A Bad Dream

 It's 3:23 am, Friday the 27th of December, 2024. I am up because I had a bad dream. I tried going back to sleep, but I felt that I should write down how I was feeling. Perhaps I will feel a little better or more relieved after doing that. I don't know whether the way we left off our phone conversation or the news about the total shutdown had anything to do with the dream. I mean, we didn't finish our conversation on good footing. We nearly, no! We most certainly raised our voices. And there was news about the shutdown, which was a reason for some panic. 

So, in the dream, I was in a big lecture hall with benches & seats on big steps. There were many people. The person beside me was just telling me to be careful, more like hide my face, because I, with two other people (I didn't know who they were), looked a bit like Kukis. (I mean, what?! How did this even pop up in my dream, huh!?) He said that we were more susceptible to attacks, so it's better to be safe and take precautions. Shortly after that, there's a young boy, maybe around 11 or 12, plump, looking harmless (almost giving you the image of the chubby boy Russell in the movie Up). He walked on one side of the room, speaking with a loud voice, saying, "It's the third wave now." As in the Covid first wave, then the second wave, and now it's the third wave, not Covid in this case, but the conflict situation, which was the reason for the total shutdown. He went on, "People are now clearly divided into two sides, one side with Russia and the other with China." (This does not even make sense since the conflict in Manipur is between the Meiteis and the Kukis, and he's talking about Russia and China.) (Not Russia and Ukraine, it seemed.) Anyway, as he was speaking, everyone's attention was on him, and it looked like he was gonna go away. Then suddenly he produced a pistol and pointed it towards us, the people in the hall. Everyone panicked and got down.

Sorry, I had to take a break from writing this down because of a call of nature; I think the fear and stress of reliving that scene in my head is causing it.

Okay, as I was writing, he suddenly produced a pistol and aimed blindly at us. Everyone got down and hid themselves under the benches. Me too. I feared for my life, obviously. Especially after having been told to hide for safety. I dragged myself on all fours and got away from him as far as I could, under the benches. This whole time, he was speaking and aiming the pistol at us.

Oh damn! I am starting to forget how it ended. Maybe it ended here, or I've forgotten what happened after this. Anyway, I wasn't killed. But I remember thinking in my dream, "I don't want to die," "I don't want to die." When I woke up, my whole body was tingling with fear, and I was thinking about how vulnerable life can be. It can be snatched away just like that. With no warnings. Sometimes it does not make sense. But people die. Why not be happy while we're alive? As I thought this, it made me sad how I had arranged for the tea party, and you two ruined it.