Stuff I Dreamed Up

Souls

I had this dream the day after the balloon head one. Oddly enough, this one also featured balloons. I haven't had any dreams featuring balloons in awhile, and I still haven't figured out why they were a reoccurring symbol. Anyhow... (warning this one involves suicide)

The scenario was an odd one. It was practically a soulmate au. Basically, when a human is born, a balloon appears that is, in a sense, a physical culmination of that human's soul. The balloon stays with that human throughout their whole life. Once they reach the age where they gain basic motor skills and an actual conscience, they have the ability to manipulate their balloon. By that I mean rather than it being permanently connected to them, they can move it around at will as if it were a normal balloon. There were alot of rules my dream had explained to me about this concept. If your balloon is popped, you will die. Your balloon is very hard to pop however. No outside force can pop it, however if it is away from your side for more than 24 hours, it becomes as fragile as a normal balloon, and will pop if put under the right kind of pressure. In my dream, there were people committing suicide simply by letting their balloons go, but I'll go deeper into that later. Only you can interact with your balloon, if someone else attempts to touch your balloon, they will simply phase through it as if it is a hologram, there is one exception to this rule however. This is where the soulmate stuff kicks in. If someone reaches out to touch you balloon, and it turns out they can touch and manipulate your balloon just as you do, then you have found your soulmate. Your soul balloons become bound together. This simply means that if you attempt to let go of your balloon, and you are too far away for it to find you, it will simply seek your soulmates balloon to let your soulmate know you're missing your balloon. This is something that can only happen AFTER you have encountered your soulmate. If you let your balloon go and you have not encountered your soulmate, it will simply float around aimlessly. It is also theorized in this crazy world my mind made up, that once your balloons are bound together, they are set to pop at the same time, meaning no one lives longer than their soulmate. This hasn't been proven however, since according to my dream world, finding your soulmate is so rare, there aren't enough soulmate couples to study up on. Also, because it's so rare, most have forgotten soulmates are even a thing, just living their lives to the fullest. Now, onto the actual story I was following in my dream. I've found that in my dreams, I'm rarely myself. I'm usually playing the role of somebody else. In this I was actually playing the role of David, although I wasn't in a red army setting.

I was walking around what I could only assume was my apartment complex when I heard some people talking. I couldn't help but eavesdrop. They seemed to be talking about a heap of suicides happening in the area. People were going to random places in the city and letting their balloons go, ending up dead the next day. I was of course aware of this. I worked at a hospital, and we would get alot of cases of people who were reported being seen without their balloons. It was sad to know there wasn't anything we could do to help them, but at least we could keep them in one place in the hopes that their balloon would float by eventually. So far we haven't been so lucky. No knew what was causing so many people to commit mass suicide. It was very disconcerting. Everyone who had died so far had shown no past record of mental illness, and there was not one thing in common between each person. I tried my best to keep it in the back of my mind, and clearly my eavesdropping had just made things worse. I turned to go upstairs to my apartment, but I froze when I thought I felt something hit my balloon. I turned and saw no one, but I could've sworn I saw my balloon look black for only a moment. I kinda just shook it off. I went into my room and flopped down onto my bed. I wasn't exhausted or anything, it just felt like the right thing to do. I got up and walked over to the bathroom, prepared to brush my teeth and head to bed. As I stared in the mirror, I suddenly got the feeling of being watched. I felt a sharp pain in my chest and this huge wave of dread washed over me. I grabbed my balloon and dashed outside, wanting all of it to stop. I ran into a strangely shaped figure. I couldn't tell if it was a person or an animal, but it only made me more scared. It held up what look like a sewing needle, and brought it's other "hand" to my face. It's voice wasn't male or female, just some genderless whispering I could barely hear. It told me that it had the ability to corrupt and pollute souls with just the small prick of a needle. It could just swipe the needle through balloon, not popping it, but corrupting it. Setting it off by just a tiny bit. Enough to make someone scared and questioning their every move. It was an awful feeling. The thing didn't say anything for a bit, just stood there. It then whispered that it could all go away, that it was the balloon making me feel pain. If I let it go, I could be free. I fought against my better judgement and pushed past the figure to the park. It was dark and cold out, and I could so vividly see the stars in the sky. The pain was too distracting however, I couldn't focus on it long. I held out my balloon, letting the string slip past my fingers and float away. I watched it for awhile, in a bit of a daze I suppose until it was nowhere in sight. No trace of the red heart shaped balloon I used to clutch so tightly. The pain disappeared, and I could finally think... But then it hit me. I had just done the unthinkable. I wanted to run, run and try and catch up to it but... I was frozen in place. I kinda just sat down on a curb, accepting my fate. That is until I could feel something like a tug in my chest. I saw someone walking up to me out of the corner of my eye. A tall man with black hair and a scarred face holding a light blue heart shaped balloon in one hand, and my balloon in the other. I quickly grabbed it out of his hand, suddenly realizing that he was capable of messing with my balloon. Since I was in the shoes of David, this man was of course Jack. Unfortunately, I woke up immediately afterwards. I almost wrote it into a javid oneshot, but I decided against it as the last second.

Also for some reason in this one I felt alot more "involved." That is way this is written this way.

(Republished because I forgot to include the illustration)