Onto the dream ...
I was an onlooker in this dream and didn't really appear in it whatsoever; it played out like a film. A horrifying film.
It begins in a Slimming World group, where everyone is bunched into small groups of four or so on tables around the room. We have been asked to tell the group about our proudest moment, and a beautiful woman is speaking.
"My proudest moment? Getting my new face," she says. Everyone looks at each other confusedly. "Well, let me explain..."
The room evaporates into the scene of a family holidaying in some overseas, sunny destination, at a resort that sits right on the beach. They consist of a Mother, Father and two children. Mother and Father decide to go for a swim, leaving children at the hotel, and are happily enjoying the waves when (all of a sudden, as it always is with dreams) a humongous cruise ship ploughs its way into the beach.
Mother is under the waves when it happens. She is buffeted all over the place as the cruise ship causes a mini tidal wave (I don't know if this would happen, but it's a dream so stfu) and engulfs the resort's beach. She manages to clamber back to the surface, but can tell she is injured. Something just doesn't feel right.
Dragging herself to safety, Mother finds Father - who is badly injured and appears to have been rendered blind - and makes the decision that they need to find a hospital. Chaos has erupted around them as people rescue each other and the cruise passengers make their way from the wreckage. The two of them hobble around the city for a while, seemingly aimlessly wandering around until they finally come across the hospital.
Inside, Mother and Father attempt to get help, but no one speaks English and they don't know the language everyone is speaking. It sounds like English played backwards on a tape. They eventually manage to figure out that the A&E is upstairs, so they find a lift and get in it with a young man. They stand in the middle of the lift, she supporting her husband, but the young man cowers in the corner of the lift and covers his face with his hands. He refuses to look at either of them and groans shakily. She assumes he is mentally ill.
When they get off the lift, Mother desperately tries to get someone to help them. She keeps trying to flag people down, but they just scurry away from her. She finally gets a woman in a business suit carrying a clipboard to stop for her, but she looks flustered and shocked.
"Please can you help us? There was an accident, we need help," mother explains. The woman with the clipboard tells them she can take them to a ward where they can get medical attention. She calls another young woman over and, together, the four of them make their way to a lift.
They get in and travel to the bowels of the hospital. Mother thinks this is strange, but she's too preoccupied with keeping her husband upright to really worry about it. They traipse through the basement and up a flight of stairs, down a long corridor and into the hospital kitchen. Just as mother is about to complain, the woman with the clipboard tells her it's not much farther.
She leads them all down another corridor and to a second flight of stairs, which they go down. Halfway down, on a small landing, Mother looks out of the window and notices that they're right by the beach (somehow).
"Look!" Father suddenly shouts. "There's a man pooing in your shoes!" Mother looks out of the window again and realises he's right - a man has indeed squatted down and is shitting in her high heels, which she left on the beach in her hurry to find help. She gets angry and is about to shout at both the young woman and the lady with the clipboard, but she's quickly ushered down the remaining steps and into a room, which turns out to be the ward they were hunting for.
Father is taken away to a bed in the adjoining room, while Mother is given a private room and a sedative. She has fitful dreams that seem to last days and, when she eventually wakes up, she feels even less herself than before.
She climbs out of bed, removing the IV from her arm and attempting to flatten her hair, as it's standing on end from all of the tossing and turning she's done while unconscious. She shuffles, zombie-like, to the doorway, having to reach out to steady herself against the wall as she walks. She feels as though the skin on her face is too tight, and she can't see properly - she has no peripheral vision.
She makes her way to the lift outside of the ward and jabs at the button with a shaky finger. It arrives and she falls in, only just catching herself against the handrail at the back. Once she's sure she isn't going to collapse, she presses the button for the floor above and then looks up at herself in the lift's mirror.
Reeling backwards, she stares, aghast, at her reflection. No wonder she felt all wrong. Her entire face has been crudely rearranged. Her eyes are turned at a 90 degree angle and appear like diamonds, her mouth is an empty gash with no teeth or jaw, just a tongue lolling against her neck. Her nose is a stub of bone and snotty flesh.
She faints.
The dream cuts back to the Slimming World group, with everyone staring in wide-eyed wonderment at the woman.
"And that," she finished, "is how I ended up with my new face! Don't you think they did a good job?"
We all applaud her.
WHAT DOES IT MEEEAAANNNN?!
