"He took me under his wing. Gave me a place to live, a different complex, which he paid for. He told me he'd given up teaching for, ah, some important studies and other such things. I was thankful, of course. He bought what few paintings I owned and encouraged me to continue."
"But each rose is not without its own thorn. I still had many problems in my life which I hadn't sorted out. I was particularly stressful when a band had moved into the apartment next to mine to practice their music."
"Their name, if I remember correctly, was the Neon Brood. Horrible. Absolutely terrible. I couldn't sleep a wink."
"Did you try talking to the landlord?" I asked.
"Yes. No matter what I said, he just never sided with me. Frankly, I believe those twats bribed him." He grimaced.
"Anyways, their music was just about the worst thing in the whole world. I couldn't focus on my canvas, couldn't hear myself think, by God, I couldn't do a bloody thing with all that racket!"
"Doctor Herbert must've known, for he came over one day to comfort me. He offered me a pill and said it would help my nerves. Thinking nothing of it, I took it and drank some water to go with it. And then..."
"At first, I hadn't noticed it, but I did feel much calmer than before. The music, the room, the light, all of it seemed to blur away like a man taking off his spectacles. The objects on my nightstand seemed foreign to me, as if they were strange fungi sprouting from wood. My hands and my face were getting hotter, though it wasn't unpleasant. A sweet euphoria rippled throughout my body, shaking my very soul. I was sweating, hyperventilating. The ceiling now seemed impossibly far away. Then, it wasn't as if the things on my nightstand were fungi, they were fungi, green and brown dappled with black and white specks."
"I was beginning to enter an out of body experience. An unexpected sensation came over me, the kind you get just as you are about to fall asleep, and then suddenly you are free-falling. I, or rather my consciousness, went down, down, and yet further down, into the abyss, where only the dreamscape awaited for me."
"I awoke into my dream standing upright. I looked behind me, and saw myself laying on the bed, blissfully staring at the ceiling in a weird high. I was somehow aware (for was this not my dream?) that I was no longer my 'self', but that I was controlling my Id."
"I exited through a door, and instead of entering the hallway I knew was outside my apartment, I was now in someone else's bedroom. There were posters of glam rock artists on the walls. I noticed the group of young men sleeping on the bed, the floor, and in chairs. They were surrounded by instruments and bottles of beer. Obviously these were the Neon Brood, and presumably they had too much to drink and passed out."
"I saw my opportunity and took it. Gripping the knife I now suddenly possessed in my hand, (again, for was this not my own dream?) I went and did what had to be done. They sang music they had never sung before all night long." He chuckled.
"I remember it all so clearly, like film playing on a camera, then rewinding, and playing again, again, again... the knife went up, glimmering in the dim light, and went soaring down in a sharp, cutting arc. My hands were warm with blood and sweat. It's true, what they say about blood smelling like copper. They sung. I did it again. And I kept going 'till their song was over."
I had nothing to say.
He continued, oblivious to my silence. "The next morning, I woke up sober. Doctor Herbert was gone. I saw the Neon Brood later on at a restaurant, as white as the moon. They looked as if they hadn't slept for months. I could see in their dark, sagging eye bags, in their bloodshot orbs, that they recognized me with great fear. They had seen my Id in their collective dreams."
"A few days later they moved out and I haven't seen them since."
"There were still a few loose ends, of course. What was that pill, and why did Doctor Herbert supply me with one? I soon found out, but only partially. The doctor happened to visit me at my apartment one day. Naturally, I asked him what he had done to me."
"He said, and please forgive me if memory doesn't serve me too well on this, that ones dreams are a mirror of ones--"
"Enough of this," I said, getting up to leave.
"Wait!"
I ignored him and pressed onwards. It was cold outside. Snow blanketed the streets. I heard the crunching of ice under boots coming from behind me.
I turned around and saw Jack, panting and wheezing. It appeared even the slightest bit of strain on his muscles exhausted him entirely. "What is it?" I was at the end of my rope at this point.
"Merry Christmas," he said, handing me something. I took what he held, and opened my palm to see several small pills.
"Is that it, then? You just want me to be your druggie buddy? Well, I'm having none of it. You've lost your head."
He looked at me with his mouth agape. "What? No, I want you to know what it's like, to walk amongst others dreams, and to--"
I held my hand out and let the pills drop into the gutters, into the sewers. "No!" cried Jack, who attempted to catch them. They were swallowed by the darkness, gone, irrecoverable. I stormed off, leaving behind all that rubbish about murdering others in their dreams.
That was the last I saw of Jack in the real world.
That brings us to the present. I've been having nightmares. They've plagued me since that night. Nightmares of blood and raw flesh. Nightmares where I die.
I know it's Jack, for sure. It's Jack who stalks me and hurts me in the dreamscape. It's Jack who is always in the peripheral of my mind, never gone, always there... a silhouette in my vision, a shadow in my heart...
Last night I had a bad one. I woke up in the middle of a dreamless sleep and couldn't move. My chest, my throat, my limbs; they were paralyzed. I could only hopelessly dart my eyes around the darkness of my bedroom. Shapes of everyday household objects took on ominous, disturbing shapes that twitched. I knew something was lurking just outside my line of vision. I could feel it.
His shadow rippled into view. I wanted to scream. He held out a clawed hand, dug into my chest, and I found I could scream.
I fully awoke and switched on the lights. There was nobody there. I was only covered in perspiration, not blood. I went to the bathroom and threw up. I didn't sleep the rest of that night.
I know one thing for sure: this will never end. I've angered a God through an act of blasphemy; the God of dreams. Now I suffer divine torture. Even now, as I write this down, I sense that thing which looks like Jack Estrada. It follows me, throughout halls and throughout rooms, through walls and through floors and ceilings. It stands in each window and corner, outside my vision and beyond my vision. It finds me wherever I may go, and I am very, very afraid to fall asleep.
End.
