59
Karena expected to find that she was dead and thus couldn’t move any of her limbs. Yet somehow she could. And somehow she appeared to be lying on something soft. Was she really dead? Was this what death felt like?
But she knew she couldn’t be. Taking breath into her lungs, she felt far too alive for that. And it was then she realized that she’d been here before, to this very place before. Multiple times. This was the room where she woke up every time she started over. This was the nursery of her nightmares.
She cried out. She didn’t know why, it was just that it was so surprising to her to find that she was not really dead, that she was merely starting her life over again. It was surprising, but more than anything it was terrifying. To think that she would have to go through everything, her whole life, another time, and now without Shawn. With her last hope destroyed. She had hoped so desperately that she would be killed then and there. But now she realized that it would never end. He’d said that he would kill her, but perhaps killing just meant making her start over again. Even though this was far worse than death.
Her parents came rushing into her room. Karena normally was annoyed with them when they did this, but this time, she let her father pick her up and comfort her. She allowed her crying to be soothed to the point where she could control it. She allowed herself to become a baby again. After all, what else was there to do? She had hardly had any comfort in any of her lives, and now she realized that she needed it.
60
Everything disappeared again. The nursery that had been around her vanished in the same swirling vortex that had been enveloping her before, along with her father who’d been holding her. Looking down, she saw that her limbs had all vanished and that she could feel nothing as she floated through the oblivion. All her emotions, all the pain of what had just happened, seemed to be suddenly gone for a moment, as if it had been swept away in the violet along with her body. She felt no pain, but she felt nothing pleasant either. She could still remember Shawn, but for some inexplicable reason she didn’t care. For just a short period of time she was surrounded by the strange shapes of purple and there was nothing at all that she could feel. It was somehow different than the other times this had happened. She knew that when this was over, she wouldn’t be a baby. Would she be dead? Probably. But there was no telling yet.
And then something came into focus. At first, nothing was clearly visible. But then, as she felt the violet fading away, things were still not clearly visible. She could see, that was for certain, but she couldn’t see very well. Everything around her seemed to be obscured by some sort of fog. It wasn’t like any sort of fog she’d encountered before, however. It was like it made everything blurry and confusing rather than entirely blocking it. And as soon as this blurry vision came back, the pain came back too. It hadn’t gone away, much to her dismay. She didn’t think it would ever go away.
But where on earth was she? She wasn’t in the bed, because she had grown used to waking up with the feel of soft sheets beneath her and wooden bars surrounding her. That much was for certain. But she couldn’t’ imagine where else she could wake up. Was she in the ruined city? Looking around once again, all she could see were vague outlines without recognizing anything.
She decided to try moving. Her limbs, however, did not seem to be connected to her in any way that was familiar. When she tried to raise her leg, she found that she had no real leg, but could feel several different tendrils rising from the area where her leg should be before she found that they were restrained. She tried to move all different parts of her body, and she found that she could move limbs that hadn’t existed before, such as arms on top of her head and arms coming down from her stomach. It was most peculiar, but Karena had soon realized that all these limbs were restrained in some way, bound in the position they were in save for slight movements she was able to make.
Karena had no idea for the life of her what was going on, and she felt the first pangs of panic. Was she dead? Had the Sandman killed her after all? Desperately, she tried to thrash about wildly, like when she had been taken by all the Sandmen and had tried to escape. Except this time, it wasn’t as easy. No matter how much she tried to get her strange new body free, there was no way she could do it. She was completely and utterly trapped.
Karena bit her lip. Or at least she tried to bite her lip, only to find that she had no lip, or indeed no mouth. This whole thing was ridiculous. So instead of trying to do anything that seemed familiar to her, as it seemed that nothing was familiar to her any more, she decided to just wait this out and see if something happened. She was in no way uncomfortable, she was just infuriated with the situation she was in.
Karena stood still, looking around her and, once more, trying to make out any recognizable shapes in this bizarreness. There were none. She could feel something pulsing inside of her, but it didn’t feel like a heart. This was the Sandman’s doing. There was no one else who would have any reason to do something like this to her. Indeed, she had never even known anyone else. She realized then that this must be some other trick of his, and probably the strangest one yet. He had put her into a new body. It seemed impossible, but she had no other explanation. Shawn had done this to her. The thought made her want to gag, even though she realized that she couldn’t do that without a mouth. Instead, she went back to looking around her and standing still.
It seemed that waiting it out was the right thing to do, in fact, the only thing to do, because some minutes later she heard a strange sound like a hissing. It sounded mechanical, as if it were some sort of pipe letting out steam, except that this sounded cleaner somehow. The sound continued, and Karena began to see that the fog that had been surrounding her was slowly beginning to fade, allowing her to begin to be able to see more clearly. And she could see that she was in a very small enclosed space.
It appeared to be a sort of glass chamber, except that the glass was very blurry and translucent, much like the material that had made the Sandman’s hourglass. All around her there was an assortment of wires that were attached to the wall of the chamber, and she appeared to be crammed right in the middle of all this.
The hissing sound stopped, and now the fog was completely gone. Another sound started, and this sound didn’t sound like anything she’d ever heard before. It was rather quiet, and above all is sounded sleek and clean. Karena was soon able to see that the sound was coming from in front of her as she saw the wall in front of her slide out and open, revealing the space beyond it.
There wasn’t much really to say about the space. It was a long hallway that was lit, though Karena could not tell where the light was coming from, as there didn’t appear to be any light strips on the ceiling or elsewhere. All that appeared to be in the hallway were more and more containers like the one she was in, identical in every way. She could not see inside the containers, but she assumed there must be other people inside them. What was this place?
All of a sudden, the wires all around her detached themselves from the walls of the container and she felt herself falling forwards, out of the cubicle. All the wires that had been inside it tumbled out after her so that she was caught in a giant web or them. Karena tried to stand up, but that proved to be harder than it normally would be. As she’d discovered before, she couldn’t manipulate her movements in any way that seemed normal to her, and so she found herself flopping around on the floor rather than successfully standing up. Terrified, Karena’s movements became frantic and hurried as she tried in vain to untangle herself.
Then, she had a thought. In horror, Karena looked down at the cords around her. She tried to raise her legs in the air, but instead of a leg, an ugly bundle of cords and wires rose into the air. Somehow she had control of them. Which meant that somehow, she herself had literally become a bundle of cords.
61
Karena didn’t have any way to express her shock except for through her own thoughts. How could this be? What was going on now? Karena was scarcely able to try and come up with a rational explanation
for this at the moment, however, because she was too busy being shocked at the fact that she had just become a bundle of cords! What on earth was the Sandman doing to her now? What was he even hoping to accomplish through this?
With much difficulty, she was able to manipulate her new appendages to the degree that she could stand up, if it could even be called standing. It was more like she was still in the same shape, but somewhat more off the ground, wobbling around like a piece of gel or some rubbery substance.
Suddenly, Karena heard something at the end of the hallway, which was very far away. Looking in one direction, she couldn’t even see an end to it, and looking in the other direction she was able to just see a door very far away. It was this door opening that was the sound she’d heard, and she could see two tiny figures walking towards her from the distance.
They covered the distance surprisingly quickly, and in no time at all Karena was able to see that they weren’t bundles of cords and wires like her. She couldn’t exactly determine what they were, but as they got closer she could see that they appeared to be somewhat small and very stretchy. The way they moved around was by stretching their body to the point where Karena was sure they would break before using the elasticity to bring their whole body forward again, and then repeating the process all over. They did this remarkably fast, so that within a minute Karena found that they were perched right in front of her. They had no faces, no real features either. They were merely fleshy, tan-ish blobs.
For a moment, Karena wondered if she would even be able to talk without a mouth. But she figured she’d give it a try anyway, thinking that this new body would automatically allow her to communicate in whatever way it communicated, hopefully. Of course, standing hadn’t come naturally to her, and so there was no guarantee that this would either.
“Who are you?” Karena asked. The question did not come out of her mouth, and she could not really tell where it was coming from, or even if it was making an audible sound. She just knew that that was what she’d said. Hopefully the blobs, if they were even sentient, would understand her.
“What should we do?” asked one blob to the other. It appeared to speak by creating strange shimmers across its body that rippled around in a most fascinating manner. Karena could understand it, fortunately, which meant that she must be communicating in a similar fashion. This also confirmed that the creature was, indeed, sentient. However, it had made no sign that it had actually understood her.
“Deactivate it,” said the creature. “It can’t help us anymore, and it has served its time.”
“Hello?” Karena asked. “Can either of you even understand me? I asked who you were, and I also want to know where I am.”
“You’ll remember soon enough,” said one of the creatures. “It usually takes about a half hour or so to fully recover your memory.”
“What are you talking about!?” Karena practically screamed. She could scream, she found, by creating greater oscillations in her wires when she spoke, and this seemed to have the same effect that screaming would on a normal person.
“Should we briefly explain?” one of them asked the other. “As we are about to deactivate it?”
“I’ve got to go, actually,” said the other creature, and Karena could tell it was somewhat annoyed. “I have a meeting to attend. And unfortunately my physical presence is required.”
“I’ll explain, then, I suppose,” said the other creature. “And then it will be disengaged.”
“Explanation is not a part of standard protocol.”
“Well, I have no current obligations, and so there is no logical reason why I shouldn’t.”
The second creature did not quarrel further and instead backed away, flinging itself towards the end of the hallway that it had not come from.
“All right, please explain this to me,” Karena said. “I want answers, and I want them now. I’ve waited a very long time for this.” She had a feeling that right here, right now, everything was finally going to be explained to her. She somehow knew that these creatures were not copies of the Sandman, and that this one was going to tell her who the Sandman really was. Who Shawn really was.
“Not as long as some others,” said the creature.
“What do you mean?”
“Just let me explain. You were in a dream. That’s the first thing you need to know.”
“What do you mean, a dream?”
“Everything that has ever happened to you that you currently remember was part of a dream.”
Karena wanted to laugh, but found that this body had no way of doing so. A dream? That was ridiculous. But if it was true, then it meant that phycologist had been right all along, something she found quite amusing, considering the fact that she’d dismissed his dream theory a long time ago.
“At first you were in a dream in a dream in a dream in a dream,” the creature continued. “And then you were in a dream in a dream in a dream. And then you were in a dream in a dream. And then you were in a dream. And now you are in reality.”
“What!?” Karena asked. That had to be the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. This was reality? “But that doesn’t explain the Sandman and the hourglass and…”
“Yes, I know. I will explain if you will show some patience. Your ancient human side is showing from being in the body of one of them for so long. Don’t worry, that will wear off soon. Though of course, you’ll be deactivated soon, so it doesn’t really matter. Now, these dreams are able to be manipulated. The dreams were created using vortex technology, which allows us to conjure our own dreams that we can then implement into one’s mind.”
“Vortex technology? What are you ranting about? Please just explain to me what is…”
“I am, if you will show some patience please.” The creature was clearly annoyed with Karena’s ‘ancient human’ tendencies. “The vortex is a substance that controls the subconscious of an entity’s mind and allows them to dream. It is in everyone’s mind at once, unless you are able to harness its power and take it out of your mind, as has been done with me, naturally.”
“What does any of this have to do with me?”
“I will explain, if you will show some patience-”
“I’m sick of showing patience. I’ve had enough patience in my lives. Just explain what is going on.”
The creature refrained from asking her to show patience again and instead went on. “You were put inside of this dream for a very specific reason. Those who do wrong cannot go unpunished, and thus they are put into a manipulated dream until they are ready to come out. Usually this takes around 20 to 30 lifetimes. You, however, served a quite short sentence. Your anxiety levels reached the required point quicker than a normal person’s and thus you were able to be taken out sooner.”
“Hold on,” Karena said. “Are you trying to insinuate that I’m in here because of something I did?”
“Yes, that is why you are here.”
“And I got out early?”
“Remarkably early.”
Karena was shocked. All that was being done to her, all that had been tormenting her this whole time, she’d brought it upon herself? How could that be? All this time, all her lives, she’d been serving some sort of punishment? What could she have done that would lead to that? Never would she have guessed that that could be the case. The information was too hard for her to believe. She needed evidence, proof. But if what the blob had said was true, then she would be regaining her true memory again shortly. And if it was, then there was one thing she had to know. Who was the Sandman?
“Who did this to me?”
“Do you mean who was the one put in charge of your sentence?”
“Yes, whatever. I need to see him. I need to finally see the real Sandman with my own eyes.”
“Unfortunately for you that is not protocol.”
“I don’t care about protocol.”
“Well the rest of us do. I may have gone against protocol in explaining this to you, and that is enough protocol deviation for on
e period. You are now going to be deactivated.”
Karena looked down at herself once more. She realized that the creature had used the word deactivated rather than simply saying killed because she must be a machine of some type. She had a hard time believing this, but that was where all the evidence pointed.
All of a sudden, the blob began to expand its body so that it became unusually large, and so that it was stretching out flatter than a pancake. It rose into the air, swaying back and forth, and when it spoke its ripples travelled along its whole body, which was now at least eight meters high. “I cannot deviate,” was all it said, and it began to move forward, turning its body into multiple limbs, all extending towards her. Karena shut off her optical transmitters, waiting for death.
“You have permission to deviate from protocol once more,” said a voice suddenly. Karena detected it coming from behind her, and found that there was another, identical creature coming down the hallway. “I will take it from here. I believe the console has another assignment for you.”
“Yes,” said the first creature, shrinking back down to its normal size exceedingly quickly. It then went back down the hallway the way it had come.
Karena turned around to look at the other creature, wanting to breathe a sigh of relief that she was alive for a moment longer at least. She still had questions. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Well,” said the creature. “The name you know me by is ‘The Sandman.’”
62
Karena stared, unable to believe that the strange blob sitting before her was actually the person who’d been tormenting her for all those years. This was the man who’d held up the hourglass all those times, and who’d made her start over all those times. This was the man who had haunted her worst nightmares for so long, right here in the flesh. Karena wanted to do something to him; she wanted to lunge forward and strangle him and make him pay for what he did. But she was a bundle of cords.
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