Chapter 18: I’ll Do It - A Dream of Waking Life

Matt awoke in a standing position in his apartment, and he had to catch himself before going weak at the knees and falling over. The Room Reaper poster filled the whole of his vision, and he realized he was standing only inches away from it. He could still vividly feel the sensation of his nose smearing across his face. Backing away from the poster, he felt frantically for his nose, but it was intact.

Did the old man die? Matt wondered, and he instinctively inspected his apartment for anything out of the ordinary.

Now it’s your turn, the old man’s voice told him from an incredible distance. To die.

Matt licked his dry lips with animal fear. He nearly asked the old man whether or not he died for sure, but then he remembered that the old man in his head and the old man of his dreams were not the same.

I need to think first, Matt reasoned through a mounting fog of panic, and he began to pace about the small apartment.

Fernanda and Souvik...they were both in the dream. And they weren’t old. They were impervious to the cold, and they were more perfectly sculpted than their fucking video game character counterparts. He glanced back at the Room Reaper poster for assurance and caught Mu’s stare.

May...Matt lamented with incredible longing.

A sudden knock at the door sent him jumping back. He regathered himself and peered through the peephole. Outside, May had her ear pointed towards the door and a look of incredible worry strewn across her face. Despite the numerous shadows, her features looked angelic and lustrous in the dim light of the hallway, and her diamond studs shone with an ochre hue that seemed impossible amidst the drab colors of the hallway.

“Matt?” May checked gently, and she knocked again. “You in there?”

Matt exhausted a heavy sigh. Maybe that’s why things aren’t spiraling into insane oblivion right now...because she’s here.

He unlocked the door and had to immediately lower his head in fear of forgetting all about his objective to die in this dream of waking life.

“Matt…” May breathed, and Matt glanced up to see her shake her head, visibly in pain. “Have you been in there this whole time?”

What do I even tell her? What is there to say? He lifted his head and gazed at her as if from across a fathomless chasm. Tears were building at the corners of her eyes, and seeing her emotionally distressed was simply too much for Matt to bear. He reached out, and she immediately moved to close the gap. Holding her in his arms felt like sunlight in winter.

She buried her face in his chest and she couldn’t help a series of sobs despite clearly trying to stifle her emotions. She gripped him hard around his back, and Matt gripped back, cherishing her presence.

You still have to die, the old man reminded him sullenly, and Matt mentally recoiled at the truth of his words.

But everything is okay when I’m with her, Matt pleaded with the old man.

You have to know, the old man volleyed. You have to.

Matt wanted to hold May for all time, but the sound of something smacking against Matt’s living room window turned both their attention away from each other's embrace.

“What was that?” May checked, pulling away and looking as though she had felt equally enraptured and fulfilled by their embrace. She wiped away her tears with the back of her hands.

“I don’t know,” Matt said as he moved to inspect outside the window. He peered outside but was immediately forced to duck back out of view. A few stories down on the sidewalk, Dr. Heron and at least fifty imposters stood in a mass, staring at the apartment window like hungry automatons.

“It’s him!” Matt shrieked, and he waved May over to have a look.

But maybe he’s a hallucination, Matt reasoned cautiously.

May closed the apartment door, then strode to the window with her shoulders back as if preparing for a fight.

She peered outside, then jumped back just as quickly as Matt.

“What the fuck?” she screamed.

So, she can see them after all, Matt confirmed to himself with a sense of vague dread. He couldn’t be certain if that was better or worse than the whole situation being a complex hallucination.

Another smack at the window forced Matt to turn his head. This time, he caught a glimpse of something small and red falling down to the ground. Another hit the window, and this time Matt understood what it was.

“Serotel,” he seethed.

“Your medicine?” May checked, visibly attempting to stifle her nervousness.

Another Serotel hit the window and fell down to the sidewalk.

Peering outside the window again, Matt watched as Dr. Heron readied a pill in his fingers and wound his arm back to throw it before realizing Matt was showing his face again. Dr. Heron smiled sinisterly at him, and like marionettes, the army of imposters simultaneously smiled along with their puppet master. The imposters removed their own Serotel bottles from their pockets, and in a single movement, they poured the entire contents of their bottles down their throats along with Dr. Heron. They chewed their mouthfuls of pills like mad cows as their unblinking eyes stared at Matt. Crimson spittle leaked out of their overfilled mouths, but none of them took any notice, not even Dr. Heron. They were like battle-frenzied berserkers preparing for slaughter by ritualistically consuming living flesh.

What do they want? Matt desperately wanted to know.

Just a dream, the old man reminded him forlornly.

Matt absorbed May’s distress-strewn features and rebelled helplessly against the knowledge that this all has to be a dream.

Maybe those are doctors and nurses here to help me, and I’m just seeing everything through my lens of insanity, Matt thought helplessly, not believing a word of it. Maybe, his mind raced desperately for rationality, maybe they’re here to take me to the hospital. Dr. Heron said he’d be keeping me there. So maybe...maybe I’m in the hospital already. Maybe this is all in my head, Matt thought with desperate abandon, knowing that couldn’t be the truth as he watched the horde of crimson-streaked mouths masticate and consume a month’s worth of Serotel all at once.

Just a dream, the old man reminded him. One that you have to die in.

Matt winced and gulped down the truth of the old man’s words.

“What are they doing?” May checked with mounting franticness. He was almost thankful she wasn’t looking out the window at that moment.

Someone knocked at the door before Matt could respond, and he pulled himself to check who it was to save May from more madness.

“Who…who is it at the door Matthew?” May demanded as she moved nervously away from the door to look outside the window. “What the fuck are they doing?” May burst, but Matt could offer no reasonable explanation.

And there’s no explanation needed, the old man urged. All you have to do now is die and realize with total certainty that this is all a dream.

Matt shook the old man off and looked through the peephole. Exhausted and shell-shocked, Fernanda stood outside the door drenched in sweat. The large scar stretched across her face shone a deeper red than the rest of her flushed skin.

“Fernanda?” Matt asked through the door, unsure if he could trust her or anyone for that matter.

“He’s outside!” Fernanda warned, out of breath and barely able to hold herself upright. “You have to get to his office.”

“Matt, please. What’s going on?” May demanded to know, and she strode to the peephole to look outside the door for herself without waiting for an answer from Matt.

“It’s...it’s…” she stammered, backing away from the door and shaking her head. She removed a small baggie from her pocket and snorted a large amount of blue powder, shaking her head at the impossibility of what she saw.

“Under the carpeting in his office,” Fernanda urged. “I found something, Matt!”

“Sorry,” May said, shaking and staring at the ground before raising her stare to Matt and wiping the blue residue from her nostrils. “I just...am I going crazy too? That’s...my character. Putch…I…”

Matt reached out to comfort her, unsure if she would accept him within the torrenting insanity that she was now a part of. She grabbed his hands and locked her eyes with Matt’s.

“Matthew, what is happening?” she gasped.

It’s all falling apart, Matt told himself. Even being with her...the insanity is taking over. And Fernanda...what did she find? What did she mean?

“I thought maybe as long as I stay with you,” Matt croaked, stifling his oncoming tears, “but everything’s still fucking crazy.”

He nodded helplessly at the truth filling his mind like primordial muck.

I have to die.

He absorbed her scared features and tried to soften his own for the sake of calming her, but he couldn’t push the thought from the forefront of his consciousness.

I have to die. I have to die!

“Matthew! Answer me!” May urged, squeezing his palms as if to extract him from his thoughts.

“Shit!” Fernanda screamed. “They’re coming up!”

He heard Fernanda’s heavy steps fade away down the hallway as May broke away to look outside the window.

“They’re not out there!” she said, glancing back at Matt with wide eyes. “Matthew!” she screamed, too overwrought with panic to disguise it with a facade of self-confidence. “What do they want, Matt?”

Matt shrugged in perfect defeat. “Kill me. Please, May.”

“Matthew Willish!” May shrieked. “What are you saying? Just...just help me here!”

She began pulling the large couch and inching it toward the door.

“If he takes me to a hospital...or does whatever it is he wants with me, it’s only going to be harder to find a way to kill myself,” Matt explained simply as May pulled frantically at the couch.

“Stop it!” May cried. “Just help me, Matt. Please!”

Matt couldn’t help entertaining the suffocating and perfectly real possibility that she was just a dream character, but her distress was too much to bear.

That’s May! a distant part of his mind urged. This can’t be a dream. She is all that matters!

No! Matt shouted inwardly, but he still couldn’t stop himself from helping May drag the couch in front of the door to use as a barrier against Dr. Heron and the army of Matts.

“You saw how many there are,” Matt told her as they moved the couch into position.

“What the fuck do they want?” May demanded as she searched the room for more furniture to use as a barrier to the door.

“The police!” she realized far too late. “We need to call the police!”

Matt shook his head in painful resignation at May’s despair. She shook her head back at him, giving up on trying to reason with him. She removed her phone and attempted to call, but evidently, she couldn’t get a signal.

“What the fuck!” May screeched, terror welling in the deepest pits of her mind now.

It’s just a dream, the old man reminded him pityingly.

What was Fernanda talking about? Matt urgently pleaded with the voice in his head.

The old man shrugged. Go find out. But then you have to do it.

Matt nodded, feeling a mixture of sullen and stoic.

In the hallway, footsteps could be heard filing outside Matt’s apartment. May tipped over a small bookshelf onto the couch in a futile but desperate effort to add something more to the makeshift barrier. She backed away from the door, step by step, and reluctantly took Matt’s hand in her own.

“I’m scared, Matthew.”

Matt lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her alabaster skin, savoring the sweetness of her scent and presence and very soul.

It’s just a dream, he repeated to himself, and he knew what he had to do.

“Me too,” he admitted. “So let’s get out of here.”

All of a sudden, the door was battered with dozens of hammer-like hits all at once, threatening to splinter the wood right off the hinges. The door suddenly cleaved open as tireless, bloody fists continued widening the splintering gap in the wood.

May yelped in terror and almost fell back, but in a single movement, Matt caught her, closed his eyes, and visualized Dr. Heron’s office.

The existential vibrations overtook the pair in a single crescendoing wave, folding and bending the space in front of them into a chrysanthemum-petalled portal.

Opening his eyes, the last thing Matt saw through the gorge in the door was Dr. Heron. He smiled with typical rapacious delight as arms flailed around him, tearing the door open like frenzied insects excavating dirt to catch some treasured prey.

The petals enveloped them and then unfurled again, depositing them directly into Dr. Heron’s office. They fell haphazardly away from each other, Matt slamming against the wall and May catching herself on the couch. Throbbing pain emanated from where Matt hit the wall with his lower back, and he grunted hard against the pain as he turned to make sure May was safe.

Just a dream, the old man reminded him.

“May!” Matt called out, lifting himself to his feet as he ignored both the pain and the old man.

Hunched over with both arms outstretched on the couch for support, May didn’t appear to be breathing. She was dumbstruck with existential confusion, her mouth agape and eyes welling with tears.

“Please, May!” Matt begged. “Please just breathe.”

He rubbed her back and drew her hair out of her eyes and over her ear. Her diamonds sparkled an impossible ochre hue despite the room only being illuminated by the particularly bright moon and stars outside.

“Please, May,” he begged her, letting his lips linger against her cheek.

Just as Matt was about to launch into full-blown panic, May finally heaved a giant breath into her lungs as if surfacing from a mile beneath the ocean.

“Okay, there,” Matt said, encouraging her with kisses against her temple as he continued rubbing her back for support. May pushed him away suddenly and pulled herself onto the couch.

“What's happening,” she demanded, her eyes still wide and her mouth agape as she pulled at the air to replenish her body of precious oxygen. “What was that, Matt? Please. Please! Make it all make sense.” She removed another baggie full of blue powder from her waist pocket, then let it fall on the couch, probably realizing it would do nothing to lift her from this pit of madness Matt had dragged her into.

“I’m sorry,” Matt began, but May was quick to interject.

“I don’t want sorrys, Matthew. What the fuck is going on?” she seethed on the verge of anger.

Matt nodded, sorrow filling his every feature as he wished desperately that everything could have just stayed normal and stable with May beside him.

“This is all a dream,” he admitted reluctantly, knowing that it would offer her no reprieve from the insanity but would instead send her further down the rabbit hole with him. But it was the truth, and Matt didn’t know what else to tell her, for the truth was more reasonable than any lie he could possibly conceive in that moment.

“You mean like, when we were talking in the Mega?” May considered, shaking her head in shock. “Matt, I wasn’t serious about that. That was just...philosophy. I didn’t mean to –”

“You didn’t do this, May,” Matt said, wishing now that he would have just stayed distant from her and never entered back into her life. She shouldn’t have to suffer this with me. No one should.

“We just fell through a flower-shaped portal. You just saw a real-life version of the character you created. An army of my imposters, led by my therapist, just tried to break into my apartment. You experienced it too, May. This is...this is all just –”

“Stop it!” May shouted with wild abandon. “This is real, Matthew! This is real! Just stop it!” she snapped, rising to her feet as tears continued streaming from her quivering eyes.

She’s terrified, Matt recognized, and so am I.

Stop wasting time, the old man warned. Dr. Heron will surely be here any minute. And then...who knows?

May eyed the door desperately, then collapsed back on the couch and let her head fall into her hands.

“If this is a dream, then I need to wake up,” she reasoned through shallow sobs as she worked futilely to bring her breathing and anxiety under control.

Matt yearned to hold her and protect her and find a way to make everything make sense for both of them, but that wasn’t possible anymore. He knew what he had to do.

He checked the top drawer of Dr. Heron’s desk for something sharp and found a pair of scissors just waiting to be picked up. Scissors in hand, he got on his knees and began cutting the plush carpeting, wasting no more time.

“I need to wake up,” May repeated, and Matt figured she was doing her utmost not to jump and run mindlessly away from him in any direction.

As he cut the carpeting and padding beneath it, he realized that it was freshly lain, as if it had been installed just a few hours earlier.

Hurry, the old man warned.

“Just a dream,” May said, her voice low and distant now. Matt glanced up at her and nearly winced at the sight of her physically collapsed form.

“May,” he whispered in an attempt to pull her from her mind’s protective stupor.

What can you possibly do for this dream character? the old man demanded gravely. Focus!

“May,” Matt whispered once more, but she wasn’t even registering his voice.

“Just a dream,” May repeated, her eyes glassy and her voice aloof and reserved.

Matt heaved himself away from his anguish over her despair and went back to cutting the carpet. After finally managing to cut a five-foot length with the office scissors, he stood and yanked the carpet, tearing it in new directions. As he pulled, a pitch-black trapdoor was revealed, only identifiable by a pearl-white handle.

Now what? Matt lamented inwardly. What new madness does this nightmare have in store?

It’s just a dream, the old man assured him in direct contradiction to the survival chemicals coursing through Matt’s veins with increasing rapidity as he took hold of the handle and pulled.

Straining against the immense weight of the door, Matt finally heaved it open and let it fall and slam against the floor like an ancient drawbridge loose from its chains. Peering inside, Matt instinctively withdrew his body from the edge of an infinite abyss so dark that it made the rest of the room seem bright.

“Fuck!” he yelped, backing further away from the edge. “Don’t move, May!” he warned, for the couch was only a few feet from the edge.

She lifted her head easily and gazed detachedly into the abyss with puffy, tear-drenched eyes. She didn’t avert her gaze from the impossibly dark depths beneath the floor.

“You should take a closer look,” Dr. Heron said from across the room, sending Matt jumping and grabbing the desk for support. Just above him, the inkblot painting resonated with buzzing energy, threatening to come to life. Matt pivoted an inch away from the painting before recognizing that there was nowhere left to run.

May still sat on the couch, but now she turned her head away from the perfect darkness, finally acknowledging Dr. Heron’s presence.

“We’re in a dream,” she told him simply.

“That’s correct, dear,” Dr. Heron said easily, offering a smile of assurance before turning his head back to Matt and allowing the smile to morph into cheshire delight. “Now,” he bellowed, “take a closer look.”

Dr. Heron removed multiple flares from his jacket pocket as if they were always there, waiting for this moment. He snapped them in one swift movement. They puttered with flames, illuminating his face with wicked, crimson radiance and shadows.

“Look,” Dr. Heron said again, and he tossed the flares through the trapdoor.

The scissors, the old man urged Matt. You can use them to kill yourself.

Matt nodded in reluctant agreement and squeezed the scissors with surging dread.

“There’s more than enough time for that,” Dr. Heron said, still reading Matt’s mind. “Just look!” he barked.

Matt glanced at May and noted in equal terror and relief that she looked almost placid despite her still flowing tears.

She snapped, Matt understood, and he wondered how he was still managing to continue wading through this nightmare delirium.

“Because you still haven’t fully accepted the truth,” Dr. Heron explained as he recklessly stepped over the trapdoor and sauntered to Matt’s side. “Now, look!” he bellowed, kneeling down and squeezing Matt’s neck in his constricting grip.

Forced forward by Dr. Heron’s unnatural strength, Matt gripped the edges of the trapdoor and resisted being thrown into its fathomless depths. Dr. Heron pushed harder until half of Matt’s body and the whole of his head were fully perpendicular with the opening. He was a hair’s length from falling in, and Dr. Heron was the only thing stopping the plunge in that moment.

Gazing into the abyss, Matt’s mind readied itself to reel in horror at the dizzying depths, but instead, he was filled with a wave of spiteful loathing for his own mind.

Why is this happening? This can’t be, Matt gawked, but the old man sighed in an I-told-you-so manner.

“You see?” Dr. Heron inquired excitedly, his grip like a vice around Matt’s throat.

The flares had halted their descent every thousand feet or so, and each was now frozen in place, creating a chain of lights illuminating the giant space at least a mile below, stretching to form a familiar steel ground and hulking walls lined with cell doors.

“Room Reaper,” Matt breathed, and though Dr. Heron removed his grip, Matt found that he was still frozen in place.

May rose, smiled sweetly, then stepped right to the lip of the door. The toes of her shoes hung an inch over the edge, but she seemed surprisingly stable. Still, Matt reached out in wordless warning, begging her with his defeated eyes to back away.

“It’s our game,” she told Matt whimsically as tears flowed freely across the lips of her wide, detached grin.

It’s a dream, the old man urged Matt. End it.

May just smiled, staring into the maddening depths below like a child entranced by her first bonfire. Her mind was totally shattered, and Matt sobbed at what he had caused this woman, who was everything to him, to endure.

Dr. Heron stepped back across the chasm and into Matt’s view once again. “Do it,” he told Matt pleasurably, nodding to the scissors he still held in his hands like a nearly empty canteen in the middle of a desert. “Find out for sure, Matthew.”

Matt glanced back at May, but she was still tranquilly hypnotized by the unreality of the world.

Matt let an image of himself slitting his throat with the dull scissors flash across his mind, and it sent chills down his spine despite the knowledge and concrete assurance below him that he was just dreaming. He gritted his teeth, desperately demanding his arm to obey his higher mind and plunge the scissors into his own neck, but his body wouldn’t listen. His drive to survive was still ever-present. But most of all, he couldn’t do it – know for sure that everything was a dream – for that would mean not only the end of his reality, but also of May.

“She’s a fucking dream, Matthew!” Dr. Heron urged with a twinge of agitation.

She’s just a dream, the old man repeated sorrowfully.

May just stared, taking no notice of them.

Matt felt something undulate beneath his feet, and he backed away from the edge just as the inkblot slithered between his legs and pooled itself at Dr. Heron’s feet like an obedient jackal. The ink rose up his legs like slow-growing vines, and another section of the pool lifted an object from somewhere unseen and placed it in Dr. Heron’s hand.

“She’s just a dream,” Dr. Heron sighed with tangible scorn.

Matt squinted his eyes at the object and saw that it was a revolver. Dr. Heron leveled it at May’s head, but she took no notice of the danger.

Grunting and heaving his body out of its prostrate position on the ground, Matt attempted to jump for Dr. Heron even if it meant falling through the door with him. But he was too late.

A devastating flash from the barrel and an ear-splitting roar stopped Matt in his tracks.

Matt screamed in unintelligible horror as May’s skull exploded, splattering her brain into the air and across the walls. Matt fell to his knees and clenched his fists, screaming without sound as May’s lifeless body slumped and fell through the floor like discarded meat.

He couldn’t even bring himself to breathe, let alone move, but Matt’s mind still injected him with visions of May’s bloody body shattering like dense glass against the steel ground.

May! Matt pleaded, and her name was like an oasis burnt away before his eyes.

Just a dream, the old man reminded him.

“Shut the fuck up!” Matt scolded his mind with a gut-wrenching growl. “Just shut the fuck up!” he seethed again, and he placed the scissors against this throat. Pushing hard against his neck as he sobbed with terrible anguish, he was able to draw a small amount of blood, but something deep inside him still refused to let go.

Do it, the old man told him simply.

“May,” Matt breathed desperately, blade pressed hard against the pulsing veins in his neck. He closed his eyes and visualized being in her apartment. He could see her now, readying a drink for each of them in her kitchen as she smiled seductively at Matt over her shoulder and swayed her hips to a melody only she could hear.

He could feel the portal vibrations already beginning at the periphery of his senses, and he held his eyelids shut, focusing clearly on his intended destination.

May, Matt pleaded, needing her presence more than ever before.

“Fine,” Dr. Heron said with resigned disappointment. “I’ll do it.”

He opened his eyes, and Dr. Heron pointed the gun at Matt’s forehead. Before Matt even had time to protest, the flash from the barrel illuminated the room with an all-consuming blaze. Time seemed to stretch and slow, and the roar of the gun’s combustion and the sound of his skull and brain exploding inside his own head arrived at his ears as a single orchestrated wave.

The sound of death, he heard inside his head in the same instant that the bullet reached the center of his brain.