It was dark, surprisingly so. When I “woke up”, so to speak, it wasn’t anywhere that I had seen before, and honestly I was confused. The last thing I could recall happening was going to sleep in my bed, at home, but now, I was somewhere completely different. I was in a forest, lying next to a huge pine tree, and it was completely dark except for the glow of a nearby lamp post. There was snow everywhere, but for some reason, I wasn’t cold. I couldn’t feel anything. No heat, no cold, no damp, no hunger… nothing.
I got up and looked around, but there wasn’t anyone around, and other than the gently falling snow, there was an absolute stillness to the night.
I started walking. I didn’t know what else to do. Maybe this was a dream, a very realistic one, but a dream nonetheless. Given that I couldn’t feel anything, it clearly couldn’t be real. I walked and walked, but despite that, I still didn’t recognize anything. It looked like I got dropped into a story book, especially since the light from the lamp posts were a strange glow, nothing like a light bulb I’d ever seen before.
“Wow, this really is a vivid dream”, I whispered into the night. My voice seemed small in comparison to the vastness of the dark snowy expanse stretching out in every direction. Except for the occasional lamp post, there was absolutely nothing else.
I heard a crunch in the snow behind me. I wheeled around, my heart racing in my chest. There wasn’t anything there except for a large paw print in the snow a few feet away. It looked like it came from a gigantic wolf.
“Oh fuck, what kind of dream is this??” I backed up slowly staring at the print. It was definitely fresh, but there weren’t any others nearby, so where did it come from? I guess I could feel one thing while in this dream; sheer terror. My long red hair whipped across my face as the wind picked up. I brushed it to the side, my eyes darting around the darkness looking for whatever created that print.
Nothing moved.