Inception Syndrome

I open my eyes to the blank screen of my computer. Shit! Did I doze off? My small apartment is filled with the golden, reassuring light of my bedside lamp, which I never turn off. The microwave's display tells me it's three in the morning, but it always lies. My alarm clock agrees, but it also lies.

My small loft has two entry points: on my right, the entrance door, locked, chained up, obstructed by a chest. On my left, the window, covered with thick, black curtains that even the midday sun cannot penetrate. Who knows what I would see if I pulled them open? The shockwave of an atomic mushroom, rolling toward me? Medusa's petrifying stare? Or perhaps a hooded man with a gun pointed at me… BANG! Or perhaps this isn't a nightmare—perhaps I would only see the buildings on the other side of the street under the yellow light of the street lamps, and if the night is cloudless, a moon crescent and a few faint stars. But there is no sense risking it.

I am cursed with awakenings. Why, I must have had thousands this year alone, a dozen for every sleep. My days start before the previous ones stop, they stack, they live inside each other like matryoshka dolls. I wake in twisted worlds where all monsters imagined by man conspire with those that lurk in their subconscious to track me down and devour me.

The only silver lining is that they are not yet there when I wake. They do not yet know where to find me.

Is it the rumbling of their steps I hear outside, or the rolling gait of a passing car? No matter. I need to stay silent, leave the curtains closed, keep the door shut, and they will leave me alone. I walk carefully to my bed and lay down. I recall I have a job interview in five hours. There is plenty of time. I've set my alarm clock to a song I've never heard. The horrors lull me into a false sense of security by mimicking everything that I know, down to the slightest detail of the smallest object in my room, but they could never compose a song that I did not already know. Still, I'm worried they will learn.

The interview… my mother did everything she could to find something I could do. “It's remote four days per week,” she told me, “you will still have to go out from time to time…” She doesn't understand. How could she? How could anyone? They only despair when things are not as they seem, whereas I am most afraid when they are. They see me rot in this small loft and they tell me, “Why do you never go outside?” A few months ago my sister visited me; I must have fallen asleep while she was there, for when I woke up and I followed her out, we got lost in an infinite labyrinth of hallways and the Minotaur devoured us.

Sleep does not come. Knock! Knock! Knock!

They are at the front door… Knock! Knock! Knock!

I have to stay put… let them knock, wait until they give up and I can faintly hear them try the next door. But a familiar voice calls from the other side.

“Johnny? It's mom. Open up!”

What? Mom? I am jolted upright. I must be late for my appointment. I get up and run towards the door, I undo the chain lock, but as I put my hand on the door knob, I pause. Did the alarm clock not show three in the morning? I look. It shows eight o'clock, but the left part of the eight is blinking: when these two diodes are off, it looks like a three. I must have looked when they were off, then.

But now I wonder why there is no chest barring the door. Okay… hold on… I must have removed the chest so that my mother could open the door herself if needed… but then I should have also left the chain lock undone too. Oh, goodness, I don't remember!

But they are not knocking anymore, they are banging, and now I know, I know that they know that I am here. Someone… something is forcing the door. And at the other end I hear someone… something scratch the window. The curtains inflate as if the wind was flowing into them, but the window is not open, I still hear scratching on the glass. Fresh blood drips from the ceiling. A whining sound seeps through the floor, getting louder and louder until it becomes howling.

They are here. It is over. My only hope is in choosing the parameters of my own demise. I run to the kitchen counter and slide my chef's knife from its sheath, the one I sharpen every night so that my subconscious would never think of dulling it in my darkest hour.

“You will never get me!” I scream at them. “I choose to awaken!”

I plunge the knife into my heart.

⁂

I fall down from my bed. My knee hits the floor first, sending a painful shock to my brain. I realize I am shouting.

“My God Johnny, are you okay?”

“M-mom?”

“You weren't answering so I used my key… is it another one of these terrible nightmares? My poor baby… come on, rise up! I'll make some coffee.”

I sit on my bed. I must look terrible, but I have no mirrors in my home. I broke them all. Twenty eight years of bad luck.

“And take a shower! Interview's in a half hour and you smell like wet dog.”

The interview… yes, the interview… had I not set my alarm clock to seven o'clock? I look at the display to see how much time I have left, and then all my blood turns to ice. 88:88. What is that supposed to mean? Not another nightmare… not here! Not now! Panic shrouds my mind. Nothing seems amiss with mom, but she's inside. Inside, nothing is ever amiss. At the start, anyway.

I walk into the bathroom. I turn on the shower and let water drip on my back. In spite of myself I let my mind wander on the yellowed tiles on the walls, the lines between them connected in some arcane pattern. Everything seems unreal.

“For the love of God John, close the door!”

I don't listen to her. I walk out of the shower while it's still running, without bothering to dry myself off. I can't tell if I am safe or not. I try to look for clues. The curtains over the window are swaying, as if wind is blowing into them. Had I opened the window? No… I would never do that. Had mom?

Mom put clothes on my bed. A jacket and a tie that I had never seen before. In my nightmares, I often have new clothes, inexplicably, but these are explicable. I put them on, but I am still shaking like a leaf. Everything seems so right, so safe… and these are the worst ones.

God damn it, there must be some kind of trick to make sure. Pinching myself won't work, I've tried before. Slapping myself won't work either. The chef's knife will… but I won't resort to that just yet. Only if I am sure. Don't I have a spinning top somewhere? I run to the living room cupboard, my elegant dry-cleaned clothes sticking to my skin and dripping on the hardwood, but a hand clamps on my arm. They are already here? No, it is only mom.

“John! What the hell are you doing?”

She rubs my hair with a towel then wipes my face. She stares at me, mouth slightly agape as if she was looking for words. Then she gets the cup of coffee she'd put on the bedside table and shoves it into my hands.

“You'll dry on the way. Go! We're going to be late!”

“No… I… I have to make sure…”

“This isn't a dream, Johnny, this is real life! Look, what's the worst that can happen? You wake up?”

I nod, at the brink of tears. It's probably all right. I had to wake up eventually. But as I let myself be pulled forward, I suddenly hear something. It comes from beyond the door. Yes. A murmur. Crawling. Seeping through the slit under the door. Vwoom… Vwoooom… I lower my eyes. I think I can see the smoky bodies of evil spirits rising up. I pull back.

“Johnny?”

“Shhh… they… they're coming.”

“No one's coming.”

“Don't you hear?” I say, my voice edged with suspicion.

“I hear a vacuum cleaner. Is this what you mean? Bloody dimwit,” she mutters under her breath. I hear her and panic seizes me. Is she the enemy? Mom blushes deeply. “I'm sorry I said that, I… I'm a bit tired… Look, it'll be all right. It's just a vacuum cleaner. Come!”

I can't take any chances. I have to go back and find the top. But as I run back, mom lunges towards the entrance door. She knows that if she opens it, the answer will come, either in the form of nothing at all, or in the form of billions of dark monsters.

“John, we must get going!”

I have no choice. I pull her away before she can grab the handle. My cup slips out of my hand and bursts into a hundred shards, spreading a scalding hot puddle on the floor.

“Are you crazy?” mom screams.

She pulls back and tries for the door again. I can't let her do that, the monsters are swarming. I can hear their whispers even more clearly now, a few feet from the accursed frame.

So I pull her away again, harder, but in her resistance she stomps on a shard and loses footing. She falls with a sickening sound. I glance at her slumped shape. A thick rivulet of blood pours out of the base of her head… I trace it back to the sharp corner of the table where I usually put my keys, painted with a red streak.

“Mom?” I kneel down to brush her cheek, to wake her up. She isn't moving. She doesn't see me. The murmurs are purring behind the door, but I'm not afraid of them at the moment.

The chef's knife awaits in the kitchen, silent and sharp.

“I choose… to awaken…”