AN- Mkay, pretty much writing this when I’m home sick and bored out of my mind. It’s a dream I had, so I have to warn you that there are times where it will probably make no sense whatsoever, and things that may not sound like they make sense either A few more notes. The italics at the beginning aren’t from the dream, there what I’ve added in to try and make some sense out of everything.

Not many of my dreams have actual endings when they’re this good, especially the really good ones, sadly. If they did, I’d probably write up more of them. Hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed ‘living’ it. I would probably try to write this in first person, but I suck at first person. But you know what? I’m gonna try it anyway. So…deal with it. It’ll probably sound like a re-telling at some points, to that might be cool.

Remember, italics at the beginning and end of the story don’t mean a flashback, they indicate what I added to the dream.

I Dream a Dream of a Gamed Called Death.

There is a valley tucked away amongst an impenetrable wall of mountains, in turn slipped into an endless sea. Few know of this island, for it is a secret kept from all. All, that is, except for those who find themselves there. This valley on this island is the home of a game, known only to those who have experience it. There are no rules. There is no way to cheat. And the creator of the game is a mystery.

The game is called Death, which certainly must not sound fun. The only way those who experience this game know that it is a game are due to certain hints...certain things in the valley. The valley is filled with creatures far vaster than anyone can count. Far fiercer than anyone can imagine – Dream, perhaps; but certainly not imagine. They are pieces in this game. They are a punishment. They are a reward. They are the only way anyone has come to leave this game.

I played this game, with others. There were four of us. Three survived. The only three to make it out of Death as such. Our fourth companion will be remembered and honored above any others we’d met in the game. And to think...none of us even knew each other before this.

The last thing that I remembered was falling asleep, and now I awoke with no memories besides that. Beneath me was a cobblestone circle, all around me in the distance was a ring of mountains; judging on the distance, I was in the center of a valley. The very center, the dead center. As I sat up I realized there were others near me, three, and all older than I, all awakening as well.

There was a man in his mid life, black hair, mustache, and beard flecked with silver. His eyes were grey, for some reason she noticed them the most. The cloths he wore were unimportant, as were the clothing of all the others there. There was a woman as well, possibly in her thirties. Long blond hair to her waste and startling blue eyes, tall as the man previously described. The last was another man, but younger still, probably in his early twenties. Short brown hair and green eyes.

The four of us stood up and looked around our surroundings, realizing that it seemed to be a town of sorts. We noticed then a single wooden pole at the edge of the circle of cobblestone we were on, an image plastered to the wood. The paper was cream colored, almost like papyrus, and the letters looked as if they were from an old printing press. Smaller words towards the top read ‘The game as begun.’ and below that, more words. The words below sounded strange, as if the sentence they formed wasn’t placed correctly.

Death no here.

And all around the border were printed lines and designs that held no meaning. The older man looked to the other three of us then, as if just not noticing us. “What...are your names?” he asked, his tone holding a sense that made it seem as if it were the only thing important. We all exchanged glances, eyes widening, wondering. None of us knew, not even the man. And so we turned to our last memories, later we would find that all who ended here did the same.

“I remember a picture box, moving and filled with color. Something called a television show, with agents of some sort investigating…” the older man said. And so he called himself Agent.

“An image of someone dear...My God, I think. A cross symbol around my neck, with the wings of...of something called an angel on them.” the blond woman reminisced. And so she called herself Angel.

“A dear pet,” the other man spoke, “with long ears, not a rabbit I think...a Hare, who’s wild habits I was researching.” he explained somewhat about the research he remembered before ending here, and so called himself Warren.

I thought then, back to the memory when I’d fallen asleep. “I remember a sunset of blazing fire...with stallions and mares galloping across the sand. Their coats blazed, shining under the dieing sun...a pied mare.” and so I called myself Pied.

We stepped off the circle of stones then, meeting with others in the town quickly. They explained the situation of this place to us, and we feared for our lives. The four of us broke into pairs to explore, promising that we would meet up again. Having woken up all at once, there was a fast kinship forming between us. Angel and I came across a playground.

It wasn’t much, not what I would expect my memories of a playground would be. There was a large tree, and a single wooden frame of a swing with a rope and a wooden plank. Plastered across the trunk of the tree was yet another poster, the same words, the same ominous message of ‘Death no here’. Remembering the advice we received from those we’d met upon arrival, we deemed the playground a safe haven. Angel took a seat upon the swing, and I settled onto a branch of the tree.

We spoke for a few minutes, but the conversation I do not recall. I remember then that the ground shook, a wooden bucket in the sand below tipped over, and a monster appeared. There was no time for thought as our instincts drove us, Angel climbed on top of the set’s frame, and I pressed myself against the trunk of the tree. The creature was huge, the pale body of a white worm with hundreds of spindly legs along its side and pincers breaking out from beneath its hideous faceted eyes. And it went for my tree, for me.

My memory fails me here once more, and I remember not much of the battle. Words were yelled to the older woman, questions of ‘Why isn’t it going after you as well!?’ broke my vocals at one point or another. And then there was a broken piece of metal in my hand, tossed to me by my friend and comrade. It was embedded into the worm’s ugly skull quickly enough, pulled out and plunged in repeatedly in blind panic. When the worm fell, and after a moment of blank stares, Angel and I went to it. Fear still gripping me, I stabbed the worm’s head a few more times, thoroughly making sure the eyes were useless, whatever brain it had turned to mash...And though I thought I should, I felt no remorse.

The incident over, we thought nothing more of it. This was the game, the Game called Death. But still, we went to find Warren and Agent. Along the way there was a courtyard of sorts outside a tavern. Money, apparently, was not asked for in this place. Hospitality was the way. In the courtyard was a swinging platform. There were benches underneath a canopy, and the small square of floor that the benches were on moved back and forth as the group of girls and boys around my age moved it. One of them was standing up in the center, looking towards the ceiling as she sung a song of words I could not hear. And the ground shook once more.

We were told by those in the beginning that there were not only monsters in this valley who took lives, but other things as well. Incidents that shouldn’t have happened; and this was one of them. A pillar of light and smoke erupted from the ground beneath the girl who had been silent singing. Screams were shouted from those around her, though she herself was silent. The pillar was gone as soon as it came, and the girl stood there. Her eyes still facing towards the ceiling, her clothing tattered, her eyes leaking panged tears. A paper fell from the ceiling, unglued from its spot by the pillar that had come and gone. It was a poster, slipping off her face and onto the ground, its three words staring up at everyone present, mocking. This was the first death we witnessed in this place, this game.

We accepted it with a strange apathy, that this girl we had not known had died. Angel and I walked along the cobblestone path, ahead of us Warren and Agent called to us, drawing us near. They too had seen horrors. We wondered why it was so that everywhere these things happened was a poster that decreed there would be no death in that place. A realization dawned on us as if all at once, the memories of how we came to realize this vague in my mind. The posters were not showing us safe places, but places of death. We would avoid them from that point on.

The four of us found that we were hungry, entering the tavern in hopes of eating. As we sat down at a booth there were menus already placed there. Three of them had on the front a plain cream colored menu, but Warrens had a watermark. Small text, with the three printed words. He cried out and threw it away, and we looked around the room, wondering how it would have come to be here, in this place that should have been safe. There were others in the tavern holding menu’s such as Warren had, looking strangely at him as if had gone mad. I found myself standing to shout to them, to tell them they were wrong.

I shouted that anyone who had a menu with the words of ‘Death no here’ printed on them, anyone who had a menu that was also a poster, should throw it away, get as far from it as possible. But none of them listened, they looked at me as if I were crazy, their knuckles white in grip on the menus as if they were a lifeline, their only chance of survival. Angel gripped my arm gently, bidding me to sit once more, gently coaxing me and telling me there was nothing I could do to help them from their own ignorance.

The food in the tavern came without cooks, for the only people who dwelled in this valley were those who were playing the game. No chefs, no waiters. But the food came. We ate sparingly, unsure of doing so in this place, this game; but hungry for nourishment. As we left the tavern screams erupted, and without looking back we knew what had happened. Heading along the cobblestone path once more, none of us then noted that we’d yet to leave this path since we’d found it. That this path, in actuality, originated from the ring we’d woken up on.

There were benches ahead, and we sought rest. Warren and I searched the benches for posters, Angel and Agent looked to the trees in the soil behind. There were none, it was safe enough, and we sat. By now we had walked farther than any others, realizing that most of the players remained in the area of the courtyard, accepting their fate to live as much of a life they had left there; but we did not. Remaining seated for only a short time, we continued along the path. Presently, there came into view another building, high on a hill at the base of the mountain range. A large house, a home. The word mansion came to our minds on tendrils of our lost memory.

The pathway lead to the front of this home, and we were welcomed inside. The only memory of this place I hold is the flooring, solid square stones, possibly two feet thick. I know not what we saw as we were given a tour of this house, except that I stole from it. I stole a knife from this man’s kitchen. Also, I remember the four of us seeing three containers of glass with three strange pods in them. The pods resembled something of a bean, but larger and thicker, and a dark earthen brown color. We asked what they were, and were told that they were egg pods for an experiment he was doing. That confused us, why would anyone in this game have time for an experiment? Have time for a home?

The man told us that we must leave then, for he had work to do. We went outside to his back yard, as he had told us we were free to explore the grounds. But though we did not know this, we had seen too much. Outside was a sitting area, and after a check for posters, we settled. Angel and Warren took a seat on the bench, I sat near a plastic play house, and Agent leant against a tree. It was peaceful for once, for awhile, for a moment. And then there was a low rumble. Not nearly as loud as the first two had been, as the worm or the pillar.

A creature came up from the ground; the top of it was transparent, jelly like, clear; and a foot in diameter. The creature had what seemed like hundreds of tendrils coming from this bell like top, and it attacked us. The four of us were confused, we had checked for posters. Why were we being attacked? Had we been wrong? It seemed so. We sought to be off the ground, and I turned to the play house. Before climbing atop I looked inside and under the roof, for this was still the game of Death. Barely in time had I brought myself on top of it, crying out as I felt a tendril attach itself around my thick shoe, sticking to it instead of wrapping.

Agent grabbed a hold of the tendrils to pull it off, yelping in pain and throwing it to the ground. The tendrils stung, he warned us. I sought to help, pulling the knife I had stolen out and leaping off the roof of the play house. I grabbed onto the bell of this creature, some tendril of thought telling me that this was a safe part to hold, and I cut it. I sliced the blade across the bell in rows many times over, continuing along the tendrils, cutting it into pieces. Later I might have wondered if I attacked it too much, if a single slash would have been enough, but not then. Stepping away I winced lightly, a tendril stuck to my hand and stinging the skin, but I quickly flicked it off.

The four of us stood shocked, looking to each other. We must have spoken, done something to make a time pass, but I do not remember. Angel was the first to notice them, what seemed like tiny blips of light. Hundreds of them coming towards us, hopping along the ground. They were like the creature before, but tiny, only an inch in length. Small, seemingly harmless, but able to sting; and able to swarm. We turned to run towards the house, the hundreds of creatures dove into the ground, doubtless tunneling after us. And we ran for the cobblestone path.

The man was shouting at us to follow him, telling us that we would be safe in his home on the thick stone flooring, and we went. We followed the man into the room with the pods, only to find that one of them had broken open and was empty. The four of us must have conversed once more, for the man had left the room. And we realized that the creatures pursuing us must have hatched from here. These were the experiments, and the larger one from earlier, their mother.

Agent proposed explosives to destroy the pods; we could plant the bomb in the empty shell. If these eggs hatched and swarmed the valley, everyone would die. This round of the game would end in a few short hours. We had to stop that. Agent was able to make a bomb out of parts in this room, and as he began putting them into the pod the man came back in. Angel and Warren were standing by a steel door in the back; I was crouched atop a large wooden crate watching the scene.

The man said something to Agent, how it was valiant of him to try but that his attempts would fail. He pressed a button on a panel in front of him, and a second egg pod opened. The creatures were the same as the small ones outside, and they swarmed Agent. Angel and Warren had found a way to open the steel door, and were out waiting just outside of it, calling to Agent and I.

I called to Agent, wanting to help him even as the hundreds of jelly like creatures swarmed over him, stinging repeatedly. I could see death haunting him in his eyes, but he kept working at the bomb. He yelled at us to go, that he would stay and finish this. I refused, but Agent yelled at me to listen and leave. The man at the panel was closing the steel doors, and I ran for them even as I knew I would never see Agent again. Outside there was a vehicle of some sort that Warren remembered how to work, the word Jeep came to all of our minds.

I pleaded with them to wait for Agent, but Warren sped off even as I did, assuring me that Agent would not have told us to go if he had meant to come with us. Angel was crying, and Warren was staring pointedly ahead of him. I was turned in the jeep to watch the building, staring apprehensively toward it. They were right, and if Agent failed his bomb making then the valley would die.

Suddenly, the home burst apart. Flames erupted with a torrential explosion; and my throat tore open with a screaming cry for Agent, wishing vainly that he didn’t have to be a sacrifice so we might live. The explosion is the last that I remember of this place, this Game of Death. For even as tears poured from my eyes for our fallen friend, even as Angel wept in the seat beside Warren, I was brought home. This game of death was over.

Later I would realize that the man in the mansion home must have been the creator of this game. This man that experimented and lived on such an island, in such a place. This man that lived in a game where all would die. I realized that death must have fascinated him, and wondered if he was fascinated even as he had watched Agent being stung to death by his inventions. I wondered if he was fascinated even as our fallen comrade finished his bomb and saved the valley, even as the man himself died.

I do not know what happened to the rest of the players, though I assume they went home as well. And I also wondered...would this game ever return? Even with the man gone, would another come to take his place? The explosion did not destroy the valley in the ocean; it did not destroy the creatures and unexplainable traps. I’m sure it did not destroy all the posters that appeared of their own will, plastered to those places that should have been safe. I wondered...would this game, this game of death...ever once again come to life?