the sound of water

Men and Gentleladies, the Real World Self:

One of the most vivid dreams of my life occurred shortly after my becoming the Creature.

I was descending a long series of stairs in a vast, dank, and echo-filled concrete chamber. The stairways lined the walls of the space, so that as I descended, I walked the perimeter of the vertical shaft, spiraling downward into almost complete darkness.

I was aware of having companionship, two people walking alongside of me, though I didn't recognize them. In the manner of dreams, I simply knew that they were colleagues, and we descended together bound in some enterprise.

Before long, we had reached the bottom of the space. It was dim, with a tenebrous, bluish light that seemed to reflect everywhere, but with no apparent source. Standing in small groups scattered throughout the area were numerous people, dressed in rags, behaving as if half-asleep. No one spoke, though it seemed that our arrival had been anticipated.

Before us, facing the bottom of the stairway we had just left, rose a sheer, blank wall, whose termination was invisible to us, ending as it did somewhere near the beginning of our descent. One of my companions walked over to stand directly in front of it, touching its surface with a hand. There was a sensation of cold, though not oppressively so. Everything seemed steeped in dampness, unwholesome moisture clinging to the cement.

I gradually seemed to hear a splashing, as of a great body of water roiling, emanating from the wall before us. I sensed, somehow, that the wall contained a monumentally vast amount of some sort of liquid, and I could hear it seething behind its containment, slooshing as if in agitation. The people around me seemed to stir, perhaps hearing it too.

Suddenly, the wall began to lift itself from the floor, and a great rush of some greenish liquid began to pour forth. Instinctively, I jumped, forward and upward, catching myself on the wall by digging my strong claw-tipped hands into the concrete material, and hanging from it as easily as any rappeller on his line.

Below me, the liquid gushed forth, enveloping both of my companions, and everyone else too slow to move out of the way. I began to hear screaming, as of those in anguished pain, but could not make out what precisely was occurring below. I somehow knew, as one does in dreams, that the people below were being dissolved, or, more accurately, digested, presumably by the liquid itself.

I began to climb the wall to distance myself from what lay below, making my own handholds by virtue of my strength, and below me, ever more faintly as I climbed, mixing with the screams, I heard laughter... the laughter of those who have lost their sanity, blending in a horrible chorus with the screaming, such that they began to resemble each other.

After a few seconds of this, I began to virtually fly up the wall, in a frenzied haste to leave that place, that being, and what must surely have been my failure to prevent it from escaping. I woke up soon after, feeling cold even in my blankets.

And there you have it, some scenes from my earlier years. When the Real World Self dreams, he becomes me. I've experienced many incredible things in the Dreaming, and still don't know why I exist, if not to merely be witness to all the horror and wonder of that place.

Tomorrow: levity.

Well I could keep it above/But then it wouldn’t be sky anymore/
So if I send it to you you’ve got to promise to keep it whole
-- REM