It was the time
between waking and sleeping that Saito hated the most. There seemed times when
the world around him spun, and when he tried to extricate himself from his
dreams only to have them pull him back in, tendrils of thought tangible as
hands pulling him back down to tangle in the bed sheets of his apartment. He
was there and not there, awake and dead to the world all at the same time, and
the world around him was a very different place.
He hit the floor with
a thud, looking around about him wildly; his eyes opened wide and yet not
seeing the world around him as he struggled to cast off his sheets as though
they were made of lead. They tangled around his limbs, holding him tight as a
cast before he managed to extricate an arm, his skin hot to the air around him
as he pulled himself back. He was gasping for breath, but he couldn’t feel it,
eyes rolling but not seeing as he threw himself back against the wall, reaching
down to brush ineffectually at the blankets, his hands running across them
almost fluidly, unable to extricate themselves without tying himself up more.
There was something in the air, it was so hard to breath, like every breath
sucked in wires that caught and tangled inside him, trailing from his lips into
the air like black twine trailing to fingertips that came from nowhere and that
he could only see out of the corner of his eyes, the wires sticking to his
throat like spider’s thread as he felt them deep in his lungs, deep in his
body, binding up along the inside of him with every coughing, sputtering,
feeble breath.
His limbs were like
lead, his muscles fluid as he struggled ineffectively to free himself, his head
lolling back against the wall as sweat beaded on his brow and slid in droplets
down his face before screaming down to the ground below. They never seemed to reach
it, caught as they were on the web that ensnared him, running up along them
towards the ceiling. This seemed odd to his eyes, and as he watched he saw the
beads run to the fingers and disappear to the top of his small bedroom, sliding
away into nothing as he felt the tug.
Slowly, as though
there was a tug inside him from the bottom of his lungs, he felt the pressure
begin to mount. He coughed immediately, unable to do anything but before the
pressure began to spread, a thousand wires conforming to the form of his lungs
and throat pulling at him, slowly increasing their tension as though to haul
him into the air by his insides. He let out a long gurgling cry before he
shuddered, his hands suddenly alive with motion as they snapped across the
floor, fingertips trying to find purchase on anything, grasping at the carpet
beneath him and gouging into it as he felt himself lifted upwards.
But he stayed still,
his body never moving. They were tearing something from him, but it wasn’t his
body, they were pulling out something else, something that was a part of him
and not a part of him all at the same time. As they pulled he could feel
something start to give, something deep inside him giving way to the taut
fingers as they pulled at his insides, feeling something begin to rise out of
him that he’d only ever seen prowling in the back of his mind. He opened his
eyes wide, the whites of them able to see only black strings connected to white
fingers as his lips opened wide, wider then they really could, and he began to
hear a sound, whispered as though from a thousand mouths all around him in
growing intensity. It started fast and became faster, ending in a roar that
burst from his lips-
His eyes snapped open and he threw himself back, feeling the
wall his bed pressed to beneath his sweaty fingers s his eyes whipped about the
room. The clock on the desk said it was barely 5:15, which explained the sudden
wave of exhaustion that rolled over him as soon as the initial panic wore off,
and finally he sat back, leaning against the post of his bed, his eyes closed. Just
a dream, just a fucked up dream, he thought, but as he closed his eyes, there
was something…else about his room. Something other, something that he couldn’t
quite explain. It was as though the world was open now, as though there was
another color that he’d never realized existed in a wash over everything he
saw. It was disconcerting as much as anything else, and as he looked to it, he
could see something… more. Something he really shouldn’t have been able to.
There was a string, a single black string, dangling from his
lips and trailing up the ceiling, and trailing off into nothing was a single
white finger with the string attached.
Let me out.
The words came to mind as soon as he saw the string and felt
the tug, and with a yell he snapped a hand in front of it and cut through the
wire as though it were nothing, watching it evaporate like smoke as he panted and
fell back to the sheets closing his eyes and rolling over quickly.
A dream, he told himself. Just a dream. He was still just
half dreaming. He hoped.
Words: 920
Completed: Spiritual Awareness Quest
EXP: 170
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