#writing fodder

the house was actually an old mansion, probably late 1800s, in a neighborhood full of similar mansions. i went inside with the other performers and stuck like glue to the one i'd been badgering earlier about my shoe. for some reason, i feel like their name was blue. or something like that.

anyway, i could tell blue had a soft spot for me, while the other performers regarded me with bland suspicion. they all had something a little Off about them, but it was hard to say exactly what it was.

i began to realize as more and more people filed in that the audience in the theater had been made up of almost entirely these Off people, including one i'd thought was a 13yo boy attending with his mother. but he gave me a withering glare that made it clear he wasn't a child at all, and possibly not human. my mother and i had been the only regular people in there, it seemed.

i thought briefly about my mother, who hadn't come with me to the mansion, and pulled out my phone to text her. no reception. i asked blue if they had a landline i could call her from soon so i could tell her not to worry. they nodded and said something vague and ushered me to my seat at one of about 10 small round tables (think like old oscars shows or 1940s nightclubs with tiered seating areas).

they were having a dinner party, apparently, to celebrate the successful first performance of their highly-experimental film/play thing. everyone was dressed up, but in slightly Off ways (think the partygoers from rocky horror), and most of them wore small round sunglasses that made their eyes look like shiny black buttons. blue wasn't wearing them, but their eyes were also black.

i chatted with other guests as the dinner started up, and the handful of people close enough to talk to gradually warmed up to me. it had been awhile since any of them had talked to someone not in their little group, so my questions gave them an opportunity to preen and boast about accomplishments everyone else already knew about.

eventually, someone who seemed to be like a leader or senior member of the group arrived, and they were about to start some kind of presentation to discuss how the performance had gone. that leader then noticed me and went very still. the room had been cold before, but the temperature dropped noticeably as they stared at me.

blue hurriedly went up to them and explained that i had been accidentally allowed in but had not been a nuisance and therefore shouldn't be kicked out. the leader hemmed and hawed but finally agreed to let me stay--on one condition.

"you have to be asleep for this part," blue said when they returned, and put their hand to my forehead.

i fought the fatigue, protesting that i'd already seen some weird shit tonight, so why bother hiding this? i fought so hard, in fact, that i woke myself up for real.

and i was so annoyed about waking myself up that i promptly went back to sleep and back to the dream, which picked up immediately after whatever presentation they wanted me to not see.

i began bothering blue again, this time for more specific information about what they and the other performers were.

"i like understanding things," i told them. "and i know you're not normal people, so i want to understand you."

suddenly, one of the other performers mentioned to blue that someone called "sunshine" would be performing soon, so they'd better stash me away somewhere. apparently, normal people might go hopelessly insane at the sight of this "sunshine."

blue was reluctant, but i could tell i was wearing thrm down. i hadn't batted an eyelash at any of the odd things anybody had said over the evening, and they'd seemed kind of lonely. blue wanted to like me and wanted to trust me but wasn't sure if they could.

blue cursed and ran off muttering to themself, returning shortly with a very large...sigil? made of what looked like a number of coffin nails bent and welded together. blue told me to keep it against my skin so it would be able to protect me, so i grabbed it with both hands and waited, nervous.

"sunshine" was not one person, but three. and they weren't exactly People, either. they were like flat human-shaped cutouts made of static. i recognized them from the movie earlier and immediately set the sigil back on the table.

"they were in the movie, right?" i asked blue, who had pressed a hand over my eyes the second i let go of the sigil. "i saw them before and it was no problem. my mother did, too, and she was okay."

blue removed their hand and gave me a Very Strange Look.

"that's weird," they said, and then "are you SURE your mother was okay?"

"yeah, i mean she seemed fine when i was talking to her after the movie. the tolerance for weird is probably genetic."

i watched the rest of the performance without holding the sigil.

blue grilled me about my Weirdness Tolerance after the performance, asking all kinds of questions about my family and whether there had been any strange occurrences in my childhood.

"i mean when i was a teenager i tried to trade my sanity for forbidden arcane knowledge," i told them (which is actually true IRL. i wasn't kidding in earlier posts where i said i'd have been ripe for cult indoctrination as a teen. luckily the person i'd been talking to was just messing with me, though.)

at some point, it came up that everyone in the room was immortal except for me. immortal, and unchanging. which explained why the person who looked like a 13yo boy was not acting like one.

"that must be nice, not changing," i said, and everyone at the table Looked at me.

"i mean my body is starting to fall apart on me already," i clarified, a bit embarrassed. "it would be nice if i didn't have to worry about, like, further deterioration."

sci-fi weapons with lasers and stuff. (probably cos i’ve been watching a dead space 1&2 let’s play the past few days.) at one point, zin was caught by one of the bad guys, who promptly held him down and cut off one of his arms with a laser gun. (the guy went “three to go,” which makes me think that zin probably had 4 arms? i only ever noticed 2, but there were a lot of details that escaped my notice in that dream.)

turns out zin healed fast, so he just had to grab the arm, bolt for a place of relative safety, and just kinda tape the arm back on so it would reattach itself. it was. unsettling.

also unsettling was how the dream kept shifting from being “real” to being like some kind of LARPing thing? like there was one bit where zin was fighting off a bad guy and was choking her out, but then it shifted and it was “me” pretending to choke another player. except she didn’t seem to understand the rules for the game, and i was like “dude seriously i don’t want to hurt you please just take the L and go somewhere else.” and it shifted back again, but i was still reluctant to actually try to hurt anyone because things seemed to be bleeding together a little.