Sometimes my
brain does things in my dreams that I don't readily
understand.
I'm sitting in a room, and across from me is a
faceless man, about my age, but more clean cut. It seems like we stare at each other in that grey, autumn, it's-
raining-outside-and-it's-almost-night-time-anyways nonlight for hours.
I can't see his eyes but
I know he can see mine.
Eventually I can see
blurry movement from his
hands. I hear a small rattling noise and then the strike of a match. I can smell
sulphur as the match burns, and the sudden light makes me squint, so that I still can't see his face.
The match burns down to his fingers and
extinguishes. He drops the spent stick, opens the
matchbox, strikes another match, lets it burn down, drops it, repeat. I could see the number on the side of the matchbox, it said
five hundred, and I started counting.
I didn't get to see his face until 499. He lit the match and this time held it right by his left
temple. I looked into his eyes and saw that it was me. I was lighting matches and letting them burn down in some
grotesque mockery of old
bad dreams I knew I used to have. The 500th match that the other me lit ended up not burning down at all, just igniting and sort of
hanging in the air. This is where things got weird.
I was still staring at myself from across this room, but this time when I made
eye contact, I really
was staring at myself, looking into my own eyes in a mirror in a
bathroom that had kept the same lighting as the empty room myself and I were previously in.
I was
crying, and I noticed that
my tears were black. I wiped one away, and then the
smell hit me.
Oil.
I was crying oil.
I tried to wipe the rest of the tears away but
my hands wouldn't open up anymore, so I just kept
hitting myself in the face. When I grabbed my right hand with my left so I wouldn't knock myself out, the
skin started to slough off. I saw bits of
machinery, robotics, metal and gears. I panicked and started
clawing at the skin, on both arms now, until from the elbow down my arms were laid bare of it. Arms like machines,
crying slow, oily tears, I couldn't take it anymore.
I started slamming
my rusty, metal arms on the sink, trying to break them off. After
three strikes my left arm splintered and sent a spinning jagged cog into my cheek. I picked it out with my right hand and saw that I was bleeding oil. The skin on my face started to
slacken, and I saw I gears and bladders clicking and inflating under my skin. I looked animatronic. I punched the
mirror in the middle of a scream. I really ended up punching the other me, back in the room, still with
skinless arms and
a mechanical face.
I
blacked out. I
woke up.