Wednesday, December 31, 2008

A dream - sunset holocaust

Matt and Chey and I are all piled into a car together, with Cheyenne driving and I in the back seat. We pull into the driveway of a familiar house. We all get out of the car and I am slightly anxious because we forgot to bring something with us. It is twilight, and the eastern sky beyond the house is made darker by the presence of forbidding cumulonimbus clouds, the textured, corrugated bottoms of which provide a low, ominous ceiling. Although they are ubiquitous to a certain extent, they start to thin and break up as my gaze follows them across the sky towards the west. About 2/3 of the way to the horizon they disintegrate completely, leaving a clear, calm sunset. The sun, having just disappeared below the western horizon, leaves a bright yellow sky which fades slowly into the dark blue of near twilight before it is obscured by the blanket of clouds from the east. I turn my vision back towards the dark cloud cover and am amazed to see in the distance an immense UFO flying below the cloud deck. It is quite far away, but I can definitely discern a massive hull festooned with bright, multicolored flashing lights. Matt is just getting out of the car so I yell at him, "Reach back into the car and grab the binoculars, quickly, hurry up!" I point at the sky and exclaim to him, "It's a UFO! Give me the binoculars!" Matt digs around in the back seat and emerges with the binoculars in hand. He sweeps the sky futilely with them, which exasperates me, and I frantically urge him to hand them over. He does, and I proceed to scan the eastern sky. Almost immediately, I spot it. It is an amazing sight, made even more incredible by the sudden ignition of two engines mounted at the rear of the main body, which begin to glow a dull orange. I exclaim to Matt, "The engines are lighting! It'll be gone soon so hurry up and look!" I hold the binoculars slightly away from my eyes with one hand and with the other hand I point as directly and accurately as I can at the UFO, while at the same time passing the binoculars to Matt so that he will know exactly in what direction to look. He sees the UFO but doesn't seem nearly as thrilled as me, and he and Chey proceed into the house.

An old man and woman live in the house, and at this point I realize that we are visiting a kind of analogue for our grandparents. I don't recognize them but they still seem familiar as I greet them in the living room. However, I am still filled with excitement at what I had just witnessed, so I quietly steal back outside. Heavy clouds had begun to form in the western sky, and as I looked towards the sunset, I could barely make out the diminished shape of the UFO against the form of a thunderhead as it reflected the last of the sun's dying rays. Suddenly, I realized with dread and unwelcome comprehension that it was engaged in battle with an enemy vessel, and they were exchanging a volley of nuclear weapons. I hid my eyes as one of them detonated, and when I looked again, there was a towering mushroom cloud rising from the western horizon. I quickly hurried inside and warned everyone. "There has been a nuclear detonation and the shock wave will be here quickly. We have to seek shelter!" Matt, Chey and I, along with the old couple, quickly proceeded outside and towards a separate garage. I watched the mushroom cloud as I hurried across the yard towards the garage, and I could feel the air pressure building as the front of the shock wave quickly raced towards us. With all of us inside the garage, we hunkered down on our knees, clasped our hands behind our heads, and tried to roll ourselves into little balls. Then the shock wave hit and the garage shook violently around us, shattering the glass in the windows and shaking the door off of the frame. As I crouched there, hunkered, I tried to catch a glimpse of Matt and Chey to see if they were all right. With the door gone, I could see the grass and trees outside through the open doorway scorching in the intense heat. I expected the garage to come completely apart around us at any second, exposing us to the searing winds.

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