Grey

We were visiting a museum or something like it in a desert town. An excursion of some kind.
All of us, perhaps hundreds, sitting around listening to the speaker far far away by the buildings, I was on the outskirts not really listening when a crack appeared in the sand.
Like on the beach when the top layer of sand is hard.
It got bigger and closer and you could see sand sinking into the crack as it widened, as though there was a deep space underneath.
I got up and decided to get away because it was starting to make me uneasy as I watched.
I ran and told the other people sitting by me to do the same. Some others saw what I had seen and ran with me.
When we got about 100m away I turned and watched the crack open wider and wider and the people finally realising what was happening, but only managing to get up and stagger a few steps as the ground opened up and swallowed them.
I heard them scream over the roar.
Landslides of sand followed them into the gap and in a matter of seconds there was just a wide area of disturbed sand where people had been, and the hard ridge of the top cracking layer.
I ran over to the area, knowing that it was useless but nonetheless falling to my knees and digging with my hands.
So intent on what I was doing, I was vaguely aware that others joined me but barely noticed.
Sooner than expected I touched something. Flesh. Fingers.
My nails scraped against fingertips.
I dug around them.
A small hand appeared.
A child.
My fingers brushed against theirs as I dug and I wished as I dug to see or feel them react to my touch but they remain lifeless.
I dug down their arm and found another tiny hand. Smaller this time. Plastic.
A doll.
At that moment, an unexplained wave of water crashed from behind me and over my back and covered the scene in a few inches of water after soaking in a little.
I felt my hope dissolve as I knew that now if anyone had somehow survived the cave-in, their oxygen was now cut off by the water.
I clenched the small hand now underwater and cried hard.

Then I woke up.

The next night I was some type of futuristic spy, and kidnapped by some kind of Darth Vader-like character, and tortured, but tortured whilst under anesthetic so that when I woke up and somehow was amongst my own people again, I hadn't yet noticed that there were steel spines sticking out of my legs.
Another spy-person, older than me, noticed them and told me to hold still while he pulled them out. I remember they were thin and smooth and hard to grip - like the first steel string of a guitar - and when he pulled them slowly out there was lots of blood and we held tissues over all the bloody spots on my legs.
There was also something about driving home from the Vale in Eli's car in the rain at twilight with no headlights.
At this point, I knew I was dreaming and forced myself to wake up.

So much for the nice dreams I don't remember.
Replaced by icky dreams I can't forget.

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