EPTThe girl forewarned us that the theater was huge – she was fucking right, I was amazed such a thing could exist, let alone a university (in a city, no less) afford it. Ridiculous and cavernous, if you're looking across or even halfway across it the height of a human is imperceptible compared to the chamber. The chamber was dome-shaped (maybe stretched a bit to be taller than its radius) with a big, flat shelf on one side (the balcony) over the seated audience, facing the stage which took up the other half of the space. The girl mentioned that she found one of the actors (a large man with some facial scruff, and cast in leader-ish roles) the most compelling, and I'm like, “duh, he's the only one big enough to make out his facial expressions.” Come to think of it now, he reminds me of my father. (I don't hate my father.)
At first, the actors are all clinging to some sort of giant corn plants (the corn bulge grew halfway up the plant, was split open, and kind of fluffy and sticky inside so it wasn't really corn) because they're a team of rough and ready men exploring the giant's domain at the top of the beanstalk. (They're hiding from him in his cornfields, maybe.)
Then the theater is much smaller, and instead of a balcony there's just a chairless area where we're sitting against the back wall, and as a part of the play, all the actors are going to the back, because there's sort of a 2-3ft barrier between the 'balcony' in the back and the top row seats (the seats are tiered, and the don't go around in an arc because the theater is small) that they can peer over, which looks like they're defending a fortification against attack. Their armor/helmets look Romanesque, but they're only around for a couple shots.
So, all us people in the 'balcony' get little books, and I'm the guy on the end (so I have line of sight down the stairs to the bottom row of the tiered seats) holding my little book. And then suddenly all the actors are really pissed off at me, and I don't understand why, and they're like, “Throw your bible, you jackass!” I'm confused because none of the other people in the 'balcony' are throwing the bibles, which I think are an audience-participation special effect for some kind of bombardment, but apparently they're just supposed to feed me more ammunition by passing them down the row. So I throw the first bible, but then I start getting really angry because they're treating me like shit for holding up the play, when I didn't know I was supposed to be taking part in it at all. So I just stand up and start walking out, but some jackass actor (white guy? Not sure) starts cussing me out, and the entire crowd is looking at us (I can't tell if they're angry at me, or as WTF as I am), and I start exploding on the jackass, but I'm so pissed I'm incoherent. Then an understanding-looking asian guy tells me to chill, that it's okay, I didn't know. I'm grateful to him, so I try to thank him, but I'm still stuttering with rage and speaking in my shout-at-the-douchebag voice so it's awkwardly loud and sounds more aggressive than I meant it to.
Anyway, I get out of the theater, and (dream time skip!) I'm walking home in the dark. I get to the front door of my house, and I'm about to let myself in (not sure how, the front door's kind of messed up, and I think it's also locked + I don't have a key) but then I realize that the angry guy from the theater might be waiting behind it, to attack me with a cement block. So I somehow fake opening the door (?) and sure enough there's a loud thud-smash against the other side. But then the door opens (I can't see into the house at all) so I try to hunker (frightened!) on the top step of our porch so that if anything is thrown at me, it'll miss. Nothing comes. I stand up, facing the open doorway, which is filled with a consuming darkness that I can't see through or even perceive, that shifts and denies my eyes the power to focus...
I feel a freak-out creeping up the back of my mind, when I realize that darkness and shadows don't actually work that way, that I should be able to see a fuzzy monochrome haze at least, and therefore this is a dream. Recognizing the dream terminates it, so suddenly I'm in the real dark in my room, looking up at the ceiling with unfocused eyes. I want to get up and turn on the light, because that was kind of freaky, and I especially don't want to fall asleep back into such nightmares. But I can't move... sleep paralysis.
This has me very concerned, not so much because I can't move, but because I read on Teamliquid that waking up with sleep paralysis causes vivid and terrifying hallucinations that I'm not in a state of mind to deal with. For a moment my mind flits to something it could hallucinate – uhhh... maybe Dracula? – and the confused haze of color that is the darkness (because my eyes aren't focused, and I think they're blinking very rapidly) starts to shift into some kind of ghoulish vampire ghost... but Dracula doesn't actually frighten me, because he's just Bela Lugosi gussied up like some aristocratic pedophile, so I try to start moving before my subconscious finds the things that really freak me the hell out. I find I can't speak, only issue a pathetic little hissing sounds as I very slowly emit unshaped air, so I get to work on my hands/arms. They can't really move beyond the slightest little twitches, twitches that might even just be what my mind assumes is happening because it can't get any proper feedback, but... there's a dancing motion I do habitually, which involves a bit of swinging the arms back and forth. Because it feels so natural to do, I can feel them swinging.
I don't know if my arms actually swung, but the idea of it frees me from paralysis. My eyes focus, the weird shit ends, and I'm just lying down in my bed, under the blankets, head on the pillow. I'm very sleepy and consider falling back to sleep, but the idea of resuming nightmares inspires me to turn on the light. I start to get situated, but there's an awful taste in my mouth that I really want to spit out, and I could use a piss. My room is unfortunately on the bottom floor, and the bathroom is on the third floor, so I leave the lit places and step back into the darkness, up the stairs into the bathroom. There are still colors shifting in the darkness, because I'm waking up, and I get the sense that there's something behind the shower curtain (I can't turn on the light, because our bathroom light is burnt out) but clearly no one is taking a bath/shower because there's no sound of water. Ohhh, fuck, I bet I'm still asleep, in a second-layer dream. Might as well open the shower curtain and get this over with...
Blue light trickles in from the skylight to reveal, nothing there. That's a relief. Now I need to piss, but it's very dark, and I don't want to splash and wake everyone up (it's one in the morning), and I don't want to close the door because then the room will be even darker, to the point that I won't be able to see what is/isn't there and my still part-asleep mind might... fill something in. After a moment's consideration, I give up my manhood and sit down to pee. After washing my hands (which renders them wet and fucking cold) walk back down through two floors of darkness, watching my back in case, well, just in case. Poured myself some water, opened my laptop, and entered TL to describe my clash with waking sleep paralysis.
