Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?

It's rare for me to remember my dreams. Nightmares, rarer still.

There are a few that have been so powerful that they've haunted me well after I've rejoined the waking world. I had one last night, and some say it's therapeutic to talk about them, to help you get over them and understand them, so bear with me.

I dreamt I was a toothpick. Yes, I'm aware how silly that was, but everyone were toothpicks, and all living in some strange black and white and shades of gray world. I was standing along the riverbank and off on the other side was a huge, floating city, larger than the island of Manhattan, all silver...but not a bright silver, but a dull color.

The city was made up of toothpick-people, all...assimilated...into a collective, all individual will repressed, no life, no thoughts...just cold toothpick people who became the buildings, the roads, the city itself, and I knew it was looking for more people.

Think the Borg from Star Trek and you've got the idea.

They were taking everyone...friends, family, whatever...and absorbing them into the city. I saw them coming for me and I flew (hey, if I'm a toothpick, I can do pretty much anything, right) away to escape while everyone else became just pieces of a larger puzzle but with no minds of their own.

(For the record, last night, I didn't watch any Sci-Fi. I watched Ratatouille on DVD, which was quite good.)

I flew and flew and flew. Every time I thought I was safe, this dull silver floating city made of toothpick people kept following me, taking away everyone else around me. Only I could escape. In the end, everyone else was gone, swallowed up, and I was alone.

Damn dream woke me up from a good night's sleep. I just laid there in bed for the next hour and a half, trying to get comfortable again and trying not to think about it but it was still there in the back of my mind, one particular scene. Me, as a toothpick, lying in the grass in some empty countryside, alone.

Strange things, dreams.