Welcome to the twenty-second post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012.
Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone.
If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com.

We’ve been house-sitting this weekend, there’s always such bizarre noises and odd things that happen at this house. I have had some horrible dreams, and one in particular, has been troubling me ever since. It was so vivid, so horrifying to experience. But it would be an amazing premise for a film…

It all took place at the Lake Merritt station. I was waiting there with the American, and suddenly the Operations Control was patched through the loudspeakers:

Attention! This is BART Operations Control. Driver of the train, could you please contact BART Operations Control. I repeat, the driver of the train, could you please contact BART Operations Control. We have lost contact with you…

Unexpectedly and unusually slowly, a train pulled in to the station. It flashed ‘SF/Daly City’ on the indicator boards, but it was on the wrong side of the platform. I didn’t get a look at the driver: the cab was blacked out. There was no light from within, nor any reflection from the station. The essence of whatever was driving the train was not … human. I went cold.

The first car passed us, and the passengers inside looked odd. None of them looked well, but they were mostly upright. Their eyes were vacant and their skin shone shades of blue and purple, like an intense bruise.

The second was what I would term Ground Zero. Everyone in there was dead. They were all slumped over and some looked as though they had exploded. Something told me they had exploded from fear. Whatever was responsible was in that car.

The train halted to let us on in the third car. I was not having a bar of it, but if I didn’t catch this train, then we would not have been able to get home. I told the American my fear: if we catch this train, we’re not getting off alive. He told me:

Listen, we’re only going three stations. We’ll be okay. Whatever they’ve got, we won’t be in there long enough….

I had two seconds to make up my mind. I felt strongly about this being sinister omen. But I couldn’t allow the American to go it alone, so with great reluctance, I boarded with him.

The light overhead in the third car was an unflattering, flickering yellow. The passengers were also shades of blue and purple like those in the first. A tall gentleman sitting in the row ahead, turned to us and groaned. He said:

Don’t, man. You don’t want to be on here. Things are not what they seem. You don’t want to be on here…

The doors closed. It was too late to change our minds.

I was a hair short of a total freakout, and James was trying to use his sleeve as a mask. The power of the lights in the carriage ebbed and flowed. The train snaked its way through the tunnel, and with each second that passed, the weight of ominous dread increased exponentially.

The horror I felt as the train failed to slow down to stop at West Oakland, was all consuming.
We were on a train, and it was not going according to plan.
Our deaths were imminent.
I was not okay with this.
ENOUGH!

I managed to wake myself up, but even when I tried to go back to sleep, the images of the dream were seared on my eyelids.