Bad Surprise
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The next day, I was walking down the street when a man came up to me. He looked like he’d been in some kind of accident, and his face had been badly burned. His eyes were red from crying; it must have hurt him so much. “What are you doing?” he asked. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to smile at him as if everything was okay. But then I saw that there was something wrong with his head—it wasn’t attached properly! It hung off by itself on one side. The skin around it was charred black. There was no way anyone could live like this, but he did.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me into an alleyway. “Please help me!” he begged. Then he began to cry again. “My wife is going to kill me for coming home late after she’s already fed our children dinner,” he sobbed. “She’ll think I’ve been cheating on her or stealing money from the company. She won’t even care about what happened to me anymore…”
Then his voice changed completely: “But don’t worry, because we can still get married. We just need your body parts… Your hands, maybe? Or a leg?”
At first, I thought he was joking, but then he started laughing hysterically. That made me angry, and I tried to pull away from him. Suddenly he turned back into the burned-face man who’d approached me earlier. And now he had a knife in his hand.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned. “Just give me whatever you want most.”
His words shocked me. What was happening to me?! Why couldn’t I stop myself from talking to these people? Was I losing control over my own mind?
As I stood there frozen, he lunged forward and stabbed me right through the heart. When I fell to the ground, he took out another knife and cut off both my legs. My blood spilled all over the place, staining the pavement red.
After that, he went inside his house and locked the door behind him. I lay there helplessly until nightfall when someone finally found me and called the police. They brought me to the hospital where they put me in bed while doctors worked frantically to save my life. But the damage was too severe. I died before morning came.
When I woke up, I realized I hadn’t lost consciousness during any of those horrible events. In fact, none of them actually happened. All I’d done was imagine them.
That realization scared me more than anything else ever had. If I’d really gone insane, I would never have known. I might have killed somebody, or gotten arrested for assault or attempted murder. I wouldn’t have been able to tell anybody that I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. So I decided to go see a therapist.
It turns out that I’d suffered from sleep paralysis since childhood. A lot of people experience it once or twice, but I always seemed to end up having it every single night. Sometimes I even dreamed about being attacked, which meant that I was probably also suffering from nightmares.
Because I kept getting stuck in my dreams, I developed a fear of sleeping alone. After several years, I ended up moving in with my boyfriend. Now I know that I should be careful about the kinds of things I read or watch before going to bed, but I still love horror movies. Maybe someday I’ll find a way to enjoy them without worrying about the consequences.
⁂
A Day at the Park
One day, I got a call from my friend, saying that he wanted to take me somewhere fun. “Let’s meet up in front of the park,” he suggested.
So I walked over to the playground area near the entrance to the park. As soon as I arrived, I saw my friend sitting on top of the jungle gym, waiting for me.
“Hi, Koyuki!” he exclaimed. “Come on up here!”
I climbed onto the platform beside him. He pointed toward the swings. “Want to try swinging?” he asked.
“Sure!” I replied eagerly.
We hopped onto the swing set together, and he pushed us high into the air. It felt great.
“This is so cool!” I shouted.
“Yeah, isn’t it?!” he agreed.
Then he started pushing harder, faster, higher. Soon we were flying across the sky, surrounded by clouds.
Suddenly, we stopped. We weren’t anywhere near the ground anymore. We floated above the trees, looking down at the world far below.
“Wow, look how big everything is!” I marveled.
“You’re right,” he said. “It looks different from up here.”
“What are we doing?” I wondered aloud.
“Oh, nothing much,” he answered casually. “Just enjoying the view, I guess.”
“Where are we going next?” I asked.
“To the moon!” he declared.
“Really?” I gasped, surprised.
“Yep. We’re gonna fly straight to the stars.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along. The wind blew against our cheeks, making us laugh.
Soon, we reached the moon.
“Hey, what’s this?” I asked.
There was a small crater in the middle of the surface.
“Looks like an alien spaceship crashed here,” my friend joked.
“Maybe aliens live in space, too,” I mused.
“Who knows? You could be right,” he laughed.
“Are we going home yet?” I asked.
“Nope! Not quite,” he said.
The two of us flew farther away from Earth, circling around the sun. Then we shot past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus…and Neptune.
Finally, we landed on Pluto.
“Woah…” I breathed.
My friend looked at me. “Now we can get some rest,” he told me.
And just like that, I passed out.
When I woke up, I was lying in my bed. And I remembered everything: the park, the swings, the moon, the planets—everything.
But then I noticed something strange. There was no sign of my friend. Where did he go after taking me to the moon?
I must’ve fallen asleep again, because now I was back in my room.
I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes. What if I wasn’t dreaming at all? Was it possible that I’d traveled to other worlds while I slept?
If that were true, I couldn’t wait to travel to new places again. But first, I needed to figure out where I’d been.
I went to the window and opened the curtains. Outside, there was a clear blue sky. No clouds anywhere.
Wait. That shouldn’t be possible. Clouds usually form when it rains. They float through the atmosphere, gathering water vapor from the air.
Could it be that I’d flown to another planet instead? Or maybe I was inside a giant cloud, floating among the stars.
No matter what happened, I knew one thing for sure: This dream was real. My body had experienced it firsthand.
That made me feel better somehow. I decided to keep exploring. Next time, I would visit Mars.
The End