A Dream Journal

I stopped following the news about them, until one day this beautiful young lady was convinced that I was one of them. She liked to hear my takes about the things I'd done, and eventually we fell for each other.

But I wasn't who she thought I was.

I had to start following the news again, browsing forums and articles - practically stalking this guy. All to know what to talk about, to weave the lie that I was who she wanted me to be. She said she felt bad because she knew that I probably want to just leave these events behind, but for her I bring the stories back to life, prolonging them a little bit more just for her.

But then one day, heroes start going missing. She's concerned for my safety. I reassure her everything is alright.

Met up with the lady, she was a tall imposing Lady who I managed to impress. Went back home, told my best friend who said she wanted to go with me. Took the car we were provided with, drove to the coast and took the boat over (with the car) to an island in the middle of nowhere.

The Lady invites me out. We end up having dinner and going to a dessert parlour. She confesses she does not actually like desserts and we enjoy ourselves. She tells me that she would like to join the games with me. I have a few days to agree (before the games begin.)

Then my best friend and I attend a party. I discuss with her the potential music I wanted to use and some young locals got mad at me for picking shitty, generic songs. I impressed them with my actual interest in listening to their music. My best friend disappears with some guy and I end up going home with the leader of the local group.

He's very lovely and we end up having a very good connection. In the morning, I overhear my best friend's plan with her new boy to sabotage me before we go to the games. I resign myself to it, and go off to DJ for the opening. It is a success. I see the guy again. He spends the evening with me, and he is wonderful. He also invites me to partner up with him for the games. I don't accept, but he implies he will help me anyway even if I don't agree.

I go back home early the next morning. It is the day of the beginning of the competition. I find the cars in the yard wrecked. Mine is intact, but has had rubbish shoved into it. It looks like something had prevented people from actually damaging it, and it looks like one of the robots from the Lady's home.

As I empty it, a mailman arrives. He looks about at all the carnage in confusion, shrugs, and leaves a pristine cake atop the wreckage. It is a cake of the first lady. In it she writes that she awaits my answer "Where I had the sweetest encounter in the sweetest of places."

I face a mental dilemma of partnering up with the local boy or with the Lady. I eventually decide on the lady, but panic as I realized that I don't remember what the name of the dessert shop is.

Left the house to inspect the surrounding area to see if things were normal there too. While out, had the sudden realization that we had forgotten a person on a wheelchair who was on a machine. Rush back to the house and found that a couple of the boys who are known pranksters sitting on the machines.

The man I was with approached them, telling them off. Their heads turn to face us, saying nothing. But I realize something was WRONG. Their bodies seemed too stretched out. I back away, realising that something was not quite right. He forcibly stops one of the boys and the boy's face remains weirdly twisted. We realise it is a mask. I take another step back as he tells the boy off for playing around and pulls it off. His face is similarly twisted beneath. I scream as the other boy stops in the machine and we can see that his face is also covered by a mask. It is twisted in a similar fashion, and I immediately know what is beneath.

The man drops the first boy in horror, and the boy falls to the floor unmoving. In the moment that his face is hidden from me, when we both glance away from him, another mask has covered his face of the same expression.

It looks strangely like a comic book face. The man turns, and realizes that the SUN looked like it had a mask on it and exclaims. He stumbles, falling onto his knife. As he lays there bleeding, I glance away for a moment. When I look back, a mask is on his face. It is one of a man in pain.

Things went very much to shit very quickly. Like, people going bonkers on the street because "it's the end of the world...!"

I ran away from a guy that was chasing me, and ended up stopping an assassination attempt on a guy that turned out to be rather important to the resistance against the giant rodents.

I somehow had the ability to rewind time, but only for a minute. I kicked up a petty fuss about the chick that was going to assassinate him, which resulted in attention landing on her. She panicked, tried to attack anyway, and I took the bullet in the shoulder.

We couldn't call for help because things with signal would draw the rodents to us. We had to make do, and the big important man felt bad so he took me in.

I stayed in this military bunker while the majority of the world went to shit. But humanity managed to scrape by, somehow. Learned how to stop the rodents from picking up the signal. Killed them. Ate them (after some testing).

I had to learn the names of the people that had been hurt, and could make myself stronger by including their names in a chant - "In the name of... I come to enact vengeance".

"That guy always encouraged him to be way too reckless! Don't even think about it."

Financial industry, where you're charged for everything. Even work, even play.

I was new to the area, and ended up getting lost on my way to work. Ended up following this guy along. Supposedly he was a bit unreliable because the people at the late gates knew him, but he was plenty nice.

They charge you an increasing amount based on how late you are, and based on how many days in a row you're late. It's not a huge price, but in a society where every penny counts, it made enough of a difference for most people.

I followed him along and... It turns out he wasn't on the way to work. We ended up in the middle of this augmented reality game where I did really poorly because I don't have any of the buyable weapons.

He said he'd be willing to help me out, and we added each other as friends.

A lot of the ladies we ran into seemed to dislike my friend but also find him really attractive because of his laid-back attitude.

I ended up staring at it the whole time, and trying to record it on my phone. Once we'd finished, we headed out into the living room where my friend was sitting and watching TV.

She said that there was currently some sort of weird astronomical event and advised us it was unsafe to be near or look out of windows.

I got nervous and walked back into our bedroom and inspected myself. I discovered my body was deteriorating quite rapidly and the sky no longer looked the same. My recording didn't capture that same insane sky, either.

I went back and asked my friend what would happen, theoretically, if someone did look out at the sky. I was told that the people that did were dying.

I didn't want my partner or the others to see me die, so I went back to the bedroom and sat in the closet to perish quietly.

As I sat in the darkness, I realised that whenever I tried to think about what could be causing my body to fail me, I was using new words instead of old ones like "proteins" and "starches" and "sugars". I realised these were new things that I was now taking in, that my body didn't recognise the old things and that's why everything was failing.

I had to sit there and re-teach my body all these new things, substituting them for all the old things so they could once again function. I managed it. Somehow. I came out of it, feeling better than ever. The sky now looked completely different. Less chaotic. Comprehensible. The shapes I could recognise for what they were, though my waking brain can not describe them.

When I came back into the living room, my friends were all talking with two individuals who are apparently somewhat similar to my new nature. They would try and explain the astronomical event to us, but would occasionally use this strange terminology that my partner and my friend couldn't comprehend. They'd just look at each other and try to say it a different way so you could understand it.

But I understood it.

When I was on the brink of dying, there was an explosion. It awoke me. I saw things and colours I couldn't see before, and gave me a magical ability.

Ended up stumbling upon a fight with others that had the same powers. When I was trying to run away, discovered a folder with information on everyone that had the curse mark. They had been observing us. Watched us die because we weren't "strong enough".

I was angry so I decided to side with the rebels. I was sent to find the other cursed one they'd been fighting over - and had just located.

There was something about the facility that had been stopping them from breaking in. My abilities allowed me to sneak through the nunnery she was staying in, and I found her.

With some effort, I managed to convince her to come with me - or so I thought.

When we got out, I brought her back to the building where she then began to send messages with the nunnery, letting them know where she was before spiralling out of control. Sending signals to the internet, getting more and more attention towards her. She was obsessed with it. It consumed her. She was doing nothing but frantically messaging and messaging, desperate for attention.