Era of Madness

Dream

For a second, Tyler looked at his hands. Why were they so red? What was that liquid dripping off them, breaking the silence as drops of it landed on the rotten wooden planks of the floor?

"M-mom? D-dad?" Tyler called.

No answer. Slowly, he looked up, and his eyes met with the source of the blood. Two horribly mutilated bodies entered his sight, a man's and a woman's. Blood was flowing from their wounds on the ground, creating a puddle that kept getting larger, until it reached the tip of Tyler's old damaged shoes.

Around him, it was both as if the world was spinning, and at the same time wasn't moving. He couldn't make sense of anything around him. The only thing he felt clearly was the confusion, panic and anger in his heart, along with some... hilarity?

"Nothing happened, nothing happened!"

"Mom? Dad? This can't be real, right?"

"What happened? Nothing. What?"

"Wake up. Come on, get up! It can't be over just like this!"

"Dead. Dead. Haha, of course it ended up like this, haha!"

Tyler kept hearing himself saying things that didn't seem to make sense. What was that? What was happening? His mom and dad, what happened exactly, weren't they still alive when he left his home?

Among all those sentences he couldn't make sense of, a name stood out: "Ulysseus"

Right after he heard that word, everything around him got engulfed by flammes, and the whole scene disappeared after his sight was filled with orange and red fire.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in an desert plain, filled with thin pink and red illusory grass. He was sat on a simple but elegant chair, in front of a table with nothing but a cup of tea on it.

But this cup wasn't for him: a man's hand bordered by ample sleeves took it and brung it to this same man's mouth. The movement in itself was gracious, but not the way the man drank: he was drinking it all in one sip, making loud noises. A bit like how Tyler was drinking alcohol.

Except he didn't look like Tyler at all, with his slightly curly and long hair intertwined with pearls, and his mid-long beard, both a dark blond color.

"Well, well, well, I must say, that was really something" the man said. "Dreams that are this realistic are rarely seen, you know?"

The plain they were in seemed to waver, and then suddenly began to... shatter?

"Wait, a dream? The fuck you mean, a dream?" Tyler asked. "And what the fuck was that, exactly? What did that mean... all this?"

The man threw his cup of tea behind him and shrugged:

"I have no idea, it's your dream after all" he said. "Well, I should say 'was' your dream"

And just as he said that, the plain finished to shatter and Tyler brutally woke up, sweating:

"God dammit... why does this kind of thing always happen to me?"

Uh... actually, it was probably because he drank a bit too much the day before...

Sighing, Tyler got out of his bed, and went to the bathroom to take a shower. It helped him to calm down, and his mind was clearer afterwards. As he dressed, he looked at his body in the mirror, and couldn't help but see a slight cocky smile forming on his face. He had always been relatively fit, but now it became a lot more visible compared to a few weeks ago, his muscles were really starting to take shape.

Six weeks ago, after they escaped Glactia-62 and started traveling to their next destination aboard the spatial ship, Tyler thought that, at least for a moment, his problems would be over. But he couldn't have been more wrongs, and two of his biggest fears became his reality at the same time: work and studies.