I have had a recurring dream since I was very young. It used to make me cry when I was a child. I'm almost used to it now. I wake up in a cold sweat, then get over it and go back to sleep.
In the dream, I am always standing on a very small platform, with just barely enough room to stand. It is like a land tower, something you'd see in a canyon. The best example I can find is something like this:
There is just one of them though, and it is very straight, and very skinny.
It's the only place to stand in an underground cavern full of lava. Not far from me, there is a large metal cage suspended from the ceiling of the cavern. Inside the cage are my loved ones -my friends and family.
I am put in this situation by a demon, who always asks me questions. Questions about myself, my family, music, history, geography, science. Every time I answer a question incorrectly, the cage lowers a few feet. I never see the demon; I can only hear his voice.
Sometimes the demon is just feeling particularly malicious, and lowers the cage even when I answer a question correctly. It is completely at his discretion, and for his entertainment.
The dream always ends the same way, no matter how well I answer questions. The cage finally reaches the lava, and my loved ones die, screaming. Then I wake up. I never wake up before they die. I always experience that part.
This might be my longest running recurring dream. I can remember having this dream as young as four years old.
My only defense against this dream is to make light of it. And I noticed that who is in the cage varies from one occurrence to the next. My mom is almost always in there, so are my sisters. But which friends end up in there always changes.
So I've begun to think of it as a term of endearment. If you were in my lava cage, that means you're one of my loved ones.
So a conversation with my friend who knows about this dream might go like this:
me: "Alisha, you were in my lava cage last night."
Alisha: "I love you too, Lizzy."
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