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.

Them Bears

Dream Info: Saturday, April 4, 2009
Realism Intensity: 3
Content: PG-13

Up in the hills just outside of the city was a nice resort of sorts. It was set on the foot hills overlooking the valley.

People were strolling about in the warm sunshine. I was walking near the edge of the resort. The bushes moved and out clambered a large grizzly bear. He was several hundred feet up the road so I didn’t feel threatened. I just stopped walking and stared. The bear scratched itself and then started lumbering lazily towards me. I walked slowly backwards and then turned down a side street, into the resort, leaving before anything bad happened.

I saw no more of the bear. I had an urgent message for the owner of the resort, and continued on my way to her house forgetting about the oddity of a bear in this area.

As I drew close to the house, again the bushes shook ahead of me. I froze as the bear jumped out onto the road. It stood and roared. I was being stalked. Behind me, people stopped their morning walks and those at the café lowered the cups of cappuccino.

“Run. Get out of here,” I cried to them, then turned and fled myself. The crowd vanished into buildings. The bear rushed after me.

I was going to die, I knew it. And I ran fueled with fear. I outran a young boy who was wheezing with exertion. I looked over my shoulder as the bear, catching him, crashed and rolled on the ground; the boy clasped in its great claws. I was overjoyed. The boy distracted the bear which was allowing me to escape. What luck; I was going to live.

I stopped running, consumed with guilt. What had I just thought? That was terrible. So I turned and ran back. Against a building was a stack of chopped wood. I grabbed a log and hurled it at the bear. Again and again I threw. The bear drew back, startled by the sudden attack. Confused it retreated to the nearest trees leaving the boy on the ground. I rushed forward, lifted the boy, and together we ran inside a nearby building.

The building had several rooms and large glass windows. In fact, the door was glass. It wouldn’t keep a grizzly bear out long. I locked it as the bear sprinted from the trees towards us.

There were several people inside the store, a gift shop of sorts, who looked at us questioningly. I pulled everyone into the center of the room, away from the windows. The bear slammed into the door. The glass cracked but held. The bear battered angrily. I led everyone through the rooms to another door. But as we reached it, three more bears attacked. That door was glass as well. We were surrounded. I was shocked at how cunningly the bears had apparently planned this.

The first bear crashed through the door. One of the others had worked its way in through a window. The third and fourth worked on the back door. One had its paw through the bottom and was shattering the glass in a widening hole. The sound of roaring, breaking glass, and screaming filled my ears.

Then I woke up.