Dream

I have this dream, maybe once or twice a month - always the same sequence of events, always the same outcome. I'm sitting in a dinky corner of a desolate warehouse, the pungent odor of urine consumes me as I awake spluttering as if I was trapped under five feet of ocean spray. I look around but there is no light at my level of vision. I avert my gaze to the ceiling where a slither of light is visible. My lids squint protectively over my burning pupils as they just can't handle the pathetic glow from the dirty window. Like snails into their homes when met with a salty foe I struggle to coax them out of their hiding place, to once again search for me within the bleak nothingness surrounding my entity. I do not feel fear, although I can feel my palms sweat.    
   My eyes slowly begin to adjust to the darkness and I can make out multiple slumped shapes dancing like mirages in the heat. They are squirming on the floor like they are struggling to move and as I squint closer I notice they are human beings. Chained to miscellaneous points around the room. Some are missing various limbs, others extremities, some are just badly bruised and cut. All are crying, howling in pain and screaming with unfortunate rage. I feel a desire to go to their aid, but it is quickly extinguished and replaced with a mild curiosity to discover how they came to be there.
   I am hit by a memory. A monstrous, sickening being, disproportionate in girth to height, it drags itself along the floor of the warehouse through what appears to be the orange glow of an evening sunset. I can not focus my vision on this creature, it is masked in a shadow that moves with it where ever it travels. It leaves behind a trail of human blood, dripping from the fragments of bodies I can see dangling from it's tilted, razor sharp mouth. It's face is curled in the shape of a jagged smile and it's eyes are black. Pinks curls of thin venules swirling through their iris-less mass like toffee swirls on a molded sundae. It's skin is the hue of a cancerous tumor, translucent and pale. It's black veins pound beneath this thin skin and make sickening churning noises with every pump of it's vacuous heart. Still I feel no fear, I look on imbued with a curious sense of longing to solve this puzzle, unmask this enigma. The creature moves around the warehouse towards me and as it's eyes lock with mine I am transported back to the darkness, to the present time.
  Only now I can feel my extremities and the room is clear in the dark, I can make out every screaming face, every fragmented nail, every smear of menstruation on the discarded rags in the corner, every crack in the ceiling, all the furniture scattered across the room. I begin to walk, stifly at first then fluidly, towards a cracked mirror above the decrepid sink to the left of the whining bodies. I place my hands either side of the porcelain china and I look up at the smudged, honest mirror.
  And in that moment I am struck with more horror than I have ever experienced in this warped and unending dream realm or in the candor of the real world. But what is real? In that moment the marrow in the depths of my bones freezes and my blood stops stagnant in my veins. In that moment my heart beats so hard it slams into my ribs and I can hear them straining to contain it. Cracking under the pressure, blood pooling within my chest. In that moment I sweat more profusely than I thought possible, beads running down my face and a cocoon of damp warmth kissing my cold body. In that moment a sickening bile rises from the pit of my stomach and cankers acidically against the back of my dry, screaming throat. The screams pierce through the silence surrounding my previously peaceful sleep. I shriek and shriek as I try desperately to open my eyes - to make it all stop. Because, in that moment, in that mirror, that monster - was me.