it’s so true that the greatest weapon against nihilism and existential despair is to find joy in the mundane and never stop chasing after love
The idea of the Dreamlands has been like. permeating my skull ever since Lil' Nas X tweeted about our dreams being actually another dimension. Like;
You live your life having fucking weird ass, wild ass dreams about strange places and terrifying creatures and barely any of it makes sense b/c dreams rarely make sense after you wake up. It gets so bad and frightening that you begin to take experimental dream suppressants (i don't know if those actually exist or not) and for years you have no dreams and sleep well.
And then one night you forget to take them.
And you wake up in the dark, the air is dusty and smells strangely perfumed. You reach out and your fingertips touch stone. You are in a sarcophagus.
You begin to panic. You begin to scream.
The stone is too heavy for you to move yourself so you scream louder, crying desperately for help; with no doubt in your mind that you've been kidnapped or some such thing. You hear something outside, a rush of footsteps, voices, all sounding as equally panicked as you. The stone above you begins to move and you waste NO time in throwing yourself out of it.
And then the real screaming starts. Not from you. But from them.
And when you turn, confused, you freeze because holy hell, those aren't human.
They're not even close.
Some stare at you with wide, dripping eyes, other press themselves against the far wall, screaming oh gods, oh gods it can't be!
One watches you and the expression on its face is, quite literally, an exaggeration of grief. A caricature of a tormented soul, and it steps. closer. to you. its arms. out. reaching. to you.
You back away with each step and nervously your hands twitch up to your face, maybe to cover your eyes, or maybe you want to convince yourself that this is a dream and you hope, foolishly, that your hands will pass through your eyes.
They don't. Instead you feel the raised skin around your eyes, the strangely shaped but deliberate scaring on your forehead. You look down at yourself and see your arms, tattooed in colours so vibrant that they sway in your vision like waves. Stones embedded into your knuckles, the fine cloth that's draped over your body attached through your skin by golden chains.
You feel. like you're going to throw up.
"Creature?" the thing that is a parody of emotions finally speaks and its voice is like nails on a chalk board if the nails were small silver bells.
"Creature, is it you?"
You don't know who this freak is talking to and you will not be engaging with it because you've got hooks in your arms and you've just noticed that your lips feel much colder and stiffer than you're used to. You reach up and your fingers brush against metal. You feel faint.
Fingers snap in front of your face and your name is called. Your name. You look up, into the many sad, drooping eyes of the thing in front of you and it speaks again, calls your name.
How does it know your name!?
"What the fuck is going on?" you ask because you have to, "Where the fuck am I?"
"Your crypt, Creature," it says and you're thankful it didn't say your name again, "Your crypt. What are you- what happened? You are meant to be dead! You stopped moving, you stopped breathing. We performed the rites. You are dead."
And it weeps and its hands reach the rest of the way out, stretching longer than arms are meant to stretch. They reach your face and hover there for a moment, almost afraid, before they rest on your cheeks. And then, their eyes widen; they've felt your skin, your body, your matter. You are there, you are real. And their nails dig in, drawing blood in their desperation to hold you and feel your presence.
"Ten years," they cry out and you are beginning to be pulled in, your bare feet tripping up as this Thing pulls you closer, "Ten years since I buried you!"
But that's impossible. Impossible, there's no way-
But holy shit.
"My pills," you mutter as you are all but clawed into the horrible embrace of an inconsolable monstrosity, "I forgot to take my pills."












