It started out with me playing PUBG with some friends. I don't know specifically who they were, only that there was a British guy I called Twig. There were three of us and we had just won a firefight. Our health was low and the late game circle was closing in. We had to make a convoluted path inside because we were blocked by some weird cliff/rock formation. The circle overtook us and we took heavy damage, but I was able to heal and survive by the skin of my teeth. Twig moved a ways off to the right, but he also lived. The other squadmate died. As I was nearly in the clear, two guys on a motorbike drove up to the edge of the circle and started popping shots. i unholstered a glock and beautifully one-tapped the passenger. Twig killed the driver from some distance away. I am almost in the zone now; Twig is driving another bike from offscreen to come rescue me just in case. Health is low, but not critical. I jump for the last stretch. i collide with the side of Twig's barely moving vehicle and am killed. I let out a shout of frustration, "TWIGGY?! WHY?!"
The scene shifts. I am lying down in the back seat of an old van that used to belong to my grandparents. The doors are open and my mother is in the front seat -- we are parked a couple hundred feet from my grandpa's hay barn. Ostensibly, we are cleaning the vehicle out before taking it to go on a family vacation. My headset is still on my head and I am still talking to Twig and the other guys that don't matter apparently. Despite our harrowing loss previously, he wants to queue again. Unimportant guy says he has to dip and Twig suggests duo queue instead. I answer in the affirmative whilst I go about picking up several magazines -- some of them college newsletters, others generic digests, etc -- from the rear floorboards. I tell him to let me finish up on this task and I'll be back on soon. I disconnect. Taking the headset off and picking up the magazines in a tidy stack, I notice movement in the woods a short distance away. I can see a large rat scurrying out of the thicket into the clearing. Moving slightly to get a better view, I also see a number of chickens pecking at something behind a tree. The object is obscured to me, but I am fairly certain it is a corpse. The air grows cold, the world silent. I turn to the right, toward the barn. A kid is there, maybe nine or ten years old? My younger brother? He's just standing there glaring at my mother and me. Old words go through my head like a flashback in a movie. I hear an upbeat woman: "Mmh naw! If that were my baby I'd take him right to the nearest church! Buuuurn that evil right outta him."
Something is coming. I scoop my little brother up and seat him in the passenger seat of the van. He's thrashing now, clearly upset; I'm having to awkwardly kind of hold him on my lap to keep him from escaping. My mom floors it.
The scene shifts again. We're driving along a coastal road. A small chapel rests on a scenic overlook a few hundred yards away. My brother is still thrashing, growing increasingly more desperate to escape what is to come. I hold tight. Mom forgoes the road and takes us right towards the side of the chapel. We crash violently through the wall. As soon as we cross the threshold, my brother bursts into flames in my lap. I don't feel anything, so I hold onto him even tighter. The vehicle is still rolling rapidly towards the opposite wall of the chapel, so my mother slams into reverse. The motion jars me and I lose hold of the kid, who violently jumps out of the vehicle, a task made easier by the fact that the passenger door is now gone. I leap out after him. He is now standing in the middle of the chapel, still on fire. He is now flanked by two similarly burning figures with empty eyes given life only by the flame that spouts from their skin. The two figures caress his cheek before looking up at me with clear disdain. I sprint towards them and tackle one of them. Hundreds of ghouls pour into the chapel, all of them burning now. A battle ensues. Somewhere along the way my perspective changes. I'm no longer involved here; I'm just an onlooker. My mom and younger brother are nowhere to be seen, and now the only remaining people in the chapel are two young adults and the many ghouls the continue to fight. The pair come to some sort of realization. They stop fighting the ghouls and instead take each other's hands and bow their heads. They begin to pray. What was a battle scene a moment ago becomes what is supposed to be an uplifting moment. The criminally cheesy kind you see in bad christian movies a la Dark Dungeons. The ghouls disappear and the pair hug each other, having won the day.
I am standing on a beach with my mother. "Well that movie kind of sucked." I say to her. I enjoyed it, though. In a "so-bad-it's-good" kind of way. She turns to me, clearly irritated by my mockery of ham-fisted religious moments like those.
"The Marine isn't going to like you saying that." She warns me. The Marine is some new congregation or another. They sponsored the making of the film we are discussing. I don't have strong feelings about them one way or another. Mom gives a scoff and walks off and I take stock of my surroundings. We're on vacation. Some quaint town in Florida. There's fog rolling in from the ocean but I can still clearly see all of the vacation homes across the gulf. In the same glance, of course, I can see the massive Skyline tower in the distance, impossibly large, glowing with neon and, apparently, in the middle of the ocean. If I listen closely I can hear the tower's PA system blast announcements about upcoming shows to be held there. Not that I have any plans to see them. I decide to head back to our domicile and catch up with my father. It's a bit of a run, but nothing too much.
By the time I reach the base of the hill on which all of the homes are built, I'm not sure of the time. It's plenty bright enough to see, but the sun is completely hidden; everything has a flat appearance and it's kind of eerie. I was getting tired so I contemplate taking off my shirt, but I think better of it -- I'm almost there, after all. Indeed, in a few more short steps I arrive in front of the garage of our vacation home, conveniently built in the middle of the street. My father has strapped a ladder and some construction materials onto the back of his truck. They're far too long, and I can see as he tries to pull his vehicle into the garage that he'll never have enough space. A good five feet of ladder protrudes out the garage door, which obviously refuses to close properly. The door begins to close ever so slightly before resetting to its original open position over and over again, having sensed the obstruction. Dad hops out of the truck and sees me. "Hey Tyler," he says, finally noticing that I've been watching this embarrassing display. Go around to the other side and turn off the clock so that this thing will close properly. That's weird, I think. Why would turning off a clock--
I wake up.
