Writing Practice 7

Nightscapes: 1,200 word minimum, no proper nouns

“Better Than.”

I can’t remember the last time I got a good night’s sleep without hearing this, seeing this across my wall, waiting for it to go away or at least an explanation as to what it means. It was always the same, in the dreams, I would talk to myself in so many violent scenarios. Giving birth, being murdered, committing suicide just to wake up, anything and everything just to not sleep and yet I would get to me, and in all of my dreams I would find in the end only two phrases:

“Ascend!” and “Better Than”.

Last night I lay awake hoping that I wouldn’t fall asleep only to realize that I was staring at myself on my bedside the whole time and was, in fact, asleep. I just watched me watch me quietly as normal and it took nothing short of a miracle to keep me from trying not to lose it again. Instead, I just sat up, feet hanging off the bed, no floor as usual, just black nothing, white sheets though, representing nothing in particular. I always sat in a chair in the corner watching myself quietly watch myself with only one of us blinking and flinching trying to deflect the uncomfortable attention.

I get up and take a step on the non-floor and the world springs to life, a meadow this time, the sky is red, the flowers are green and reflect the real world, there are insects and small fauna rustling here and there and my bed is gone and so am I. I look left, and I look right, and the world as far as the horizon goes is null and empty filled with the grass and the red sky with grey clouds as if in some weird negative Polaroid room. The grass is up to my waist and is as sharp as real grass but of course in a dream you can’t really feel anything so despite it all it was as if it were nothing. No sound though. Never any sound in this iteration of The Nightmare. I could hear the sounds that should be but never were or will be of course by just playing out what I thought it sounded like in my head, but that’s a thought within a dream, and those get distorted so easily; the flap of the wing of a butterfly turns into a horrific scream from time to time piercing the senses painlessly forcing me to reconsider but my human nature begs me to fill in the sounds so I do at risk of the same related experience.

I blink and turnabout because I know this Nightmare. I see the me that sees the me for who I really am standing in the distance beside the her who should be with me but never will be. I know what is coming. It doesn’t matter. I run every time. I run like an idiot trying to avoid the inevitable, pushing soundless green hearing the agony of those who I meet alongside the rustles mixed in due to the thought within a dream effect. I always run but I never escape, like the treadmill of the nightmare it is I turn my head and she is always closer to me and he is always just behind her. It ends the same, I feel the cold caress of the warmest hands I’ve ever felt as she wraps her hands around my chest in a hug from behind, my still running and she just seemingly floating behind me in the embrace.

“Ascend!” she whispers excitedly and I am there again, beneath her, inside her, staring at her as she stares at me her hands around my throat crushing my windpipe as she gives herself an orgasm intensifying her movements as I lose my breath atop my bed while I who watches myself watch myself sits in the corner opposite quietly watching tilting his head and smirking from time to time.

“I loved you! Why did you leave me?” She leaned in and whispered exhausted and covered with sweat, her breasts against my chest, licking my neck with a tongue sharper than a knife causing bleeding as she ended nibbling my ear, myself inside her, myself leaking out of her, feeling and yet unfeeling of the orgasms and waves that she had for the both of us. “You are better than.”

I blink, as I do every time, and I naked and prone and prostrate tied down and incapable of movement. She always loved this part, reversing roles, penetrating me, kissing the back of my neck while moving in rhythmic movements against my body telling me how much she hated me. Her kisses were fire burning in a way that didn’t make sense, the singe of my soul, the only pain that could be felt in the dream, readily apparent with every caress. They were loving, hatefully loving, whispering “You are better than…” over and over, every moment, every movement, tormenting me with the words that I could never decipher that echoed somewhere deep within resonating with a power unrivaled.

It always hurt though, she pushing into me, growing more forceful, eventually sitting up and digging nails which turned to claws which turned to knives into my shoulders as the hatefuck began and of course this is where the real nightmare began. A lean in and kisses turned to bites turn to sunken fangs in the neck and blood everywhere and red eyes and blurry vision and helplessness with always the same thing at the same time as my neck is forced to the right. The me in the corner who is watching me watch me is standing against the wall standing on the blackness drawing “Ascend!” over and over and over on the wall, lust turns to rape, rape turns to confusion, confusion turns to “Ascend!” and madness and repetition and begging to die which only turns her on all the more.

I turn around to see the me that is being violently taken and walk over kneeling on the floor that isn’t there on the edge of the bed watching me grunt and grit my teeth as she gets off on my thousand deaths and tilt my head to the right and smirk.

“Why not?”

The claws anchored into my shoulders suddenly dislodge and reinsert themselves inbetween my ribs puncturing everything as if it were paper sliding clear through each side dripping in some silver liquid that isn’t what I remember because I never remember. She screams “Better than!” again and it is over, I’m practically paralyzed, watching myself stand and sit next to me on the bed, calmly placing his hands on his knees and shrugging. There she is, atop some other man, beneath some other man, blowing someone else, all these scenes, all these spotlights, and jealousy tries to take me but fails as I just listen to her sobbing with all of them as she agonized over why they weren’t me and how wrong the world was. There was no pleasure there, just pain, and broken promises which lead to more broken years and the me that watched me watch me just lay on the bed able to breathe but incapable of breath as the me who watch the me who watched shook his head.

“Why?”

I close my eyes to sleep within the dream only to find I’m awake again in the shower standing alone. It’s hot water. It’s nice. It’s relaxing. There is nothing outside the shower, the same blackness of the scenes of my memories coming to merge with my emotions, and all the blood and bile and ichor and silver goes down the drain which hungrily eats it consuming my essence as though it were candy. It was fascinating really, this part, where the water gently washed away the color of the shower, of my skin, of what I thought and felt, of how it continued to run perpetually long after I dissolved in it, but I could never define whether that was a blessing or a curse, whether I was being destroyed or reborn, only that in my last moments I looked to my left and saw in small beautiful glimmering tile “No.” in bright purple crayon.

Then I woke up. I looked to see if I was there watching me, but I wasn’t, and I put on my little dress shirt and dress pants and prepared for the day again on little to no sleep wondering what ever happened to her. I know she doesn’t think about me anymore. In a way it’s a relief and makes The Nightmares easier to bare. Sometimes when I am sitting at my desk I just ask myself “Why?” without really knowing why, muttering aloud and unprompted, forgetting myself among the rapid clicking and gentle ambience of the office.

But I know the me who watches me is there quietly scrawling on a wall “Better than”, slowly creeping into real-life, blending the two worlds, demanding I “Ascend!”

Words: 1518

Time: 62 minutes

Notes: Horrible. Needs tangibility.

Writing Practice 7

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