A Village

Unlike M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, my recent village dream had nothing to do with boars' heads - neither the lunch meat nor the ritualistic donning of them. This dream had a lot to do with horror and cramped spaces, and other than my claustrophobia, I really have no clue what real-world fears it mined.

I was driving through dirt roads with a girl I assume was a girlfriend, though she had no discernable face, yet she was beautiful and tall and thin. We were listening to old AM stations and enjoying the fall colors of the forest when a group of people blocked our way on the road. It was very similar visually to the scene in Children of Men when they are ambushed and Julianne Moore is killed. No alternate route could be found to avoid these people, and every time I would turn down other dirt roads, another group would form and push me in another direction. Eventually one of them was able to jump into the car, pushing me across the seat and driving us towards a cliff. As he accelerated, we fell over the cliff and began careening down into the rocks below. At the moment we died, our bodies were transported elsewhere. The mechanism behind this wasn't clear, but it was obvious that my girlfriend was gone and I was merely a spirit, viewing the events.

I floated off towards a village overlooking the cliff, and saw the matriarch of the village. She was instructing the others in preparation of the bodies, and I followed them back down the roads I was driving on previously to find them meeting up with a car-load of drunken ne'er-do-wells. These villagers were in the business of selling newly aquired bodies to those who could do whatever they wished with them. As I saw my body and my girlfriend's body loaded into the car I felt an immediate sickness, and headed back towards the village to hide, and to mourn.

I found a suitable hiding place in the basement of the town hall of the village, but to get down there, I had to travel down a set of stairs that was tightly placed against the ceiling. Being an ethereal being, I was able to get down into the basement and wait. While in the basement I began to learn that I had certain abilities in my ghostly form that might be helpful in exacting a revenge. I could inhabit the bodies of the villagers and take their places in the hierarchy of the village. I slowly worked my way up in the village social structure by taking over these bodies, but it wasn't enough. My attempts at subterfuge were foiled by a staunch belief in all things the matriarch told the villagers. It would not be easy to form a rebellion.

Unfortunately, after taking over these bodies, my basement hiding place was becoming very difficult to enter. The crawlspace stairs would nearly suffocate me while I would travel them, and after getting into the basement I felt a strong loneliness; waiting in the dark for someone to enter for a new body to take. I was keeping the old bodies that would be disposed of in there as well, and the stockpile was growing larger every day. I had to do something else before I was discovered.

While training my haunting abilities in the basement, I realized I had gained another ability. I could plague villagers, causing their skin to melt and disfiguring them. I found that these monsters who favored beauty and only sold the best bodies (I have no idea why they wanted mine in the first place) would become completely distraught at finding their bodies destroyed by this plague. I was able to turn most of the villagers into the ugly versions of themselves before the matriarch decided to pack up shop and leave. She had no good bodies left to sell, and most of her villagers were done with her plan if they couldn't be beautiful and happy.

On the day the matriarch was leaving, she began gathering her belongings and went out to her old station wagon to leave. She had forgotten something in the basement, though, and had to return. She went back and crawled down the stairs and began picking up her equipment in the corner. Across from her, a figure lifted his hood and revealed himself. It was me. Somehow I had gotten my old body back and I set my plague on the matriarch. She cried out and took out a knife. Instead of coming at me with it, she stabbed herself, knowing that her beauty was gone, and in her mind she had no reason left to live. I crawled out of the basement and stood over the cliffs and saw my destroyed car at the bottom.

I woke up.