I’d gone on vacation to some remote lake. I was with friends (who exactly, I don’t know) and we’d rented small powerboats to go fishing. For some reason some old guy went out with us to act as a tour guide of sorts. Apparently he was a local who knew some of the town’s folklore. Anyhow, we’re out there for the better part of an afternoon and this old fellow begins to tell us a bit about the town and some of the recent news to pass the time. Turns out a few of the people living along the lake have been reporting their pets going missing and he proceeds to tell us a few of his theories on the matter, mostly by indentifying a small research lab in the area as belonging to the government and hinting at their involvement. In an act of fortuitous timing, my line hooks on something that pulls violently at the line, causing our small boat to toss precariously. I’m pulled over the side but I manage to somehow hold on to both my rod and the edge of the boat. My friends are grabbing at me, trying to hold on and my arms feel like they are being pulled out of their sockets. Through the green tinged water I can just make out a massive shape thrashing about beneath the surface. It appears to be some sort of large catfish, at least 6 feet long with writhing tentacle-like whiskers. Its eyes are set farther forward than would likely be normal for it’s species and, just for a second, they lock on to mine. It stops it’s thrashing and we just stare at each other, transfixed. Its eyes are human. Suddenly it shoots forward in the water directly towards me. Startled I drop the pole and at the last second it veers sharply aside, brushing me as it rushes past. My free hand drags along its cold, mucous covered hide and it’s like I’ve been struck by lightning. For just a moment I’m lost in time as a series of short images flitter through my mind. There’s a man, wearing only a pair of white drawstring pants, being dragged forward between two large men in featureless black jumpsuits through a thick set of airlock doors into what appears to be a lab. Off in the distance several men in lab coats can be seen arguing around a cluttered whiteboard set in the wall. In the center of the room there is a steel examination table with thick leather restraints and is surrounded by a cluster of medical monitoring devices. Several other visions of the man in white follow; lying on a cot in a cell, in the cockpit of a jet as it’s spiraling out of control with smoke billowing out of the console, a rather pretty woman smiling at him and caressing his face as they lie side by side in bed. I come back the present in a daze, floating limply as my friends in the boat reach for me, trying to drag me from the water.

(There’s a gap here where my memory of the dream jumps)

Then I’m in the back of a yellow schoolbus that’s crashed into the sidewall of a long, underground tunnel (sort of like the type you’d see on a remote mountain road). The schoolbus is mainly intact but I can see through the shattered remains of the front window that several other cars have wrecked in front of us in the tunnel. As I watch, fires spring up out of the wreckage and seconds later one of the cars explodes violently. The shockwave throws me backwards down the aisle of the schoolbus and shards of the windshield bit deeply into my arms and across my cheek as I try to shield myself. Dazed once again with my face pressed against the grooved black rubber flooring, I look up and notice for the first time that the emergency door in the rear is hanging open. Through it I can see a black mercedes with tinted windows speeding towards the bus. With a squeal of protest it brakes hard at the last moment, pivoting slightly as it comes to rest less than thirty feet from the rear door. The passenger door opens and a girl steps out (long black straight hair, late twenties, slender). She steps out towards the center of the tunnel, her head moving as she scans the wreckage. Something towards the rear of the bus seems to catch her eye and she starts to move towards it. A man suddenly bursts into my view looking terrified and running full tilt around the rear of the bus likes he’s making a break for cover. The girl fixes her gaze at him and the air seems to ripple as a shockwave tears down the tunnel, seemingly emanating from her. The man is thrown forcibly sideways, slamming into the rear window of the bus with a sickening crunch and leaving a splattering of blood and gore streaking down the scuffed plexiglass. The wave passes over me as well, and it feels like I’ve just taken a solid blow from a prizefighter. Even more disturbingly, my mind is assaulted with a series of violent and dark images. For just a moment I’m a young girl of 8 or 9 being woken in the middle of the night by her mother’s boyfriend slipping into her bed. Then as a teenager lying bloody and broken in an alley staring into the lifeless eyes of my female lover as a group of teenage boys take turns beating my limp form, all the while screaming out our crimes against god and nature. In the last scene she’s curled up naked in a bathtub, sobbing uncontrollably and apologizing over and over again incomprehensibly as she uses a box knife to gouge at her wrists (she is apparently some sort of telepath, using focused negative emotions to manifest a physical attack, her victims experience the memories in addition to feeling the direct effects of her blows. Definitely the most disturbing thing I think I’ve ever dreamt. In the dream it was like I was seeing them all from her point of view with all of the awareness and pain that went with the experiences)