The half-forgotten
Other half of my short life
In short story form

 
The Death Of Us
04-01-1999

There I was, standing in line, waiting for the concert to begin, pushing my way up among other people to get close to the stage. My old friend Dave was with me (Harlequin from the BBS days). We discovered that the show was going to be delayed for some time, so he decided to take a run through the gauntlet. I had nothing better to do, so I ran after him, through and away from the crowd toward an undergroundish entrance. I hadn't felt the effects of the drugs until just then, when I started running, and then wondered if this was such a good idea. Luckily I'd been through it before with some other people (perhaps earlier in the dream, because it WAS familiar).

It started out rather standard....corridors through a huge abandoned mansion, and if we were fast enough and knew our way, we could get rather far before its undead inhabitants became aware of our presence. That was the plan, at least. He was moving pretty fast, and I fell behind, always barely keeping him in sight.

He waited up for me at a particular junction, a secret trap door low in the wall. "Well, which way?" he asked me, even though he knew where HE was going. "It doesn't really matter," I said, "they both end up in the same place. It's just a matter of preference. I went right last time, so this time I'll go left." "Well you have to go right," he said. Whatever. We went our separate ways.

It was a muddy passage, and we had to crawl a bit before separating. Both passages WERE essentially the same...piers of slippery mud, a very unstable floor, with dark pits beneath. In spite of my drugged condition, I managed to speedily cross without a problem and arrive at the other end, where I met Mike (Dworkin, Dave's best friend in RL). Dave was nowhere to be seen, but oh well. I suddenly remembered, in panic, that I forgot to get something back there! There was a crystal ball of sorts I was supposed to pick up that would make life much easier later on, but the mud zombies were already starting to snatch up out of the mud. Similarly, Mike remembered that he saw a weapon back there that he would like, so we went back down our paths. I had to step on a lot of zombie heads, hoping I could make it in time before their arms made it out...cringing as I remembered what happened last time (although I don't remember what that was, but I had visions of legions of these things converging on me and several other people)...I found the crystal ball, made it back, and then dropped it! The horror! Actually, I'd made it to a place where there was actually a floor, and I watched it slickly roll over the floor and over the edge of the void! Noo! It was too late to go back, for the zombies were almost out from under the earth.

We ran around pillars of mud toward the exit, a big metal door, guarded by an armour-clad demon three times our size, and me with only a knife. Mike had his ice-scraper, though, so maybe that would help. The demon breathed fire at us, and we rolled for cover. "Duck under the ledge where he's standing," Mike shouted to me. I did so, and the foul creature couldn't get to me. A little lizard thing went by, and I stabbed it several times.

I suddenly knew what Mike was up to. I also knew it would work, but we would regret it later. He'd tied the scarab he had to a string, and we was swinging it around, shouting out an incantation. At the final word, he let the scarab go. It collided with the demon warrior, who exploded into smithereens. "Why did you THAT?" I implored. "We'll NEED that scarab later!" I guess sometimes you can't afford to think ahead.

We went through the door. All sorts of undead creatures were slowly after us now, groping at us as we passed by. We barricaded a bedroom and looked around. Dead end. "So where do we go now?" Mike asked me, as if he knew the answer, but wanted me to find it. Aha! There's a secret door behind that dresser there....just pull it...help me out here...ok. I imagined someone else peering door the passage and saying, "You're not going to like this." It was very confined, but it was a way out. Mike went first, I followed. "Don't we want to seal our exit?" I asked. "No no! You have no idea how this works at ALL, do you?" Apparently he wanted the inhabitants of that bedroom to find out that someone found their passage.

We found a spiral staircase, but there was a zombie coming down the stairs. Between us and him was a door...like a jail door, or a fence door. You could stick your hands through the bars. Beyond the bars was a very complex series of spinning wheels (it made sense in terms of physics, but it was too brilliantly-arranged for me to remember how it worked). Suffice to say there were latches and such spinning around in a complex, yet repetitive, pattern, just within our reach. I tried my key, which I found earlier, in the door lock. It didn't work. Mike mocked me, "If you keep trying that useless key, you'll be the death of us." He had a blue key thing he was trying, but it didn't work, either, and the zombie was closing in. I remembered that last time I stuck my key through the bars and luckily hit one of the latches on the spinning thing, and that opened the door. I tried that, but I couldn't do it. I patiently waited for the latch to come by a few more times, but each time, I failed. Eventually Mike got it and we went through.

We emerged into a huge concert hall-like room where we faced another huge demon warrior guy. Several others had somehow joined us. None of us had ANY weapons, either, and I openly complained about that. I expected someone to want to try killing it anyway, and was ready for the task, but everyone decided to quit and leave, so I did, too. The drugs had worn off.

I was with Aziz and Ted (another student) in a huge theatre. The building was new and was being shown off. We went up the elevator to another level and stepped out. As we stepped into a new room, everything became bigger. At the same time, everything seemed to have lower resolution, and Aziz commented on the poor quality of design. We went to the windows and looked around. We were really up high, and you could see the entire city (though was city it was, I know not). We found some bags of cookies in a desk drawer, and some woman shooed us away from them. I scampered away to eat my cookies while Ted and Aziz walked around the room some more. Someone tried to get my attention, and I waved a crumby hand at them. They figured I was busy.

We walked into the next room, and it grew even larger, but again, you could see the big "pixels" that made up everything.

I decided to visit the fraternity house, remembering how (in another dream) it had been completely remodeled. In fact, this time the entire neighborhood had been completely redone...or was it a different neighborhood? Everything was different, actually. I parked and went inside. Lots of interaction I don't remember. Lots of fraternity people and even high school people, like a big reunion. It started to snow, and I bragged how I'd parked my car perfectly in the spot where no snow would get to.

On the porch, some guy with a sword started facing me off. He was a distance away...large porch...and all I had on me was a cookie wrapper. I got into a fighting stance. He charged. I threw the wrapped at him to distract him, then rolled on the floor under his legs. He jumped my legs and then kept on running, engaging into fake combat with someone else.

Something about Storm Troopers coming over and shooting some useless people, then leaving.

Then I dream up a soundtrack that I actually remembered, so I woke up to record it.


posted by Phlegm at 11/24/2003