I'm standing in the ruins of the old elementary school my father worked at in the 1990s, looking out the front doors. The skies outside are a dusty yellow hue, and very silent. The school foyer blends into that of an condo apartment I once dreamed about years before. There's an open elevator directly behind me. It's doors are open, with the cables exposed as they descend into the darkness below.

There's a podium in front of me, with a draft of a film script I believe I've written. I'm going over it, making notes in the margins using the pencil. At the back of the script, there's pencil sketches of set designs, and characters. I don't know who drew these pictures. I'm fascinated by how difficult it is to write - I cannot draw letters in a straight line. I focus on individual words, but they become like symbols - an "R" is still an "R" as I see it, but I don't recognize it as such until I reflect on the dream later.

The films' tag line is "War, war changed." I realize in-dream this is a take off on the Fallout series tagline, "War, war never changes." Titled "The Psychic Wars", I realize in-dream this is another reference - this time to the old Blue Oyster Cult song "Veterans of the Psychic Wars".

The premise is that in the near future, the world suffers an alien invasion. It begins over Latin America with Ender's Game-like dogfights in the skies. The invaders strategy is curious: nine out of every ten people are unharmed in these cities. Yet, one in every ten humans their ships target become catatonic. They stop responding to stimuli - living in a perpetual waking-dream state.  

The film script revolves around battles in Latin America, with a cast of Spanish speaking (subtitled) actors initially in battle in the skies over Chile and Mexico. However, the focus of the story is more on the effects it has throughout the world.

As the war spreads to other continents, globally cultures change. While most South American nations become palliative-care paradises to manage "the Afflicted" ("los Afligidos"), other countries view them as cursed, or waking dead. These nations exterminate those affected rather than caring for them.
Amidst the chaos, an object is detected by an observatory travelling as it travels toward our solar system; appearing only as an absence of light. It is assumed to be another wave in the invasion attacks. 

The reveal at the end of the story is sad: as the object reaches earth, the other nine-tenths of our surviving population go mad. A Lovecraftian elder god reaches our world and feasts. The alien "invaders" were attempting to prepare our species for a "psychic war".

As "the afflicted" battle an elder god in the dreamlands, their bodies are butchered by those driven mad in the waking world. The story follows the drama of the original Latin cast - some in the waking world, gripped by violent insanity, while others are in the dreamlands, battling the Lovecraftian horror. It's a losing battle: without enough "afflicted" world wide, the battle takes too long. Those in the waking world murder those who sleep before they can stop the Cthulhuian entity. We're lost as a species.

There’s a train station shaped like a long half cylinder, devoid of other people. I've been here before in another dream, but on a different platform. The trains pull up into the station from the outside, and depart for places unknown. I'm lost in the levels of escalators, and the place is hauntingly empty. A grey tone saturates everything around me, and the air feels like the early morning - crisp, and cool. I find my way to a train, and it departs from the station.

I arrive in cobble stone streets that remind me of my old college area. I ascend steps to the main area where there would be a bridge, but there is none. Instead, a street lined with tall trees on either side. The sound of a horses' hooves fill the air, and a man riding a horse approaches. As he comes closer, I can see he's a corpse, but still alive. His wife and child are bound to him with rope, but both are long dead. Trailing behind the horse, also attached by rope is ...

“Dead eyes see no future” I tell myself as I flee into a nearby building. In the real world, this was a set of offices for my college. In this dreamworld, the hallway angle down sharply and is paved with cobblestone. On either side are small food service businesses with takeout windows. People stumble about, drunk, or out of their minds. I have the strongest sense of vertigo, and cannot stand. I topple forward...

I was meeting someone, or perhaps I will be meeting someone. In this place, it’s hard to think in a linear direction. I'm drawn to an office or perhaps bar space on stilts. The stairs are individually cut circular logs ascending to the door-frame. I enter the office, and a panicked man recruits me to pretend I'm a lawyer. Confused, I comply, and set at the back of the room near the window. There's an exchange with another man who enters, then both men leave.

There's a woman sitting at the back of the room with me. She is fascinating, and enigmatic. I can't figure out what her job is until she admits that she provides breast milk, and presents her large breasts to me. I'm encourage to grip them - when I do with both hands, milk seeps out in spurts. This woman draws me in, and provides this milk to me. It's horrifying, and inescapable. The dreamworld outside is chaos, but she reassures me with her presence. She finishes, and gives me her card to contact her, but no name...

I walk outside near the water. This path is the one that continues from where I saw the rotting man atop the horse earlier. The road blends into a memory of surrounding I have from Little Lake Park in my home town - the road curving left as it follows the shallow lake water. I gaze across the water, and see a gazebo in the distance. The outline of a small child silently observes me through the haze. 


I wander along the water, but I can't think of anything else but the woman. I return to the building I met her in, card in hand. Another person is there - a younger girl in her late teens. She has a disconnected look in her eyes that alarms me. I sit down next to her, and ask if she knows this woman - offering the card. She glances at it, and resumes her 1000-yard state.  "I do, but there's always a price." Since feeding from the mysterious woman, I feel a compulsion to…

I am led to the water, but from the opposite direction. There are multiple men here to mate with the breastfeeding woman, all entranced. They have each finished, and stand by the shore, naked and waiting something. The woman sees my approach, and greets me warmly. “You’re just in time.”

Something glides up from the depth of the water toward the surface. What looks like an alligator with the distorted head of a man emerges from the water. The men are eviscerated, with others castrate themselves before the the creature consumes them on the shoreline. The men are eerily silent. I’m frozen in fear, but the woman squeezes my shoulders and tells me it’s all okay. “They wanted this.” The younger girl stands a few feet behind us, still gazing at a fixed, unknown point in the distance…

* * *

I can not tell if my surroundings are a memory of a department store I once wandered through, or the echo of another dream: I walk through the harshly lit appliance isle, with its low ceiling and claustrophobic interiors. There’s a boy and a girl with me, both teenagers. We pass through the sliding store-front doors into a parking lot. On the far right is a Shoppers Drug Mart. We walk to the far left side of the parking lot to a police cruiser. The officer opens both drivers’ side doors, and tells us to find room inside.

The car interior is in a terrible state of disrepair. Garbage cover the floor, the seats' vinyl is ripped, and in places revealing the foam underneath. The passenger seat is cranked forward, and there’s a large amount of oily water floating on the floor in the back seat. The boy gets in the passenger side door, while and girl and I get in the back seat – careful not to let our feet submerge in the water. We wait for the officer to return. Perhaps he’s giving us a ride to where we need to be. Where do I need to be?

The boy gets tired of waiting, and discovers the keys somewhere up front. He starts up the engine, and begins driving around the parking lot, recklessly sliding into his corners. In two instances, I am certain he’ll crash the car against the wall during a tight turn, but manages to miss both buildings and people. I am angry at him, and get out of the car. The girl refuses to leave.

I walk into the Shoppers Drug Mart, and discover it’s smaller on the inside than it appeared to be. I go to the back of the store, and find a checkout. I comment about the boy and his driving to the cashier girl – a Nordic looking blond girl with dark eyebrows. She sympathizes with me. I’ am looking out the store-front, watching the boy still lurching around the parking lot in the police cruiser. I hear the blond girl’s voice over my shoulder – I turn to see that there are two of them. The girls begin speaking in fractured sentences – finishing each other’s – thoughts. They’re both gazing at the police cruiser, and say “It’s ok, he wanted this.”

* * *

I’ve returned to my grandmother’s old house in Lakefield. It’s different now – darker, with the walls and floors stripped down to the bare plywood. There are people moving around in the kitchen, unseen. In the living room, a television is on broadcasting a strange show I've never heard of. I approach the short set of stairs between the living room and the kitchen, and notice a few empty coin rolls on the ground. Covering the stairs and part of the kitchen are nickels and dimes. I kneel down on the floor, and desperately start trying to sort them out. The sound from the television behind me distorts, and the deepening sense of vertigo returns.

I sit down on the brown/white patterned chairs in the kitchen and gaze out the window. The cool early morning air calmly blows in from a formless, grey horizon.