Perception determines reality.
Growing up, she may not have believed this proverb or even understood it, but as she peered down the dark corridor yet again, no other adage rang more true. This is what she was seeing and so that made it very real. In actuality she was pulling her bedsheets closer in clinched fists and mimicking every sensation and emotion of the fake life.
But what was fake and what was real?
It didn’t matter. She was in the long, dark hallway again and she had to deal with it. Concrete walls were erected on both sides, keeping her in, the cold and callous bricks rough on her fingertips. Miles—it seemed—of nothingness stretched out in front of her and behind her and she was lost somewhere in the middle, the blackness overwhelming and the sensation of hopelessness already seeping in.
And then began the pounding, thumping, thunderous sound that originated somewhere far ahead of her, reverberating through the hallway and in her eardrums, disrupting any thoughts she could be having and shaking the very floor she stood on.
This much was always the same: the concrete corridor, the dark, the noise. And up to a certain point, the events that followed were also the same.
Probing with outstretched arms she made her way forward, one foot after the other. Though she had learned through the years to be silent in every movement she made, somehow she wasn’t able to suppress the sound of her loud and exaggerated footfalls no matter how softly she stepped.
Frustration.
Her steps always remained out of sync with the pounding noise ahead of her and the result sounded a lot like some kind of music fit only for neanderthals, like the beating of tribal war drums urging her forward.
Fear.
A light began to appear at the end of the corridor, rectangular in shape with a hollow belly. When she got close enough to realize the light was the outline of a door and that beyond that door the sun was shining through the cracks, she stopped. Someone—or several someones—were on the other side, banging on the door, wanting to get in.
Uncertainty.
She called out, “Who’s there?”
Her voice carried through the corridor without reverberation or echo.
And then there was silence. The thundering ceased and all she could hear was her own stuttering breaths—cold intakes of oxygen drawn softly from her concrete sarcophagus.
Then it came—a reply to her question—an even more ferocious beating against the door, so hard and violent that the light started to distort and wobble, likely pushing the durability of the frame to its absolute limits.
Then began the part of her dream that made even less sense than the rest of it. With no more thought or hesitation, she walked to the door. Her eyes, open wide, saw nothing but the light. Her ears, listening intently, heard nothing but the pounding, beckoning sound that pulled her near. Even her footfalls—which had been so noisy before—were now lost amidst the din.
The door itself was a heavy-duty metal bastard. Three locks adorned the space above the handle and each one begged to be unlatched.
She turned the one on top first. With a modest click it let her know it was undone and useless. The banging slowed and the silent intervals became steady and somewhat rhythmic. She turned the next lock. It too made a modest click. The banging intensified once more, remaining rhythmic, cheering her efforts. So with a satisfied exhale she turned the final lock.
The banging was constant now; no silent intervals.
boomboomboomboomboom
She reached down and placed her hand on the doorknob, feeling it to be much warmer and inviting than the coldness of the corridor and its concrete walls. The sun was out there, she knew. There was light out there to extinguish this dismal darkness. There was warmth—and, perhaps—hope.
She turned the handle and let the door swing open.
Sunlight shot into her eyes like daggers, brightening her face and blinding her momentarily. It was a good sensation, even if only temporary.
But then came the hands—thousands of cold dead hands attached to cold dead arms attached to cold decaying bodies, clothing ripped and shredded and polished with a layer of blood, dirt, and muck. Eyelids rotted off, fully exposed eyeballs looked at her with a glassy, soulless stare. Thousands of faces with blue skin and formaldehyde-filled veins, tendons and muscles pulling away to show cold, white bones. A thousand dead bodies wanting to partake of hers.
And this is where the dream sometimes varied.
In some instances—most instances—the dead hands would latch onto her and pull her out of the dark corridor and into the sunny area occupied by this mob of hungry corpses—and there they would rip at her shirt and claw at her jeans and, while she screamed in terror, they would open their mouths and feast on her flesh, taking off chunks of her skin with each grisly bite, some of the greedier ones pulling her arms off at the sockets with a violent tug and taking them elsewhere to chew on separately. Her intestines came next, pulled from her open belly like sausages and dragged into the crowd like a bloody rope. And after several seconds of intense agony, with her eyes open wide she finally transpired, staring up at the very mob that had taken the sun from her, casting their shadows down across what remained of her body.
Yes, that is how the dream ended in most instances, and—despite its gruesomeness—it was actually the ending she preferred.
But what she got this time was the finale she dreaded most, the one where all the dead arms lowered to their dead sides and instead of pulling her out they invited her in.
—To join their ranks.
She brought her own arm up to her face to study it under the sunlight. It was blue and cold. Frantically, she pressed her palms to her cheeks and felt that they, too, were cold. She looked down at herself to see her clothes ripped to shreds, maggoty decaying skin showing through. Finally she stopped everything and stood completely still, hoping and praying to feel something in her chest. Her heart should have been beating at a frantic, adrenaline-pumping pace, but instead it was utterly dormant. She felt nothing.
She was one of them.
And so she stepped out of the corridor to join her new comrades, basking in the glory of just another day, all cognizant thought swept from her mind. Only one motive was driving her now:
Hunger.
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