My scary dream

This is a dream I had two nights ago. I decided to make it into a story... Well, a rough draft anyway. We'll see how it goes. It might just be me writing down what happened. Who knows.

Thanks Zan for the idea.

Please note that the two girls in my dream are people that I actually know but because I don't want them to think I am creepy (because I don't know them well), I have changed their names for my story.

It was dark, but it was warmer than it normally is at such a late hour. I think it was summer. It must have been. There was no snow on the ground and, from what I recall, any trees that I could see seemed to have leaves.

I was back in Thunder Bay. I was in the K-Mart parking lot, which is odd, because that K-Mart doesn't exist anymore. It must have been a childhood memory. I was in the K-Mart parking lot with Liz and Megan. We were just walking out of the building when all of a sudden we heard the sound of glass shattering. We looked at each other, scared and a little confused. We stood still for a few minutes, quiet, but heard nothing. So, we continued walking. I don't know where we were going. We were crossing the parking lot. Did we have a car? Maybe. We might have been going to catch a bus that was stopped on the other side of Arthur Street.

We continued walking, and all of a sudden, a boy zoomed by on a bike, one of those really tiny, good-for-tricks kinds of bikes. He was wearing black pants and a baggy, grey hoodie. He had something dark under his arm. It looked like a cat, but somehow I knew it was something he'd stolen from K-Mart. We all knew somehow.

We'd been watching the boy ride away for a few seconds when, all of a sudden, Megan starts chasing after him. So I didn't know what to do, Liz was just standing there. Liz disappeared though. I don't know where she went. She just vanished. Weird. So I was left standing all alone and the only thing I could think to do was to start running after the crook with Megan.

So off I went, and somehow I caught up. I must be super speedy in my subconscious. I was about three feet behind Megan, and I noticed the boy reach into his pocket. He'd seen us, and I knew exactly what he was doing: he was going to pull out a gun. I stopped dead in my tracks. I wanted to scream at Megan to tell her to stop but I didn't say anything. Sure enough, the guy pulled out a pistol. Then he shot Megan. She fell over and didn't get up. I assumed she was dead and blacked out.

When I came to, I was on the other side of the parking lot with Liz and the crook. We were standing near the trunk of a little red car. It might have been a Sunfire. I couldn't really tell just by looking at the rear bumper. The boy didn't say anything but we'd already figured out that we'd been kidnapped. We were discussing who would ride where. Somehow Liz managed to get the front seat, and the boy tried to convince me to ride in the trunk. I think I went along with that plan.

The next thing I remember was being parked outside a police station. The boy had a run-in with this cop back in the day, and was out to seek revenge. I guess he wanted us to help. We got out of the car and walked into the station. It was empty. It looked like a hotel lobby. There were street signs that read "Library," "Museum," and "Office." No one thought this was strange though.

We snuck through the "library" part of the police station. Liz and I weren't sure what we were doing but the crook seemed to have a pretty good idea. We stopped when we found a narrow, staircase. The stairs were covered with a beige carpet. We went upstairs.

Apparently, in whatever day and age we were in, it was common for a policeman and his family to live above the police station. They had a cozy little apartment. I liked it. So did the crook. He was there to steal something, but he never told us what. While he was rummaging through some cupboards, a large blonde woman came into the room and interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me! Who are you?"

I knew the crook wasn't clever enough to come up with a decent response and I didn't want to get arrested myself, so I stepped in and told the woman that we were from out of town and that her house looked so elegant from the outside that we just had to see what the inside looked like. She believed me and was so flattered that she invited us all into the kitchen for some milk and cookies. They were delicious. We also got to meet the policeman. He was retired and resembled a thinner, younger Danny Glover. He had a very raspy voice.

When we'd finished eating, we decided to leave. At this point, the layout of the house had changed and we were at a door that led outside to a driveway. Liz stood in the foyer and put on her shoes while the crook had a very friendly conversation with the policeman. I couldn't hear what they were talking about. For some reason, my shoes were outside. So the policeman's wife held the door open so I would still be included in the conversation while I put on my shoes.

Once I'd tied my laces, I realized that this was my chance to tell someone we'd been kidnapped! I pointed through the wall to the boy and mouthed "He has a gun!" while making the universal gesture for "gun."

This is when I realized how truly stupid this woman was. Instead of keeping her mouth shut and alerting her husband the policeman once the crook was out of sight, like I'd hoped she would, she yells at the top of her lungs, "Jeremiah!" Apparently this was the cop's name. "Did you leave your gun out on the front porch again?" I guess he denied it, so the fat, blonde woman decided to prove herself right by telling him that I had pointed to the front porch and made a gun with my hand.

As it turned out, the crook was smarter than Jeremiah's wife. He knew immediately that I had tried to turn him in. More importantly, I knew he knew. So I started running down the driveway, hopped a wooden fence, and found myself in a forest somewhere. It was autumn now. I could tell because there were leaves all over the ground. For some reason, however, the leaves that were on the trees were still green. It was a strange forest.

I heard the leaves crunching as the boy with the gun chased after me. My heart was beating fast and I was terrified. Luckily, I found a burrow in the trunk of a willow tree. I crawled in and started to cry.

The crook had caught up to me, and I could see him from my hiding place. He was singing a song. I don't remember the words but the song scared the crap out of me. There's a good chance that it was Ring Around the Rosie or a similar nursery rhyme song.

I was bawling my eyes out now and trying to keep quiet. But the crook could hear me. I knew it. He would pull away the branches of the willow tree with his gun and peek into the hole I was in. He pretended he didn't see me, but I'm pretty sure he knew.

I held my breath and watched as the boy started to pull back all the branches, one by one. When there were two or three branches left obstructing the villain's view of me, the two of us made eye contact. He had these terrifying, bright yellow eyes, and they made me start to cry again. His arm reached out and into the hole. I tried to push myself back but there was nowhere left to go. I closed my eyes.

Then, all of a sudden, Jeremiah the policeman came into the scene and shot the boy in the back of the head. I still cried, and while the cop was handcuffing the boy and arresting him -- even though he was obviously dead -- he gave some elaborate, retired cop's speech, something that you would see at the end of a movie. I was in too much distress to pay attention, and I haven't a clue what he said.

And then I woke up.