Coffee Shop AU from Hell

Had one of those fun nightmares that I woke up from, spent a while trying to get back to sleep, and then fell right back into it.

I was an actor in some kind of coffee shop sitcom, with a bunch of my friends and a lot of other people I didn't know. We were doing coffee shop things, you know--witty banter, lightly insulting each other, talking about our lives, flirting, that sort of thing, while other people moved in and out around us. But I started noticing that some of those people were being ushered out and not returning, and that there were people who aren't part of the crew watching us. Eventually the acting conceit faded away and I was actually in the coffee shop, talking with people--I think this was after I fell back asleep--and a man dressed as a Buddhist monk was savagely beaten and dragged away. I ran and hid in the bathroom, paranoid after being watched for what seemed like hours, certain that someone was going to find me. And when the main door opened and I heard footsteps, stopping in front of the stall I was in, I woke up.

It was mostly about powerlessness, about the sense that I had gotten myself into something that was bigger than me that I couldn't control. A dawning horror that I was being weighed and judged, that I was in a trap with no way out. Sure, the the beating and disappearances were also terrible, but it was the lack of escape that really unsettled me and stuck with me when I woke up. Like living in a totalitarian state.

Sleepwalking through today due to fatigue.