Chapter 7: Perfect Darkness - A Dream of Waking Life

Matt woke, as usual, with the cold steel floor pressing like a vice against his naked body. But this time there was no light source to illuminate the cell – only perfect darkness. With nothing to focus on, phosphenes fractaled across Matt’s vision, filling the darkness with buzzing madness.

“Hello?” Matt called out.

“Quiet!” the unmistakable Igwe rumbled back.

“But what’s going on, I –”

“Shhh!” someone sprayed, likely Kartikeya.

Matt remained silent, waiting in the perfect darkness for something – anything.

What seemed like several minutes passed, but the light never came on, nor did the count-down lights on the door.

The drug she gave me, Matt realized suddenly. It knocked me out. That must have influenced the dream.

Matt tried the group again. “Something isn’t right. I think –”

“You don’t do the thinking!” Igwe roared at Matt. “That’s Kart’s job.”

Matt shrugged in the darkness before remembering they couldn’t see him.

“This isn’t how it normally happens. That’s all I’m saying.”

If everything is shut down, then maybe the Reaper is too. Maybe I can finally explore this place.

Matt squeezed his fists, taking in the realness of this reality despite it clearly being based on his real-life video game.

“Normally?” Mu asked sweetly, a bodiless voice in the darkness.

“Yes. This is just a dream. You’re all just dream characters –”

“Shut up, Loki,” Putch said with a voice like pressed metal.

Should have been obvious that would happen, Matt groaned to himself.

“Come on,” Igwe said from somewhere in the cell. “Putch. Kart. Even Mu and Loki. Help me with the door. All of you.”

“Think about it!” Matt jumped. “How do you even know there’s a door there?”

There was silence, then, “Shut up, Loki.” This time it was Kartikeya.

“Really!” Matt urged, feeling silly for urging dream characters to consider their reality. But it seemed like the perfect opportunity to test the dream’s boundaries.

“Everyone knows there’s a door,” Mu offered, taking what the others perceived as obvious bait from the trickster Loki.

“Who is everyone?” Matt pressed.

“Us. And the others behind the other doors. What are you getting at, Loki?”

“But…” Matt hesitated. “Okay, let’s put it this way. Where were you and all the others before you were in these rooms. Does it really make sense that you just appeared in this room like this?”

“Does it really make sense that we listen to you at all?” Igwe retorted.

Damn it! Matt cursed himself and the character the others assumed him to be.

“Just tell me!” Matt nearly shouted in the perfect darkness. “What do you remember before being in these rooms?”

Mu’s unmistakable grip curled around Matt’s shoulder as she bent down to whisper calming words into his ear.

“If you can’t remember anything about your own reality,” Matt winced and painfully whispered to Mu over her chanting, speaking more to himself than her, “doesn’t it stand to reason you may very well be a dream character who just popped into existence in the dream of an unknown dreamer?”

Is that what I am? Matt pondered his own words as Mu’s chanting finally calmed his nerves. A dream character in someone else’s dream?

“The hell are you on about anyway, Loki? Dream character? The phrase doesn’t even make sense,” Kartikeya ruminated.

“The door!” Igwe bellowed. “We can deal with Loki’s riddles once we find the Golden God Door and win.”

Matt heard the others shuffle to a single point, and he followed.

“I’m just curious,” Kartikeya said, exhausting his breath as he bent at the knees, attempting to manually lift the steel wall with the others. “What do you mean by that phrase? What other dream or goal is there but to attain victory?”

They don’t know what a dream is. They don’t sleep. They are dream characters, and they don’t realize it!

“A dream is what happens to your brain when you sleep. It’s something you imagine in your head and experience, usually without realizing it’s a dream.” Matt laughed to himself, knowing he was traversing a dead-end discussion. “But none of you know what sleep is, let alone dreaming.”

Putch rumbled, considering Matt’s words, then said, “I don’t get it.”

The others offered nothing in response, probably assuming he was toying with them, as Loki was apparently inclined to do.

Matt laughed stupidly to himself. What am I doing? What is the point of this? Why is this happening?

“Lift!” Igwe huffed. The others began lifting, and Matt did his best to help, though it felt like he and Mu were mostly just getting in the way.

The door moved a millimeter, then another.

“Come on!” Igwe cried, demanding the door open.

Mu hummed three enchanting syllables, injecting strength into all five of them.

The door gave way, shooting up into the ceiling once it was lifted a few inches. The open door unfurled endless darkness, though not perfect. A single dim, reddish light emanated from somewhere distant. None of the other cell doors were lit, and there were no sounds of others doing battle.

It’s dead. The Reaper is dead!

“Is it just us out here?” Mu asked.

“Doesn’t that mean we win?” Kartikeya said.

“Maybe,” Igwe offered.

“Now what?” Putch asked.

“You all seemed to know everything about everything back in the cell,” Matt said sardonically. “You don’t know what happens when you win?”

He could just barely make out the figures of the others in the dim light now that his eyes were adjusting to the scant luminosity.

“You just win,” Kartikeya explained.

“And then?” Matt asked.

“What then?” Kartikeya scoffed.

“Tell us,” Mu said. “What happens, Loki?”

“Let’s go,” Igwe said, trudging toward the dim red glow without waiting to hear Matt’s response.

The others began to follow, but Mu held back and kept to a slow pace with Matt.

“Server reset,” Matt told her.

She shrugged. “What’s that mean?”

A wave of frustration followed a surge of corrective recollection that she was just a dream character without a rudimentary concept of dreaming. Her ignorance wasn’t her fault. Technically, as the designer, it was his fault.

“Never mind,” Matt said, enraptured by her voice and the allure of her every movement.

“I saw you in the real world,” Matt said, not caring that she was a dream character. He would have to settle for this, though he just wanted to talk to the real version of this woman whom he clearly loved and longed for but whom he had somehow forgotten about entirely.

Can you just forget about someone you love? Just like that? Is it really love, then?

“You were just as beautiful there, you know,” Matt whispered longingly.

He could feel her beaming smile through the darkness like a vibrating, braided strand between them.

“You are too kind, Loki,” she responded modestly.

Now you’re going to try to make it with a character in your own head? Matt asked himself sharply. He didn’t want to admit his excitement regarding the possibility. She was simply so beautiful, even without being able to see her fully in the darkness. She was like an iron anchor of certainty in a torrenting sea of unknowns. She felt exactly like...home, Matt told himself, uncertain what it really meant.

Matt grabbed her hand and held it as if it were a delicate heirloom that could easily turn to dust outside his grip.

“If the Reaper is dead,” he said, “maybe we can just stay here.” Matt checked himself. “At least for a while. I don’t want to be stuck in this dream forever. But...I just –”

He suddenly pulled her close, embracing her naked body against his own. He gasped at a fluttering in his stomach that was now permeating his veins and every cell of his body, consuming and reciprocating her warm touch. Tears streamed from Matt’s eyes.

I know you. Matt gasped inwardly, though his mind was still a network of dizzying self-ignorance. You’re important to me. You’re everything. How...how could I have forgotten?

She hugged him back and offered a few friendly pats on his back before loosening her grip. Matt’s shoulders dropped as he realized that none of the same emotions were inside her.

She feels nothing for me.

No! Matt corrected himself as they pulled away.

She’s not her. And you aren’t him – that video game designer. You’re an old man on his deathbed.

“No!” Matt shouted as he pulled away.

I’m not that old man! I’m not! That’s a dream! The real world is real! The real world is –

“Are you okay?” Mu asked, startled by his sudden outburst.

Matt laughed to calm her, but inwardly he reeled at his confusion.

Or maybe this is real. Or maybe it’s all a dream.

“Sorry,” Matt said, doing his utmost not to scream.

You need your meds.

No! That’s a dream, Matthew. You’re not young anymore.

No! I’m not that old man either! I’m me. I’m –

“Hey! Over here!” Igwe bellowed from at least a thousand feet away, his voice echoing ominously through the hulking, shadowy corridors.

Matt’s mind halted and centered on Chike’s voice.

Not Chike! Matt corrected himself. This is just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream! he repeated over and over again, demanding his legs to move toward Igwe.

There may be something I can learn here, Matt hoped desperately. There may be a way out of this...this madness. A way out of...myself.

Mu bent low at the waist and waved for Matt to follow. Despite the emptiness of the room, she still remained cautious by staying low and running swiftly.

Matt followed her through the darkness, the shadows intensifying as they neared the light source.

Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream!

“We found something,” Kartikeya announced jovially. He pointed downward towards the light. “Look.”

Matt walked carefully toward a slab of golden metal lying beside a circular hole in the ground. Igwe huffed deeply, catching his breath from what Matt assumed was the removal of the golden cover from the circular hole. Peering over the edge, Matt couldn’t help gasping.

No fucking way!

“What is it?” Mu asked, holding onto Matt for added stability as she craned her neck to look over the edge.

“My…office,” he stammered, stunned by the level of precise detail. Directly below, the crimson carpet buzzed with supernatural energy, and the koi fish swam with frightful urgency. Even the plant life seemed on edge somehow. The only difference was the absence of a door to enter or leave; there was just additional wall space. On the grand mahogany desk there was a laptop with its screen open to an old-school DOS prompt. In front of the desk, in a lifeless heap, the Reaper waited like a sleeping bear in fruit-laden woods.

“It looks dead,” Igwe said.

“But maybe not,” Mu considered. “It might be trying to trick us.”

“This is a strange cell,” Kartikeya said.

“It’s my office,” Matt reiterated. “And if I can get to that computer, I might be able to...change things in here. Maybe.”

Matt wanted to jump down, but the sight of the Reaper kept him paralyzed as it injected memories of violently dying into his consciousness. Dream or not, the experience of dying was still painful and shocking enough to make Matt think twice about jumping headfirst toward death.

Putch knelt down to the edge and shook her head at Matt’s words, then let out a powerful huff before jumping down into the room. The others held their breath, all eyes on the Reaper.

It didn’t move.

Putch lifted one of its rope-like arms and let it fall back to the ground.

“Dead,” Putch stated stoically.

Igwe jumped down, followed by Kartikeya.

Matt offered to help Mu, holding out his hand to her, but she just smiled and backflipped gracefully into the room, landing directly beside the lifeless mass of the Reaper.

She lifted her arms in presentation, and Matt nearly applauded her landing. She smiled at him, catching his eyes with hers.

May…

Matt yearned for a woman he still could not fully recollect outside a few basic facts.

Mu kept her gaze locked on Matt, but her smile began drooping like superheated wax. Her mouth gaped open, and a torrent of crimson fluid spilled onto the identically colored crimson carpeting.

Mu’s knees gave out as she fell, revealing a blade protruding from her head, which was attached to a snaking, elongated limb.

“Bastard!” Igwe roared, and the Reaper came fully to life at the same moment that the normal lights of the facility powered on.

The drug is wearing off! I took too long! I wanted more time with her, and now she’s dead –

– Just a dream! another part of Matt’s mind interjected.

But the whirling dervish of death below didn’t seem at all dreamlike to Matt.

This is real! Matt urged himself as the Reaper stood fully upright, its head only a foot away from his own. Its skull looked human enough, and Matt saw the terrible creature for a moment as a suited slave to some worse master of its own.

“This is just a dream!” Matt shouted as the Reaper leered at Matt with its featureless, ink-black head.

The others had already been converted into a crimson fog of blood and brain and bone, their very essence indistinguishable from the original crimson glow of the office.

Matt breathed heavily, and he could taste the concentrated iron from the blood of the others.

This is real! Matt confirmed finally as the Reaper swung its arm in an elegant upward arc, piercing Matt through his open mouth and passing through his brain with incredible poise and purpose.