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
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Dream 01 - A World of Plastic
I don't know why I gave this log a subtitle, to be honest. I guess, I'm just gonna roll with it. Each time the world seems different, changed. It sometimes cycles back to old worlds that I've visited, but it never is in the same state I left it in. It's strange like that. I'll note the dream that I've experienced, but before that I'll jot down my pre-sleep routine.
At 10:45, as per usual, I finished my assignments that I'd need to turn into work. I work as a contractor and consultant in the engineering field, and I have to design and alter schematics in scientific machinery to increase productivity, cost-effective usage of materials and yield more accurate results. I haven't taken the time to learn which company I was currently working on assignment for, but they seem well enough and they're more than happy to take my advice into consideration on schematic alteration. At 11:00 I began my night shower, and roughly 15 minutes later I brush my teeth using the same brand of toothpaste I always have, floss, and this was one of the days when I shave my face. I make myself a single toasted piece of nine-grain wheat bread, and lay the same brand of butter on it. Then at approximately 11:30 I go to sleep- well, more like 11:45, because a mixture of reluctance to revisit those dream worlds and general thoughts about the day prevent me from actually falling asleep for about 15 minutes.
I woke up, tossed off my cover sheet, twisted my body to the right side of my bed, and stumbled off of it. I rubbed my eyes, turned to the door. The door was a different color, which I thought was actually fairly strange. Usually my surroundings don't deviate from the norm until after I go through the door. The floor feels strange against my feet- just as firm, but the texture was different. I slowly raised my hand to open the door and I was able to squeeze the knob in my hand. It left large indentations for a few seconds before the knob returned to its original shape. I squeezed it one more time to confirm that the doorknob was actually plastic. I'd be willing to bet that the floor beneath my feet was also plastic. I opened the door, taking one last look behind me and realizing, vaguely, that my bed had since become plastic as well, with the sheet being one hard red blob on my unnaturally cubic shape. I turned back to the hallway outside my door and I noticed, again, dimly, that the entire room was also made almost entirely out of plastic. The only things that weren't plastic were, for some reason, the wires that held the pictures to the walls of the hallway in my house. In the real world, they were repurposed chicken wire, taped to the back of the frames and then wrapped around a nail. In this dream, they were thick, white stringy threads that somehow held the now nondescript pictures to the wall. The pictures had no memories to them, and were more like silhouettes, faded watercolors. So far, nothing extremely out of the ordinary. Then I heard giggling coming from downstairs in what sounded like the kitchen and dining room. The giggle was hard to place, it seemed to reverberate and had some strange tonal split to it, but if I had to guess at the time, I guessed it was the giggle of a young girl. I slowly plodded my way down the plastic stairs, trying to steady myself on the handrail, but the plastic was too smooth and malleable- my hand went into the plastic and my feet gave way and I slipped down them.
I landed on my head at the foot of the steps, the side of my head connecting square with a small corner landing. I could hear the crack of my ethereal dream-world skull and the pain felt real enough, I suppose. But when I looked down, I was mesmerized. Even as my blood was pooling from a small cut on my forehead, it was becoming something two-dimensional, with solid black outline and no texture to speak of. Covering my forehead with one hand, I tried to scoop up my blood and, transfixed, I began to peel it from the plastic landing like a decal. I had lost track of the giggle and when I finally diverted my attention from the fact that my blood had essentially become a sticker the giggle had stopped. I don't know exactly at what point it stopped but the sound was replaced by a faint pattering some distance away. I couldn't tell what direction it was coming from, everything was a light plastic material and the sound was deadened. I looked over, across the living room which connected directly to the stairs and through the small opening into the dining room and kitchen. The fridge was open, and one table was turned slightly towards the opening.
I noticed footprints. Not made by any kind of powder or liquid, but footprints embedded into the plastic floor. It took me a moment to figure out the footprints were actually in a path headed directly for me. I followed the path the footprints made. They started at the turned chair, near the doorway. Then just inside the doorway. Following it, it crept closer, and I already could see that the path wasn't curving any time soon. The path of the footprints was aimed straight at me. I looked down, and saw two, very distinct footprints, child size, embedded into the very bottom step below the landing. In fact, the footprints were more pronounced here. It's like whomever was standing there was standing for a long time.
This is what I hate about my nightmares. They don't go at it like most nightmares do. I don't wake up in my underwear or have a creepy ghost girl scream something cryptic or nonsensical into my ear. I sometimes have falling dreams, but in those I don't have the good fortune to wake up right as I hit the ground- I have to experience the full process of my body losing its functions, and then its senses, and then its thought processes. That's the thing about my nightmares. They're subtle. I'd be fine with screaming ghost girls so long as they weren't subtle about it.
But nobody was standing there. I looked on the stairs behind me. There were no footprints. I looked around on the plastic landing. After that set on the bottom step, the footprints ceased. I shrugged it off as one of the intricacies of my fucked up nightmares, and made my way towards the kitchen. The blood matted one of my eyes, and I kept it closed. Using my one open eye, I looked outside my window. Everything was fake. I couldn't tell from far away, but it all looked plastic. The house across from the backyard, the grass, the trees, it was all visibly synthetic. I saw figures moving down the street, but they were blurry so I couldn't make out the details. I continued on my way towards the kitchen. Each time I took a step, I heard the pattering. I couldn't place the sound still, but every time I stopped, the pattering stopped. Every time I started, the pattering started. Once I entered the kitchen itself, I heard a strange scrape, like something sharp against the plastic, and the pattering somehow became louder. I looked around. The fridge was still wide open, but I didn't feel any blast of cool air, and it occurred to me at that point that the air was just as stale and dead as the rest of this plastic world. I looked at the table. It was also, predictably, made of plastic, and in front of one chair tucked away under the table was a bowl. The bowl was plastic, some sort of white bowl with a purple stripe that I've never seen before. What was inside the bowl, I couldn't exactly tell. But it was a dark red, almost maroon. I tapped it with one finger and, to nobody's surprise, it was plastic.
I closed the fridge door, noting that there was absolutely nothing in the fridge and, in fact, all the shelves on either side of the door were nothing but plastic boxes with stickers on it. I had a strange vibe, feeling like I was but a tiny little being crawling around some kind of giant dollhouse. I opened all the cabinets. The insides were not insides at all, but merely more stickers on lifeless plastic.
At this point, I turned back to the bowl. I tried pushing it but it wouldn't budge an inch. I tried picking it up, but my hands wouldn't get good leverage. I looked for something suitable to pry it from the table, if that was even possible, but the only things I had for that were in drawers that were no longer drawers in this dream world. I turned around, still looking for some kind of spatula or flat edge, when I heard a scoot from immediately behind me. I look and the chair is now pulled out from under the table, and I could have sworn the bowl was now closer to the edge of the table than before.
I shook my head, trying to ignore the incoming sense of dread that always preceded something awful. I didn't want to hear it. I really thought, for some reason, that if I ignored the feeling it wouldn't happen. I turned back around still trying the cabinets.
That's when I heard a much louder scoot and an almost deafening SLAM from right by my ear.
I jumped and turned back around. This time the chair was all the way out by the plastic refrigerator, and next to the bowl was a very, VERY defined hand-print. It was child's size, matching the young girl's giggle that I heard before. I don't know what compelled me to sit down. Maybe a sense of destiny, if my little subconscious mind could grasp the concept. Maybe I was simply compelled. Sometimes in these dreams my body has no conscious will of its own, and allows the dream to just drag my sorry carcass in any way it sees fit. But, no matter why I sat down, I sat down.
And that's when the first spike impaled itself through my right hand.
I tried desperately to yank it out of my hand as an instinctive reflex, but it was stuck fast through my hand and into the table. I tried wiggling it to get it free, even though that caused me a great deal of pain. I looked at my hand when the wiggling and the pain stopped and I saw that my hand was starting to become numb- not just numb, completely cut off from my brain. It was slowly becoming more and more into plastic, starting at the center of the wound and moving outwards. I screamed, and then I noticed the string coming out of the other end of the spike. It went directly upwards.
I looked upwards, and realized at that moment where the pattering was coming from.
A little girl- if I could even call her that, was staring at me, suspended from the ceiling, her head snapped almost entirely backwards. The string connected to the spike, white fabric, tied around her left index finger. The first thing that drew my attention was that she was the only thing besides me and the photogrpahs that had anything besides plastic. She wore some old-fashioned red garments, a long matted skirt and a one-color blouse. It was all bright crimson. Her hair, hanging down from her head, was stringy, and looked suspiciously close to the strings both attached to the pictures and attached to the spike embedded in my hand. Her eyes were like doll eyes, they stared at me, impossibly wide and completely dead, giving nothing but a glassy shimmer. Her mouth was twisted into a smile, a plastic smile to match the rest of her completely synthetic face and skin. But there were two parallel slits down either side of her mouth, like a ventriloquist's dummy. I remember this vividly- in fact, this and the next moment of the nightmare will probably be burned into my mind. As I looked up, she opened her ventriloquist dummy mouth- and showed me a fearsome set of sharp, needlepoint teeth, jagged but uniform. Then, almost out of thin air, popped two more spikes between the index and middle finger of her right hand and the index finger and thumb of her left hand. The spikes dropped, and before I could react, one spike drove through my other hand. As I bent down in pain, the third spike pierced my neck, and I couldn't even scream anymore. I could barely breathe. Not that I didn't try, but my throat and the inner workings of my vocal chords were slowly turning to useless plastic, so all that was coming out was a wheeze. I was nearing shock, but being a dream I knew I would never get that luxury. She somehow forced my head to move forward with her spikes- the pain forced me to react, to comply with her.
The bowl of unknown "liquid" began to melt. First the maroon liquid inside began bubbling, actually becoming some dark red substance that smelled disgusting to whatever part of my nose was still flesh and blood, as the plastic began working its way up my arms and head. I wanted to do anything, even wheeze, but my mouth was completely plastic at this point, and I couldn't feel anything anymore. I longed for the pain again, at least I'd be real. At least I'd be alive. She forcefully moved my hands, but without pain, as each of the wounds from my hands had long since been deadened from becoming plastic, to touch the bowl. My hands grabbed onto the bowl, and my head began angling farther downward as my hands pulled the bowl closer to me. I could feel the heat on the last surviving organic patches of what was once my face, and I realized that it was hot wax. My one thought as my face completely submerged itself in the agonizingly hot liquid was that it was a damn shame that I couldn't scream.
3:55 AM. I woke up earlier. I screamed. I screamed long and loud and I don't regret one second of it. I pinched myself. Slapped myself. Even drew blood to see if it was real. When I was completely convinced that this was reality and not the world where I was becoming a plastic man dousing his head in boiling wax, I took a long shower and cried, shaking until the sun finally came up. An organic sun, shining down on organic trees and foliage.
That wasn't the first time I felt lucky just to be awake again, and I'm sure that it won't be the last. All I hope is I don't have to revisit the Plastic World again.
End Dream 01
At 10:45, as per usual, I finished my assignments that I'd need to turn into work. I work as a contractor and consultant in the engineering field, and I have to design and alter schematics in scientific machinery to increase productivity, cost-effective usage of materials and yield more accurate results. I haven't taken the time to learn which company I was currently working on assignment for, but they seem well enough and they're more than happy to take my advice into consideration on schematic alteration. At 11:00 I began my night shower, and roughly 15 minutes later I brush my teeth using the same brand of toothpaste I always have, floss, and this was one of the days when I shave my face. I make myself a single toasted piece of nine-grain wheat bread, and lay the same brand of butter on it. Then at approximately 11:30 I go to sleep- well, more like 11:45, because a mixture of reluctance to revisit those dream worlds and general thoughts about the day prevent me from actually falling asleep for about 15 minutes.
I woke up, tossed off my cover sheet, twisted my body to the right side of my bed, and stumbled off of it. I rubbed my eyes, turned to the door. The door was a different color, which I thought was actually fairly strange. Usually my surroundings don't deviate from the norm until after I go through the door. The floor feels strange against my feet- just as firm, but the texture was different. I slowly raised my hand to open the door and I was able to squeeze the knob in my hand. It left large indentations for a few seconds before the knob returned to its original shape. I squeezed it one more time to confirm that the doorknob was actually plastic. I'd be willing to bet that the floor beneath my feet was also plastic. I opened the door, taking one last look behind me and realizing, vaguely, that my bed had since become plastic as well, with the sheet being one hard red blob on my unnaturally cubic shape. I turned back to the hallway outside my door and I noticed, again, dimly, that the entire room was also made almost entirely out of plastic. The only things that weren't plastic were, for some reason, the wires that held the pictures to the walls of the hallway in my house. In the real world, they were repurposed chicken wire, taped to the back of the frames and then wrapped around a nail. In this dream, they were thick, white stringy threads that somehow held the now nondescript pictures to the wall. The pictures had no memories to them, and were more like silhouettes, faded watercolors. So far, nothing extremely out of the ordinary. Then I heard giggling coming from downstairs in what sounded like the kitchen and dining room. The giggle was hard to place, it seemed to reverberate and had some strange tonal split to it, but if I had to guess at the time, I guessed it was the giggle of a young girl. I slowly plodded my way down the plastic stairs, trying to steady myself on the handrail, but the plastic was too smooth and malleable- my hand went into the plastic and my feet gave way and I slipped down them.
I landed on my head at the foot of the steps, the side of my head connecting square with a small corner landing. I could hear the crack of my ethereal dream-world skull and the pain felt real enough, I suppose. But when I looked down, I was mesmerized. Even as my blood was pooling from a small cut on my forehead, it was becoming something two-dimensional, with solid black outline and no texture to speak of. Covering my forehead with one hand, I tried to scoop up my blood and, transfixed, I began to peel it from the plastic landing like a decal. I had lost track of the giggle and when I finally diverted my attention from the fact that my blood had essentially become a sticker the giggle had stopped. I don't know exactly at what point it stopped but the sound was replaced by a faint pattering some distance away. I couldn't tell what direction it was coming from, everything was a light plastic material and the sound was deadened. I looked over, across the living room which connected directly to the stairs and through the small opening into the dining room and kitchen. The fridge was open, and one table was turned slightly towards the opening.
I noticed footprints. Not made by any kind of powder or liquid, but footprints embedded into the plastic floor. It took me a moment to figure out the footprints were actually in a path headed directly for me. I followed the path the footprints made. They started at the turned chair, near the doorway. Then just inside the doorway. Following it, it crept closer, and I already could see that the path wasn't curving any time soon. The path of the footprints was aimed straight at me. I looked down, and saw two, very distinct footprints, child size, embedded into the very bottom step below the landing. In fact, the footprints were more pronounced here. It's like whomever was standing there was standing for a long time.
This is what I hate about my nightmares. They don't go at it like most nightmares do. I don't wake up in my underwear or have a creepy ghost girl scream something cryptic or nonsensical into my ear. I sometimes have falling dreams, but in those I don't have the good fortune to wake up right as I hit the ground- I have to experience the full process of my body losing its functions, and then its senses, and then its thought processes. That's the thing about my nightmares. They're subtle. I'd be fine with screaming ghost girls so long as they weren't subtle about it.
But nobody was standing there. I looked on the stairs behind me. There were no footprints. I looked around on the plastic landing. After that set on the bottom step, the footprints ceased. I shrugged it off as one of the intricacies of my fucked up nightmares, and made my way towards the kitchen. The blood matted one of my eyes, and I kept it closed. Using my one open eye, I looked outside my window. Everything was fake. I couldn't tell from far away, but it all looked plastic. The house across from the backyard, the grass, the trees, it was all visibly synthetic. I saw figures moving down the street, but they were blurry so I couldn't make out the details. I continued on my way towards the kitchen. Each time I took a step, I heard the pattering. I couldn't place the sound still, but every time I stopped, the pattering stopped. Every time I started, the pattering started. Once I entered the kitchen itself, I heard a strange scrape, like something sharp against the plastic, and the pattering somehow became louder. I looked around. The fridge was still wide open, but I didn't feel any blast of cool air, and it occurred to me at that point that the air was just as stale and dead as the rest of this plastic world. I looked at the table. It was also, predictably, made of plastic, and in front of one chair tucked away under the table was a bowl. The bowl was plastic, some sort of white bowl with a purple stripe that I've never seen before. What was inside the bowl, I couldn't exactly tell. But it was a dark red, almost maroon. I tapped it with one finger and, to nobody's surprise, it was plastic.
I closed the fridge door, noting that there was absolutely nothing in the fridge and, in fact, all the shelves on either side of the door were nothing but plastic boxes with stickers on it. I had a strange vibe, feeling like I was but a tiny little being crawling around some kind of giant dollhouse. I opened all the cabinets. The insides were not insides at all, but merely more stickers on lifeless plastic.
At this point, I turned back to the bowl. I tried pushing it but it wouldn't budge an inch. I tried picking it up, but my hands wouldn't get good leverage. I looked for something suitable to pry it from the table, if that was even possible, but the only things I had for that were in drawers that were no longer drawers in this dream world. I turned around, still looking for some kind of spatula or flat edge, when I heard a scoot from immediately behind me. I look and the chair is now pulled out from under the table, and I could have sworn the bowl was now closer to the edge of the table than before.
I shook my head, trying to ignore the incoming sense of dread that always preceded something awful. I didn't want to hear it. I really thought, for some reason, that if I ignored the feeling it wouldn't happen. I turned back around still trying the cabinets.
That's when I heard a much louder scoot and an almost deafening SLAM from right by my ear.
I jumped and turned back around. This time the chair was all the way out by the plastic refrigerator, and next to the bowl was a very, VERY defined hand-print. It was child's size, matching the young girl's giggle that I heard before. I don't know what compelled me to sit down. Maybe a sense of destiny, if my little subconscious mind could grasp the concept. Maybe I was simply compelled. Sometimes in these dreams my body has no conscious will of its own, and allows the dream to just drag my sorry carcass in any way it sees fit. But, no matter why I sat down, I sat down.
And that's when the first spike impaled itself through my right hand.
I tried desperately to yank it out of my hand as an instinctive reflex, but it was stuck fast through my hand and into the table. I tried wiggling it to get it free, even though that caused me a great deal of pain. I looked at my hand when the wiggling and the pain stopped and I saw that my hand was starting to become numb- not just numb, completely cut off from my brain. It was slowly becoming more and more into plastic, starting at the center of the wound and moving outwards. I screamed, and then I noticed the string coming out of the other end of the spike. It went directly upwards.
I looked upwards, and realized at that moment where the pattering was coming from.
A little girl- if I could even call her that, was staring at me, suspended from the ceiling, her head snapped almost entirely backwards. The string connected to the spike, white fabric, tied around her left index finger. The first thing that drew my attention was that she was the only thing besides me and the photogrpahs that had anything besides plastic. She wore some old-fashioned red garments, a long matted skirt and a one-color blouse. It was all bright crimson. Her hair, hanging down from her head, was stringy, and looked suspiciously close to the strings both attached to the pictures and attached to the spike embedded in my hand. Her eyes were like doll eyes, they stared at me, impossibly wide and completely dead, giving nothing but a glassy shimmer. Her mouth was twisted into a smile, a plastic smile to match the rest of her completely synthetic face and skin. But there were two parallel slits down either side of her mouth, like a ventriloquist's dummy. I remember this vividly- in fact, this and the next moment of the nightmare will probably be burned into my mind. As I looked up, she opened her ventriloquist dummy mouth- and showed me a fearsome set of sharp, needlepoint teeth, jagged but uniform. Then, almost out of thin air, popped two more spikes between the index and middle finger of her right hand and the index finger and thumb of her left hand. The spikes dropped, and before I could react, one spike drove through my other hand. As I bent down in pain, the third spike pierced my neck, and I couldn't even scream anymore. I could barely breathe. Not that I didn't try, but my throat and the inner workings of my vocal chords were slowly turning to useless plastic, so all that was coming out was a wheeze. I was nearing shock, but being a dream I knew I would never get that luxury. She somehow forced my head to move forward with her spikes- the pain forced me to react, to comply with her.
The bowl of unknown "liquid" began to melt. First the maroon liquid inside began bubbling, actually becoming some dark red substance that smelled disgusting to whatever part of my nose was still flesh and blood, as the plastic began working its way up my arms and head. I wanted to do anything, even wheeze, but my mouth was completely plastic at this point, and I couldn't feel anything anymore. I longed for the pain again, at least I'd be real. At least I'd be alive. She forcefully moved my hands, but without pain, as each of the wounds from my hands had long since been deadened from becoming plastic, to touch the bowl. My hands grabbed onto the bowl, and my head began angling farther downward as my hands pulled the bowl closer to me. I could feel the heat on the last surviving organic patches of what was once my face, and I realized that it was hot wax. My one thought as my face completely submerged itself in the agonizingly hot liquid was that it was a damn shame that I couldn't scream.
3:55 AM. I woke up earlier. I screamed. I screamed long and loud and I don't regret one second of it. I pinched myself. Slapped myself. Even drew blood to see if it was real. When I was completely convinced that this was reality and not the world where I was becoming a plastic man dousing his head in boiling wax, I took a long shower and cried, shaking until the sun finally came up. An organic sun, shining down on organic trees and foliage.
That wasn't the first time I felt lucky just to be awake again, and I'm sure that it won't be the last. All I hope is I don't have to revisit the Plastic World again.
End Dream 01
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Prelude to Dream Journals
I don't know why I'm typing this. I'm acting like these words will reach anybody, like I'm doing anything other than throwing meaningless words at a page that doesn't even physically exist. Even if people were to read this, they would dismiss these chronicles as fiction.
Let them. I know people don't believe me and I've given up on caring long ago. I can only make this sound semi-plausible and semi-rational, but hopefully the way I word sentences will be in such a cohesive way that you (whomever you, you nonexistent, hypothetical reader may or may not be) won't show this to your friends (whether or not you have any, of course- no offense meant, of course, again this is completely relative to the fact of whether or not anyone truly reads this blog) and giggle over the new complete lunatic who decided to put up a little public web journal. This isn't Ted is God, here, though I'll gladly call my own mental health into question. I'd be so happy is simply being unable to trust my own perceptions and senses was all I was dealing with. At least then I would be assured that it wasn't anyone else, it was just me.
I won't give out a real name. That's just silly. Neither will I be so oh-so humble by bequeathing myself with some haughty, badass name like "The Wanderer" or "The Dreamless Dreamer" or something else completely self-contrary.
Actually, nevermind, I'm too lazy to think of a fake name more original than John Smith so I'll just say- hm... The Chancellor. Yeah, call me The Chancellor. Why? Because I just thought it up and when I don't have god-awful nightmares that keep me in cold sweats or visions of things that aren't real that make me doubt the stability of this pointless and meaningless universe that we live in, I'm a sassy piece of shit.
You don't like The Chancellor? Fine. Call me "daddy", for short. Why not. Go crazy.
I guess I haven't been explaining myself. It would constitute me re-addressing my own failing mental health and currently this electronic sheet is a peaceful solitary island of perceptual normality in a sea of "what the fuck is happening to my mind".
I guess the first thing I should say is, I have dreams. Well, I say dreams, but I guess you would call them nightmares. I wouldn't even call them that. What they are lacks a suitable word in English that would do the horrifying experiences justice. It starts out the same way every time, and every time it feels real to the point that I can't believe it's not when I truly wake up. I say truly because every dream starts the same way- with me getting out of bed, making it, and stepping out of the door. It's not until that door opens that the fragile thread of reality in my subconscious snaps completely.
I have a very strong distrust of doctors and medical professionals in general, as ridiculous as that may seem to you. Well, tough it up. It's a waste of money if I'm too unsure of medical practitioners to even take what they're saying at face value, and so I looked up alternative coping mechanisms for things like I have. Unsurprisingly, there aren't many- or should I say any- coping mechanisms for recurring nightmares in the same vein as the ones I have. But the closest conceivable one that I could find was to write down my nightmares in a dream journal of sorts.
I'm too lazy to write things down on paper and the nightmares usually only linger for a couple hours or so, and to put that to printed text by hand would take too long and I couldn't write it in the detail that I need to feel like it's done any good for my emotional well-being. So, to satiate my own emotional and mental instability and to give all of you (I say all of you, but highly likely it's only four or so people, tops, who read this) something to, I guess, morbidly enjoy(?), I've decided to make it into a blog that anyone can see. Oh, boy. And it's not like I have crippling anxiety and fear of social pressure or anything. Honestly, the fact that only four people are reading this is the reason that I'm sticking with this method.
So, I'm going to go to post this and head off to sleep tonight. I have the same sleep schedule every night, I finish my extra work at my job at around 10:45 PM, and I go to bed at around 11:30 PM. I wake up around 7:15 the next morning, but varying the sleep pattern doesn't affect the dreams I have, to be honest. Neither does varying my eating habits, increasing my already fairly strenuous exercise regimen, rearranging the way I set my silverware (I don't have any obsessive compulsive disorder, I don't think, but I'm meticulous when I can help it, especially with the layout of my kitchen and dining room). Taking sleeping pills or any sort of localized anesthetic does nothing, either. In the end, the nightmares happen every night whether I like them or not, and the best I can do is write it in a way that you might enjoy it.
Let them. I know people don't believe me and I've given up on caring long ago. I can only make this sound semi-plausible and semi-rational, but hopefully the way I word sentences will be in such a cohesive way that you (whomever you, you nonexistent, hypothetical reader may or may not be) won't show this to your friends (whether or not you have any, of course- no offense meant, of course, again this is completely relative to the fact of whether or not anyone truly reads this blog) and giggle over the new complete lunatic who decided to put up a little public web journal. This isn't Ted is God, here, though I'll gladly call my own mental health into question. I'd be so happy is simply being unable to trust my own perceptions and senses was all I was dealing with. At least then I would be assured that it wasn't anyone else, it was just me.
I won't give out a real name. That's just silly. Neither will I be so oh-so humble by bequeathing myself with some haughty, badass name like "The Wanderer" or "The Dreamless Dreamer" or something else completely self-contrary.
Actually, nevermind, I'm too lazy to think of a fake name more original than John Smith so I'll just say- hm... The Chancellor. Yeah, call me The Chancellor. Why? Because I just thought it up and when I don't have god-awful nightmares that keep me in cold sweats or visions of things that aren't real that make me doubt the stability of this pointless and meaningless universe that we live in, I'm a sassy piece of shit.
You don't like The Chancellor? Fine. Call me "daddy", for short. Why not. Go crazy.
I guess I haven't been explaining myself. It would constitute me re-addressing my own failing mental health and currently this electronic sheet is a peaceful solitary island of perceptual normality in a sea of "what the fuck is happening to my mind".
I guess the first thing I should say is, I have dreams. Well, I say dreams, but I guess you would call them nightmares. I wouldn't even call them that. What they are lacks a suitable word in English that would do the horrifying experiences justice. It starts out the same way every time, and every time it feels real to the point that I can't believe it's not when I truly wake up. I say truly because every dream starts the same way- with me getting out of bed, making it, and stepping out of the door. It's not until that door opens that the fragile thread of reality in my subconscious snaps completely.
I have a very strong distrust of doctors and medical professionals in general, as ridiculous as that may seem to you. Well, tough it up. It's a waste of money if I'm too unsure of medical practitioners to even take what they're saying at face value, and so I looked up alternative coping mechanisms for things like I have. Unsurprisingly, there aren't many- or should I say any- coping mechanisms for recurring nightmares in the same vein as the ones I have. But the closest conceivable one that I could find was to write down my nightmares in a dream journal of sorts.
I'm too lazy to write things down on paper and the nightmares usually only linger for a couple hours or so, and to put that to printed text by hand would take too long and I couldn't write it in the detail that I need to feel like it's done any good for my emotional well-being. So, to satiate my own emotional and mental instability and to give all of you (I say all of you, but highly likely it's only four or so people, tops, who read this) something to, I guess, morbidly enjoy(?), I've decided to make it into a blog that anyone can see. Oh, boy. And it's not like I have crippling anxiety and fear of social pressure or anything. Honestly, the fact that only four people are reading this is the reason that I'm sticking with this method.
So, I'm going to go to post this and head off to sleep tonight. I have the same sleep schedule every night, I finish my extra work at my job at around 10:45 PM, and I go to bed at around 11:30 PM. I wake up around 7:15 the next morning, but varying the sleep pattern doesn't affect the dreams I have, to be honest. Neither does varying my eating habits, increasing my already fairly strenuous exercise regimen, rearranging the way I set my silverware (I don't have any obsessive compulsive disorder, I don't think, but I'm meticulous when I can help it, especially with the layout of my kitchen and dining room). Taking sleeping pills or any sort of localized anesthetic does nothing, either. In the end, the nightmares happen every night whether I like them or not, and the best I can do is write it in a way that you might enjoy it.
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