town (the hotel area was one of the highest points, and yes, this implies I had a real car again and not a damned empty duffel bag). But then I wondered if this would make the enemy find us too.

Then I woke up.