Mid-day Nightmare

It all started when I was in a movie theatre with my brother. We were just collecting our 3D glasses and preparing to tuck ourselves in when suddenly, our neighbour showed up. He had more admirers in the theatre than the movie itself and even my aunt talked to him instead of her son. I just put on the 3D glasses and was about to watch, but everyone stood up. When I looked around, there weren’t too many people; only a few of them, that too in their college uniform. The uniform seemed a little bit weird because I’d never seen anything like it before in my city. There were two guys who were seated in the front row on the left side of the screen and it looked like they were being felicitated for something. They had a mirror in their hands and the reflection was feeble. I tried to look into the mirror and I saw myself, but in their uniform. I was shocked, and I looked away immediately.

The movie began and the first seen itself was very horrible. It looked like as if someone was hammering a nail on my forehead. The sound got intense and I felt a hand gripping my wrist. I thought it was my brother who’s equally scared, but when I looked around, I was alone. I was lying in some room where the walls were shattered and the debris was scattered all over the room. I was floating in the air and my legs had no flesh on it. They seemed as if I was made of plastic and there was a metallic wire inside me that looked like my bones. I felt like I was walking on a thin rope suspended in the clouds. I tried to scream for help but it was a graveyard in the sky. I couldn’t hear my own scream and neither could the gushing wind let me speak out.

All I could feel was a push from behind and I was falling down like a meteorite. The only exception was I wasn’t wrapped in flames on my way down. When I touched down, I saw an old rusty book that looked pre-historic enough to awaken the dead. And right in front of the book, was my mother. She was sitting in front of the book with a candle on either sides and eagerly waiting for me to open my eyes. I slowly blinked my eyes and everything began to look like blurred lines in rapid motion. I gathered all my energy and stood up, looked at my legs and they were real, fleshy, all covered in good human skin. I began searching for the mirror and it was still lying in the debris, all broken into pieces. I stared deeply into my mother’s eyes for full 2-3 seconds and said, “We’re not doing this again”.

I had no idea what I was talking about. I thought it was a dream, but my mother took my hand, walked me through the debris and said, “YOU DID THIS”! I was still perplexed on what’s going on with me and I went back inside to read that pre-historic book. I couldn’t get any of it what was written inside and it seemed utterly boring and tranquilizing. It was like a dope before we started doing something universally treacherous, like an apocalypse. Only this time, I knew it was a dream and I could try and get more answers out of this mysterious episode. The deeper I went inside the dream, the similar the story began to get. I tried to wake up in the middle of the dream but I was unable to open my eyes. And when I succeeded, I could again see the wires in my leg instead of flesh and bones. But, for this time, it was only my left leg that was different. This time I was really forcing myself hard to get out of the dream and it seemed next to impossible. The only way out of it was to see it end. So, I waited for the next mystery to unfold.

While I was lying there paralyzed, I heard a whirring sound and it constantly kept increasing as the sound approached me. When I looked everywhere for the source of the sound, it was a Lego Batman. It was creating this entire nuisance by trapping people in their own dreams and making them destroy their own home. I had a glance at the previous body this “Whatever” spirit possessed and it didn’t end well. The source of the only entry and exit was “The Mirror” and that was their, so called, ‘portal’. And that’s when I found my way out – through looking again into the mirror, I can get back to reality. I started scanning for a mirror in my room while the Batman minion was still resting on the air-condition’s vent. I found a regulator for the fan and I switched it on when suddenly the walls of the home began to shatter and I was slowly being buried by myself in my home. I turned the regulator in the reverse direction and things began to get real ugly. The devastation intensified and I jumped out of the window breaking everything that was in front of me. While I was falling down (again), I saw a mirror that was falling down too. I looked at my face and it wasn’t me at all. There was a monster wearing me and the only way for me to escape was to escape my body. When I looked into the mirror, all the wrongdoings of the monster flashed in it like a time-lapse movie and in the end, the spirit escaped me and entered another person.

I hit the ground and the pieces of my body were all over the lawn. For the first time, I was truly amazed to see how beautiful red looks on green. I stood up, still unable to see clearly and my it hands were covered in blood and holding a sword. I was afraid that the monster is still wearing me. So, I started swinging the sword in every direction hitting everything that came in front of me, not knowing if I was possessed or them. And this time, it wasn’t a dream. I had sliced my family into pieces and I still had no idea whatsoever who was I. And when I looked down at myself, my legs were real; my hands were real and bloody. And the book? What book? There was no sign of it anywhere. I was locked up in my own eyes, not able to see myself, not able to look at another mirror and not able to speak, just like the mirror – it only reflects, not reacts.