"The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep."
– Stephen King
*****
For the longest time, I felt myself falling. It felt as id the ground no longer
existed. Just the endless dark, whether my eyes were open or closed.
Darkness was all I could see.
At least, in the beginning.
Now? Now I see swirls of grey, twisting into twinkling glints of light reminiscent of stars. Those stars brought colour back to my world only for them to blink out of existence after a short moment of life.
The dark returned. It always returns. After who knows how long, more than hours, longer than years, eons perhaps? All I know is, Things, have begun to appear every so often with the twirling grey and blinking lights.
Things that make me stomach twist and turn. An almost intrinsic fear that all living beings have. To the dark, to the quiet whispers, to the movement in the corner of your eye that you seem to never be able to catch, to the unknown.
The unknown.
The incomprehensible.
And along with it, the Madness, that has come with being the observer of
these inconceivable things? Events?
Beings.
*****
After things have begun to change, I've been able to have some assemblance of the passage of time. With it, some bits of my sanity as well have returned.
No longer was I a screaming mess, twisting and turning, breaking my bones, clawing my eyes out, peeling back my own flesh in the darkness that I have come to call home.
Or have I? Am I gaining my sanity back? Or has that be perverted so much by the insight of things no mortal creature has any right to glimpse, nor comprehend as I have, that my insane mind has become the new norm.
And mortality. My mortality. Do I even fall in that category of existence anymore after the length of time that I have long lost count of has past me by?
How long has it truly even been for me? Once the Madness took hold I stopped caring in all honesty and and indulged in the perversion of body mutilation and acts that would see a mortal long break and die.
Yet I'm still here. Long has the lights stopped twinkling in and out of existence. But I feel them. Oh I still feel them moving around me. Twisting and turning in the most eeriest of ways that would make a sane man's skin crawl. The faint slushing and slugging sounds echo in my ears in this place with no sound at all.
I'm back in the dark in the most truest sense.
But this time I'm not alone.
"I-t—'s ti—me…."
What was that? New sounds? Has my shattered mind finally come up with something new for
me?
"M— dea— sweet Hun—…."
It is such a sweet voice. Almost, caring? Yes, caring I would say. Nothing like the voices I've come to know and and grown accustomed to in the dark. Well, I can't call them voices, but I know they are speaking to me in their own unique way and over time, I learned the language these, creatures used.
*****
Am I real?
What can even be considered real?
At this point I've gone through so much
mutilation and done such horrific things to myself that the question finally popped in to my brain.
Do I even have a brain? So much has changed. What was once pink flesh covering red muscles and white bones, now appear as a grotesque aberration of what was once called human.
I can't see the changes but I can feel them. With no more lights appearing I can only run my once normal hands along my figure and envision the depth of the changes that have occurred upon my being.
Clawed hands for a start, sharp to such a point that the smallest graze tears open my flesh.
My flesh, skin, feels somewhat wet and has a leathery texture to it now. Has healing from the numerous flaying caused it to heal to such a grotesque degree?
Then there's my face, teeth razor sharp, sharp enough to rip and tear flesh from a creature with minimal effort. And my eyes, long since have a tore them from their home in my head, lay vacant holes that I can only imagine are just as black and empty as the dark is now.
But yet I can see. See far more than my eyes ever could have imagined. See things that would absolutely have made my previous self experience a true ego death. The full death and eradication of consciousness that made up what could be described as Me, and my since of self.
But since that didn't happen, could it have been the long and extreme torturist experiences that I subjected myself to from the Madness the dark imparted on me?
Or maybe my mind was already a bit mad before I ended up this place. My own Wonderland so to speak.
Compared to the vibrant colours and whimsical nature that Alice experienced, my dark and twisted nightmarish hellscape that sent my once human to the farthest and darkest reaches it could handle before it snapped.
And I did in fact snap.
At one point in time, I considered myself dreaming. Dreaming up all of this.
This, Nightmare, I guess you could call it.
One of those that feel like years, ones that people have whole families, watch their kids grown up and they themselves age to become elderly and right before they enter their finally sleep, their eyes snap open and wake up in bed like nothing happened.
I have long given up hope for that moment to arrive. Accepting my new fate, my, new reality as true. After all, the line between sane and insanity is thin, but I've long crossed over it and embraced it.
*****
It's gone quiet. Even the creatures have gone silent on me now. No long do I hear the sweet grotesque melody have their language. Just back to the silence as when I first arrived here.
I wonder how long it has been since I have arrived here?
When I first became aware of myself in this place, that first long silence in the dark was deafening. But it followed the twisting grey streams along with the
twinkling lights flashing in and out of existence. Then those things showed up after the lights went out; and stayed for a so many cycles of flashing lights and endless darkness.
But even they have gonna silent on me now too and all that remains is an insane disfigured mind and body floating now in the dark.
That is until I heard that voice again.
That sweet one from long ago. Only this time I could hear it much more clearly.
"It's time to wake up, my dear sweet Hunter. For it is time to experience the Waking World once more."
And once I heard those words, just like that, everything went a blinding white.
*****
A/N: got inspired by some cosmic horror stuff and figured I'd write this to try and get back into the swing of things.
I know it's been awhile but I'm not dead! Just dealing with live as it comes and I missed writing. So figured why not do a Cosmic mind fuck of a story, or well, at least a chapter or two to get the mojo flowing again.