Dreams of Charlotte

Charlotte used to have lots of dreams, all the time. She dreamed when asleep, and sometimes when fully awake. Charlotte called her dreams visions, and believed them to be real. She claimed that every one of her visions had happened in real life, somewhere in time. When asked how she was so certain, Charlotte just explained that she could feel it, somehow. She even claimed that some of her visions were of the future.1

She often told of her dreams or visions to her closest friends, and her imagination frightened them, and even more so when she claimed them to be real. Sometimes, Charlotte would break down and cry when her friends would refuse to believe her visions to be real. But also, it scared them how vivid she would explain every gory, disgusting and creepy detail of her visions. Charlotte would sometimes cry in compassion for the people involved in her visions, saying that nobody deserved that kind of treatment. And occasionally, when asked about dreams that seemed to haunt her more than others, she would refuse to explain. Charlotte even threw up when trying to explain a dream once.2

Charlottes dreams, or visions, started when she was thirteen years old, but grew in intensity over the years. The first vision she had was of a man, presumably a knight, lost in a desert. He was wearing shining armor that had heated up to the point where it had stuck to his skin, boiling his body slowly as he crawled in the sand, unable to take off his armor. Charlotte awoke in the middle of the night, after seeing the knight finally being able to rip his helmet off, taking half of the skin from his face off with it, screaming a dying scream as he fell to the ground.3

Another dream Charlotte remembered well, the first she ever told to her friends, was of a war. Charlotte had later said that she thought it was the Vietnam war, but that she wasn't sure. The dream, or vision, depicted three young men running through a jungle. The men couldn't be more than eighteen-nineteen years old, and they were all scared, scared and armed with heavy guns. The sun of the jungle heated the metal-guns, and gave their hands blisters, much like a mild version of the dream of the knight. But after running for several minutes through the overgrown jungle, the three men stopped. One of them were slightly overweight, and was breathing fast and uncontrolled. As he kept speeding up his breathing, the two others tried to calm him down, but he was out of control, and suddenly started vomiting. At first, the two men only held him up, trying to avoid any of them being hit by the vomit, but then, blood started following the vomit. One of the two others were so freaked out that he jumped away, stumbling backwards, into a booby trap that set a minor grenade to explode. The man who stumbled into it died instantaneous, and a splinter from his gun hit the overweight man in the back of his head. The overweight man fell dead, though still puking blood, towards the third man, who was unharmed by the explosion. Not being able to react fast enough, bloody vomit was spilled into his eyes, and the acidly liquid made the eyeballs bubble slightly as the man screamed in pain. Then, suddenly, the vision made some sort of a time-jump, and Charlotte saw the third man again, now as an adult 30-something year old. He was standing in an almost empty apartment, on top of a chair. His long hair was in his face, but it was obvious that he was wearing a black bind in front of his eyes, indicating that he was blind. He had just tied a rope from a lamp in the roof, and he had tied a badly made noose around his own neck. Then he jumped from the chair, and slowly wiggled around in pain as he hung under the lamp. But the lamp was too weak to hold his weight, and it was ripped out of the wall, though it was still hanging from wires in the roof. But the man, he fell down to the floor, not succeeding in his suicide attempt. As tears emerged from behind the black bind, the lamps supportive wires suddenly snapped, and it fell down and hit him in the head, killing him.4

Charlotte claimed that she was in no way making all the dreams up, but that she had seen them all, as clear as reality was, just as if she was there. She said that the mildest dream she had ever had, was of a suicide, that had succeeded. It involved a girl, not that old of age, hanging herself inside some sort of a cell, with a belt, from a much more solid lamp than the Vietnam-soldier had used. There was no blood, guts or gore, which Charlotte found to be a good break. She found the scene to be quite beautiful actually, as the girl, dressed in white, stood in the middle of the dark room, with a single window letting in some light. But then, she hung herself, and the beauty was spoiled totally, as always in Charlottes dreams.5

One of the dreams Charlotte would cry when thinking about, was a dream taking place in a black ghetto. The dream started in the middle of a gunfight between two men. A young man was standing by a window, shooting into the kitchen of the apartment, where another man was hiding behind some chairs. Without realizing it, the man by the window had used up his magazine, though having hit the other man in the shoulder. But the man who was hit quickly used his chance, got up from his hiding and shot the man by the window several times through his chest, causing him to fall backwards out of the window. The glass was already broken by a bullet, but splinters of glass entered the mans back as he fell over the edge, and out of the window. Below him, where he was soon to fall down, was the porch of an apartment housing a single mother and her child. The little child was out on the porch playing with his toys as the mother was making dinner inside. The man who fell from the window, fell straight down towards the child. There were few crushing sounds as he landed, mainly because the child broke the dead mans fall, and didn't have a solid bone structure yet himself. The loudest sound around was the mothers desperate screams as she saw what happened. She dropped her casserole, but as it fell to the ground, it's content was splattered over her, scorching her, making her fall backwards into the stove behind her, cracking her head. Then, Charlotte woke up, crying.6

After years of dreams, and telling her friends about the dreams, Charlotte's friends decided to tell her parents, despite Charlottes constant request never to tell them, as she had herself struggled hard to keep it all a secret. Charlottes friends felt it would be for her own good. So they told her parents everything, even details from the dreams, just like Charlotte had told them. They told her parents of a dream where Charlotte had seen a war in some ancient civilization, though unknown from what time. Charlotte had seen mass graves, filled with the rotting corpses of warriors, innocent children and all other members of society. The mass graves were filled with hungry dogs, just so that they would be somewhat emptier in front of the next filling of the graves. The dogs ripped the flesh of the decaying corpses, and sometimes, the people living by the graves would hear screams, as someone was devoured by the dogs, without even being dead, only fainted or asleep, though thrown into the graves, believed to be dead. And she also saw the battlefield, where men were being gutted by sharp knives, and driven through by spears and sticks. Some were bludgeoned to death by rocks, mashing their skulls into bloody pulps, and some were simply wounded heavily, left to rot while dying of hunger and pain, unable to move. Charlotte told it with such detail, as if she had seen the infected and maggot-infested wounds of the dead herself, as the dogs were eating around their wounds. Charlottes friends told her parents with great discomfort, which was also the feeling they were re payed. But her parents were sure they told the truth, as they had long since noticed that Charlotte had alot of nightmares, even in the middle of the day, while still being awake.7

Charlottes parents contacted a doctor, who again contacted a psychiatric ward. Charlotte was put into a mental-hospital only two days after her friends had told her parents about the dreams. Charlotte tried to convince her doctors and parents that she was telling the truth, that she saw all this, and that it was real, at some point of history or history to come. This only made both parties realize that the girl, only sixteen years old, had lost her sanity. 8

So, that's how Charlotte was put into a dark cell. A single window let light shine in, as she tied her belt around the lamp in the room, and jumped off a chair. It didn't take long before she calmed, and she didn't scream, so she wasn't noticed until hours later.9

Charlotte used to have lots of dreams, all the time. She dreamed when asleep, and sometimes when fully awake. Charlotte called her dreams visions, and believed them to be real.10

Charlotte doesn't dream anymore.