“It is better to fall among crows than flatterers; for those devour only the dead — these the living.” — Antisthenes (444-371 BC).
It was a lazy Thursday afternoon and I felt the curtains of deep slumber calling out to me. I had been trying all week to have a lucid dream, particularly one filled with soul blistering terror. My pineal gland was pulsating with a maddening vibration—psychic visions bubbling out of my eye sockets—an indigo plasma cloud obstructing my view of the television.
I had been watching Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, which features my future wife, Natalie Portman. Natalie hasn’t met me yet, though I have sent her 172 unanswered letters and am president of her fan club. I thought my eyes were open, but things felt strange. The movie seemed to have an altered story line.
The echoes of thunder rolled through my bones causing my flesh to undulate atop it’s connective fascia. I noticed the cool scent of sapphire rain as the storm approached – pure blackness ensued. I wasn’t quite sure if I was asleep or in a dreamlike state. I kept feeling I was going to see something I shouldn’t: something evil. My heart was stomping and I had trouble sucking air into my lungs.
I believed my eyes were open and could see my arms though my face felt buried in humid pillow. I couldn’t move. I struggled with all my might but couldn’t twitch a single muscle…WHO’S THERE? My arms were broken—twisted into a strangled knot of sickness—pinned beneath my sleeping corpse. I was shredded road kill, ripped into muscular blood knots, imploded within it’s inside out. Through a morbid cleft, my left arm protruded from my chest; but I sat up, floating above myself. I stood perpendicular to the centerline of my own consciousness. I purposefully rode upon the backs of each blood cell—soaring through the labyrinth of vascular tunnels and lymphatic caves. WHO’S THERE? I convulsed almost breaking my contorted neck—muscles paralyzed—splattered like a carcass on the windshield of my bed.
Deadness. Silence. I asphyxiated in this vacuum of emptiness, too weak to live. I was dead. Something was near, I could feel it’s presence. I heard him speak, “You must breathe . . . breathe or you will die for real.”
I panicked, unable to move—my heart a frozen stone—wrenched in the pit of my trembling chest. I was a naked newborn infant. A man dressed in black held me by the leg, carrying me to death. I saw my cold blue skin in the mirror as he walked viciously towards an open door. He gazed upon me, a wicked smile carved into his face. He growled, “Die you putrid fucking maggot,” and tossed my freshly born body onto a scraming nest of fire ants. Pain. Soul scorching pain. My tender milky flesh devoured by the bloodthirsty horde, thousands of scarlet beasts crawling, shrouding me in tortuous misery. I could see him through a dusty window, kneeling before the half eaten child. He doused the baby in kerosene and dropped a lit match—the carcass engulfed in blistering crimson flame. The stench of roasted pork infiltrated my dilated nostrils, my stomach quivered yet I could not gag. I had fallen through the icy sheets of consciousness, drowning in hellish terror.
cannibal
The cannibal sat by a stone wall and ate my blood drenched remains, washing it down with a cold beer. He cleaned every fiber of meat from the grisly rib cage, filling his belly with tender charred flesh. He said in a regal tone, “May the force be with you.”
I awakened on the kitchen floor, saliva drizzling down my face. The blood flow in both arms had been choked off and I couldn’t push myself up from the cold floor. AARGGHHH . . . I madly gasped for breath, finally sucking air into my nearly collapsed lungs. I climbed to my feet and staggered into the bathroom. My face was bluish-red, blood trickling from my nose all over my chest. I rolled over and opened my eyes—still in bed—pillow soaked in sweat. I had only been asleep for 7 minutes. What a nightmare it was . . . I shall never forget it.
*The insane picture is Nightmare Alley 6 by DAV.
