I usually don’t remember my dreams, but when I do they tend to be fairly bizarre, and usually in Technocolor with Dolby Surround too. Sometimes though the dream feels less like a “dream” and more like an immersive movie or RPG in which I’m following around a character or two. I’ve come to call these CinemaDreams, and what follows is a narrative of one I had few mornings back. It was visually stunning, and should really be shared as either a movie itself, or at least a graphic novel. Since I don’t have any of the ability for either though, I’ll just have to settle for writing it out.

The Hospital
1,312 words

|| The hospital room is rather generically achronistic, with stark white walls, a green parquet floor, and the various stainless steel tools of the trade along the walls. In the corner is a single, large bed that betrays the room as being out of time. It looks straight out of Star Trek or Halo with it’s heavy, shiny metal frame and dark black cushions. Next to it stands the “Doctor.”

It is clearly not a Doctor though, and not just because it isn’t wearing the requisite lab coat. It’s because the Doctor is a 12 foot tall purple dragon with one main head, and four smaller ones that look like snake heads writhing around without discernible intent. Its skin is rough along his belly and chest, but smooth everywhere else. The rough bits are a dark, uniform purple that almost touches black, while the rest of its smooth skin is a soft, light purple with mottled spots of various other purplish hues in between dotting it. Its main head is has twin, scaled horns rising straight up from each side of its skull, and its eyes are tiny, but intense, black dots.

It looked about the room with an expectation that was quickly realized as a young teen boy appeared on the bed. The Doctor, or monster, looks down at the child and asks, “Have you accepted in your heart the love and truth of our only Lord and Savior?”

The boy replies yes with equal parts fervent belief and trepidation.

“So it is, and so shall it be as always,” The Doctor says with grave seriousness before reaching over with its claw and touching the buttons on the panel above the bed in a fast, intricate pattern. A glowing, semi-transparent frog emerges from the wall and swallows the boy almost whole, until only his feet are uncovered. The boy is still completely visible though, and the giant frog has morphed its body to match the boy’s. The boy disappears just as he had appeared, and the Doctor looks around the room again.

“Is this it, are we done for the day?” it asks, looking up at the ceiling even though it knows full well there are no more converts to protect. When no answer comes, he says “Well, I guess that’s a yes.”

As the Doctor walks out the door, the scene shift to the outside. The building the Doctor is in is made of hard, square angles built into the side of a jagged mountain dusted with snow. It is next to a huge waterfall that has an enormous volume of water crashing through it. It appears as though the building is next to a step in the waterfall, and there is an enormous amount of spray there. Our vantage point is from an oddly shaped rock that rises up from an otherwise empty plateau in front of the structure. Its top is smooth and perfectly level.

We appear to be both standing on it and looking down on it from above when from under its ledge a couple appear, walking towards the side waterfall side of the structure, where closer inspection reveals a covered patio area. As the couple approaches the patio area, a large door opens well away from the waterfall area and a stream of adults begin trudging out. High above on the stone, one after another children covered in the translucent purple frogs fly out from the structure as though catapulted. Their arc is gentle and they touch down lightly with their faces frozen in a look for forced happiness. After each one lands they head down to join the line of adults walking, with each child coming down the back slope of the rock just as their parents lined up with it.

But now we are watching that solitary couple again, and they navigate through the large patio area. The structure exists to their right, as well as over their head, but the ceiling is easily three stories above them. There are a wealth of tables and chairs, but they appear to be wrong somehow, as they’re not naturally placed. They aren’t neatly arranged as one would expect from cleaning, but appear to be deliberately scattered so as to suggest a usage that they do not enjoy, for it is not the randomness led by people milling and moving about.

They notice, but hurry forward anyways. Deeper into the patio walk until there is a long window of square glass pains extending the entire patio’s width and continuing along the structure’s side (closest to the waterfall). As he walks forward to the glass, she hangs back. He is dressed in simple, raggedly cut tunic and breeches, while she is wearing several layers of robes, with the topmost one a deep, pale blue. You also see, as he looks back at her for encouragement, that they have a young child with them, clad in all black, zhe clings to zhe’s mother as he turns back to approach the glass doors.

As he looks in he can see that the interior is still under construction. It is cavernous and dimly lit, and except for thin, regularly spaced supports, almost wholly empty. Past the stark red supports there is a wide shallow pool in which a worker is plying their trade. He taps on the glass, hesitantly at first, and then louder and more insistently as the worker doesn’t respond. As he starts slapping the glass with both hands the door opens.

As he walks in he sees a brightly lit sliding door to his immediate right. It too opens and he steps into a large hospital type foyer. There are multiple doors, hallways, and safety-glassed windows. There is a bustle of shapes moving with a purpose passing through the lobby area, but while he can clearly make out various plants and paintings here and there, he cannot actually make out the moving shape’s bodies. Before he can try and see them more clearly, he realizes that someone is intently watching him.

He turns to his left and sees and a Gentleman in a formal suit looking at him with polite, if well practiced, impatience. The Gentleman appears to have been severely burned recently as his is skin is more open, raw wound than not, and every last inch of it is an angry shade of red. He gives no sign that there is anything even remotely wrong with his skin, nor that it is giving him even the slightest of discomforture.

“Can I help you? You appear a bit lost,” he asks the man. The man looks behind him to where the woman and child are once again standing. They appear to be both in the room with him, and also still standing out in the snow. The man looks back to the Gentleman behind the desk and sees that he has two rows of teeth, all of which are are yellowed with visible black holes. He’s so fixated on this that he misses what the Gentleman is saying and has to ask him to repeat it.

The Gentlemen politely coughs to make clear that he is repeating himself, but also that it’s not an issue, before continuing, “You want divine protection for your child?”

The man turns to look at the woman again, and while she doesn’t appear to understand the question either, she nods her assent nonetheless. “Yes,” he replies.

“And do you take the Lord into your heart, and your wife’s heart, and your child’s heart, as you one and only true Savior?”

He looks back to the woman who gives him both an elegant shrug of ignorance, as well as another nod of assent.

“Yes,” he says again. The Gentlemen stands and shows them to an elevator. Once all three are in he bows, and returns to his desk. The elevator doors close.