A Dream

It's just a dream.

He lay down for a rest, just a quick nap. Five minutes at best. He had all the time in the world to spread hope and love. So for now, he just needed to recharge. It would only be for a little bit. He threw off his jacket, slipped out of his shirt, and stretched across the fluffy carpet and closed his eyes. It felt good to be off his feet for once. Saving people and restoring hope was more work than he could imagine. But it was worth it; to make a lone spirit feel loved and connected was all he wanted to do.

Even the first few seconds felt like an electrical surge running up his legs and branching out to other parts of his body. He could feel his energy slowly returning to his body. It was way better than any massage or spa treatment he could imagine. His mental awareness began to stretch out beyond his own body. His inner world slowly started to form against the lids of his eyes and he enjoyed the sensation of repeatedly gravitating up and down. He half-anticipated the violent agitation that was supposed to propel him completely into his inner world but, unfortunately, all he could feel was a smooth hand touching his own. He could tell that it wasn’t a real hand; rather, one somewhere in the cut between reality and his inner world. He caressed it with pleasure, until it clutched his inner hand and began to tug his inner being elsewhere.

It felt like he was sliding downward; even his physical body felt like it was moving despite the fact that it wasn’t. He wasn’t sure what it was. He wasn’t even sure that it was possible. But as he attempted to resist, he felt his physical muscles tearing themselves apart and his eyes violently darting left and right and up and down as if they were being yanked out of his eye-sockets. It was more than a panic. It was far greater than any fear he had known. It was practically a nightmare, especially after his head phased through a hidden portal of a sort and into absolute nothingness. His eyes stopped working, his ears stopped working. He wasn’t even sure if his head was still on. All his brain had registered was everything from the neck down. It was even worse than the fear of death. He only had one working sensory function and it didn’t seem like it would be enough. He couldn’t see. His brain was still working somehow, but it had almost forgotten the concept of sight itself.

He felt weak; he felt like his strength was automatic and out of his control. His movement felt limited. He tried moving his leg, but slid further into the plot of nothingness. It was then that he realized that he was sliding headfirst into the barrier, but was upside down, as if he had fallen backwards into it. His anxiety doubled. He was starting to lose control of voluntary movement; even the ability to feel the muscles moving at all. Just like his brain was starting to forget that it even had muscles.

Slowly but surely, he could feel the bane of his existence slipping beyond the gates of death. For a brief moment, he could understand the concept of eternal death, like a man with deadly cancer or a child shot through the head. Some kind of vibration had pervaded his entire body but he didn’t even bother trying to understand it. It could have been his fear growing. It could have been his body trying to prove to itself its own existence. It could have been his brain still trying to figure out what was happening.

But then he realized that it wasn’t his brain interpreting any of this. With what little ability he had to feel anything, he sensed a chain connecting from his leg to his inner spirit. He had been saved. His inner spirit had been trying to rescue him the whole time. And yet somehow, through all of this, all of his energy was still there, still returning to him as if he was sleeping soundly.

However, the nothingness had started to become something even worse. It was just like it, but in a physical form, if that even made sense. It was like an endless physical pit of darkness that had he could differentiate from his own self. And as he merely let this happen, something started to change. It was like his spirit was either merging with the nothingness or trying to make it merge with him. But the pull of the chain was saying otherwise. He felt a burst of energy in his leg, regaining all control over it. He used it to try to propel himself upwards, escaping the barrier of nothingness temporarily, sinking back in all the way down to his waist. But his leg was still free and still active. The barrier was now trying to swallow him in, but with another kick, he shot out of it and propelled himself so hard, he burst through the cut between reality and his inner world and shot up in his physical body.

But the hand wasn’t done. It materialized right in front of his eyes. It was too unreal. It was gray, oily, and gaunt and seemed to be attached to the opposing wall. It shot towards him like a rocket, catching his neck and pinning it to the wall behind him. But he woke up, extremely sweaty and out of breath. It had ended. The real reality was here.

“Danny, what’s wrong?” Peter asked, clearly having not gotten any sleep. Danny had first caught his breath and then wiped the sweat of his face with both of his hands. He kept his unfocused gaze at the foot of his bed.

“A dream,” he answered.