Dearest Rachel –
It would seem that not all nightmares involve being personally terrorized; sometimes the nightmare involves being the terror itself, all while appearing to be perfectly innocuous.
Such was my dream from last night, and a vivid one it was, honey. As far as I could tell, I was part of some class on literature or creative writing, and for whatever reason, we were on a sightseeing field trip. Our teacher, a tall young woman by the name of ‘Leaf’ (why do I remember that? Yes, it’s an unusual name, but that doesn’t seem all that important) told the ten or twelve of us that our sightseeing trip was meant to observe what one might think of as NPCs, or ‘non-player characters’ in gaming – although I can’t remember the more proper term she referred to them as, while she herded us into a jeep, to ride through a crowded urban area standing up safari-style.
Leaf turned out to be the ‘heavy’ or ‘big bad’ of the story, as she had somehow given the ten or twelve of us in her class some sort of lethal vision. Essentially, anyone with whom we made eye contact with was struck by lightning from the sky and vaporized. It was just a matter of locking eyes and then boom! they were gone.
It didn’t happen to everybody we laid eyes on, to be sure; the effect required actual eye contact. If we looked at someone while their attention was diverted elsewhere, nothing would happen to them. And when all hell is being unleashed around you – and people are disappearing left and right about you with a flash of light and a clap of thunder – there are so many directions in which to look other than at us. But eventually, you would be trying to determine the source and cause of the chaos around you, and your eyes would almost instinctively be drawn to the safari jeep rolling slowly through the neighborhood, with a group of young people (and yes, I still counted myself as one of them; I was in a class, as a student. What else could I be?) staring gobsmacked at the folks on the ground as they exploded into nothingness.
At first, most of us in the class were stunned by what was going on as we were driven back and forth on this street that was becoming less and less crowded by the minute, thanks to us. It took time before it dawned on us, though, that we were the cause of it all. We looked at each other in confusion – fortunately, our lightning gaze didn’t seem to work on each other – before some of us started to find workarounds, while others began to make a point of staring at as many people on the street below as possible.
I think I was the first to be able to mitigate the effect of my gaze, since in real life, I wear these glasses that turn into sunglasses as the lenses are exposed to the ultraviolet radiation of the sun when I’m outdoors. It didn’t completely work; there was still a weak bolt of lightning that came down, but all it could do was to knock the person down, rather as if they had been tased. Meanwhile, others brought out their phones and iPads; it would seem that observing people through camera lenses negated the effect completely, as you weren’t looking at the person directly, so you weren’t calling down the thunder upon them (however inadvertently that had been happening until then).
At some point, I recall being grabbed from behind and suplexed to the ground by someone I had struck with my lensed sight; I don’t know if Leaf had ordered us out of the jeep to wreck further havoc, of if I’d been pulled out by this individual in their rage. If the latter, I’d have been surprised that they managed to get past the glares of my more malevolent classmates. Even as they were screaming at me somewhat incoherently for the chaos and death we were causing in general – and I, personally, was dealing with the pain and anger resulting from being thrown to the ground like that – I fought the urge to pull my glasses off and look at the person. Whatever they had done and were doing to me was hardly worthy of the retaliation I could invoke simply by facing them deliberately.
At some point, I was able to confront Leaf directly about what had happened to us, and whether she was responsible for it. She laughingly acknowledged that she was, as she watched the carnage unfold. If it weren’t for the fact that it was a dream – and therefore wasn’t supposed to make sense, let alone tie up loose ends – it might be expected that, with a name like hers, she would be some sort of eco-warrior, attempting to depopulate the planet in the name of Mother Gaia or something, but no, she just happened to have this “gift,” and wanted to spread it around, adding that I should be pleased to have such powers, unlike the normal humans we were eliminating.
“But we’re not heroes,” because of these powers, I objected. “We’re the monsters!”
Again, in a normal story, this would be the perfect spot for Leaf to give some kind of motive rant as the villain, explaining herself and why she thought this would be a good idea to have us do. But this was a dream – and I’m merely taking the time to tell you about it, not to try to create a larger story out of it (I’ve got little enough time before it fades from my memory entirely) – so no explanations would be forthcoming. I’d like to think that I fought her over it all, and maybe I did, but as I woke up before there was a clear winner between the two of us (after all, not only could those of us with this lightning gaze not harm each other with it, she was the one to bestow it upon us – or so she claimed – so she was likely the more powerful of the two of us), there’s no point in going over it, save to try to mount a defense that I was at least trying not to be part of the terror at large – although I don’t think I was the only one, to be honest.
It was one of the more frightening dreams I’ve had in a long time, despite the fact that I was clearly in no danger throughout it all. Sometimes, it’s that much scarier to be the monster as it is to face one.
And with that having been said, honey, I should get about my day. Keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 