Last night's dream
I dreamed that I was wandering in a dark redwood forest, and I came upon a house. There was a family living inside - a mother and two daughters.
There was also a young man there, who wasn’t related to the family. He was living in the basement.
The mother approached me and said that they wanted to get rid of the man, because he was being very aggressive to the youngest daughter. Threatening to sexually assault and murder her. They told him to leave but he wouldn’t come out of the basement.
She said they were all afraid of him because he was turning into some kind of monster.
So I went over to the basement door, and just as I was about to open it, the young man opened it. He had on a big black trenchcoat that covered everything except his head, which was pale and very round.
He pushed past me and started looming over the youngest daughter, threatening her with a knife.
I went over to the wall and picked up a fireplace poker, then ran at the guy and stabbed him through the stomach, pinning him to the wall. But the trenchcoat deflated like there was nothing in it, and his head detached from the coat and floated towards me like a balloon.
I grabbed it out of the air and realized it was made of rubber. Inside were a bunch of tiny vials of powder, like a collection of spices. I ran to the bathroom with the head, tore it open, and emptied the vials into the toilet one by one. He was trying to cast some kind of spell on the household, but I ruined it by flushing away the reagents.
When I ran back to the living room, the man was there again, wearing another trenchcoat. He was standing close to the daughter and appeared to be pleading or bargaining with her. There was no threat in his posture. I don’t remember any of the words.
I tore the fireplace poker out of the wall and brandished it at him. He picked up a metal bar that was leaning nearby and held it as though we were going to have a swordfight. His form was terrible. The expression on his face was more like curiosity than anger. So I made a pretend-swing at him, very slow. Then another. He mirrored my movements. He thought I was teaching him how to swordfight.
I noticed that his arms and hands were misshapen, and covered with cuts. His head was lumpy too, like he was a mutant, or suffering from some weird disease. I felt sorry for him. I decided I didn't want to fight him, but just then the other daughter came running into the room and stabbed him in the chest with a huge knife.
He collapsed on the floor and died. Then the mother and her daughters gathered around his body and dragged it outside into the woods, leaving it by the side of the road.
After that I stood around talking to the mother. I can't remember the exact conversation, but I remember asking her where the guy had come from, and she said he was from the house a little ways down the road.
Then she said something like, "now we'll have to find a replacement," and looked at me with a big toothy grin.
That was when I realized that the young man had not been haunting their basement. He had been imprisoned there. The family had grown tired of experimenting on him and abusing him - twisting his mind and body - and they used me to kill him off.
The mother took a step towards me and raised her hands up in the air as if she was going to cast a curse. I realized I was still holding the fireplace poker, and I swing it down directly on her head. CRACK!
It punctured a hole in the top of her skull, and blood came pouring out. When I tore the poker free, a chunk of her hair was tangled around it. Her arms were still raised. She laughed crazily. I swung the poker again - CRACK! And again. She stumbled in her advance. I hit her one more time and the poker got stuck. So I let go of it, turned around, and ran up the road.
I ran so fast I began floating up into the air, into the trees. Behind me the woman tore the poker away from her skull, then turned around and began walking back to her house, laughing the entire time. Her daughters stood there watching, their faces expressionless, as though this was no more eventful than a visit from the postman.
"See you soon!" she shrieked back at me.
Then between her and me I saw a transparent, skeletal figure come rising up out of the ground. It stretched like a funhouse mirror, and shot up into the trees above me.
Then I realized that since I was floating in the air, perhaps I was no longer in my own body. Perhaps this was the beginning of some curse or spell. Perhaps things were about to get a lot worse. "What if this keeps going," I thought, "and gets so bad that I actually die in my sleep, and get stuck here in these woods forever?"
I thought to myself "NO" and, BANG, my eyes shot open and I was instantly fully awake. The end.