Two horrifying dreams (2 of 2): Contest.

I’m at a contest where on the edge of a vast empty parking lot of asphalt there’s a big square rotating platform, maybe 15 x 15, and a guy dressed like a green-skinned orange-bearded viking (like the troll who's Anya's husband in Buffy?) beside it asking trivia questions about fantasy novels, where you have to match a person’s name to the realm that a trial of theirs happened in, and then the name of the trial itself, and each question is associated with a side of the platform, and as the first person in the group I’m with guesses, the appropriate side of the platform breaks the regular rotation and turns toward them, and as they get all 3 questions right with a laugh, it’s so easy, this animal hops off the top of the platform, which is low and pyramid-ish and full of greenery, and then is in their arms, almost like a pet or a toy, and is the prize.

I’m up next, and I get the person question right, but then I err on the name of the realm, and an animal hops off, and it looks like a rat, but is the size of a bigger small dog, and with two large front teeth (like the rodent in "Ice Age"?), and somehow I pick it up by its fox-like tail with a nervous laugh, and spin it around my head faster and faster for like 10-15 seconds, and its tail tears off a bit in my hand, as I go to let it go and it flies off into the distance and bounces off the concrete, and as I suddenly know that something is horribly wrong.

The animal is still and then slowly gets up and stumbles dizzily, then it shakes and gains its wits and starts coming toward me, slowly at first, and then scampering.

Next, I’m on top of a huge red steel girder sunk diagonally in the ground, having clambered up the top, but though it has a flat top and bottom, its sides have loosely spaced pegs.  From where I sit, way up at the top like thirty feet off the ground and safe at first, I can see the animal figure out that it can maneuver its way up the pegs, and it starts to do that very methodically and purposefully and at a decent enough speed, getting closer and closer as my chest clutches more and more.

As it arrives towards me, by my hands since I’m sitting on my hands, I know that it can get me, and I wake up.