This post was inspired by a dream misadventure I had last night where I was just minding my own business getting gophers out of the rice field, then suddenly on the intercom/announcements (which I did not expect to have in my dream, since I was outside, not in a building), a voice said "attention, this is a representative of the fediverse speaking... going into effect today, dreamland itself, err, everyone's dreams, are now a part of the fediverse; that is all, happy floating on cloud nine" and then suddenly a bunch of Stalingrad ninjas popped out of nowhere and ambushed me (yeah, how would you react if that's the case). So I guess I'm not even safe from everyone in my sleep.
I walked down a path like an alleyway or large aqueduct. It was the middle of the night and water rolled down the slope in the direction I was walking. Walls on either side of me, several stories high, were made of immense sandstone blocks. I entered an underground chamber through a barred gateway in the wall on the right, already open, waiting for me.
A few twists and turns and down a flight of stairs, and I could see a room beyond with 3 walls. The side farthest would open up to me if not for the large rusted bars that separated the space, save for yet another gate to the right. Just past this gateway on the left there was a stairwell with its first steps in the corner forward and to the left.
In front of the bars on the side of the entry way, there seemed to be a mound of dirt or trash. Nearest the corner to my immediate left after walking through the gateway, an old wooden door stood closed. A guardian stood to the left of the door in the corner with the head of a jackal. The guardian of the door spoke to me and said "Open the door. There is no going back." in a low doubled voice that I seemed to hear in the air, but also in my head. I hesitated and turned my head to the left to look back one more time in the direction I came from.
Just past the bars now, atop the mound of refuse and filth, I saw the dirty white skeleton of a deer resting with its head upright, both living and dead. As my gaze turned to the left revealing it, I seemed to glimpse that it's skull was turning to its left at an identical cadence to mine to look right at me, like a mirror with left and right reversed. When our gazes stopped squarely looking at each other it felt jarring.
It looked right into me with its gaping black eye sockets and rotting meat festering and falling from its ribs, legs, and neck. It looked at me expectantly, and after looking at me for a moment longer, it turned its gaze away from me and turned to black dust which itself seemed to dissipate into nothing on the mound.
I turned to face the door, turned it's handle, and stepped through into a pure tar black which seemed to consume my memory and consciousness entirely.