I was in a large hotel helping a handful of people escape, including my youngest brother Jesse. After they escaped I would never see them again; I had to stay in the hotel and help other people. I felt that many of the escapees were unprepared for the harsh realities beyond, so I was barraging them with advice.
We went to where an elevator would normally be; instead there was just a hole in the floor that dropped down one level. This was a secret passageway. We were nearly out of the hotel. We started walking down the hall when we saw someone in one of the rooms (the door was open). We all went in. It was a slightly overweight latina woman in her fifties lying on a cheap gurney. There were two nurses tending to her. In the dream, this person was my mother.
The gurney was a complex business with many moving parts. She complained about how this made her uncomfortable. I spent several minutes following her increasingly frustrated directions on how to fix the gurney to make it more comfortable. Then I kissed her hand and we all ran out.
As we approached the exit, the dream transitioned suddenly and I became a spectator to something so horrifying that I clawed my way back to consciousness and lay panting in the dark for an hour, battling sleep lest I see it again. It is emotionally difficult for me to describe it. I should note that I have a mild phobia of snakes.
This is what I saw:
A group of people much like the ones I had helped escape (none of whom I recognized) had just finished a long, messy car wash at a gas station. There were soap suds everywhere, about a foot thick on the ground. They were packing up to leave in an old white sedan. As a practical joke, they had put a ten-foot black snake on the roof of the station over the pumps. There was a square hole in the top much like the secret escape in the hotel, and the snake had poked its head down and scared one of the kids. They all laughed and got out a long, cylindrical canvas bag. Then they coaxed the snake into it and loaded it into the car.
As they were loading, I saw something move in the suds. It was another snake. Ghastly white coils rose and tensed; the snake's head was still hidden but I saw that it was at least fifty feet long, as thick as a human head. It was coiled and kinked like a garden hose that hasn't been put away. For an instant it just sat coiled, obviously riled by the laughing kids. Then, one of the coils leapt out and wrapped around a kid near the trunk, tethering her to a telephone pole and crushing her to death. This happened so fast I didn't realize it had happened until it was over. The other kids were still loading into the car, oblivious. Another coil struck the kid getting into the passenger side; the impact of the blow killed him instantly.
A third kid loading in behind the passenger door turned to look - not panicked or surprised, just curious. Another coil crushed his right shoulder against the door. The kid didn't register pain. He just calmly reached into his pocket as the snake finally reared its head. It had the face of a cobra, but completely white with gleaming red eyes. The snake opened its mouth and hissed as the kid pulled out a small, ancient-looking knife with his left hand and held it up like a sword. Then the snake snapped its jaws shut on the kid but the knife went back into its throat. At that point I was finally able to awaken.
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