u/After_Ad6422

It was in the middle of the night, as always in my dreams. I was inside a church, very well lit, full of people sitting on church benches. I was sitting on the third row from the front, all of us watching the preacher. He had a microphone and was preaching away, I know I could hear him, but his words were undiscernible, just background noise. As I was listening I suddenly thought I want to leave. I stood up and began to make my way across the other people sitting next to me.

However, the atmosphere changed. The preacher said I wasn't allowed to leave until the service ended, no one was allowed to leave. I felt challenged. Why did he bar us from leaving? I started inciting the people to rise in revolt against the preacher. I don't know what I was saying to them, but enough of them started fighting to get out as well. A stampede ensued and someone opened the church door. I was the first out! As soon as I stepped outside I found myself in the middle of a terribly dark night, starless, moonless, hazy and very deep. I was not afraid. I made my way across the parking lot towards what seemed like a cliff edge.

Looking around it appeared to me that the entire dream world was pitch black, the church windows were the only source of light in the entire world. The church seemed to be on a high cliff, looking out over the entire dark world. I felt an ominous presence approaching me from behind. It was some guy, dark skinned, wearing a white shirt. He reached out to me, seeming to want to grab me, I acted first. I grabbed him by the neck and strangled the life out of him, he died - I killed him.

I don't know if he was truly a threat, if he was really after my life, meant me harm or was simply an innocent guy looking for someone in the darkness - but I didn't care, I wasn't taking a chance. After I had killed him, the people from the church suddenly came pouring out, after me - for the murder. I ran off towards the cliff. I thought surely they wouldn't jump after me. I was wrong. I plunged downwards into the darkness below. It was pure darkness when I jumped into it, but a moment later I landed in the middle of a jungle - rainforest type, there was a river running through it. I began to run, surveying my surroundings as I went. I could hear my pursuers shouting through the darkness, signaling to each other. They didn't seem to know my position, but they were all around me, searching.

Suddenly one of them jumped on my back from a high tree! Before my mind could decide what to do, he pushed a knife deep into the side of my neck, it felt cold and I felt numb immediately. He clung on to me so that I couldn't shake him off, I was bleeding horribly, but still running. His people were fast approaching our position, he kept calling to them. He pulled out his knife and was about to stab me again. I jumped into the river before that knife could pierce me again. The guy was still holding on to me even as we both were fast sinking into the depths of the deep dark abyss-like river.

The water was very cold, but I was busy choking on my blood and suffocating from the water drowning me to notice that. As soon as I died I awoke! Still clasping at my neck, trying to keep the blood from escaping. For a good few seconds after waking up I was still suffocating, still dying. I will never forget the words I said just then, "I'm back, I made it back, I'm alive"! I was not afraid, I was happy, but not that I was back, rather that I had won, though killed - still by waking up I had won.

My endless ruminations on death are what lead me into such dreams, as well as my obsession with endlessly testing myself, to know myself and my limits, to know what I would do in various life and death situations.

A great flood has run the whole world through. The waters run perpetually around the world, carrying vast chunks of all manner of debris. The only way to get around is to float on the debris until it brings you to the part of the world you want to reach.

I am a man filled with regret, I lived a life of restraint and one day in a fit of blind rage I bludgeoned a man to death to protect my cousin and ran. I find myself floating on the debris endlessly, aimlessly. I have the mind to go to America, but the way is dangerous, there are people that snipe at floaters from afar, to kill them.

My float seems to have been caught in a revolving current that does not leave my country, I simply orbit forever the same place, watching the same people. There is no sense of time, no urgency, I'm just numb, empty. I see a cat and a dog bound together by a piece of rope, the cat is unusually large but weak. The dog drags it about. She is so pathetic, I pity her, but i can't help her. Every now and then they come close to my flood, I think if I could just leap off I could reach them, I could cut the rope. But i never do it. Whenever I think of it I am afraid.

I see my sister in the distance, she's looking for her daughter, the little girl is off trying to keep our dog from chasing down the bound pair. I call out to them, but they do not respond. I see a man and a woman bound together, the man has a knife. He is forever cutting at the rope, but it is not sundered.

One day the snipers come to my country. As the current carriers me about I sometimes see them, I have nowhere to hide, they shoot at me but I feel no pain, only a strange sensation and a lightheadedness. I stop fearing them. I see a man on a fishing boat next to the bound man and woman. He is sobbing, bitterly and deeply, he is holding a gun to his head. The bound man takes his knife to the woman, he grabs her and begins cutting her neck, her head begins to burn in pale yellow flames coming from the wound.

A song begins to play, I have forgotten the lyrics but I know the essence of the message. The crescendo comes when the crying man shoots himself and the woman's head falls. All three disappear like mist.

The song said that the dead live on in the memories of the living, but their lingering tortures those that remember them. The crying man could no longer bear to live with the memory of his parents, they themselves had withered into mindless husks over time and yearned for release. The cat and the dog I can see in the distance, still bound, whose memory are they?

I look to my left and I see my cousin, which I had tried to protect! An overwhelming and profound understanding falls suddenly upon me; that I am dead and bound to him, and the memories of the living have bound us both here. The floods only run through my world, the dead world, my sister and niece are perfectly fine in the living world. I seem to be the only dead one that can see both worlds. But in the distance, on the living side I see a fat man that has been staring at me for a while, perhaps he's a living that can see the dead.

I feel that I am about to wake up, so I hurriedly try to catch a glimpse of my sister and niece before I do, but I wasted all my time staring at the spectacles, they are gone from my sight, it is too late.

I awake.