Him and i - Dreams of trauma

I open my eyes. Everything is like before, before passing out. I feel my neck tight, strangled by the shoelace, stopping my blood from flowing to my brain. It feels though as if I had just put it. I untie it quickly, get up, get my head out of my noose belt, and look all over myself. I don't see blood. I'm touching my neck, I have nothing. Blade is clean, of blood. I pull it out of the tree. No blood in the hollow. There's not a drop of blood anywhere, but on my wrist and the cloth around it. But…

The red on the bark, just under the hollow looks fresher. Like a new layer of blood was painted over the old one. The old one can still be seen around the fresher one, outlining it. Did it work? I'm not dead, I hope, but nothing is happening. Not…

A strange noise disturbs my thoughts. A noise of ripped branches and crushed leaves. The tree starts spreading on the sarcophagus wall. Roots and branches start covering the grey stone, replacing it with the brown wood of the tree, and the red of my blood. Now I see it, the whole blood I sacrificed, I see it everywhere around me, I see it on me, I feel it on my skin, even where it shouldn't reach. I see myself, kneeling on the ground, and the blood that was still gushing out of…neck, and my hand on the handle…

And everything disappears like it was never there. A loud noise of broken wood wakes me up from theses, false lies. Don't know why, but sometimes you can call things, with words you never heard, without knowing anything related to that, just from instinct. The wood cracking really breaks me out of my trance, and I find myself in front of the…anomaly.

The hollow now grows bigger too. After the wood covered the entire face of the stone, now it's time for the hollow to do the same. Leaves start falling in front of my eyes, all of them, making a wall of leaves through which I can't see. They cover everything in their fall, staying close one to the other, cooperating to not let me see the magic happen. All I see is green. A moving, dancing green.

Once the leaves have fallen, all of them, the hollow presents itself in front of me. It's big enough to get inside without leaning forward or needing to lower my head. It's incredible. I feel like I'm dreaming, it can't be real. I look again around, on the floor, to check if my body lays dead somewhere. My blood. Nothing. I'm alive. I turn back to the hollow. I try to see what's inside, but it's too dark. So dark that the light doesn't reach in there. I pull out my compass and light ahead.

I see steps. Steps that go down in a spiral stairway. It's not a narrow spiral, it's very loose, large enough to go down relaxed without having to turn my body to left after each step. The left and the right brick walls don't suffocate me, they are at like two meters distance one from the other. Everything is neat, perfectly clean. The walls, the ceiling, the steps. Like this whole space stayed in a vacuum place until now. The bricks seem very old, but are in perfect shape, undeteriorated, untouched by time. There is complete darkness ahead of me, and there seems to be no end to these stairs.

I start going down the steps, under the sarcophagus, through the freshly presented hollow of the now dead tree. I'm lighting my way with this dim compass, not too bright, but in this deep darkness, it's extremely useful. And I go down the stairs, and I go down, and down some more. And nothing. Nothing seems to be changing. I have a long descent ahead of me. So I don't stop, and keep going down, and down and down some more.

It's been a hard, long day. And very crazy. Haven't stopped since I woke up from that dreadful dream this morning. I'm gonna take a pause, stop to rejuvenate myself. I must've descended some, I'd say more than I'd do from my apartment to the ground floor, so more than 5 floors down.

After the quick pause, I get up and continue my descent. Compass ahead. Step after step. This time I'm going slowly, not going to hurry myself into exhaustion. I take my time, to think at what happened today. At the fact that everything I dreamt, happened. And a lot happened today. Couldn't I had dreamt the lottery numbers? Oh. And there's Sarah. Why is she acting like that suddenly? Did I really do something? Maybe I should send her a message…

I pull out the phone, but no signal comes on my screen. It should've been expected, I'm so deep down that, looking behind I don't see even the smallest ray of the outside light. Anyway, I wouldn't know what to write her, to make everything better. I kind of shat on this relationship. Again. Every time I think on this, a bitter like lifeblood juice is flowing through my veins and reaching straight to my heart. So bitter. I really liked her… Loved her. I'm a piece of shit. I should've stayed more with her today, but I didn't have a choice… Fuck.

I had to get to Matt and George… In fact, I did have a choice, between them, and her. But it's a little more complicated than that. It was more of a choice between my happiness and their lives. Terrible choice. I made it without even thinking that I have something to lose. Would I still have chosen the same if I knew? Probably. Hopefully.

Maybe if I have a talk with her, she'll understand me. Maybe, if I explain it all to her, she'll give me another chance. Maybe, I can choose both options. Maybe, if I don't fuck again everything, in that new chance, I'll finally be with her, forever. Fuck! Whatever. All these maybes… There's also the problem of what happened that night, those two nights. But I can't give up!

But I need to solve my problems, I first need to solve my actual problem. She wouldn't want to be with someone that's losing his mind. With a crazy hallucinating boy, or who knows what even worse is happening to him…to me.

 HOW MUCH MORE DO I HAVE TO KEEP GOING?!

More than quarter of an hour has passed since I started descending. It's impossible to go downstairs for this much time and find nothing but still stairs. I stop again to take a pause, calm myself. I'm tired, my feet hurt from how many steps I've went down. Nothing happened since the first step. Nothing changed. I get close to the wall and check it with my compass. I check the bricks, they are perfect. All the steps are the same. Everything is the same. Everything is perfectly made, neat, without any error whatsoever.

It's impossible. I go slowly down the stairs and closely look at the walls, at the bricks, at the ceiling and the steps. Everything is the same everywhere. Symmetric. No mistake. Nothing is chipped, scratched, deteriorated, nothing. Something is not right. There is no way something like this exists, unless…

I start running upstairs. Running and running and pushing myself over the limit. The light of the compass swings after my hand's chaotic movement. I can't see up ahead, I can't see where I'm going. But I'm going head on, three steps at a time.

No, no, no it can't…! I hope I'm not right. I run, and I run, and I run, for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Body is collapsing under my heavy will to get out of here. I stop. I'm dead exhausted. Didn't even realized I couldn't breathe properly, and now I'm gasping for air like a new-born. I can't stop now, I'm still here, on these endless stairs. I take a deep breath, force my lungs to accept it, try to calm down even more forcefully, and continue running in the dark.

My legs are heavier than I ever felt them, I can barely breathe. I'm still here, I have to go on. Barely dragging my feet, I hit a step and collapse on my hands. It hurts, everything. No. I can't push anymore. I turn on my back, laid on the steps like a drunk that fell asleep on a building's stairway because the key wouldn't fit into his door. I try to not die now. Gasping. Light-headed. Full of pain. Waiting to come back to my senses.

I'm back. A little better than the near-death state I was just in. I get back on my feet and look ahead of me, upwards, in the endless darkness of the stairways. I can't deny it anymore. I'm still here. Still the same. I'm in a loop. Never-ending torment. Even if I descent, even if I rise, no matter how much I'd go each direction, I'd go on forever without ever reaching an end. Without end. Without signal. Without knowing where I am or in which direction to go. I'm stuck here. Eternally? Stuck with a dagger and a compass. I don't think there are any survival tools more important than these two. Here, they're useless.

I sit down, on a step, laying with my back against the wall. I look right and left. Same darkness. I don't bother to raise the compass to light around me. It's no use. To see the same thing? Left or right. Up or down. Still stuck in the middle I'll stay, in this endless stupid circle. Everything's the same. I have a compass that can't guide me, a dagger that can't cut anything around me, and a phone that can't call anyone. I don't bother to put the compass back in my pocket, I place it on a lower step, to my right, it turns off, I quickly touch it again with my finger and place the lateral of my calf on top of it to keep contact and let it light downstairs.

I can't believe I wasn't bothered by darkness until now, since I've been down here, I haven't had one thought of fear. But now I am, good thing I reminded myself about that… It's stupid, a shit thing this fear that I have of darkness. Why can't I get rid of it? Conquer it! It should've been gone way before this age. Everybody said that it'll be gone before I know it. But it doesn't go away, it's as stronger as ever, night after night. I'm shy of 20 years old, and I still sleep with my night-light, every night. I had that since, forever.

I punch the wall behind me. Like that's gonna solve something, punching. But I don't stop. I keep punching again and again and again until I hear something. Or I thought I heard something. I look downstairs, there's nothing. I grab the compass and point it upstairs, same nothing. I don't hear it now, but I sure heard something, a hit, but like it wasn't coming from where I punched. It sounded just the same, I think, or… I don't know… I don't even know where I heard it from, up or down…

It doesn't seem like it came from a direction specifically. But I heard another sound coming from somewhere else other than where I am. Now, I'm only hearing my heart beats. They are strong and fast. I try to calm myself. I breathe, slow. I place back the compass, on the next step down, with my hand leaning above it and my finger barely touching it so it can keep lighting downstairs. I try to calm myself. I was so scared I didn't even have the courage to get up. If something, was…I would've face it sitting down like a coward. I'm still alarmed. Scared. I keep searching from the corner of my eye, either up or down, for…something.

I see a shadow downstairs. I turn my sight, it's something, I don't know what exactly but it's moving. A skinny soft shadow, that moves slower and slower until stops. I'm too scared to move, to run. I'm just petrified, looking down without even blinking. I'm waiting for the shadow to move, again, or for its owner to appear, suddenly, emerging from the darkness. In time, I get a little more courage and move, grab the compass, and hold it down ahead, trying to reach as further as I can with my hand, without moving from my cowardly sitting position.

I start sliding myself downstairs, from my sitting position, just letting my ass fall down one step at a time. Meanwhile I point the compass in every corner and direction I can, just randomly, and I look frantically for…anything. I check the steps for marks, but nothing. It's nothing now. Nothing up, nothing down. Nothing.

I stop, I lean my back again against the wall and let the compass drop on my abdomen. It lands face up, lighting the ceiling, barely. I slide slowly down on my back until I'm on horizontal with my body. I feel the wall with the top of my head, and prop upwards my legs on the other. It's not wide enough to accommodate my whole body length.

Fuck. I'm a coward. I'm stupid. I'm useless. I'm despicable and not deserving of this…of this life. So afraid, so weak… I just close my eyes, I don't want to get scared by anything else. Maybe I even fall asleep, or just die, I don't care. I don't deserve… Fuck. I am so low right now, it's sad. I'm tired. I'm weak. I'm don't feel right. Nothing is right about me. About what's happening to me. But right now, in this moment, that I don't feel right, is the most normal thing that happened to me all day. It feels, weird.

I open my eyes, pushing some tears with my eyelids. I see the shadow. Again. It's on the ceiling, moving, again, very slowly but it moves, more like a pendulum. I watch it until it stops. What, what could it fucking be, in front of the light sour…?

It's the needle! It's compass needle. I grab the compass and turn the dial towards me. It's oscillating.

"It's fucking moving!"

I hear it again. Odd echoes around here, creepy, but none of that matters. I have a direction now. The compass is fucking working. I can't believe I hadn't noticed until now. I don't know and I don't even care how, I'm just going to follow the compass. It's my only hope now.

The needle points towards upstairs. I start rising. The compass is moving with me, keeping the needle pointed towards forward even if the stairs are in a spiral. The needle knows. I'm going the right way. I pick up my pace, I'm still having a little disbelief. If I'm caught in an infinite loop, and the compass makes me go upstairs for an eternity, I still get the same fate.

But I climb and I climb, and then I stop for a few seconds, still tired from how I ran crazily just not long before. I'm dragging my feet more than climbing these stairs. But I'm going. As I'm going up, I still check from time to time, on the compass. Maybe the direction changes at some point. At this point, as much as I went upstairs today, I should be way above the level I started descending from. I went up more than down.

I keep going up, legs already know the height of the steps, the angle of the spiral, and I walk just watching the compass. I can't go faster. I'm exhausted, so I keep this pace, hoping I'll last until I get to my destination. My end.

I hit the edge of a step with the tip of my shoe. I almost fall but I catch myself on the interior wall. I get back up and continue going. After building enough confidence that I won't fall and smash my head to the steps, I look again at my compass. It's showing backwards. What?

I stop, turn, and start going down. Slowly. The needle moves with each step, more to the right until it turns backwards again. I go up three steps and now it shows dead right. Straight towards the exterior wall. Well I guess that's better than finding a dead end at the end of the stairs. Or even more better than infinite descent without end, following the compass for an eternity. It's better than the alternative, but it doesn't help me at all.

I point the compass to the wall to light it up. I have to find out why did it brought me to this wall. And I find a hole. Just that. A hole larger than my index finger. At about my chin level. Finally, something out of place in this perfect space. It's not perfect, the hole. Seems more like it was made by mistake. I put my finger in the hole and go in until it stops. I hit something cold, metallic. I touch the tip of my finger, look at it, there's nothing on it. I put it again in the hole, it's deep, half of the index.

I try to push, it doesn't move. It's not a keyhole or… Maybe it needs blood again. I pull out the dagger from the pocket, unsheathe it, check the blade on both sides. It still has my blood, from the last time. What the hell is happening? Why do I have to keep cutting myself, and open ways with my blood? Why do I have to keep passing these trials that make me go out of my mind? Why is this happening to me from the beginning? Why me? Why?

It wouldn't shock me if I'd wake up now at a mental asylum. In a white room. In a white straitjacket. Tied. Sedated. Immobilized. Helpless. Lost physically and mentally. Lost, as I feel now, in this dreadful, endless, place. As this whole day was, and these all events that happened today. An endless torment.

I feel that I can't handle reality. If there's at least one thing real from what's happening to me. I have to focus, I won't have much until I lose control. I'm at the edge of reality, near the end of my mental sanity. I have to try and keep my control. I try to breathe slower and slower. Inhale. Exhale. I come back, easy, slowly. First, I have to get out of here.

I place the blade on my palm and cut. It starts dripping. I quickly place the blade under the wound and tilt it down towards the hole, with the tip placed in the hole. The drops fall on the blade and slide downwards, into the hole. After just a few drops, the hole fills and is overflowing. Blood is dripping on the bricks. Nothing is happening. I just wait. I…I cut myself for nothing, without even thinking before at any other idea, without trying before any other option. Hah, there wasn't even a hint to tell me to do this. F…

"Fuck! Fucking fuck this shit! Motherfucker! Fuck me! Why are you fucking with me so hard?!"

I'm sick of these games.

"I'm sick of it! Do you hear me?!"

Who the hell should hear me? I sheathe the dagger and sit down on the step. Fuck me. I feel a quick pain, coming from the wrist wound. I lean forward and hold the compass with my knees so that it lights down. Under the compass light I place my hand with the cut towards the compass. I softly grab the bandage as if I was scared to not infect my wound even more. I pull the bandage off the wound.

It doesn't look very beautiful. It swelled and blackened. I can't see very well but it seems like the skin around the wound got darker also. Maybe dirt got there. It hurts when I clench my fist tight. I cover the wound back and cut another piece of cloth from my shirt to bandage the new one. I'm done, with all this… I don't want anymore. I lean back, back against the wall. I can't anymore. I hit the wall behind me hard. I still had the dagger in my hand.

The sound it made…from my hit. The dagger, when it hit the brick wall, produced an odd, unexpected sound. I hit again. It sounds like a small, muffled, echo. I quickly rise on my feet, too quick though as now I'm waiting in complete darkness for the vertigo effect to wear off.

I hug the wall and stick my ear to it and hit it with the dagger. Each knock makes this beautiful sound. The wall, is empty, nothing behind it, I'm sure of it, I'm sure of this sound. I try a few meters off to the left, it doesn't sound the same. A few meters to the right, it doesn't sound the same. Only in the middle, here in front of me, the wall sounds like this. Maybe there's nothing behind this wall, maybe a door, or a pathway. A secret entrance. Something must be.

I pull my ear from the wall and stick my eye, this time to the hole. Red. I back out and put my finger in the hole to clean it of blood, then I try to look again through it. It's a lit room. Fuck. Finally. There's a room behind this wall, behind the glass behind this wall. That's what I felt with the tip of my finger, the glass.

I take a more attentive look. It seems to be a dungeon, lit by torches and urns. I see a thick pillar in the middle and metal bars in the shape of what seems to be a door, at the very end. It's very open that metal door. I found my exit, entrance. My escape. I have to take this wall down first, to break the brick and then to break the window.

I place the compass on a step and start to feel the wall with my hand until I find the hole. I take the dagger and stick the head of the sheathe in the hole. I try to use both of my hands and make a leverage inside the hole to carve it out. Pieces of brick around the hole start falling. I start using the dagger as a pickaxe, hitting behind the brick, and pulling it down towards me. Big pieces start falling from the wall. I can hold now the compass in one hand and keep scraping with the other. I notice now how there's no glass behind the brick wall, no lit room, no escape, no…

"Aargh! Fuck!"

What the fuck did I saw then, when I looked through that hole? Fuck. I start punching the wall and the black glass and start hitting the rest of the fake brick wall with the dagger until it clears off. All the bricks placed there, were put to quickly fall off, so I stopped when I met resistance. After the last pieces of brick fell off, I stop and step back until I hit the opposite wall.

It's not a window at all. It's a dark mirror, through which one cannot see. Large and in the shape of a door. But it's just a black mirror. What was that I saw then through the hole? Now I can only see myself, my pathetic, helpless, piece of shit, self. I look so dead, so devoid of hope. I look like I already lost, and should just give up…

But how did I saw that room? That lit room. My escape…

I move my head to try and watch from every possible angle. From every direction. From every distance. But it's the same thing I see, no matter what I do. This black glass that shows my pity self. I hate… It's my reflection, the image there. When I watched through the hole, there wasn't light to reflect anything… It's hard to explain, even to myself, but maybe that's it. I put the compass in my pocket, and pitch-black takes over. I can't see my hand, and it's almost touching my eye. I hate being in this darkness.

I'm scared. I'm a coward. I want to take out the compass and look around me, to be carefully searching for any monster that could've got closer to me while I was covered in darkness. But I'm too scared to do even that. I'm too scared to move my finger, as if the very instant I move even my little finger, even for a millimetre, I'll die a horrible death by the hands, or claws, of whatever…

Suddenly the room lights up. Which got me so much by surprise that…I don't want to check to be sure, but I think I peed a little in my pants. But I can see again inside, behind the glass. Same room, same thick pillar, same urns, and torches that light the whole room up. I get closer to the glass, maybe it's gone, and I can now enter the room. I put my hand forward, but my reach is quickly blocked by that glass.

Ah, I hit my hand with the bad cut, I even forgot about it, about the pain. And it's worse, it feels wrong, but I need to focus on the problem at hand now. I touch the window, it's still solid, cold. I knock, but it sounds like I knocked on the thickest cement wall in existence. The thickness of the glass must be immense, judging just by the sound. I start pounding, punching with my least wounded hand, but the window doesn't even vibrate. It gives me this feeling that it's impenetrable.

I grab the dagger with my left hand and hold it tight. I must break this, this only impediment that holds me from reaching my only escape. I place the tip of the dagger on the glass, pull back, and hit as hard as I can, hoping that I can penetrate a little just with the first hit. The tip gets absolutely no grip, slides and my hand that held it so tight is twisted brutally. My wrist snaps. And I quickly fall. The pain I feel right now…

The little pee that escaped earlier is now joined by the rest of it. I couldn't stop it, in the middle, near the end, not even the last drop. I couldn't. I just had to let all of it go, in my pants. I didn't even try to pull down my pants. I'm despicable. I despise myself.

"Aaaaaaa!"

It hurts so… Oh God, please, please just… Fuck! No. I need to keep… I can't… All this pain. I feel the warmth in my pants, and trickling down my legs, and on my belly. I'm laying in my own puddle of piss. But that's not the worse. The insane pain, and intense warmth that comes from my wrist is terrifying me. But not as much as the feeling I have, when I move just by a little, my hand. It feels detached from the arm. The wrist feels shattered in pieces, and impossible to ever be put back.

I just lay. Wallow. Think about sticking that dagger in my throat. But I want to survive. I don't know why. It's a part of me that wants to get out, to survive.

After what felt like hours of agonizing pain, where thoughts just couldn't be formed inside my mind. After my piss got cold. And even dried up. And pain was replaced by numbness. I could finally move again. Using my right hand, carefully as that one has the wrist cut, to get my body in a sitting position. Back against the opposite wall, facing the window and the impossible room. Holding both of my left hand with my right one. Trying not to lose some piece of me. It hurts. I just, a normal person…no…I, want to kill myself. I want to end this pain. It hurts, like the only relief I'd find is in death. I grab the dagger with my right hand, the least fucked up, and put it back quickly in the left pocket. At least it will be harder to reach it if some bad impulse gets the better of me.

I really want to know, this…biggest mystery I ever encountered…this will to live, where the fuck did it came from?

I guess…I really really love Sarah, and want, even facing worse than hell, to have her.

But I'm pathetic. I'm a weak, crippled, maimed, pathetic…wait, I already said that…I'm just trash. Dead trash. Good thing the mirror has window properties now, or else I would've seen myself in the reflection, and then…I really would have done it.

Looking at the room that I can't touch. I realize, there, are my answers. I felt that, this was also somehow part of my drive that motivates me to survive. The drive to find the answers. This feeling of attraction, that grew as I advanced more towards this…place. And my answers are so close, and somehow, I think, that these answers, will solve everything. But I can't reach, that room. I can just watch.

I'm getting filled with this…I don't know, everything. Pettiness. Anger. Cowardice. Helplessness. Self hatred. Abandonment. Failure. I…I…I give up. I try to get the dagger out of my pocket, my right hand shaking and barely making precise moves. Just injuring my wrist cut even more, and in this all shakiness, also my ripped wrist. I manage to open back my wound, causing my right hand to bleed a lot, again, but I also managed to pull it out. The dagger, already unsheathed.

I point it towards my neck, and try to pull as hard and quick as I can, without thinking or planning. But I stop myself. I managed to figure out what I was doing in time. I can't. No. NO! NO! NO! I throw the dagger downstairs to not have it in my hands anymore. The noise of the dagger falling on the stairs starts to fade up to the point it starts to increase. Now hearing it with my left ear, it sounds louder and louder. And I look upstairs and see the dagger falling down the stairs and stopping at my leg. I grab it and sheathe it and put it back into my pocket.

 Fuck.

I didn't go up and down, above or below the earth, hundred of meters. All the running, it feels like it was a waste. My life feels like a waste. I ran, like a hamster on a wheel. Does the hamster know he's running for nothing, and arriving nowhere? I didn't…

I feel like a Hamster. Like someone pulled a bad joke on me. Like God is messing me up, fucking me up, hard. Or the universe. Or whatever the fuck religion exists in this fucking cult with these fucking dungeons.

I'm tired. I'm giving up. I'm not going to try anything anymore. I'll just rest. Hopefully, forever. But not by my hand, as I don't have the courage to even end it myself.

At least, I'm not laying in darkness anymore. The compass was barely making any light around me. But now, I'm bathing in this light, I feel safe, as much safe as I could feel considering these circumstances. It's relaxing, to give up, stop the fight, just stop, and watch, watch this beautiful play of shadows on the wall. This dance of the fire that projects them. This calm heat that the room gives off.

I'm more and more tired. Body is on its last minutes. Eyelids become heavier and vision gets narrower. My eyes close, so slow, as if they don't want to scare me. I'll rest a little, and then, whatever happens then. The light will protect me, and I'm not going to be afraid anymore. I can see it through my eyelashes. They're closed now. I hope I won't sleep too much. But I think it'll be forever. I want to d…

I hear a fire.