Chapter 5: Stuck Inside - A Dream of Waking Life

His lungs clawed and scraped to fill their present vacuum, forcing a curdling yelp from his lips, but Matt was quick to silence himself. He lay silently in the hospital bed and stared at the scintillating stars outside to steady his mind and breath. He wanted time to look around – time to understand.

There has to be a reason this all seems so familiar – a reason this all seems so real. And my dreams, he realized, they’re clearly occurring in a cyclical pattern. Yes, Matt told himself, absorbing his surroundings as his mind raced to process his existential predicament. One dream leads invariably to the next. I wake up from the video game, then I fall back to sleep in the life of the video game designer.

Matt nodded to himself. Yes. I’m starting to remember.

No! Matt shook his head and began to tremble.

This is the dream. The next world is the real one. This is still a dream.

But everything was perfectly real, and when he thought of the video game designer, it was so obvious that younger man wasn’t actually him, but a reflection of who he once was.

No! Matt urged his mind. That’s wrong. I’m me. I’m me!

“What is happening!” Matt demanded with a decrepit groan.

He heard shuffling to his left, but when he turned all he saw was the endless, curving corridor – windows and stars on one side, doors on the other. Matt stiffened his body and pretended to be asleep.

I need more time to think. I need to figure this out.

He saw movement in his periphery. It was a nurse poking her head out from one of the doors. She stared at him for a few moments, then, satisfied, shut the door and returned to something else.

Am I just a dream character, or am I the dreamer?

He glanced at his old hands full of webbed discoloration and naked veins. Except for being old, they seemed normal. He pressed against his bed, and that seemed normal too.

I’m not dreaming. But I did reality checks in the video game world too, and I wasn’t dreaming there either. And it was the same when I woke up as the video game designer. If reality checks fail and a dream seems perfectly real – if they all seem equally real – how can I ever know which one is the true reality?

Matt tried to calm his breathing, but he felt claustrophobic and stuck inside his own mind.

Maybe all three worlds are a dream.

Matt gulped, not wanting to consider the possibility.

Or maybe all three dreams are real, he thought, uncertain which possibility was worse.

Matt swallowed hard and forced himself to try anchoring his mind to his current reality.

I need to get up – figure out what’s going on.

He tried to lift his tired, time-worn flesh, but it was no use. He could barely hold his arms up for longer than a few seconds at a time.

So old, Matt gasped. How much time do I even have left here?

Just a dream!

The thought injected itself into Matt’s awareness.

This is just a dream.

No! Matt urged, certain that couldn’t be true.

This is the real world. Those other places are the dream. But that’s exactly what the video game designer thought in his world.

His world?! Matt checked himself, volleying with his mind.

He is me. I am him. This is...this is just a dream...isn’t it?

Matt audibly whimpered, unable to stifle his dread and confusion any longer.

“Help me!” he called out. “Nurse!”

He suddenly found the strength to lift his body high enough to look out the window in order to survey the land outside. But there was no land. There were only stars and endless black.

No! Matt revolted, unsure of the implications or why the infinite starlight filled him with such indelible panic and terror. Matt spun his head round. Directly behind him was a set of perfectly ordinary hospital doors with small glass windows.

No! Matt panicked again, foreboding and profound disquiet welling from deep within him as he looked through the windows.

Not that!

A world of ice and darkness raged silently outside the doors, tugging at eldritch fears within the deepest pits of Matt’s being.

Matt experienced a snap of detachment and wondered at the intensity of his aversion to the icy landscape for just a moment before snapping back into the unfurling chaos of himself.

What is happening? Where am I? Matt probed like an imprisoned alien.

“Help me!” Matt screamed.

Multiple doors burst open simultaneously, and a platoon of nurses converged on Matt. They were all identical, right down to the most minute feature. Though he felt like he might be in hell, the nurses glided to Matt like angels, and he couldn’t help feeling immediately calmer seeing them come to his aid.

They will help me, Matt assured himself with quivering fright. Everything will be all right.

“Mr. Willish!” the nurse at the head of the group called out casually as she came within a few feet of him. “You’re awake again?”

Matt shook his head. “No, that’s not the problem. You have to help me. I don’t...I don’t know where I am and I don’t…” Matt stopped short, realizing what he was about to say: I don’t even know who I am.

Matt began to weep pitifully.

I’m crazy. In every world I’m crazy.

One of the nurses uncapped a syringe while another two talked hurriedly among themselves. Another handful ran back to their respective rooms with looks of concern.

“There, there,” the first nurse said, patting Matt’s head softly. “Everything will be just fine, Mr. Willish. This is all part of the procedure.”

“Please!” Matt urged. “Make it make sense. Please tell me what’s happening.”

The nurse smiled from beneath her mask, and Matt imagined that the nurses might all be Mu, just with shorter hair. The rest of their features, at least those Matt could discern, were close enough.

“Mu,” Matt pleaded. “Will you please help me?”

The nurse nodded to the nurse holding the syringe.

The injection flowed into his veins and reached his heart.

No! Not yet! I don’t want to go back to the dream yet!

“Everything will be all right, Loki,” the nurse said serenely, but Matt wasn’t sure if it was his own mind or the nurse who said those words.