by Tesseract » Jul 22, 2011 10:18 am
This was a dream that I had last night. Usually I don’t remember my dreams very well, but this one I remembered quite vividly. I didn’t remember what everyone said word-for-word of course, but I wrote it down the closest to what I remembered. It’s not remotely like any dream I’ve had before.
I was in a giant, open field. Everybody under 18 that lived in my town was standing there in a giant circle. A giant new game/arcade center/park was in front of us. The game center was surrounded by a giant wall. Over the top of the wall I could see the peaks and pinnacles of what looked like the various attractions inside. It seemed to be a mixture of carnival and amusement park games. There didn’t seem to be any rides, only games. Today was the grand opening of this new game park in my town.
Employees of the gaming center were handing out discs shaped like Frisbees to everybody in the circle. The discs had our name on them, along with electronic panels that could display various different numbers. A few of the discs were glowing red and had the words “All-Star” on them. My disc wasn’t one of them.
The owner of the game center stepped into the middle of the circle. “Welcome to the grand opening!” he said to all of us. “Inside, you will find many different games that you can play. To play a game, just insert tokens. If you win the game, you get various different things that can be redeemed for prizes at the prize center.” People around me began to clamor with excitement.
“However,” the owner continued, “Today, the 20 people who are All-Stars may redeem prizes from the prize center. Tomorrow, a different 20 people will be the All-Stars. It is completely random. So be sure to come back every day to check your disc, and one day you could be an All-Star!”
This new information didn’t go over very well with the crowd, and people who didn’t have glowing red discs started to walk away. “Wait!” the owner said. “I haven’t told you the best part yet. The tokens are free.” He threw huge handfuls of tokens up in the air, and people ran forward to catch them. The entrance to the game center opened, and people poured in.
Following the crowd, I went in. I decided to have a look at the prize center. The prize center appeared to be a small building sitting amongst all the games. In front of the building it had a display case and a roof that stuck out from the building from which things were hanging. There was a door inside the building, which was where I assumed there were more prizes.
The owner walked behind the display case. I looked at all the different prizes. Most of them were just toys. Some of the prizes were food. Hanging down from the roof were little cubes that had things printed on them, such as, “A vacation to Hawaii! A ride in a real helicopter!” Everything had a price tag on it. The prices were listed in dollars.
“The prizes are bought with special money that is earned in the games,” the owner said, as if he was reading my mind. I asked him, “Aren’t the prices here a lot more expensive than in real life?” “Oh no,” he said, as he grabbed the “Vacation to Hawaii” cube. The price tag read “$2,000”. He turned the cube around and on the back, in crossed out letters, was, “Market Price: $20,000”. “You see,” the owner said, “I really am giving people a good deal.”
Something didn’t seem right to me. “How can you afford to do all this?” I asked. “Oh, it’s just out of the goodness of my heart, I suppose.” He replied. “Here, we have a motto: A happy child is a good customer. Now run along and go play a game! There’s lots to do here!” I took his advice and wandered off.
There were plenty of stereotypical carnival games, such as the whack-hammer and knock-over-the-bottles games. I didn’t find these appealing, so I went over to a small black building that seemed to be another game. The game, I found out, had to be done in groups of threes, so I waited for 2 other kids to show up and we went in together.
Inside, we were in a dark space shaped like a theatre. The three of us were up on the stage, surrounded by mounds of hay, and down where the audience would be was a giant pile of gold coins, with pillars of fire behind it. To win the game, one apparently had to throw hay onto the pile of gold coins. If enough hay landed on the pile, we “scored” a coin on the scoreboard. We assumed that after we had won, we would get the physical gold coins. There was a scoreboard above us that said, “Coins needed: 38. Coins gathered: 0”, followed by a clock.
We all started gathering hay and pitching it at the pile of coins, and pretty soon we had scored 28 coins on the scoreboard, but time was running out. One of the kids got down on his belly and started to stretch himself over the edge of the stage, saying, “If I could just grab a handful of coins, we’d win!” His hand almost reached the coins and then he lost his balance and tumbled off the stage into darkness. I looked up, and now the scoreboard read, “Coins needed: 45. Coins gathered: 0.”, just as time was running out. I assumed that the kid had broken the rules. I couldn’t see where he had fallen, but I high-tailed it out of there because the place was downright creepy.
I ended up walking back to the prize center, and saw the owner disappear into the main prize center building. I saw a very popular kid at my high school come running towards the prize center with a glowing red disc. It figures that he would be one of the All-Stars, I thought to myself, as he walked up to the display case. I watched to see what the prize-getting process was like. The popular kid inserted his disc into a small slot and selected the grapes. On top of the display case, an electronic screen flashed how much money he had and how much the grapes cost. He had $1.10 while the grapes cost $1.45. “Darn!” He said. “I thought I had enough now! Oh well…” he turned to me. “Could you watch the display panel while I’m gone and make sure nobody messes with it?” I said sure, because nobody else seemed to be coming anywhere near the prize center. He ran off with his disc, but the information remained on the electronic screen.
While he was gone, I watched the screen. The price of the grapes started to slowly tick up from $1.45 to $1.51! A short time later, the popular kid came running back, panting, and stuck his disc in. He now had $1.50 on his disc. “Darn!” He said. “I thought I had enough now! Oh well…” he turned to me. “Could you watch the display panel while I’m gone and make sure nobody messes with it?” I said, “sure,” and he ran off again.
Looking at the prize center again, it looked like nothing had even been taken from the display case or shelves. Everything looked exactly as it had been when the place first opened. I was now convinced that this whole thing was a scam. I felt an urge to tell somebody about this, so I quickly abandoned the prize center and ran off to find my best friend. He was playing a dart game. “I have something I need to tell you,” I said. “After I’m done,” he said, staring at the dart game. “I’m trying to beat this game…I can almost do it!” “This is really, really, really urgent!” I said. “So come find me as soon as you’re done!” “Ok,” he muttered, still completely fixated on the game. As I walked back to the prize center, I saw a little kid sobbing uncontrollably to his dad because he couldn’t win one of the games.
I figured the best way to find out what was going on would be to talk to the owner. I assumed he was still inside the prize center building, so I went past the display case and opened the door, and went inside. The door closed behind me.
All four walls of the room were covered with bookshelves, from floor to ceiling. The owner was in the corner furthest away from me, stacking books onto one of the bookshelves. I looked around. Some of the books were propped up on little stands, so that one could see their covers. Some of the books were even three to five feet tall. All of the books had price tags on them, so they must have been prizes. What was disturbing, though, was the titles of the books and images on the book covers. The book titles were all about witchcraft, demons, devils and other things that were all around satanic. The images on the book covers were all drawings of people getting tortured, chopped up, and mutilated in various grotesque ways.
I was mad at the owner, so I walked partway across the room and yelled at him, “All this is a scam, isn’t it?” Still facing away from me, stacking books on the bookshelves, the owner said, “Oh no, the prizes in here aren’t.” Suddenly he turned around and began to run towards me. I ran for the door, and time seemed to slow down. My body moved slower and slower as I lumbered toward the door. “You’re sick!” I yelled. “Your books are all about torture and death!” “What’s wrong with that?” he said in a much more sinister-sounding voice than before.
I actually was able to reach the door before he grabbed me. I bolted out, and ran through the park towards the exit. As soon as I got out of the park, I looked around frantically for somewhere else to hide in, or ask for help. The only building that I saw was a “Christmas” store. There were Christmas trees in the windows, along with Nativity sets and other various Christmas things. I ran in, hoping to find someone who could help and get rid of the owner of the Game park. Unlike the noisy, obnoxious blare of the park, the inside of the Christmas store was serene. As I ran around inside up and down isles, calling for people to help, they all completely ignored me. It was as if I wasn’t even there.
Then I woke up.
) and a few other people. This team was on a mission to do a remake of The Lord of the Rings movies. There was Justin, a woman named "Patrick", and a man whose hand-print looked like an animal's print, I think a bear's. So we were going to use his hand-prints for the prints in the ground from the Uruk-Hai! And we were going to ask Peter Jackson to be Grima/Wormtongue. For some reason, we thought he would be perfect for that role! I don't remember much else, except the fact that Justin wasn't being very helpful; he was just sort of sitting around being lazy! That's about all I remember. 
I heard the news in my dream!
