Catfish and Bugs

I was in a huge house. It was a modern, American house, with a vast drive and patio doors. I was sitting in the living room, talking to a middle aged man I didn't recognise about how I met the owner of the house. The owner, who wasn't there, was an amateur film-maker who I'd met briefly when I was helping him escape from a particularly scary catfish. She had faked her identity and moved into his house.

(I'm starting to forget bits already)

There was a sequence when he was escaping, running down a mountain. This flashback as I was describing it played like the low budget movie he'd made. He was being pursued by people, and there was a bit where he'd laid traps for them. As they failed to work out math questions or understand how to get past the traps, they fell apart into blocks as if they weren't real.

As I told the tale of his escape, the door opened and loads of people came in lead by the film-maker I recognised. He'd arrived in a trailer that was so big it had to be carried on the back of an 18-wheeler that seemed impossibly huge. The drive was still big enough for it.

The film-maker, we'll call him Dennis, said hi and said he was glad I could make it, then went off to sort something.

I remember looking over in the corner of the room, getting up from the sofa and getting down on my hands and knees. The carpet was sprouting things in the corner - tiny creatures were growing. I looked at my left forearm and there were dozens of little black worms spiralling up through the skin. I brushed them off, and they fell out of the holes in my arm, tumbling to the floor where they joined the other creatures, growing into tiny soldiers, tigers, and bugs.

The worms kept sprouting from my arm. Dennis came back down and started zooming in with a small handheld camera to film what was happening. I asked how I could stop them, and he suggested moving over to a different corner of the room and seeing if the creatures that would sprout there would form another army that would fight the original.

That's when I woke up.

Staring at the Sea

I was at work, only it wasn't quite right. The owner had decided to expand, building a new part of the building and I was looking around it with a handful of people. The front was curved, a complete 180 degree window panorama that looked out directly onto the beach. I remember standing up against the glass, looking out and seeing that the sand of the beach came right up to the wall at the bottom of the building, the curve jutting out into the beach itself. Out the window I could see the waves of the sea, huge and tumbling in slow motion, and at once I felt happy.

I turned back to the group of people in the construction, and recognised someone from school that I haven't seen since those days. I remember turning to her and saying "I f***ing love the beach." Before striding off...

I'd left the building, and I was holding a load of important paperwork in my hand. It was dark now, and I was walking into the town, but I couldn't help but feel I was being followed. I rolled the papers into a tube and gripped them hard like a weapon and made my way through a crowd of people in the town centre.

There was a police car in front of me, parked. A couple of police officers were leaning against it, keeping an eye on people and chatting. I approached, and told the female officer that I was being followed and felt like someone was after the important paperwork that I had in my hand. The officer said that there was nothing they could do about it.

I said, "What am I supposed to do then? What would you do if you were in my position?"

She just turned to me and said, "Kill them all."

I could see some of the dodgy people looking at me from a higher road level. I said, "If you say so," and drew a pistol and started shooting. There were more of them, hanging onto the side of a bus, and I remember shooting at them through the windows of the bus as it tried to make its way through the town.

And then I woke...

Mechanical Virus

There was a spider in the house. But it wasn't a normal house, it was one I'd not seen before. A friend managed to get it out of the door but it was huge, and it left behind a sack that I was convinced contained eggs. Sweeping the spider (about the size of a hand) out the door with a broom, the scene suddenly cut to the bedroom.

I was trying on clothes, trying to decide what trousers to wear. There were these cool black trousers that had highlights that glowed like something from Tron, but the person (I don't remember who it was) in the room told me they were over-trousers and I couldn't wear them. I needed to find some normal trousers. That's when the person's parter arrived. He was angry, and built like an american footballer. And there was me, without trousers.

The scene changed again, we were breaking into a base, and there was a virus that the villains were releasing. It could be controlled, and it started like a strange floating mass, glowing, about the size of an apple. It reached out tendrils, and was grabbing nails, tools, metal and anything it could find to absorb the materials and grow into a dangerous, sharp force that could pierce flesh and armour.

Runaway Diamond

The motel room was being investigated by agents. There was a strange film, almost like a liquid cling-film over the glass on the door. It was solidifying, and becoming stronger. One of the agents had an elemental name, though I can't remember it now. I do remember thinking that they may have a connection to Sapphire and Steel, the old series from the 80's.

There was a couple on the floor, kissing, but covered in blood and the agents seemed to be ignoring them. There was a girl in the corner with a guitar, and she knew she had to get away. There was something wrong with the agents. The couple stopped what they were doing, and made for the exit.

Next thing I remember, was out in the parking lot, and the trio were about to make their escape. The agents were trapped in the motel room, the film on the door solidified harder than diamond. The girl threw her guitar, a bass, into the nearby trash and hopped onto the back of a motorcycle-sidecar.

The play's the thing

We'd gone to a play in London, a strange follow up to a massively popular play that we'd already seen, and were confused that they'd managed to create a sequel. Next to the theatre was a very old pub, and the landlord spent a while explaining the history of the place.

The play itself didn't seem to make any sense - there was a suitcase full of water and angels, a child was being frozen under the water, and then it stopped for the end of Act 1.

We left the theatre, and started walking home without returning for Act 2. We walked home through the park, passing various children who had been in the play who said hello and greeted us by name. Out in the green of the park, a brightly coloured parrot was attacking pigeons and it hovered in the air savaging them. I tried to shoo it away with a blanket I'd found.

Bugs under the skin

The kid came up to me and said "I had the same problem, you just need to dig it out".

I looked to my hand, opened my palm and I could see a little black hair sticking out. No, it wasn't a hair. It was a leg. I wiggled and squirmed, and eventually a flying ant crawled out of my skin. It crawled about a bit, then flew off.

I looked again, and another had started to creep out of my hand. It too crawled out and flew off.

A larger one tried to emerge from the heel of my palm, but it struggled and got stuck. I grabbed it, and pulled. It hurt, but not excessively, and a spider was pulled out. I freaked out a little and threw it across the room. My hand was messed up, little holes where the ants had crawled. They weren't bleeding, but in the biggest hole, where the spider had been, I could see a crater in the dermal layers going down to red-raw skin below.

I could feel something else moving in my arm.

The kid opened up a school drawing set, and withdrew a large set of compasses, only the point was larger, like a sharpened straw of glistening silver metal.

"That's it, you just need to dig it out," the kid said.

He grabbed the skin on the inside of my elbow, and forced it into a bulge I could poke with the compass point. Strangely, it didn't hurt, as a huge, hairy tarantula crawled out of the hole I'd made. There was no blood again, despite digging a hole out of my arm about two centimetres across. The tarantula crawled off, turned and looked at me, and did a mocking dance. I shoo'd it away, resisting the urge to kill it...

And then I woke up.