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Dream of Rats


This is a dream I had a couple of months ago. I was walking west down twenty fifth street towards Seventh Avenue. The old neighborhood was in pretty bad shape. New York isn’t the cleanest place in the world but it looked like there were a few abandoned cars and piles of old garbage in front of the entrance of my former apartment building. I have no idea where I was going but walking around aimlessly seemed to be a good idea. All of a sudden it was apparent that I was homeless and didn’t have more than thirty dollars to my name. It was getting cold and nightfall was setting in. The big problem was I was extremely tired and passing out amongst some garbage bags was not a good idea. I was almost past the front door of my old place when a man came running out and said it was alright to come inside and get a few hours sleep. I didn’t say a word. How did he know I was homeless, I thought? I figured that I looked pretty bad, and it was almost as if he recognized me. I had no idea who he was but I kind of trusted him in an odd way. I still just stood there and said nothing, so he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me in the lobby.

This place wasn’t as I remembered it, it was a different world. Everything was a dirty gray. It was the industrial enamel gray that you would find on the basement floor or in a school locker room. The odd thing was there was no door, no stairway to go anywhere. The only thing was a small window or opening straight ahead of me. It was probably four feet tall and two feet wide. An exhaust fan was mounted in the bottom half of the window. The motor and blades were incased in a wire cage that was covered in dust. It was motionless. Suddenly it kicked on and blew right at me. The dust was awakened and it desperately clung to the fan, holding on for dear life. I moved out of the exhausts path and noticed a few rats sitting around the room. Now there was even one sitting on the top of the exhaust fan. I also started to notice roaches hanging out in the cracks and crevasses that were all along the walls and in the floor. Something was happening. The man that was standing next to me, said, “Go on in.” Go on in, I thought, where and to what place? I said that there wasn’t a door, and he said, “Up there, up there, go in up there.” He then pointed to the opening above the fan. The fan took up the bottom half of the window but the space above it was completely open, just enough space to crawl through. “I can’t crawl up there and climb over that fan while it is running!” I said. Now the lobby was full of people and they kind of pushed me towards the window. “Just go, just go.” they all said. And so I went. I had to kind of climb up on the sill and step over this powerful fan, all the time trying to keep my fingers from penetrating the wire cage that surrounded it. As I was about to lift my knee up and stick my foot through the opening, I noticed bats hanging around the top of the window above my head. I tried to not panic. They weren’t terribly realistic bats, they were somewhat stylized like bats that might be in a cartoon or in a bad horror flick. They were taunting me with their screeching and plenty of roaches were clinging to the ceiling witnessing my dismay. The bats then seemed to be cursing at me in English. That was very unnerving. I had a feeling that they wanted me to know they were special and I am sure they thought talking bats would scare the hell out of me. Somehow I made it to the other room.

The smell of death was in the air, I mean real death. It was faint enough that I didn’t feel really sick from it, but it flooded the room and sunk into my clothes. As I looked around I noticed this room was very dark. Two light bulbs hung from the ceiling and they barely emitted any light that could be of much use. I was relived that I had found a place to sleep but I searched for a door or some exit to reassure myself that if I wanted to leave in a hurry I would know exactly where to go: even if I was half asleep I could stumble out in a moments notice. Well I couldn’t find any such thing. I had almost forgotten how tired I already was and I walked over to the man that had invited me in the first place. I asked why there wasn’t a door or some other way to get in or out of this place besides the way I came in. He replied, “What do you think this place is, the Ritz?” This response baffled me, I knew it wasn’t a nice place by any means, but a room without much of an exit is a bit claustrophobic. Before I had time to say a word somebody said, “The lights are going out in a few minutes and then it will be pitch black in here, you wont be able to see a thing but you will feel the rats as they poke you with their noses and nibble on your fingers!” This was too terrible to imagine. I started to see more rats appear from the dark corners of the room. Roaches were multiplying and darting around my feet. Another voice said, “The only way to get away from the rats is to go over there and sleep at the table.” What is he talking about, I thought? I couldn’t see much but I headed over towards the place he had indicated.

I was on the other side of the room standing directly under one of the lights from above. They would go out soon and I looked for this table that was supposedly going to protect me from the rats. The room was much bigger than I had thought. It seemed that the more I walked around the more it grew. The light seemed to be getting dimmer. I walked a little more and noticed that the floor seemed to end six feet in front of me. If it actually was there, it was completely black and nothing could be seen from that point on. I inched my way closer and discovered that there was a large rectangular hole in the floor. Then things started to become clearer. A round table and four chairs appeared a few feet inside the drop off. The table top was level with the floor and the chairs placed around it accordingly. They were hovering in the darkness and yet seemed anchored to their position. One man was passed out at the table and a Styrofoam cup was lying next to his head. I finally figured out what the voice told me earlier, this was the way to get away from the rats. I was going to find a safe way to get on one of the chairs so I could also fall asleep at the table. I found an empty beer bottle on the ground and I dropped it into the hole to see how deep it was. I heard nothing, absolutely nothing and I became alarmed at the fact that if I slipped off one of the chairs while climbing down onto them I was a complete goner. The thought crossed my mind to simply jump over on the table itself because there was something that my feet could land on, but if I slipped I’d have to try and latch onto the backs of one of the chairs. I didn’t know what to do. All of a sudden a couple of people were standing next to me. They explained that time was up and the lights were going out immediately. Rats were starting to gather around my feet. This was it. I jumped to one of the chairs in a panic. As my foot landed on the seat I grabbed back to steady myself. What happened was unexpected. The chair actually wasn’t anchored too much of anything and it broke free from its floating position. It threw me off and I was swallowed by the darkness.


Angel


It was around two in the morning and I was in bed trying to sleep. My brain was full of activity and I could hear it talking to me. It wasn’t really talking to me, it was ranting and raving and singing and carrying on. All of a sudden there was an evil presence in my room. It was as if this thing was floating over my body as I lie frozen in bed. Since I couldn’t move I figured that this must be a dream and there wasn’t much to worry about.

This evil presence I felt got heavier and heavier. When I say heavier I mean weight, it was starting to crush me and sink directly into my body. It started to take shape and looked wavy like heat emanating from an idling car in the dead of summer. Now it was swirling around and starting to sink into my chest. This was bad, and I was sure this thing would either kill me or take my soul and turn it into something terrible. This can’t be a dream, I thought, this was extremely real. I could see into the other room and there was just enough light to make out strange shapes moving about. I had no choice but to fight back. I could barely move my arms and I tried to push this thing off my chest but my hands just went right through it. I tried again and instead of pushing I tried grabbing. This seemed to work. I was holding this thing and I tried to rip it apart. I was even growling to try and intimidate it. The ghostly presence fought back with full force. Instead of trying to sink into my chest it spread and went down to my feet. I was still clutching the body of this thing and I couldn’t let go to try and fight it off elsewhere. This had to be real. I looked at the wall facing the foot of my bed and saw an angel standing on the wall. She was standing on the side of the wall facing the floor. Why was she facing the floor, I thought? I needed some eye contact to reassure myself she was going to help me but she just stood there motionless facing the floor. As I continued my struggle, I once again noticed the shapes moving about in the other room. It was apparent that they were shadows shaped like demons with large tails and big ears. Well if there are shadows then there must be something making them! Good God, how much worse could this get, I thought? The devilish figures themselves stepped into view and played hide and seek games with one another. They occasionally stared directly at me to show they weren’t completely ignoring me. I was losing the battle and my body was being flooded with this evil spirit. I once again looked to the angel for some sort of comfort. This time all that remained was a hollow shell of an angel staring at the floor. It looked completely vapid. The devil’s childish games had sucked the life out of her. All hope was gone. I woke up to sound of a bat trying to get from the basement below up through one of the heat registers in my bedroom.



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