A Dragon in the Snow (and other short stories)

Dream Catcher

(Prompt 2: Every so often, people have to empty their dream catchers.)

I woke up in a rainfall of sweat, uncomfortably warm against the cool fall wind entering from the nearest window. The leaves of my half-dead potted plant rustle against the makeshift pot I put it in, somehow still alive despite my lack of care through the summer I had barely pulled myself through.

The dream I had barely escaped was hardly a nightmare, though the terrors fueled by reliving memories churned into a chaotic soup of horrific nonsense always rustled beneath my skin, the tattoos my shaman had etched into my skin keeping them at bay for now.

Instead, it was a whirling washing machine of color and impossibilities, memories mixed into absolute chaos of past inventions and future conceptions, a tangled mass that was only terrifying in the implication that escape is an impossibility that I would never achieve. It was a lie that was too grand to disbelieve on principle, so much nonsense that I instinctively believed must be true because that was the only thing that made sense to a subconscious mind.

All I remember within ten minutes of waking up is whirling colors and endless hallways that were almost the ones I walked through for every day of middle school mixed with a cheap apartment building feel. Nothing I could recall explained my dramatic response, but I have long since given up on trying to understand the inner mechanisms of my mind.

With a sigh, I walked over to the open window and pulled back the curtains that had been left open, an oversight of my sleep-deprived mind when I stumbled onto the twin mattress on the floor, too tired to acknowledge that I would regret leaving them as is when the weekend sun maliciously shot into my eyes, inescapable from any angle I could rest in. It was half-past three in the morning, a truly ungodly time for any rational being to be awake unless no other choice was presented to their biology. I resented anything that joyfully woke up before noon, and hold a personal grudge against all members of the avian species who start singing as soon as the sun breached the horizon every morning.

On a hook in the window frame was my personal dream catcher, a further purchase from my shaman, designed to siphon off excess thoughts to encourage peaceful sleep. The glow that indicated the remaining charge was dimmer than I thought it should be, but it should be good for another week at least.

Letting small memory fragments pass unfiltered was expected of a catcher of moderate quality; only the most high-quality designs had the necessary combination of mana and neural uplinks could independently process enough memories to make dreams of any kind completely irrelevant to the health of the brain.

I've heard rumors that they're working on a newer model that can simulate the dreaming experience with programable memories for a more satisfying night's rest, but considering my rock bottom salary barely covered payments for a model this advanced, something like that was so far out of my reach to be an abstract dream in and of its self.

Still, unless my model was completely out of charge, it shouldn't let through something vivid enough to prompt such an emotionally fueled response unless a major malfunction had occurred.

With a world-weary sigh, I pulled it off its hook and disconnected it from the energy port from the wall, decorative feathers brushing against my legs with every lazy swing of my arms. I grabbed the connective cord attached to my apartment's built-in mainframe and plugged it into the transfer socket, the dual tubing removing the used-up mana, and replaced it with fresh magical energy. Images of trapped dreams flew past my gaze, the same generalized nonsense that I had come to expect by this point in time.

All at once, the entire system froze, the usual blue flashing red as an error message flashed in front of my eyes, followed by a loop of a ten-second video of a woman I had never seen before pacing in a square interrogation room, ending with her silently mouthing "Help me" at whatever camera was recording her. It took me several attempts to read her lips before I understood her message, and two loops after I had understood, everything turned back to blue and the dreams cycled as usual.

I paused the cycle, looking back through the memories to see if I could find the glitch once again. There was nothing there but the usual mind nonsense and a couple of flashes of horrifying memories, no inexplicable video clip to be found.

With shaking fingers, I unclipped my dream catcher before it had finished its mana replacement cycle, walking mechanically back to my room as I tried to explain away what had just happened. Sleep deprivation could cause hallucinations, right? Maybe I just needed to take the weekend to rest for once, clear my mind before work resumed as normal.

Putting the catcher back where it belonged, I plugged it in and closed the curtains this time before laying back down on my still warm mattress. It was about eight o'clock the next morning when I finally drifted back off, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never force the ten-second clip to leave my mind.

After a few hours' worth of relaxation attempts, I posted my experience on an anonymous tech forum, hoping someone would tell me it was all in my head, or it was a new virus floating around. I planned to check it again the next morning (or whenever I next woke up) and hope for answers then.

All that awaited me was thousands of responses citing almost identical experiences with no answers in sight.

When I checked the forum less than two hours later, my account had been wiped and the post and all the replies had disappeared without a trace.