//------------------------------// // Welcome To The Hereafter, Desperation and Courage Only // Story: Stupor // by Regina Wright //------------------------------// Down I went, the cleats of my conjured boots aiding each catch and release as I scaled the dream-matter. I didn't know a thing about rock-climbing, just lazy thoughts McKinney spared when he was forced to wait in a dentist's waiting room. Accepting like a limp-noodle chump the suave choices of nature magazine, nature magazine and baby magazine. Anything to look good in front of the cute receptionist. My rope and harness gear attached to my waist squealed, the little wheel spinning, louder than I thought it would be. Comforting with its senseless, shameless noise. I thumped against the trembling cliff-side, hauling my happy ass further and further from my corpse of a body. Yes, I am in the middle of getting myself out of McKinney's impending unplugging. Allow me to explain the process; astral projection and homemade bullshittery. As a coma patient, McKinney's mind can't help but wander, allowing me the sort of freedom most dreams can't experience. As he dreamed, he imagined me being able to float over his bed while also mentally projecting me over his bed. Back then, I was free to pace his room and listen to conversations. In the ghostly flesh if you can believe it. Maybe if I kept at it, I would have become a poltergeist. Could have been fun at parties. But that's how I learned that McKinney was in danger of being sent to meet his maker. With those two abilities, it took a lot of experimentation to take it to the next level: Entering other people's dreams. As fun and trauma-scarring it was to see the mind-scrambled dreams of the nurses and doctors that watched over my care -Nurse Clarice, call me- I knew that I was onto something. When a dream ends, the special matter that makes up the dream world people create in their heads leaves. It doesn't vanish. It doesn't stay with the sleeping person. It goes somewhere else. There was something freaky going on. I used to be afraid of staying in a dream when it was about to end. I thought when it poofed, I'd poof with it. The curtain falls. The end of me. But I was wrong, yeah, I was really wrong. I sat around in the dream of my eldest brother, a coward that lived in a artists' commune, as he pondered if it was fair to divvy up the insurance claim money that came with my condition. He did all of this nuanced thinking with interpretative spazzy dance and paint, boring the hell out of me. Probably the reason Julian was the one still kicking. When his dream ended, him getting woke up by Nurse Clarice, I stayed behind. Curious. The dream-matter took off but I caught onto it, carried to wherever it went. You see, I had a great revelation. That maybe, just maybe, I could survive McKinney's death. Beyond his very last breath and the moment when his labored heart would beat no more. Call me a fool but I was born to not give any fucks. And here I was, successfully getting the fuck out of dodge. I'm not exactly sure how to explain how any of it works or the shit I've seen, treading dream dust to escape my fate. But all dream-matter went to a place I called a realm. The realm of dreams. If you're a cocky son of gun, yes, you could use this place to hop into dream worlds and have your way with any dream. But if you're even cockier, you would find that this massive sprawl of dust and matter also leads to other places. Other realms. Crazy concept, am I right? Of course, I had to try my luck. I couldn't die twice, could I? All around me, except for the cliff I'm keeping solid with every concentrated touch, there was truly nothingness. The grand void of blurring, bleeding colors. Despite the realms I've snunk into, the connecting passages never changed; resembling tunnels bleached with neon light and clusters of shifting stars, red giants, duking it out in their reverie. Misty streams of flickering thoughts and half-wishes whirled around me and my foolishness as they drifted back and fro to their owners, whomever they may be. It was an noisy affair of hasty whispers and random screaming. Silence didn't exist in the realms of dream. I heard things I wish I could've ignored. Kept secrets that ate at my insides. Knew terrible stories, shitty stories and heart-breaking stories of anyone whose dream-matter I happened to come across. Everyone wanted to give their despair and joy a soapbox to preach and plead. And what better way could there be if not in a dream? It just so happened that there were a pair of ears within a bag of opinions to hear each and every last one of them. And my verdict: Mortals were indeed perpetual whiners. It's like a punchline an angel would have made. I kept up a steady pace, attempting to convince myself to mind my business. And to keep my eyes on my feet. In the realms of dreams, something I called universally the Hereafter, it was important to know where you walked. As long as you were sure of your footing, the realms wouldn't be able to consume you so easily. But still, my eyes went to the right and down. Below me and to the side of mostly nothingness, devil-eyed creatures, that I shouldn't be looking at, were feasting on their latest victim. A odd three-legged thing that had wandered out of the boundary of its dream world and into the Hereafter. It's a lot more common that you think. People walking into the realms and getting a ugly end for their troubles. I'm a special exception as I'm not a dreamer. I am a dream, plain and simple. Not worth tearing to shreds. Most of the the time, anyways. Anyhow, guardians, those cheap shot bastards, came in many forms. You only knew them by their red eyes and ragged tiny wings, lifting their slithering scaly bodies as they kept the centers of every realm orderly. These ones were like chimera men, having multiple heads of goats and beasts, scale skin with lizard tails while walking upright like humans on two legs. The monstrous guardians of this place gnawed and gorged down the dreamer's self-awareness until they became a dazed, transparent husk of a dream self. And then even less than that. I don't think dreamers can feel a thing. There would be more screams and limbs being flung around. Guardians didn't like when their prey moved. You were supposed sit and take it until they were full or they moved on. They may move in packs and did the whole hunting thing but they never liked sharing. There wasn't a single drop of loyalty amongst them. Sometimes, they even tried to eat each other if they couldn't find anything better. And by sometimes, I really mean all of the time. The guardians devoured the wavering will left behind and fought over the remains. Then they howled their find to the others, making me flinch as I realized I'd stopped moving down. Caught up in the gory show. I shuddered, envious and limply grasping onto the coarse starry rock. My mouth watered. The guardians always had to be so clean. Couldn't they have left some scraps behind? It had been a while since I had a meal. And the dreamer wasn't even human, so it would have been fine if I had gotten to them first and knocked their lights out. If I'd been quicker... I bounced against the cliff-side harsher than before, increasing the distance between each thump. I probably would have been chewed on myself. I glanced down at my boots, the soles wearing thin and the dream-matter holding the cliff together unraveling the further I went. It seemed I was about done, close to the way out. My left hand went to the rope, tugging on the line before I braced myself and leapt away for the last time. The cliff-side collapsed, crumbling as I fell backwards into the twinkling darkness. I held onto the rope, a mental manipulation of a endless yard stick and a miss-remembered harness I saw once off the side of a magazine cover. The numbers ran up to the thousands as I spun, bored and not-bored. Then restless and dizzy as I considered the digits the rope showed; 6:51:28 of the way down. Numbers never worked right in this place. Who knows how long I've wandered? Days. Months. Years. Of should I think of it, hours. Crueler still, minutes. “What if I haven't gotten anywhere at all?” A wayward thought sat on my head and chirped, trying to slink itself inside of my skull. “What if this is what I deserved?” I swatted that ugly thought away and didn't miss it, watching the awful question fluttering upwards to be trash to someone else. My own reedy voice repeating it until it flew out of sight. I continued falling and falling until the void became flat and the flat space that-was-and-always-would-be became something of a door. Silhouettes of eyelids sat along where the door's handle could have been, fickle was any door in a dream, looking like crawling smears of not-darkness and not-light, blinking. The door thought itself clever, opening itself slightly with its large keyhole glowing. Nothing more than tricks. Dreamers, yeah? The ones who wander out of their own dreams. Most of the protective features of any realm; the guardians, the shifting landscape, unexplained logic. They were built for the sole purpose of putting dreamers back into their worlds. Yes, the Hereafter follows a type of logic to counteract any dream-induced logic that any dreamers might follow. Of course, I don't know why. It's just something I've noticed, using any free-ranged dreamer as a guinea pig when I came across something I couldn't figure out right away. For example, that door. I've watched dreamers try all sorts of methods of trying to get through. From turning into a key, shrinking small to run underneath the door to even cutting through all of the bullshit and simply growing large enough to use the door handle. None of them ever worked. I merely imagined that I should be on the other side. And so, I was. What was left of my boots turned into glittery ash as my feet made contact with the ground of this new realm. I used to have something of a number system, categorizing the types of dream-matter and dreamers that populated the place. I stopped counting somewhere between Realm 162, the skulking six-arm beast lords, and Realm 286, the mutated flora people born from cosmic radiation. You see, every time I kept count of an even numbered realm, I tended to loop back to them like an idiot. This new realm, it was going for the dark and stormy night theme. I couldn't help but shiver a little. Clouds cascaded from the star-lit sky, making a path for my bare feet to tread. The soft drizzle of rain poured upwards, splatting on the empty horizon. Fragments of the daily lives of the people here floated aimlessly. I saw carts, castles and even thatched two-story huts drifting up and down as they were formed and then dissembled by the dream-matter. But the most eeriest thing about this place was the fact that it was so still. I brought a hand to my ear and took a moment to listen. It was quiet, echoing the sleepy murmurs of the dreaming folk but little else. I decided that I needed to investigate. This couldn't be the type of opportunity that I was thinking of, could it? I stole a cloud, using what was left of my reserves to bring it under my control. God, I really needed something to eat. Then flew up, flying through the sky, ripples distorting the image of a night sky. I wounded up in a complete duplicate of the same place, only a single shade off. The pitch black night now a deep navy blue, the stars replaced with horse muzzles, screaming. Oh shit, am I actually getting away with this? I need one more test to be sure. I flew up again, repeating the process. The night sky burned, flames licking the edges of all I could see. The sprawling horizon was bent, crooked as it drooped low as it melted into bluish goo. The realm was alive, shrieks echoing from one corner to the next, crying out because of the intrusion. I sat back on my cloud, a smile eating half of my face as I waited. Nobody showed up. Not a dream-beast. Not a pack of nightmares. Not even a sentinel, the great warden of any realm. This place was completely unguarded. Ripe for the picking. Perfect for the, my stomach growled, feasting. I allowed my form to shift, hands and feet turning into claws. Dense dusk-color fur sprouting on my human skin. I grew wider and taller, a long spiked tail flailing as I outgrew the little cloud. I didn't need it for my plans. My jagged fangs clicked against each other, steaming saliva running down my massive jaw. I looked quite a fright, not at all too shabby for a passable imitation of a dream-beast. Then I was off, sprinting as my billowy form kept me afloat. The smell of dreamers filled my nostrils as I hunted them down, slipping into their handcrafted dream worlds. Like a spider to a fly, I stalked them. My paws silent, my teeth sharp. The first two hardly noticed. Equine creatures caught up in the before-performance jitters of something I couldn't make two tails out of. Roommates. Their dreams resembled each other. They were upset over the same thing. I ripped them to shreds, gorging on their ego and competitive spirit. The after-taste burned my tongue and I wanted something sweeter to wash it down. The next four put up a little fight, noticing me before they noticed their missing limb. I grabbed them by their colorful tails and flipped them into the air, gulping their bright bodies down with a single swallow. Their dreams were mixes of romantic confessions and sappy wishes, things they'd never say out loud. I got a buzz after the sixth, wondering how much saccharine fluff I could down before getting drunk. I yanked a few dreamers out of their dream world, conjuring collars and leases for the group. It would be a while until I found my way to the center of the realm to continue my journey and I like the taste of these six dreamers. I don't know why but they had sugar and spice and everything nice, the dream-matter nibbled off them even changing my fur to a muted rainbow color. Weird. Then I tugged them along, gnawing on the spare limbs. Hey, they didn't need all four to walk. Sure, I may seem like a relentless beast but I had rules. No humans. No children. No hopes. I stayed away from those three for an obvious reason. McKinney. My body didn't want or need to be reminded of his current situation so no humans. He remembered every one of his dreamless nights as a child, so no children. And hopes, McKinney was a petty, miserable human. Eating hope-drenched dreams were the equivalent of kicking a puppy and then setting it on fire. It's best that I stay away from them. And I'm pretty, pretty sure dreamers can't feel a thing. In fact, they should be grateful that I was the one who ate them and not something real nasty. I'm not the only thing that travels between realms. With my motley crew of pastel horses, I lazily thought of a flashlight and got a dinky pen light for my trouble. Then with a very necessary eye-roll and deeply sated sigh, I pointed at my feet as I held it in my mouth. Always, in any realm, keep an eye on your feet. Then we traveled, crossing chocolate rivers and fields of grazing apples. No rhyme or reason to any of what we saw. As we went along, I started to get the munchies again. Once I start eating dreamers, I can't seem to stop until I munch them completely down. It was quite the shame because the whole point of bringing them along was to have emergency and delicious supply. But with so many dreamers to eat, I wouldn't miss these six at all. I slowed us down and turned my eyes to the winged unicorn, her fur a lavender purple. She didn't need her wings, did she? I pulled on her cord, my tongue sliding across my fangs as I got ready to bite. But then the creature planted her hooves down, her head morphing into another of the species. A mane of stars and a unflinching glare greeted me as she morphed the dreamer's form into her own, a towering horse with horn and wings. I stared, my mind grinding to a stop. Dreamers didn't have opened eyes. Dreamers couldn't glare. And dreamers certainly couldn't... She opened her mouth, her voice booming. "I know what you are and what you have done, accursed dream-eater!" ...Talk. Talking does not happen, but I guess you learn something new. I can't claim to be a complete expert of the Hereafter, now can I? Regardless, I smirked, revealing my three sets of pearly whites. "You shouldn't have revealed yourself to me." I cackled, my voice deep and dark. "You reek of the undeniable stench of a dreamer and I do believe that I can and I will eat you. Sweet dreams."