Two or three years after the dream about the little girl opening the gates of hell, I dreamt another mall/hell dream.

A few friends and I are walking in the same mall as last time, and we notice people our age slipping into service exits. After witnessing several more people doing this, we investigate. The service exit we enter leads down into a large, shadowy cavern below the mall. There is graffiti on the walls and all kinds of, what my mind apparently designates as, underground shops (shops with party gear, tattoo parlours, nite clubs and a sprinkling of shops selling items that would appeal to alternative culturally inclined individuals).

There is an air of mystery and the forbidden. The further we walk into the seemingly endless darkness, the darker and more dangerous the themes become. Here and there we start seeing strangely changed people. Some have angular features and elongated limbs. I see a few that appear to have no white in their eyes. Soon, I feel uncomfortable but also fascinated by this place. Eventually we leave.

We return another night to explore this dangerously attractive underground party. Again we head deeper into the cavern. We explore further than we did before. Besides the people with the strange features, we also see creatures that look less human and more like demons.  At first, we glance nervously at these creatures, but slowly we start feeling more dangerous ourselves. There is an intoxicating euphoria in the air and I realise that I care less and less about things that would have scared me before…and that I actually like the danger.

Rather like that feeling of guilt you may have after eating a family member’s carefully stashed birthday chocolate, the nagging feeling that I’m falling prey to evil’s seductive lure pops into my head. Just the kind of insidious and practically irresistible kind of lure that can convince good people to let go of their good values. And there goes my irrepressible sense of responsibility. I realise that I will carry an eternal sense of guilt if I stay here and succumb. And with that, I  also suddenly realise that I have inadvertently entered one of the upper levels of hell because of my incessant need to prove that I’m not an innocent goody two shoes. (Fail, yes? lol)

At this point I wake up.