I was on my feet before I knew it. I reached for the doorknob, the metal slipping from my grasp once as I tried to yank the door open. The moment I opened it just a fraction, a series of dissonant notes ricocheted between my ears. A spot on the top of my skull buzzed and vibrated as it felt like something was peeling back layers of neurons.
[Sit down.]
The words appeared again, and the door slammed shut and locked by itself. From the wooden grains of the door dripped silver molten steel, coating my only escape all at once, before solidifying the room shut. I hadn't even started dashing to the windows before they shattered inward and froze midair: a maze of jagged shards, some so thin I could only catch a glimpse at odd angles.
Out of options, my brain finally caught up to my body. I felt weak, my legs shook, and I was breathing heavily. I could partially feel my heart in my skull. I tried to lower myself to the floor, but my legs gave out as my vision gave way to static.
[Congratulations, You've Entered The Endless Dream]
[You have been rewarded.]
[Visitor: OII-1734-3.PRMEV12]
[Lucidity: 0]
[Assimilation: 10 -> 11]
[Identity: 50-> 55]
[Continuity: 14 -> 10]
[Presence: 160 -> 200]
[Inventory]
[Empty]
[Boons]
[None]
[Restrictions]
[None]
[Titles: 1]
[Hidden]
Too much information. Too much to process. This felt wrong. It felt like living in four dimensions instead of three, and everything looked so detailed.
Facts. What facts did I have? Fact: there were words inside my head. Fact: they were speaking to me. Fact: the door was closed. I had gone to sleep. I was dreaming. I was dreaming!
[Lucidity: 0 -> 1]
Okay. A lucid dream. My brother's journals must have been getting to me. I focused on the glass shards. It was a dream. I owned the dream. It was mine, and if it was mine, I should be able to manipulate it. I pushed, trying to shove the glass shard back into place, but they stayed still, frozen in the air.
I tried a different approach. I closed my eyes, weaving an imaginary hillside with lush, tall grass that blew in intense bursts of wind. Large clouds on the horizon, the soft scent of rain. I opened my eyes, imagining myself in the scene. But I was still in the dorm room.
[You are not the master of this dream.]
[Choose a reward]
[A key to no lock - "Hold onto this. You'll need it."]
[It's already in your pocket. You don't remember picking it up.]
[A Flickering Lantern - "Light to Guide your way"]
[Warm in your hands. The warmth fades the moment you need it.]
[A Map of Familiar Places - "Find your way back"]
[The lines shift when you're not looking. Some places no longer exist.]
[Alternate Reward]
[Open the Door]
[Take note. There are others here. Do not take alternate rewards unless you know exactly who they are from.]
Something inside me acted, breaking out of the temporary stupor that I found myself in. I grabbed a chair and hurled it at the suspended glass shards. The impact should have shattered them, broken them into smaller pieces at the very least, but they didn't move. The chair lodged in the air for a heartbeat, its faux leather cushions impaled mid-motion before – with a ripping sound – the glass shredded the seat, sending it clattering to the ground. It didn't help, but it gave me an idea.
Pulling the desk out from its spot on the wall, I shoved it towards the floating blades, the squealing of wood against wood giving me a headache. I stopped short of touching the glass before tearing the mattress from the bed. With only slightly shaking hands, I heaved the mattress and threw it on the shards. If I could disperse my weight properly, I could crawl across to the window. After that … Well, I had to get there first.
[Annoying]
The floor lurched. A chorus of creaking metal pipes snapping, stone grinding against stone, and wooden planks tearing filled the room in an instant as the world sluggishly rotated on an off-axis.
I stumbled at the sudden lurch, almost losing my balance and falling into the field of glass. I steadied myself by dropping flat onto the desk. What was once the floor was rapidly becoming a wall, and I had to crawl up the "side" of the desk to get some measure of safety.
The scraping sound of wood on wood was my only warning. I looked up too late as Joey's bed frame lost its last bit of traction and came crashing down.
It hit me before I could scream, sending me backward into the floating shards.
Something ripped. Sudden and raw. Pain lanced down my spine, vertebrae grinding as glass punched through muscle. Blood spilled from my back – from my lungs. My vision collapsed inward, narrowing to a field of static.
I struggled for breath, tried to scream, but only succeeded in choking out gurgling gasps.
I was going to die.
But it was a dream. It had to be a dream.
I choked. It hurt. It hurt. Fuck, it hurt.
I raised my hands, feeling the weight of mountains on me as I pushed weakly against the bed frame. The small amount of force caused the shard to snap my rib, and my stomach dropped as I entered free fall.
[Let's try again. Next time. Play along. Take a gift.]
[Lucidity: 1 -> 5]
No. No, no, no.
A shard slammed through my throat.
A pop. A severing – snapped apart.
Then nothing. Not even pain.
I lost all feeling in an instant that I refused to accept. Where were my limbs? My heartbeat? My body?
Static roared in my skull, searching for something, anything – frantic and desperate.
Scream. Twitch. Convulse. Move! Do something. Anything.
Please.
I woke up screaming, clawing at my neck and limbs as I held my body close. I squeezed my wrist tightly. Feeling the sensations of pain as I squeezed tighter and tighter still until my nails imprinted on my skin.
Then humming. A low reverberation that steadily rose in volume until it was all I could hear. I let out a yell, but my bones were pushing against my skin in beat with the hum – now so intense I couldn't tell if I made a noise at all. I covered my ears— slammed my head into the floor, all in an attempt to escape the quiet noise.
Only when all other thoughts were drowned out did the pitch ratchet up in sudden waves. Each octave higher comes with worse effects. First, my limbs seized. Then my throat constricted shut. Every nerve ending turned on at once, and I felt the acid in my stomach and my intestines grinding against one another. Blood ran freely from my nose, but I couldn't turn, so it slid back down into my throat, where it pooled against my closed esophagus.
I writhed, unable to fully process what was happening before the ringing hit its crescendo in a burst of noise and vanished just as quickly.
Bile rose from my throat, leaving it coarse and scratchy, as I threw up blood and stomach acid. Tears fell freely from my face as I coughed and sputtered on the ground, wondering if I had just experienced a stroke.
A bad dream. My mind was trying to wake my body up.
But I remembered. I remember it in almost perfect clarity. Every feeling, every puncture, and crushing weight. I couldn't get it out of my head. My stomach rolled once more as I continued to empty my lunch onto Joey's floor.
My arms lost all energy. I held my side, gingerly squeezing and poking at it. I could feel it. It didn't hurt.
It was just a dream. All just a bad dream.
But I knew deep down it wasn't. Because out of the corner of my eye, I could see it.
[You have died.]
I don't know how long I stayed on the floor, curled in a ball next to my vomit, but it was long enough for Joey to find me. I barely noticed when he flicked on the lights and let out a surprised yell. I knew he was there. I understood that he was shocked by the scene; the concern in his voice was evident as he kneeled down next to me.
I just couldn't respond. His words didn't really register in my mind. He was saying something. Something about calling, but I just stared off into space, cradling my neck with both hands.
Responding took a while longer after that – long after he had propped me up onto the couch, cleaned up my vomit, and put on a TV show for me to watch while he paced.
I finally managed a response halfway through an episode of The Office. "Sorry about your floor."
He didn't say anything at first, just walked over to his mini-fridge before handing me a freshly opened sports drink.
The contents were refreshing. I didn't realize my throat was so parched and torn up until I was greedily drinking from the bottle.
"Hey, hey, slow down. Those things don't grow on trees," he warned me, and I realized I had chugged more than half the bottle.
By that time, I had regained my composure, but I could still feel the burning static of nothingness in my limbs if I focused hard enough. Felt the shards of glass ripping through bone as I drowned from punctured lungs.
I could remember it all in perfect detail.
I paused. It was just a dream. The text in the corner of my eye when I woke up was just a residual. It wasn't real. In my mind, I could picture the numbers, the categories, and the values along with them–
"Let's go to the hospital," Joey's voice pulled me from my thoughts as he paused the show.
"No." I shook my head. The thought of those sterile rooms threatened to send my mind into another hole. "It was just a bad dream."
"A bad dream! A-" Joey practically yelled, his composure cracking for a deep moment. "Dorian, that was not a bad dream. That was a stroke or an aneurysm or something."
"I feel fine. Really, Joey."
"Feel fine all you want, but do it at a hospital."
"I'm not going to a fucking hospital."
The sound of the TV continued through the silence. I stared at Joey, who glared at me back just as intensely.
"The clinic then."
I opened my mouth to snap a no at him but controlled myself. Clinics were fine. Clinics were fine, but what if I was wrong and my brain was actually exploding? Not to mention, if I didn't do this … I likely would never hear from Joey again.
"Okay."
Joey decided that I was apparently too fragile to walk all the way to the student parking lot, so he told me to hang tight while he pulled his car around. I was supposed to wait for him to come back up and walk me down, but of course, I didn't listen.
Stepping out of the room felt wrong in a way that was hard to describe. Like the moment I left, everything grew stale and rigid. The lack of movement was in everything; even the air vents sat still despite how frigid it had suddenly become.
As I walked through the winding halls of the dorm, a crawling sensation brushed over my skin. The lights were perfectly still, but in my mind's eye, I felt them flickering. Pulsing in time with my heart, speeding up every second I remained in the hall.
I swore I could hear breathing as I walked. Only for a moment, but the rhythmic rolling of warm breath trailing down my neck caused me to whip around, throwing a haymaker at thin air. No more hot air. Then it was behind me again, and I could almost feel the smallest drop of liquid hit my shirt. Every time I tried to focus on it, the feeling vanished.
I knew it was nothing. Logically, it couldn't have been. I was just shaken from the nightmare. That didn't stop me from breaking into a jog of feigned casualness – steady strides, even breaths.
Still, my steps were too fast, my feet pressing too hard into the ground, and I found my jog turning into a run. Then, a sprint. Without realizing it, I was suddenly bolting through halls and downstairs, the phantom breathing roaring in my ears.
I slammed through the double doors of the dorm into the cool night air. The crawling sensation vanished the instant I crossed the threshold. I sucked down air in deep, greedy gasps – my heart hammering in arrhythmic palpitations. A sharp pain stabbed into my chest, forcing me to stumble. A low hiss of agony pushed itself from my lips as I steadied myself against the rough cement of the sidewalk.
Something was happening. I wasn't crazy, and it wasn't just a dream.