3/28/2019

copied from my tumblr:

man, i had one of the wildest ass nightmares last night. im writing this down because it’s one of the most serialized, well put together nightmares ive ever had, and it was also one of the scariest ive ever had, and one of the most personal i ever had, and i dont even know what to do with it other than write it down because if nothing else it’s one hell of a good story. so its under the cut here.

it was a big old house with an elevator with a shitton of levels, although the levels wern’t in the right order on the elevator. the story went that the house was a work of art called ‘year zero: first draft’, and it was implied that this was the rough draft of a story that was completed. i experienced it as a video game kind of perspective, but i knew that it actually was a big black book in a black sleeve with the title embossed in silver on the side. on the first level, upon entering the house, you’re greeted with the setup for the story: there’s a bunch of the family and close friends of this guy, who apparently lives in the house, and they’re all worried and shit talking to a doctor about his mental state. this was level 0. you enter the elevator and pick the first floor.

the first level was a nightmare telling the story of a father. he had a wife with two children, a boy and a girl. he and his wife decided that it would be best to have her and the girl sent off somewhere else, and it left the father alone in this big dark apartment with the son. he wouldn’t stop crying. the father stayed locked in a room and was terrified of him. gradually, the cries matured from infant cries to toddler cries, and then from toddler cries to angry child screams, and then you could hear a teenager banging on the door, furious at the father and threatening to kill him. and then the crying went from a teenager to adult sobs, and he stopped banging on the door. the father was crying to himself at the end.

the second level was this wide, endless hallway of a shitton of rooms, each with a different door. i spent time in each one, and each one terrified me, but i cant remember what they were aside from being deeply personal, so much that i was like, shocked in the dream of how much they applied to me.

it went up 13 levels, but the elevator buttons were only marked 1-11, with the last two buttons being marked with a piece sign and a cartoon picture of a cat. this would make sense later. i dont remember all of the levels— i remember there was one that was a story about emotional numbness, and one that was about anger, and they all were terrifying— but the common theme was about this dude’s anger, isolation, and trauma turning into depression.

the 10th level was with me. it was my grandma’s house, and it was christmas, and we were having christmas breakfast. i came around in it with the awareness that my mom was mad at me, which made me super fucking scared bc she says some wild shit when she’s angry irl and i go out of my way to avoid making her mad. i came in, and my mom was annoyed with me for everything; she said my attitude was wrong, that i was eating too much and eating the things brought by other family members instead of the things brought by her and my dad, and saying i was ruining the meal. half an hour in, she said it was called off and everyone needed to leave because of me. this left me alone with her, and then it ended and the elevator went up to the 11th level.

the 11th level was a dude- the guy the anonymous family members were talking about on level 0. he lives alone in the top of the house, which is perpetually dark and crazily isolated. in a previous level the viewer learned that he used to have cats, but that they all died and now he was alone, and he thought he had no reason to live. he was the author writing the story for this place, which was manifesting in all the levels of the house. i wasn’t afraid of him, but he wouldn’t look at me. i was impressed with the knowledge that he was thinking, very seriously, about killing himself. i didn’t want him to, because i got the impression that all the levels below were stories of him and his childhood and trauma and stuff and they were pretty amazing, how they were built and stuff, and i was amazed at how this guy could have talent like this and still think he was worthless. he seriously did not believe me when i impressed this knowledge back at him (we weren’t talking; we were just thinking). he also didn’t believe me when i said there were people in the foyer at the bottom level with a doctor worried about him and stuff, and he said they didnt matter.

even though we were in the attic, there were two more levels to go: the peace sign level, and then the cat level. but when the scene ended, instead of going to the next level (and i was pretty invested at this point, even with all the fear; i wanted to know if this guy would live), the whole elevator fell through. it barreled down the shaft….and then it was a completely different nightmare with some dumb shit without any of the rich character development id been enjoying up until that point. i felt robbed.

im not missing the possibility here that the guy in the attic was supposed to be me.

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