I have nightmares...

One of the benefits of being slightly cracked, and absolutely an insomniac, are all of the wonderful dreams. Last night's installment, which seemingly lasted the entire evening, was frightening and bizarre.

It began with me, and some friends of mine from the Moot Court Program we were all in together during law school....

We were preparing for a big event, but we had all just had various surgeries: I had my shoulders replaced, T had his back repaired, J had his leg amputated, B had her teeth removed, and BT had been crushed in his face by a mallet. Nevertheless, we decided to sequester ourselves in a cabin to prepare for the intellectual rigors of the event. But this was a cabin straight out of nightmares; a dilapidated shack of terrifying proportions....

 

Realizing that we were in no shape to defend ourselves, we sought an assistance from guard dogs. These dogs were like nothing on the planet; they were talking, sentient St. Bernards large enough to deter almost any would-be attacker or mischief maker. Just what we were worried about seems irrelevant...you know how nightmares work...

Anyway, BT and T went out to the woods to chop some firewood for our heating and cooking. As soon as they left, the dogs turned to me, B and J and said "They will never return...you don't want them to return, either". Slightly spooky sentiments from a dog, and we didn't believe them....then, BT comes slowly ambling up to the door, and the dogs go nuts; BT's face is a skeletal mess and he's shrouded in shadows....

 

 

I realized immediately what it was, a Vashta Nerada: the things that go bump in the night; the shadows in the dark spaces of all the universe; those that have always been, and shall always be. Flesh-eating horrors that never, ever relent and swarm and swarm and swarm until all life has been consumed. As B, J and I are trying desperately to hide in a circle of candlelight, the Vashta Nerada attacks one of the sentients dogs, devouring its flesh, and all through space and time you can hear the howl of exquisite agony....

The other St. Bernard screams in horror and loss. We are able to drag him into the circle of light before the shadows reach him. Then, realizing that we have no choices, no options, no way to defend ourselves against the oldest evil in the universe, the St. Bernard opens his flask and reveals all of our assorted painkillers from the surgeries, and urges us to kill ourselves before the Vashta Nerada can feed. The dog, like a fakir or yogi, talks to us about the serenity of the eternal, about release from pain and fear and material want, as we choke down mass quantities of strong drugs. He tells us that he will guard us while we move along to the next existence and will hold our bodies inviolate.

J and B are the first to die; I hear their breath growing ragged and smell their bodies release as they convulse into a frothing, painful nonexistence. But, even though my breath slows to nothing, my heart feebly pumps...fighting for life even when all is hopeless. As darkness descends, and my muscles are deadened, I see the shadows come, first for my dog, then for me...I cannot move, I can barely breathe, I scream inside my mind in pain, and fear, and the void that stares at me...

Then the shadows fall.