Ape Dream

A dream widely circulated on the Japanese internet, called "Ape Dream", is one that someone wrote down after experiencing it over and over again.

In the dream, he stood at a strange station, the platform empty. After a while, a woman's voice came over the loudspeaker: "The next train to arrive, those who board it will suffer misfortune." The voice was flat, like someone reading an announcement. He was a little afraid, but apart from him, there was no one else on the platform, and nowhere to go.

The train pulled into the station. It wasn't a normal train, but the kind of miniature train found in amusement parks, carriage by carriage, the cars painted to look like monkeys, the engine itself a monkey's head, grinning. It slowly stopped in front of him, and the doors opened by themselves. He clearly didn't want to get on, but his feet moved up on their own.

Inside the carriage, several people were already seated, heads bowed, faces pale, motionless, as if asleep, or as if dead. He walked in alone, chose a seat in the third row from the back, and sat down. The seat was hard, and cold to sit on.

The train started moving, entering a tunnel. The lights in the tunnel were purple, flickering on and off. After a while, the announcement sounded again: "Next, alive, disemboweled."

He heard movement ahead. From deep inside the carriage, several very short little people walked over, their clothes ragged, each looking as if they had crawled out from somewhere, holding things in their hands, approaching the passengers one by one. The person in the first row was surrounded by them.

He didn't dare look down, nor dare to speak. The passengers ahead fell silent one after another. The little people moved back row by row; every so often, the announcement would change to a new phrase. With each change, they were one row closer to him.

When the announcement read "minced into meat", he woke up from the dream. Upon waking, he was drenched in cold sweat, and it was already light outside the window. He gasped for a long time, telling himself it was just a dream.

Years passed, and he had the dream again. The same platform, the same voice, the same monkey train. He recognized it; this time he had no intention of boarding, but his feet wouldn't obey him. He sat down on the train and heard the announcement repeat once more. He desperately tried to wake up, thinking that as long as he woke up, it would be fine. He woke up, this time earlier than before, waking up inside the tunnel.

After that, every once in a while, he would dream it again. Each time he woke up later than the last time, meaning that thing was getting closer and closer to him. One night, when he woke up, a voice still rang in his ear—not the woman's voice from the announcement, but a low male voice, saying each word distinctly: "Escaped again—next time, it will be the last time."

He wrote down this dream and posted it online. Later, someone asked him what happened afterward, but he did not answer.

#Paranormal #短篇故事 #日本怪谈