Just a Dream

I had a dream where my little sister and I decided that there was an easier way to make our room look clean. We planted a holographic machine in the ceiling fan, and when we ordered something inanimate to do something, it would do just that. We brought our parents into the room and said “Look at this.” We ordered the clothes on the floor to disappear. We ordered the toys on the beds to put themselves away. We ordered the clothes hanging in the closet to organize themselves by color. My dad was impressed, my stepmom was excited, and Sarah was giggling like mad.

When the adults left, Sarah and I sat on the now-clean bed and rejoiced by having a tickle fight. Halfway through, she ordered a dress/shirt of hers to participate in the tickle fight forever. It flew at me and tried to choke me, but I ordered it to burn on the spot without damaging anything around it. I scolded Sarah for being so careless with her orders, and she and I went into the bathroom to brush our teeth.

When we came back out, I heard two small patters, like cloth hitting the ground. I turned and threw out my arm just in time to block a teddy bear that had just launched itself at me. Sarah screamed as I tore it apart, and we sat on the bed together again, looking around worriedly at the room which had turned sinister in its cleverness.

Something happened to my cell phone, so I ordered what was left to turn back into the last cell phone I had had. Somehow it turned into something with a radio setting, so when I turned it on it was very static-y, but underneath there was a deep man’s voice whispering that we would never get out and our orders didn’t matter anymore.

So Sarah and I ran down the stairs (which we had, in this dream, although normally we live in a one-story house) and found our dad sitting on the couch in the living room. We sat next to him, breathless and trembling. It took us at least five minutes to calm ourselves enough to actually talk, and when I tried to explain it to him he didn’t understand and thought we were only playing. He was always skeptical. I was in the middle of explaining how the room was trying to kill us when he cut me off and asked “What started it all?” After a moment, I realized what it was. “The fan!”

So Sarah and I went back upstairs and into the room to defeat our creation. There was a porch on the side of the house, just at the wall of our room, with the walls made of glass. I stood there and looked out, a little surprised to see the glass turn opaque and lights start rushing by that suggested I was in a tunnel of some sort. I turned to look back into the bedroom and there were three strange people standing beside my bed, watching me with interest. They hadn’t been there before. I asked them what they wanted, and they didn’t answer me. After a moment they smiled and started repeating what I had heard on the radio/cell phone. They said they could make any illusion they wanted, and they guaranteed that if I broke the window there would be a tunnel with a train roaring by.

When I started to order the room to stop operating, they all started yelling at the top of their lungs so that my voice was drowned out. I stopped, and after a moment their screams faded. I tried again. Again I was interrupted. I started to say “Room, give me the fan,” but they would never let me reach the end of the sentence. I knew my time was running out because sooner or later they would get tired of trying to stop me and they would just do it. So finally, I decided it was time to change my tactics.

“Fan.” I said, and they started screaming. Grinning, I waited until they stopped. “Give it to me.” The utter look of fear and defeat on the three people’s face was enough to shock me into consciousness.