Because I Never Lie and I'm Always Right

Unfortunately I don't remember anything before suddenly waking up in a seat towards the back of the bus and screaming because something was clawing and biting my ankles. It was dark and storming outside and the thing clawing my ankles was a demon. One of the two tour guides kicked it off me and asked if I remembered anything "from earlier." I said no, I just got here? But apparently I had been there before and there had been some kind of attack on the bus and, as the kid in the seat in front of me said, "three people got shot; they're in Paradise 3 permanently now." To which I said "Paradise 3--that's Venus, right?" because we're apparently using Dante's Divine Comedy as a basis for this dream.

Anyway, we're driving through the dark, in the middle of a storm, and I'm having visions of the bus blowing onto its side or flipping over, and demons are clawing at everyone's ankles again (the demons looked sort of like the gremlins when they go bad) and I fucking swear one was about to put its fuckening claw through the tissue between my Achilles tendon and the bones of my ankle and it hurt like a bitch.

At one point we suddenly got out of the storm and we were in this desert that was covered with blue clouds and blue fog--thin enough for the sun to get through as a white disc but the air was blue. And just a bit past the road there were all these square houses piled up like boxes, with rooflines that sloped only on one side (angled rooflines?) and these perfectly square windows glowing with white-yellow light. We had to be perfectly silent as we passed through and keep ducked down away from the bus windows because that's where more demons lived.

Eventually we arrived at…a toy store??? A very small toy store that looked more like a old timey general store in a movie, but it was a toy store. We were told to each pick out a toy; that we would use it as an offering later.

More driving, through swamps this time, until we arrived at a big stone church. We all went in and knelt down on the red carpet (no sitting).

Apparently my having missed/forgotten part of the trip was an issue, so the two tour guides (who, let me note, were adults while the rest of us were, at most, teenagers) dropped this heavy hooded cloak on me--I mean, it was heavy, with deep pleats around the neck, all done in gray wool with black velvet trim and these black velvet ribbons (with metal triangle ends?) hanging down in front in bunches. I think the hood part was white? The whole thing felt very, very old and worn. I pulled up the hood and hid in it. The tour guides told me, very seriously, do not take it off. It belonged to a Saint P---- (can't remember the name but it started with a P; not Peter) and I saw his symbol? Emblem? kind of like a vision: a white unicorn with blue eyes with one foreleg raised on a dark millefleur background with a black banner wrapped from its horn down around its body and around its lion-type tail. Then a second, white banner with red text appeared and wound around kind of the other way? Like the unicorn was in a double helix of black and white banners?

The tour guides said "Saint P----- approached the exam table without fear in his heart." That was, for some reason, terrifying to me.

We were, at this point, clearly in the very depths of hell.

I can't really recall what happened next and maybe that's good? I remember an altar i nthe middle of the room which was both altar and "exam table". I remember there was a cloth on it embroidered with red and gold pomegranates.

After that, next thing I know, I'm waking up in this other church-like building that seems to have been made of logs--not a stave church, a log cabin cathedral, and very bright and very light-colored wood, kind of like a new age-y arts center or something like that. There were brightly colored silks hanging down like tapestries everywhere, things like that. It was mid-morning, based on the light, and the sky was so blue.

And everyone who was on the tour is dancing around, twirling from the ceiling, literally gliding around the room. And I'm…not? And I don't know why. I have no idea what happened or why this is going on, though I figure it was like they had had some kind of revelation or experience--and I didn't.

So it came about that I would go on the tour again and I did, and I made it through this time to the toy store without forgetting or disappearing or whatever (not that I remember; I just know this). Unfortunately, shit went down at the old timey toy store and a woman got angry with me for some unknown reason and tried to attack me with a straight razor.

I try to defend myself but this is apparently a bad move on my part??? We all end up outside the toy store in a kind of campground space and I'm arguing my side that she attacked me first but it seems like everyone is on her side. This one dude is trying to intimidate me by flexing his muscles and yelling about how "I'm going to make a movie about how all the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy were rapists!!" And I'm like "Then do it, asshole!! If it's the truth, then tell it!!" Not intimidated, just angry.

I think I got kicked off the tour because I'm in a room something like my childhood bedroom except on the second floor of a house (we had only 1 floor in my childhood house) and I'm walking through a small hallway, like the landing at the top of the stairs. There's a faded painting of a flower in an oval mat there and a window with white curtains. I can see a handful of people moving down the street outside, through the window screen.

I feel like they should have been like the people floating in the log cabin church but these people seem more weighted down. They're wearing more black and they're just skipping or they're walking on stilts. It's not quite as amazing. And it's only a very few people. (I think this scene is referencing Nico's song "No One Is There" because the imagery is similar to what the lyrics make me imagine.)