Not Dreaming

A brightness. Nate's senses tingled with the numbing dull-pain of prickling thorns. As if his entire body had entered a deep sleep, yet his mind and his nerves had not passed on with the rest of him. He felt the irritating pinging of dots all over his body. The bane of relaxed muscles took its toll slowly on the sluggish mind. He desperately struggled to regain some semblance of control over his body, either to immediately release control and fall into dreamland, or wake up completely to banish this terrible feeling. Control would not come. He was not in the right place to have control. This was the land of his thoughts, a place where physical Nate had very little control. He tried to convince himself, in the veneer of wisdom that now swathed his mentality, that this must be what his inner self desired. A numbness. A ringing numbness that could manage to be a blunt, banging sensation as well as a sharp, acuteness. Nate felt legitimately plagued by his own self. It felt as if hours passed, in this realm of sleeplessness and simultaneous paralysis.

It wasn't as if Nate had never experienced this kind of thing before. If he ever did manage to fall into slumber, this was usually the kind of output he received; a strange, constantly conscious kind of coma. When he was a child, it used to freak him out. He would battle himself internally to escape from the void that was his sleep state, which left him mentally fatigued upon awaking. Nate missed a lot of school during his childhood, but as all humans do under stress, Nate learned to live with his unique form of insomnia. "You'll survive." His mother intoned, on the tail end of a doctor's rather lengthy and long-winded diagnosis. And she was right. He survived. It wasn't so bad anymore, but there was always a re-familiarizing of sorts associated. Like returning to a nostalgic dream. You know its face outside of sleep, but once you fall back into the role you've taken every time you have the dream, everything seems momentarily fresh. Nate ended his struggle and let his body rest. He remembered the method of escape. It was to not escape, and simply believe that escape, while inevitable, could be found the sweet embrace of surrender.

Then, something different happened. A dimming. The brightness around Nate seemed to almost "slow" if such an action word could apply to a change in light. As if the light particles were slowing down in Nate's vision, allowing him to perceive what was there between bounces. The dimness darkened to shadow, and eventually to complete darkness. If possible, this was almost worse than the brightness. The tingling faded away, receding with the light. Only a few moments passed before Nate began to fall. He felt the tug on his feet first, and it carried up throughout his body. There was a sliding of sorts, through some invisible hole at the end of this imaginary dream world surface Nate always rested on, and then the actual falling. It felt more like slipping over and over again, and less like plummeting or gliding. Nate recognized the potential to regain his balance after attempting to use his limbs, but every time a foothold seemed to materialize beneath him somewhere, he slipped past it. Everything was soft, and the darkness was sustained.

Nate fell for a few minutes, it seemed, before hitting solid ground. This only lasted for but a second or two. The surface cracked, inaudibly, and let Nate pass through into a denser atmosphere. He felt like he was being pulled through water now. The water sucked him in like a low-powered vacuum. The atmosphere solidified gradually until Nate felt as if he were falling through a swimming pool filled with pudding. At the end of that layer, Nate truly fell. Still figurative, in nature, but the sensation was all there. He landed roughly on his back end amidst the familiar sea of darkness. The only illumination came from the floor beneath him, lit only in a circular rim around his seated form. Nate wondered what to do next. This had never happened before, though he definitely felt as if control were returning to his limbs. He managed to whisper some unknown syllable, before silence fell onto the black zone. The faint drumming left over from the tingling was entirely gone. All was quiet.

"I told you, I can't fucking take anymore!"

Rowan stared through glassy orbs at the empty air in front of him. His body slightly swayed in the wind of intoxication awash his body. His head bobbed ever so slightly, as if trying to keep up with his shaking mind. The two would occasionally align, mind and sight, and a brief moment of clarity was left behind. In this moment, Rowan realized how stupid he must look, taking Jell-O shots in his lonely room in his lonely home. Without his parents there to inhibit his consumption alcohol or his conversations with Liam, Rowan was reveling in his freedom the best way he knew how. Shots with his imaginary best friend. Rowan registered mentally that Liam were not actually taking shots with him, but some fragment of him could feel Liam's presence nearby, could hear the crunch of the plastic cup as a post-shot victory smash. Liam was there, to Rowan, just as the man staring at you when you feel him glaring down your back from some alley. Rowan was easily convinced to take another shot after only a few more minutes of coaxing. It was never hard for Liam to make Rowan do anything. Remove a piece of clothing, say the magic words, touch just the right spot... Liam had his ways. And Rowan could do nothing but give in. After all, Liam was there for him.

The Jell-O slid down his dry throat with all the sting he had expected. His body was mostly numb to it by now, so a gentle prickling through his neck was the only punishment for this excess misuse of Devil's Poison. His parents wouldn't approve of this, not so much because of the alcohol itself; they told him not to drink it when they went out, but they knew that, as a fully functional teenager, he would do it anyways eventually. It was his tendency to be persuaded by his imaginary friend that really caused them worry. Though Liam had always been around, it was not until a recent incidence of arson that Rowan had begun to allow his little mental problem to affect his physical life. As soon as that kind of interference was made, his parents set about conditioning some sort of safe removal of "Liam". But Rowan didn't frankly give a damn about his parents or their beliefs. To him, Liam was no different than the best friend he had always lived with, whom his parents occasionally voiced their disapproval of. Not that it ever mattered. Rowan was still a teenager, after all.

It didn't take long for Rowan to fall asleep after the last shot. Liam faded from his view as his head impacted the carpet in slow-motion. His vision remained for a short while before cutting to black.

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