Lucidity: 9/10
Symbolism: 10/10 
Vividness: 10/10 

I’m playing in a garden with a friend.  Every thing is lush and green, and butterflies carefully rest on passion flower vines covering the wooden archway at the entrance.  The sound of running water ripples in the background as the birds sing overhead.  I’m digging in the freshly dampened soil and my fingertips brush across something rough and foreign.  It is a match box wrapped in rusted wire.  I pull it from the dirt and brush it off.  There is something written in permanent marker on the exterior of the box.  It reads, “You know what to do.”

I open the match box to find a letter.  It is addressed to me.  It becomes apparent that the letter is a challenge, a contract of sorts, from an anonymous antagonist.  A wicked scavenger hunt to be completed, and a threat of offense if I can not complete the challenge.  The author informs me that he or she has already murdered my animals, and for some reason—the weight of each animal’s remains.

My heart flutters with panic.  I tell my friend that I must start the challenge immediately in order to avoid any harm to me or my family.  We head back to my apartment and I open the door only to find a different interior.  The design is modern and clean.  Every thing is white and full of light.  There is a wallet lying open on the table in the kitchen.  I pick it up and I contemplate on keeping the contents (roughly $700 in cash with various credit cards, but no license or ID of any kind).  A shuffling of feet outside the front door causes me to drop the wallet and hold my breath as the door creaks open.

Strangers.  Complete and total strangers.  They seem to be completely unaware of my presence though they are looking straight at me.  My friend’s jaw hangs open as she whispers to me with her eyes.  The strangers move to the kitchen and the man sits down at the table.  The woman floats across the room to the refrigerator.  She opens it and pulls out a jar of live worms.  One by one, she feeds the worms to the man and he sucks on her fingers after swallowing each worm. 

A flash of light and the whole room vanishes.  We are in my apartment, and every thing is in its right place.  Thunder rolls outside.  I grab what I need and head out to start on the challenge.  Outside, every thing is glowing with electric color—as if the carbon had suddenly been replaced by neon.  There is a murmur of distress in the streets as sirens yelp in the distance.

An accident.  A terrible accident with smoke, fire, and blood.  The screams are deafening.   The sky is getting darker still as the rain begins to trickle down to wash away the mess.  The lights from the ambulance illuminate the scene in a strobe-like fashion.  The air begins to vibrate.  I look up to see a massive object spinning out of control.  A spaceship with an engine fire, and its coming down quick.  It smashes into the ground a hundred yards or so from us, and I clench my fist around the note in my hand.  I find myself wondering how I am ever going to be able to complete the challenge with circumstances such as this.

A whistle.  A bang.  The ship’s weapons are misfiring.  More screams and more explosions, a stampede of human feet.  The sky is coming down upon us and we are cornered in the streets.  Without hesitation, my legs lunge me forward and I begin to run at full speed.  I come upon a building with a piece of torn canvas for a door and I step inside.  It appears to be a brothel.  The world is coming to an end outside and I am being offered a happy ending.  I am trying to escape but they are tugging at my limbs.  I find my way to the roof and see a beach in the distance.

My eyes flood with tears as I pull the note out of my pocket.  The first objective of the scavenger hunt is to find a sailboat with a familiar name.  Inside the sailboat, I would find a debt to be paid, and I must deliver the debt once I found it.  I climb down the fire escape and start running toward the beach.  

I lost my friend somewhere in the chaos before the brothel, but her presence seemed to be of no importance at this time.  Alone, I rush bare footed on the sandy asphalt.  The waves are sky high.  Slow rolling tidal monsters.  And I am supposed to board a sailboat in these conditions?  A waterspout forms to my left and is whipping my face with sand.  I seek shelter in a hotel on the bayside.  Docked in the harbor is a sailboat.  The name, once garnished in gold, has faded with the salt of the sea.  Still, there is familiarity.  I crawl onboard and inside I find an hourglass.  I hear the roar of the ocean behind me.  The tidal wave is about to pound me.  I feel my life is fleeting.  I invert the hourglass and the sand inside stands still with time.  The waves reverse when the sand begins to fall, and I find myself awake.

******

Prominent symbolism (interpretation aided by Dreammoods.com):

• butterflies — Butterflies signify creativity, romance, joy and spirituality. You may be experiencing a transformation into a new way of thinking.
• message — To dream that you are receiving a message represents a message from your unconscious.
• white — White represents purity, perfection, peace, innocence, dignity, cleanliness, awareness, and new beginnings.
• worms — To see a worm in your dream represents weakness, degradation, filth and general negativity. 
• strangers — To see a stranger in your dream signifies a part of yourself that is repressed and hidden.  
• accident — To dream of a car accident symbolizes your emotional state. You may be harboring deep anxieties and fears. 
• spaceship — To see a spaceship in your dream symbolizes your creative mind. It denotes a spiritual journey into the unknown and signals self-development and self-awareness.
• brothel — To dream that you are in a brothel indicates dissatisfaction and deprivation in your emotional or sexual relationship.
• beach — To see the beach in your dream symbolizes the meeting between your two states of mind. The sand is symbolic of the rational and mental processes while the water signifies the irrational, unsteady, and emotional aspects of yourself. It is a place of transition between the physical/material and the spiritual. To dream that you are looking toward the beach suggests that you are returning to what is familiar to you. Alternatively, you may be adapting or accepting to the changes and circumstances in your life.
• tidal wave — To see a tidal wave in your dream represents an overwhelming emotional issue that demands your attention. You may have been keeping your feelings and negative emotions bottled up inside for too long. On a positive note, the tidal wave symbolizes the clearing away of old habits.
• sailboat — To see a sailboat in your dream represents your emotional persona and how you navigate through the various situations in your life. 
• hourglass — To see an hourglass in your dream denotes that time is running out for you. This may be a deadline that you have to meet for school or work. Alternatively, an hourglass represents a situation that is being turned upside down.

(Source: dreamcinema)