by Logan Castle
It’s just a nightmare. Don’t panic, it’s not real!
Yes, that’s exactly what it was, a nightmare. A series of images concocted by my subconscious to take the form of everything I most feared. I knew, despite how real this vision seemed in the moment, no harm could come to me. When I awoke, I would be right back at Plum’s side once again. And yet, that small fact brought me little comfort. I couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that something was very wrong about all of this.
My hunch was based largely on considerable experience in that department. The truth was that I had been struggling with my dreams of late. For the past six months, I was stricken with a plague of nightmares and they were always the same. I was always falling in every one of them. Not from a jump off a high ledge or being pushed by an unseen assailant. No, I always found myself in mid-air and continuing to fall, never landing, never ending and never dying.
I remembered the very first time I experienced that dreaded nightmare. Unable to wake myself up, I remained “trapped” in an endless free fall for what seemed like an eternity. It turned out to be the entire night. The next morning, when my weary eyes finally snapped open, I was completely drenched in sweat and just as fatigued and exhausted as I was when I went to bed.
After that first sleepless night, the falling nightmare persisted. It came with increasing regularity in the weeks and months that followed. I was exhausted most of the time and when I closed my eyes every night, I always feared falling asleep. I couldn’t help wondering where my subconscious would take me. Even though I wasn’t a religious man, I would pray to whoever might have been listening for a peaceful night’s rest.
But no respite ever came. My pleas went unanswered so I researched the subject on my own in the hope of finding a solution. Perhaps if I understood it better, I could find a way to silence it for good. All the websites said the same thing. When the dreamer is falling, the subconscious is trying to convey that he or she is spreading him or herself too thin and doesn’t have enough, or possibly any, control over certain aspects of their life. That explanation seemed far too simple for a nightmare of such magnitude, so I wasn’t satisfied. I considered other alternatives, including therapy. But a lifelong disdain for the profession always made me reconsider.
Pursuing my research led me to something called “Lucid Dreaming.” This term refers to your brain being cognizant that you are dreaming while you’re still caught up in the dream. In my study of Lucid Dreaming, I managed to learn how to break through to my subconscious mind and inform my sleeping self that the nightmare wasn’t real. Once I mastered lucid dreaming, I took it a step further and started to train myself to wake up. This was simple as saying “Hey, idiot, flip the switch!” If I obeyed the voice and flipped the so-called switch, my body would jolt awake. Sometimes it took a few minutes for this to happen, while other times it might have taken all night or last well into the early hours of the morning. Mostly, I was just grateful to have figured out a way to interrupt the nightmare and make it stop.
I could never go right back to sleep though. If I did, I would return to the exact moment before I had woken myself up in the first place. The only solution was to lie awake for a few minutes and then eventually fall back asleep for at least an hour or two.
The darkness currently surrounding me seemed to be growing thicker and I raised a shaking hand to touch it. My fears were only heightened when I realized I couldn’t see the outline of my fingers until I’d pressed them directly against my face. Heart pounding through my chest, I clawed my fingers at the cold, empty nothingness but it had swallowed me completely whole. I was instantly struck with a paralyzing fear that I was going to spend the duration of this nightmare flailing through a pitch-black void.
As if in response, the seemingly unrelenting darkness abruptly gave way to countless specks of light that appeared all around me. I turned my head wildly in every direction as I tried to figure out what they were but a sudden wave of cold air that brought forth goosebumps across my bare chest signaled that my unbridled ascent had just grown faster and increasingly more out of control. There was simply no time to concentrate on any one of the seemingly thousands, maybe millions, of lights for longer than a split second. As the speed of my climb increased, they took on the appearance of an endlessly trailing spiral. Frozen in awe, I allowed all my limbs to hang freely, momentarily forgetting the panic that had consumed me only moments earlier. I noticed a flurry of other colors zip past me in a dizzying rainbow effect, but those became such minute details in the greater landscape of white and blue that I didn’t even break my stare forwards to observe them as they sped by. It felt as though I was in a trance, held captive at the breathtaking display that was laid out and expanding before me.
Finally, my brain snapped me out of it. I knew I had to get out of here; I knew that there was no way I’d want to be trapped in this nightmare for the duration of the night…or whatever night would be left when my eyes sprung open. I decided to make the effort to wake myself.
Hey, asshole! I yelled to my brain. You’re having another fucking nightmare! Snap yourself out of it!
Nothing happened.
A cold and divisive dread took hold of me then. Usually, all I had to do was realize I was having a nightmare to awaken my body. Waking from a nightmare in that way was often quite sudden and intense. More than a few times, I’d scared the hell out of Plum while doing it.
This time I couldn’t end it, no matter how many times or how hard I tried.
Wake the fuck up, dammit! I yelled furiously. But I felt solid resistance. Something had trapped me inside my own head. Like the dial tone of my body had a blaring busy signal. I couldn’t get a single idea through to it no matter how much I tried. It soon became obvious that this nightmare was in charge, not I.
Suddenly and without warning, the spiral of lights came to a grinding stop, and with it, so did I. While the lights around me came to a peaceful and methodical halt, there was nothing graceful about my own. It was as though I was put into a washing machine, turned upside-down, inside out, and violently wrung out. The pit of my stomach rose, ready to explode through my mouth. My limbs strained to remain attached to my body. I gritted my teeth, trying to keep the air from bursting through my lips in a perpetual scream as the proverbial brakes of my ascent were slammed downwards with a foot that might as well have been made of lead. Once stopped, I took several deep inhales to regain my composure before looking around.
I glanced in every direction and assessed my surroundings. I was still inside a vast darkness interrupted only by balls of light, some brighter and closer than others. Millions of them. I knew instantly where I was because I’d see enough pictures in textbooks to slash any doubt in my mind that I was not right.
I was staring into the blackness of space and the balls of light could only have been stars…or planets even.
I’m… in space?! But if this is outer space, then how the hell am I breathing normally? As soon as that thought popped into my head, I cursed my ignorance.
Because it’s a dream, idiot! This was another nightmare which wasn’t confined to all those pesky laws of physics.
From my left, I caught something moving so I instinctively turned my head in that direction. I didn’t see anything at first. I wondered if my eyes were just playing tricks on me. I began to twist my head back to what was in front of me and abruptly stopped. I saw it again. Movement, coming from something small in the distance. I really had to strain to see it, but there was definitely something out there. It started out as a speck but began growing larger with every passing second.
At first, it appeared as nothing more than a mere dot amidst the grand nothingness of space but as it approached me, it took a shape that I could not mistake. It was an asteroid and, judging by the size of it, a dangerous one. Its surface was rugged with craters, jagged edges, peaks and valleys. It was rotating slowly as it sped ever closer, showing its many faces as it spun in orbit.
I’m directly
in its path!
My body froze at that realization before I went into flight mode. I strained to flap my arms and legs, even thrusting my hips forward in what I was certain must have been an utterly stupid response to move myself even slightly out of the way, but I remained stuck right where I was. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t move even a fraction of an inch.
My imminent demise, taking the form of a giant, speeding rock, was making its way ever closer. Now that I could see it, I was blown away at how large it really was. Twisting and turning through space, I must have been no bigger than an ant beneath a giant foot.
The asteroid was so massive that it hadn’t completed a full orbit, until now. Sitting proudly atop the gigantic asteroid, I was rising higher into space. I spotted a stone edifice, so colossal that I had to strain my eyes to take in the full scope of it. It appeared to be made from the same stone as the asteroid, as if it were physically carved from the rock itself.
A castle!
Unable to rip my incredulous eyes from it, I watched in mute horror as it spun towards me, taking a lopsided and off-kilter trajectory.
I felt the shadow of it completely envelop me and looked up just in time to see the stone fortress swinging down on top of me. I was strangely relieved, however. I knew when I died here I’d be waking up in real life. I shut my eyes and braced myself for the inevitable impact.
Nothing happened.
For what seemed like an eternity, I waited. I kept my eyes sealed shut just in case the nightmare was playing tricks on me. Such was the world of dreams; no rhyme or reason to them but that didn’t make any of this easier. I felt my chest tightening and realized I’d been holding my breath. I breathed out a very slow and deliberate exhale while I opened my eyes.
I was standing. My bare feet were now resting comfortably on solid ground. Studying the ground more closely, I noticed the brown and grey stone, uneven, cracked and imperfect but solid nonetheless. The broken ground stretched in a straight, but narrow pathway that extended unhindered in both directions behind and in front of me. I turned my head both ways and squinted hard to look for any indication of the pathway terminating in either direction. There wasn’t.
Does that really surprise you? I asked myself sarcastically.
So far, nothing about this nightmare was what I might have otherwise expected. I peered up from the floor, training my eyes on the walls that lined the tight corridor. The walls spanned as far as my eyes could see, even higher, every line and jagged edge on them making me pause in marvel. As I peered ever onwards, I wondered how something like this could ever have permeated into my imagination, let alone been constructed in the first place. I then realized that I was standing within the very stone castle that I was convinced only moments ago was about to flatten me.
No sooner did that recognition dawn on me, when I saw a light briefly illuminate the otherwise dark corridor. It disappeared for a moment, only to come back and fizzle out again. I waited to watch it and the flicker continued its game of hide-and-seek. This went on for a good minute or so as I stared at it, unsure of what to make of it. As the light shone through each time for a split second, I guessed that it was coming from a room further down the corridor. I could barely make out the opening in the rock each time the light twinkled in the black background. But as I watched the incessant flickering, the room was suddenly clear. It was all the way at the end of the corridor. I would have to get much closer to see inside it.
Taking one careful step after another, I approached the room. The lights wavered, growing brighter in the opening the closer I came. After I finally got there, I grabbed onto the stone wall that made up the frame of the opening and stuck my head in.
I found myself staring into a sprawling space, colossal both in size and shape. The walls of the room seemed to stretch into the vastness of the cosmos themselves and a roofless top made it that much more breathtaking. While I could have stared upwards into the starry filled and planet littered depths forever, my attention was quickly diverted back to the actual walls themselves, more specifically the one off to my very left.
On my first passing glance, the wall had appeared just like the others. Now, as I inspected it once again, it was clear this one was different. There were thousands of small breaks in it, as if the wall itself was made from a million individual squares. I strained my eyes, staring at a single square amidst the many and my breath caught sharply in my throat as I faintly made out the makings of static coming from it. They were TV screens and, as I panned my eyes all over the wall, I could see that every square was reflecting the very same distortion.
What the hell is this?!
My eyes were suddenly drawn to a flicker of movement directly in front of the massive wall. There, sitting squarely in front of the towering array of multimedia, was a small console. Projecting from it was a digital screen, similar in size to that of the many monitors it faced but noticeably longer, making it easier to discern from the rest. While my first instinct was to try and make out what was reflected on the screen, my attention was forcefully brought back to that which had caused the initial movement to begin with. Gliding through the air directly in front of the console flew a small robot.
Wait! A robot?! My mouth fell open and I couldn’t believe my eyes, but sure enough, there was no mistaking it. Cutting through the air with sharp precision, it was very small and compact. I saw the stubs for arms, which it used to push buttons on the console. I could not make out any of its other features because its back, or what I assumed was its back, was turned to me.
I considered taking a step forward, but to do so would certainly have alerted the robot to my presence. I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience anymore excitement in this nightmare so I stood very still, looking on with unfettered fascination. I imagine I must have seemed like a five-year-old gawking at a monster truck. Even in a dream state, what I saw was something that stretched the confines of my own imagination. I’d never even seen anything like this robot. Naturally, I couldn’t understand how my subconscious managed to dream it up.
My thoughts were rudely interrupted when what I was certain was a leathery hand suddenly gripped tightly onto my right arm. With an almost inhuman strength, I was tugged backwards. Caught fully unprepared, I stumbled backwards only to find myself then being wheeled around to come face to face with my assailant.
The figure wore a hooded robe that completely obscured his face. I glanced down at the hand that still grasped my arm and noted the skin was worn and spotted, either from old age or too much sun, possibly both. I glanced up to where the person’s face was shrouded by his robe and stared squarely into the dark opening. A voice emerged loudly from the darkness.
“He’s here! KT-1, the stasis field!”
The man’s voice was booming with urgency. I tried to wrench my arm from his grasp but it felt like an iron shackle, virtually immovable. Whoever he was, he wasn’t as frail as his appearance might suggest.
From the corner of my eye, I watched the robot turning swiftly in our direction. I could faintly see lights in what looked like its face illuminated brightly. Suddenly, I was frozen stiff right where I stood, unable to move a muscle in any direction. Helplessly and with only the use of my eyes, I watched the withered hand of the man before me fall from my wrist. The hooded figure paused, studying me.
I struggled to speak, but I could not say anything. I had a million questions going through my mind and no voice to ask them. Even if I could have, what would I possibly say to someone appearing in a dream of my own making?
As if he heard me, the figure nodded slowly. “KT-1, reduce the stasis field to allow the subject to speak. I must ask him some questions.”
That last part didn’t sound good. All of a sudden, the muscles controlling my mouth were free. The unexpected control of only one part of my body was an odd sensation, certainly not one I was used to.
“What is your name?” The question came while I was still gasping for air.
I looked u
p, trying to peer beneath the hood to see my captor’s face.
“I’ll ask you one more time. What is your name?” The voice sounded impatient.
“Isaac. Isaac Kent,” I managed to spit out, but my lungs burned with the effort.
“Isaac Kent. Isaac Kent,” he muttered to himself. “How did you manage to discover this place, Isaac Kent?”
I would have frowned had I been able to. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, how did I discover this place?” I shook my head. “I’m just dreaming.”
The figure shifted, looking increasingly agitated. “Don’t play coy with me. Your cooperation is not required; I could freeze you for an eternity and be done with this game you have chosen to play. So, I want you to listen to me very, very carefully.” There was a pause while he waited for me to respond.
I waited.
The voice beneath the hood sounded again. “We have gone to great pains to bring you here. First, I want to know how you managed to discover this place. Second, how did you breach our walls and enter the premises completely undetected?” I had no idea what the man was talking about. That didn’t matter because he didn’t allow me to respond. “And you must tell me to what extent you’ve meddled with the Multiverse. You better pray you haven’t caused irreparable damage. Give me the answers and I won’t make this too unpleasant for you.”
The words tumbled from my mouth quickly but my mind was still bogged down with what I just heard. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about! I was… I am dreaming. You’re just a character from my subconscious imagination!”
“I most certainly am not!” the old man roared at me, sounding extremely affronted.
I shook my head, trying to make some sense of this bizarre encounter. Clearly, I was still stuck in a dream but none of it felt like I was dreaming.
“Answer me!” the hooded man wailed and even though I was still convinced I was caught in my own imagination, I responded anyway.