Strange Dream (7-13-19)

## 7-13-19

This excerpt is taken from a diary found by an underwater search and recovery unit. The diary was located in a black ceramic box along the floor of the English Channel. This entry is the only legible one.

This time, the nightmare is different. It isn't like the ones before, like the one in the plaza or the one where my dog dies. This one feels cloudy, and way more realistic. Dreaming it feels almost like when I'm struggling to remember something that happened a long, long time ago. The doctors said that to make it go away, I should try writing it down. So here goes.

The moment the dream starts, a set of hands are placed upon my shoulders from behind. I know, without looking, that they belong to my grandfather, even though I've never met him. We're standing in a field of hip-height wheat, and the sun shines brightly overhead. Far off on the horizon, I can barely make out a very large looming black tower. The sun glints off of it if I look at it just right. Something about it unnerves me, and I frown. My grandfather, noticing this, comforts me, saying something. But the words aren't in English. In fact, they don't seem to be in any language at all. The noises he makes are clearly words, but they lack familiar syllables.

To reply to this, I turn around to look at him. He's about 4 inches taller than me, and he wears a baseball cap embroidered with a single black square. He smiles kindly, squinting his blue eyes in the sun and showing his crooked, yet kindred smile. He says something in the inhuman dialect again, gesturing at the wheat around us as he does so. Instead of looking where he is gesturing, my gaze returns to the looming tower in the distance. The sun overhead beats down hard, now an unpleasant level of heat that beads sweat on my forehead.

In the wheat nearby, a twig snaps. My grandfather and I both turn our heads sharply to look in the direction of the noise. When we do this, a horrible shrieking noise fills the air. It sounds like a trillion metal cables being torn apart at the same time, overlaid with harsh scraping of metal on metal. We now turn to look at the source of the sound, the tower. The looming tower is somehow much closer to us than it was before that twig snapped, as if it teleported. It must have been about 200 meters from where we stood, and it was beginning to twist and fall down towards us. My mouth opens to scream, but I can't even hear myself scream over the horrible noise the falling tower was creating.

Suddenly, time seems to skip forward. I'm standing where I stood before, but everything has changed. The sky is an oily black, with no stars in sight. The wheat around me is scorched and flattened, and I'm coated in a thick layer of some kind of powder. On all sides of me, there are burning scraps of the tower, and a thick cloud hangs in the air. In front of me is a terrifying scene. Three corpses are sprawled in a mangled mess. Two of them wear black robes, with matching black masks to cover their faces. The third is that of my grandfather. His hat is placed over his face, as if someone had already tended to the scene. He's very obviously dead, his shirt soaked in blood, dust, and dirt. I run over anyways, desperate to try anything to save him. When I reach for my grandfather's face, I find that in my hands, I am holding a large revolver. After noticing it the weight hits me, and my hand drops to the ground, before I drop the revolver.

I feel my grandfather's corpse for a pulse. It is no use. He seems to have been dead for some time, and he is cold, despite the fires raging around me.

The other two corpses, however, are still alive. They rise in unison, slowly approaching me. Panicked, I reach for the revolver, but it's nowhere to be found. I jump up to meet them, and then they are gone. I'm simply standing in the center of a huge disaster, alone, with the corpse of my grandfather. Warm tears streak down my face. And abruptly, a set of hands rests on my shoulders from behind, and I awake in a cold sweat.