- 12:30 -
I can’t remember much about how the dream started off, but what essentially happened was that I was minding my own business when I fell down a laundry chute and found myself in another world.
This world I ended up in was a little bit more wild than good ol’ Earth, having all sorts of different trees, bushes, rock formations, flowers, all of which were completely foreign, sharing no relation to the plants we know. So I wander around for a bit and come across some other kids. One, and older boy, was my age, and he had a little brother and sister. They said that they were lost here as well.
So together, we started making our way through this forest full of really weird stuff, lke giant colorful mushrooms and strange animal noises.
Finally, we make it to this sort of big shelter tucked away in a gorge. Once inside, we find it empty (or so we think. It was a big place and we didn’t have time to search it completely). The youngest boy finds this book on a table in this sort of sanctuary at the front of the building and picks it up. Immediately another boy, maybe just a little younger than me, steps into the room and tells the kid not to touch the book, but it was too late.
This new kid’s name was Grant, and he was sort of like a Ben from Lost kind of character, where it was apparent he knew a lot of things about our situation but wasn’t willing to share. Naturally, we were frustrated with him practically the whole time.
Grant told the boy that he was now sort of “bound” to the book. He was responsible for its “well-being”, for it was a special book and anything that happened to it happened to the boy, too.
When I asked him how to get home, he said that it was complicated. He said that at the very core of things, every world was connected. He told us that instead of picturing the universe as a huge mass extending in all directions, we should picture it more as a huge room, with every world resting on the floor in different places. There were entrances and exits to every world–the trick was just finding them.
So we set off with Grant, who apparently knew where one of the exits was to this particular world. It was a cave, and when we walked far enough into it, we could see nothing but darkness. I began to have my doubts about Grant’s story. But he said that in between worlds is only darkness, and there were paths made. People who had found these placed before us, he said, had spent a lot of time wandering through the darkness before finding another world, and when they did, they left a path. We were wondering how we were supposed to see a path when we bumped into some wire and string. “That’s the path,” he said, and we understood.
Feeling our way along the strings and wires and other things (I remember there was also caution tape), we made our way through the darkness and eventually came out out through a locker in a locker room. When we left the locker room, we were high up in the bleachers in a huge gymnasium. Down on the gym floor, there were people in dance crews have dance competitions. When I looked closer, I thought I recognized some of the dancers as different people I’d played sports against in high school (namely Trinidad and LaJunta). Then, as I scanned the bleachers for the crowd, I saw all the guys from the Big R baseball team I’d played on all my life (including Clay). I went over to them and started to talk.
Now, something weird about this world that we came to was that it made you feel like you belonged there–it made you cease to care about any other place at all. Soon, I had no incling whatsoever to return to my own world, or to bring back my friends (who obviously belonged there, too). However, the little girl who I’d met at the previous world kept her head on straight and convinced me that we should leave. I convinced the team, and we made our way back out of the world from the same place we came, taking different strings this time.
Those strings led us to a really futuristic world, where the sky was all gray and machines with blue and red and other colored lights rose up all around us. I can’t remember much of what happened here, but I do remember that Grant, the three siblings, and I were separated from the team, and we dove into this crack in the ground to escape something that was pursuing us.
The crack gave way to a sort of tunnel that we slid down for a long time.
I was the first one to emerge, popping out of a big drain at a train station. The drain spat me out right in front of the tracks, and I had to keep my balance to keep from falling in and getting hit by an oncoming train. I spun around and saw Old Ben, the clocktower, and knew I was back in London. The drain spit Grant out, and I stood between him and the tracks, making sure he didn’t fall in. The little girl came out next, and right after her, the younger brother with the book. I caught the girl, but the boy excaped my grip and went flying over the edge and onto the ground. He hadn’t landed on the tracks, however, so I didn’t worry about him right away. I caught the older brother as he came out and then all of us went down to check on the boy. (except Grant, who remained on the platform) When we got there, we saw the book in pieces, having fallen completely apart with the impact. We knew the boy was dead.
Then suddenly, Grant began to scream and cry and ran down to us. “The book was mine!” he yelled. “I was bound to it, not him!” He was pleading to some higher power to take him instead.
Grant gathered up the book pieces, and threw them back down again. Instantly, he collapsed, and the boy regained consciousness. Aaaaand I woke up.
