Dream CXXXIII

I was going to a small convenience mart in a hilly, rural area to meet with some folks who were mutual friends.  They were all going to set up a "flea market" type area, where they could display their collections of trading cards and swap some of them.  I got to the area and saw that there were already a number of folding tables with cards spread out on the surface or arranged in boxes.

I got out my cards (which included some of my own artwork) and was looking at what might be tradeable.  One fellow saw some pictures of insects in my stack and said, "You need newer, more personal cards."  I pointed out that some of the cards were my own work and offered to show him, but I couldn't find them in the stack and he eventually wandered off.

I asked about food and other supplies, and I was pointed to an old abandoned filling station.  I walked down to it, and it was clear that there wasn't anything left there.  All the furniture and fixtures were gone from the interior, the walls were scarred, the floor was broken up with weeds poking through.  There was an open doorway at the far end, which led to the oil change area, but the room there seemed to be in the same condition as the main one, with a floor covered in dust, broken brick and loose boards.  I was about to leave when I noticed a creature moving near the oil change doorway.  I went for a closer look.

It was about the size of a small cat, and looked like a severed limb, except that there were proto-fingers on both ends and what seemed to be a primitive face in the center.  It was struggling to move around in the area, seemingly because it wasn't really designed as a mobile creature.  I moved forward to help it...

Just then, a bulky blue creature, the size of a basketball and looking like a deflated balloon with fat, chubby facial features, appeared to the left of the doorway.  I instinctively stepped back and watched.  The blue creature was only a little larger than the limb creature, but it slowly, deliberately clambered over the limb creature, until it was on top of it.  It then flattened itself like a rubber disk, and began using two thin, needle-like arms to compress and squash the limb creature.  When the limb creature was dead, the balloon thing resumed its normal shape and struggled to drag the body away to the side of the oil changing room.  I could see that its rear half, which had a wicked looking whip-like tail, was covered in dust.  It seemed that it must have lain in wait for a victim for a long time.

I stood in the abandoned gas station for some time, not knowing what I should do.  At length, an alien appeared in the oil change room.  He was dressed in a silver reflective suit, and appeared humanoid in limbs, hands and feet.  His face was a sworl of strange tendrils in a large, circular head.  He held his silver-gloved hands in a gesture of friendship.

I wanted to cry out, to warn this being about the blue creature, but I was overcome with a sudden paralysis.  I watched, helpless, as the blue creature appeared behind the alien and stabbed his legs with the needle arms.  The alien collapsed to the floor, and the blue creature flattened itself, flowed over the now prone alien, and began massaging the body with the needle arms until the alien's body was flattened and spread out.

At this point, the paralyzing terror left me, and I fled from the gas station.  I ran back up the hill toward the convenience store, but was intercepted by a highway patrolman.  I told him what I'd witnessed, and he told me to be calm and try to make sense.  He said that he had heard about a strange craft visiting a nearby mountain range, just before a group of tourists had gone to camp there. 

To indicate where the ship was supposed to have landed, he pointed off to the distance at some low, grassy hills.  As he did so, a strange silver light seemed to settle in the exact spot.  I knew that the masters of the blue creature had just landed to harvest a crop of new victims, and I urged the highway patrolman to call in reinforcements, but before I could convince him, there was a small, bright explosion; part of the mountain appeared severed by a brighter silver light, and the smaller silver light now took off into the sky, a rain of mountain dust accompanying it.