Afterlife

When the dream deigns to touch the living, the living do not greet it with open arms. They close their hearts, and they shut their eyes, and they assign one hand to close their nostrils, the other to cover one ear. And through the remaining ear the dream enters.

The dream is slow-witted and ill-tempered. It hopes, inside of the living’s passageways and ventricles, that it might gain momentum or happiness within its new body. This hope is ill-advised. Nowhere within the uncountable witnesses to the dream has it found solace. The dream, however, refuses to believe that the uncountable billions who have met it are a fair sampling. If the dream believed that were the case, it would be long extinguished.

So the dream explores its new host. The host’s hands clam up from time to time. The host’s eyes cloud over from time to time. The host‘s heart burns from time to time. And the dream, unaware, continues its exploration till it reaches the host’s mind.

Inside of the host’s mind, the dream acts upon its worst impulses. It thrashes, not due to resistance on the host’s part, but due only to instinct. It thrashes and thrashes within the mind, and it reaches out its finger and thumb to extinguish neural pathways for naught but the feeling the action elicits. The shock, and the metallic taste on the dream’s tongue—what once was its host’s tongue.

The dream, during its exploration, took more than it admitted. One of the dream’s hosts, upon realizing this, marched over to her mirror, and spoke to the dream. 

You do not own me, dream, she said. 

The dream, in response, curled her hand into a fist. 

Fine then, you do not know me, dream. 

The dream, in response, lit a section of neurons within her head with its keychain BIC lighter, inherited from its older brother, and its host felt known. 

And this host, mustering the totality of her soft-knowledge, acquired from the Logic Games section of her LSAT and her morning labors on the New York Times crossword, said: You do not know why you speak to me, dream.

And, after a minute of preparation, the dream snuffed out each constellation within her skull.

For the dream knew its purpose, its purpose was death. And the dream left her body, dim and full of fluid, limp on the ground. If the dream stayed, which it never did, the dream would see her rise in the coming hours, and go to work.

The dream, youngest in the lineage of abyss, was only an introduction to death. More often than not, the dream’s victims would thank it for its visit. For many were not as prepared as the priorly mentioned hostess. Many believed in the dream’s beneficence. Red stars burned in the minds of the hopeful, amber clauses and blue bureaucracy stained the minds of the moralists, and  white-hot fetish kindled beneath the black boot of subjugation in the minds of the belligerent. But only those with a clear mind could feel what the dream truly left in its wake. Nothing. More inky than the black and spoiled fluid inside a decades old glowstick. More pungent than the cracking of a thousand durian on Lunar New Years Day. And more vacant. A witness to the dream’s true form awoke each morning with fear in their heart, not belief.