Curate, connect, and discover
Tonight’s the night. It has to be–
I’ve been patient, biding my time, ignoring this urge in the name of an experiment but also because some part of me was hoping it’s all a lie I’ve convinced myself of. That I could break away.. I’ve always known what I am. At first it was easy, and I’d gotten hopeful. The dreams dulled to a myriad of eyes, a cacophony of screams. I got dms, offering to share memories and I politely held my resolve but then the ache began to grow steadily like a raw and aching wound in my chest.
Now that ache has developed into everything I’ve feared the most. This parasocial relationship has become my religion and way of life. So here I am, in another bedroom. In the end it’s no big surprise, I crossed the line a lifetime ago in a reality far from this one. Torturing myself with guilt isn’t enough to hold me back anymore. I want to know the feeling of touching that high again, even if the heart palpitations kill me. I think she understands that when I look at her.
Megan is watching me back, frightened, but I look through her all the same. Her eyes are dark, frantic and searching mine for any humanity. Yet she found none in any of them. This has become a methodical practice, and I was far too desperate to show any delay. I was beyond reasoning, and nothing more than a caged animal. The eyes are the gateway to her soul, and so my fingers stabbed down into the pupil of her eye, and again we meet in this same place that we always do.
Megan Awbrey was lost. I could feel that much, the stirring of dread like dead leaves in the wind reverberated through my chest. I had been in the mall with friends, this was just supposed to be a girl’s outing, not only a week away from my birthday. How had I found myself.. Here? It’s a long stretching room, painted a shade that seemed to be red or orange. The loud and bright coloring was miles away from the crisp white of the mini mall that I had been in only moments ago. The only way out was a vivid lilac door. “Erica..? Dana? Where the fuck are you?!” my voice comes out as the sound of an agitated young woman, in her 20s- 22 to be exact, her life had only just begun. I try to shake off the building anxiety and make a move towards the blue door with a huff, only to find the gap between the door and I pull. I was sure I had moved and yet the door remained the same distance away.
Something is terribly wrong here, I can feel it in the air. Something heavy that sends hot and cold flashes through my body, making my vision dip and swoon, my ears ringing- I am so terribly trapped. I zip open my purse, fishing out an old tube of chapstick. ‘If I really am going nowhere, this chapstick will stay in my line of sight as I’m making a dash for the door,’ I think to myself, dropping it down onto the old, thin carpeted floor and watching it roll slightly into the baseboard of the wall. Megan is congratulating herself for her forward thinking as she takes quick little steps down the ugly ashen hallway, she almost forgets the dire situation she has found herself in, until I look back and see that the chapstick is nowhere to be seen. More direly, I hear footsteps. Fast, quickly closing in footsteps, and so I- Megan, begins to run down the hallway, desperately trying to reach a door she cannot even remember the color of.
She had not gotten this far through nursing school, to ultimately be backrooms-ed to death. She thinks this under a litany of other frantic and half aborted thoughts- because you barely even have time to think, when you’re running for your life in high heels, mind you-
It was about the time that the hallway went awash in a creamy off putting shade of yellow, that I remembered that I am not Megan Awbrey. This thing I’m running from, at the end of the hallway is just a part of my dreams, and therefore a part of me. I slow to a jog and eventually a halt, refusing to look back at what is probably rapidly advancing. I can hear it’s footsteps on the walls, the ceiling–
“May I ask you a few questions? I feel like you have something to tell me.” And the voice is so terribly mine, that it catches me off guard. It is me, so suddenly that I feel off kilter, ripped from a dream. It’s quiet for a minute and then, “You can ask, but you’ll never find answers.”
..
What do you do, when you find yourself interrogating your own memories? Are you truly getting the answers you so desperately crave, or is my own subconscious feeding me my worst fears? Is it all an exercise in vanity?
“I need to know what you are. Please, what is your nature?” I sound frantic to my own ears, and I realize I have disregarded the questionnaire in feverish hope of something making sense. I have no script to rely on now. “I am the gaps in your mind, the fear of chaos. You are living on something concrete, but I am the in between,” The anomaly before me grins wide, drinking in my reaction. I shudder; suddenly this hallway seems so far from the warmth of the sun. Chaos incarnate is one way to look at them, and yet somehow I felt as though they were playing with their answer. “Have you always been force of the impossible coming into reality?” My fingers twitch, the nails clicking against each other in anticipation. At this vague and cryptic question, they cock their head in curiosity.
The question is at the tip of my tongue, ‘Were you always this, or was it something that was inflicted upon you?’ but I think better of it, instead choosing to ask, “Are there others like you?”
“Many! More than you could hope to find in your dreams. So many of them were hapless victims that found themselves taken over by an entity outside of human comprehension. Have you ever watched someone get chewed up in the mouth of fear and swallowed down until there was nothing left of the person you knew before? That is what they are! Victims have been fed to the fears countless times, and it will happen again.”
“Why do they do it though? What do they want?”
“Well, if you were a being that defined yourself off the fear of others for allll of your existence…what would you want, more than anything after being left in silence for as long as we have?”
“They want to be known.” I decided, because that had to be it, right? They wanted to be recognized and seen for the fearful creatures they once were- at least to inspire new fear just as they once had. Could it even be as simple as that? “Is that what you want? To be known?”
“Do I look like I do?”
I suppose not in the traditional sense. This was a being of complete chaos and contradiction, that much was readily apparent to me, and yet I think this entity would not be entertaining my inquiries if they didn't want to at least be recognized for the disorder and breaking of boundaries that they represent. They are a creature of many branching facets that wishes to be studied by inquisitive eyes- maybe I was just the man to bring them that.
“I think you have been left craving for a long time.” I finally settled on. “You would know about cravings, wouldn't you? How many memories have you strangled from people's subconscious?” There's a tone of teasing, light and airy and yet the bitter accusation underneath is digging into me deep. “This is my dream and you don't have power here,” I mutter, trying to focus on something so I could force myself awake. I desperately needed to ground myself.
“Oh don't be so coy, dear Jules. You haven't been perfecting your dream hunting because you want to help others.”
“I'm going to count backwards from 3, and then I'll wake up. Three,”
“All this pride, all this fight… oh, be honest with yourself. Yoouuu liked it~”
When the impossibly long, slender fingers of the entity ran along my chest, I couldn't help but let out a breathless gasp, a tremor running up my spine. It then became apparent to me that no matter how otherworldly I felt and looked in these dreams, there was still a part of me that felt vulnerable and human… and most of all, afraid. They could smell it on me, and I was mad at myself for giving in so easily.
“I'm nothing like you,”
“Oh no? You're not drinking in the fear? My, maybe he was wrong about you after all.”
And suddenly, the fingers stabbed deep into my chest, causing me to leap awake, grabbing at myself. As I work on catching my breath, I know when Megan finally found herself free from that monster, she never found her friends again. A sickening part of me is more focused on the possibilities our conversation has presented, rather than the guilt I should be feeling though.
.. And isn’t that just terrifying?