Chapter 6 Part 5

A Nightmare Reborn

Chapter 6 Part 5

This is not what I imagined it to be. Gustaf, once again, calm and reserved, asked,

"Is this him?"

Perhaps Sam was also Gustaf's target. I had, perhaps, in my madness, rendered Sam as fictitious. This was my error, one in which I should have never left open to my assumptions. He was originally my target, one I had forgotten all about once I had scaled the Catskills. As the conjoined beast lurched forward, Sam moaned and bellowed out in a tumultuous manner, letting me find peace in the fact that his mind has been long since dead. The two twin lady beasts, each which served as sort of makeshift arms for Sam, did not welcome our appearance. As they vomited over and over again, I realized that their puke was the cause of the noxious fumes. Our time was running precariously thin, and both Gustaf and I surged forward, sensing the urgency.

When I had drawn near the right twin, I realized that she was beautiful, as beautiful as a beast can be. Her fur came down her head, serving as a sort of mane, its dark shine enticing my loins as the devil inside of me fought to come out. As she reached out to grab me, I froze, allowing myself to be captured. As I reached for my knife, her yellow eyes sought to hypnotize to me further. As she went to bite me, she let out a fiendish screech, and I gazed at her face one last time, finally coming to the realization that the right hand twin was nothing more than a beast, not human nor better. As I stabbed her in the eye, she screamed once more, and vomited all over me, covering my upper body with green slime. As she became stiff and lifeless, I fell out of her arms, and struck the ground sharply. I began to cough and cough, and I knew my time was limited, as the extra exposure to the newly spewed vomit had caused me to inhale a lethal amount of toxin. With my final action before falling unconscious, I got up, and withdrew my knife from the dead beast lady twin, and drove it into Sam's soft, decayed skull. As he now collasped on top of me, his weight did nothing to injure me further, as I was already to be counted amongst the dead.

I saw him...is this a dream? My vision was blurry, but I could make out Gustaf above me, and he held in his hand some aromatic meat, something I could not quite identify the scent of. How did I come back? I felt myself die. Had I imagined the conjoined beast that had been Sam? How could anyone remove the gargantuan from my once frail body? Is this some sort of foolish imagined display, one that happens to the body, post-mortem? Is this such thing as life after death, or had it really just been some sort of hellish nightmare? As my vision cleared, I seized the food that Gustaf had extended to me, and he said,

"So, you are up."

As he helped me to my feet, I asked, never more astonished,

"I am...alive?"

Gustaf, his usual dire and upbeat self, answered,

"Afraid so."

Sam's monstrous body was no longer here. Instead, a pool of green toxin rested in the middle of the room, and I could breath easily again. As I quickly consumed the hard-yet-edible morsels of meat, which had more than likely been removed from my bag, I asked, in a daze,

"Was I dreaming?"

Gustaf's expression had became sullen, and he answered, quietly, 

"No. It's... our curse..."

Curse? What else could exist in this previously thought imagined world? As I struggled to realize what reality was, I assumed that Father Gustaf had nursed me back to health. Ah, I see now. The lady twin had left green stains upon my beaten coat. It really had happened. The curse, however, was what really perplexed me. Had I not died? As I fought against the ever lurking madness, I asked,

"What has happened to me?"

Gustaf did not reply to me, and I heard what sounded like a faint voice belonging to a woman possessing a hoarse tone. She said,  

"It has began."

I couldn't see her anywhere. Even still, I wanted to know what she meant. I asked, in my mind,

"What?"

That's all I could manage. The woman, now louder, answered simply,

"Your...rebirth."

As I expected, her answer was cryptic. I fought with myself to match the voice with its possessor, and I realized it must be her. Alice, of course. She has been playing me all along, so why wouldn't she be the real puppeteer? Father Gustaf realized my sanity was slipping, and asked, harshly, as he thumbed his ever-growing beard,

"You okay, boy?"

My response seemed automatic, as if Alice was concealing her manipulations. I answered,

"Yes...I...am..."

Gustaf did not seem to believe me, but we continued on. Drinking here and there from his flask, we scoured the room to find an exit. Alongside the eastern wall of the pit, we found a passageway, one that seemed as if it was dug out by once human hands. As we heard some indistinguishable banter ahead, I braced myself. Gustaf, however, seemed expectant. As the sound got closer, I was still unable to make out the  noise, but I realized that there was two of them. They sounded both female and male, and each of them seemed utterly unaware of our presence. As they seemed to stop, Gustaf crouched, and said, in a whisper,

"We can't proceed...not now."

I sat down, and felt my lids become heavy. As both of us laid down, I was instantly pulled into my dreams. After I had been whisked away to my unconscious mind, I realized that I had crossed some unseen border into a nightmare world. Everything was bright, as if we had gone back into the past before the beasts had taken the mine. Everything was illuminated brightly, in a brilliant, translucent, blue glow. None of the features that this place held before remained, and I was baffled by this area's puzzling changes. Gustaf, who also stood above his sleeping body, laughed, and said,

"Nothing like a good nap."

His expression bore renewed vigor, and we both quickly continued in our sleep down the passageway. Ahead was the two from before, appearing as a young and beautiful couple. Their presence here seems off. As Gustaf crossed over the boundaries of the sleeping and waking world, he brought down the male, and revealed the dark truth. He was Sam, and Gustaf now executed him in this life, too. The woman was what appeared to be both of the female twins, the beasts from before, their halves seemingly interwoven together. I reached forward, biting the woman on the neck, tearing out a hunk of bloody flesh. As I chewed and swallowed her salty yet delicate flesh, she fell to the ground, bleeding to death. Gustaf, before we returned to our slumbering bodies, said,

"Nice!"

We had killed them now in both the present and the past. No...our dreams and the waking life? What is reality, and what is really our dreams? Are they one, or are they separate? Is a dream reality, or is reality a lie? This nightmare seems too real. Am I asleep, or am I awake? When will I awaken? Am I alive, or have I died, long ago? Was I truly ever born? Has my body passed away, giving way to some new form? Was I nothing more than a grub in the last life, that form having became the catalyst to this weightless and elegant recreation?