My past couple nights I've had really strange, vivid, macabre dreams. This is last night's. I'll post the one from the night before that after this (maybe not tonight) out-of-order, because I remember less about it/it's much harder to explain.
I was with my parents, at home, and we all got in the car to go somewhere. (A movie, I think.) My dad pulled out of the driveway and immediately swerved for no reason, and we went over the yard of a nearby business before swinging back onto the road safely. Naturally, my mom and I are asking OH GOD WHAT JUST HAPPENED WHY DID YOU DO THAT and my dad suddenly looks worried and says he really, really doesn't feel so good.
Obviously something is very wrong, so he switches seats with my mom and we drive to the hospital instead. By the time we get there, my father is just shuffling along silently and we have to guide him where to go, like a child. We go in the first door we see and find ourselves in a crowded room full of furniture with a long of adults sitting around and milling about, acting oddly. I realize we must be in the psych ward or something, and ask one of the orderlies (men who were standing around like guards in pale green doctor-esque uniforms) where the emergency room is.
He vaguely points in one direction out a door while shushing a patient laying and groaning in a handcart.
By now, my dad is catatonic and wont walk, and my mother is becoming more and more infantile, like my father was. I pick my mother up and carry her out the door, leaving my dad behind, figuring once I get to the E-room I can let them know he's there and he needs to be attended to.
I walk through the hospital corridor, carrying my mom (something I can't do in real life, haha) and and as I go, the passing hallways and rooms become more and more grand, with coiling staircases grandiose rooms. I become frustrated, because I assumed there'd be signs saying "Emergency Room This Way" with arrows, like most hospitals have. There are none.
I keep going, and soon it no longer resembles a hospital at all, but rather an enormous, many-story mall with an open area in the middle with flashing lights and carnival rides, and thousands of people milling about.
At some point, I realize I've lost my mother, but I push on - again just hoping I can reach the Emergency Room and tell them my parents are in the hospital and need help. Of course, I'm hopelessly lost and the crowd keeps getting thicker, and every once in a while I think I see an orderly, but he disappears into the crowd.
At one point, I go to leave the building, hoping there are signs out there pointing to the E-room. I walk out onto some steps, which are hopelessly crowded with people. I can't even get outside properly.
I shimmy along a window-ledge next to the stairs and go in a window, hoping it'll lead somewhere closer to the emergency room. Instead, I'm in a quiet corridor. There's no people, but at least it looks more like a hospital and less like a crazy carnival/mall.
I see a door off to the side and walk down it. I start to feel a little freaked out at this point - this hallway is unlit and gets darker and darker as I walk down it. I reach nearly pitch blackness depths of the hallway and squint, seeing something red at the other end. I push forward and realize with dawning horror what the red is - the end of the hallway is blocked with giant, pulsing red coils of flesh (possibly intestines?). I book it, running back the way I came only to find the door I came into this dark hall through is gone, and the way is similarly blocked by giant, flexing, moving fingers. Luckily a door appears to the side of me and I exit - ending up back in the insane, crowded mall area.
By now, I'm starting to feel really strange and unwell and wonder if I have whatever my parents have come down with. I see and orderly and run up to him gratefully, and he gives me a winning smile. He ushers me onto a diving board gently and I look down - the fall is really far, as we're on at least the fourth story of the mall. He tells me not to worry, that if I just jump, I'll "win".
I jump.
Then I woke up.