» HELLO

Caterpillar: “I ate my house.”

“BALL PIT”

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At a ball pit at some mall with both mom and dad. It was the largest ball pit inside the largest room I've ever seen. The colorful pit padding covered the entire space, the ceiling was high, and the balls in the pit were filled up to children's waists. The balls were red, yellow, blue, and very bright green. They smelled like plastic and old sweat. In the middle of the "ball sea," there was a mountain made out of the same fake leather padding that covered the floor. There was a very bright yellow lamp at the top of the mountain, and a bunch of older children were climbing up to reach it. Mom (or was it dad?) wanted me to go play with them, but I didn't want to because they reminded me of ant swarms.

“THE CHASE”

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The next room, past the door next to the tall wooden bookshelf in that old library room, was where the chase started. Everything was pristine white in that massive area, almost like an oversized open corridor with vaulted ceilings and doorways. Several white mattresses with no bedsheets were laid out on the floor. Climable shelves and chairs were fixed to both sides of the walls, and people were sitting up there listening to music with small, unfamiliar devices on their heads. Everyone had a calm, almost serene expression on their faces. Having realized that I was still being chased, I ran and climbed through everything (I could jump really high here) until suddenly the floor gave out and I fell face down onto a mattress below the floor. It was the most comfortable thing I had ever laid on. I was very tired, but I had to get up right away and keep running. That's when I bumped into a girl (unknown), and that made her drop her phone-like thing and cried. I ignored her and ran like hell. Finally, I saw the way out of this bed area and was going to go through it when suddenly a white-haired boy appeared. He looked younger than me, and then I realized that he might be the thing that had been chasing me all along. He was faster this time and was very upset with me because, in his words, I made his sister cry. I was caught right there but didn't say anything because he refused to tell me what I did wrong before that. Suddenly, the girl was there too, and the boy started hitting her on the head repeatedly. She didn't seem to be hurting; she just stood there, with only a stern look on her face.

“BATHTUB”

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Woke up in a small bathtub in a bathroom that was as big as the tub. Everything seemed to be washed out in pink, like how one would see the world wearing pink-colored shades. Sitting in front of me was a black spider that seemed to be both near and far at the same time. Suddenly the vision shifted and blurred, and the spider then morphed into a big and small black spot moving inside my eyes.

“FIELD TRIP”

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On one of those middle school field trips, we went to this "Water Resources Museum." It was very sunny, but we sat outside for a lecture anyway. The chairs laid out on the grass were red and made out of brittle plastic. I was sitting in the front row when an unknown friend (whom I just noticed was sitting to my left) turned to face me and said something in what seemed to me to be an unknown, familiar language. That's also when I noticed that there was no sound at all. I couldn't hear her spoken words; I only saw how her lips moved. (of which I couldn't read) She didn't seem to mind that I didn't respond. She kept speaking and went on to make some repeated sets of significant gestures that I couldn't understand.

“PIZZA SLAB”

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In high school, but my then English prof. from the Uni was there. I was carrying a tablet buried in a cement slab to the class but ended up in some strip mall instead. As I walked into the pharmacy, the prof. who apparently worked the counter there asked me if I needed anything, so I walked out. As I was leaving the strip mall, I heard some people arguing about something. Turned out it was the prof. again, and the other person was his wife (who was also a teacher). The woman looked upset and drunk, and she left shortly after. The prof. apparently saw me looking. He called me over and said that he had some leftover pizza from his class. He ended up giving me three slices of old thin-crust cheese pizza. I put them on top of my cement slab and left. As I was leaving, I noticed the woman was still around; she didn't look well. Then I saw the prof. looked at me while I was staring at the woman vomiting green stuff onto the pavement, and so I left. After that, I finally arrived at my high school; it was still in the morning. I went to my class and shared the pizza on the cement slab with two of my friends.

“MISSING PLOT”

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Watched an animated movie from inside the movie itself (and VR wasn't a thing back then). It was a popular kids show with animal characters. The movie ended, but then it "secretly" continued and revealed the plot for the sequel in great detail to me. It was awesome, and I thought about how nice it would be if I was the one who thought about the plot first. But it turned out that the whole thing was actually my own creation, but I couldn't remember doing all of that. After the realization, somehow I've now forgotten about all of the awesome plot.

“CHERRY TREE”

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At some sort of holiday resort food garden with family and an unknown friend. They served western food on small plates, but the place wasn't pretty, and there were lots of flies hovering above the marble-top tables. Mom said me and my friend should go get some drinks from another table for us, so I did, but I took so long that when I returned there were so many flies on my food (it was sardines), and the friend was gone. Beside our table was a cherry tree that I had just noticed was being forcefully pulled up by some sort of chain mechanism attached to it. The tree kept going up until it hung upside down underneath another suspended cherry tree under the stone bridge high above the garden, like a reflection. The sky in the background was unusually blue.

“GOOD NOVICE”

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At a run-down Buddhist monastery that looked like my middle school but had been struck by an earthquake or something. I was supposed to be a new novice there (I was in the robe and all), but everyone else seemed to think highly of me (even the abbot) for some reason and kept asking me if I needed help or if I wanted anything done. There were a fat pig and a few cats in the temple as well, and I knew that they knew that all the time I was a "special" novice there, my mind kept wandering to dirty thoughts.

“PRESCHOOL”

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In an unfamiliar preschool/nursery playroom, except nobody there were preschoolers, only non-student adults, and few teachers. It seemed that I had done something very wrong, and they were going to have me executed for it. I was furious because everyone pretended to be sorry for me, but nobody would tell me what I did, and they insisted that I should be killed as soon as possible. When they were about to shoot me in the back of the head, someone cut in and said that I had been falsely accused, but as it turned out, they all agreed that they should proceed with the execution anyway.

“ROBOT RECYCLE”

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I was a very outdated robot (like ones in those cheap retro-futuristic movies) on my way to get recycled. There were many like me, and we were heading to the recycling plant because there was supposed to be a molten lava chamber in there. There was also some sort of priest who was also a robot; it kept telling us that we were "going to a dark, dark place and never return" as we threw ourselves down to the lava pit. As I was falling down, I saw that my creator, out of nowhere, was there, falling down together with us. I was worried about him because of the lava and all, but somehow we turned out fine. I couldn't see his face when he slowly stood up, looked back and around the bottom of the (now empty) lava pit. But when he turned to look at me, he smiled.

“MASSAGE”

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Went into a traditional massage parlor and was told to go wait for the staff on the massage bed. I laid face up on the stiff reed mat (it was yellow with thin green borders sewed on) there, staring at the ceiling, which was off-white with a bright round light in the center. The masseuse never came.

 

“SLEEPOVER”

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Probably in elementary school. There was a big sleepover party in a second-hand clothing store that my parents used to bring me to, but the 2nd and 3rd floors had the rows of clothes hangers pushed aside to make room for big dining tables. I arrived late; it was already pitch-black outside. Everyone had already finished their meals and was chatting among themselves. Everybody there were girls probably around my age then, and they all wore variations of pink-beige nightgowns with little silk bows and soft lace ruffles on them. (I didn't know what I was wearing.) I was under the impression that I was supposed to meet someone I knew there, but that didn't happen, so I just went and stood in the corner trying to find other boys (I just noticed that everyone and everything smelled like dust, too). I recognized one of the girls in the doorway as my good friend, but she didn't seem to know me and looked at me weird. Another girl, though, thought that I was her old friend (I was not), but she was cool enough so I just went along. As the night went on, we seemed to run out of food. My new old friend — whom I now knew went by the name Pin — said that she could cook up something, but she'd need fresh ingredients. It was at that point that I noticed that the first girl I thought I knew (the doorway girl) was missing. Pin and I eventually got outside and went into the house next to the shop to find more meat. It turned out the doorway girl was in there, sitting in the doorway with a few new unknown friends, eating some fish. I got upset with her because the fish wasn't cooked, but didn't say anything. I walked past them and into the house itself, which seemed to be a self-service butcher shop. The inside of the house was full of red meat and innards. It was very bloody in there. Things smelled, too, but I held my nose. I went and brought a big piece of meat to the recently-used meat cutting table and chopped the meat into small pieces. That was when I noticed there was also a framed picture placed in the corner of said table — it was an old photograph of a girl with a pig and a cat, with small writings written underneath. It told the story of how the girl butchered and cooked the pig and put the cat in an oven.

 

“FORGOTTEN”

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Met my then girlfriend at my childhood family home, but she did not recognize me. She was using my dad's old PC, but the screen wasn't on.