It Is Not Real

Alarm goes off. Six in the morning, as usual. I sit up and place my feet on the ground next to my bed. Soft carpet, like standing on a sheep the size of an elephant. 

I stand up and start walking towards the bathroom. On my way to brush my teeth, maybe quickly shower and perhaps taking a piss and a shit, I feel a sting on my temple. 

My ears start slightly ringing, but I brush it off. I do have chronic migraine, after all. 

Upon entering the bathroom, I grab my toothbrush and my eyes quickly look at my meds. Painkillers, for whenever I start getting the aura symptoms of migraine or headache. I grab a pill, swallow it and then apply toothpaste to my toothbrush. I start brushing.

 

Ten minutes after, I dry my hair after coming from the shower. As I hang my towel on the hook, I feel the pain again. Meds must’ve not kicked in yet. 

I walk to the kitchen, load the coffee maker, push start and prepare myself a bowl of cereal. As I sit down to eat and enjoy my morning coffee, I start feeling pressure around my head, all the way from my forehead to occipital. ‘Weird’ I think to myself. I quickly drink my coffee, which supposedly helps with headache. 

 

Clock is half eight. I turn off my TV. Got to start heading to work. I pack my bag, put on my suit and look myself in the mirror. ‘Another day in the same fucking office’ I think say to myself. Then, I think I hear a whisper, unintelligible but clearly someone's voice. I turn to look around but no-one. I mean, I do live alone, so unless someone’s broke in, there’s nobody. Might’ve been the wind outside, creeping in through the windows. Should probably reapply the sealant, draft’s been a problem for a while. 

While putting on my shoes, the sting returns. At this point, I’m getting worried. 

The medicine should’ve started to have effect by now. What is this?

Immediately afterwards, I hear more whispers. Couldn’t understand a single word, pretty sure it wasn’t any language I know of. But unlike last time, there was two clearly different voices. As quickly as they appeared, they also went away. Am I actually fully awake?

 

I close the door behind me and start my first heavy steps towards another eight hours of utter boredom. I walk through the walkway for which feels like hours, while actually taking mere seconds. Deadline for that one article is due tomorrow, I haven’t gotten even halfway. That thing my boss said last week still bothers me. He sounded angry and said my name but I do not remember anything else he said. 

A few minutes later, as I’m pretty much in the city center going over a crosswalk, the pain returns, stronger than ever, like my head’s between spiked clamps while also being pounded with a sledgehammer. I fight so hard not to collapse on the sidewalk with literally hundreds of people around me, trying not to vomit right here and now. Have my meds expired? Dose too small? 

As I have walked a few hundred meters, sick as fuck and my head feeling like there’s thousands of bull hornets, I finally look up again. Having seen a ton of trash, rocks, bubblegum and even a few used condoms even, seeing the sky was refreshing.

While walking and trying to look normal, with the cocktail of sweat and tears on my face, I see some peculiar movement in the corner of my eye. I look over to the top of a skyscraper and see a lot of hazy dark clouds. But unlike normal clouds, which look light and cottony, these seem almost liquid and move like a pit of snakes. The movement is precise and calm. What are these? 

 

The longer I look at them, the more defined they get. I start seeing tendrils originating from them, going all the way down to individual people. One cloud could have thousands of tendrils while another merely a hundred. I start feeling terrified, I can count at least five of these clouds from where I stand. 

I freeze, about a kilometer away from the office building. Each of the tendrils float above all of the people around me, forking into multiple smaller ones. Each one of these smaller flows of weird liquid smoke go to each joint of the human body. The movement of these people happens as these smaller tendrils pull the limbs. 

Then I feel it. The pull on me legs. The feeling of just having to move. I look down at my feet. Dark smoke. It’s moving erratically. I start following the trail, finally looking straight up. There it is. A cloud with approximately thirty tendrils, one of which comes right down to me. I hold my scream. The tears of pain quickly turn into ones of pure terror. Absolute horror. I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t understand any of what is happening around me.

All the people around me look lifeless now. Like puppets. I realize that the movements we make aren’t actually our decisions. Or are they? Does this mean that these black clouds also control our thought? Why would they do that, that’s stupid. But they are making us move. They are. They are puppeteering our limbs, our movement, aren’t they? That’s what it looks like. That’s what it feels like. 

 

My headache is growing stronger, my ears are ringing like church bells. The whispers are growing louder, starting to sound like discussion. But I still don’t understand a word of it, it’s like a completely unknown language. One that shouldn’t exists. The words I hear feel wrong, they should not exist. I start running.

One of the voices sound hasty. The cloud with it’s tendril attached to me moves erratically. I feel the pull on my limbs. I can’t continue running. I physically can not. I want to. I have to. I need to get the fuck away from here as fast as possible why the fuck can’t I run I need to get the fuck away from here somebody please help what the FUCK IS GOING ON!?

 

I can’t scream. There’s a forced neutral expression on my face. Forced steps. These steps feel wrong and right at the same time. I don’t want to make these steps. I want to run the opposite direction yet, these steps I’m taking against my will, feel right. I cry but feel like my eyes are not allowed to form tears. I want to scream but my mouth is not able to open. I scream inside, but even that feels like it’s controlled by someone. Everything I am doing now, I am doing against my will.

 

My hand reaches for the door handle and my fingers curl to grab the handle. My arm muscles retract in a way that makes my arm pull the door open. My feet start walking towards the elevator. My index finger goes to push the ‘call elevator’ button.

The elevator dings, the doors open and my body walks inside and the same finger presses the button for 4th floor like it was a magnet attracting my finger. I stand there, my foot tapping to the rhythm of the elevator song with eerie precision.  My fingers are drumming, pretending to play the piano in the song but out of rhythm even though it feels like they could do it as accurately as if they actually played it themselves. 

The elevator stops, the doors open and almost like a calculated delay made to seem like slow human reaction, my body begins the walking animation to the office space. The same familiar people sitting at their desks, small black smoke making all of their finger type the things they should be typing like they were some universally programmed robots. My body reaches the destination of the desk appointed to me, and begins to sit down on the chair the hands conveniently turned for optimal angle. My body is now commanded to do the work assigned to me.

 

My face is pale and almost greenish, sweat running down my face like a waterfall. I puke in my mouth. I run into the bathroom and storm into a stall. I projectile vomit into the toilet and sob. What is happening. I’m not in control of my own body, have I ever been?

I sat there, on the bathroom floor. No force making me do anything else. Is this what the dark creature in the sky is forcing me to do? Is it trying to make me convinced I do have some control? The slightest comfort I got from storming in here and thinking this action was all me was gone. It wasn’t me. It was the creature. Making me think that I made my own decision. I feel sick. The headache is pounding my head and my brain feels like it’s being sucked by a black hole. My body feels weak. I feel like I’m about to pass out. 

 

I finally got up, because the creature forced me to. I aggressively walk to the bathroom door like my body was angry at me. It opens the door, and behind it stands a tall man in a black suit and sunglasses. His face is somewhat generic, like manufactured. The kind of a face an alien would create when told to create a ‘aesthetically pleasing human male’. Perfectly symmetrical chin, nose crooked the right amount to the right like it was like that on purpose to look more authentic. The jawline was perfect. Everything, except no hair. 

The man started to speak. He said only four clear words. “It is not real”.

Immediately afterwards his mouth opens unnaturally large, eyes glowing behind the sunglasses. His mouth is like a void, nothing but darkness behind the lips. He starts chanting words without moving his lips. It’s like a cosmic choir inside another dimension in his mouth. It’s the same language as the whispering. The headache, the ringing in my ear, I can’t hear anything else! I’m holding my head, it feels like it’s about to explode. I’m going to collapse. What is this, who is he? I go down on the floor, fall on my side and curl up into a fetal position. I cry. Why is this happening to me. What are these creatures. The ringing. It’s impossibly loud, it shouldn’t be happening. The pressure, I feel like I’m imploding. It’s like I’m collapsing in on myself. My mind is… my mind is… 

 

I close the bathroom door. I walk to my desk and sit down, wiping the sweat off my forehead. 

I think the migraine’s passed. 

I do my full eight hours of work, pack my things and walk home. The walk was nice. Fresh air, city noises. Even bumped into Joe on my way home. Man I can’t wait to watch some tv before going to sleep. Today was such a lovely day.