Nightmare Journal #1

As promised, my previous night’s rest was assailed by countless imagined tales of the strange; images and events wholly invented by my brain to twist itself for reasons unknowable. For your enjoyment, I will relay the ones that I can remember.

The first of these forays into the weird began (as is recently common) with me walking on an endless, dusty stretch of road. I was shuffling down this unoccupied highway, looking out toward the horizon at on both sides and admiring the alien scenery of some wind-carved oddities that stood out among the mountain ranges of the unknown desert. The sun was growing unbearably hot on my face and shoulders as I was beginning to consider ways to ease my predicament (i.e. – being stranded in the desert) when a lone car approached from behind me. The window rolled down, and some sun-obscured figure invited me in. The back passenger-side door popped open of its own accord, and I obliged.

Inside, I was greeted by the face of a person I cannot be said to know in the waking world, though I inexplicably knew her to be a teacher of mine, either current or from the recent past. The passenger up front was a young man wholly unfamiliar to me, but my fellow back seat passenger was an old friend which I have known since middle school: Jeff. 

I assume that in this dream I had not been gone from “home” for long, because Jeff and I found no portion of the past worth catching up on. The entire car was engaged in a general session of shooting the breeze, like we were all winding down from some mutual long day. One glance out the window at a time, I was starting to notice a tremendous change in scenery. We were making a gradual transition from blazing desert to the heart of some great and untamed jungle.

As we approached our apparent destination, the driver asked where I needed to be dropped off. This is something I hadn’t considered, as I had no idea where I was going in the first place. She made it clear that I was not going to stay at her home, and I wondered if I had somehow implied such an intention. I had inadvertently invited myself in, and embarrassment washed over me. I was thinking of some way out, or even how I was going to get home (wherever that was), when the car slowed and pulled over to the side of some verdant hill. Her quaint, white home sat on the other side of the road. Its siding was coated in an oddly familiar cracking, ancient paint, and the windows were without curtains and showed no sign of light from inside.

Before the car came to a complete stop, I noticed a small black figure darting across the road. At a distance, it looked to be some enormous fruit bat, like something you wouldn’t expect to find outside of some dense South American jungle. Another one soared over the hood of the car, and then another. They were coming down from the sky and seemingly landing in front of the car, crawling around in the grass. I got out to take a closer look at the roughly cat-sized leatherwings, and immediately made a second discovery: they weren’t bats. The wings fit the description of some great flying fox, but they were attached to the backs of something akin to a capuchin monkey. Their fur was black as coal, and they were skittering bipedally around all sides of the vehicle.

The woman I had assumed to be some manner of teacher was more annoyed than surprised by their presence. She warned us to be careful when exiting the car to make sure that they didn’t get in. Apparently, they were unafraid of humans, and had a habit of getting in anywhere they could to try scavenging for food. As we disembarked the car, one or two had managed to get just inside and were standing on the seats. The remaining winged monkeys were crowding around like pigeons around an old woman with bread, but they seemed almost more nervous than eager. They trembled and twitched, all emitting an occasional screech. I had nervously reached out to touch one on the back, and found its fur to be short and coarse, almost like long bristles. Their wings flapped asynchronously to complement their nervous energy, and I was reminded of the time I was in Thailand. When monkeys climbed onto the boat in Thailand, we were told not to try to pet them, as the monkeys were known to bite if frightened.

I was hesitant to attempt any further contact with the shivering abominations, lest I suffer some fierce monkey bite and die of a rare blood infection, like Alexander the Great. We were doing our best to keep any further monkeys from getting into the car, which they seemed to halt at the door, but the three of us were unsure as to how we would remove the ones that had already gone in. I tried clapping loudly, and yelling at them to get out. Some in the crowd fled nervously at the loud noise, but the ones inside stepped around on the seats with mild trepidation. 

Jeff managed to brush one from the back seat out with his hand, but another winged monkey took its place before he could block it out. The other passenger did the same with the monkey in the front seat, but it was replaced by two monkeys. They were standing side-by-side with their tails intertwined. The mystery passenger grabbed one, untwisted their tails, and simply tossed the monkey into the back seat, which seemed counterproductive. The monkey up front began screeching and howling uncontrollably, and its cries were piercing, and truly horrible to hear. The rest of the crowd followed suit, and their bellowing became unbearable. I covered my ears and started to backpedal, but Jeff seemed more severely affected. He started coughing and choking, like the incessant baying of these flapping devils had somehow irritated his throat, or released some envenomed miasma. The screeching and coughing grew to thunderous levels as I attempted retreat toward the house, but I awoke before ever reaching the door.

My blurred vision cleared up just enough to read the clock on the night stand. It seemed my day would begin at 4:53 AM.