Have you ever had a recurring dream? Or have you ever had a dream that played through several nights as a story of some sort? Let me tell you, they’re pretty weird. At the same time, though, they’re so cool. It’s like reading a suspenseful book. You don’t know what will happen when you pick it back up. I used to have those dreams all the time when I was about six or so. When I think back on it, I wish I could be six again. Children’s imaginations are so much more wild and fascinating than that of someone my age. I am still creative, but it takes so much more effort to spit out some great idea than it would have when I was less than ten years of age. I remember a specific dream of mine which continued for about a week. It started off with my family and me in a museum. Well, I knew it was supposed to be a museum in the dream, but it was really just a blank white hallway. At the end of the hall, a blue light shined out of a door on the right. My family and I sped up to take a peak inside and it was the weirdest thing ever. We walked in through the door and on a white leather couch sat Tony the Tiger.I was so happy because I knew all the words to his song and I happily ran up to him and began to sing it. He simply smiled and waited for the song to end to tell us to put our belongings in the cubbies on the wall. I put my white blanket and my shoes in one at the bottom; I was too short to reach any of the upper shelves. My parents and Iain put their things in cubbies as well. Jake was still only about a year old, so my mom had him propped up in her arms. He had no need for a cubby. When we all turned around, there were four large red cushions on the floor on which Tony insisted we sit. We flopped down on them and Tony stepped down from his couch and sat on the floor. He asked us about how our day had been and it had only been satisfactory…until we got to meet him!
After nearly two hours of just sitting and talking to dear Tony, he stood up in a kind of militant manner – good posture, head up, etc. – and told us we had thirty seconds to gather our belongings and leave the room. We were initially perplexed and thought it was just a joke, but then he started to count down. We bolted toward the cubbies, grabbed our things and ran toward the door. We were just out of the room when I realized I had left my blanket inside. There was no way in hell I was going to leave it, so I ran back for it, but once I finally had it in my hands, time was up. A two-foot thick glass door dropped. My heart dropped along with it. I was stuck inside a white room with some aberrant talking tiger. I think that was justification enough for any fear I had. I banged on the transparent barrier, and my parents reciprocated. There was nothing that could even begin to tamper with the door’s stability. I was actually trapped.
Fifteen minutes went by and my family finally gave up. They waved, blew a kiss and left. A tear ran down my face and a few followed rapidly after it. It was a race…literally. There was a close up, in the dream, of my tears trying to “out-slide” each other, for lack of a better word. When the dream zoomed back out, so to speak, I slowly turned around. Tony sat on the couch, reading a newspaper. I yelled at him to get him to open the door, but he ignored my request. I forcefully stomped toward him and took his paper from him. He yanked it back and continued to read. After that, I woke up. I didn’t know what to think of the dream except that it was all just a dream – thank whatever is holy. I don’t know what I would have done if my parents had actually abandoned me when Tony the Tiger could have killed me. Well, the next night, the dream continued to play, as if I had a movie on “pause.”
Without hesitation, I took the paper back from Tony and ripped it to shreds. Infuriated, he stormed toward me, got “all up in my grill” – as the kids would say these days – and roared. Along with his stressed vocal vomit came a large, orange hairball. The wadded up fur fell on my bare feet. I screamed and kicked him in the face. Bad idea. I knew I shouldn’t have done that, so I immediately ran to the other side of the room, curled up in a ball and prayed he wouldn’t hurt me. He got on all fours and walked toward me like a normal tiger would if he were on the prowl. I shook so much out of sheer terror that someone could have mistaken my nervous habit as a seizure. Again, just as he was about to pounce, I woke up with a cold sweat. I was terrified. For a few more nights, I dreamt of being in that room with Tony the Tiger and we continued to fight. My parents visited from time to time, but they made no attempt to get me out. It was all over to them. The last night, after eight or nine nights of the story, Tony let me out of the room. It was as if nothing were wrong. Just a change of heart, I suppose. When I left the museum and walked outside, the streets were empty. Everything was completely desolate. I was alone. I yelled just to see if anyone would respond. There wasn’t even an echo. I got one response – Tony chuckled a bit behind me. I turned around, he leaped and then…
I woke up.
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