I had a dream

	I had a dream last night. It left me in my bed in a cold sweat, despite my AC unit running at full blast. I liked the cold, but after that dream, I don't think I could enjoy it any longer. My dream seemed normal at first. I was alone on a highway, with trees to either side of me and nothing but a long, empty road. It wasn't empty for long. I wish it was empty. Driving used to be fun for me before that dream, but it came anyways. A tunnel loomed in the distance, with intricate stone lining the walls and nothing but darkness inside. My dream self drove into it none the wiser, expecting to just exit on the other side. I never came out. It felt like I was driving for hours in there, and I had started to get worried at that point. Well, as worried as you can get in a dream that is. I don't know when the road disappeared, as I wasn't quite paying attention to it. When I looked again, it was gone, replaced with rough dirt, which I could now just start feeling beneath my wheels. I looked up again to see the walls of the tunnel replaced with old, faded red bricks, clearly worn over decades of damp life in the tunnel. The only light for me to see with was the glowing indicators on my dashboard, and my high beans pointing into the endless darkness. The first branching path I saw had to be five hours in the tunnel, from my estimation. It was smaller than the 'main road' tunnel, and had a more angular look to it, with the shape of it being a rectangle cut diagonally into the wall. I payed little mind to it, but that changed when I started to notice more of them. They all had varying sizes and shapes. Some were circles cut into the wall, others were angular square-like shapes like the one from earlier. The first one I stopped to look in made my heart stop for a moment. It was a circular tunnel, had to be about six meters in diameter, and running into the darkness was a pair of bloody footprints. I didn't know what to do in that instance. I just stared at the footprints, my idling engine echoing in the dark tunnels as the sound of something dripping in the distance constantly rang in my ears. It took a lot of will to drive onwards, back into the looping, endless tunnel. More hours passed, as the same faded brick walls began to make me lose my mind. I could have sworn I saw faces in them, but I could chalk that off to hallucinations. How can one hallucinate in a dream? I should have been asking myself these questions. Maybe then I could have just woken up and forgotten about it. Instead, I lost hope. Fourteen hours. I had counted. Fourteen hours I was in there. I stopped my car, turned off my headlights, and began to cry. My silent weeping still echoed in the empty tunnels, my sorrow becoming a chorus for my own ears. My sniffling was disguising a pair of footsteps approaching my car, which I hadn't noticed until I heard my passenger side door open. I didn't care at the time, and resumed my sobbing. I only cared when I felt an ice cold hand touch my shoulder. It felt.. wrong. I couldn't feel and end to the man.. or woman's fingers, they just stretched away from my feeling shoulder. I could feel the thing lean in towards my ear, and whisper to me in a raspy, but warm voice. It was then I woke up. I cannot remember what it said to me, nor do I think I want to, yet it still hurts my mind to think about. I continue to desperately search my memories for what it said, what it could have told me to wake up. I just need to sleep on it.