"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster...
for when you gaze long into the abyss The abyss gazes also into you"
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I'm a 19-year-old college student living alone, but I feel like I have the body of someone twice my age. I look significantly older than my peers, and my hair is already starting to turn white.
Despite owning seven mansions and spending excessively on food, I typically wear ragged clothes. It's not a matter of poverty; rather, even with my wealth, I remain incredibly slim—I'm practically a walking fossil.
Some People say dreams are just imaginary things the human mind thinks of when it's asleep. While that might be true, I don't see it that way. Sometimes, when I'm in a difficult situation that requires a lot of effort and I don't know how to proceed, my dreams guide me at night. You can call me crazy, mad, or delusional, but I believe in what I've experienced, not just in what people say. That's how I've always been.
For me, dreams are not just insignificant things that you imagine and then brush off the next morning. Instead, dreams are like a story, a tale about how to get through things you've been struggling with in my life.
That night, I remember dreaming of something unusual. I'm sure you'll say that dreams are always unusual and unpredictable, and you might be right. But, as I've said, my dreams have always been an inspiration for me when I get into a stickysituation.
Like, for example, one time I dreamt of my parents' house burning in the middle of the night. I was about nine years old at the time.
Anyway, when I woke up, the next thing I did was look around the house. Even though it was just a dream, it made me anxious, so I told myself I'd check, just in case.
So after i investigated the bathroom and my parents bedroom and my bedroom of
After I checked the bathroom, my parents' bedroom, and my own, I went to drink some water. I've always needed to hydratemyself; I can't go to sleep without a cup of water beforehand. I was scared I might die of thirst in the middle of the night—I was just a kid, after all.
The moment I reached for the sink, I was shocked by what I saw: it was engulfed in flames! To this day, I don't know how that happened. When I asked my parents, for some reason, they refused to tell me how the sink caught fire.
Anyway, I yelled at the top of my lungs for my parents. Well, let's just say that was a very darkday.
Later on, when I got older, I stole money and other valuable things from my parents. I'd grown sick of them, and the sight of money tempted my simple human heart. Greed consumed every last bit of me that night.
Anyway, the unusual dream I had the night I went drinking with Ross and Riley, after I passed out, was of me standing alone in an empty room. Well, I guess I've always been standing in an empty room my whole life, so it didn't feel too far off.
The room had grey-colored wallpaper. It wasn't a big room; for example, my height is about 5 ft 6, and my head was almost hitting the ceiling. The room's size was proportional on all sides. If I were to lie down, it would almost take two of me to reach the other side, so it wasn't very big.
But what really caught my attention was the dark brown door in the middle of the front side of the room—the side I was facing when I found myself there.
After inspecting the room for a while, my curiosity got the better of me, so I tried to open the ominous-looking door.
The moment I reached for the handle, I felt a chill run down my spine. I felt like something or someone was breathing on my shoulder.
"Dad?!" I said for some reason, slowly turning my head. I swear I felt like I was seeing someone at the edge of my vision, but I couldn't make out their facial details.
When I finished turning, no one was there. I sighed in relief. "Good, no one's there."
So, I turned back to face the door. I tried to open it, but to my utmost surprise, the door was locked.
Huh?
But I heard and felt something coming out from the gap underneath the door; it was a BROWN liquid.
The amount of the brown-colored liquid was increasing; more and more was coming through the door gaps.
Reaching out to examine it, I muttered, "No, it can't be. No way."
When I reached out for it, I dipped my finger in it and put it in front of my nose, then started sniffing it.
"Phew, just apple vinegar. For a second there, I thought it was something completely different."
The amount of vinegar coming through the door gaps was increasing, though, to the point that I started floating in it.
"Ugh, it tastes so salty and disgusting!"
The vinegar reached the top of the room, filling the entire space with the BROWN liquid. My memories started getting hazy from that point.
What I remember next is gazing at a truly colossal hole in the ground during the night, under the ominous illumination of a red moon.
I remember some dude was talking to me, his face unclear. He said, "This is the abyss where all special people are born. You and I, we don't belong here; we forced ourselves in, unlike them."
I can tell I was confused the whole time he was blabbering about the massive hole in the ground. I never gave it much thought at the time.
The next scene I recall is finding myself falling through the abyss, as the mysterious man called it.
Then I suddenly woke up, sweating.
"Ugh, my head. What happened?" I wondered.
When I opened my eyes, the next thing I saw was white light shining through them. I could also see a white ceiling.
"D-did I die? Am I in heaven?" I stammered.
Then, a repeating beeping sound caught my attention. I turned to see a large machine with a monitor displaying a zigzagging line and a fluctuating number.
"A heart monitor? For who? Me?" I wondered.
When my eyes adjusted to the bright light, I looked around. I was lying on a hospital bed with blue sheets, and next to me was a heart monitor with wires everywhere.
On the lower half of my face was an oxygen mask. To my right, there was a closed oak door.
That's when I realized I had lost consciousness after drinking a bottle of vinegar, and they had sent me to the hospital.
As I was looking around the room while lying on the bed, I started hearing a bunch of loud footsteps through the hallway.
I heard a door creak.
A Black-skinned guy came through the door. He was wearing a white coat and looked like a doctor, but what caught my attention was how fat he was. I wondered, "How can a person this fat become a doctor?"
He was so fat that I don't even know how he managed to fit through the door. I honestly was scared.
I thought to myself, "What do I do? He's so fat"
He looked around, then at me, and said, "Good, you're awake."