The October Amaryllis

Chapter 25 - ????

I've had the same nightmare for several years now. In it, I find myself unable to walk and have to resort to crawling. This would typically be nothing more than highly annoying, but the dream always seems to place me in dangerous situations, such as right next to the train tracks. They say that nightmares are based on our fears, but I never figured out what caused them.

This time, I crawled through an abandoned dystopian future, the exact opposite of Arcadia. Architecture-wise, it seemed to be based on French Baroque, which confused me beyond any words. It was as if two distinct realities combined into one in a blender. In fact, I would have thought that I was in the past had it not been for the advertisements for Cyzortan hoverboards like the ones in Back to the Future. The sign read, "Get the future today!™."

What happened to this place? It looks like it was abandoned years ago. Where is everyone? Is this what the end of the world looks like? Did I cause a nuclear war of some sort? A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'

Moving around the place, I found countless statues dedicated to one person, as if he was the only important person who had ever existed. Every time I tried to read the inscription on the figure, it became so blurry that I couldn't make any sense of it. I could see the writing, but my brain could not make any sense of it, as if I got hit on the head with a sledgehammer. The best way to describe it is that I became extremely farsighted.

I wonder where all of this takes place...

Crawling forward toward what looked to be a massive palace, I witnessed giant silver-colored robotic centipedes with crimson-red eyes that hissed and snarled any time I tried to get close to them. Their mouths looked razor-sharp, as were their legs, which they had about ten of. As far as I was concerned, they wiped out the entire town. Their mouths kept making these horrible clicking sounds as if warning me to stay away. Their clicking sounds almost sounded like bones being broken; I hated that sound beyond all description.

This was when the dream became very surreal as if it was a David Lynch movie. The ground before me crumbled, and I was trapped in a black void with many voices echoing in the distance, calling out for me. No matter how hard I tried moving, I couldn't move an inch, as if I was glued to the floor. (?) The voices became louder and louder until, eventually, they overwhelmed me. I heard many disapproving voices around me and wanted to crawl into a ball and stay in that position forever to escape the agony. Here are some of the things that I heard them say.

"Look at him wasting his life away, the fool!"

"This will eventually kill him, and he doesn't even realize it..."

"I'm dead because of you!"

"Time isn't meant to be played with, Clive."

I tried my best to escape the blackness with all my might, but the harder I tried, the more I became trapped. It was as if I was swimming in a pool of superglue. There was no escaping this situation.

It somehow got even stranger after that. The black void disappeared, and I found myself situated next to the side of a highway. I heard a motorcycle crash and crawled over to where I heard the sound out of curiosity. There I saw a bleeding biker who begged me for help. I had the strangest sensation of déjà vu at that moment; I swear I saw him before somewhere.

"Please help," he begged with blood running down his forehead. The poor guy looked pale as snow and sounded like he was a second away from dying.

"I'll help you," I said, trying to prop him up. As I did, he pulled out what looked like a Desert Eagle from his jacket and shot me point-blank in the chest.