Era of Madness

The man in the dream

Amanda gave them all the details, and then led them to their rooms.

"Now you guys should get some sleep" Amanda said. "You'll start the expedition of Ghost London tomorrow, it's important to rest before. Here I'll show you your rooms, it's better not to come back to your ship before so you're going to sleep here instead"

And thus they each headed to the room she designated for them, except for Tyler, which she stopped as he was entering:

"Oh, and uh, Tyler?"

"Yeah?" he replied.

She hesitated a bit and then said on a low tone:

"Gentleman forever"

"Riiiiight" Tyer replied before closing the door of his room.

'If I ever meet the bastard that started this trend, I'm going to strangle them' he thought as he took a shower, and then went directly to bed.

He looked up at the ceiling. This day was supposed to be his vacation day, and yet so much strange things happened: Yohan, the Genova curch, Ghost London... it was a lot.

"Meh, I'm thinking too much" he told himself as he drank a can of wine he bought on his way. "I just have to enter with the suit along John and Erica, get the Nova beast's corpse and stay alive in and after the process. Easy, right?"

He laughed as he threw his can right in the trash can- why did then sell cans of wine anyway?

Finally, he closed his eyes, falling into deep sleep.

.

.

Slowly, Tyler 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!"

.

As it was during the previous night, the whole scene disappeared after his sight was filled with orange and red fire. Instead, of a plain, this time, the scene switched to an old-style bar. Beside him was the same man with long pearled dark blond hair as the last time.

"Hello there" the man said. "Still feeling dreamy? Uh wait, does the word dreamy works in this situation? Hmph, whatever, welcome back I guess"

Tyler pinched himself, but didn't manage to wake up. He did manage to hurt himself though.

"Ouch!" he said.

"Nice try but, fun fact, that's not how dreams work" the man said calmly as he sipped on a cocktail. "You only dream you pinch yourself, you're not actually doing it, so it won't help you waking up, sorry to disappoint you. Though, as a consolation, your brain will do its best to emulate the pain, so the feeling will be very authentic"

Tyler sighed: even in his dreams, he couldn't even get a single fucking moment of peace!?

"Stop making this face, it looks like I'm torturing you, it's terribly hurtful to my image of non-violent person" the man said.