#the chittering leg skittering noises as my body changed as well ooooooo yuck

[tevos]

i had such an intricate and fucked up dream last night

set in a secondary school about a treasure hunt that was being put on for all the last year students. hidden around the school were little bundles—I think it contained the teacher’s I.D. who hid it on a lanyard, some had chains and necklaces entwined with it, and little goody bags with sweets or trinkets etc inside—and every student who found one won some kind of scholarly prize? i didn’t get the full details, but there were hundreds of kids looking for just a few of these hidden lanyards and it was absolute bedlam. the teachers had left clues nearby their hiding spots too so some people were finding weird clues and the school was just being ransacked.

but this dream did a weird thing where it called back to another dream i’ve had before about there being a secret passageway out of the school—originally this passageway led up into some like…apartments or hotel type building? i had a friend lead me through to take me to her house in that dream and it was just very small and weird. but then in this dream my english teacher was telling me about it, almost kind of joking about it being a bit of a high school legend and rumour and something all the students know of but nobody has ever seen, except i had and my teacher knew that i had. (should point out as well that i was ella purnell, but her name was something like olivia and she kept being called ‘livie’ by other people. also my english teacher was my old uni tutor ailsa lmao she was cool)

so when the treasure hunt started it all went nuts, and it took me a second to remember this passage and then it took me a bit of time to backtrack to where the school side entrance was. at this point some of the students were becoming quite violent—it seemed the prize for finding a lanyard was actually very good education wise or something? extremely competitive. then i remembered that the entrance to the passageway was somewhere near the teachers’ lounges. outside of the staff room though a bunch of people were having a go at another student who had started a fire while looking for a lanyard, so it was very busy for a bit, but i managed to break through the crowd and around the corner was a stairway down. i was totally alone at this point so i headed down and it was like…. an underground car park? and i think there was a bit of a corridor all in the dark, and then there was a door. and the door opened up into a tiny living space, right there beneath the school.

i looked around the room a bit and as i neared a bookshelf a video game wind chime type noise could be heard (i’ve played too much da:v already) and i knew i was close to a lanyard. i searched the shelves and then i found it—my teacher’s lanyard with her school I.D. in it, wrapped around some silver chains, and a little pink pouch that i think was filled with sweets and weird little pig trinkets. and the lanyard was stacked directly on top of some neatly piled loose pages—when i inspected them, it was my english work, pages upon pages of poetry and essays with my name in the top (sometimes she’d sign them ‘livid’ to be funny, and i got the sense that these were really quite old—work from years ago). i put the lanyard on and grabbed the pages as this proved that i’d found them where they were left and waiting for me, and i took the long way back up to the school so that i wouldn’t run into as many people.

the dream skipped them and i was inside what looked like some makeshift courtroom with the school board as they examined the papers and the lanyard, and it kind of came to light that i was being expelled for something and me finding the lanyard was a last ditch effort to save my place in the school, but the school board were torn. it came down to the english teacher who had left it for me, trying to help. she then started rereading over the poetry i’d brought back and her face just….fell. like she’d read something in it that backed up whatever terrible thing i’d done that was leading up to my expulsion. and as my perspective switched back to looking at myself, it kind of blurred and overlayed one of my arms with the arm of a cockroach. then my leg on the same side. and then without even seeing it happen my whole body was a giant roach.

and then i woke up 🤷‍♀️