My dreams have always been so vivid, as if I were traveling to another place and time. Often quite gruesome. I am also usually not me. In my dreams, I’m in someone else’s body.

My conclusion has always been this: I’m handling a tough situation for someone who is unable to do so, and who has mentally checked out. They’re on autopilot, so I’m the one driving. I’ve been stabbed more times than I can count. Shot. Pursued in car chases. Guided a starving and desperate group of my family (well, someone’s family) through a burned-out, flooded city. In the past, I’ve tried to frame this to myself as, “Well, this is tough, but at least I’m being helpful.”

With that in mind, the following are snippets of a similar vision I had tonight. I truly hope this was just a piece of fiction from my exhausted mind, and not a real situation someone had to go through, for which I was in the driver’s seat.

There were a group of us, all men, that were forced or coerced into a bizarre medical gauntlet. All the tasks were solo, but with an interlude of time together between each event. No crowd could be seen, but I knew this was all for someone’s entertainment.

Task 1

I was on a team with two other men. We were in a tall arena with clean, sterile, translucent, white walls. I was told to pick an object from a table in front of me, and that would give me a task. This was some kind of difficulty-selection process. The man to the left of me picked up a book, and a booming voice was heard inside our heads. “Ah, the monkey’s tail (tale, maybe?). There is a reason there are few monkeys left on this island.” He was given a barbed, pulsating mechanical tail which he had to insert into his anus.

Task 2

A pulse of blue energy was flowing out of the wall, through a tube into my chest, and out my wrist, to a series of tubes in a tree-arrangement which led back into the wall. I had to direct the energy down the correct path so it would no longer return to me. I may have used a joystick, but maybe my mind. Unclear.

Task 3

I was in a confined white translucent chamber. I could not move at all and was forced to stand straight up, with all walls pressing against me. There was a snake wrapped around the outside of the box. Every few seconds, the chamber would get tighter. I had to use my mind to make the snake wrap up and around the outside of my chamber, quickly, before it constricted me to death.

Task 4

I was told that a drug I had taken in this gauntlet process was causing me issues, and my task was to figure out a way to counterbalance it. I was shown a panel of medicine in needles and had to choose which was the right one before I died.

Conclusion

Guess I didn’t make it past that fourth task - that’s when I woke up. I’m still processing all this stuff, but feel free to ask any questions - I’ll do my best to answer. I’m going to go make a pot of coffee; it’s a bit early for me, but I have the feeling I won’t be able to go back to sleep anyway.