Some kind of Nightmare

I jinxed it. Shortly after my last post, the skies opened up and the rain poured for over two hours. It seems pretty clear now, but the forecast still calls for more showers.

I stayed up and watched most of the rain. It was too dark to snap any pictures, but I thought I would stay up and watch it anyway. Normally, it's relaxing. This time, though, I got no peace from it, and the thrumming on the roof matched the rate of thoughts in my head, and none of them were good thoughts.

Upon going to bed, I had a dream. When I was a child, I would have called it a nightmare, but now it's just a dream. The nightmare starts when I wake up. In the dream, I was with friends. Everything is more apparent in my dreams when compared to the living world, so naturally, whenever they spoke to me, it was pretty obvious that most of them were lying. I played along. We travelled a bit, through Fish Creek, a place I used to frequent.

We were ambushed. A man with a gun opened fire, but the decision for life was mine. He had no quarrel with me, but rather my friends. I could take the bullet for them, spare their lives, and likely end up losing my own, or I could let him have his time, and watch and see who would be spared.

When friends lie to you, and prove to you that you are there for show or purpose, rather than as an actual friend, you feel compelled to let whatever ill fate they earn reach them.

I don't know why I did it. I remember jumping in front of the bullet(s). I remember the sharp pains in my chest. I remember hearing the sounds of feet, running. And then there was a blackness.

I woke up, in my dream, a few minutes later. In a pool of blood, and sadly alone. Everyone had fled, even the shooter. I had been left to die, after making a sacrifice to ensure their survival.

And then the phone rang, waking me up. Naturally, that's not the best of moods to wake up in.

My reward for being an honest person has been naught but pain and loneliness.
But I continue being honest, because of hope, and the foolish belief that being honest is a virtue.