Uncanny: A Sleep Expansion

Are you dreaming? It’s late, after all. Curfew was hours ago, and across the cold lake you can see the dim bunks and their flickering lonely porch lights. It feels like you’re dreaming. But the mossy rocks against your skin are too real, and the weight in your chest grounds you in the present. You’re not dreaming, no matter how fake the stars overhead feel. But if this isn’t your dream, perhaps it’s something else’s.

When you’re awake, it’s easy to mistake our world as something sturdy. But, sitting out on the rocks at the edge of camp, you gain a new appreciation for how fragile our home can be. Perhaps there was a time when dreams moved through the waking world. Perhaps if you could just peel back the thin layer of comfort we build for ourselves, you’d find something else…

And for a moment, you spot it. In the darkness. Waiting. Watching. Dreaming.

And then it is gone, and you realize how cold it is outside in August at two in the morning. Don’t worry. Go back to your bunk and go to sleep. In the morning, this memory will mingle with all your other memories and you can chalk it up to just another of the Strange sorts of things that happen at camp.