The Demon of the Highland

Dream Info: February 2008
Realism Intensity: 8
Content: PG-13

One day I was at home. Dark clouds rolled in and blocked out the sun. In the sudden gloom I turned on a light, but nothing happened. No light came on. I grabbed a flashlight and headed into the black basement to find the circuit breaker. At the bottom of the stairs I hesitated. Something felt wrong. I stepped into the basement hall and the door to the kitchen at the top of the stairs slammed shut. Alarmed, I stepped back onto the stairs and fumbled with the flashlight. My arm brushed against something soft and cold. Something was there on the stairs with me.

The flashlight clicked on and I spun around. It threw me against the wall. It grabbed my neck suffocating me. I brought my flashlight up; the light fell across a very large humanoid creature. It was blacker than the dark basement. It had no eyes and only a slit of a mouth. It was eight feet tall, its head pressed against the ceiling.

I fought free. Somehow I found a sharp object and was able to overpower the creature and chop it into small pieces. The pieces bled, turned into black ooze, and drained through cracks in the cement floor. Shaken, I left the house. No other buildings were visible as I ran through the fields. Our house was alone on the Highland moor. I eventually arrived at the next building. I was winded. An hour or more had past. This building was a gray, dank, stone house. It was very old but had been converted into a restaurant many years ago.

Entering I found myself in a pleasant little Burger King. It was lunch time and quite crowded. I got a burger and sat with some friends. Dark clouds formed again outside. I was a little worried, but figured it was just a stormy day. For some reason I went down into the basement of the restaurant which was old, cobwebby, and obviously unimproved. It grew dark again. The power was still on at least. The dangling light bulbs flickered anemic light which was absorbed by the thickening darkness. One corner of the basement, in a back room, was completely black. I eyed the room warily. The blackness gathered form and suddenly the creature leapt out at me. We battled and I screamed for help. One of my friends jumped down the stairs. We managed to subdue the creature again and chop it into bits. We were both wounded and chopping it up was extremely difficult. This time I gathered up the creature and threw it into the furnace before it could ooze away. It made a terrific howling noise and smelled awful. We sat, winded, watching it burn.

I thanked my friend. I told him to stay at Burger King and enjoy his lunch. I needed to leave. He of course wanted to know what had just attacked us. I was putting the pieces together but didn’t want to say anything to upset him.

I trekked further north through the empty and windy land to the house of my uncle. It had been in our family for at least ten generations and was once the clan headquarters. I needed help, for I was afraid this was not the last attack. I was afraid I had yet again failed to kill the creature. For how can you kill something that is already dead? It was a Demon that had come for me. I’m not sure how, but it had come from Hell and somehow taken physical form. Foul and decrepit as it was, it was extremely powerful and bent on killing me for some reason. Or so I figured. If I was correct, it would come a third time and I would need a better weapon. I also needed some rest.

From the house of my uncle I took the family sword. It was a large but surprisingly light sword that was as old as our clan and rumored to have been handed to our ancestor by one of the very archangels guarding heaven. I hoped the rumor was true.

The sun was setting below the thick low clouds as I hiked towards home. A sudden rushing sound scared me. I dove onto the ground and rolled as a green dragon slashed through the air where I had been. It rose into the cloudy sky and vanished. I slowly got to my feet and unsheathed the sword from the scabbard on my back. I could hear the creature circling in the wispy clouds not far above me.

The sun was now sinking behind the distant hills. I needed shelter. Burger King was again my closest bet. I ran. The clouds thickened over the distant building. It knew I headed there.

I made it to Burger King without any other attacks. It was the dinner rush. My friends were still there, now having dinner. The sun had set and its faint red glow was being blocked out by the sinking clouds that were engulfing the restaurant. By the time I had explained to the costumers the danger we were all in it was completely black outside. Nothing could be seen out of the many large glass windows. I stepped to one cautiously. The Demon’s green head pushed out of the blackness and into the glass, cracking it. I jumped back, heart racing. Its wings thumped against the wall. It was not too large, its body probably only eight feet long. It was still humanoid. Only it had given itself large wings and a sinuous tail. I gathered all the costumers into the center of the building. We were as far from the windows as we could get. The windows wouldn’t stop the Demon. It was only toying with us.

Screams from the basement stopped my thoughts. I kicked open the basement door. No lights were on. I flipped the switch and revealed two children at the base of the stairs staring at the green shadow that had formed between us. The shadow lunged at them. Sword first, I plunged down on it. The winged Demon solidified and killed one child instantly.

My sword was able to slice right through the Demon like paper. The fight was terrible. I was bleeding and ended with broken ribs and nose but was able to slice the Demon into submission. As it thrashed in pieces on the ground, for a third time I sliced it up even more. I knew that that was what you do with Demons. But this time I did something different. I can’t remember what though. But I was sure that by my sword, and that other forgotten act, I had permanently sent that Demon back to Hell. Feeling relatively confident, I returned upstairs to the terrified people.

The Mine

Dream Info: June, 2009
Realism Intensity: 8
Content: R

Accompanied by two friends, one male and one female, I climbed through the collapsed entrance and into the wide tunnel of an abandoned mine. Everything was ordinary enough until several hundred feet in. There, hewn rock walls were replaced by dingy metal. The rock ground descended into wide stairs. The mine suddenly felt like an old underground installation of some kind. Rooms lined the stairs as we proceeded. They were all rather small. Some had doors, some curtains, some nothing. Occasional there were chairs but usually the rooms were empty.

I ducked into a room and stopped. My heart leapt to my throat. The room had a table, a couple of tipped boxes whose contents had spilled out, and several chairs. One of the chairs was occupied.

The person was facing the wall. I could only see his back. He was slouching. His dark hair was matted and unkempt. His headed rested at an awkward angle and both arms hung down. Their flesh was dusty and a sickly gray. The fingers were black and curled.

He was dead.

I must have made a noise for my two friends appeared at my sides. The girl screamed. The guy grunted.

It was as if I was frozen. I couldn’t move. It was incredibly eerie to come across a dead body. I had never seen one before. And here I was deep underground in the dark, in a small room, with a corpse. My mind wasn’t sure how to respond and my heart was pounding.

Somehow I approached the man. I moved the opposite direction his head was titled so as to avoid his face for as long as possible. I was not sure I wanted to see his expression. His chest distracted me from thoughts of his face. The man’s ribcage had been burned and was sunken in which allowed a perfect view of the insides of his lower abdomen. There was nothing identifiable: no organs, or bone structure. Just a yellowish orange liquid pooled down inside the black opening. The smell hit me. It was of orange juice, alcohol, and the bitter twang of throw-up.

I covered my mouth and nose, jerked erect, and discovered the man staring eyelessly at me. The face was gray and still bloated. Stains had dried where fluid had run from his now empty eye sockets. The hair on my neck stood up. I realized his body was too well preserved. Too much of his soft tissue was still on him: his bloated and streaked face, his hanging arms…he appeared to have died rather recently. This was an exceedingly uncomfortable realization.

Clarity came to my mind as I realized we were deep underground in the dark, in a small room, with a fresh corpse; a corpse that had died in a gruesome and undoubtedly unnatural way.

My skin was crawling and I was terrified. And I woke up.