Dream: Arthropods & Backrooms

This doc I found seems to be the origin of namuhnI,

Dream: January 6,  2023

Have you heard of the Backrooms? The premise of the Backrooms is terrifying because it is a place that you cannot escape. I have had many dreams lately that feature such places. Realms from which I cannot leave.

Let’s see if I can transcribe my most recent dream into a coherent summary.

I remember that yet again, I was exposed to my inexplicable fondness for insects and arthropods.

Dream: Start.

It starts in my house. I wake up. I climb down from my bed. It’s dark in my bedroom. I hear a noise. It is the sound of someone speaking but slightly muffled and not quite right. I know what this is. It’s the sound of a video playing on a computer speaker. I open the bedroom door to the hall beyond. I can see most of the rooms from here. There is a bedroom to the right. That room doesn’t have a door. The light is off in that room. The hallway forwards is dark as well. The bathroom at the end of the hallway has an open door and the darkness proves no one is using it. Another bedroom to the right at the end of the hallway. Dark.

To my left before entering the hallway, I can see the dining room, the kitchen, the breezeway, and even a little bit of the living room. All of those rooms are dark as well. All of them except the dining room, which is closest to my bedroom out of those rooms mentioned. And there, on the dining room table, I can see where the sound is coming from. A black laptop sits open, screen displaying what looks to be a concert. A darkly lit concert, so that I can hardly see the performer. If there is a band, it’s hidden in the darkness. The audience is only sometimes slightly visible as a glint of reflective light in front of the stage. What could be reflecting except the metal seats? Maybe the audience is empty? On stage, the performer sings and dances. By it’s voice, it must be female. But I can’t place the age. And the performer wears and black and white dress, with her face too hidden by shadow to make out. So whether she be a little girl or a woman, I don’t know. But I do know that it is far too early in the morning for this nonsense. I can’t believe someone left a video of a concert playing all night.

I walk over to the table and grab the laptop, planning to turn it off. Instead, I stare into the screen, watching the performer. Though I can barely make out her shape by the black and white of her attire against the pitch black background, something about her motions strikes me as mysterious because I cannot follow them. One of her arms appears to have a long sock-like sleeve that ends in a glove: All-black. The other arm is the same, but has stripes of white criss-crossing over the black at uneven intervals. The same goes for her legs. One black, one with stripes of white. The effect is entrancing. With a black background, and a mostly black costume, she is almost invisible. Key word: Almost. The little that we can see from the white of her clothes is all the more meaningful. Catching my eye more potently. I can hear from the song that she sings a sad tale. What the tale is, I cannot say. For I did not listen much longer.

I brought the laptop into my room and set it on my desk. Now in the darkness of my room, all I could see was the occasional glint of light reflected off the stage or audience, as well as the white of the performer’s clothes. I would have watched longer, but I had things to do. I needed to get ready for the day.

I entered the dining room. The rest of my family woke up and began to roam the house. I needed to use the bathroom. So I entered the breezeway between the dining room and the bathroom.

…

I was in a large warehouse. Boxes stacked nearly to the ceiling towered as walls dividing the center of the room. The floor, after a distance, became a ramp upwards. All the time, massive boxes and crates blocked much of the way. My family was here too. I walked up the ramp and finally found a true wall, not just piled boxes. There was a doorway here. An exit. I came back down to my family to tell them of the way out, but the ramp was so steep. So much steeper than I thought had been moments before.

I have the distinct memory of a toilet in this warehouse, though my memory as to why it was there or what we did with it is blank. I ran down the ramp. I ran faster and faster to catch myself. I came to the opposite end of the warehouse. A true wall yet again, but no exit this way. So I climbed over the piles of boxes and began to crawl back on top of the boxes instead of taking the easy way of walking on the floor. Once I reached where my family was, I had them follow me. I jumped down to the floor and ran up the ramp. As I came up against boxes in my path, I dove to the side, rolling back to my feet. Then I continued running. I made it to the doorway. I made it to the exit.

I entered the dining room of my house from the breezeway. I returned to my room. I could see that the video on the laptop had progressed several hours already. I felt remorse for having missed so much of the video. I’d have to rewatch the parts I missed later. Looking, I felt I could see the performer more clearly now. It appeared to be a little girl with black hair. Although, I also remember that at times I would look and see that she was very clearly a much older woman. So I’m not certain which memories to trust here.

I begin to feel that the performer is trying to say something to me. Not to the audience or to viewers in general, but to me in specific. A secret. Something that no one must know but that must be passed on into capable hands. Perhaps it’s her cadence as she sings or how she sometimes stops and stares at the camera, motionless as the music continues to play as though she were still performing. But I get the feeling that she wants me to know something. A pop-up notification on the computer informs me that it is downloading a file. Judging by how slow it is downloading, it is a pretty big file, measured in GigaBytes.

…

I’m a little boy. A little boy in an airport. My brother is here. He is a little boy too. One of my sisters is here. She is a little girl. We three are in an odd airport. Metal doorframes stand free of any wall to act as a foundation. And do not connect to the ceiling, which is far above them. They simply stand empty, no door attached. These metal doorframes are placed one in each block. Like that of a city block. There are buildings inside this airport. There are streets and crossroads, and each block between intersections has a single metal doorframe, which appears to serve no purpose. There is a bathroom at each block as well. I saw my brother go into one. I also went into one at some point, but the mirrors provided no reflection, I supposed they were probably foggy. Then I saw a glass trophy case. But there were no trophies inside. Instead I saw what appeared to be military clothes and airport security clothes. There was also some military gear in there, including a World War One gas mask.

I saw some toys on the ground in front of the glass case. One of the toys appeared to be a My Little Pony from the old 90s cartoon. But the gleaming orange pony with pinkish-red hair was checkerboard of black and white on one side, making it appear almost skeletal on that side. There was also what looked to be half of the frame for a Connect-Four game. There were a few more indistinct toys discarded in front of this glass case, of which I do not remember clearly enough to describe.

After examining the glass case and the toys, I looked around to notice that the layout of the airport was much different. The ground was pooled with water up to my ankles. The ground was natural, uncut rock. And a 3-tiered waterfall poured down from a direction I wished to go. But the waterfall made it impossible for me to climb up. Thus I thought to myself, how should I pass this obstacle. So I gathered with my brother and my sister, and we took out a deck of large white cards. We each drew a hand of about 5 cards. Instead of numbers and shapes, such as 7 of Hearts, the cards each displayed the image of some Anime person in distinct clothes and colors. Each of us chose a card from our hand and laid it in front of us. To be honest, all of the cards I had looked kind of similar, so I just used a card picked at random.

Once my brother, my sister, and I had all placed a card atop the water, I heard a voice from behind me. I turned to see an old woman, so old as to be my grandma. This was a real person, not some Anime person. She informed us that we must be thrown to pass over the tiered waterfall. My siblings and I agreed that this was an excellent idea. The old woman picked up my brother with one hand threw him with such force that he arced up over the tiered waterfall, then we could see him no more. My sister was worried about letting a complete stranger throw us high into the air, So I offered to be thrown before her. She threw me. I felt the air whip against my flailing arms. And I quickly realized how foolhardy our plan was. The shallow water below would not be enough to break my fall. I felt weightless as I plummeted.

…

On one wall of the mansion was a large decorative mirror. I gazed into it. Was that me? A tall man with a red overcoat, black tie, lacquered hair to rise upwards and forwards, a confident smirk, hands in pockets, ears pierced with small golden buds. The person in the mirror. It couldn’t be me. I turned around. There he stood just as I saw him in the mirror. “What do you think? If I’m going to spend the next five years, I might as well travel in style.” I didn’t quite understand what he meant until I saw a flash of something move past the window. I looked out the dark window. It wasn’t night. If asked whether night or day, I would type Non-Applicable. For we were hurtling through outer space, the stars were streaks of white lines zipping in the distance, asteroids and planets colliding in the distance. This was no mansion, it was a spaceship. But then I remembered my brother and my sister. They must be here too. And upon my very thought of such, the man’s smirk became a scowl as his smooth, flawless face became marked with wrinkles of age. His hair graying as the dye drained from the hair and dripped down the face. It was the old woman that threw us. Her arms seemed to grow longer, her height no longer of a stoick build, but of langley struts. Her very clothes seemed to wear away into tatters of old cloth. Her teeth growing no longer clean, white and even, they were the jagged, uneven triangles of a shark’s mouth.

Fear overcame my determination to save my siblings. I fled from the room, down the hall. Having left the hall, I saw that no other room was decorated like the inside of a mansion, others were functional but unkept white-walls of some underground facility. The clear hallways had nothing for me to use as a weapon or to throw back at my haggard pursuer. She ran on her hands and feet, but as she was humanoid, it was the awkward gait of one’s head near the ground, while their hip waves far above their head behind them. And yet despite her inefficient crawl, she was making headway. I saw a square shaped hole in the wall, about the size of basketball. It was a deep hole, not seeing the end of it. It thrust my hand into the hole out of desperation, not knowing what to expect. I felt the crawling of tiny stick-like legs pinching me with their skittering over my arm.

The woman howled. It was an utterly human howl, which made it so much worse. I couldn’t help but stare back at the woman, only a few feet away from me. The skittering up my arm, I could see black shapes crawling from the hole and up to my shoulders. The old woman crashed into me, and clutched me by my legs to prevent me from running. In one hand, she lifted me from the floor. I hung, held upside down in her grasp. But I could still feel them crawling over my skin. She screeched and dropped me to the tile floor. I collapsed, my skin breaking apart, my bones sliding from their place, my insides bubbling up.

…

In outer space, there is an astronaut that makes videos on Youtube. He hasn't posted in a while, some people think it’s because it takes time to send it back to the Earth. I watch a playlist of all his videos. I see comments describing how the type of videos he made has changed. And many say it has changed for the better. And yet, they also say that you cannot truly appreciate his work without having seen him at his worse to appreciate his growth. So I see his videos, starting at his oldest and most boring. Amateur camera work, glaring reflection makes it hard to see what he is trying to show. He is trying to point the camera out of the window of the space shuttle to give a view of Earth, but the light from the room reflects back on the window obscuring the view.

Later videos, he is outside his shuttle exploring alien planets. I say alien planets, but they find no signs of life in the deserted wastes they trudge through. And later still, he and other astronauts are playing games like Hide-and-go-Seek in the ruins of alien planets. Ruins that act as a sign that this world holds or used to hold sapient life.

…

His later videos don’t show his friends anymore. Just him and his surroundings. No mention of why. I saw what looked like a spaceship flying in the background of one of his latest videos. I wonder what that’s about. Anyway, he hasn’t posted any new videos for a while.

…

I am watching the video on the laptop. It has gradually grown brighter over the last few hours. I can now see the performer clearly. Sometimes a woman. Sometimes a little girl. Always wearing a black and white dress. She is staring directly at the camera. The music has long since stopped. I don’t like what she is saying. The theater is vacant. No band plays music in the background, no audience watches. Such terrible secrets she professes. I don’t want to hear them. This video was not meant for me. It is too much for a child to bear.

“The arthropods have been around since time immemorial. We overlook them, our own destruction. There are those that recognize their power and would use them for violence. Be warned, you must not use them as weapons. You will not be able to contain and control them.”

I can’t watch anymore. Her words are harrowing. I leave my dark room. My brother and sister are here. We are all little kids. We sit in the living room. I hear the sound of footsteps faintly from outside. Between the sheaves of the curtains, I see movement. Someone is outside. I go to the front door and check through the tiny window. The rapidly amassing crowd is made up of people of all ages… and some do not appear to be “people” at all.

…

Our parents were driving us to school. Sitting in the backseat, I didn’t pay attention to the world passing by the window. I sat there in the backseats with my brother and sister. The car stopped. I could feel it shift gears into park. I looked around. We weren’t at school. This was a parking lot outside of what looked to be a storage warehouse. Our parents told us to wait in the car. They said they needed to go run an errand really quickly.

They lied.

We sat in the car for about fifteen minutes. I began to be suspicious. So I looked around through the windows. That’s when I saw the T-Rex. Suddenly, the layout of the car changed. My brother and sister were no longer in the car. Instead, I was in the front seat, and a man that I did not recognize but that I trusted explicitly. With a T-Rex on our tail and no time to change seats, I turned the key in the ignition. The T-Rex could see us. It began sprinting in our direction. I shifted into drive and pressed on the gas. I didn’t know where to go. The stoplights and stop signs seem especially annoying when I have to stop with a T-Rex after us.

I zoom up a hill into a forest. I turn around the bend, trees make it a blind curve.

“Where are we going?” My sister asks.

“Shouldn’t we wait for mom and dad?” My brother asks.

It’s me and my brother and sister in the car. I don’t even remember a T-Rex or a man in the car with me at this point. I feel so foolish. What am I doing? I was supposed to wait in the parking lot for mom and dad. I find a place to turn around. Then I drive back towards the city. I shouldn’t be driving. I come up to the blind curve against. I try to turn, the wheels do so… the car continues forwards. I panic. I spin the wheel rapidly and stamp down on the brakes. The ABS activates, making quite the bumpy ride. The car begins to turn. I round the curve, but I’m in the left lane. Wrong lane. I hurry into the right lane to get out of incoming traffic. The man in the seat next to me curses my driving skill, swearing that I’m going to get them all killed. The T-Rex can’t keep making such fast turns. I zip under it and in between its legs. It tries to turn around to chase after me. But the momentum of its previous charge keeps it going and it trips, crashing into the trees. My brother and sister scream in fear of what was so very nearly our deaths.

I return to the parking lot in front of the storage warehouse and shift the car in park. “We need to get mom and dad!” I say. The T-Rex can’t seem to rise back to its feet. It’s too heavy and its arms are too short. That being said, I’m certain it will eventually rise again. My siblings leave the car, but the man in the passenger seat stays in the car, revealing that he doesn’t actually know how to undo the seatbelt. My sibling and I run to the door to the storage warehouse. I enter through the doorway.

…

The performer in the video is no longer talking. She is just staring at the camera. But it’s not a freeze-frame. I can see the slight movements of her breaths and occasionally blinking eyes. I can’t imagine what she wants with me. It’s eerie. Why am I still watching? How long is this video? I grab the mouse to check the time stamps. Fur. It skitters out from under my hand.

“They’re here. You must not let them find it.” The performer says, spooking me as she hadn’t said anything for the past hour. Then she returns to silent staring. What had she just said? Why was she being so vague and ambiguous? From what I understand of the video, she wants me to protect something from getting into the wrong hands. But she won’t tell me what it is or who I must protect it from.

…

Mom and dad aren’t in the warehouse. “Look! Over there!” My sister shouts, pointing. Down the road at the bottom of a hill is a storage warehouse. How did we go to the wrong building? I follow after my siblings who have already started running towards it. I stop at the road. I look both ways. There is a car coming. It is very much far off. But I wait the twenty seconds for it to pass. Then I cross the road. My siblings didn’t wait the twenty seconds for the car to come and go, so they are far ahead of me. I run after them. The ground is growing increasingly wet and muddy as we trudge down the hill towards the warehouse.

Another car approaches. This one is old, like old as in people still used horse-drawn carriages when this thing was made. I am running through mud. The car is only barely faster than me. So it slowly passes me on the road. We reach a cement platform on top of the muck. Concrete stairs lead down the rest of the way of the hill toth warehouse. I carefully make my way down the slick steps coated in dried mud. I reach the bottom of the steps. My sister was right. Our parents are here. I climb over a short brick wall. I see insects crawl out of my way as I pass through. The entire area is coated in wet dirt. It’s disgusting. Bugs everywhere.

I climb over another short brick wall to reach my mother. She is looking at one of the short walls, taking notes on a clipboard. I look to see what is so interesting to her. White translucent worm-like appendages that are each about as long as a hand and slightly wider than a finger’s width reach out from holes in the wall. Looking more closely, I can see the pincers at the ends of these polyps.

I reel backwards in surprise and fear. But I can’t help but admit that they are fascinating. This courtyard just outside the wall to a large storage warehouse. It makes sense. The bugs are out here, so there is no reason to enter the warehouse.

My sibling talk to our parents, describing how concerned they were for being left alone for so long. While they discuss with each other, I notice that my parents are not the only people here. There are few other people here dressed in white lab coats and wearing safety goggles. There is also young woman or teenager. Hard to tell. But I rank her age as somewhere between 17 and 22. She wears an overly-big lab coat. Her lab coat sleeves are so long that I can’t see her hands. Now that I think about it, the sleeves were slack and… empty. She didn’t have her arms in her sleeves. She must have had them under the labcoat. Underneath her unbuttoned lab coat, she is wearing a purple cotton shirt.

Her lab coat was so incredibly long that it went all the way to the ground… and folded beneath her? Wait, what? I am looking at my memory right now. It looked like she was kneeling down with her white lab coat bending beneath her to follow her legs. I didn’t see her legs, the lab coat was too long. But she wasn’t kneeling down, so why did it look like that? I mean, she couldn’t have been kneeling down, she was already so tall. Taller than anyone else there. She was a full head or two above my parents.

And if she had been on her knees, how could she move? She had been waddling around as fast as anyone else. She had safety goggles on like everyone else but hers were fogged up. I couldn’t see her eyes. The goggles were too big for her. They went down over half her face. I couldn’t see her nose and could barely make out her mouth. Her mouth. She had something in her mouth. Protruding from inside her mouth… tusks? No. They could move as tactile has a hand. Pincers? Oh. Mandibles. Whoops. That explains what she was saying about Arthropods. The very thing that the performer in the video had warned me about.

I talked to her while I was waiting for my siblings to finish talking with the parents. She told me how Arthropods were amongst the first to inherit the planet and how they would eventually reclaim it from the unworthy species that defile it. I agreed with her at the time, though I didn’t exactly understand what she was talking about. Partly why I talked with her and verbally agreed with what she said is that I was attracted to her. I didn’t notice at the time, only looking back are the feelings I felt obvious. Silly, really. Her clothes covered so much of her, she couldn’t be pretty unless I find massive safety goggles and labcoats beautiful. Maybe it was her voice then? I wouldn’t say personality since I had just met her. There is only one thing I can think of as to why I was so entranced by this woman. She wasn’t human. What’s with me and my interest in insects and arthropods in my dreams?

After talking to her I sought after my siblings. I asked them where mom and dad had gone. They tell me that they'd been kidnapped. I don’t know how that could have happened. Surely I would have noticed. Actually, no. I wouldn’t have noticed. I couldn’t take my eyes off the centipede girl. She was gone too. No one mentioned her being kidnapped, and I would have seen if she had been kidnapped. I think she just left. Her absence was why I could focus enough to talk to my siblings.

I follow my siblings into the doorway to the warehouse. But when we enter the doorway and do not enter a building, we exit the warehouse that is where we parked the car up the hill. We run to the car. I open the door and jump into the driver’s seat.

…

The people outside my house are trying to break in. I press against the door to keep it closed. But they have sledge hammers. They begin to tear down the wall next to the door instead. A dread knight enters riding his woeful steed. In black iron armor, his pale white face and vibrant blue eyes stare death into my own. The steed jumps upwards, twirling in the air landing on its hooves… on the ceiling. The knight defies gravity and runs along the ceiling. I jump upwards and kick, knocking the charging knight off his horse. Without his horse, the knight can’t spider climb. But he has a sword and I have nothing but my fists. Fear overtakes me. I back away. I consider jumping out of the window and fleeing. But the moment that thought crosses my mind, images of the performer fly past my mind. She frowns, shaking her head in disapproval.

They’re here for her. She knows about Arthropods. She has secrets that if in the wrong hands, could create a superweapon, an Arthropod. Emboldened, I charge back towards the knight. He thrusts his sword towards me. I side-step the blade and punch his hand, knocking the blade to the ground. Then I kick his legs, causing him to stumble to the floor. I pick up the sword from the floor.

…

I am in the car with my sister, my brother, and a man in the passenger seat. I still don’t know who this guy is. But he is trapped in the passenger seat since he can’t seem to undo his seatbelt. I don’t know where I should go. But if mom and dad were kidnapped, I surely need to leave or else I’ll be next.

And yet I just sit there with decision paralysis, unsure where to even start. While I’m waiting, a construction crane vehicle slowly drives up the road and into the parking lot, then it lowers a massive crate that is open and vacant. The crane then drives up behind my car and begins to push our car into the crate. I’m so indecisive that I fail to take any action to stop this.

…

The red liquid drains from the dread knight’s corpse like water from a bucket. I drop the sword. I can’t believe what I’ve done. I feel numb. I can hardly think. I can’t speak. I do nothing as more people invade my house, rushing past me to find the secrets. Everything is too loud. Too bright. I stand up. I have to get away. It’s all too much. I need somewhere to be alone. I see a line in front of a wooden shack outside. It’s a bathroom. I get in line. Those in line, seeing me and that I am no longer defending the house most all from the line abandon the line to get to the house. With only two people remaining in front of me in line, it isn’t long until I get a chance to enter.

…

Who knows how long I’ve been in the bathroom. It has been over a day for sure, since I’ve fallen asleep in here. Someone is knocking on the door. By the voice it sounds like my mother. I open the door. It is indeed my mother. I look around. I don’t see my house anywhere. But the clouds are dark and stormy. I don’t see any houses anywhere in sight but upon examination, I see columns reaching upwards but with no ceiling or roof for the archways to support.

A boy walks up to me. He appears to be somewhere between 13-20 years old. He has green hair and devilish horns. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but this guy might not be human. He is pretty friendly. He tells me about where I am. It’s a cathedral belonging to the Sultaness. Speaking of the Sultaness, she rounds a corner and sees me. She is furious to find an intruder trespassing in her halls. Orders her guards to destroy me. The armored men grab me, and not wanting to spill blood on the beautiful carpet, they drag me up stairs until I reach an upper balcony. The storm is in full swing now, and the freezing rain stings my face as the tempestuous wind whips it against the ground. They’re going to throw me off the top of the building. I’m going to fall to my death.

Lighting strikes the side of the building. Then the storm suddenly fades. The guards are amazed. The Sultaness is in awe as well and is convinced that I must be the cause of the strange weather. They decide not to hurt me and instead revere me as a god. It doesn’t matter too much to me that they are worshiping me as deity when I know I am a mortal because at least they aren’t killing me.

Murals on the walls depict gods using their wondrous powers. The boy with green hair and devilish horns thinks it is pretty funny that the Sultaness consider me a god. I agree that the notion is comical. I discover that the boy is a servant of the Sultaness. He helps give me a tour of the cathedral. Open to the sky. What an odd design. There is one thing I do notice to be odd, that I noticed ever since I entered the cathedral. Something that didn’t catch my attention at the time, but now that I am booking back through my memories, it strikes me as something that is probably important.

There is a massive floating ball made of up iron rims inscribed in blue runes. It hovers in the air. Glowing blue light radiates out from between the rims. It’s like a ball of yarn with criss-crossing rims. It’s also something like the Ophanim since it is a glowing ball made up of rims. But instead of eyes, it’s runic lettering. It also reminds me of the Eye of Magnus from Skyrim’s College of Winterhold questline.

Whatever the case, this Ball was barely visible through an iron gate to an off-limits area. Since it was off-limits, I didn’t pay much attention to it. But now that I’m awake looking back, I wished I had investigated.

…

I wake up. I get up on my knees on the floor. I rub my eyes and look around. I’m inside a small room with white-yellow paint. There is a doorless doorway in front of me. To me right, the room expands a bit and continues for what is probably 30 feet. It is very bright to my right, though there are no visible light sources. The light is tinted yellow. To my left there are two openings. One is a dark doorless doorway that is to my left and behind me. The light isn’t properly placed. It goes from bright to pitch darkness past the threshold of the doorway. So I decide to stay away from there. To my left and in front of me, there is a large opening such as the doorway of a garage. It is also dark, but not as pitch dark as the doorway behind me. This large garage door-sized opening is dimly lit from the light coming from the opposite side of the room. It’s a vacant space.

The doorway in front of me leads into several vacant rooms of differing levels of light as I see through the several doorways. Remembering it now, it reminds me of The Backrooms. I turn around so that the dark doorway is to my right-front instead of my left-back. On the wall that is now in front of me, there are words written in what pencil. The words are very large but since pencil is so thin, I can’t read it. I hear a sound like the shuffling of leaves. A ¿Woman? Approaches from the dark doorway. But she has no legs. Instead her abdomen extends and bends, stretching back into the darkness and out of sight. It sort of reminds me of a finger puppet with how it has no legs and stretches back into the darkness.

She speaks, but there is something wrong with her mouth. Something I notice now that I remember, this part of the dream had low texture detail and resolution. It’s like watching a video at 144p. It’s somewhat fuzzy and hard to make out details. So her face looks wrong. But since it is too blurry, I can’t tell what. Her mouth is moving… wrong? Maybe there is something in her mouth? Maybe she has strange teeth or a prehensile tongue? I can’t tell. Also, I think she might have more than one pair of arms. But it is so very hard to tell. Her hair. I think it’s black. I think it’s hair. But it might be something thicker like stiff tentacles or bristles. Eyes. Hard to tell. It looks like a black blob to me, but I couldn’t make out any detail.

I hear the harsh, almost angry voice of a young woman behind me. “Where did you come from? How did you get here?” I turn around. It’s another woman, she’s right in my face. I stumble backwards, but then I fall to the ground realizing that I’m edging closer to the other ¿Woman? here. I try to crawl away from them as I swivel my head to keep an eye on them both. I don’t want to be pinned between two strangers in this strange place, especially when I can’t see clearly.

The woman speaks to me, she is in a more wide-open and well-lit area. Also, she has legs, which is more than I can say for the ¿Woman?. For these reasons, I recognize looking back at my memories that I subconsciously trusted the woman more than the ¿Woman?. She appeared like a normal human, out of what little I could identify through my blurry vision. The ¿Woman? could not possibly be human, at least not fully. The woman spoke, “How did you get in here? Is there an entrance or a passage you took?” The woman sounds much younger than she looks, though it’s hard to judge age with such low-quality vision.

“N-no. I just woke up here.” I said, “I don’t know how I got here.”

The woman’s face is stern, serious. She seems upset, though not necessarily at me. I’m mostly guessing based on how her voice sounds since her eyes are dark blobs, and her nose and mouth are almost indistinct. “There must be a you got in.” She said, “And if there is a way in, I can take that way out.”

I came to understand that she was like me, someone who woke up here one day and became trapped. Though, I recognize now that I am awake, that she never explicitly said she was human or that she had ever lived outside of this place. I merely assumed this because she wanted to escape and she appeared human.

“Don’t get his hopes up.” The ¿Woman? said, “There is no escaping this place.” The ¿Woman? sounded much older than she looked, but again my eyesight isn’t the best at this point in the dream.

“I see, you’re trapped in here too.” I said to the woman, “Have you been here long?”

“Hard to say.” She said, “You’ll find it’s hard to track time here.”

Despite her answer, I believed she must have been here a long time. Her mannerisms were so confident and decisive that I expected that she must now be familiar with her surroundings.

“So you’re trying to escape?” I ask, “Can I come with you?”

She stares at me for a while, probably considering whether it was worth dragging me along or if I would just be a hindrance.

“I’ve decided.” She said with firm assurance in her choice, “You will come with me.”

She turns around and strides confidently to the doorway to the next room, not waiting for me. As I struggle to my feet, the haggard old voice of the ¿Woman? remarks, “Hehe, I forgot how trusting newcomers are of strangers.”

I ignore her as I jog to catch up to the woman. I am not as trusting as the ¿Woman? thinks I am. I don’t trust the ¿Woman? at all.

I pass through the doorway to another vacant but well-lit room with doorways to the front and hallways to the left. “Hey, thanks for inviting me to come along with you.” I say, “My name is [I don’t actually remember what I said here. Apparently my dreamself had a different name than my realself. What’s yours?”

She didn’t stop walking. She didn’t turn her head to look at me. She continued walking so fast that I had to jog to keep pace. “I will not give you a name.” She said, “And you will learn to not be so open with others.”

“But then what should I call you?” I ask.

“You shall call me nothing at all.” The woman said, “I will know you are speaking to me.”

“But what if there are multiple people around?” I ask, “How will you know if I am speaking to you?”

“You will only speak to me.” She said, “If we must speak to others, I will do the talking.”

Unfortunately, none of these red flags concerned me at the time, so I naively followed her. We passed room after room, most of them looking quite similar. With no furniture or other identifying features I immediately lost track of where we were. I would not be able to retrace my steps to where I awoke if I wanted to.The woman never hesitated. She passed through room after room, turning through doorways at the side or the front, never pausing to consider the best direction. I wasn’t sure if she had a destination in mind or if she was just wandering, hoping to find a new location that might have an exit. I didn’t question it. I didn’t question her. Looking back, I now see what the ¿Woman? meant about me being too trusting. This woman could be leading me to a trap or somewhere dangerous, but the thought never even crossed my mind.

After about five minutes of speed-walking and occasional jogging to keep up with the woman, she finally stopped. I was glad for the break and struggled to catch my breath. But then I saw that this room was different from the other rooms we had been in. This room had people… or rather, creatures in it. It was inhabited by short green men. They were about three feet tall and their heads were wide as if their heads had been placed sideways on their necks. Still, with low pixel vision, I couldn’t discern what they were wearing. I thought they were wearing clothes because I saw blurs of browns against the dark greens of their skin. But it’s kind of impossible to tell if that is clothes or if they just have brown splotches on their skin. There were other of these in the room that were black instead of green, tinted ever so slightly purple. They had glowing yellow eyes and I could  see their mouth hole because that was glowing yellow too. I don’t know if those are a different species than the green men or if they are something different.

Some little green guys and little black guys came to us when they saw us enter the room. “Who are you?” They questioned us, “Why are you here?”

“We’re just passing through, looking for an exit.” I said. I could instantly feel my mistake. It felt painful, being stabbed through the chest. I looked down. One of the little black creatures had impaled me with a spear and the rest of creatures, both black and green, were unsheathing weapons as well.

The woman glared at me as I fell to the ground, dying. “I told you not to talk to anyone.” She said. I think it is unfair for her to blame me for this. The little men are drawing weapons and jumping forwards to attack her. No wonder why she’s so bitter.

…

I opened my eyes. Wait, hadn’t I been here before? My vision has low quality pixels but from what I see, this place looks like the Backrooms. From a dark doorway to my left behind me a familiar ¿Woman? appears. She is the same as before, except this time she is scowling.

“Back so soon?” She asked mockingly, “See where trusting strangers got you?” I look around. I remembered this room. This is where I met the woman and the ¿Woman?. Why was I here? Hadn’t I died? I was about to ask that very question when I heard the faint echoes of footsteps pounding in the distance. The footsteps were gradually getting louder. I didn’t pay much attention to the footsteps. Instead I tried to get my bearings and process what had happened. I stared at the ¿Woman?. She still remembered me, and I remembered her. But I also remembered dying. The conclusion was unacceptable. I refused to believe that I had come back from the dead.

“What are you looking at?” The ¿Woman? hissed testily, “I’m no circus freak for you to goggle at.” The footsteps are getting closer. The footsteps must only be a room or two away. The ¿Woman?’s words strike me from my stupor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.” I said, “It’s just… I thought I died. How am I–” The footsteps stopped just outside of the room in the well-lit doorway behind me, opposite the wall of the ¿Woman?. “I told you you can’t talk to anyone.” The woman said.

I turn around to face the woman. She is backing away, shaking her head at me. “What? Those little guys were gonna kill us whether I spoke or not.” I said, trying to justify myself.

The woman turned away. “Tell me when it’s done.” She said. I frown, confused. Then I feel a sharp pain scratching along my back as a weight pushes me against the ground then begins to drag me. I flail, trying to find my attacker, then I see her. The ¿Woman?. Funny as it sounds, I felt proud that I had guessed that she was untrustworthy. She dragged me into the doorway to the dark room.

…

I open my eyes. “Done.” The ¿Woman? said. She crawls along the wall out from the dark doorway again. I scramble backwards on my hands and feet away from her. “W-what was that?” The ¿Woman? opens her mouth to smile a horrid smile of shark teeth. Red ichor is dripping from her mouth. “Are you talking to me?”

“Simple. You died. Does that answer your question?” The voice of the woman said behind me.

“Hehe. Nice save.” The ¿Woman? laughed, “But I’m still hungry.”

I can’t look away from the ¿Woman? as she slowly creeps closer, abdomen stretching further and further from the doorway to the dark room. An arm grabs me under the armpits from behind and lifts me from the floor. “Dying wastes a lot of time.” The woman said, shoving me forward, “Don’t waste anymore.” I run forward, the haggard voice of the inhuman ¿Woman? growls. I straight forwards through the doorway on the wall in front of me, but then I come to a room where the only doorways are on the side walls. I stop and try to consider my options.

“Why’d you stop?” The woman asks from behind me. I jump, gasping. I hadn’t known she was right behind me. I look back. She is certainly right behind me. The ¿Woman? is nowhere in sight. She must have retreated back to her dark room. “I don’t know where to go.” I say.

The woman stares at me. The dark blobs that are her eyes shift. I suspect that she was using facial cues to say something, but my vision wasn’t detailed enough to discern it. Perhaps she was rolling her eyes at me or squinting at me in question. “Fine.” She says, “I’ll lead the way.”

She takes off at breakneck pace. I run to catch up. Despite the speed, she appears to be merely walking casually as though this were an evening stroll. I can’t fully trust my eyes due to the sight problems of this part of the vision. But it seemed almost like when you see someone moving on a moving walkway. They go further than the stride of their legs suggests.

My blurry vision corrodes even further as the edges of my vision go black. I struggle for breath as I sprint. Usually, my dreamself is in much better physical shape than I am in real life. Unfortunately for this dream, it seemed that it took on my true capabilities. Finally, she stops. I put my hands on my knees, and pant for air. I stare at the ground, trying to regain my stamina. I look back up to see dark blobs on the floor. The room looks familiar, but they all kind of do. There isn’t much difference between rooms. But this one has large chair-sized puddles maybe? Hard to judge depth with my sight. Some green, some black. Then I see the long sticks. Sticks that end in sharp points of what must be either stone or metal. Now I remember the room. The room where I died. Looking closer, I could now see the tint of a dark red coating on the blobs. But something’s off. Even for my sight, they should still look somewhat humanoid. One head, two arms, two legs. Instead, they are just bloody masses. I tremble to think that something in this place eviscerated this room full of little spearmen.

The woman picked up a spear. “Take this.” She said. I hesitate. The thrusts shaft into my arms. Then she begins walking again. The spear clattered to the ground as I was unprepared to take it. Once I have retrieved it from the ground, I have to run to catch up to her. She isn’t walking nearly as fast this time, but I’m weary from my previous run, so I still struggle to keep up. With a spear in my arms, I follow her. I didn’t notice this at the time, but she didn’t have a spear. Just me. There were plenty of spears on the ground in that room. If she wanted one for herself, she could have taken one.

The next few hours become a blur. All the rooms look pretty much the same. She walks with such confidence that I am convinced that she must know where she is going. We cross a room with dark shadows in oddly positioned places. The lighting of the rooms is odd. There are no visible light sources. Also there is a jarring contrast with dark shadowed walls next to brightly lit areas. And we ever so infrequently meet other creatures. I’ve learned from my mistake. I don’t speak. I let the woman speak instead. Dark pillars of shadow, that I wouldn’t consider to be creatures at all if the woman didn’t stop and face me with a stern expression to say “Remember. Don’t say anything.”

I’ve reached a part in my dream where not only is my vision blurry, but my hearing has become distorted as well. From now on, the words are hard to parse, like trying to hear through white noise. Which is odd, since I don’t play white noise or any other sound while I sleep. So I can’t quite make out what her garbled voice is saying to these shadowy pillars.

With both sight and hearing blurred and distorted, I have a hard time remembering anything of this. She must have negotiated with them because didn’t attack when she passed by. I followed the woman through a doorway, leaving the room of shadowy pillars behind. But as I passed through the doorway, I felt cold, wet tendrils slide down my shoulders. Then I fell backwards.

I opened my eyes. I rose up from the ground. I was back in the room with the ¿Woman?. I didn’t know how to catch up with the woman. I wouldn’t be able to navigate the labyrinthine passages to find her. I hoped she was on her way to retrieve me. If she wasn’t, I don’t know what I’d do. I didn’t hear footsteps approaching as I had last time I died. But we had been walking for quite a long time.

I sat there dumbfounded as to what to do. The ¿Woman? crawled from the doorway of the dark room. Gnashing teeth glinting in the dim light. Now I knew that talking to her meant death. Looking back, I have to wonder why talking to something caused them to kill me. When I talked to the woman, she didn’t kill me. But when I talked to the ¿Woman?, she killed me.

It’s hard to understand her garbled voice, but my full attention was devoted to listening to her since I had nothing else to do to pass the time while I waited hopefully for the woman to return. So I can guess a basic idea of what she was saying.

“Back again, I see.” The ¿Woman? sneers, “I told you. There is no hope for escape.” I couldn’t understand why she would talk to me instead of rip me apart. But she seemed upset or annoyed at my presence. Now that I knew that she would eat me if I dared speak to her, I kept my silence. I still didn’t really understand though: if she wants to feast upon my corpse, why doesn’t she do so? Why does she speak to me instead, trying to lure me into responding? No one else is here to stop her. I surely can’t defend myself. The spear I held didn’t help in the slightest when the pillars of inky shadow struck me down. And now I don’t have the spear at all.

That being said, I don’t really have a reason to fear death. And they kill me so quickly that I hardly feel it. So I’m willing to take a few deaths if it will get me some answers. I decided to take my chance. “I know you’re probably going to kill me for this.” I said, “But I wanted to ask you: When I wake up here after dying, do you see me arrive? What does it look like?”

She makes a sound with her mouth that is almost like the clicking of a tongue, but more like a tapping of hard material against hard material. “Curiosity killed the little boy.” The ¿Woman? said, “I haven’t been looking when you arrive. So let’s find out together, shall we?” She skitters along the wall closer. The sound of her shuffling against the surface makes me think that she perhaps has more limbs than an ordinary humanoid, despite missing the legs of an ordinary person. I close my eyes in anticipation of the incoming attack. I felt myself pushed to the ground and hooked limbs ruffling around in my torso. Then I felt still, and I opened my eyes. The ¿Woman? was there, eating bloody meat from the ground. I looked away. I waited until the sound of slurping had stopped. She didn’t speak. I had thought that she liked speaking to trick me into talking back. But right now, she was silent. I finally decided to turn to look at her.

I am so glad that I couldn’t see very well. It was almost like a censor-blur that you put over gore or nudity or faces, that is how degraded my vision was at this point. She looked back at me. Staring. Expectantly. I realized she was waiting for something. She knew what I wanted. I wanted to know what she saw. I knew what she wanted. She wanted to feed. And we both knew she wouldn’t feed unless I spoke to her. I felt my stomach drop.

“What did you see?” I asked hesitantly.

“I saw you die.” She rasped, then jumped forwards to pounce upon me. I opened my eyes. Silence again. How many times was she going to kill me before she answered my questions? She was slurping upon my remains, throwing into a scattered pile across the room. When she was finished. She became silent again. I didn’t know how many times she was going to kill me before she was satisfied, but I still couldn’t hear any footsteps approaching, so I figured I had nothing but time.

“What did it look like when I appeared?” I asked. Then I cringed, waiting for the worst. She cut through me like water.

“You know what?” I said, “Just tell me when you’re ready to answer my questions. I’ll just keep talking.” And so I did. And I don’t even know how many times I died. But I can’t believe she can eat so much. But after something like five deaths, I said something like “Go ahead and kill me again.” But after waiting for a few seconds. I open my eyes. There are like two bodies on the ground in front of the ¿Woman?, and she is slowly chewing on a chunk of arm. She sluggishly looks up at me, then back down at the two corpses. Then she shakes her head.

“I didn’t think I’d ever get sick of eating. What is this feeling?” The ¿Woman? said, disgusted, “I can’t eat anymore. It hurts to eat more. Are you poisonous?”

“No. I think you’re just full.” I said, “You’ve eaten too much and need to wait a while before you can eat again.” The ¿Woman? groggily shook its head, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Are you ready to tell me what I looked like when I appear after dying?” I asked.

She breathes out a sigh of annoyance. “I think you’ll be disappointed to hear that you simply appear out of thin air.” The ¿Woman? said, “I don’t know what you expected. A hole to open up and drop you onto the ground or perhaps descending from a pillar of light. No You’re just dead one second, then you’re there a second later.”

I must admit, I was disappointed. It is terrible. If I simply appear out of nothing when I die. Then I did not necessarily arrive into this death trap through an entrance that I can take as an exit. I might have merely materialized here. I was growing increasingly anxious and worried that the ¿Woman? was right: there is no escape from this place.

I began to hear the faint echoes of footsteps in the distance. The ¿Woman? Groaned. She must have heard it too. “Get out of here.” She said, “I’m sick of you. Get out of my sight.” She slowly dragged herself into her dark room. I didn’t leave. The scowling ¿Woman? Seemed quite upset. But then again, what’s she gonna do about it? Kill me? Ha!

“Why are you still here?” The ¿Woman? calls out from the dark room, “Go ahead and explore.” But I didn’t want to explore. I felt my mind filling with anxiety and despair. I began to realize the reality of my existence. This was an eternal torment. I hadn’t seen food in all the rooms I had explored. Maybe that’s why everyone I meet is so hungry. I knew that I was going to slowly die of hunger and thirst every few days. My eyes filled with tears, but it had no effect on my sight. It was already as blurry as could be. I fell to the ground and lay there. I had given up. I wished I could die permanently. At least, then I could escape. The footsteps grew louder.

Now I knew why no others ever wandered the halls. They were all caught in this nihilism. They knew there was no escape. They knew death meant nothing. And so they killed anyone who disturbed their wallowing in sorrow. Those were my thoughts at least. There were still exceptions… maybe they were still naively optimistic.

The footsteps stopped. “Hey! Wake up!” The familiar voice that sounded far too young for who it belonged to said. I didn’t move. A long wooden object bounced off my shoulders. I opened my eyes. There were no features anymore. Just light and shadow. The somewhat spherical silhouette of someone looking down at me from above. “Pick it up and let’s get moving.” She said to me, “We’ve wasted too much time already.”

“Wasted time?” I scoffed, “We have nothing but time.” She waited. Her footsteps left my side and stopped at the doorway. “You talked to her while I was gone, didn’t you?“ She asked, “I told you not to talk to anyone else.”

“Yes, I talked to her. Who cares?” I said, “I know she kills me if I speak to her, but death is meaningless when I reappear here after death.”

“Do you really think that I’d consider something as temporary as death to be a reason to only speak with me and no one else?” The woman’s voice garbled like she had a mouth full of marbles, “I found you. Someone new. Someone who had not yet given up like the rest of these sorry souls. I was right to worry that talking with them would cause you to lose hope.”

“Why shouldn’t I lose hope?” I asked, “What do I have to hope for?”

“Escape. Freedom.” She said, “Return to your normal life. Isn’t that something you want?”

“Don’t remind me.” I said, “I don’t want to think about it. I’ll never see them again.”

I heard an inhuman growl. But it didn’t come from the dark room where the monstrous ¿Woman? tried to fall asleep. It came from outside the room. Past the doorway. I didn’t look. I didn’t care. Whatever made that sound was probably going to kill me. Why should I care?

But I was left alone. Nothing tore into my flesh. Nothing pulled apart my limbs. Nothing carried me off to be devoured. Instead, I heard the overlapping clacking of footsteps march away like a bunch of people with metal walking canes. The sound faded into the distance and I was left alone to the emptiness again. But now tainted with memories of what I had lost. What I would never see again.

I can’t know how long I lay there. Eyes closed. Motionless. But echoing in my mind: Brother. Sister. Gone forever. House. Friends. I’ll never see again. The sun. The sky. I used to never go outside. Now I wish, all these things I despise, would happen again. Just one more time.

I felt something grab me by my shoulders. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know it was the ¿Woman?, finally hungry again. She bit into my neck, severing it from my torso by snapping the sinews. Then I opened my eyes. Something was different. I could see clearly in my mind’s eye, the people that needed me back home. A corrupt company had gotten the laptop with the information I was supposed to protect. My family had been taken. My house has been ransacked. I abandoned them. I couldn’t leave them behind. Stirring in my mind as I ruminated upon these thoughts. I rose from the ground.

I turned to face the ¿Woman?, and for the first time ever, I saw her clearly. Sight pristine. Any hint of a fading blur was gone from my vision. She wasn’t human. I already knew that. But I had assumed that at least part of her looked human. Looking at her now. It’s obvious that the only thing about her that was even slightly human, was her voice.

Skin. Flesh. Much like that you’d find on a human or a hairless mammal. She wore no clothes. Only humans wear clothes. The skin made up plates of carapace. But it wasn’t chitin. It was skin-covered flesh that made up the overlapping plates. The spherical head had two massive vertical oval-shaped dark-green eyes, with lines running latitude and longitude. No pupil, no iris. Just a gradient of green to dark-green. Bug eyes, as it were. What I had thought might have been hair, were thick cable-like cords stretching down from the top of its head and ending in the back of her shoulders. Her mouth, if I can even call it that, was an always open hole of shark teeth. What I had mistaken for lips shutting up the mouth was instead massive pincer mandibles that obscured the hole when clamped tight together. Her arms stretched out from the sides of her flesh-plated torso. Three pairs of them. No thumbs. And instead of fingers, each claw had four curved metal blades starting evenly spread around the hand, almost like a cross shaped. They curved forwards like a grappling hook. Her arms and hands had a thin layer of tan-brown fur. After we reach where most people would have a hip split into two legs, her abdomen stretches back towards the dark room. I could faintly see the silhouette of her abdomen coiled into a bundle in the room: a lump half the size of a car. Splintering out the sides of her elongated abdomen tail, segmented peach-colored chitinous rod-like limbs spread rise up at a diagonal angle two feet before reaching a joint that connects to the four-foot forelimb to shoots vertically down until it lands on the floor on a rod-like stump instead of a foot. Too many of these legs to count, all the way back along the abdomen tail. I can even see some of them stretching out from the coiled bundle in her dark room.

The horrific creature grips my corpse in her claws. Her mandibles snap through my pink meat with no remorse or hesitation. I shouldn’t fear death anymore, but I can’t help but feel afraid when I see this. She looks up at me, her expression is impossible to read with such an inhuman face. I subconsciously back away. It tosses the body across the room. It crashes against the walls of the corner of the room and lands in a pile of similar human corpses, mostly stripped clean of meat.

“You’re awfully active all of a sudden.” The creature rasps in the voice that I originally reminded me of an old woman because it was hoarse and croaking. Now I see it’s merely because it doesn’t have proper human vocal chords, and thus it mostly speaks by hissing breaths outwards. “Are you finally gonna leave me alone? Give me the peace and space I’ve been asking for for so long?”  

I feel my feet step on something hard. I look down. It’s a spear. I lean down and grasp it with both my hands. Then I stand straight up again, and hold the pointy end towards the monster. It leans its head to one side, perhaps in curiosity. Then it shakes its head and skitters up to the wall closest to the dark room and climbs up the wall. I take my chance and run. I don’t know where I’m going. I speed through the doorway, turn right, then left. And keep running. I pass through a room that has no floor except floating planks of wood lining a twisting path. Looking down reveals and endless fall. But I safely ran across the planks to another doorway. I enter a room with creatures that look like giant wasps, but I’ve already left through another doorway before they have a chance to react.

I hurdle an empty green couch facing a TV that is playing static white noise. Then I pass by a wardrobe as I hear it open behind me. I turn another corner. In front of me lead four different hallways, all completely dark. Opaque blackness prevents me from seeing where they lead. The lighting is odd in this complex, so I don’t think too much about it. I run through the second hallway from the right even though I hear the faint sounds of conversation coming from the left hallways. Running in blinding darkness for a few seconds, I turn to look back. Have I really only gone what appears to be no more than 30 feet?

I continue down the dark hallway before turning to see how much progress I’ve made. But it doesn’t look like I’ve gone any further. I growl in frustration. So I ran back towards the well lit room the way I came, but I don’t seem to be getting any closer there either.

I begin to panic. I can’t go anywhere. I’m stuck. And even worse, no one’s around. Wait, I hear conversation not too far away. Maybe I can – “Hello, is anyone there?” I ask quietly, “I need help.” That was too quiet. I realize, so I say it louder. “Can anyone hear me?” But again there is no response.

I shout. “Please! Someone help me! I’m trapped. I can’t move. I need help.”

The conversation stops. But I don’t hear any other sounds of movement. So I shout for help again. “Hello? If you can hear me, I’m trapped in this hallway. I can’t get out!” Still no response. I was about to ask again when I woke up on the ground. I looked around. “Oh, you’re back again.” The insect-like creature hissed from where it was lurking in the corner where the ceiling meets the wall. I crawled up onto my knees. I didn’t have the strength to stand. It was hopeless. Maybe I had the chance to escape. But not on my own. I can’t survive more than a few rooms away from where I awake. If only I hadn’t given up and driven away the only one who could help me.

My vision begins to blur. My eyes become unfocused, uncaring. The sound around me jitters with feedback. Garbled echoes approach from the distance. I close my eyes and slump to the ground. But the sounds of repeated impact grow louder and louder until they stop. Right outside the room. Something hard bounces off my head, and I hear the hollow clatter of it landing on the ground. I open my blurry eyes. The face in front of me is little more than a silhouette with my sight. I find the strength to reach my hand upwards to wave whatever it is out of my face. My fingers hit skin. Soft flesh, not the hardened carapace of a monster. My eyes begin to focus. As the face in front of me improves in pixel resolution, my hope rises. The woman has moved away rubbing her cheek, which is pink from where I had touched her.

“Ouch.” She said, “I didn’t think you had any strength left.” Then with her other hand, she waves her arm briefly to my side. “You dropped that.” She said, “Looks like you haven’t given up entirely. You were exploring.”

“You’re back! Oh, dear. I’m so sorry for hitting you.” I apologize, “I’m sorry I gave up. Please forgive me.”

She frowns. “Forgiveness? What good will that do?” She asked, “I see you’ve gotten back up on your feet. You’re coming with me.” She turns around and begins to walk for the doorway. I can see her clearly now. And I’m glad to see that she is a perfectly normal human woman. Well, except for her eyes. But that’s probably just genetics. Each eye has two pupils and irises, one above the other. The lower pair of pupil and iris is that of a normal human. Brown iris, and small circle-shaped pupil. But the upper pair is cat-like. Brownish-orange iris and the pupils are vertical slits. And now that I can see her clearly, her appearance matches the age of her voice. She looks like she’s probably barely older than 20 if not younger.

I felt bad about hurting her. She was still rubbing her face where I slapped her. As she was walking away from me, I noticed what I never noticed about her before. She casts a shadow in all directions. And each shadow has equal strength of darkness. So it does not have the appearance of a lot of overlapping silhouettes, instead it is just a circle of darkness.

I check for my own shadow, only to find that I don’t have one since there is no source of light. Some places are lit, and others aren’t. No rhyme or reason. Light doesn’t appear to behave normally in this place. I pick up my spear and follow after her. She stops walking a few rooms away and turns to me. “I’ve searched this never ending maze so many times. I’ve never found anything that could be an exit.” She said, “But I heard you scream, and I came. I found your body… in a room I’ve never seen before.”

I didn’t know what this meant. But then pointed at me. “You must lead the way.” she commanded me, “I will… follow.” She sounded uncomfortable with the idea of following someone else’s lead. I stood there, hesitant. I was unfamiliar with this place. I get killed even when I’m following someone else’s lead, even more so my own. I can’t lead the way.

“I said, you will lead the way.” She growled, clenching her fists, “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Simply walk in front of me and choose a doorway to go through.” Her firm gaze shakes me from my reluctance. I take a deep breath and make my forward, leading the way. I have no idea where I am going. I turn down a corner, passing by a room full of paintings of flowers in vases. I enter a nondescript yellow-walled room. Here is a doorway on the left wall, but also an industrial metal door on the wall opposite of me. I ignore the small table to my right and go straight for the metal door. I reach for the door handle then pause, looking back at the woman following me. She opens her mouth to say something, but then she closes it. I get the feeling that she doesn’t want to sway my decisions on navigation. So I twist the gray handle. The door opens into a dark and cold room. It’s too dark to see more than a few feet from the doorway, so I have no idea how large the room is. But I immediately see a wall in front of me and to the left, with the hall opening to the right. Past that, I can’t see anything.

I hurry in, my companion’s footsteps follow behind me. I hold my spear out in front of me, so that if I bump into anything, my spear will hit it first. My spear hits something hard. I stop and then slowly reach my hand out. Plaster. It’s a wall. I line myself up to walk parallel to the wall and point my spear forwards again. I walk forwards. It’s eerily quiet. Our footsteps echo on the tile floor. My spear hits something hard. I reach forward and touch it. Another wall. I readjust myself and continue forwards again. The echoing footsteps are creeping me out. It almost sounds like there are more than just two of us walking down these halls. My spear hits something soft. I stop and pull my spear back. I am too scared to reach forwards with my hand, so I slowly swirl my spear in circles in front of me. I don’t hit anything. I want to tell my companion, but my mouth goes dry. I’m too frightened to speak. So instead I reach backwards for her, but I grasp empty air. I begin walking back to where she should be. I only hear one pair of footsteps: mine. Fear is getting to my head and I’m shaking. “W-where are you?” I whisper. I get no response. “Please, say something.” I plead. Something heavy, cold, and wet drops down on me from above pushing me to the ground. I roll on the ground trying to stab upward at it with my spear. But I’m not hitting anything. The weight slinks off me and wet slapping steps trail it as it flees upwards. I’m confused about how its footsteps are rising in the darkness. Time for action. I leap to my feet, the floor wet with liquid, I thrust my spear up to the sounds of slapping steps. I hit something soft. But this time I have much more momentum and the soft material gives away. I feel a cold sticky liquid pour down my arm and hear it splatter onto the floor. I lower my spear point to the ground and stomp on the monster to push its impaled corpse off my spear.

“Hey, are you okay?” I ask. No answer. I fear what happened to my companion. But after a few more seconds, I hear someone gasping for air, and I hear something wet slap against a wall then thump against the floor beneath on the floor. “I’m here.” She says, voice raspy, breathing heavily, “Let’s keep going.” I don’t want to continue and get ambushed again if she still hasn’t recovered from the last attack, but I also don’t think this dark hallway is a safe place to stay. We should get out of here as soon as possible. “We should hold hands so that we know if one of us is ambushed again.” I say, reaching out my hand towards her voice.

“You just want to hold hands because you’re scared.” She says. Despite her verbal reluctance, I feel her hand grasp mine. It’s wet. I remember that she doesn’t have a weapon. She must have killed the monster with her bare hands. So with one hand holding hers, and one holding a spear in front of me, I continue forwards. Our two pairs of footsteps splashing in the liquid dropped from the monsters that ambushed us. My spear hits something hard. A wall. I turn left but that way is blocked by another wall, so I go right instead. Our footsteps echo on the tile floor, no longer splashing in the liquid. Three pairs of footsteps. I stop and give her hand a quick squeeze. I’m not sure what message I’m trying to give by doing so. She squeezes my hand back. The third pair of footsteps is still walking. It passes us by. She squeezes my hand twice in quick succession. I don’t understand what she is trying to say. But since she squeezed my hand rather than speaking, I think I can at least deduce that she agrees that speaking aloud is a bad idea in this situation.

The footsteps of whatever was in the hall with us rounds a few corners, muffling the sound, but then it stops. I hear the squeaking hinge of a door opening. And then I hear the clunk of the door as it shutters closed. I’m excited. We must be very close. I lead my companion forwards. But I fear what I might find. I tap the spearhead against the wall, following the passage. The ting of metal against metal. I tread carefully onwards. Ting of metal, ting of metal, thump of metal. I pull on my spear, but it doesn’t move. It’s stuck. I wish I had light. I pull on the spear then try pushing it other ways, jiggling and jostling the shaft. The woman squeezes my hand. I freeze. Are we under attack? Or is she simply curious about what I am doing with my spear? I ignore it for now.

I let go of the spear and grab the metal wall to find why my spear is stuck. It’s not the flat surface that you would expect from a wall. Stretching out from the wall is… I trace my hand around the rim… a wheel. The spear is caught between the spokes. A wheel? I forget about the spear and grab hold of the wheel. Could this be what I think it is? I pull at the wheel, but it doesn’t budge. I risk speaking, “There is a wheel on this wall.” I whisper, “Help me spin it.” She squeezes my hand, but I feel her pushing from the other side of the wheel. The wheel gives ever so slightly, but it still doesn’t turn. Then I hear the sound of splintering wood, and the wheel begins to turn. Clockwise. I hear the cogs ticking inside the wall, the mechanism slowly moving as we spin the wheel. The wheel stops and clicks into place. I wait. But nothing else happens. I’m disappointed. I was certain that something would come of spinning this wheel. I had heard someone come down here and a door… I thought I had found it.

The woman squeezes my hand. I still don’t understand what she wants. But then she places her hand holding mind onto the wheel. She curls her fingers around the rim, forcing mine to do so as well. I feel her hand go tense as it squeezes over mine, crushing it against the wheel. I’m pretty sure we already turned the wheel as much as it is gonna turn, so I feel that what she is doing is pointless. And it hurts.

“Aah, aah, ouch!” I hiss, “St-sto-stop!”

“Stop your whining and pull.” She says, “I’ve almost got it open.”

I comply with her demand. If only to make it pass faster. I lean backwards from the wall, wrenching the wheel towards my chest. I feel like my hand is going to break under her grasp. I hear a creak, and a slit of light breaks through. It grows into an open doorway. Door finally opens, the woman softens her grip. We cross the doorway. And we’re back in the well-lit hallways of plaster walls and carpet floors. I can hear footsteps. Whoever I had heard earlier… could they still be around?

I begin to run. I turn down the hallway to the right. The woman is struggling to keep right next to me since she doesn’t know which way I will turn and holding her hand doesn’t give her much room to maneuver. I could hear the footsteps getting louder as we approached. “Why are you still holding my hand?” The woman asks, “It’s not dark here.”

I ignore her for the time being. More important is catching up to this person. It might be a monster, but if they are familiar with this area, they might have some useful information. The footsteps sound so close now. I turn left through a doorway. Then I see it. Gray trench coat with a high collar. Gray wide brimmed hat angled down over the face. Long gray pants that are tucked into black hiking boots. The figure rounds a corner, escaping my line of sight. I sprint to that hall to see him duck into a doorway on the left. I dash after it. I enter the room. It’s an empty yellow plaster room with carpet. No furniture. No one in a gray trench coat. And no other exits. I frown. I don’t hear footsteps anymore. Whoever this person was, they’re gone now.

I examine the room closely. It’s blurry, which strikes me as odd since my vision is otherwise crystal clear. Blurry, reminds me of when my sight was impaired earlier in this complex. The carpet and walls are the same color of yellow, but the ceiling is white. There is no pattern on the wall. It’s simple plaster. Only about 30 feet by 30 feet, with the ceiling  around 10 feet up, it’s a very small room.

The woman’s hand goes limp and begins to slip from my grasp. I squeeze onto it, eyes darting around the room for the attacker. “Let go of my hand!” She growls, “What’s wrong with you?” I release my grip and she pulls her hand away. I feel embarrassed. Looking back from an awake perspective, I’m not sure how I could have not noticed that I was still holding her and or that she was clearly trying to let go of my hand. It’s one of the instances where I’m so glad it was just a dream because that would have been so embarrassing in real life.

“I saw someone come in here.” I say, “But it’s a dead end. You saw that too, right?” She growls in response. The more I hear her growl, the less human it sounds. It’s more like the growl of an agitated animal. “I’m taking the lead from now on. Following you was a mistake.” She says, “You dragged me through the halls by my hand, nearly dislocating my arm.” This was clearly an exaggeration on her part. She turns around to walk away, expecting me to follow.

“Wait! We need to search this room.” I say, “Didn’t you see them go into this room? There must be a secret passage.” A growl, like that of a dog moments before it bites. It sends a shiver down my spine. It sounded like it came from the woman. And it must have, there is no one else here. But it just sounded so inhuman that my initial thoughts were that something else made the noise. “I was too busy watching you nearly break my wrist to see anyone else.” She says venomously, “But if this is a dead end, then they couldn’t have gone in here.”

I’m not convinced that it’s a dead end. We’ve seen some odd rooms. I expect that this must have a hidden passageway. The question is where? The room is empty and every wall looks the same. The woman is no longer in the room. She is walking down the hallway. I get a little upset that she is ignoring what I think is a valid idea. Looking in this room, I stare at the walls. Blurry. I don’t know what it means, but it strikes me as important. I try to imagine what the gray trench coat figure did when they entered this room. Was there a hidden pressure plate? A secret combination lock? But the room is empty. I can see in the blurry room that there is nothing here. I look back at the woman, who has almost rounded the corner. I see her in perfect detail, so why do I find this room blurry?

My anger kindles. I feel that I am close to uncovering some sort of secret and she is ignoring it. I run after her, I grab her arm and begin dragging her back towards the room. She growls. She hisses. She tells me to stop. But I’m too angry to listen. She can’t leave when I’m so close. We pass through the doorway into the blurry room. She punches my arm. That’s going to leave a bruise. She squeezes her fingernails into my arm, and I cough in pain. I sprint into the room, losing control of my momentum. I stumble in pain, kicking my legs to keep running so I don’t fall to the ground.

Thump. We crash into the wall. I hear it crack from the impact. But then something gives way and I feel myself fall. The woman cries out with a terrible ghastly scream. I’d have thought she was being murdered from the sound of it. I squeeze tight to her hand. I don’t want to be separated. Everything is yellow and white. I feel like I am sinking in water. I grab her arm with my other hand. It’s above me, keeping me from sinking further. I feel gravity pulling me down, but she’s keeping me up. I can’t tell if she is still trying to escape my grasp or if she is just trying to keep stay afloat. I can’t see anything through the opaque whitish-yellow that fills my vision. As I sink, I pull her down with me.

I hit the ground, landing hard on my back. I am still holding her hand. Gratefully, the rest of her is also attached. I open my eyes. At first all I see is black. But my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I see the street lights. Houses line the block of this neighborhood. We are on the grass next to a road. Just over 100 feet down the road, it continues beneath a bridge. The woman is backlit by the streetlights, so I can only make out her silhouette… and her glowing pair of orange irises with slit pupils. She growls again, baring her teeth. I hadn’t noticed how jagged and sharp they were. She rips her hand away from mine.

“Hey, we did it! We escaped.” I say, trying to calm her with the good news, “Aren’t you happy? This is what you wanted.” She doesn’t respond. And even with street lamps close by, I realize that the ground around her is still cloaked in shadow. I take a step back. “I’m sorry for dragging you around by your hand.” I say, “But at least we escaped, right?”

The shadow on the ground grows upwards, no longer limited to two-dimensional space. It seals itself to her silhouette and a new form begins to take shape. She’s over 15 feet long from her fangs to her tail and about 6 feet tall from the tips of ears down to metallic claws. It’s like a panther or a cougar made entirely of oily shadow. The purple rainbow reflection of oil shimmers off her fur. Too many legs. Somewhere between 3 and 4 pairs of them. And the gentle swaying of her head from side to side left gray afterimages.

Rage in her eyes. I knew what was coming next. I raised a hand, gesturing for her to keep back, but she swung a claw, and I felt my insides begin to spill onto the ground. “Please… look.” I said between gasps of pain, “You’re… free.” A car passed us and turned down a nearby intersection, but it apparently didn’t notice us or perhaps it just decided that it didn’t want to deal with a giant shadow panther with glowing eyes, metal claws, and too many legs.

The passing vehicle took her attention off me as her eyes tracked its motion. I saw her pupils dilate as she began to take notice. I heard her make a shrill gasp. The shadow began to melt off her form, pooling back down to the ground. Soon, she returned to her human form, backlit by the street lamp. It was hard to see her face in the darkness, but it looked like she might have been displaying an emotion other than anger.

“I’m…free.” She said faintly, as if not believing it herself. Then her eyes fell back on me and I saw guilt spread across her face. “Oh no!” I was going to say something comforting, but I was in too much pain. I had never seen her like this. She was… humble. She had been assertive, bossy, and demanding from the moment we first met. She would make commands and expect me to follow them. She wouldn’t ask for my opinion or check to see if I agreed. And he never admitted to making mistakes. But now I saw regret on her face.

“I’m sorry. You helped me escape.” She says, turning away because she can’t bear to face me, “And I killed you in return.” I wasn’t dead yet. I looked down. The gaping wound and the viscera spilt on the ground meant that she was probably right. This will probably kill me.

Then I opened my eyes. I was back in the complex. And the creature that looked like the cross between a woman and a centipede was irate at my return. “How dare you show your face here again!” She says, “Get out of here! Scram! Leave!”

I didn’t move. I was frozen with shock and terrible sadness. I had done the impossible. I had escaped. But I had angered my companion and paid the ultimate price. I sat deflated. I had nothing left. Having seen escape but have it ripped away. My vision began to blur into low-pixel render. “Hey! Can you hear me?” The creature screams, “I told you to get out here.” I hear it crawling down the wall. I stand to my feet. I’ve seen the exit. I know it exists. I found it once… I must be able to find it again.

Overlapping tapping footsteps of tens of pairs of legs skittering closer. I turn to face the monstrous entity that has ever so vaguely human-like features. I widen my stance and bend my knees. Then I push against the ground and straighten my posture while I reach towards the creature with my right hand. It’s claws, I have to watch out for those. I grab a claw with two of my hands, but it has other claws. I can’t stop it from hurting me, but its claws don’t touch my skin. I push the claw I’ve grabbed towards its face. It crawls backwards in a sudden burst of speed. Abandoned its charge.

It rips its limb free of my grip and begins to climb up the wall. I see the claw that I grabbed, the limb is blurry and fizzles with static. It blinks in and out of sight. I can’t normally identify emotions on such an alien face, but at this moment, I could see blatantly written on its face–pain. Excruciating pain. I frown. This hadn’t ever happened before. “I found the exit.” I say, my voice flat and monotone, void of emotion. The woman-like centipede-like creature breathes out a sigh of relief. “An exit you say?.” It says ponderously, “That monster that you’ve been traveling with… she was with you when you found the exit?

I say nothing. I don’t even nod. It clicks its mandibles in glee. “How delightful.” It says, cackling, “She’s gone, I presume?”

I grit my teeth. “You said there was no escape.” I say accusingly, “Aren’t you at least surprised that you were wrong?”

It shakes its head. “Look around, buddy.” It says, “How many other humans have you seen around here?” I frown in confusion. I haven’t seen any humans, but I don’t know what the monster’s point is. Maybe it’s because I can’t think straight. I’m angry. This creature claims it knew that there was an exit this whole time. It lied to me. It tortured me. It killed me over and over, toying with me. I march to the corner of the room. The corner filled with corpses, I recognize them as my own. I rip the femur bone from the ground, manager clouding my blurry vision. I stride back towards the monster.

The critter’s bug-eyes widen in fear. It begins to shake. It understands. I’m going to kill it. Sidenote here. This might be the most concerning part of the dream. It’s not a good look for my mental state to dream about murdering someone, even if it isn’t human. But in my defense, I wouldn’t call this murder because death doesn’t mean much. It would be assault, maybe even torture, but it wouldn’t be lasting murder. I refuse to believe that I would kill this creature in this situation if killing it would leave it dead permanently.

It’s huddled up in the upper corner of the room where the ceiling meets the wall. Unfortunately for this monster, its abdomen stretches into a tail that coils into a bundle in the dark room past a doorway. The majority of its body is still easily within my reach. I run towards the abdomen tail and bludgeon its underside with my femur.

The femur splinters as it hits the soft underbelly of the centipede-like creature. The creature cries out in pain, and its elongated abdomen writhes in response to my attack. It falls from the wall, landing on the ground with a crunch. And my anger falters for just a moment when I see the horror on its face. Then the sight of its bloodied claws rekindle my fury anew. It rushes me, but I push the broken shaft of the bone into its mouth. But this time, it doesn’t recoil at my touch. Nor do I see it begin to phase in and out of existence. Instead, it chops the bone from my hand with its mandibles.

This part of the dream is hard to remember. I know I got mad and attacked the creature that vaguely resembled a woman from the torso up, and a centipede from the abdomen down. I also recall that I was no good at fighting. Cold claws excised my throat. I woke up on the ground next to it. My anger had lowered to a smolder. What would be the point of killing this creature? It likely would hurt more to keep it alive and wounded.

I stand back up. The monster is wary of me, keeping its distance. “Stay away from me. Get out of here.” It screeches, “You said you found an exit, right? Then leave. I won’t stop you, so you don’t need to hurt me.” What it said was true. I could probably get out of here. Now that I know that there is an exit. Now that I’ve already escaped once. I can likely do it again. Hurting this monster, killing it, won’t help me. It doesn’t seem like it wants to hurt me anymore. In fact, there had always been a sort of consent to its attacks. I rarely encountered other monsters, and so it was hard to tell with them. But for this centipede-woman? She has never attacked me before I’ve spoken to her. Thinking back, it doesn’t seem like she can even touch me if I don’t first grace her with my voice.

This doesn’t excuse its actions. But it does get me to think about my behavior. So I realized just how terrible it is to hurt someone out of anger. I don’t apologize. I’m not sorry. But I do decide that I won’t hurt it anymore. “Ugh, you knew there was an exit.” I say, “So why are you still here?”

It crawls further backwards into its dark room until it is little more than a silhouette. “Escape? To a world full of other murderous humans like you?” It asks, “No thanks. I don’t want to die.” Having died many times, I can see how it would be uncomfortable. But, I’m certain that living outside in the world would be much better than this terrible empty maze even if you were killed every time a human found you. Frankly, I didn’t care enough to continue questioning the centipede-like creature. So I left the room to try and find my way to the exit again.

I round a corner, then cut down the hall to a doorway. It’s so empty. So terrible. I walked through several rooms. Nothing worth mentioning. Except for maybe, the black pillars. My sight isn’t blurry anymore now that my anger has died down and I am set on seeking the exit. I’ve seen these black pillars before. Now I can see them clearly. Black static fizzles up to just a foot beneath the ceiling, then branches outwards with its five limbs stretching about 3 or 4 feet angled slightly downwards. There are about three of these entities. Their stem is about a foot and a half wide. And their limbs are about 4 inches wide at their points, but are about a foot wide at their base at the top of the. The light is warped around it like looking at a black hole. It’s a really weird effect. As soon as I see this creature, I immediately begin taking steps backwards. I’ve been killed by one of these before. It might have been by these same individuals in this same room.

They have no discernable face. They are not even slightly humanoid. I don’t know why they killed me last time. I don’t know what rules they follow. And they are so utterly alien that I don’t have any clue of how they might react to any given choice I take. If I run, will they chase me? Are they fast? If I walk through, will they attack me? I’ve yet to see any of them move. The only reason I know they are alive is because my companion spoke with them last time and I died in that room, and I assume it was they who killed me.

I step away until I round a corner and am out of sight. Then I run down another doorway. I don’t see anything following me when I look over my shoulder, so I figure I’m good. I stop just before entering the doorway. Inside the room are those same pillars of black static. They’re in the same position as the other room. I look behind me, trying to see if I somehow turned around and went back to the same room. But I had been going the opposite direction of this room. Don’t know how I could have returned to this same room. So I walk away, but I keep my eye on the doorway, making sure I am not walking towards it.

Then I hit a wall walking backwards, so I side-step along the wall as I keep my eyes on the doorway to the room with the creatures. I feel my hand around the wall behind me as I follow the perimeter of the room. My hand cusps the edge of a doorway behind me. I turn to face the doorway and find another empty room. I pass through this room and head towards the doorway to the right. I stop. Again, this doorway leads to the room with these entities.

My vision begins to waver and so does my resolve. I feel emotionally numb. Navigating this maze is so hard that I want to give up. A wave of lethargy overcomes me and I fall to my knees. I stare down at the ground in front of me. The entities in the room in front of me remain motionless, but my ears begin to ring as if bombarded by a sound that is too high-pitched to hear. In addition, I start to hear the hum of a radiator coming from behind me, creeping ever closer. I close my eyes and straighten out to lay on the ground, face-down. I don’t have the strength to move. The buzzing radiator has an almost white noise effect overlapping with it as it grows deafeningly loud right behind me. Wet tendrils slide down my back and wrap around my waist, hoisting me upwards. I get a few inches above the ground before I wake up in the room with the centipede-woman. The monster hides in the dark room, trying to escape my notice. I know it’s there, but I don’t care. My vision begins to return to normal slowly as my emotions begin to thaw. I shake off the fatigue and unexpected sluggishness.

I stand and attempt another escape. But this time, after traveling through probably 50 rooms, I find one with burning human skulls with bat wings, screaming as they flap through the air. I opened my eyes seconds later and got up to try again.

I head down the halls again. This time, I find myself crossing through dark rooms coated in deep shadow. But still only shadow, so I can still see if only just barely. I don’t immediately recognize the change in my surroundings due to the darkness, but once my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I noticed that the walls were brown planks of wooden logs like those found in a wooden cabin you’d expect to see in a forest. The ground is gray stone, but isn’t smooth. It’s like they chopped the rock to make it semi-flat but never smoothed it with sandpaper or made it even.

I see windows, but they have curtains covering them with wooden planks on top of the curtains boarding up the window. The sides of the room are furnished with tables and chairs. But there is no one else here, so the empty furniture makes it seem even more ominous. I reach the end of the room. At first, I thought it was a dead end, but the wall has a doorframe. It took me a few seconds to notice that it had a door.

I slide my hands along the door, but there isn’t a door handle. I apply a bit more pressure, pushing my fingers into grooves in the door. The door opens–it wasn’t latched. I go through. I hear footsteps shuffle in the room I am entering. I don’t let it faze me. There is literally nothing anything here could do to me. I’ve already suffered the worst case scenario–death. So I walk forward with an uncharacteristic bravery that comes from knowing you’re effectively immortal.

Despite the sounds of footsteps in the room, I do not collide with anyone as I cross the room. The room grows darker as I continue further into the room. Soon I can’t see at all. I hit a wall at the end of the room. I feel around on the wall until I find a doorframe. Once I touch the doorframe, the footsteps stop. This doorframe doesn’t have a door attached. I go through. I hear the faint sounds of conversation in front of me. Overlapping. Incoherent. Untrustworthy. I continue through the room, the conversation grows louder. I reach forwards with my hands to make sure they touch the wall before I do. I don’t want to hit my face.

I feel my hands push against a pressure or force. Suddenly, my hands go numb. I can’t feel them. I suddenly hear footsteps from the room behind me. They are dashing towards me. Provoked by irrational fear, I run forwards, pushing through the barrier. It’s still pitch black. The sounds of footsteps are immediately gone from hearing. I get the sensation that I am falling. I hit the cold wet grass. I stand up. It’s dark, the sun is not visible in the sky, but I can see that the sky is brighter in the East. It’s almost dawn. I look around. I’m in the city. Like the middle of the city. I’m in a patch of grass in front of a skyscraper. Looking back, this an odd location for there to be grass. I don’t see anyone out and about because it is still early. I also don’t know where I am. But I’m no fool. No phone? No problem. If you’re lost in a city, there is a simple solution. I wander the sidewalks until I find it. A bus stop. There isn’t a map at this one, but that’s fine with me.

I don’t know when a city bus would arrive or where it would be going. But I knew one would be coming eventually. I waited there for quite a while. Less than an hour, but probably longer than 15 minutes. The city bus comes and stops there. I get on the bus and pay for the ride. Then I take a route map pamphlet on the side of the bus. I read through the route map. I can’t figure out what city I am in or how I would go about trying to get home. Had this been real life and not a dream, this plan might have actually worked. Instead, I remain entirely lost.

I look out the window as the bus drives along, trying to figure out where I should go. Then I see her. It’s that woman from before. I helped her escape. From her transformation into some sort of predatory cat formed of shadow, I now have the sneaking suspicion that she might not truly be human. Having seen someone familiar in this strange city, I view her as a sort of anchor or beacon. I jump out of the bus while it is still moving. I must have opened a window to escape. I ran towards the familiar face.

I couldn’t reach her. She jumped across rooftops. Not every building here is a skyscraper. The buildings that are only one or two stories high are the ones she ran atop. I looked for a way up to the rooftops. I found a dumpster to climb. I grip window sill frames and throw myself to the roof.  But at this point, the entire cityscape appears incredibly different. The skyscrapers form window-less walls. Up against a wall, there is a narrow roof that is probably only 10 feet by 10 feet. Due to the minute space of the roof, I can’t imagine what the building beneath it could be used for. I see my companion jump onto the bus as it is passing, then jump from the bus to the platform.

There are two openings in the wall. One to the right and one to the left of the 10’ by 10’ platform. These openings are incredibly large but are high up above the ground, so much so that they are above even the rooftops. However, there does appear to be a way in. The bus is driving in circuit, into the opening on the right and out of the opening on the left. The city bus was flying.

She jumped from the rooftop to the flying bus. Then she disappeared into the hole in the wall. The city bus comes out the other side, but she isn’t on the bus anymore. So I jump onto the bus, then jump from there to the 10’ by 10’ rooftop. I stay on the rooftop for about ten minutes, petrified in fear. The bus passes again and again. I should jump onto it and follow it into the opening.

I finally worked up the courage to jump again. I jump as the city bus flies past. I land on its roof. The bus zooms in through the opening in the wall. Inside this opening, I find it is not just a wall, it’s an entire building. There is a ceiling. There is a floor. The city bus flies upwards. I‘m going to get crushed against the ceiling. I roll off the roof of the bus. I don’t remember falling. The place I land does not look like the area I saw looking down from the top of the bus. I see myself in what is much like a massive warehouse. Around me are a bunch of rooms. This is different from the complex I had found myself in earlier with the monsters. This is inhabited with humans. Some of the walls are one-way viewing windows into what look like interrogation chambers. I see through a window. It’s the woman, the one that transformed into some sort of predatory cat one time. The one that I had helped escape the complex. She is sitting, strapped to a chair. There are two people in the room with her. They wear white lab coats, clear safety goggles, and light-blue face masks like those from a hospital. They are questioning the woman in the chair. Their voices are faint muffled sounds because the glass window into the room blocks most of the sound. I fear that my hesitance to follow after my companion has led her to being captured. If I hadn’t been too scared to follow immediately, I would have been there to help.

…

My entire world seems thrown through waves of water. I am entirely disoriented as my vision swims and I feel myself falling. Bright lights flash through my mind. I can’t feel the ground. I flail my arms and kick my legs. I feel myself breach the surface of the liquid and gasp for air. I swivel my head from side to side to try and get a grasp of my surroundings. I am in the ocean. There are three points of interest that I can make out other than the endless blue horizon. There are two military battleships on course parallel to each other, both heading towards what appears to be a floating island, anchored to the sea by giant metal chains that reach below the water. This floating island looks like it must be half a mile in the air above sea-level. Airborne by some unknown means.

I don’t have time to appreciate the grandeur of the majestic structure. My anxiety grows as size and space distort before my very eyes. The relative size of the battleships molds based on my perspective. As they are far away, they seem quite small. And for a few minutes, I believe them to be almost toys. Like I could hold them in my hands. I reach forward to touch them. As my hands move towards the ships to touch them, the water pushed by my motion sends waves rippling through the water, crashing against the ships, nearly causing them to capsize. Then I hear a terrible siren alarm behind me. I turn around to face the massive floating island. Despite its size being even smaller in my view compared to the ships for the great distance away it is, I could only imagine the landmass as absolutely colossal in comparison to both me and the ships.

The metal chains that anchor the island to the water writhe back and forth in the water as though some leviathan of the deep were wringing the chains, trying to knock the land out of the sky and send it plummeting to the depths. My fear grows as size and perspective returns to me. The ships have gotten closer now and are very clearly massive battle cruisers. And the splashing movements of the chains that anchor the island causes the water around me to churn and swirl, even though the island is still yet so far away. One of the ships begins to sink into the choppy waters, the front of the ship pointing up into the sky as it drops below the surface. Bubbles billowing up from its remains.

I keep my eyes on the one remaining ship as though its presence could save me from drowning. And it remains faceted to a fixed distance closeby. It continues to chug towards the island, but I am dragged with it as though by an invisible tether. I feel myself grow heavy in the water, and the ship again seems to shrink in relative size to me, until I feel that I am a meandering giant. But now we are close to the island. And I can see just how high up in the sky it flies. My initial estimate of half a mile in the air has proven to be a few miles short. This structure rises above the tallest mountains. The metal chains that tether the island to the sea sway back and forth in the waves and the wind. I can’t even imagine living on such a landmass. The constant rocking movement would surely throw me off.

The ship is now nearly directly beneath the island. But it is too late. I see torpedoes ready in launching silos on the sides of the ship. It is not enough. Rising from the water are gargantuan tentacles, like that of some giant squid or perhaps even the kraken. They slam against the surface of the ocean, and the ship is heaved backwards by mountain waves. It fires its torpedoes, which cut through the waves, burst out the other side of the great walls of water, then fall to the more level surface of the sea before sinking into the depths, having never hit their target.

I struggle in the water, feeling like I can barely keep my head above water in the tempestuous currents of some great aquatic beast roaming beneath, a shadow in the dark abyss. A sail billows on a previously non-existent mast on the metal cruiser. The wind catches the shape and slows its backwards momentum, and prevents it from spiraling into an uncontrolled spin. As quickly as the mast and sail arose, they are gone again. And the ship resumes its course directly towards the hovering island and the great sea monster that lives in its shadow.

Another siren sounds its alarm from the island, and the beast plunges its tentacles up from below the surface, coiling to grasp the ship. But a splash of white water, the battleship has fired another volley of torpedoes. This time, they didn’t miss. The tentacles in front of the ship are smacked back beneath the waves. The deafening thundercrack of explosive missiles reverberate through seas, as the sea monster retreats back to the depths. I look to the side as the ship cuts through wave after wave, in a straight course towards the island. I can see the massive, bulbous eye of the colossal cephalopod. It’s dark blue and purple shape sinks into deeper darkness until its silhouette is indistinct against the depths beneath the waves.

…

I awake. Massive hoops hover in the air, directing a race course for airborne vehicles. I am on land. In this residential neighborhood, an intersection next to a bank. In the distance, an icecream shop with the full skeleton made of whale bones mounted atop the short building. Some primordial being reshaped past extinction. With people who must have been either my friends or my family, I enter the icecream shop. One of those who are with me asks the old cashier behind the desk about the meaning of the whale skeleton. I can see now the true nature of this building. It is no ordinary edifice. They begin to drone on about prehistoric battles, but all I can see is that the icecream shop I have entered is a massive city bus. The same bus as those that flew in a previous part in my dream. At this point in the dream, I had no recollection of previous accouonts with woman that transform into shadowy panthers or dinosaurs or warehouses. I didn’t even remember the giant squid and the floating island as each episode was disconnected and my memory did not continue through the entirety. But I felt an eerie familiarity with the bus and the whalebones mounted atop it. It was as though I felt that should remember these symbols but I did not know why at the time. So I ignored them for the time being, trying to shake dissonant anxiety that threatened to overtake me.

The icecream shop, which was a massive city bus with a whalebone skeleton atop it was arranged like a diner on the inside. Stools lined up to long marble tables where crowds talked and laughed as they tasted their sundaes. I felt that I should join in the recreation, but something felt amiss and put me on edge. I could not be calm or comforted in this place. And every minute I stayed their longer, the more I looked at the other inhabitants with suspicion. I knew them to be my friends and my family, but I did not know their names. In retrospective memory, I can recall that their faces were indeed the faces of those that are in real life my friends and family, but at the time I could not easily remember. My father came to me and offered to help me order a glass of icecream. I wanted so desperately to accept and forget what dreadful feelings whelmed within me. But I stood my ground, staring into his eyes. His complexion was darker than it should have been, as though he were standing in shadow despite the well-lit icecream shop illuminating all areas of the inside of this city bus. The face of my father was shrouded in darkness. I did not believe him to be who he claimed to be.

I stepped backwards slowly until panic overtook me, and turned full around to sprint away. I can hardly remember what happened. What I do know is that something got me from behind. Then I awoke. A complex. Centipede monsters. And elsewhere Hellenistic and Greek iconography as the fury of a storm god shook the sky. And my entire vision thrust through the halls, as though zooming along a rollercoaster. Zipping around corners, as shadowy creatures chased me. Verily inky pillars stood motionless awaiting my fall into their clutches, but I could not be stopped. Then crashing through a wall, and I was falling again. But plummeting beneath the waves, I opened my eyes. And I was high in the air. Hoops in the sky below me as I fell through the airborne obstacle course. Wind whipping against my limbs, I felt like my arms and legs would be torn off from mere air friction. I stumble, hitting the back of the trunk from within a car. The backdoor opens and my family and friends leap out from inside the vehicle. I shake, convulsing on the floor of the van, slowly lose my grip on the door handle and sinks to the ground, floor rising to meet my fall. I land on my back. Eyes dazed, I stare upwards. Van frozen above me in the air. Others from my family and friends stuck mid-leap from the trunk of the car. The air inside the flying hoops distorts until the very current of the wind is visible. Then in a brilliant flash of the light, the car is gone along with those that had been trying to jump out of it.

I groggily get to my feet. Looking from side to side, I recognize the area. It’s a residential neighborhood, an intersection across from the bank. A most familiar sight greets my gaze. A bus with a whalebone skeleton atop it. The sign on the bus indicates that it is an icecream shop. But it is too small for such a thing to be true. It is no building, but rather, it is a bus. It could support no visitors. The insides are full of freezers. My memory of continuity is beginning to return to me at this point in the dream, proving that I must be nearing true wakefulness. I begin to wonder where those I had seen before had gone. I try to piece together the contradictory scenes in my mind. And though my brain is addled, still in slumber, I come up with a clear solution. Time Travel. And even as the thought strikes me, I can see the neighborhood around me blur and twist into different versions of itself as the past unravels to make up a new present and future. Hoops in the sky disappear, and the tumbling roar of an ocean echoes in the distance. The blaring siren of alarm as though we were under attack, the very ground begins to tremble. It’s like an earthquake, but I’m not entirely convinced that the landmass I stand upon is thoroughly connected to the earth. Screaming recognition in my mind. Those that I have found and lost. Friends that have been captured and detained. Evil companies that have kidnapped my family and those monsters I have befriended.

A few truths I have come to realize as my mind wisps ever closer to consciousness. I have not seen anyone else die. Or rather, I have not seen anyone recover after death. My assumption of immortality is based on my own experience. I should not conclude that death has no meaning. For others feared it. And they thought it worthy enough of a punishment to be used as a threat. Monsters do not come back from the dead. Only humans do. What does this mean for those that are invariably inhuman?

I do not remember waking. But this I will say, that the very same day that I awoke, I tried to remember the name of the woman that transformed into a shadow panther. I thought to myself of any female name that came to mind. Rachel, Lucy, Sarah, Elizabeth, namuhnI. Later that same day, I researched what words meant backwards to help inspire interesting names. But one came to mind as it was a name I had ignored when I remembered the monsters. namuhnI was dismissed from my mind when I thought of it because it did not seem like a real name. Then I found out that “namuhnI” backwards spells “Inhuman.” That is to say, my companion was Inhuman. She was named Namuhni. That disturbed me that night until I dreamt of Queens, Jesters, and Ministry, considering those to be the suites in play for Poker. But that is the end of the dream. The confusion that befell me in those last minutes has hopefully been well demonstrated in this record. I cannot prove to myself or others what has happened. Nor can I tell what I means. Perhaps it was nothing at all. Little more than a figment, which sprouts from underlying dread.