Chapter 1: Lesson
"GIR! Where are you? You have work to do."
Nope. Not gonna open eyes. No workie today. Sleepy day. Gooooood daaaaay...
"GIR! NOW!"
Naaaaaaaaah. Don't wanna...
"GIR! If you don't obey RIGHT NOW–"
Suddenly, Zim's voice cuts off, to be replaced by the chirping of birds. I open my eyes in surprise. I lie in lush grass, surrounded by flowers and butterflies.
Meh. Boring. Wait… How did I get here? Who cares! At least it's quiet.
But then I notice something waaaaay better than boring plants and bugs
There is bacon floating in the breeze.
I smile.
Everywhere I look, bacon flutters earthward, slowly. Majestically.
I have found... paradise.
A strip comes to rest on my head. I gobble it down.
Ecstasy…
I snatch two more strips out of the air. Nom nom.
Anywhere the bacon reaches the ground, it transforms into fallen leaves...
NO! I must save the bacon!
I leap to my feet, rushing about, grabbing and gobbling as fast as I can. I cannot let this beautiful bacon be wasted!
A bit carried away, I slip on some leaves and fall flat on my back.
Then, through the delightful madness of my typical perception of reality… I come to a tragic realization.
This... isn't real.
It can't be.
It's just too perfect and beautiful.
I'm dreaming.
I lie in the grass, weeping without restraint or shame, as the agony and tragedy of this cruel world crashes in on me. I simply fell asleep when Zim was giving me orders. All of this beauty and perfection... is a lie.
"Just a dream! Just a dream! Meanie dream! Lying to GIR! Tricking GIR!"
Suddenly, the ground beneath me shifts.
I open my eyes.
I'm now lying in the middle of a city street, although there's no traffic. To either side, high rise apartment buildings block most of my view.
Big, cute, fluffy things are leaping and dancing on the rooftops. I access my databanks, and determine these are capybaras. Yay! They're basically giant guinea pigs! I can pet them and hug them and love them and nom them and–
Wait… nope. This has gotta still be a dream.
So sad.
"Dream. You meanie. You lie to GIR. You make GIR happy... then take away. GIR hate dream. Dream is-"
The capybaras start jumping off the buildings.
"Whuuuuuuut?"
They spring across the gap, covering the whole width of the street, pinballing from one building to the other on the way down. Hundreds of them rebound off balconies, ladders and walls.
This is a pretty fun dream.
But then some start missing their jumps, and they splat on the street.
Not fun no more.
And when others start surviving the fall, it gets REALLY not fun.
Because these are not nice, gentle, plant-eating capybaras.
These are crazy nightmare ninja capybaras.
They bare their enormous rodent teeth, howl like banshees, and charge toward me.
Uh oh.
The first dream must have gotten very angry with me for being so ungrateful as to call it out and discover it wasn't real.
So now it's gonna kill me.
"Not AGAIN!"
I leap to my feet, blitzing through the city, screaming and wailing and begging for help. I have an arsenal of advanced weaponry, but…
"Too cute to shoot too cute to shoot too cute to shoot!"
I really should have pretended the first dream was real. Never be rude to your dreams. They can get very nasty.
Author's Note:
I didn't consciously make this story up. It was a dream I had last night. This was not the first time I discovered I was dreaming, and the dream turned angry and nasty in response. It's like, when I start to go lucid, the dream takes extreme offense, with an attitude of: "Ya think this is fake? Well I'll show YOU!"
The first time this happened, I was facing off with a hideous little monster. I told it, "You can't hurt me. This is just a dream." It immediately proved my first statement wrong and my second statement irrelevant... by savaging me mercilessly. And yes... when my dreams get really bad... I do feel pain.
For a lot of people, realizing that they're dreaming gives them godlike powers, able to reshape the dream however they want, flying and changing the world and having a ton of fun.
Sounds nice. But that is not how it works for me. My dreams are proud actors that want me to buy into the fiction. And when I break the fourth wall, the dream breaks me in revenge.
Reviews are always welcome.
Update: I have also posted the dream I had immediately after this one. I woke up from getting slaughtered by capybaras, decided this dream should be written, went back to sleep, and had another dream. The following dream went to great lengths to ensure I wouldn't realize I was dreaming. It's entitled "Bombing Run," and reading both of these stories will give some insight to the bizarre psychology of my subconscious. My dreams hate getting identified as such, and they can use multiple strategies to prevent it. Years ago, the most disturbing example of this was a time when I suspected I might be dreaming. So I did a series of tests, including running down stairs, rolling in the grass, focusing on distant details, causing myself pain, and the like. And I concluded it was real. Waking up after that made me question reality for a bit.