A recent "nightmare"

Fact is that I just posted a really long entry, but I can't get enough of this sharing thing, and actually here's a dream I want to describe for posterity before I do any forgetting.

Prologue: as you know, many if not all of my dreams recently have been pretty dazzling (to me, I mean), colorful, clear, and startling in their realism (at the time). Not only that, but they differ from dreams I've had in the past in that the weather is more distinct and more visible, and there's more of a physical component than ever, especially in terms of pain.

Two or three nights ago, I dreamt that I was walking down the street in Ithaca (only it definitely wasn't Ithaca), listening to music, and it was about to rain. The sidewalk I was on was on a higher plane than the street, so there was a short slope of grass between me and the road. Nearby, there was a chubbier white balding man in a white t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, jogging, possibly listening to a walkman.

Then the approach of a group of... hooligans. Terrorist youth. Serious troublemakers. I don't remember if they came from the side of the street or in a convertible, but they definitely appeared. They were all of a certain persuasion and wasted absolutely no time in accosting this man, and eventually graffiti'd his back with black spraypaint. I got a feeling that this was a serial thing... that they were assaulting a certain kind of person, much in the same way that there were serial kidnappings in a dream I described earlier, and serial vampire attacks in my oldest nightmare (you know... they were dressing up as postal workers to get at children as they watched TV... my assailant was a curly carrot-top with beetlejuice's pale skin, an orange and green striped or polka-dotted tie, and a tux-- no joke, this one scared the bejeesus out of me when i was younger).

Anyways, I started walking faster, towards an group of apartments. Sometime before this dream occurred, I was introduced to the fact that my friend Christine's grandmother lived in one of these apartments. The buildings themselves were identical to some that I saw in Orange County this summer, but transplanted in a greener northeastern setting. I just felt like I would be safe if I could get there, even though I believed I wasn't the type of person these others were targeting. By the time I got to the right building, it had started sprinking.

The apartment building had four apartments, two on the bottom floor and two on the top, with two sets of stairs. All the doors opened directly onto individual patios/platforms where people would keep picnic tables, lawn ornaments, and so on. I couldn't figure out which of these four apartments was the one I was looking for. I looked closely at each one, climbing upstairs and back down again. When I got back down, Christine was there, having the same dilemma. Then we sighted her grandmother's cat (I don't think I've ever met her grandmother and I don't know where she lives or if she has a cat), and entered the apartment.

At that time, it was clear that those people (having a hard time coming up with an appropriate label) were coming for us. So as soon as we got in, we started going as far into the apartment as we could, looking for a place to hide. We found a large linen closet, tried to climb up, but couldn't find any better cover. There was a window that I felt that I could fit through, but decided that that was for the ultimate emergency. I wanted to call the police before they could get in, but since we couldn't be sure if the land line was tapped or not (we still didn't know if they knew which door we came in), and our cell phones were in the kitchen. And then I got the feeling that they were already inside and that there was no option to call for help. They started searching everywhere, systematically. We piled clothes on top of ourselves, stationed hampers in front of us, but I was not confident. Someone poked their head in, but didn't see us right away and left.

There was an ambiguous time where it seemed like there was another closet in the room and Christine's grandma was already in there and we were able to whisper with her, but I think a part of me really didn't want that to be part of the story and kept denying it to the point where it sort of happened and sort of didn't.

Then one of the girls/women/whatever in the group had some inkling that we were hiding in the closet, and I could see her start walking towards us. I had a very clear view this whole time of everything they were doing. Christine was much better hidden than I was-- I was just sitting against the wall with my legs in a hamper, using it as a shield. She came in and started talking to me. She had long black hair. I think she knew very well where I was, but wanted to pretend she didn't, just so she could fire her gun at the hamper. So she did, she fired like 3 shots randomly through the hamper so they landed around my legs. I got squeamish and started flailing, and thus exposed legs and eventually the rest of me. So she shot me once in the leg. And again, in... the other leg. And was going to continue shooting me, when the pain woke me up.

After waking up once, I started directing the action in the dream with more agency. What resulted from this, I'm not sure... grandma definitely was no longer hiding with us, we rewound before the shooting, something like that. The last thing I remember was looking through the window at the rain and a pine tree, thinking that there was a forest out there I could hide in when there wasn't at all. Just before waking up, I was contemplating breaking the window, wondering if I actually had the strength to do so, and what would happen to Christine, who wouldn't be able to fit through it (think the really small windows you find in basements). Then wondering if I could actually fit through myself.

Anyways, this dream stuck with me all day, and I found myself wondering: if I could have escaped through that window, should I have? Also, that woman would have killed me in a few more seconds, or tortured me or something. I'm pretty sure they were going to ask me where everyone else was. What should I have done? Not said anything and died and have them search the 5 feet around me where everyone was hiding anyway? Or should I just have given up to see if we would get any other opportunities to escape?

So yeah, I would file this one under "nightmare" even though it's not especially nightmarish.