revelatrix | November 29, 2024 7:45PM
The Hole
Hey all, Roxie here. I’m finally starting to get settled in. I gotta say, it’s nice to have a universe-sized book nook. Still have no idea how to get around, though. I barely know where to find the coffee.
I gotta say, it’s been an uphill battle. These days, it’s more of a gentle hike, though. When shit went down, I felt more like Sisyphus. Guilt will do a lot of funny things to a person.
They say that when you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up. That’s generally true. What they don’t talk about is how hard it is.
It’s like electrons, or what I remember of them from high school physics. They buzz around at separate energy levels, hopping up and down like caffeinated fleas. But these little fuckers don’t do it randomly. They want to reach the lowest energy level. To scream out all their energy into the void and rest inert in the energy well. When they’re up, they’re up, but always a photon or two away from the bottom.
People are the same way. You can fly as high as you want, but take your hands off the controls and you’re right back in the hole. All of us are born into it. We come out of the womb crying and flailing and not understanding anything around us.
The lucky ones don’t have to die in the hole.
The hole is a strange place. It sucks to be there. Anyone can tell you that. They’ll also tell you that they don’t want to leave. Ever. The path of least resistance is a circle in the dark, and those who walk it have made peace with the price they pay.
Don’t be one of those people. Take it from someone who climbed out, and has the callused hands and bloody fingernails to prove it.
For a while after it all happened, I stopped moving. Stopped hopping from place to place, seeing the sights, writing them down. I made a grimy, smoky motel room my impregnable fortress. There were cigarette burns on the sheets and I’d wake up with bug bites and I’d still spend most of the day lying there, staring at the ceiling.
I barely ate. I slept sixteen hours a day. I’d watch the sunbeams stretch and dilate on the wall, waiting for them to die so I could close my eyes.
I was miserable. It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Some of y’all know the feeling, I’m sure.
And then one day, I woke up somewhere completely different.
It was a swamp, or at least it looked like one. The mud below my feet was warm and sticky, the plants were dead and gray, and the trees that jutted up out of the mud were gnarled and leafless. A wet heat hung in the air with a perfect stillness like the last breath of some great creature.
I still remember this dream like it was yesterday. I think what happened there wasn’t normal by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, I took my first few steps. The mud squelched and contorted like it was trying to digest my bare feet. Maybe it was. The ground looked more solid where the roots of the trees were, so I booked it over there (if you can even call stumbling across unsteady ground “booking it”). Every step felt just the tiniest bit harder than the last one. I was already panting a little when I had just crossed a few feet.
For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me to look where the dim light uniformly blanketing the expanse was coming from. So I looked up.
The sun was dim, pale gray, and sickly, and it didn’t hurt to look at in the conventional sense of the word. Staring at it didn’t scorch my retinas or force me to squint. Instead of sending down light and heat, it sapped the energy from my muscles like some great celestial vampire. I could feel myself getting weaker by the second. In my haste to get away I stepped back, turned away, and walked right into the tree.
I hadn’t noticed the thorns before, but I certainly noticed them as they drew blood and tore at my clothes. Taking a closer look at the tree after peeling myself off, I saw that every square inch was covered in tiny, wicked points of wood. I also noticed a sort of pattern in the burls and holes in the wood. I stepped back.
It was a face. It was twisted in a cruel sneer with a malformed growth for a mouth and deep rents in the bark for eyes and a great bulbous burl at the center to form the nose.
This was about the time I started getting scared. The stress dream had definitively crossed over into nightmare territory. I might have been lucid at that point, but it’s hard to know. Either way, I started to run. My only goal was to get away from the trees. More mocking faces revealed themselves to me as I tore through the mud toward nowhere in particular. The skeletal branches seemed to bend and twist to block my path, and although I’m pretty good at dodging and weaving, I still felt them rake across my skin and leave deep scratches in their wake.
Remember how I said every step was harder than the last? That was still happening, I just didn’t notice it through the adrenaline. That was until the fatigue hit me. It was like Hemingway on bankruptcy: gradually, then suddenly.
Really, Roxie? Hemingway?
I hadn’t made any progress by the time the burning in my legs became too furious to ignore. The swamp seemed to go on forever, stretching to the horizon in every direction. The mud caking my feet and calves seemed heavier and heavier. In the humidity, even the air felt like sludge. I was drenched in sweat. My breaths were painful wheezes. I think I was lucid by that point. I still felt like I was going to die. In that respect, it was no surprise when my legs gave out under me and I fell face-first into the mud.
I barely had the energy to turn myself over so I didn’t suffocate and die right there. I was on my back, covered in warm mud, staring directly into the looming gray sun. I felt like a wriggling ant below its withering, almost scornful glare. My eyelids felt like they weighed tons, but it would have been too much effort even to close them.
I laid there for what felt like hours, barely breathing.
I thought about how I got here. Was this bad luck? Divine punishment? Did I die in my sleep? Maybe my body had finally given up the ghost.
A faint golden light teased at the edges of my vision. In that moment, I was sure I really was dying. I was thinking of all the people I didn’t get to say goodbye to when the light grew in intensity and a gloved hand touched my neck with two fingers, looking for the slow pulse that was still there.
“Are you conscious, madam?”
I groaned in something like assent. Whoever had come to rescue me promptly picked me up and slung me over their massive shoulder without the slightest hint of resistance. I had wholly accepted that this was my life now.
The walk, wherever I was going, was a blur. The indistinct figure didn’t talk, and I certainly didn’t listen.
The impenetrable mental fog finally started to clear when I moved through some (at the time) imperceptible threshold and the colors of the world around me suddenly changed. The suffocating gray was replaced by gentle brown dotted with warm golden lights.
When I reached a baseline level of consciousness, I finally realized where I was. I was in a large tent made of thick brown fabric and strung with glass beads containing motes of light. They swayed slightly with a musical jingling despite the total lack of airflow. I asked where I was. I must have been slurring my words, because the figure didn’t answer. It - he? she? they? - was a dark shape cloaked in brown, except for three golden slits where its eyes should be. Even then, I could tell it was much taller than me. If anyone’s seen someone like this before, let me know. I’m curious.
Eventually it quit rummaging around in the blurry background and sat down in front of me.
“Do you understand me?”
I nodded. It leaned forward, its blinding gaze shining directly in my eyes. I recoiled.
“Oh, my apologies. I was seeing if you were lucid.”
“Yeah, yeah. I am.”
I remember every word of this conversation. I can’t even remember conversations I have in real life.
The figure extended a hand in a brown leather glove. They said their name was Siete Lágrimas de Oro, and it was a pleasure to meet me. I told them my name. My real name. Not putting that down here.
They said they were “sorry I found myself here”, and that they tried to rescue who they could. I asked what this place even was, and they just said something about despair, rat traps, and the bottoms of wells. I nodded, not fully understanding, and there was a long, awkward pause before I spoke again.
They told me that we live in a world of opportunists, waiting for our lowest moment. Made sense to me, but they went on to say that “one cannot be safe from them even in dreams”. I asked if I just came here because I was feeling bad, and they said I was taken here. By who? They said I wouldn’t have woken up had they not found me. That took a moment to process.
I asked why they were here, and they started telling me about how they were a Dream-Trespasser, somebody who makes a habit of intruding on other people’s dreams. It seemed sketchy to me, but they insisted that they never made trouble. Quite the opposite, in fact. They often visited troubled dreams to lend a helping hand to wayward dreamers. It felt just a little patronizing, but the thought was there.
Then, things got serious all of a sudden. The bright light coming from their face dimmed a little as they looked me in the eye, and I could finally get a closer look at their head. They wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, and the parts of their head not covered by the cloak looked almost metallic.
“So, why did you come here?”
“I don’t know.”
They folded their gloved hands together and continued to look at me. They didn’t say a word. Just stared at me with that golden gaze. Not pressuring me to speak, just inviting me if I was ready.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Hm?”
“I don’t know how I can move on with my life. It feels like everything’s gone to shit. Forever.”
“Why is that?”
“It’s crushing. Suffocating. Like trying to lift a thousand tons.”
“The guilt?”
“How did you know?”
“I’ve known it before.” If they had a mouth, I was sure it would be held in a sad smile.
“Not like this.”
“Everybody says that, Roxie. They can’t all be the worst person in the world.”
“But-” I blubbered meaninglessly.
“If you look for reasons to feel bad, you’ll always find them.”
“I guess.” I sat there for a moment, staring off into nothing.
“I don’t want to see you here again, Roxie. I won’t be there to save you.”
“But how? How do I do that?”
“You climb. You dig your hands into the stone wall and climb.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Can you live like this?”
“…no.” I looked away sheepishly.
“Then it was never a matter of if you wanted to.”
“But-” There I go again.
“It’ll be hard. But it is the only thing worth doing.”
“I understand.” I stared intently at the ground.
“Good.”
And then, before I could react, Siete Lágrimas de Oro reached forward and touched my forehead.
I woke up in a cold sweat. The clock said 11:00 AM, hours later than I usually wake up. The morning light peeked in through the gaps in the blinds, illuminating the room around me.
They were right. I couldn’t live like this.
I got out of bed, brushed myself off, and got to writing about the dream before it left my mind. A couple hours later, I checked out of the motel and never looked back.
I don’t know if you’ll ever read this, Siete Lágrimas de Oro. I don’t know if you even exist in the real world.
But thank you. Thank you for setting me straight. If anyone else has had a similar dream experience, feel free to share. I have a feeling this isn’t an isolated incident, so to speak.
Signing off and looking forward,
Roxie