As per usual, I will begin this nightly ritual by mapping out my activities before I went to bed. The day at work was uneventful and ultimately unfulfilling, and when I came home I had nothing to do but try to draw out my nightly schedule as long as I possibly could. Without the work to muddle over and exhaust me into silently accepting the premise of falling asleep, the prospect of having to go to bed and encounter whatever awaited me once I shut my eyes became much, much more worrisome. So, at about 9:00 PM, instead of the usual time of roughly 10:45 or 10:50, I began prepping myself for sleep.
I took a nice, long shower that probably will sting when I get my water bill at the end of the month, but goddammit I needed something that would last a while. I got out at about 9:22? I'm only guesstimating because I spent about another twenty minutes getting dressed, giving myself a long-overdue shave, brushed my teeth, flossed, brushed a second time, used mouthwash, brushed a third time for good measure, applied some deodorant (which, in hindsight, was silly since I was going nowhere but to bed), and, of course, washed my hands. Because obviously the shower wasn't enough. Once I exited the bathroom and looked at the clock at the end of the downstairs hall, it was about 9:45. I then decided to, of course, try to stay up and read. About at this point I got a call from one of my employers, a very enjoyable respite from, well, the impending nightmare that was about to go down in my head. At about 11:45, I tore through about eleven chapters of a detective novel and, sadly, I knew that my bed and those sheets were what awaited me. So I took my time doing everything. Going up the stairs, I took one huddled step at a time. Sliding into bed, I did probably a lot more fussing with my sheets than I've ever done. Turning off the light was probably the worst part, and I had to build up the courage to actually turn the light off. All in all, I think it was about 11:55 when I went to sleep.
I awoke to creatures in my eyes. I could see them- in fact, I could see everything. I could see the way the veins in my eyes worked into capillaries, and underneath I saw veritable colonies of dark, formless beings floating within the endless fluids of my eyes. They all looked back at me, literally into me, and in one fluid motion I got out of my illusory bed and got up on my own two ethereal feet. And then I immediately regretted it. The minute my feet touched the worn carpeting, I felt slithering sensations as billions of things wormed their way around and over my feet, trailing up my legs. I could feel some enter my body, work their way through my innards. I felt everything. I felt every individual hair. I felt everything around me, and everything inside of me. Every single cell replicating. Every single blood cell moving about my veins. I could feel the buildups of fat, the bubbling of gastric acid. I felt the process of digestion. One thing you learn- digestion fucking hurts. I clutched my stomach.
It didn't feel like a dream. It couldn't have been a dream. Everything was too real. More than real. I hate the word hyperrealism. I despise it with every fiber of my being. Too often the fictitious word is overused and never used in its proper way. But this was proper hyperrealism. I could feel everything. I could see everything. Every tiny particle, every microscopic creature floating around in an endless void. I noticed that the creatures that danced around my vision, numbering in the millions and millions at any given time, did not impede my ability to look farther. I could see every detail that there was, hear the scuttling of the microbes make their way across my body. I felt my heartbeat- in fact, the heartbeat was so absolutely deafening and throbbing that I felt shockwaves run through my body. I felt blood cells mingle, get pushed into the beating muscle, be purified, and shot back out into the highways of my body. I felt large- too large- universally large. And I saw details that I would never be able to see in real life. I preferred the waking world to this by far. I preferred to think I was small instead of seeing everything smaller than me. I was only thankful that it went this far, instead of having everything be subatomic, infinite expanses.
I was able to see both directly into the creatures and past them, looking at the marred, uneven, bumpy patterns on the wall, the miniature microbes that scurried along them, the piles of dead, flaking, cells, likely skin cells, shriveled and being feasted upon by its microscopic brethren. I looked back to my sheets and it was a veritable warzone. A roughly human-shaped mass of writhing, crawling cells eking out their final existences before lying dead, a mass grave that I left behind in my bed, to pile atop all the other graves that were left behind before it. Every footstep I took, every breath I made, cells inside me were living, replicating, dying. I felt my lungs rattle. It was everywhere. It was all consuming. I couldn't take it. I tried shutting it out but it wouldn't stay shut out. I could hear the blood rushing throughout my body, the scuttling of the creatures, the tiny insects, the movements of my own cells, the bubbling of my stomach's fluids. But above it all, I heard the endless pounding of my heart. I ran. Each step I took I admitted new things into my body, left more cells behind, scraped off from my outer shell. I was infinite and I hated it and I just wanted the details to go away. I didn't like it. I went to the one place I could think of to go to- the bathroom. But it was far worse than my bedroom. There were three spots in particular- the toilet, the sink, and the shower. The toilet actually was not even the worse one, though I will say that it was crawling with a veritable hive of things, unseen by any eyes but the eyes I was cursed to see with in this world, festering, reproducing. If I wasn't too big for their understanding I could have sworn they were all looking at me. I could have sworn that the little things crawling around in my eyes, on my skin, in my mouth, around every corner, every nook and cranny of my body, were staring right back at the things on that seat. And I could have sworn I heard them laughing- the beating of my heart increased, and the pulse and shockwave sent throughout my body increased in rhythm.
The sink was even worse, a veritable black pit, with microbe after microbe littering it. I could see them clump together, fall towards the even darker center, which opened up to the center of the hive. In an attempt to get rid of the things altogether, I turned on the sink, bracing myself for having to come in contact with the faucet, almost dripping with amorphous blobs. I felt it come in contact with my hand, and what in real life seemed like a stainless, shining surface felt the same as if I dipped my hands in an algae-covered stagnant pond. It was only there for a second, and I turned up the faucet.
Black water- not even water, black ooze poured out of it- and it burbled as it went into the drain of the sink. My hand came in contact again with the faucet to turn it back off, but the faucet grabbed my hand back. I felt it latch to my hand, and so I pulled away. Pulled away, in fact, and fell right back into the shower. The glass gave way and broke, piercing me. I could feel each capillary and miniature vein split in my body, severed like rubber cord. I felt the skin break, crack apart almost, and I felt the blood literally drain out of my body. I felt empty- or at least, for only a moment- and then I felt the things inside the shower seep their way in, scrambling over one another for purchase inside my body. I felt them enter. I felt them attack me. I felt each cell get ravaged as these things began a war path. Infection was setting in more rapidly than I thought, because I could feel things that entered at cuts at my shoulder blades enter cells in my lungs. I gagged, bit my cheek and drew blood trying not to scream, felt bile rise in my throat, each single molecule of bile. I could taste it, and even my taste was magnified. The acidic taste burned me, felt like fire in my mouth, not just a tame fire but a blistering inferno. My mouth opened so I could scream as the bile reached the bites in my inner cheek and caused a pain worse than anything I could have imagined. That just led to more things entering my mouth and some bile coming out.
And then I saw things walk into my room. One was covered in the microbes. In fact, the microscopic creatures in the sink, in the shower, in the toilet, on my body, actually began coagulating, moving forward and clustering into small spikes, standing at attention, pointed towards the first figure. It held sway over them all, that much I could see, and I could see past the trillions and trillions of microbial things that it was made up of and I could see it was wearing a black leather mask with a beak and two round eyeholes, akin to the plague doctors of the middle ages. It was dressed in all black. The second figure that came in, however, was all white, even the lenses where it was supposed to see out of where completely opaque white. Where it walked, all things ceased, all microbial life stopped existing where it set foot. Its gaze eradicated microbes in the air, and its very presence was jarring, even moreso than anything I've seen, because there was nothing on its body. There was nothing on its body, or in its body, but it was there, and it existed, but it was nothing alive, not even a single cell.
"Well, brother," began the one in black. It spoke through its microbes, billions and billions of small voices, each one joining together, but not altogether. A few billion made one sound, another few billion made another sound, and so on and so forth until the infinite number of things lurking in this room and the rooms beyond spoke those two words with such a booming resonance that it made my ears sting. It turned to its dead, white brother.
"Yes, brother?" responded the other one. This one did not speak at all, or it did not have any voice that I could recall. I couldn't help but get the feeling that it didn't speak, but my mind heard its voice anyways, as if it worked through and into my mind directly and not through the legions of microbial life in the room.
"I believe this one has learned our plight," the one in black responded. It looked directly into me, and I could swear that I felt my entire body begin to fester. I felt my cells begin to waver at its gaze, I felt a number of cells swell, metastasize. I felt my body begin to break out, in everything. Its very gaze sent orders to its trillions of microscopic foot-soldiers, and they went to work, splitting my skin open into lesions, moving around my body, swelling areas of my arms and legs and turning them into blisters, and I could feel every microscopic organism inside. I could feel microbes leak out of my eyes, my nose, my mouth, begin coagulating, hardening on my dead exterior flesh. My hands shook, my blood still flowed, as all attempts to even seal up the cut had vanished, making me haemophiliac and leaving me to drain out.
"Yes, brother, I could say he had," replied the one in white.
"How long has he been dreaming, brother?" replied the one in black.
"He's been dreaming since the moon was young, brother," replied the one in white.
"Yes, brother, since the moon was young and the stars were but infant gases, trying to ignite their way into life."
"Shall we wake him up, then, brother?" asked the one in white.
"Soon. We shall, soon, but we will let him sleep his dream within a dream within a dream still," he spoke, deafeningly loud. Even the microbial life inside my body spoke as if it were part of him. Many were right next to my ears and it threatened to deafen me.
"Where shall he end up next, brother? He will not reappear with us for many an eon."
"No, my brother, he will not. But we will see him soon enough, and we will make this world anew for him to... content himself."
"Yes, brother. But will he remember us?"
They began stepping towards me. The one in black left an afterimage as he walked, and microscopic sludge puddled where he set foot, sliding off of him. The one in white, in turn, had no after image, and its garments did not even move, as if its presence deadened even the air, leaving nothing left alive.
"Maybe, brother. Maybe. But he will remember our names."
"Of course, brother. For none in this world know not of the glory of Caduceus," the one in white said, and as it said its name I felt that I had heard it somewhere before. I believe I remember hearing it in some lecture at some point in time back when I was younger and still in college.
"Neither have they forgotten the rancor of Keres," replied the one in black. This, too, sounded familiar. "Now, will you be the one to do the honors, or will I?"
"I hope I shall this time, brother. Don't worry, he will revisit us again."
"Then let us let him falter again," said the one in black.
The one in white stepped toward me, and held out its hand. I could feel its presence marking absence. When its hand touched my flesh, my flesh simply vanished. Its thumb was in the path of my eyeball, and, layer by layer as it dug into me the cells of my eye began to wink out- not simply shrivel or die, but cease to exist altogether. All my cells, living and dead, fell into it, and it didn't even hurt. In fact, it just felt like nothing. Then its fingers touched my brain.
Then I woke up. It's currently 11:15 AM. I've been asleep for 11 hours and yet it felt shorter than the one in the plastic world.
I'm not going to take a shower tonight, I think.
End Dream 02
