day 8

At precisely the stroke of 6am, and not midnight, we change sides and cease to be monsters. At night, while asleep, while dreaming, we are probably digesting our food, weaving a fanciful tale, or we have completely blanked out and are done imagining our non-existence; then we wake.
As if a rude shock, we wake.

Do you know who you are?

As you piece together the vague images and the bubbles popping before you, you realise you are once again alive. And perhaps, you remember who you are, what you are supposed to do - choose between dread or excitement - and then you sleep.
In between those activities, you push yourself through, sometimes in touch with yourself, sometimes not.
You drink some water. Eat something. And then you ask yourself what you are doing here. (Writing?)
Or you stay up till 6am, and battle your own metamorphosis. Defy as you may, there is no escape. Pure breathing (whether you are conscious or not of your own breathing), you are strangely familiar in this unfamiliar environment.
And all for what? One part monotonous, one part restful, you could somehow recognise yourself in the foggy tale. Are you there yet?

I reached the enclave and did not know what to do with myself. I cannot hear. This punishing silence, and yet I floated through. Everywhere I went, I saw a shadow of myself - no time, no presence - I was not myself, and yet I was nothing. Constantly mobile, I cease to know if I was moving or not.

You are never there. You can never finish your story. You wake to repeat the dread and the excitement. You wake to see someone or something, again and again.

I saw once again, the enclave. Without pause, I flashed across the barren space and hit a wall. No pain, no sound, just a mighty implosion, a warp of space, and there I was again, at the beginning of my concussion. I exploded, or imploded (it does not make a difference) and found myself not myself.

Night by night, you repeat the cycle of death. You can cheat life. But you cannot cheat your slumber. Before you, this strange embodiment of a world with sounds, sights and sensations, you can live for seasons beyond. But you can own your dreamscape. It owns you - even as you feed it with memories to manipulate.
Someday, at precisely 6pm, you will be able to sleep and wake later at midnight. But it will not make a difference, because somewhere else, the moon and the sun change places, and you are just a tiny fragment of this world of tiny particles, elements and atoms of infinite quantity.
Perhaps then, you can fashion yourself into a splitting image of a celebrity or a world governor - but you can never escape the silent scream of your own splitting image in your dreams - because that is where you cease to be yourself, and die at the hands of your disappearance.

I saw for the first time, you. I had always longed to see you...until now. I could not imagine how dreadful it would be to see you. I knew then, that I saw you before. You were here to take over me, just as you were about to. I was sorry I didn't know earlier. But right then, I was ready to be taken over.





At precisely the stroke of an unknown time, he wakes, only to find himself as himself; not part of a universe, but wholly himself and alone, as himself.