Subconscious Travel Log - Entry "Corn Dog"
I wanted to write another entry tonight so I did! I'm hungry and tired and didn't proofread again.
I listened to this the entire time and owe my inspiration to it, somehow.
Content Warnings: Scopophobia warning (just in writing tho), swearing, food, death. Should probably be it?
It was kind of hard to get in here. Nothing I couldn’t handle, of course, but I think that’s an important thing to note. Instead of walking through an open door I had to actually turn the doorknob myself, metaphorically thinking. Usually that means the person in question has magic of some sort or that they’re aware that people like me exist. It’s seldom a big deal, but I don’t think I’ve ever brought this up in an entry before. I figure I should, just in case someone steals this someday. If someone’s going to invade my privacy, I’d at least like them to have a basic understanding of what they’re getting into, you know?
Anyway, I entered into a dark hallway where the walls were covered in colorful glowing circles that pulsed to a rhythm I couldn’t hear. I immediately noticed that the floor was moving, carrying me back into the wall behind me. Said wall was covered in a giant drawing of an eye that moved in a pattern linked to the same rhythm as the lights. It laughed when I touched it so I decided it would be best if I kept moving.
Trying to move forward was like walking on a treadmill: I had to run to make any progress and I wasn’t making enough fast enough. Sometimes I’d look backward to judge how far I had come, and every time that eye would laugh at me. What a dick. Eventually I got far enough away so that I couldn’t see it when I looked back, but I could still hear it laughing.
I’ll admit it: I’m not really that in-shape. I mean, yeah, I was in a competition that involved murdering people so I’m pretty alright at running, but it’s been a while since then and I’ve never been into working out. I prefer being in bed all day, usually asleep. The point is that my legs were really tired and I may have tripped and fell on my face. Too tired to continue, I just kind of laid there and wound up back at the start again. I think the eye started laughing harder than usual, but I can’t blame it. If I was that eye I’d probably be laughing too. Wall eyes probably don’t have much else to do.
It was really uncomfortable just sitting there while the floor continued to move underneath me, but I didn’t care. I asked the eye for its name, but it didn’t respond. I asked what it did for fun, how old it was, whose dream this was, so on and so forth. I sat up and stared it straight in the… well, it’s an eye. But it stared back. It ignored the rhythm and stared right at me. Since it was a drawing of an eye on a wall I couldn’t really tell if it was angry with me, surprised someone was bizarre enough to speak to it, if it was happy to be treated as something more than an image, or if it was experiencing emotions beyond my realm of comprehension.
Personally I think it got sick of me because within a couple of minutes the floor reversed direction, carrying me away from it. It never returned to the rhythm as far as I saw, staring at me until once again I could no longer see it. At that point I flopped down onto my back and stared at the ceiling for a while, watching the lights dance. It was surprisingly relaxing, even as the lights began to increase in number, flashing brighter and more vividly. I was so thoroughly entranced that I didn’t notice the hallway ended in an abrupt fall until I had already landed on the trampoline at the bottom. After suppressing a scream (not sure why I even write that stuff in here) I steadied myself and took a look at my surroundings.
Where I was now was some sort of festival. First I looked behind me, noticing there was a rope ladder hanging from the hole in the wall I had just fallen from. It didn’t reach all the way to the ground – if I had wanted to go back up, I would’ve needed to use the trampoline to jump high enough. Obviously I wasn’t very interested in that option, so I got off of the trampoline and started down the boardwalk I was on. It had a fantastic view of the ocean, which was covered in lights of some sort – lanterns, I’m guessing. The sky had a brightness I can’t put into words even though it was clearly night, just delicate enough so as not to drown out the colorful lights all of the stands on the boardwalk were covered in.
It didn’t take long for me to notice that despite the liveliness of the scene, there wasn’t a soul to be found. No one was operating the stands, no one was in line for anything, no one was browsing. It made me feel a little sad, honestly – this place had a lot of potential to be fun. I reached the end of the boardwalk and discovered it ended in a steep drop into the ocean. I considered jumping off to see if there was anything there, but ultimately decided to explore a little more and to come back to that later.
Despite the utter absence of people, all of the food stands were stocked. I don’t usually eat because Tested anatomy makes that weird, but dreams tend to work a little differently. After making 100% sure no one was here and that I didn’t have any magical dream money to leave behind, I quietly grabbed a corn dog and tried to swallow my guilt with every delicious bite. I’m a terrible person.
After going up and down the boardwalk again, I confirmed there was really nothing to do unless I wanted to continue being a thief. I seated myself at the end of the boardwalk, dangling my legs over the edge as I finished off the physical embodiment of my greed.
Naturally, right at that moment a giant monster burst forth from the ocean and I promptly scrambled backward, choking on the corn dog stick and by some impossible dream logic managing to swallow it. The whole thing. The whole damn stick.
“Oh my God,” I remember whispering to myself, “I just swallowed the fucking stick.” This was really something, I thought. How was that even possible? Had I gotten my throat in just the right position? Was the stick smaller than I thought? Out of everything I’ve ever experienced in the subconscious world, that was probably the most mystifying. I think it’s because, like, could that happen in reality? If I were to re-enact this scenario in the waking world, could I make that happen again? Or was it a shortcut the dream took to get me to focus on the main action? It would be pretty disappointing if the hero died choking on a corn dog stick right as the villain made their appearance.
I guess I can’t really call myself a hero, though. I mean, I stole a corn dog.
The shadowy figure in front of me made a horrible shrieking noise, like the wailing of a million pained beings in horridly flawless harmony. For the most part that got my mind off of the corn dog thing, but… I mean, I’m still thinking about it now. I guess people can swallow swords, so swallowing a corn dog stick must be possible. Anyway, I got up and ran for my fucking life.
About halfway across the boardwalk I stopped and turned around to see what exactly the monster was. I mean, that was kind of rude of me. A lot of monstrous beings are actually really friendly once you get to know them. I know Stan gets upset when people run from me just because he’s really tall and covered in tentacles, and Stan’s the nicest guy around. This being was disconcertingly large, illuminated by the lights in such a manner that the forms of the agonized faces on its flesh were highlighted in an honestly unflattering matter. It seemed to be covered in… seaweed? Hair? Tentacles? There wasn’t enough lighting for that to be clear – or much else, for that.
“Hi,” I offered. It responded by smashing through the boardwalk in a manner that indicated it took to small talk far more violently than that eye on the wall. Taking this as a cue that this wasn’t a social being, I resumed running as fast as I possibly could. I reached the trampoline and said some words it didn’t deserve to hear. Don’t get me wrong, trampolines are great and all, but I didn’t have the time to try and get the necessary momentum to reach the rope ladder in time.
No, that was wrong, I reminded myself. If I could swallow a corn dog stick, I could do anything.
I leaped onto the trampoline in a manner that was probably way less cool than I remember it and somehow managed to both reach the ladder and scramble up it in the nick of time. The hole in the wall was certainly too small for the monster to fit into, but I knew I was just running into a dead end. Still, if I could get some time to think I figured I’d be able to figure out what to do next, be it trying to communicate with the monster, letting myself get killed, waking myself up, or finding a way around it.
For better or worse, I didn’t get to make any such choice. By the time I reached the point where I could see the eye again, the monster had completely broken through the wall and didn’t need to concern itself with treadmill flooring. The rhythm I had come to know earlier had changed: now all of the lights flashed in unison, making everything either blindingly bright or pitch black. I ran as fast as I possibly could – I knew even if I made it to the end of the hallway I was doomed, but I wanted to see what would happen if I reached the eye. I got close, so close. I could see it staring, still staring straight at me over all this time. I was almost there, almost close enough to touch it, just faster enough than the floor to reach it in time.
I tripped again.
The eye laughed.
My Mirror made me do my paperwork as usual. It sucks but I guess I kind of deserve it for giving him so much work. I told him about my experience while I worked on it since I guess it was a slow night in Limbo, and the whole time he looked really confused. When I finished, he asked me something:
“Why didn’t you just use your air powers?”
I sat there and stared at him for at least a minute straight. I stared and stared and stared. And then I laughed.
...And then I buried my head in my hands and maybe cried a little, but the moral of the story is don’t steal ever and I guess wall eyes are jerks and you can do anything if you believe in yourself but you might need to be in a dream first?