Endless Cycles of REM

I had the strangest dream last night; it was a reoccurring dream that played over and over like a movie (and in fact, in the end, it was a movie). I was running away from this man and these children, going through miniature villages and hiding through pipelines and basements. When I finally reached the double doors, I had to open one quickly and throw candy because they were behind it, then run into another room and jump into the pool and hide in the water where this woman covered for me. I would then jump out a window onto the ledge and traverse the outside of the building, and the dream started over again. In the last run, I knew it was different, that this time, I wasn't going to escape, that I wouldn't be able to hide. I opened the double doors, but too slowly, so they came at me, and I couldn't pour the candy out on time. They clung to me like leeches, sucking life out of me, draging me down. I pulled myself to the pool, flinging them off me, ripping them off. The woman told me to jump, and I knew what she meant. I knew the only way I wouldn't be captured was to jump to my death, so I did. And the glass slowed down when I shattered it, and below me was the narrow window on the ceilings of museums. I fell through it perfectly, and as I landed hundreds of feet below me in a dark museum, everything slowed down to nanoseconds. I watched my body hit the ground and slowly crumple, the glass shattering in every direction, but moving so slowly that they looked like particles floating in the air. I died.

And yet, I lived. The others jumped after me, freeing themselves; their bodies landing next to mine. And it was, in a way, beautiful; these bodies crashing to the ground. And then I walked out of the movie theater next to a girl I didn't know. It was brilliant, I said. But I was me, but I wasn't dead. It was such a strange feeling.