I lay awake on my bed at someĀ
unknown hour during some
unknown night in some
unknown room within some
unknown house upon an
unknown land that I do not wish to know.
Time was irrelevant
for that moment of memory if it can be called that.
Everything was jumbled
together:
the past,
the present,
and the future —
all of this has happened,
was happening,
and was still going to happen.
My mind wandered through the darkness
of the ceiling above,
a spattered sky that traced patterns,
both real and imaginary upon the wood, plaster, steel, and plastic of its structure; of its nature, but like the time, what it was composed of didnāt matter. My mind trekked off in its own
directionless direction,
a driverless car with a brick
on
the
gas
and
the
brake
lines
cut,
leaping
through
the
air
with
carelessness
and crashing through the walls of caution before coming to a soaking halt within a placid river, drowning and stewing in its self-delivered despair, requesting nor accepting any assistance from anyone or anything.
The walls inched
closer and closer
with every blink of my irritated eyes, constraining every breath I take, which caused my midnight blue sheets to tighten
around
my
chest
with
a
vice-like
grip.
My mind screamed desperately to get out, wanting to escape from the millions upon millions of thoughts that roamed within, thoughts both gross and mundane, diabolical and sublime, and everything in between, twisting and turning through the endless labyrinth of neurons that form the brain, the home, and prison of the mind; where everything is known and unknown; a collision of reality and fantasy; where the borders and boundaries between book and reader dissolve.
This much I knew and am certain of, yet the mind did not have the capability to carry out its wishes, the body refused to obey the mindās demands. More so, the body knew that it will become nothing without the mind. The bodyās rebellion is in the self-interest of its self-preservation. But the mind is not so easily defeated. It cried and wailed like a bottleless infant until it has satisfied every one of its needs by any means necessary.
By this time
I felt like my mind
would never rest
and I prepared myself to give in
to the insomnia ahead.
My eyelashes suddenly felt
as if they were made of lead,
pulling my eyelids shut and sweeping
me down the undertow of sleep.
My prayer of rest
had been answered
and I thought that I could finally be at peace…
I couldnāt have been more wrong.
As the dream world came over me, I found myself lying on a deserted beach in the middle of the night with only the moon in the naked sky: no clouds, no stars, just the haunting white moonlight reflecting shards of ivory on the bladed tips of every inky wave. Waves that crept closer and closer to where I lay. I tried to get up and away from the blackened waters that threatened to lap at my feet, but my body refused to comply. I could feel the deathly waters gradually kissing my legs, leaving behind gooseflesh upon my skin. As the cycle of freezing water and desolate wind washed over me, I could sense that something was terribly wrong.
I strained my head
and
attempted
to
look
down
at
my
legs
only
to
find
them
mutilated
and
transformed
into
something
I
do
not
recognize,
something
terrible
and
unknown,
twisted
and
warped,
unholy
and
eldritch,
even
though
it
still
remained
every
bit
a
part
of
me.
I continued to feel the waters crashing over me, changing me, enveloping me with their liquid shadows. I sensed my skin being peeled off, shed from the entity that I once was, like a snake molting its scales, revealing the monstrosity underneath. The waves began to caress my chest, submerging my arms, and transmuting them into some sort of multi- appendaged limbs, oily black and stick-like, each of which appeared to be covered in thorns.
The serrated waters were soon crashing over my head as I felt my eyes melt within their sockets, yet a cursed miracle remained: my vision stayed; milky and distorted. My limbs kicked and began to dig into the queer sands of this indescribable beach, trying to claw away from the cold ebon waves, twisting and twisted, flailing and flailed, each contorted wildly as if they all had minds of their own; their own need for self- preservation. Suddenly, all turned black, blacker than anything I had ever seen. A grand absence of light that pure darkness didnāt even come close to describing what I did not see. I could still sense the waters washing over me, changing me, forming me, transforming me, morphine me, sending curious sensations throughout my being as terror consumed me then.
I sprang forth from my slumber,
wide awake with terror,
a terror from the deepest shadows of my mind,
covered in the sweat of a dozen people.
My breath came in increasingly rapid
and shallow gasps,
my mouth opening and closing
like a fish drowning
on the deck of a ship.
Darkness still filled my sight,
yet in the distance,
I could glimpse at vague slashes of light,
sharp blades of illumination
which cut through the umbral void,
the shrouded fog of my restless thoughts,
tearing what remained of my sanity
to shreds
until nothing remained
but my body and my thoughts.
But I do not see what you see,
dear readerā¦
O — yes, I know you are reading this: staring at your screen the same screen with the cobweb of cracks growing from the corner, tracing over every stroke of every letter, following the words along like a trail of crumbs out from the dreaded forests of doom and into the safety and salvation of your apps, newsfeeds, and social interactions, but you are trapped here — trapped just like me, for it watches you,
O — yes — it watches you just as it watched me on that despicable beach. It lives between the spaces between words, between letters, between the lines that separate everything from everything else. I do not see what you see, our visions are not the same, the lights are all askew, the colors nameless beyond recognition, edges and shapes are blurred and distorted; shadows danced, freely and disjointed from their sources. The worst of all was the smell:
milky,
sour,
terrifyingly rotten.
Something dredged up from the deepest wells
of history, of time immemorial.
Something had happened,
something that I cannot explain.
I wouldnāt know where to begin,
so donāt think I could help you
once you figure out
what is truly happening here,
but the shadows,
O — the shadows, they have changed me.
They washed up and over me,
consumed my being,
and digested out something else,
something unknown. In spite of the hungry terror
that gnawed at the floor of my stomach,
assisted by nausea from who knows where
that had clawed its way up
my esophagus
and evacuated
the air from my
lungs in the process,
leaving me desiccated
from the inside out.
My body screamed to move, just as yours is silently doing now, and just like yours, my parts refused to move. You, on the other hand, donāt know that you should move. I simply lay in a sickly sweet puddle of sick and sweat, soaked in my own disgust as I ponder if youāll ever see it coming, sense it arriving, stretching up and over you, little by little.
What happened here?
What have I become?
What will you become?
My bones felt like they belonged to someone else, no — something else. Muscles tangled and reshaped with inhuman ability, veins that pumped battery acid, corroding the walls of my reality, the walls of these letters and words, the screen that separates you from I; veins that pumped an angry blood from a time before time.
Am I dying?
If this was what dying felt like,
let it end quickly.
Am I being reborn?
If so, may it never happen to me again.
What kind of hell is this?
I reeled and willed myself out of my bed,
out of my room,
out of my house!
My voice ripped itself from its chords
while it wailed and
rippled in chords
not meant for human throats,
but my body did not care,
my mind did not care.
I raced away as fast
as I could
for all I wanted was to get away.
And then I froze in my stride.
Stuck.
Immobile.
Immovable.
Something held me in place, something sticky,
firm,
organic.
I could not see where it originated from,
but I could see where I was at that moment.
I could see the shattered shape before me
just as my reality shattered all around
everything I knew.
The screen had been cracked —
it had escaped.
That was its plan all along
and I had fallen into its web
of lies and deceit,
its trap,
but a moment of calm swept over me,
a mere moment
as I realized that I was not its primary target,
its prey of choice.
O — dear reader, how I tried to warn you.
That broken glass,
lightning cracks across
pixels of infinite potential gave it a way,
gave it a gate, gave it a means
to get to you. Eight legs,
far too many eyes, one intent,
and a million ways
to
consume
you.
—fIn—