This is a very vivid dream I had a few months ago that I’d like to somehow turn into a story one day.

The first thing I remember, it was night and I was in bed with Tom and we were half asleep, though we weren’t in our house. We were in some kind of boarding house or off-campus housing, because I knew there were lots of other people living in the house as well. It was dark, but I could see a TV flickering; I don’t remember if it was in the same room as us or if it was in an adjacent room that I could see through the open door. I lifted my head up a little and looked at the TV. There was a woman on the TV talking, though the volume was muted. There was a guy standing in front of the TV, just a couple feet from it, staring at the screen. He was talking to the woman on the TV like she was a real person, and he was just saying all these horrible violent things he was going to do to her. His voice was getting louder and the stuff he was saying was getting more vile, and I was starting to wig out. I scooted closer to Tom and said in his ear, “I’m scared.” Tom told me that it was okay, that there was nothing to be scared of.

Then, for some bizarre reason, I decided that I had to get up and go down to the kitchen to wash the dishes, even though it was the middle of the night (WTF?). In the dream, I remembered that earlier there had been some excitement at a house nearby, with cops there and stuff, and everyone in our house had been looking out the windows trying to see what was going on. I got to the kitchen and there was a girl there; I couldn’t see her, she was just a tall black shape, but she was leaning against the counter in the dark. In the dream I knew who she was, and I also knew she didn’t like me at all, so I was nervous about her being there, but I just nodded at her and went over to the sink. While I was washing the silverware, she started moving around behind me, and I was glancing over my shoulder, thinking, “What is she doing back there?” But all she did was go to a window and peer out through the blinds, checking on the action at the neighbors’. I tried to make small talk, like, “Wonder what that’s all about,” but she just went, “Hm,” and then left. I never could see her, she was just a shadow.

The kitchen sink was on a bar that faced the living room. There was moonlight and light from the other houses, so I could clearly see the front door and the Oriental rug on the living room floor. I could also see through the front windows that there was a party going on at the house across the street; people were standing outside talking, with drinks in their hands.

The front door opened and a guy and girl came in, laughing and grabbing at each other. They left the front door open, and then sat down on the floor and started goofing off and making out. I didn’t know if they could see me, or if they just didn’t give a shit. The girl took her shirt off, though her jeans were still on; the guy stayed dressed. I could only see him from the back; he was preppily dressed, wearing jeans and a button-up shirt in a pale blue color. I was just standing there washing dishes, wondering if they could see me.

Suddenly the guy grabbed the girl’s ankles and pulled her legs apart and up off the floor. She started to cry like he was hurting her, and I thought that I should help her, but I was frozen to the spot. Then he started pulling and squeezing really, really hard around her ankles, and as stupid as it was, I thought, “Holy fuck, he’s going to pull her feet off.” And then, yeah, he ripped her feet off at the ankles. There wasn’t much blood, but I could hear the feet thump as they hit the rug. And I was still standing there, just shocked and horrified and unable to move.

And then the guy got up and whipped around and grabbed my wrist, hard. I was holding a butter knife that I’d been washing, and I saw the blade press into his palm, though of course it didn’t hurt him. I stared into his face, which was really wide, with wide-set blue eyes. He also had shoulder-length blond hair that was swept up and back off his forehead. He gave me this horrible grin, and then with his other hand he grabbed my elbow and started to twist my arm, like was going to tear my arm off. In panic I just kicked out at him, which in real life wouldn’t have worked because the kitchen bar was between us, but at any rate my leg thrashed violently and I woke up to Tom (who was still awake next to me) saying, “Hey. Did a flea bite you or something? You kinda kicked me.” And I said no, that I had a nightmare. He asked what it was about, and I didn’t feel like explaining it just then, so I said, “Some guy was trying to kill me.” And then Tom asked what he looked like (maybe so he could find the guy in one of his own dreams and kick his ass? I dunno, haha) and again, I didn’t feel like going into it because I was freaked out, so I just said I didn’t know. And then, kinda like at the start of the dream, Tom said (in real life), “It’s okay. No one’s trying to kill you.”

I couldn’t fall asleep for ages after that.