When he stepped through the door, he was doing something that he did not expect: playing Wheel of Fortune. “Spin the wheel for a chance to win $1,000,000 dollars,” the host said. John took a look at the crowd then thought, “This is definitely a dream, because I hate this game.” As he studied the room, he realized everyone was looking at him as if they expected him to do something. “Well, aren’t you going to spin the wheel?” the host asked.
  “Oh, well, uh... sure,” he replied. He stepped up to the wheel and spun. Around and around it went, until it finally stopped on the $1,000,000 mark. The crowd cheered and even the host and other players gave him a clap on the back. At once,  the crowd, host, and other players disappeared.

“Hello?” John asked.
“Yes?” a figure from the shadows replied.
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my dream?”John took two steps forward but was stopped by some unseen force.
“What makes you so sure that this is a dream?” it asked.
John observed the room. “Well for one thing, I know I will never be able to step foot onto a spaceship, especially one as sophisticated as that ship.”
      The unseen being said, “Why are you so certain that your race won’t create a time machine in the pitiful amount of time that your race calls a lifetime?”
John tried to take another step forward but was knocked back by a powerful force. He groaned while he tried to stand. “I don’t believe in this so called dream you are putting me through.”
The being screamed, “YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN DREAMS? THEN I WILL SHOW YOU A NIGHTMARE!”
At once, John fell like a bird without wings until he finally reached the end of the pit and was stopped right before he hit the bottom. 

John studied the cave he found himself in. “At least that thing has enough decency as to keep me from going splat,” he thought. As he moved around, he heard scraping against a distant wall, but the scraping turned into groaning and moaning that was getting closer and closer.
That was when he saw it: a disfigured human creature, its face falling apart. Its skin draped off his skull, and ooze seeped off its cheek and down the rest of its body. There was no telling whether it was man or woman.
More of the creature’s body appeared until, finally, John was surrounded in a ring of flesh.
His mind screamed, “OH MY GOD, THAT THING WAS RIGHT WHEN HE SAID HE WOULD INTRODUCE ME TO A NIGHTMARE!” The beings grew closer until they were touching him. As he screamed, a hole opened in the floor, and once again, he was falling.

Was this real or a dream? John didn’t know. All he knew was that he had stopped falling and was stuck in the middle of what he thought looked like a forest. It was cold and dark and John was scared. All he could see was a clearing in the distance and the night sky. John screamed, “Why am I having these horrible dreams? WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?” He started to cry.
“Cry all you want. No one can hear you.”
John jumped at the sound of the voice and asked, his voice shaking, “Who's there?”
  “No one,” it said.
“I can clearly tell that you're there. I can hear you.”, John said tears still apparent in his eyes.
“How do you know that the sound of my voice isn’t just inside that big head of yours? How do you know that this isn’t a ---?”
John interrupted,  “THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS DANG THING!”
The trees nearby burst into fire. John stumbled, blinded by the sudden light. He started to run toward the clearing he had seen, but as he got closer, the softer the dirt beneath him got until he was standing in a pile of mud. The more strenuously he tried to get out of the mud, the stronger the mud’s grip on him became.
The fire was getting closer. When John was almost waist high in mud, a figure of a man appeared from the fire’s shadow.
“Help me, please!”, John screamed. “Please!”
  But the man simply stared and smiled. Now shoulder high with the sinking earth, John pleaded, “Please for the love of God help me!”
The man didn't even blink. It was as if he was void of all emotion.
“I don't want to d…” John’s sentence was cut short by the mud entering his mouth and filling his lungs.

John jumped as he woke up. “Gah!”, he yelled as he fell of the bed. “What happened?”
His heart was still beating fast from sinking in the mud. “Where am I?” John was no longer in the forest. There was no man, no fire, and he was no longer sinking into the mud. He was home in his bedroom.
“Thank God!” he said happily. “Thank God it's over! I guess it really was a dream after all.” John stood and studied his room, making sure that everything was where it should be. His TV was against the wall. His books were all stacked up on his desk. The lamp his mom got him for Christmas last year was standing in the corner, and most importantly, his German shepherd was lying on the bed beside him.
“Cashew!”, he exclaimed. “I'm so glad to see you!” His best friend gazed at him. John sensed something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
  Cashew continued to look at him for a few more seconds then jumped off the bed. In midair, he started to transform. As he landed on the ground beside John, Cashew had gone from a German Shepard to the shape of a man: the same man who watched him as he sank into the mud.
The man turned on John with the familiar evil smile on his face. And now, the man had a knife in his hands.
John whispered aloud to himself, terror creeping into his voice. “No! This can't be real. It has to be a dream.”
“...Does it?”, the strange man said in a strangely familiar voice.
John narrowed his eyes, trying to remember where he'd heard the voice. The man drew closer to John, the knife swaying in his hand.
  “What are you doing?”John asked.
“I'm waiting.” he replied.
“Waiting for what?”
“What does it matter? Your time is up!”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“Your time to make amends is over. Now you must die!” The man surged forward, knife in hand.
John searched his mind for a way to stop the madman. He saw his books on his desk, ran at it, and grabbed the first book within reach. He spun around and flung the book at the man, but the book flew through the air and missed him by inches.
  That was it. There was no more retaliation.
John was done for.
Just as the man drew back to stab him, a hole opened beneath him and swallowed him up. “Phew!” John sighed with relief.
KABOOM!
An explosion ruptured beneath him, opening a 10 foot gap in the middle of the floor right beneath him. 

John woke to the sound of laughter. He had passed out after he had landed. All the aches he felt before had disappeared. John stood and looked at his surroundings.
He seemed to be in cabin. Lining the walls were rows of bunk beds. There were shelves beside each bed that were lined with odd things. On one was a whistle; on another a picture of a woman; and there was even a grenade.
  It was the same for just about every other shelf in the room. John pivoted and saw a door. He thought, “I wonder where that leads?” He went to it and opened the door to something he did not expect: a school hallway. There were kids walking the hall, heading into classrooms, talking and laughing with their friends, and going to lunch.
John stepped through the door and into the hallway. No one seemed to notice him. “What am I doing here?” he hissed.
There was a gunshot off in the distance. All the kids panicked and tried to run from something.
“What are you running fr--?” But John’s question was answered by what he saw: the man he’d last seen with a knife.
John turned and tried to return from whence he’d come, but it wasn't there anymore. It had disappeared. He turned again, facing the man from his past dreams, but the man began shooting, killing everything that moved.
Blood and bodies built up on the floor. John tried to turn and run but was unable, due to the horrific sight before him.
The man called to him, “Hello!” The light in his eyes told John the man had finally noticed him standing in the hallway. “There is no escape this time!” Abruptly, the man raced for him, gun in hand.
John spun and took off running, but the man was within range of him.
BANG! The man opened fire and the first shot hit John in the shoulder.  The impact knocked John off his feet and into the floor. He writhed in pain. “Ugh!”  He tried to get up but couldn't. The man ran at him then knelt beside John. 
The man sneered, “John,  it's good to see you.”
John kept silent.
“Hmm, not feeling very sociable? Well, that's too bad. I was hoping to have a good conversation before I killed you.”
“Just kill me and get it over with!”, John said finally.
“I don't think I've ever seen anyone so ready for death.”, the man replied.
“I want this dream to be over with.”
“Oh, really. You think this is a dream?”
“Yes. What else could it be?”
“Good point. You're right. What else could it be? But if it's a dream and I kill you, that would mean that you wake up. Or would you? What if this isn't a dream? What if this is real? Tell me: Do you feel pain in dreams?”
“No.”
“Right. But then again, what if the pain is all up here?” The man put his finger to John’s head. He leaned back and smiled. “That would mean that this was a dream.”
“Just kill me already!” John snapped angrily.
“No. If you think this is a dream then do it yourself.”
The man held the gun out to John.
“Do it,” he said.
John took the gun out of the man’s hand and pointed it at him.
“Now, this is interesting. First, you say, ‘Kill me.’ Then you say, ‘Kill me again.’ I give you the gun for you to do it yourself, but you're too scared to, so instead you point it at me.”
“I just want out of this thing.”, John said.
“I gave you the means. Now use it.”, the man replied.
“How do I know that you're not trying to trick me into killing myself?”
“If I wanted you dead, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“True,” John thought. Without a second thought, John pointed the gun at his own head and pulled the trigger.

When John pulled the trigger, he thought it was a good idea. Now, he knew it was a mistake. Because of his choice, John was stuck in a room with no door, one light, and it smelled like rotten eggs. It was another dream.
“That little git was lying when he said I would wake up,”  he thought. “Now I'm stuck in this place. Whatever this is.” John waited for what felt like 10 minutes before getting up off the floor to pace. The longer he paced, the more restless he got. “Is this my eternal reward?” he asked himself. “Is this what I must do for all eternity, stuck in this dream for forever?”
  Soon John got so restless that he punched the wall he was staring at. “Gah!” John screamed in pain and cradled his hurt fist. John looked at where he had punched and was surprised to find a small hole, about the size of his fist, with light coming through a small crack in it.
“I wonder…” John punched at the new hole in the wall, this time with his other fist and screamed in agony, “Schist!” His pain was great, but his work did not go unrewarded. Already, he could see that the hole had gotten larger and the crack wider. He looked at his fists and grimaced. Both were bloodied from the hammering he had given them. “Just a few more hits, and I'll be out.” he thought. He brought his fist back to deliver another blow, but couldn't.
He thought the pain in his hands would overtake him, and John sat in the pool of blood that had been caused by the pounding he gave the wall.  Frustrated beyond tolerance, he he wept and screamed, “AHHHHHH!”
John's crying was cut short by a high pitched scream of a woman. Startled, he ventured, “...Hello?!”
“Help me!” the girl screamed. John looked around for any way to escape and help the girl. Suddenly, a door presented itself right in front of John. He ran towards it but hesitated before he opened it. “If this is just a dream, that means that all of this is going on in my head. And if all of this is going on in my head, that means that no one is in danger.” He started to step away from the door but stopped dead in his tracks at the loudest scream of them all. He couldn't stand frozen and let anyone get hurt, even if it was just a dream.
  John swung open the door and stepped through it, only to see something he did not expect: it was the same room he had just come out of. There was the same hole he had created, and below it, the blood from his hands.
John turned around to look at the room he had just come out of, but it was no longer there. It was just a blank wall. “What the heck?” he thought to himself.
  BOOM!
An explosion took out the wall he was trying to get through earlier. The impact knocked John off his feet and into a distant wall. No longer shocked by physical pain, John merely growled,  “Ouch! Big ouch.”
John tried to get back up again, but as he did, something big and furry came out of nowhere and tackled him to the ground. The creature had him pinned to the floor. As he looked up,  he realized what it was. It was a bear. It was smaller than a normal bear, but it was still bigger than him. John struggled, trying to worm his way out of the bear‘s grasp.
“GRAWR,” the bear snarled.
He understood what this meant. It meant that if he didn’t stop moving, the bear was going to rip his face off. He looked left and right for something he could use to save himself. John was about to give up hope when he saw a piece of wood that had been blown off the wall by the explosion.
The only downside was that it was about ten feet away from where he was laying. John racked his brain, trying to think of a way to get the bear off of him. Then he remembered that the bear’s nose was the most sensitive part of its body. “To heck with it,” he thought, and let loose, punching the bear in the nose as hard as he could.
This time the bear did not snarl but welped in pain then got off of John and shook its head.
John knew that he didn’t have a lot of time. He stood and ran to the makeshift knife on the ground.
Meanwhile, the bear had finally gotten over the punch to the nose and had turned on him. John grabbed the improvisation of a knife in the nick of time and stared into the cold dark eyes of the animal in fear. As the bear charged him, John ran toward the him, and aimed at its head.
The bear screamed in pain as blood spurted from the deep wound on the crown of his head. It stood for a few more seconds then it fell over, blood soaking into the floor.
John slumped to the floor in relief. He was tired and angry. “All I want is to go home.” Just then, another door appeared to his left right behind the bear’s body. John gingerly walked around the bear’s body; he was about to open the door when he thought, “What if this door leads to another dream? What if it leads to something worse than what I've already been through?” Then he thought of all the things he'd seen and decided, “Nothing could be worse.” John opened the door to a blinding light and passed out.

John woke to something cold nuzzling his cheek. “Cashew!”he exclaimed.
“Woof!”, his best friend replied. John rose on his elbows and looked around: he was home. HOME.
It actually felt like his room this time. His books were on his desk beside him. John peered over the side of the bed. There were no holes in his floor. John breathed in the smell of his room and looked at Cashew again.
His dogs eyes were black, like that of the bear that had attacked him.