The Game Where You Die

This is one of my more recent dreams. (Yes, I think I have problems.)

I fell asleep normally and then I was just… in a game. I didn’t choose to join. I didn’t understand the rules. I opened my eyes and everyone around me already knew what was happening. All I knew was that you had to play, or you died. Very simple rules.

The game I was pushed into was hide and seek, but it wasn’t the childhood version. It was survival. I knew I didn’t want to die. I didn’t know how I would die, or what I was hiding from, but I made damn sure nobody would find me.

I found a small gap, squeezed myself into it, and waited.
There was something hunting us. Some kind of monster. I don’t remember what it looked like — just the feeling of it. Heavy footsteps. Pressure in my chest. Watching people get eaten or torn apart if they were found. I tried not to breathe too loudly. I remember thinking, If I don’t move, maybe it won’t notice me.
Everything around me was shadows and corners. I don’t know how the game ended, but I survived long enough to leave it.

After the game, I was suddenly walking home. I wasn’t scared anymore. It felt like being dropped out of a nightmare and into everyday life.
On the street, there was a man sitting in a filthy hammock. It was covered in jam, bugs crawling through it and sticking to him. He was crying. He told me his girlfriend had died in one of the games, and he wasn’t going to play anymore because he wanted to join her. He said it like it was the most normal decision in the world.
I didn’t try to convince him otherwise. I just kept walking. Dream me was a bit of a bitch.

The house I arrived at wasn’t one I recognise from real life, but in the dream it was my house. Like I lived there and had always lived there.
Across the road, the neighbours were doing fireworks. Families were laughing, colourful sparks exploding into the sky. Then one of the fireworks shot sideways and blasted through the letterbox of a house further down the street. A second later, flames burst out of the front door.
People screamed, but the fireworks kept going.

Firefighters arrived instantly — like I blinked and the truck and full crew had just spawned out of thin air. I followed everyone into the burning house (because yes, in dream world it’s perfectly normal for the whole neighbourhood to run directly into the flames).
From outside it looked like the fire had swallowed the building. The windows glowed orange and smoke poured across the street.
But once we stepped inside, the fire was tiny. Just a corner burning. We put it out with bottles of water like it was nothing. It was strange seeing something so dramatic shrink into something so quiet.

There was a boy in the house. Seven or eight years old maybe. He lived there alone. He didn’t speak, and nobody questioned it. Everyone just accepted it as if that was normal too.
The firefighters left. The neighbours disappeared.
It was just me, the boy, and the house that looked completely fine again, as if the fire had never happened.

That’s when I woke up. No ending. No lesson. Just that sudden shift from being inside the dream to staring at my ceiling, trying to understand how none of it made any sense.

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