Chapter 20: Flatline - A Dream of Waking Life

Matt was jolted awake by the feeling of his veins crystallizing into icy webs leading directly to his heart. But he did not find himself in that hellish dream world. Instead, the softness of May’s ochre couch supported his back as he took in his surroundings, absorbing the sweet familiarity of May’s apartment: there were the plants of every hue and shape, the koi fish, which were swimming in lazy swathes, and right in front of him on the coffee table were the grinder full of cannabis and DMT crystals and the pipe of DMT he had used seemingly a lifetime ago.

I’m back here, Matt gasped in electrifying horror, but the feeling subsided just as quickly as it came, and he couldn’t help cherishing the sweetness of everything being so calm and stable.

So peaceful. So…normal.

The humming of a simple melody filled the air, and fingers caressed his skull and ran through his hair.

Turning slightly, Matt realized his head was in May’s lap. She held her eyes closed as she hummed her sweet melody to soothe her damaged love.

That’s Mu’s chanting, Matt realized.

“What language is that?” Matt asked, jarring May with surprise.

Matt was about to apologize when she said, “It’s a lullaby my grandma taught me. She was Chinese, but the language in the song isn’t something I’ve ever encountered before. I think she might have made it up, though she always claimed it was some long-lost language of her ancestors, and all that’s left of their entire memory and lineage is that single lullaby. It’s meant to ensure that dreams don’t become nightmares.” May sighed, considering a stream of memories as she let her eyelids dip closed for a few seconds. “Anyway, you’re back. How do you feel?”

Back, Matt repeated in his head. He recollected what occurred since he had smoked the DMT. That was all just a DMT trip? Where is this even? Is this real? Is this just a dream after all? Matt considered everything he experienced since ingesting the DMT and felt a wave of existential despair. Was all that madness just part of the DMT trip? Or was the DMT trip part of the madness?

May waited for Matt to tell her how he felt and offered him a worried smile as she clung tightly to him.

“How long was I out?” Matt asked.

“Just a few minutes,” she explained with what Matt read as regret. “Though I’m sure it felt like an eternity. That’s how DMT is,” she said, sighing as if remembering some terrifying, minute-long eternity of her own. “I wish you wouldn’t have smoked it, but that was my fault for leaving it out. That was stupid of me.”

Matt shook his head and lifted himself out of May’s lap to look into her eyes. “It was my decision to smoke it. Thanks for looking after me.”

Matt breathed deep. The last time I was here, we were going to go to the hospital.

Obviously it was time to go to the hospital because his alternative was just more insanity forever and ever.

“You just smoked, like, a full gram of DMT. I didn’t realize that was even possible. What did you see?” May urged, taking his hand in hers and pulling him ever so gently toward her.

“You died,” Matt said, not caring about all the rest. He moved closer to May, wrapping his arm around hers as she gripped his leg tightly with her own.

“I’m right here, sweetie. I’m right here with you,” May assured him, and she pulled his head down and caressed it like before.

Matt let himself fold into her embrace, and he felt a single tear fall down his cheek – a drop of cascading warmth lost in the endless maze of insanity only to dry up somewhere unknown.

What’s going to become of me? Matt cried within. What has already become of my mind?

May released her grip first and looked Matt over.

“Do you feel okay to stand up?” she asked in a concerned whisper.

Matt nodded and lifted himself from the couch. Everything is so wonderfully normal, he thought. He lifted his hands and let his gaze linger on them for a few seconds. This isn’t a dream, Matt considered. He looked at the wall full of plants and saw a semi-occluded painting of a jaguar sleeping beneath a fruiting peach tree under a midday sun. Then he turned to May and absorbed her every feature.

“You’re real,” Matt whispered, and he reached out his hand to feel the warmth of her skin. It was soft and alabaster, not bloody and glistening.

“You’re not dead,” Matt whispered, and May let her head fall into Matt’s outstretched hand. No bullet wound in her forehead. No exploding flesh. No reddening and bursting of capillaries in her eyes.

“I love you, May,” Matt admitted, holding back his tears.

May kissed Matt’s open palm. “I love you too, Matthew Willish,” she said, “which is why we should go.”

“Go?” Matt checked, reminded of all the worlds inside his mind that she could be referencing.

“To the hospital,” May explained.

Of course, Matt thought, nodding in agreement. But he couldn’t help feeling that he should just stay with her instead.

“Maybe I should just stay with you,” Matt offered bittersweetly, but May pulled back and lowered her head.

She doesn’t want to be with me, Matt trembled, watching her move away from him.

“I do!” May answered, her eyebrows furrowed in sorrow and her eyes going red with tears. “I do want to be with you!”

Matt shivered. Did she just read my mind?

May looked at the door suddenly, then lowered her head, seemingly in shame.

“What is it, May?” Matt urged, glancing at the door with trepidation.

Three knocks resounded against the giant vault-like door, making both May and Matt jump to their feet.

Matt eyed May, wordlessly asking for answers.

“I’m sorry,” May told him, and she fell helplessly back to the couch just as the door swung open.

Outside the door, Dr. Heron smiled devilishly, and a platoon of Matt’s imposters smiled right along with him. Viscous red fluid leaked from the corners of their lips.

He found me.

No! This is a dream! Matt demanded himself to accept as his heart nearly burst out of his chest. He considered running for the window, but he couldn’t just leave May to fend for herself.

I have to create a portal somehow. But…that still means this is just a dream.

“This really is just a dream?” Matt asked May, seeing that she hadn’t even moved from her position on the couch.

Rather than respond, May softly sobbed.

Is this a dream or not! Matt asked, wondering if the old man’s voice would respond inside his mind like it used to.

“Watch,” Dr. Heron mused at Matt’s dismay. Dr. Heron, dressed in all black as always in this world, removed from his coat pocket the same revolver he’d once used to shoot May. He cocked it, pointed it at May, and shot her in the forehead once more.

May’s body slumped in place, twitching and spasming as her neck fell into her own lap.

Matt’s knees buckled. The world stood still as he fell back against a wall and sank to the floor in defeat. He forced himself to look away from May’s body and breathed deep, trying to ignore his anguish and recognize this illusory world as the dream that it must be.

He can’t just go around killing people. He’d be arrested. He’d be put away forever. This isn’t real. This isn’t real!

“It’s just a fucking dream!” Matt roared at the murderous spectre before him.

“Obviously,” Dr. Heron stated simply with a measure of impatience. He walked easily into the house, then effortlessly swung the giant wall closed on the army of Matts. The wall latched, and in the same moment, May lifted her head, revealing a quickly shrinking hole in her forehead and no blood whatsoever.

“May!” Matt gawked, unable to suppress his love despite the knowledge that she couldn’t be real.

“I’m sorry, Matt,” May wept.

Matt shook his head and looked at his hands, then pushed against the wall, then tried breathing through his closed mouth, then tried feeling the existential vibrations that always preceded a portal. Nothing worked. Everything was stable.

“There’s just nowhere else to go,” Dr. Heron explained. He offered Matt a seat around the coffee table with a wave of his hand. “Might as well sit down and chat,” Dr. Heron winked.

He’s right, Matt admitted. Where would I go even if I could teleport right now?

Matt pulled a large ochre chair to the couch and sat down, Dr. Heron on his right and May on his left. May wept, and Dr. Heron smiled.

“I think we have some things to talk about. Don’t we, May?” Dr. Heron said, keeping his stare on Matt the whole time.

May shook her head and whimpered softly, clearly not wanting to have whatever conversation Dr. Heron was referring to.

A glint from the steel of the gun on the coffee table caught Matt’s eye, and he didn’t waste a single heartbeat before making his decision and taking action. He jumped for it, cocked it, pointed it at Dr. Heron’s sinister smile, and pulled the trigger.

The barrel exploded with a flash and the kickback nearly knocked the weapon against Matt’s forehead, but Dr. Heron sat before him as if nothing at all had occurred. Matt’s ears rang with a piercing cry.

Did I blow out all our eardrums from shooting the gun this close to our heads? Matt winced, though Dr. Heron and May seemed totally unfazed by the gunfire.

With a snap of his fingers, Dr. Heron stopped the ringing in Matt’s ears, returning the world to its seemingly stable state.

“You can have control back right after this little conversation,” Dr. Heron told him evenly. “Then you can kill me as many times as you want.”

Matt dropped the gun back on the table and fell back into his seat. He felt like an insect caught in the predatory web of his own mind.

“May?” Dr. Heron said.

May just shook her head.

Dr. Heron sighed in disappointment. “She’s been lying to you, Matthew.”

He’s lying! Matt thought. He’s the liar!

Matt’s nerves directed him to lift the gun once more. He fired twice at Dr. Heron’s forehead, but this time the gun didn’t even go off.

Dr. Heron just laughed.

“Tell him!” Dr. Heron barked at May suddenly, the Reaper coming out in full force.

“He’s right,” May let slip.

Matt shook his head, not wanting to accept any of it. “May…”

“I’ve been lying to you, Matthew.”

“As have I,” Dr. Heron admitted. “Though, I didn’t play with your heart.”

Matt looked back to May for confirmation, and she nodded in painful resignation to the truth.

“I know this is all just your dream,” May admitted sullenly.

Just a dream, Matt confirmed in horror. His heart went wild. Every fucking thing is just a dream.

“So then…” Matt stuttered, unsure how to begin.

“This is all in your head. We’re all just…dream characters,” May said as if the words were daggers through her heart.

Matt didn’t want to believe it, but he had just watched her die and be resurrected.

Just a dream.

“Then, then I…” he stammered, still not sure how to begin.

“We all represent your subconscious mind,” Dr. Heron interjected, dropping his smile and replacing it with a look of professional seriousness. “Programs in the mind of the programmer. In the real world, the world outside this one, there is a Dr. Heron that I am in communication with. He told me about the procedure and your existential predicament in the real world.”

“The real world?” Matt gawked. “You’re talking about that icy hellscape and the infinite circular lab? That’s just one of my dreams.”

“The game is the other one, right? Room Reaper. He told me about that,” Dr. Heron explained easily.

May clutched her shoulders and shivered at Dr. Heron’s words.

Matt wanted to reach out to comfort her, but he was stopped by the undeniable reality that she was just his subconscious mind.

“You’re not real, then?” Matt asked her, his voice cracking in agony.

May shrugged and let her shoulders fall with tortuous torment. “What does real even mean, Matthew,” she urged, forced to defend the validity of her very existence. She pointed to Dr. Heron. “He claims the world outside this one is the real one, yet you call it a dream. I know this is all a dream, but I feel real, Matthew. I feel real.” She started sobbing once more, but between each cry she said, “And…I wish that we…that we really could have a life together…here.”

Matt took a heavy breath and stifled his anguished tears beneath the impossible, paradoxical weight of wanting to hold her while at the same time knowing she couldn’t be real. But he couldn’t help it. He went to her. Held her. Felt her. Breathed her.

He ignored Dr. Heron.

“Even if you’re just a dream,” Matt seethed against his mind, “I still love you. I love you, May.”

She wept in full force and pulled him to her, but Matt stopped her. He thought back to the first memory of her that his mind could offer, as far back as he could remember, when he first stumbled into the office and knew with certainty that she could help him. That even though there might be no way out of his insanity, she was still all that really mattered in that moment and every moment that came after. The rest was unresolvable and pointless.

She is everything. She is all that matters.

Matt told May, “If the world outside this one is…more real, somehow, than this one…whatever that means…if there is a real world, then there’s a real you. And…I need to find you, May.”

May nodded as unstifled tears flowed freely down her cheeks and into her palms like cold rain. “I know. I know. But we can still have this here, can’t we?” she pleaded.

Matt shook his head.

“He doesn’t remember,” Dr. Heron explained to May.

“Remember what?” Matt demanded, turning to face him.

“My counterpart in the real world explained it to me,” Dr. Heron offered simply. “He said that you created him and the laboratory and everything in the real world to discover a way to make yourself believe that this world in your head is really the real world. You want to forget all about the world outside this one. You want to close it off forever and just remain inside your mind in this world. All this so you finally can be with her,” he said, pointing to May, “without inevitably remembering that she is just a dream.”

Matt shook his head in pleading disbelief. “I created the labs and…Dr. Heron? You? What do you mean?”

“The real world,” Dr. Heron mused ominously. “It's your world. You’ve always had control over it. You may as well be God there.”

“No,” Matt interjected. “I’m just a weak old man in that world. I don’t have control over anything.”

Dr. Heron nodded. “That’s exactly what’s so exciting. You’ve undergone the procedure, Dr. Heron’s procedure, countless times. And I mean countless. We’re talking billions of times. More than that even. You can’t die in the real world, so we’re talking –”

“Then it isn’t real,” Matt interrupted.

Dr. Heron nodded as if expecting Matt to say that. “Yes, yes. That’s always been your conclusion. But my counterpart and I believe it’s the real world, and you just don’t die in the real world. There’s no such thing as permanent death. That’s just an idea in your head.”

“Death?” Matt gasped. “Just an idea?”

Dr. Heron nodded, seemingly excited to be sharing his theory on Matt’s existential self-ontology.

“Yes. You’ve just gone mad after an eternity of being. You can’t help imagining there’s a world outside the real world.”

Matt felt disgusted that his own mind was psychoanalyzing him and presuming him mad, but he couldn’t resist the terrible, perfect logic any longer.

“But there is a world outside this one,” Matt pressed. “Outside the fact that there’s no way I just imagined all these people and the very concept of death, when I did the DMT and when May and I made love, I went somewhere. I…heard May’s voice. There were lights and –”

“Yes,” Dr. Heron said, waving away Matt’s words. “You always go there the first time you make love to May after forgetting about her. And you always have the same experience on DMT – the realization, among endless possible realizations, that you are alone. Perfectly and utterly. But still, that’s most likely just part of this dream. An unexplained part, I admit, but –”

“How do you know that?” Matt urged. “Maybe the DMT world or the world I went to when I made love to May – maybe one of those is the real world. Maybe they’re the same real world. Something…something outside this solipsistic hell!”

Dr. Heron shrugged with open consideration. “Okay. Let’s assume one of them is the real world. Then what? With regard to the lovemaking and the world it reveals, you always describe yourself as being stuck there. You can hear May’s voice, and then you return here. That’s it. What will you do with that information?”

Matt sat back, needing to hear Dr. Heron’s words even if they were insanity.

“Tell me,” Matt demanded of both of them, “how long have I been stuck in this series of unrealities?”

“Forever,” they both said.

No!

“How long!” Matt demanded, refusing to accept their answer. “How many years!”

“Time doesn’t pass like that,” May offered quietly, painfully sniffing away her tearful sorrow. “The concept of time and years and all that – it’s all just ideas you created. There are no years. There is no sun. We don’t remember a beginning, Matthew.”

“I didn’t just make up the idea of time!” Matt nearly barked. “There’s an outside world. There has to be! There has to be! How else could I know about anything? Doctors and dreams and pills and insanity!” Matt seethed at these people who might be mere personifications of his mind. “All of that is from a true reality. I didn’t make up all that!”

May squeezed her eyelids shut with anguished force, clearly affected by Matt’s outburst.

“As far back as memory goes,” May told him regretfully, “it has always been like this.”

Matt gulped down her words, then offered, “Or I'm just crazy, and I’m in a hospital right now, conjuring eternal insanity in my head as I wait to die.”

Dr. Heron and May both nodded in agreement.

“You have also come to that conclusion many times,” Dr. Heron explained.

Insanity. Dreams. Death. Will I ever know the truth? Will I ever get out?

Matt reached for May’s hand like a ledge before the infinite fall. She intertwined his grip with her own and squeezed him for reassurance.

“I know that you are what matters,” he told her, sure of nothing else. Not even his own reality. “The real May. She –”

He stopped suddenly, remembering what May told him when he had first discovered his office below the floor in the video game dream.

“You told me that you left,” Matt ruminated to her miserably, “that you had to leave. But you wouldn’t say why.”

May shrugged sadly, unable to offer an explanation. “That might be true, but I don’t remember saying that.”

“Or are you still lying?” Matt wondered.

May winced, but said, “I deserve that.”

Matt had to know. “So even when I first came back to the office,” he said, “even then you were lying?”

May was quick to correct him. “No, of course not. We only remember who we really are once the world starts falling apart.” She pointed a finger at Dr. Heron. “He’s the one that’s been lying to you the whole time.”

Dr. Heron winked at Matt. “All part of the procedure. The procedure that you designed, Matthew. I do as you will, Boss.”

Matt focused on his breathing. In and out. In and out. He didn’t want to admit it, but everything they were saying made sense in its own terrible way.

But now what? Now what am I supposed to do?

“Once I die here or do DMT or whatever else, I’ll go to the video game dream? With the Reaper?” Matt asked.

“No,” Dr. Heron answered. “That dream was part of the procedure. There’s the real world and then there’s this world – that is, the world you go to in your head when you meditate, will yourself into your mind, or die in the real world. That’s it. There are only these two worlds. The video game world is used in the procedure as a challenge for your consciousness, testing its ability to let go. You remember first becoming aware of yourself inside the video game dream, right?”

Matt thought back to the beginning of all the madness and could practically hear Mu’s chanting in his mind. “Yes, that’s when all this madness started,” Matt admitted.

“Well, that’s just the first time you remember,” Dr. Heron continued. “During this last procedure, you experienced the video game dream eighty-one consecutive times before finally becoming consciously aware of it, representing the raging of your subconscious mind against an illusory existence.”

Dr. Heron appeared excited to the point of jittery regarding the results of his work.

“What’s the point of the procedure?” Matt pressed.

“I already told you. The purpose of your design is to make you forget about the real world and accept this world inside your head as the real world. You’ve spent eternity searching for May in the real world, assuming she must be there – somewhere – in infinity, as if she just left and will one day be found again. But deep down you know that isn’t going to happen. So the next best solution is to leave that world and spend the rest of eternity inside your head where you can forget all about that fruitless search and just be happy with her here.”

No! Matt seethed pleadingly against Dr. Heron’s words. That isn’t the real world. It’s just a dream. It’s all just a dream.

“The world you call the real world is inside my head too!” Matt demanded.

“Fine,” Dr. Heron said, waving away Matt’s concern. “We’ll call it the world inside your head inside your head. It’s all just semantics, Matthew.”

“What about Souvik and Fernanda and the May nurses and the other Dr. Heron and –”

“You made them all.”

No, Matt demanded inwardly. I didn’t make them. They’re my friends. They’re real. Somewhere they have to be real. He stared at May, absorbing her into the foundations of his mind. May is real!

But it was no use fighting it. He had already admitted it over and over to himself. There was just no way anything here or in the other world was real. Even if there was a real world, this wasn’t it. It couldn't be.

This is all just a dream.

“I made everything in that world?” Matt checked.

“You did. You even made copies of yourself,” Dr. Heron said.

“Copies?”

Dr. Heron nodded, then sat back in his chair as if personally impressed by the information he was ready to divulge. “It’s nearly mathematically guaranteed that you are a copy, as there can only be one original. But that doesn’t mean anything. You are still real, unlike us.”

Matt shook his head.

I’m just a copy? But I’m also real?

“How can I be real if I’m a copy?” Matt urged.

“In the real world, if you wanted to, you could wave your hand and erase anything and anyone. But you can’t do that to a copy of yourself – a legitimate copy of consciousness itself. There is no death or erasure for the original Matthew Willish nor any copy.”

“They’re bringing you to the Tower of God, Matthew,” May interrupted in seeming terror at the mention of there being an original Matthew Willish.

Dr. Heron exhausted an impatient breath. “He doesn’t remember, May.” He turned to Matt, and his eyes burned as he explained May’s words. “It is believed that the one who resides at the top of the tower is the original Matthew Willish. He keeps to himself, sleeping at all times, guarded by reality itself, it would seem. He built the labs. He put you there under my watch. He built the tower outside the labs – the one we call the Tower of God. There is no way in except if he wills it.”

Matt could barely believe the new layer of insanity they were introducing to him. Tower of God? A version of myself at the top of the tower guarded by reality? What the fuck fantasy world are they talking about?

“It’s hospital time,” Matt told them, stopping himself from engaging any further with his own existential confusion.

Dr. Heron and May looked at each other with actual surprise.

“Matt…” May began, unsure how to respond. She finally said, “this is just a dream, sweetie. You know that, Matthew. There’s no point in going to the hospital.”

“This isn’t a dream!” Matt yelped suddenly.

It can’t be. She’s real. I know that May is real!

“You’re real!” Matt barked, his words laced with pleading, desolate sorrow.

His throat constricted, suffocating him from the inside. He pleaded for help with his eyes, begging May to come to him.

“Maybe we should take him to a hospital just to make him feel better,” May said, tears welling in her eyes as she knelt down to comfort Matt. “You know, until he remembers everything.”

Dr. Heron shook his head stolidly, denying her request.

“I’m sorry for lying to you, Matthew,” May told him, and she rested her forehead against his temple.

Matt’s vision blurred, and he felt the subtle beginnings of existential vibrations mounting in the background of reality.

What does it matter? he thought as he felt the life drain from his limbs. There is no way out.

May exploded into a flurry of desperate tears. “For fuck sake, Heron, just kill him and let him wake up. This is terrible!”

Matt instinctively raised a hand to stop them from killing him, but Dr. Heron just shrugged at May’s words.

“It’s probably for the best.”

With practiced ease, Dr. Heron removed the gun, cocked it, and pulled the trigger, only this time he shot Matt in the chest.

The force of a sledgehammer slammed against his sternum, sending bone and flesh flying and splattering all over his and May’s faces. Matt gritted his teeth against the explosion of his torso, and the pain quickly subsided into an icy numbness.

“But I want you to experience death moment by moment, Matthew,” Dr. Heron explained sinisterly. “Watch as this reality dissolves into the next. This is just a dream, Matthew. You need to remember that fully.”

May clutched Matt’s head and seethed at Dr. Heron, “You’re cruel!”

“Reality is cruel, May,” Dr. Heron snapped. “His mind is cruel. Cruelty is all there is. Cruelty is proof of existence.”

Blood cascaded from the cavernous hole in Matt’s chest and spilled over what remained of his torso. He was slipping into the other world as quick and certain as streaming rain.

The existential vibrations were replaced with howling, frigid winds. The present world went dark, and he could see the other world like light at the end of a tunnel. He was being pulled toward it, and as the light enveloped him, he shielded his eyes against the blazing brightness. May’s and Heron's faces stared at him, but they were no more than imprints of light against the darkness of his strained eyelids.

Frigid cold battered his skin, prying his eyes back open.