Death, the Endless Dream

I trace the assortment of numbers and letters on the underside of my wrist.

My wrist says I’m E.M. 567-AHJ. But really, I’m Eloise Carr.

My wrist itches as I recall the first time I’d been branded. I’d soon learnt that the numbers and letters meant almost nothing - they were just a unique combo for myself. But the E and M did mean something; E for Experiment, and M for either Muse or Mare.

The experiment is divided into two classifications, Mares and Muses. If you’re selected, you’re placed under lock and key before being injected with a serum that stimulates a certain part of your brain when you sleep. For Mares, it triggers the part of your brain responsible for fears, resulting in terrifying nightmares every night. For Muses, it triggers the part of the brain associated with happiness, resulting in blissful, calming dreams every night.

I’m a Mare.

And right now, it’s the worst thing to be.

I watch as the wheels of a bed roll past, just visible under the paper divider surrounding my bed. The screams - a woman’s - are so loud I wince, and the whispers I’d heard earlier are confirmed.

Madison’s broken.

According to the doctors, that’s now three-hundred-and-ninety-one of two thousand experiments gone. Sent off to a secured, padded room to await their imminent death.

Recently, the institute has recorded some…malfunctions in their systems. As experiments, our minds are being addled with too much. The lines between our conscious and subconscious are blurring, mixing dreams with reality. For Muses, it’s fine. For Muses, it means a peaceful life of bliss and ignorance. For Mare’s, it’s different.

For Mare’s, we have to watch the devil himself materialise before our own eyes, even if it’s the middle of the day. We can do nothing to stop it, only standby as the things that should only live in darkness appear in the light of day.

And eventually, just like anything else once too much pressure is applied, the mind snaps, thus creating three new sub-classifications for the experiments.

Balanced, Blurred, and Broken.

Or less formally; sane, unbalanced, and insane.

I’m Blurred.

“Hello E.M. 567-AHJ.” A doctor says, reading off the clipboard attached to the end of my bed.

“Eloise.” I say pointedly.

The doctor just stretches her mouth in a wide smile, not even acknowledging I spoke.

“It is time to administer your medication.”

That’s what they call it - medication. As though there were something wrong with us. As though they had done us a favour by tearing us away from everything, had taken us in like orphans and fed us, clothed us, healed us.

It makes me sick.

The doctor steps forward to place restraints around my wrists, ankles and middle, a precaution taken after one too many others were mauled by crazed experiments.

I look to the syringe she picks up from a tray near my bed, deadly sharp and full of serum. The doctor doesn’t hesitate, inserting the needle into the underside of my left forearm in less than two seconds.

I writhe on the thin mattress, my fingers knotting in the sheets, a scream slipping through my clenched teeth. The serum is painful, coursing through me like fire from the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes. My heart races the way it does when one is scared out of their mind and my stomach jolts. Sweat begins to bead on my forehead and my eyes dart around for the threat causing my anguish, but there’s none. Unless you count the doctor standing a foot from the edge of my bed, the smile on her face weirdly fixed in position.

Once the pain and fear has passed, I lie on my bed, chest heaving from effort.

“That will be all for now, E.M. 567-AHJ.” She says, turning on her heel and whipping the curtain closed behind her.

I throw my head back against the pillows, clenching my eyes shut. “Why?” I whisper to myself. I’m not asking for anything in particular, just in general.

“Good question.” Comes a voice from behind the curtain.

I reach out of my bed to draw the curtain away, revealing my permanent neighbour, Jona Davies.

“Hi Jona.” I say tiredly.

“Sup E.” Jona replies, nodding her head at me.

I’ve known Jona the longest at the institute. We aren’t meant to talk to the other experiments, but eventually, people stop caring. Either that, or the human person hiding behind the mask of the government understands that even though we are nothing but our minds to them, we are also people. And a friend can be comforting, even to experiments.

I watch as her arms transform into tentacles dripping with slime but the next second, the vision is replaced by her concerned face.

“Dude, your pupils were so big.” Jona says. “Vision?”

“Yeah.” I shake my head to clear the memory.

Then Jona starts screaming.

A doctor and nurse enter Jona’s ‘room’, the former calm as can be, the latter panicked and frantic.

“Mason, for Pete’s sake, calm down.” The doctor says, irritated. The heart monitor by Jona’s bed beeps exactly like mine, and her restraints snap around her whilst the doctor pushes past a hyperventilating nurse to inject Jona with anaesthetic. She stops thrashing almost immediately, her eyes rolling in the back of her head.

“Take note of her number and send a notification to the board. I’d say we got two days. At best.” Says the doctor, seeming almost bored. They look to me, don’t say a word, and promptly whisk the divider back in place.

I sit in a stupor for a minute or two, absorbing that information. In two days, I’m going to lose possibly the only thing currently stopping me from going mad. From breaking.

Along with petrifying snippets of past dreams, more doctors and nurses come and go throughout the day, assessing things here and there. Another doctor wanders through the curtain. A nurse had placed a new syringe on the metal tray next to my bed about half an hour ago, my second of two daily serum doses. The doctor picks it up, injects me, and leaves the room without even making eye contact with me.

In the next five minutes, the lights dim on whole floor, an unspoken cue to go to sleep. Doctors and nurses still shuffle around on the other side of the paper, their noise having reduced to whispers.

My eyelids droop of their own accord. I try to fight it, terrified of what lies behind my eyelids tonight. But it’s useless. Over the day, us experiments are slipped pills that force our bodies onto a strict clock, meaning wake up at this time, sleep at that time, eat now, pee then.

I finally give in, the fight making me more tired than necessary.

I’m in a brightly lit room. The light sears so white I squint, using my hand to shield me from the light. As far as I can see, stone columns rise up from the ground, surrounding me, each equally spaced apart from one another. On their flat tops are objects, everyday objects. A can of food, a shoe, a red ball. I move to the object closest to me, a bowl of fruit. But the moment my hand touches the bowl, a light flashes red. In the bowls place is a thrashing cluster of maggots. They wriggle their way up my arms, enveloping me. I scream, waving my arms around to bat them off and end up falling against a column housing a bottle of perfume. As my body makes contact with the bottle, just visible through the swarm of maggots I see a red flash again. Suddenly a spider the size of a basketball is on me, sinking in its fangs. I feel the poison begin to flow through my veins, and my limbs turn leaden . I fall to the ground, immobile, and every single column vanishes. Doctors and nurses of the institute replace them, walking toward me. They move slow and stupid, arms outstretched like zombies. The maggots move off my eyes, providing an unobstructed view of the oncoming people. The first doctors and nurses reach me, some faces familiar and some not, but all recognisable by the white lab coats and scrubs. Wrapping round my arms and legs like vices, they pull until I threaten to tear apart. The bright white light grows blinding, flashing, then disappears.

Now I find myself strapped to a table, with restraints around me, not unlike the one’s from my bed at the institute. A spotlight shines from above, but the rest of the room is dark. This time the room has four barely distinguishable walls. The top half of the table is tilted at forty-five degrees, giving me a view of the room. Directly across from me is a door with a glass window. A silhouette appears and the door opens. The silhouette walks toward me, a shaft of light from the spotlight falling across their face. I recognise them immediately as my older brother, exactly as I remember him ten years ago when I was taken, wearing exactly the same clothes, with the same haircut, the same smile.

“Hush, Eloise.” He says, though I hadn’t spoken. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

“D-Daniel.” I croak, ecstatic to see him.

But the moment the words leave my lips, disembodied hands emerge from the dark grabbing him, destroying him. I scream, scream, scream and then I’m being lifted, still stuck to the bed, away from my dying brother. I scream until I’m swallowed by the blackness and my eyes open, back in my bed at the institute.

The lights are back on, signalling morning. The quiet shuffles and whispers I’d fallen asleep to have returned to their usual volume. A hand grabs the edge of my curtain and I scramble, memories of my dream coming back. I’m prepared to scream out for Daniel again when the hand draws back the curtain to reveal a doctor. I calm slightly, but remembering the doctors and nurses trying to pull me apart in my nightmare, I remain tense.

“Quite the screams you made last night, girlie.” Says the doctor, scribbling something on the clipboard at the end of my bed.

“Shouldn’t be any different to the one’s from everyone else.” I spit.

“Maybe, but you made yourself known to the night crew, that’s for sure.” He says with a poisonous chuckle. “Anyways, time for your dose of serum.”

We fall silent as he injects me and leaves. I endure the pain to follow, squeezing my eyes shut to ward off any unwanted reminders of last night’s dreams. But it’s the male yells coming from Jona’s side of the curtain that snaps them open.

I pull back the curtain with such force, I tear the fabric slightly. Where Jona had slept - more like an induced coma - yesterday, a young man lays in her bed. No sign of Jona anywhere.

My heart beats loud and fast in my ears. “Who are you?”

The young man looks over to me, confused. “Who are you?” He shoots back.

“I’m El - I mean, I’m E.M. 567-AHJ.” I answer, undecided on whether or not to trust him yet.

“So you’re an experiment too, huh?” The young man queries. “I’m -” He bends forward to reach for the clipboard at the end of his bed, wincing against the remnants of the serum’s pain. “- E.M. 493-VBS, apparently. Or Lachlan Davies.”

I stare at him suspiciously. He has the same last name as Jona. It could only mean one thing.

“I’m actually Eloise Carr. Do you know what happened to Jona?” I probe. I throw in my real name because if he trusts me with his, it’s only right to trust him with mine.

He flinches so violently I think he is having a medical episode.

“How do you know about my sister?” He asks, the devastation and pain obvious in his eyes.

“Sh-she used to be in this room. I-” I pause, ghosted by a vision of maggots and spiders. “-I knew her for over ten years. I didn’t know she had a brother.”

“J-Jona was here? Right here?” I watch as elation spreads across his face. “My Jona? My baby sister? W-where is she? Can I see her? Why did she move? Where did she move to? I have so much to tell her!”

I brace myself to deliver the news that will surely destroy him more than any serum could.

“Lachlan…they don’t move patients unless…” I trail off.

“Unless what?” Lachlan prompts, barely containing his excitement.

“Unless they’ve broken.”

Lachlan looks puzzled. “What does that mean?”

I inhale deeply before continuing. “It means she went mad, Lachlan. It means the serum drove her to insanity. It means, if she isn’t already dead, Jona is about to die.”

Lachlan’s reaction happens so fast. Where I would have expected him to go all quiet and take his time to process the information, he lets out an animal-like roar and the heart monitor beeps, sending restraints around him before he could even get a foot out of bed. Two doctors and three nurses come rushing in. The doctors converse in rapid-fire words whilst the nurses aid the restraints, pushing him back against the bed.

“YOU KILLED HER MY SISTER YOU KILLED HER JONA’S DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU SICK BASTARDS GET OFF ME ELOISE ELOISE HELP ME THEY KILLED HER YOUR SERUM KILLED HER YOUR GODDAMN SERUM KILLED HER YOU KILLED MY SISTER!” His last words are so loud the nurses jump back in surprise and Lachlan takes the opportunity to throw his head forward so forcibly I hear a snap and the fighting ceases. The doctors pause their conversation, turning toward the bed. The nurses move away from Lachlan, revealing his limp body, his neck at an unnatural angle. Dead.

Despite the fact that I knew him for less than five minutes, I feel a pang of grief at Lachlan’s death. I sink back against my thin pillow and shut my eyes, for a flicker of darkness and the hands came back. I listen as they wheel Lachlan’s bed away, breathing deep, cursing everything, the institute, the government, the serum, the fact that the only reason we are here is to dream. And I’m torn between living or surrendering myself to the institute. Because either way, I’m already Blurred. Within a matter of weeks, if not days, I’ll be dead. I could suffer for weeks, but somehow enjoy breathing and thinking, or I could die, and rather than suffering give up th e pleasure of my own mind. Something within me latches on to the prospect of living, for whatever reason, but its grip loosens when the tiny voice in my mind speaks.

It’s not really death, it says.

Just an endless dream.