I wrote the following in a dream journal on the morning of January 21st, 2020. It is not the strangest dream I’ve ever had, but it was one of the most vivid.
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Many trials and adventures preceded my arrival to the wasteland, but they have since faded from my waking memory. My story - or the part I remember - begins as I stood outside a single concrete structure that sat among the blasted, twisted geology of that infernal place. I surveyed the land I had inherited from the fresh corpse beside the door - an entity I could not identify, but knew instinctively that I had somehow killed - and furrowed my brow. I scanned the horizon. The land shifted slightly, but angrily under my gaze. Diffuse light of unknown origin - no sunlight could pierce the distant rock ceiling - bathed the writhing land in a hateful glow. Something akin to thunder ebbed and waned, rolling through the red canyons and grey cliffs.
A creature leaped viciously at me from the shadows. I struck it down easily, as it was no more than a whelp. It was birdlike in appearance, though its wings were clearly vestigial, capable of little more than affording small boosts to its meager jumps. I found other such denizens in the wasteland - all bestial, though varied in appearance - and slaughtered them at my leisure. They struck at anything that moved, and that included one another. The things acted on misplaced primal instinct to kill without thought, though I considered my actions little better. The only difference between me and them is that I possessed power beyond their comprehension. And mine, for that matter. What creature had I become?
I don't know how long the reckless reaping lasted, but eventually I found myself grappling with the two remaining demons. The first, a rust-colored, dog-like creature with black eyes and four scythe-like feet, tussled with a snow-white cat with deer's antlers protruding from a black, eyeless head consisting of a single, cavernous maw. I gripped them both by the back of the neck and squeezed with inhuman strength. As they writhed in my vice-like grip, I wondered at the unexpected softness of their fur and the fragility of their bones. How easy it would have been to simply turn my thumbs and break their necks? My waking self shudders at the savage thought.
"Do you wish to live," I asked them, "or will your bones crumble in my hands?"
"To live," the dog-like one growled in response, though clearly with reluctance. The white cat didn't speak - perhaps unable through its terrible maw - but I sensed its reply to be the same. I released the creatures and they immediately squared off with one another, their quarrel clearly unfinished.
"This is ended," I rebuked, "you are brother and sister now. Go and do my bidding."
The two creatures, twice cowed by my authority, acknowledged one another a final time, then departed in separate directions. I knew they were off to do my bidding as commanded, though I could not say for sure what my bidding actually was. Whatever it was, this was only the beginning. I realized as they left that I had already given them names in a previous dream, but I couldn't remember what they were. I knew that if I could remember the names, the true potential of these creatures would be unlocked, but I set the problem aside. Something greater demanded my attention.
I found myself at the entrance of the single structure. The corpse of its previous tenant was nowhere to be found, but this did not concern me. I knew the wasteland had consumed it and turned my focus to the building. It was a small, concrete bunker with a numbered keypad beside a simple, yet sturdy door. My fingers moved before my mind could wonder at the code.
Of course. The number arrived without effort. Or perhaps it was already there, as if it were an integral part of me. THE number. It was the number over the warehouse in the night city. It was the number on the boat where the child evaded me among labyrinthine decks. It was written in the sky over my childhood home and tattooed on a severed arm in the snow.
It was the pass-code to innumerable safes, doors, and puzzles in dreams only now remembered in hazy flashes. A memory of a dream that may have never happened, but was irrefutable in the moment. From where did the number originate and what significance did it hold?
No matter. The keypad intoned a single, sharp chord. The door opened into inky blackness. I stepped inside.
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