Congrats, OP. The horror has infected my psyche and given me a terrifying dream. I wouldn't call it a nightmare, because I was not a victim of it, but it was pretty disturbing. Since the imagery obviously came from your story, I am posting it here, because I must applaud your talent for horrible imagery and I am sure you'd be interested to see how other people might interpret and experience your creativity. Let me tell what happened now.

I was an extra terrestrial human with my very own spaceship and a crew made up of my recurring astral friends, and I came upon this planet floating dead in space, still revolving around some star, and surrounded by a black shell. By no means invisible though, because remember there are a lot of stars and nebulae in space.

By the time I got there, I don't suppose there were many survivors, and when I entered in through a pore in the shell, the inside was like a mind-bogglingly massive cavern. With the only light coming from my ship, a dim gray contrast was cast over the surface and the inner shell. The atmosphere was dead and still. Everything was quiet, and nothing moved. The world didn't spin, so the gravity was pretty crappy too. When I landed the ship and took a step out, I immediately felt like I was in some danger of falling into the sky if I wasn't very careful.

When I called out, my voice carried off into the distance and up into the sky, echoing faintly all around the world. The people were lying around, their skin a pale gray like everything else I saw. When I went back into my ship and interfaced with the shell, I managed to unroll a sliver of the shell near the dusk horizon to reveal the local star, and there was no sky. Just the same star I saw coming in, with stars around. It immediately lit up the ground and I could see trees, streets, and houses in full color. I could also see the black shell in the sky, shadows cast by the sun from within reflecting how dauntingly massive it was.

The stillness and the quietness and the vastness of this void contrast by just a small sliver of sunlight flooded my field of vision was quite possibly one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen in my dreams. It reminded me of those same elements found in in movies like Alien or possibly Event Horizon (although I haven't actually seen Event Horizon yet. I just know about it).

Great job. You briefly scared the daylights out of me and created a psychic hell for me to explore and experience, first-hand.

[edit on 24-10-2009 by Syrus Magistus]