I just dreamed that I read an entire story. I wasn't sure it was a dream until I woke up and remembered it. It felt like I remembered it too deeply for it to be a dream. But now I realize that the dream was a mix of reading text and seeing images that may have been comic book pages or something on TV, and that mix of media in the same experience could only be a dream,
It was parallel stories of several people who believed that they had found a way to get to the underground world of Atlantis. In each case, it involved following someone who said they were from Atlantis into walking into the ocean. The thing is, though, that no one had ever reported coming back from these journeys. But each person in these stories, by different means, was convinced that they had found the way.
There was an old man in a wheelchair, a young man skeptical of the fellow who said he was from Atlantis, and a couple more who I don't remember so well. In each story, the person was led by the "Atlantean" to a place in the ocean where they stood on a platform.
That was the moment of commitment, where those who had no doubt would go forward right away, and those who were unsure had to make their decision.
Once made, the person would walk forward, guided by the Atlantean, and the front of the platform would extend and drop down, like an elevator, but would form invisible barriers around it so that you descended down a rectangular shaftway, like a bucket pushed partway below the surface of a pool or tub.
But as the platform descended down and forward, the water at the surface would start leaking over the top and filling up the shaft, just like if you continued pushing that bucket so that the rim would be just at surface level, but the lapping of the waves at the surface would spill water over the sides into the bucket.
At that point it was revealed that this was a trap. The water would fill up, and the people would disappear under the waves forever, and no one would ever find out the secret of Atlantis.
The trick of writing this story will be to make the reader buy into the story being about Atlantis, but then throw them that Twilight Zone/Outer Limits twist without disappointing the reader. As the dreamer, I was satisfied with the conclusion as I woke up and tried to figure out if I had dreamed the entire thing.
The picture is from a Reddit post about how a picture of people standing on the bottom of the ocean is "oddly unsettling."
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