I was recently injured in a car accident, and as a result, I had been on Vicodin and a muscle relaxer for two weeks. After having gone twenty-four hours without any of the medication, I had the most vivid and terrifying dream series during the night. I woke up very frightened multiple times, but fell back asleep and “picked up” the dream sequence where I had left off. A week later, the dream is still very vivid in my mind, and I cannot stop thinking about it. I am writing in the hopes that someone can help me to understand any special meaning to this dream.
In the dream, I slowly woke up (as if regaining consciousness), to discover I was in some sort of an underworld ... I was surrounded by thousands of bodies and we were all naked (but that seemed normal—there was no weirdness associated with this). As I started paying attention to the bodies all around me, I suddenly realized that many of them were dead, and others were just waking up like I was. There were strong feelings of confusion, fear, and despair. I then realized that we were in some sort of factory deep within this underworld and there were many souls hanging about ... all wailing. The atmosphere was a reddish/orange and there were demonic spirits all around. And in this factory, we were lining up the dead bodies on a type of conveyor and peeling all the skin off to free the soul. The skins were laid out onto a separate conveyor and melded together. We had to use the excess skin as our food—and in this dream that was acceptable as something we had to do to survive.
Several of us kept getting sick and throwing up into a flowing stream of bile, which ran under the conveyor (which was as long as the eye could see). In addition, we noticed that some of the dead bodies were posed and being used as displays with spoiled food items sitting on an overly enlarged tongue. As I was trying to understand what had changed and why I was there, I saw an old friend of mine. We then started planning how to survive and make our way back into the real world. We realized we had come to where the dead all go, but that we were not really dead, although we weren’t actually alive either. We both agreed it wasn’t too late for us as long as we worked diligently to make our way back.
We were suddenly back in the real world, but in an unknown town. We suddenly knew that the entire world had changed due to a huge disaster that we had vague bits of memory about—but no real details. However, we knew that the world population had been greatly decreased. My friend and I separated, and I ended up in what I thought was a deserted house. My plan was to hide out and build back my strength before venturing out. However, the house turned out to be occupied by a group of thugs. They found me and I escaped, but they came after me. After successfully getting away from them, I saw a police car. As the car stopped next to me, I somehow knew that I was being arrested and that the thugs had reported me to the police. The thugs came to the jail to claim me so that they could find out what I knew. After they realized that I was no threat to them and had no knowledge of anything about them, they decided they could not let me go, that I needed to join them. I knew this was wrong, but I also knew this was the safest thing for me to do at this point. I planned to gain their trust and then run away and leave the area. After joining the group, I discovered that they were not the evil people I had thought, but I still did not agree with all their methods. I was torn as to whether I should try to escape or just stick with them and be safe. At this point I woke up.
