The Burned Man grimaced. “Just eating Welsh Rarebit can cause drowsiness and warped dreams to incur.”
The Girl waited for more, but apparently he was finished. “That’s it?? Doesn’t seem that much a big deal.”
The Burned Man tightly clasped his hands around the sides of the Girl’s head, holding her close and gazed intensely into her eyes. “That’s because you don’t know how terrifying dreams can be.”
She wrested free from his grip. “Oh, come on! I’ve had bad dreams before!”
“Not like these. You may laugh, but I alone know the true terrors they can inspire. I know, because I used to explore dreams myself.”
“You were a DreamWalker?”
“Of a sorts. I would unobtrusively enter people’s dreams and… tease them a little. It was all fun and games. That was until one day, the dreams I infect – investigated no longer reacted to my actions.”
“They must’ve gotten bored of you.”
“No, this wasn’t a simple amount of ignoring me. They didn’t even react when I threatened to tear them to pieces. They didn’t care if they lived or died. It’s no fun playing with them if they don’t react.”
The Girl continued listening. As long as she engaged with a superior with work-related questions, it would count as work. This method of “working without really working” would hold up as long as she kept the monologue running with follow-up questions related to the original question.
“Normally, the typical dreamer has a fail-safe to avoid death, but to these people, death was considered a release. No amount of cajoling would arouse them from their complacency. Moreover, their waking state was no different. They walked around in a sleepwalking state that left them apathetic about their surroundings.”
“Pathetic surroundings?”
“Apathetic surroundings. To them, dreams and reality had become indistinguishable from each other. If anything unusual happened, it was just simply accepted as the norm. Surely you must’ve noticed that things haven’t felt right for a long time?”
The Girl didn’t rise up to the bait. She wasn’t going to risk breaking the pattern. Besides, for as long as she had known, the world had always been like this. Looking disappointed but unperturbed, the Burned Man continued.
“So I looked for the source of their apathy, and found it deep underwater. It turned out to be a gargantuan creature slumbering in the deep dank depths. A being of great age and power to such an extent that its thoughts were leaking out, affecting the world we live in. Curious, I dove in to take a closer look at its thought patterns, to get an idea of what made it tick. I figured it wouldn’t take much to scare it off and bother other pesky beings.”
“It turned out to be the biggest mistake I ever made.”
“I expected to see a typical subconscious narrative where the dreamer would be the focus, either of personal wish fulfilment or buried subconscious fears. But when I got there, the dreamscape was completely different from what people or animals dream of. I was trapped in an incomprehensible vortex of shifting dimensions, with no clear boundaries of where reality intersected, and where fantasy ended.”
“Four text dimensions?”
“Vortex dimensions. My mind was overwhelmed by a bombard of information I couldn’t even begin to grasp. It took every effort of my will to move forward a single inch, with no knowledge of whether that was bringing me closer to the exit, or further in. There were long twisty corridors of impossible structures filled with living things that barely resembled people. When viewed from a distance, they looked perfectly normal, but up close, their features and actions were all wrong.”
“Barely resembled meatballs?”
“Barely resembled People. As if someone was told about Humans, but only had the vaguest idea of what they were like, and put together the most slipshod result. They resembled men in the way that a blind man was told to sculpt one after given a flawed description from someone who had only the tenuous description of perspective and sanity, then retranslated from another language and back – BADLY. ”
“Tennis description?”
“Tenuous description. These beings neither approached nor rejected me. But just being in their presence projected a sense of Wrongness somehow. Even now, it’s hard to convey just what was distorted about them. Maybe it was their bodies that bent in ways that no normal body would willingly contort into. Maybe it was the high-pitched sounds that emanated from their mouthless bodies. Maybe it was the way the very skin structure cast a colour of such intensity that made my eyes burn. Or a combination of all of the above.”
“Your Sideburns?”
“My Eyes Burned. I started playing around, altering things here and there in an attempt to get noticed. For the longest time, they paid no attention to my doings, so I decided to get more aggressive. I started dissecting them, and moving the landscape around, figuring that this would be enough to make them nervous. Still nothing. That was when I really cut loose.”
“Freed from the constraints of limits, I went on a bender, stringing up these inhuman humans up, changing the landscape to something more to my liking, switching the background music to a children’s song on an endless loop. Surely, this would be enough to get the sleeper’s attention. And I finally got it. The whole of the dream suddenly became aware of my existence, and turned to look at me. Not just the faceless bodies, but the structures, the blank landscape, even the music (I can’t tell you how that worked), and that was when they came after me like a madman obsessed.”
“A madman upset?”
“A madman obsessed. I have no idea how long I spent in that unfathomable expanse of a dreaming mind. At some point, the unnatural nature of the realm overwhelmed my mind, and I blanked out. Somehow, in that state of unawareness, I managed to make my way out. Don’t ask me how – I have no memory of it.”
“By the time I was finally free, I found out I’d been wandering there for centuries, and the world had changed beyond recognition. My efforts had all been for nothing. Better I should have let it languish in obscurity. But that wasn’t the worst thing.”
“Language in Obscurity?”
“Languish in Obscurity. Turns out the creature whose mind I invaded had been in a coma all this time. It wasn’t even hibernating – it was just recovering from some unfathomable disaster. Since then, I’ve lost all desire to dreamwalk again. If I close my eyes for even an instant, all the dreamers in the world suddenly stop what they’re doing and cast their gaze upon me.”
It was then that she noticed that the Burned Man didn’t have any eyelids. That explained why he never blinked.
“You see, it was only my intervention that helped lull that creature out of its complacency. That dreamer down there hasn’t stopped, and wants my help in waking it up. If it could do that kind of damage while totally unaware, just think of what it’d be capable of when awake. Even the PLANTS know enough to leave well enough alone. And that’s my dream scenario. That certainly has to beat yours.”
“Dreaming I have all my ovaries suddenly hatch into babies, screaming, “FEED ME MAMA! FEED ME MAMA!” at the top of their lungs, and I can’t get away, because they’re still attached to me?”
“That’s… certainly one of the more innovative nightmares I’ve heard of.”
“I wonder what it could possibly mean.” Then, all too late, she realized what she’d done.
“It means that you’re worried about your pregnancy. And don’t think I didn’t know what you were doing. You’ve been on break long enough. Take those bags over to the other side.”
“Why should I, if they’re just going to – ”
“Nope, you’ve already asked your question.”
She then struggled with trying to make a connection between her original question and tying it in with the thankless task of moving the bags.
“Why if… how… Rarebits… make me… back and forth?”
“Nice try. Just do as you’re told, and be sure to stay on the path.”
Grumbling incoherently, she took one of the bags, and flung it over her. What she meant to say was, “What if I ate Rarebit, and dreamed that you made me cart these bags back and forth?” Why did she have to stay on the straight and narrow? The route kept twisting and turning all around. There was a perfectly viable shortcut right there, where the two routes nearly touched each other. All she’d have to do was take a little skip over, and no one would ever kn –
And then, the land underneath shifted on its axis, and she slammed against the wall that was the ground, spilling the contents of the bag all over the grassy foliage beneath. She immediately started scooping the poisonous material back in the mesh-threaded container, desperate to contain the damage. As long as she covered her tracks, no one would notice and the accident never happened! Feeling somewhat satisfied despite getting her hands dirty, she hefted the bag again.
The contents exited completely through the hole at the bottom.
But the damage had already been done. A heavy rumbling far more intense than a mere earthquake started, as if the land underneath was screaming in agony.
“Now you’ve done it!” The Burned Man said in a taunting gleeful manner, suddenly popping up out of nowhere.
In the distance, the Girl saw the interior rings of the large stump suddenly rise up into the atmosphere, stretching far beyond her range of vision. And then without any noticeable curving or angles, suddenly plunged back to the ground, landing right in front of her.
Even though the base of the fallen tree had traveled a far distance, it was still large enough to fill a stadium. Having reached their destination, the rings then started to shuffle off, zipping upwards back to their home base. The Girl was wondering what could possibly be behind that massive cylinder. There were still many layers that peeled away, gradually getting smaller before revealing a midget figure that looked like a living humanoid plant.
“Your very actions have called my superior around these parts – The Florist For the Trees.”
It had stumpy arms and legs bound by strands of vines that connected to a base of moss consisting of a singular face with a stern expression. The face had a cleft indentation split between the eyes, starting above where its nose would be, giving the appearance of a bushy walrus. It would’ve been considered comical if it didn’t display such impressive unassuming power. And then, despite not having a mouth, it said a mumbling single sound of displeasure:
“MMMTHRRLLRRYXX.”
This is They 