D (15:50)
Ping me if you need anything. We silently resumed our work, and I think my message was clear. I didn't feel like divulging my medical history to our department's main gossip. I made it to the auctions and placed down my tools. A series of large glass water reservoirs surrounded me, each cylinder feeding into a significantly large machine through a series of small tubes similar to the generators themselves. It's my understanding that the plethora of tubes are partly for redundancy. In case one tube fails, there are several more in place for each tank. Additionally, when required, a single generator can increase the speed at which gray water is converted into oxygen, providing a backup in times of need. It's in these tubes where air bubbles and other particulates tend to collect and impede the conversion process. Unlike the surrounding hallways, the auction tanks are typically well lit, but the light over one tank appeared to be dead. I calmly noted this on my data pad before continuing my checklist. I then hooked my datapad to the first auction and tapped on the glass to activate the built in diagnostics. The readouts were clear. Tank 1 needed a miter scrub. I activated the correct sequence, separated the tank, and began the automated pre filtration process. While I had a few moments to myself, I casually observed my surroundings and silently thanked the archon that my head was finally clear and free of pain. The dim lights during the walk in the cold underground air had helped ease the ache, but that's when I first noticed it. In the reflection of the glass, I could distinctly discern a wide, toothy pearlescent grin centimeters from my ear. Nearly toppling over myself, I spun to see who was there. Surprised and relieved to find the hall empty, I took a moment to catch my breath, then returned my eyes to the glass of the tank. No one was there. Perhaps my eyes had played a trick on me, or one of my co workers had planned some ill conceived prank. Maybe a ghostly image had been burned into the tank's display, causing that grimace to momentarily appear. But there was no one else in the room with me, and that was a relief. The generator's first purge process was readied. So after a few moments of silence, I began sterilizing the filtration tank. As the chemicals slowly oozed through the filter filling the chamber, I gradually became very aware of a new growing sound. A low breathing, heaving, wheezing breaths issued from behind me. I might froze, but my body feigned indifference. I continued moving my hands as if to work, but paid no attention to anything else beyond the sensation of the hot, warm breath pushing down the back of my neck. And that sound, the wheeze, the push I needed to know. I slowly looked at the glass just above my busy hands, trying to find myself in its glowing reflection, filled with instant fear and regret. I wish I had just run. I could have lived with the uncertainty. But no. I looked, and behind me, body distorted by bending glass, loomed a tall, gaunt figure whose shadowed visage was unknown to me but for its stretching grin and small red parallel dots. Those dots, those eyes, stared right back at me through the bent reflection. They were there. They could see me. My jaw shook as around me a sinister laugh, intensity rising with every raspy breath. I bolted for the hallway. A low, droning hum grew ever louder as I dared to glance back. I was still standing there, unmoved. I called for Bayoum by a short wave. Bayou, are you hearing this? The drone. A buzzing whir increased in intensity as I stumbled through my thoughts in the dark tunnel. I was wrong. He wasn't unknown to me. I had seen that man before. I'd seen him, and while we had never spoken, he knew me well. This realization filled me with pure fear. I recognized him through that fear, understood why he was there. In that moment of clarity. He was my tormentor, the nightmarish shadow that stalks me in my sleeping hours, agonizing my resting mind. He has been appearing to me more often, hasn't he? I've tried to keep a mental record of those nights, the ones where I awake at a sweat short of breath, a cold grip around my heart. He would loom in the distance, his head bald and so pale that deep blue webs of veins protruded noticeable from even afar. The threading veins pooled in deep shadows beneath his pallid skin, stretching into the indented recesses where I should have sat. Below the eyeless crown, a lipless mouth, grin filled with straight, ordered rows of shiny, flattened teeth. When he smiled, the teeth became overexposed. The gums were non existent, and behind his taut bluish skin the dull red dots glowed. I remembered now how close he hunted me in my nightmares, how nearer those teeth appeared every time. He used to be far away, 200 meters or further away from me in my dreams, perhaps across a rooftop or beneath an overpass. But as I've grown older, he had grown increasingly bold. He has crept ever closer, always smiling, making it more difficult for me to brave unconsciousness every night. He it, the man shaped thing of my sleeping hours, wears A lab coat. But it tosses off the crisp teal coat to expose the horror of its reach as it begins its hunt. On luckier nights, I would awaken from fear. All other nights I fled, fleeing down those halls beneath the tower in District 11. I was confused and panicked. The natural reaction of my body was to flee. I thought I must be in my dreams. Perhaps I had fallen asleep in the cool dark of the tunnels. But I knew this horror. And I understood that once its coat came off, the flight was on. Everything within its grasp would suffer instantly. Hannah. It would erode and corrupt objects, people and structures, all condemned by its grasp to rot and ooze. And I did not want to be anywhere near it once that chain of events began. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see it still standing beneath the tanks. Faster. I needed to run. Faster. Its coat fell and from beneath the hundreds of multi hinged arms quickly extended, grasping out for me, slipping, spilling down the hall. I fled. It never stepped or pursued me on foot. Never once moved its pale stilt like legs. But those arms. Those arms were never ending in their pursuit. Sprinting my way through the halls, hurtling over pipes and barriers, the mangle of ever fragmenting arms flew towards me. They had never touched me before. I made sure of that. Never once in any of my dreams had it caught me. But if that monster was there, then so was the solution. So was the end. The finish line. The end was my way out. A way to pause my ghastly pursuer until my next fitful rest. The end is in a specific object or location, but a goal. I can inherently feel a respite. It's different almost every time, but I have this innate sense of what it is when I see it. As I approach this goal, I can feel the safety within my grasp. And so I ran. The hands dashed above and behind me, brushing past pipes and vats around them. The once gleaming metals and smooth plastics turned into rust and sludge beneath its touch, boiling liquids and fraying wire. The air was heavy with steam and putrid rot and my ears rang with the growing hum of a collapsing world. The end was nowhere in sight, but I could feel I was getting closer. I knew it was gaining on me because in each nightmare game of tag, I started closer to my opponent and must run further than ever before to survive. It was a game of slimming odds. A losing game. One of the many hands reached out, grabbing my utility belt, turning it into liquefied slurry as I fumbled the strap off my shoulder. If it could reach me I wondered if it could outright grab me, or if it would play with my mind, giving me false hope. Was it playing with me then? Every time? Does it enjoy the pursuit that drains me of my energy and will? I half wondered if it was just toying with me, knowing catch me in the end? Smashing through the stairwell door, I knew something else was amiss. Moments before, I had been in the deep tunnels, yet now above me was nothing but sky. I stood at the top of the giant staircase, overlooking the ruined towers of glass stretching and spiraling into the dark below. I dashed down, running toward where I could feel the end. The stairwell door behind me decayed to dust moments after my passing. Taking leaps down the flight of stairs, I ducked as hundreds of tiny grasping claws flung forward, reaching out for my limbs, hair, and clothes. The stairwell disintegrated as the city of glass and metal shattered around me. Everything was blackened or rotted with corrosion and corruption, filled with a mass of twisted and malicious limbs. I knew without looking up, just as I knew that I couldn't look. The end was in the basement, where I thought I had been, and I was rapidly approaching the door. Jumping down the last few flights, I threw my full weight against the door, crashing through and rolling across the floor as the lights slowly flickered on. They were slow, I was not, and the creature even less so. At the end of the the hall was another door, and I knew my salvation lay within. The lights barely began to glow before they began to dim again. Tiles cracked at the mere graze of those thousands of tiny fingers, and the plastic covers on the lights melted and fizzled, the smell of acrid chemicals filling my nostrils. There was no hiding, no obstacles, only fleeing. Everything turned to nothing beneath its touch, and I wanted to live. I approached the door, and as I flung it open, I saw the desk. A small blue child's desk with an immobile seat waited in the barren room. This was the object I was seeking, my end. I staggered to reach it, my limbs shrinking as I slid into its small seat. I awoke then, face down on the floor with the dim glow of the oxygen generation tanks ahead of me, it appeared that I had tripped after all. It was just a dream, of course. Are you hurt or just ignoring me? Hello? Bayan mumbled, her genuine concern to the short range. I wondered how long I had been asleep. Hello? Do you require assistance? If you don't reply, I will call medical services. I'm fine. Just. I just dropped some things. Needed to find them. Sorry about that. I could hardly explain to Bayan what I had just experienced. She would never believe me, and we weren't that close. I also worried about telling anyone I had fallen asleep on shift. I walked to the tanks and they looked just as they did in my dream. Truthfully, all oxygen tanks look the same and I had done this kind of maintenance call over a hundred times. As I slowly began to lay my tools out before the first tank, I realized I was still trembling, reluctant to look at the glass before me. It was only a dream. It was only a dream. It was only a dream. Yes, it was yet another frightening chapter in my reoccurring nightmare. But it was also another successful evasion. It was part of my routine and I had to think logically. I must have hit my head during the fall or perhaps lost consciousness due to my condition. That would not be uncommon. I needed to worry less and focus on the work in front of me. I activated the sterilization process with practiced ease and clicked some relaxing music into my privacy hud. But I was still too frightened to dare look into the tank's reflection. I could swear I felt breathing on the back of my neck, even through my hood, but there was nothing behind me when I was finally done. After I packed up, I returned down to the tunnel to reunite with Bayone as if nothing happened. The rest of the shift was uneventful, but I fear that I will see him again tonight. Night I'm restless. Sleep holds no safety for me anymore, not when I can't tell the difference. 184703 Damn. I forgot to journal again. It's been three rather upsetting days since the last entry. I can't remember sleeping. There are points when I am in my room one moment and then in the kitchen the next. There are times when I'm on the sky rail and I do not remember walking to the sky rail or why I left my apartment or where I'm going. I missed a work call. Apparently I was somewhere all the way in the lower Statue Gardens of Jacob west park with my tools, but it had been hours since I had checked in for the job. I just feel so tired. My whole body feels weak. I called in sick this morning. I feel sick. I think I'm sick. 194 7:03 it happened again. A day I remember. A day of clarity and fear. He it had been dormant for the past few nights, biding his time, I guess. A silent observer in my dreams, ever present, still wearing that damn lab coat but not hunting me down. I think he's looking for the perfect moment to strike. He's looking for weakness and all he has to do is wait. I am so damn tired. It's been wearing at me, corroding me. I can feel the fatigue even in my dreams. The other fear I have is that he's studying me. But I don't know why. Reeve. I'm afraid of what will happen if he gets a hold of me. I've always escaped. I like to hope that, just like with falling, I would wake up before hitting the ground. Wake up before those hands grasp me. He's been chasing me for years, ever since I can remember. But he's never caught me. He's just a dream, right? I'm terrified that he might be more than that, more than a dream. Today, things got fucked up. I've explained that I don't always know when I'm falling asleep. So I'm not entirely sure that when I saw him yesterday on the train that I was in fact asleep at all. Now I'm questioning if I initially fell asleep the last time or the time before that. If this is some sort of coping mechanism for my sanity's sake when I escape. This is the sleep deprivation talking, Shirley. What if it's right? What if I'm right? What if I'm being stalked by something? I think this thing may be causing my condition, or at least making it worse. If it is something tangible, something real, and I can see it in my dreams. Maybe it wants me to fall asleep more. Maybe it makes me fall asleep more. Reef. I'm so tired. I was taking the sky rail to a job site. A simple job. We regularly checked the systems at recreation centers across the city. I had an assignment in a district across the city just a short ride away. I was half asleep this time, holding a large case containing a portable version of my coveralls and my work tools. The rail car was well populated. All the seats were already taken. I moved in, grabbing a pole to steady myself and place my work bag between my legs. I heard the doors close behind me as I wiped sleep from my eyes. When I looked up again through the throngs of chattering citizens and flashing advertisements, there he stood at the back of the car, facing me, smiling. I was not asleep. I couldn't have been. The people around me chattered about topics I knew nothing about. I could feel the vibration of the sky rail through my legs, smell the perfume of the woman beside me, still taste the meal I had earlier. But I could see him smiling, tilting his head until the blue pools of blood where its eyes should be sloshed beneath its skin. It let down the lab coat and unleashed its arms. In that moment, every citizen in the cab faced me, mouths slack, drooling, blackened mire that globbed on the metal floor with an acidic hiss. White ooze poured down from their eyes, only to find that it was their eyes. And now the crowd stared at me with visages, wrecked with agony and deep, empty sockets. Their pain did not last long, as with every touch of its long, extended limbs, the citizens rotted away and I fled. Thrashing through the train car, I shoved aside the standing, eyeless, oozing dolls. My feet were sucked into the sludge with every labored stride, but I couldn't slow, not for a moment. The cab collapsed behind me, rusted tar, varnished metal deteriorating to ash as I sprinted through one door onto the next. Every car was filled with them, sitting, standing, as though nothing was out of place, staring me down with empty wounds as I fled through my nightmare. It was closer now, my end. I could already feel my salvation. It was in the form of a childhood desk again, but it was out of the back of the final car, unaccountably hanging in midair, behind the moving train and above the crawling, wasting city below. By my ear I heard the crack of knuckles, and from my periphery a bony finger grazed the metal post before me. It could reach me. I was too slow. By some harrowing grace, it left me to flee in pained terror, and I strained to increase my speed. As the end of the final cab came into view, I noticed the hatch was already open. The end was near. With energy I do not normally possess, I leapt from the car across the decaying chasm of the city below. Mid jump I felt the tug and glanced back to see bony, withered fingers gripped around my coattail, arms outstretched, I grasped for the pole of the desk, leg so small my hand could grip it fully, and pleaded with my exhausted muscles not to let go. And then the train rang, announcing its arrival at my station. People chattered, someone laughed, and I disembarked, dazed and sweating, Resting on a nearby bench. I sobbed into my hands. If it could catch me, it would. I narrowly escaped, and I think it wanted me to know. I did my job today and I will not sleep tonight. 24:703 I did not sleep last night. I stocked up on caffeine and some generic stimulants. I will not fall asleep. 214 7:03 still haven't slept. I think I'm hallucinating. I looked it up. It could happen. When? When? Sleep deprived. It's been nearly 70 hours. I don't think I can make it tonight. The 22nd day of the 4th month of the year 703 I fell asleep. Everything is fine. It is such a beautiful day.
