Friday Night's Dream

This terrifies me. Obviously it helped to take my notebook into the lit bathroom and write it down there first. That's why writing it on a computer now doesn't seem so bad, and the light's on in here, too. Here goes.

"Just woke up from this dream. Anybody still alive was living in this post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, with some vague image in their minds of how it used to be. It looked like the wild west out there. At some point in my life, I was kidnapped from my home by a giant robot. I think he was trying to re-program my brain, slowly load up my mapped-out memories in order to erase them, in order to befriend me and make me into one of his own kind. Even early on I remember I had been given this glasses and helmet toy to play with, something to see what maps were in my head. Somehow I still had my cellphone on me, where my family could send me text messages of updates on their lives, even my boyfriend could still communicate. Something in me held back from ever responding.

I don't know how the robot tried to hold me captive, because to me in my memory it almost seemed like a friendship, but perhaps months or years later I had gotten away, I didn't think of him, I abruptly forgot.

By then I had found a group of friends, we were all in this abandoned mine or cave searching for something, trying to restore the state of our lives and figure out why we felt so vaguely brainwashed. At some point as we all stood huddled in a circle, one of the guys asked us if any one of us could lend him their cellphone for something that just might work, as long as it didn't have too much memory or data on it. I raised my hand to volunteer, but just as I handed it over, the memories of the robot all came crashing back to me at once--his sly attempts to befriend me, the glasses-like contraption he used to tamper with my memories, everything. Just before my fear and dread had started to sink in, there was a deafening thud as the robot punched his fist through the cave, reaching for me as we ran.

I woke up in a numb sweat.

I know that I lay there on my bed, too numb to move, too afraid to think of this dream anymore for fear that the robot will find my thoughts, punch his fist through the apartment, and take me away from everything I love."