Hangover

I'm in a bed, but it isn't mine. It's narrow, barely wide enough for just me, and it's not soft. I'm propped in a half-sitting, half-reclining position. Something less firm than what I'm laying on is under my head, and it feels like I'm covered by a thin blanket. Feeling totally disoriented, I try to figure out where I am, and why, but I can't remember anything prior to this moment, except that I was just dreaming there were ghosts in my apartment, talking to me. I learned how old they are by asking them what year it is, each of them answering with the year in which they died. The rest of the details have all ready faded.

I feel watched. It's a terribly disconcerting sensation. I'm sure there is someone in the room, but I can't feel what kind of presence it is. It's not masked. I'm a bit groggy. I try to pretend to still be asleep, hoping that whoever it is won't notice as I try to get a better sense of the room.

It feels like it's just me, and the watching presence. I feel mentally prodded at, and I'm pretty sure it knows I'm awake. I find my eyes opening, despite my intent.

He's leaning against the wall at the head of the bed, about ten feet away from me. He looks a little different from before. For a second, I can't place it, but then it clicks; he's less scrawny, and less ragged looking. His eyes aren't as dark or as red-rimmed as before. His face isn't quite as gaunt, and his form isn't so wiry. He looks like he's put on a couple of pounds, and maybe gotten some sleep. Except, I know that isn't why. I don't know what happened. My mind reaches back for the memory, and encounters something that feels like a huge wad of cotton. Thinking in that direction floods my heart with chagrin and loss. Why?

I try to turn my head, and a bolt of pain shoots through from the back into both of my eyes. Something laying across my forehead pulls at my skin, and I reach up to feel dampness on a smooth, flat, surface. He says, "It's an herb. Don't try to move around yet."

I can't move? Why can't I move? What the hell is going on? I'm engulfed in a feeling of dread, not like I'm in imminent danger, but like I feel when I've had a blowout at someone and said something I'm going to feel guilty about for the rest of my life. It's an all-to-familiar feeling, but not being able to recall the incident, and knowing it involves him, is totally unnerving.

The fact that we're not on my beach suddenly registers with me. This place doesn't look familiar. The wall he's leaning on is stone... the whole rest of the room seems to be stone. It's not constructed - it seems to be cut out of one piece. There's an arched doorway to another room in the middle of the wall across from me. I can't see into the next room. Where is this?

He steps over to me, crouches down, and reaches for my face. I cringe, startled, and that pain shoots through me again. He looks annoyed. "I told you, don't move. You're injured." He lifts the damp herbs off of my forehead. I see that what he has is a poultice of long, narrow brown leaves. He turns it over and places it back on my head, reaches down beside the bed, and then places his fingers on the poultice. A coolness spreads through it, and I am able to guess that he's just put a few drops of water on it. He holds a spoon up to my mouth, and out of instinct, I open without thinking, and swallow warm, sweet liquid with a distinctly grassy flavor.

He slides his fingers behind my shoulder, and then upward toward my head. I hear the pillow behind my head rustling, and I realize it's not a pillow, but a big bundle of leaves. His fingers brush the spot that is sore, and my head explodes with pain. Darkness closes in on my vision, and I'm instantly nauseous. I'm overtaken by the memory of being dominated and then pinned, the pain in my arms and shoulders, and the feeling of having my head punctured by that thing. I fail to suppress an agonized scream.

I feel his fingers withdraw, and there's cool dampness beneath the wound. It's incredibly soothing, and I feel numbness blooming through the back of my head. My awareness slowly expands from inside my head to the rest of my body, and I find that my breathing is hard, eyes are clamped shut, and I have a death grip on the blanket, holding it bunched up around my throat. The feeling of dread deepens, accompanied by a nagging sense that I can't place. I remember seeing the Doc with a terrible, somber and guilty expression on his face, holding a blade to my neck, but he's not looking at me. I let go of the blanket and feel the skin there. My fingers brush over another of those leaves. The area beneath it feels bruised, and my heart aches. I'm pretty sure I have lost an ally.

I force myself to breathe, bite back tears. This is bad, and I know it. I'm in trouble, and I'm not going to get out of it by wallowing self-pity and remorse. I'm going to have to be able to defend myself, somehow. Opening my eyes, I look to see what the monster is doing.

The monster is hovering over me with a strange expression on his face. His jaw is set, lips drawn together in a tight line, eyes wide, and his brow creased with apparent anxiety. One hand still rests on my shoulder. The other hovers over my body indecisively, as if he's not sure what to do. Is he serious? Does he think this act is going to fool me after everything else he's done. I'm offended. For just a split second, there is the impulse to tell him off, but before I act on it, another thought occurs to me.

I'm injured. I can't get up and fight. I don't know if I can use energy, or if anything I do if I can use it would work against him. I can get angry and blow off some verbal steam, but that would only serve to alert him that he hasn't broken me down. As long as he's feigning concern and treating my injuries, he's not an immediate, active threat in the way that he is when he's overtly aggressive. I have no viable alternative but to play along.

I allow my distrust of him to show, but I don't offer any resistance. Instead, I begin asking questions. I let a little of the fear I'm feeling bleed into my voice. "Where are we? What did you do to me?"

He answers "This is a hidden place. You're safe here."

Oh, yeah. Safe. With a monster 10 inches from  my face. Now, that's security. I force my face to relax a little. It takes a huge amount of control to not flinch away from his raspy, growling voice.

"I brought you here to recover."

Okay. Why would he do that? Wouldn't an injury give him an advantage? Why isn't he using my condition to gain access to what I've been protecting? I want to ask, but I'm afraid to. Instead, I ask what I'm recovering from.

He explains that he's never "crossed through" during what he first tries to describe with one of his gibberish words, then pauses, and says "a transference." He seems to think this explains everything, until I shoot him a look of total confusion. Then he clarifies with "I injured you during the escape. It's not as bad as it feels. There is inflammation, but it's not in the nerves, and it's receding. You'll heal, unless you irritate it."

I start to ask him what he means by "crossed through," but before I speak, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the beach again, melting around me, then the nausea returns and I remember falling to my hands and knees, puking butterflies in the woods. We moved. Didn't he say not to move? I think I remember that, but I'm feeling sleepy again.

I try to keep the look of suspicion off of my face, but he notices. "It's all right. I don't expect you to trust me. You have no choice but to cooperate. You have no defenses, and no escape. You know full well that I could crush you with no effort right now."

So much for acting. I try to find any source of energy around me, reaching out to the walls and floor, though it takes a lot more effort to feel outward than normal. The rock feels totally different than before. It's not like real stone. Its energy feels just like that thunderstorm did. I ask if we're still on the beach, and this is just another illusion.

He says, "No."

I try to reach beyond the walls, but it feels like there is no beyond. What the hell is this place?

He says, "You're going to hurt yourself."

I ask why he cares. If he has me broken down, why is he helping me? The sound of my voice seems odd to me, like it's coming from far away, and I'm pretty sure I'm speaking unusually slowly. Why do my eyelids feel so heavy?

He says, "I still want through."

And that's it. The concern is not fake. It's just not compassionate. I'm being preserved because I have something the monster wants. And the Doc was going to kill me, because I have something the monster wants. The monster didn't save me; he hid me. The state I'm in starts to dawn on me.

I am thinking out loud, without realizing it. "If he had killed me, I wouldn't really have died. I just wouldn't be here. I'd be awake. I wasn't in any danger, so why did he look so sad?" Am I slurring my words?

The monster looks amused. "Wait. You think this is all just a dream? That explains a lot."


I glare at him. What kind of a trick is he playing now?

He says, "If you're just dreaming, why would I have to drug you to get you to sleep?"

I start to answer, but my mouth feels like rubber, and I can't keep my eyes open. Somewhere off in the distance, I can hear him saying something else, but I don't really understand the words.

I don't know what to say about either this dream, or the last one (which I blogged in the middle of the night) except that I woke this morning with the most horrendous headache, bad enough that I've taken medicine. I don't usually do that.

Aside from the headache, though, I feel oddly relaxed today. It may be because I've taken time off of work, but I can say I haven't felt like this in years. It feels like something is missing, but for some reason, I don't care.

On a side note, this is the first time I can ever remember that the realization that I'm dreaming has not been immediately followed by a massive panic response.