Into the void of the real

I found myself walking through a throng of pedestrians. I push and shove through the invisible faces, and the riptide of random bodies swarming against my every movement. Claustrophobia and agoraphobia envelop me, swallowing me into paralysis. I can feel my lungs seize, and the panic chugging at my chest with adrenaline. My knees weaken at the endless drove of bodies. The crowd surges like a school of anchovies darting from predators, and evading attacks.

This archaic event smothers me in waves of moving flesh, and petrified thoughts. I want to hide from it all. Fall down without further fight against the hordes, and allow it all to take me down. My chest tightens, my muscles atrophy. I feel tired. Dizzy. Defeated. 

All at once, a ripple seems to distance the herds. A border of impenetrability surrounds me in an odd bubble of serenity. Everything is all happening so quickly.

The peace comes easily, and the molar-grinding anxiety of the crowds slowly dissolves into contentment. The breaths come easier. Lighter. Freer. Calmer. Enlightenment had breathed me in. Given me shelter. I walk effortlessly now, as civilization detours around my path. I was as invisible to the crowds as the breeze creating the rhythm in wind chimes. 

A soft wind catches an errant crumpled piece of newspaper that dances across the sky and brings my attention to her.

Standing in the center of Times Square traffic is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in all my 23 years. Her silk robes float on the gentle drafts. Almost as if in slow motion. All the while I was caught somewhere between the molecules of space and time.

I'm drawn to her.

Absently, I stroll to her.

She's ethereal. Almost goddess-like. Each step closer reveals a statuesque female unburdened by all the drowning noise of mankind. There could be no molds that could trap her beauty and confine her essence. She would survive eternity as a Venus in the clamshell.

The tears begin to well in my tired eyes.

Not sadness.

Not madness.

Not loss.

Joy.

Comfort.

Love.

I approach her, and she reaches for me. Embracing her grasp, I pull her closer to me. I knew this is the moment that freezes the clocks that track existence. Whatever particles that were claiming future or past are suddenly caught in the bottleneck of the hourglass. This present is etched into the universe. This moment of splendor dissolves the cold years of the former, to the unspeakable of the unknown distant.

We own time.

I bury my head into her hug, to feel her warmth. The placidity that our combination had crafted was light as a feather. I felt as if we could float to the gods of love and prosperity to beg for humanity's reconnection back to feeling and hope with our love as the proof.

I'd happily live in nonexistence forever to never lose this feeling. This idea. This world.

I never want to leave this place.

Never.

Softly I hear her breathy whisper:

"Something's wrong."

A klaxon horn begins to screech across the land. Its reverberation rumbling through the buildings while screeching to the heavens, and well beyond.

I look up to see citizens staring at us in a gnarled death face. Like painted mannequins littering the area as far as the eyes can see. They stood frozen with expressions of pure evil waiting to attack, and eat.

All around us, they swallow our eternity and wreck the beauty of our discovery. The moment had dissolved into chaos as they physically contorted to a madness of something not of this world.

As the klaxon horn intensifies, I crouch and clap my ears in a useless effort to protect myself from the pitch of this wailing insanity.

I stand to look for refuge.

The public's eyes turned black as crude oil and oozed with a hot bubbling anger. Their faces twisted further into an unhuman version of their prior selves. They resembled ravenous hyenas foaming with rabid intent. 

Terrified to my core, I turned back to her.

The inky blackness coagulating in her ocular cavities stabs a valley through my soul. My heart sinks low, as it all slides into focus. Her spirit had been consumed.

Her jaw unlatches and begins to decay in an ugly, macabre, and unholy way as a gargling hiss was emitted from this foul, and unrecognizable creature.

Whatever she started out to be was gone.

There are no words.

No warnings.

No goodbyes.

Just gone.

I'm stolen away by the whine of straining steel beams, and stressed concrete which had overrode the screaming sirens but, only temporarily. Simultaneously, the shatter of millions of windows imploding in unison jolted me into survival mode, as I crouched down once more to avoid the sheets of raining glass.

I stand to see the faded sunlight drift and dissolve into a blackened blood-red sky. A vortex begins swirling upward, twisting the shape away from the Manhattan skyline, and conforming its individuality into black sand dunes. The skyscrapers churn with the inverted twisting of the sky that separates from itself like hot ashes.

The vile eyes on me stare without seeing. Observe without feeling.

They see...

...but, it's something I'm not yet allowed.

Instantly, all heads shift their dark gazes upwards. Almost like a glitch. It's as if they had always been looking to the same spot in the sky.

Uneasily, I follow their sights to something unbelievable.

Perched atop the once popular news screens occupying Time Square is a human gargoyle. I can feel its awful presence spying, as a set of greasy, and slimy tentacles reach out from its back, and sway into the air around it. 

How long had it been up there smacking its chops, watching my heart break, and waiting to consume its prey?

I look towards the people. They'd begun to demolish the shells of their individual human containment to allow their dark ugliness to reign.

They rip at their own flesh.

Peel at their coils.

Pry the skin from themselves, and each other. Whatever had tied them to mortality, was now revealing what ultimately laid beneath those clever cloaks.

The horns begin to die into an echo…

…and somehow, I knew I had to run...

Right now!

I turn to flee, only to be ensnared.

My once goddess of tranquility and pureness had nabbed me, hissing her cold harshness deep into my heart with a dark vile moan. With an unlatched jaw, and the void of what she once was, she tries to swallow me. Her sandpaper tongue meanders across my eyes. I squirm away as the shadows of the former crowds begin to stalk me like primal animals.

I maneuver around the masses and flee as fast as I can. I duck, dodge, and slither out of their aggressive attempts to apprehend me.

I sprint as fast as possible, but it's of no use. I can only run so much, so hard, but it doesn't change the inevitable. 

I am still being watched.

I turn to look over my shoulder, and promptly get tackled. Now pinned beneath the heinous grips of the dune demon. I struggle against it, and try to break free. Its dripping eyes glow purple with no eyelids. Its face grimaces into a crude contortion that causes a string of goo to land on my cheek. It sears like a corrosive acid as it burns into my skin.

I struggle to escape its horrid clutches. Its voice crackles with a vicious laughter not known among man or beast. Its maw opens, and a tongue unfurls from its stinking mouth. The meaty pink strip stained a revolting dried brown in the center lashes about, before it clamps down with its rotting jagged teeth and begins gnashing forth and back. A thick black stream of its blood splashes across my face, as it chews though and amputates its own tongue over my mouth. All the while laughing that awful hysterical laugh. 

The tongue begins to wiggle and thump around, as the tip locates my right eye. With a slap, it begins to bore its way into my eye socket…

...with all the energy I can muster, I bolt upright against its grips…

Awake.

My heart rate screams with a chemical overdose of being lost too deep within a dream world.

Sweat rains out of my pores like I was locked in a sauna. My brain pulses with the unconscious flashbacks of what just occurred. Sitting upright, I look around the room trying to comprehend what just happened. I try my best to shake away those images my subconsciousness felt necessary to abuse me with this evening, and acknowledge the distinction from the violent night terrors, to basic reality.

I cleanse my senses by repeatedly telling myself:

"It's just a dream"

"It's just a dream"

"It's just a dream"

My brain buzzes like a turf war between wasps and hornets evicting a beehive.

Slowly, I ease myself back into reality. I'm still a bit fuzzy around the edges mentally, but, the quiet dark around me is calming my once erratic thoughts, and the dread is dissolving a little.

I swivel out of bed and stumble towards the bathroom.

I stood by the restroom entrance for a moment to look back at her, and watch her while she quietly slept. She was on her side facing away from me. I try to soothe my brain further by syncing it with her gentle snores. I watch her slow breaths, rise and fall beneath the quilt. Quietly, I think to myself:

I'm okay?

I'm okay.

I'm okay!

With that, I head to the sink. I turn the faucet to the cold tap and splash my face, while running the cool water cupped in my hands through my hair, and over my head.

I turn off the water, and stand evenly to face the mirror. While I'm toweling off, that's when my eyes focus enough to see the apparition of my dreamed, and destroyed beloved standing and huffing behind me. I feel her dead breath creep coldly up the back of my neck.

I spin on my heels to come full circle to her. She grabs my throat with scaly fingers and opens her slaked jaw. She sprouts tentacles that harshly wrap around my body as she pulls me into her gaped mouth. Her coarse tongue licking my sweating eyes, as she inhales…

AWAKE!

I wrenched out of a dead sleep, petrified beyond the rationality of capable thought.

I look around shocked.

"WHOA! WHAT IN THE FUCK WAS THAT?!?"

I utter dumbfoundedly, and really loud as Isearch the room in a daze for my wretched bride.

What is this?

Why is this happening?!

Where the fuck is she?!?

I try to slow my breathing, but it feels like a  full blown panic attack attempting to give me back-to-back strokes.

I see her curled body lying next to me, slightly stretching. I knew I had disturbed her rest with my seemingly random vocal outburst, but I balled my fingers into a fist, and ready myself anyway. 

Still feeling a bit off, I look to her and say:

"Baby, I had the most awful dream... I dreamt you tried to eat me… Twice! You were a horrible monster tasting my eyes, and… Ugh, it was awful."

I hover over her just a little, and just in case.

She adjusts her sleeping position while still slightly unconscious and tiredly whispers:

"...mmmmm I'm so sorry, babe. That sounds really horrible.” She yawns a little, and suggests: “Why don't you get some water, and come back to bed. I need snuggles."

"Okay... Yeah, okay."

I quietly agree, while unconsciously nodding along to her idea. I shake my hands out trying to loosen up a bit.

I adjust my breaths, and with an exasperated sigh, I slink out of bed wobbling to the bathroom sink to rinse my face, and get a drink.

I wash my face, and wet my hair down. I take the plastic cup and let it fill. It starts overflowing a bit when it harshly dawns on me that something about this seems all too familiar.

That goddamned dream.

On guard, I hesitantly raise my head up from the sink. Nothing. I rub my eyes, fully intending to see a horrid vision standing behind me in the mirror.

Nothing.

A relieved sigh escapes my lungs. I dry my face, turn off the tap and gulp down the cool water. With a stretch, and a yawn I begin back towards our bed.

I lift up the top comforter, to slide in and… wait… She's gone.

"What in the hell…?" 

I look around the room for only a moment.

Something beneath the bed grabs my ankles with rotten hands, and oily extremities. It yanks me down hard, and drags me under. She gets right in my face with her disgusting unhinged expression while breathing those horrid guttural sounds. She begins that insidious chuckle as she imprisons me fully. She snarls something backwards, and puts her mouth on my eyes. She begins to slurp harshly, and gargle. I feel something wiggling loose in the socket.

AWAKE!!!!

“AAAUUGG!!”

I scream aloud as I bolt upright in a cold sweat. Before I can think, I am on my feet  with a run into the bathroom. I smash the mirror with my forehead and use the shards to sever my eyelids from my face. I work my thumb between the corneas and the lid, and puncture till I can feel the edge on my thumb skin, and slice. In pain i shriek:

“THERE! NO MORE FUCKIN’ SLEEPIN’ NOW!!”

I glare into the remnants with a thousand yard wide eye stare, and wait for her dead ass to materialize and grab me again. My mangled eyelids spew blood everywhere. 

Into the abyss of madness, I holler to that blood coated piece of glass:

“WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!”

I ran back to our bed. Seeing that soft limp form lying there. She was now stirring from the sounds of shattering glass and my harsh roars of newfound derangements into the ether. Something needed to change. Overtaken with a paranoid urgency to beat this thing, a scream escaped me in a volume I never knew I had in me as I yell into the atmosphere:

"I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!! IT'S YOU!!!"

Without a second thought, I grab the alarm clock off the bedside table next to me.

I wrap my hand around it tightly, and with impossible stamina, I raise it high and with blow after repeated blow, I cave in the skull of that soft body. The blood, and bits of brain spray everywhere. Showering the wall, the ceiling, the oak headboard, the side tables, everything everywhere. Gore and wet clumps of hair still attached to pieces of ripped scalp, and jagged bits of skull were dancing through the air, and splattering into anything in the way. Warm blood bathes me as I go bazerk. I don't stop till I'm beating dying skin into a puddled pillow with a piece of sharded plastic, and a handful of mangled microchips.

With that, I stop.

… it's over. The nightmare is finally over! 

A stark and atrocious realization smothers me right then. Everything goes hazy with a feeling of falling into infinity. 

Wobbly, and soberly the fizzing in my brain settles. This waking moment has jerked me to a screeching halt. Everything becomes clear with a new undeniable focus. I felt gutted by the magnitude of what had just happened. 

“Oh god”

I fall backwards flat on my ass.

This isn't a dream. I'm not gonna wake up.