An Ominous Instrument

March 23rd, 2021

9:07am

I was at a dream version my now passed Grandma's house with my mother and some other family. I think we were helping move some things. It was the end of the day. I was sitting on a couch in the living room with a pretty high vantage point. On the small coffee table next to some flowers, coasters, and knick knacks was what I think was some kind of thermometer. It was an open topped glass cylinder about four inches wide and six or seven inches tall with measurement markings on the outside. It was filled with water a thick hard plastic ball that looked about like a ping pong ball floating in it. The ball was meant to float at different levels in the water to read out different measurements. I was alone in the room looking at it for just a moment when the ball started to slowly sink. It increased in momentum as it sank, which seemed very normal, until it suddenly stopped half way down the cylinder. It seemed unnatural as it didn't sway or swirl in the water when it stopped. This abrupt change was very unsettling. I was fixated on it. Nothing else was happening in my world; only this thing. Suddenly, just as abruptly as the ball had stopped moving, it sank straight to the bottom of the glass instrument, as if it was yanked by a string. A feeling of uneasiness and fear of the unknown seized my mind. Of all the things that happened next, only one of them was in my control. The room turned as I felt my body lie down on the couch and then rise off of it as it clumsily began to float nearer to the supernatural glass cylinder. Like someone who was not quite strong enough had bound my body and tried to carry me off the couch. I tried to tell for my mother, but I only muttered her name. Eyes darting from doorway to doorway and back to the instrument, I tried harder and harder screaming from the depths of my mind now completely saturated in primal reactions. My voice grew louder and more frantic each time I tried to cry out until I was truly screaming for my mother. Just before I touched the ground in front of the table, she bursts into the room, runs to me and grabs me in her arms as if I was a small child. I wake up.