#so i was just stuck unable to move while the sounds of Russian men lying in the dirt and getting radiation poisoning drifted to me

[crepuscular-haze]

Sleep Paralysis! At the Movie Theater

[feynavaley]

Another odd dream, this time that I had years ago but remember quite clearly because I wrote down on a notebook.

In this dream, I was a Russian princess named Anya (I didn’t know that it wasn’t a legitimate Russian name) living in a very isolated castle high in the mountains. At the beginning of the dream, I was 12 years old.

The first scene reads exactly like a clichè introduction from a B-rated novel: I was in front of the mirror while my mother was brushing my hair, so I could see how I looked like (I still have quite a vivid picture, actually. I had straight blond hair that went down to my hips, light blue eyes and those very high and prominent cheekbones that make your eyes look slightly slanted – just like the first Russian girl I met in my life, I think it’s quite amusing). My mother was telling me that she and my father had been summoned to the court and she told me to take care of my younger sisters (apparently, I was the eldest of several girls) along with my cousin Sergei (who was three years older than me, and I think an only child. He was also living with us, his parents were either dead or simply the dream never dwelled on them).

Our parents left, leaving us alone inside the castle (there weren’t even servants, it was just us, but we all knew what to do). That year, however, winter came quite early, basically trapping us inside the castle and leaving our parents unable to reach us until spring because it would have been too dangerous. We weren’t worried about it though, even if it had never happened before, we were prepared and we had everything we needed to survive the winter.

Everything went smoothly until a day when we heard a knock at the door. I had been reading and for a moment I froze in surprise, as we weren’t expecting anybody. Not understanding the situation, my youngest sisters rushed to the door, believing that it was our parents. Knowing that it was too late to stop them, I sent my second oldest sister to get Sergei and I ran after the little ones, crying to not open the door. They didn’t listen to me.

I watched in horror as my younger sisters opened the door, fearing what would be behind that (my mind was already running to bandits or something of that sort) – but for a first moment, I saw nothing. Only later, following my youngest sister’s surprised exclamation, I noticed the form that was lying flat on the snow. It looked like a boy, not much older than me. My sisters rushed to him, but he didn’t move. As I got closer, I noticed the drops of blood that tainted the snow around the boy, however, when I turned him to his front I saw he was breathing. I immediately took note of his brown hair and tanned skin that likely marked him as a foreigner.

A moment later, Sergei came out as well. We didn’t even need to say anything, we just lifted the boy and carried him inside while my sister flanked us, the oldest ones running for some medical equipment. We laid the boy on a sofa to treat him. He looked underfed, his clothes were in tatters and he was covered in bruises and scratches. The most serious wound was a gash on his lower abdomen, large but, fortunately, not too deep. Aside from that, he had likely suffered a blow to the head. The boy woke up for a moment as we were tending to him and he locked eyes with me. He smiled and groggily asked me if I was an angel, since I was so beautiful, before falling unconscious again.

Sergei, the oldest of my remaining sisters (who couldn’t stop giggling and kept giving me annoying knowing glances for the boy’s comment) and I tended to him and kept the younger children away. Eventually, the boy started regaining strength and recovered. He didn’t remember anything before waking up and seeing me, not even his full name – though it sounded something like ‘Jay’.

Since he had nowhere to go, Jay stayed with us, and when our parents came back they accepted him as well, seeing that he was basically a lost child. After his recovery, my father had him attend Sergei’s sword lessons and Jay turned out to be quite skilled. He also knew how to fire a gun and had an excellent aim, something I and my sisters found quite puzzling yet admirable. My parents theorized that Jay came from a noble family, but there were no reports of missing children and he was plainly a foreigner. He had just appeared out of nowhere.

Jay ended up staying with us, almost adopted as a member of the family (both my father and Sergei, in particular, welcomed his presence since all the other children were females). I spent a lot of time with Jay as well, and as we grew older I started seeing him as something more than a friend – but I thought the feeling wasn’t reciprocated.

Fast-forward to a spring day of four years later. Jay, Sergei and I went to a nearby village during a marked day, and we were fooling around. I was extremely giddy because Jay had asked me to dance, and that was normal, however, at the end of the dance he had offered me a flower, blushing like mad. After the dance, we kept holding hands as we walked around the market.

Everything was going well until Sergei came back to us, looking extremely serious. He wrapped his arms around our shoulders as if to get between us, then whispered that some foreign merchants had been looking at us in a way he didn’t like. He thought we’d better go home before running into troubles.

We all agreed, but we haven’t taken more than ten steps before somebody yelled: “It’s him! How are you still alive?”.

It immediately became clear that they were talking about Jay – and they didn’t look like they had good intentions. Since they were a lot more than us, we fled through the town. At one point, Jay and I got separated from Sergei, but it looked like we had lost our pursuers. We had just managed to catch our breath when I was suddenly knocked down and pinned to the ground. It was one of the men from earlier, and he was much stronger and heavier than me so I couldn’t move. Meanwhile, Jay was trying to fight off four other men, but they eventually managed to overpower him. They tied us up and started dragging us to the docks. From their conversation, it was clear that they had expected Jay to be dead and were quite unnerved by the discovery. They didn’t know what to do with me, but decided to keep me so they could have a leverage on Jay in case he started misbehaving.

Eventually, the men got us into a ship and started tying us up. At that point, we were terrified and we didn’t have any idea of what to do. A man had also realized that Jay had lost his memory (since he didn’t seem to recognize anybody) and he was clearly elated at the thought.

The ship was about to leave when suddenly we heard some commotion. Jay and I manage to turn to see that Sergei had gotten on the ship and was duelling with a man. At first, Sergei was winning, then another man joined the fray and managed to slash his side and push him. Jay and I screamed as we saw Sergei being pushed off board, and the culprit turned to us with a disgusted expression and declared that there was nothing we could do, he was dead anyway.

After that, the ship left the docks. I think that we travelled for several weeks, but I don’t remember much, just that Jay and I were constantly restrained and we barely talked, torn between fear and mourning Sergei (who we truly believed to be dead). I knew that Jay was feeling guilty and avoided me for that. I didn’t blame him the slightest, but I was too numb to talk.

Eventually, the ship stopped – but not to a port, it stopped next to a beach and we were carried over there by smaller boats. I was surprised: I had never seen a beach in my life. I remember touching the sand with my bare feet and lifting it, looking in wonder at the grain stuck to my feet. It was also quite hot.

Once on the beach, the men who had captured us had a brief transaction with another man who looked like a merchant and was dressed quite well. Jay and I were eventually led to the man, still tied, and into a chart. Jay was really nervous and told me to stay close to him.

After some time, the chart stopped in front of what looked like a plantation, and some poorly dressed people unloaded Jay and me from the cart. Then, they started trying to separate us. We both screamed and struggled at that point, but the woman who was holding me slapped me and told me to stay quiet unless I wanted the master to punish me. We both fell silent after that. We were separated and brought to different barracks, where I was offered some cold water to wash myself and a change of clothes.

My memories get a bit blurry after that, I know that we were kept working in the fields but I was having a lot of troubles, partly because I wasn’t used to heavy work and partly because the heat was making me sick. I think I collapsed once, and some other girls brought me back the barracks while our owner yelled at us,

I have a glimpse of Jay sneaking out of his barrack to see how I was doing, he was truly angry for how they were treating me. He was dealing quite well with the climate, though, so we theorized that he had spent his childhood in a place with a similar climate.

The days went on like that. We kept working, sometimes there was talk of running away but I was too weakened from the heat and Jay knew I wouldn’t make it. We were almost losing hope at that point, we were just trying to survive.

One day, I awoke to some strange commotion. I got out with some other girls in time to see that the boys were already out of the barracks – and Jay was standing in the middle of a circle, completely still, while a smartly-dressed woman was clinging to him and sobbing.

Then, I heard an exclamation and raised my head to see my parents, who rushed to hug me. There was a lot of crying and hugging from then on, and we eventually settled in the main house for an explanation.

Long story short, Sergei had survived his injury, however, he had been comatose of a while (how he had survived without the help of modern medical equipment is beyond me, but hey, that’s how Dream Logic works). After waking up, he had told my parents what had transpired. They had managed to find out who our kidnappers were and threatened them until they had gotten the entire story.

Basically, Jay (whose real name was ‘Jared’) was the only child of a rich English couple who had some properties in the Caribbeans. Before Jay, his mother had had several miscarriages and even almost lost her life. After that, she and Jay’s father had stopped trying to conceive and were starting to arrange to have another person (I think their administrator or something like that) as the heir. Then, Jay’s mother had gotten pregnant again and, this time, the baby was born. Obviously, there was no more need for an heir. Not keen on losing that chance, the administrator had eventually managed to sell Jay to some men who were supposed to kill him. Something went wrong, however, and to have some profit they decided to sell him as a slave (in Russia, because this makes so much sense...) and Jay had managed to run away. Since it had been winter, they had given him for dead and panicked when they had seen him still alive four years later.

I don’t remember how the dream ended after that, I didn’t write it down. Maybe I just woke up, but there might have been some talk about a marriage. For one who doesn’t like romance, my dreams surely seem to disagree with that...