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The Dream Surfer
The dreamers dreamt all the time, free to go anywhere, to be anything, to see worlds outside themselves, inside themselves, and beyond themselves. The Dream Surfer joined them on their journeys. He didn’t care for surface dreams and their fragmented images of inner turmoil or outer annoyances, or silly nightmares and their temporary fear.
He liked delving deeper, to share the memories of dreamers, to see their innermost joys and all the special truths they kept stored away in private corners of their hearts. He was just a dark green silhouette with no life of his own.
He lived through these people, sharing the happiness he could never have himself: new love, old love, the birth of a child, the simple pleasure of a flower, the triumph of a job well done. He saw it all through their eyes and it almost filled the unending void in what he assumed to be his soul. Almost.
He wasn’t sure what he was comprised of, or why he seemed to float endlessly between the minds of others. After millennia, he really didn’t care.
There were some minds he didn’t dare touch, minds filled with things more bitter than the darkest nightmare. Their dreams and memories were dangerous, and even a glimpse told him he really didn’t want to know what went through their heads.
Still, he was growing more and more tempted to plunge their depths, to see if maybe the parts of the world he feared were the parts that would finally give him what he had been searching for his whole time of being — the wholeness everyone else took for granted.
He wanted to be real, to feel his own feelings and share his own joys, not just taste the memories of others. Maybe, just maybe, the only reason he could never break free from this prison of nothingness was because he only ever experienced the pleasure of the world and not the pain. Sure, he experienced the occasional frustration of a bad day at work, or even the grief of a lost loved one, but he shied away from anything he found too unpleasant. But if those untried paths of depravity truly were the final piece of the puzzle, the final lock on his cage, he wanted them — no matter what the cost.
So he traveled past the laughter, the tears, and the wishes, and went straight for black pathways of crawling things, whispering insanity into crevices of filth. There were no doors here to go through, or windows or walkways, only holes, burrows that varied in appearance but all had a deep sense of darkness.
Black smoke hovered over one burrow like dense fog made of shadow. He sat on the edge and slowly slipped inside. The blackness enveloped everything, and he slid down into the mind of someone else. It was a familiar sensation, but…harsher, more viscous. His own thoughts stripped the further he went, peeling like layers of an onion, until perspectives merged and he no longer knew himself.
Nighty Night
The shadows crept along the floor, casting shapes that only children ever feared. The young girl edged farther under her covers. The shadows laughed ‑ a wispy sound like ice that drew in the surrounding heat. The child’s eyes widened and she gripped the sheets. The laughed repeated. She dove for safety under a pile of stone-eyed stuffed toys sitting in the middle of the bed.
Sleep well, little babe. And dream of faraway. Where covers cannot save you, and night eats all the day.
The girl’s whimpers filled the air, and the shadows took a taste — much too bland. They slithered closer and drew in memories, random and shattered —
A doll.
A face.
A monster.
A doll with black coal eyes and a sparkling pink dress dragged along the ground by the girl as she raced off to a new adventure.
The face, a woman’s face — a mother — always had a smile and brought warmth and comfort with a gentle embrace. The girl sat at a table as the smiling woman set down a tray of chocolate chip cookies.
The monster was a cartoonish wolf with large, too-blunt teeth. It was nothing more than a mild fairy tale, hardly worth half a mouthful of fear.
That would change.
With just a little twist, a bit of a turn, anything could become a meal. The shadows twisted into one another, forming a cruel parody of the girl’s mother. It stood tall in the room, sharp jagged teeth spilling from her mouth. Wolfish eyes peered down at where the girl hid, holding a writhing, living duplicate of the girl’s doll in a sparkly pink dress. The doll reached its cloth hands out, calling the child’s name in a soft, sweet voice.
Don’t hide away, my precious child. No harm will come to thee. Your little dolly’s calling you. Open your eyes and see.
The girl slowly pulled the animals away from her face. She opened her eyes, crying out at the twisted vision of her mother. The living doll screamed in the child’s voice, while the shadow mother brought it to her mouth and devoured it whole. The girl’s mouth opened in a scream, but the sound turned to icy mist and floated silently away.
There’s no one here to save you, or take you to their breast. The time of love is over, now comes eternal rest.
The child scrambled up, but shadows twisted again into a shapeless blob, blacker than night. Arms formed and pushed her into the mattress, smothering her with a chill.
Tears ran down her immobile face and one drop rose into the air until it landed on the forefinger of the twisting shadow form. It placed the tear on its swirling lips and smiled. Delicious.
The shadows untangled themselves and seeped into her pores, bringing fresh new fears. These weren’t the nightmares of children, or even the matured terrors of those that called themselves adults. These were real — solid — the fears that fears were made of.
They gave her the awareness of what hid behind the edges of her dreams, behind the faces of her family, behind the faces of the world, and beyond. She saw the lurking, sucking, dying things that inspired hatred and fed off fear. She saw the string of lies they spun, choking the love that kept her warm, killing the light her parents showered her with. She saw the battle that was all but lost, how the hungry beasts of the world beyond had nearly broken through, and only a thin layer of wavering light kept them at bay.
The shadows showed her themselves and fed on the shattering of her innocence.
* * *
The Dream Surfer emerged from the burrow, coughing up foreign thoughts until he regained himself. Childhood. The shadows had twisted innocent memories into something misshapen and threatening. How much more twisted could the world get? How much more could it bend?
The shadows themselves were something new. He’d never encountered anything beyond humans. The Dream Surfer always thought he was the only non-human entity that existed.
He scanned the other burrows. One burrow had moss and grass spilling from the top. Dotted along the earth were sharp metal teeth, as if it was a mouth waiting to slam shut. The Dream Surfer dove headfirst inside.