In the midst of all of these dreams, these revelations, the ones that
haunt me and the ones that give me peace, there is one that shocks me the
most. One that recurs, that I have dreamed since before my memory begins. It
begins in darkness, always darkness, and then the monsters come. And they
chase me through the night, and into the dawn. Sometimes they are great
demons, who fly silently through the thickening night, who fall suddenly from
great heights to their victims, and sometimes they are giant wolves who run
on the wind, darkening the blackened sky with their howls.

    It began when I was a child.

    I was born in an alley not so far from the life that I lead now, deep in
filth and muck, daughter to the scum of the earth. That is what I was always
told, that I was born from filth, into a world that would smash me between
two fates, and I swore that I would not die there in the darkness: still
alone.
    The nights passed, and I found myself lost to the streets, though I was
not aware then what I was, or what I would be.
    Through the streets and back alleys I grew like a vine tenaciously
clinging to a rock wall, forcing myself into the chinks and holes of society,
where they could not refuse me. Always the night filled up my head as I
walked through the empty city. Into the dark. In amongst towers that were
built by men, then abandoned, where men no longer live. Smoking remnants of
civilization, now eaten up by the marsh, smoke, that all hazed in red. The
sounds of the night echoed out there, near the outskirts of the village that
sprung up around the once great city. The smoke of the city glowed as the
light of the sun faded. The buildings extended forever up into the smoke,
their tops invisible, their bodies stretched ungainly and poor. Pulled and
extended they only looked pitiful, not menacing as most structures such as
these are portrayed.
    All of the men were gone now from that city though villages had grown up
around it. A city about which men whispered of ghosts, demons, darkness, but
in my youth I was not afraid. The city was mine, my place. Oh, the scum of
the earth still resided here, alongside poverty and sickness. And yet the
city was still mine. For all that it was. Great and tall buildings colored
red and black under the sunless sky. Blackened by the ashes from the fires
built in the trash cans left there. I knew no fear, and why should I? In the
village there was no crime, no hatred here, the church bells chimed and the
children ran through the streets, discarding tight or constricting clothing
as they went. A sleepy home-town village, no disaster dared show its face
there. I played with my friends until the sun sank sleepily into marsh,
smelling of hot mud and the tar from the streets. Barefoot, I wandered after
sunset, after all of my friends had gone home to their parents, through the
streets, and through the marshes at the edge of town into the empty city. I
knew all of the paths then, and how to tell firm soil from that which would
suck you down into the depths of the earth and keep you there for all
eternity, at least until the flesh rotted from your bones and allowed your
skeleton to float to the surface.
    Walking home one evening, as the night changed from the rosy hues of
twilight into its purple black shades of darkness, I heard some small sound,
turned, and  got the impression of a blackness greater than the night itself
when there are no stars, and of leathery wings with a span so vast that I
could not measure it until I turned my head to run. And I took off racing
through the marsh, under trees where I thought that it might not be able to
find me, and then I heard the howling of wolves, coming from behind me. I saw
them then as I glanced back, huge shapes, large enough to carry two men,
rising behind me. Impressions of searing pain, running down my back, stinging
with sweat. I awoke later, crumpled in the soft grass by a pond far from
town. I moved and hissed in pain, later, in a mirror wavy with antiquity, I
found a half-healed scar that ran from shoulder blade to the small of my back
that burned with every step and took months to heal completely. And it never
went away. 
    These dreams always begin with the chase, running away, and sometimes I
succeed. And then there are the times when I do not succeed in running away
and then they take me down, down into the darkness, enfolding me with their
blackness, and they are blacker than any blackness, pulling light into
themselves, murdering all hope. And they drink of me, of soul, and they force
me to drink of their blood and it is sweet as wild honey. I am forced to
drink of it and then I crave it, it drugs me and visions invade me like
disease, past, future, present, all crystal clear before me. All colors
immeasurably clear, all light too bright, and the voices in the wind, Oh, the
voices, terrible, beautiful, ungodly, how I crave them. I cannot bear the
memory of the deeds that I commit, under that unholy influence. I push it
away when I awake After all, they are only dreams…aren’t they? Please tell me
yes. For I cannot bear it if these perversions can be reality. But then
reality doesn’t really exist anymore does it?
    Sometimes I run through fields of wild grasses, their tendrils as knives,
lash my legs, tearing me, and the scars from them I bear, even when I awake.
I run under the pregnant moon, so close that I can feel its touch, silver
covered over in red, a film of blood. Sometimes I run through the streets,
darkness closing in, the howls of the wolves following me as I race through
back alleys, kicking up trash, and leaving it stinking pungently behind me. I
know that if they touch me I will melt away, that they will freeze my essence
and rip out my soul as they rip my heart from my chest and the chords from my
neck when I am down, and I will feel my own hot blood warming my icy skin
before I am cast into Hell to burn there for eternity. The streetlights here
are burnt out too, or perhaps they burn out as I reach their warming light,
for I smell the sharp metallic tang of electric fire like old blood. I follow
each pool of light and as I reach it, it is gone. Then I see a bright new
light, one clearer and more fragrant than the rest, fragrant with antiseptics
and sickness, death, “perhaps,” I think then “it is the light of dawn.” and
a great Hope swells within me, for the wolves cannot feed after dawn, and
they fade away into the morning fog. I run to this light. The men in the
white coats, the ones that plague me when the wolves do not, surround me and
I am taken down into a world of needles and the cries of the others here. And
the wolves fade away into the blackness like mist, fearing the light, the
doctors do not believe in them, yet I do not care, for the wolves are gone
and though the doctors keep my body prisoner they cannot touch my soul. I am
safe from them for they cannot touch me when I hold my walls against them. I
can wait for the dawn, for it is then that I awake, and I am safe, back in
The Real World. Until I dare to dream again.
    I have tried not sleeping, taking pills to stay awake, but that is even
worse, for after several days of sleeplessness you begin to hallucinate. And
then I dream when I am awake. All in blackness.
    It does not matter when I sleep, even at noon when the sun has the power
to boil your blood inside you veins, for inside my head it is always night.
    I run away, and I always fight them, and yet it becomes ever more
difficult, for they offer to make me one of them, they say that they choose
the obscene forms that I encounter because they feed on fear, and these are
the best to promote that fear. They say that I can be anything, have anything
I want, even my heart’s desire, and most of all they offer Family, company,
that I might never be alone. I would be a part of them, One with them. Soon I
know  that I will not be able to refuse. For they offer a body of my own
kind. And they would always accept me for what I am, for how could I be more
terrible than they. You cannot know how I crave this, the darker side of me,
I cannot bear to be alone. They would take away the pain. Imagine! To never
hurt again. To feel them fold around me, to feel their power as my own, to
change, to ride the wind. To at last be a god. That is what they offer me.
But they also offer me death, for to live with them I must die, and kill, and
kill, and kill. And with pain all emotion? Would they take away the ability
to love? And what would I be then? to never see the sun, to always live in
the coolness of the dark. To be a monster, outcaste, inhuman. Forever. And to
never die.
    All of this is merely dreams. All of this is to mean nothing when I am
awake, except that now the visions begin to come even when I am sleepless, so
that I cannot distinguish between that reality and this one, or know for sure
what reality even is anymore. I go to work and the electric lights hum and I
fall down into the monotony of life here, in this world. I walk down the
street and suddenly I am in a different world, where I am born, live, grow
old, and die, in only a few breaths. Then I am back, the people on the street
look at me oddly, for to them I am only a disease. But the dreams call me: in
them I am more alive than life. All that is real, all that exists, becomes
fragmented, and none of it all matters, only that the dreams are all now,
though some are terrible and I fear most the ones of darkness, I wish that
they would take me down with them, so that the life that I lead now would no
longer be. And this I fear more than all of the dreams combined, that I
should lose myself in them, but then again what do I have to return to anyway
– a world of order, of conformity, detached from the hive, of the brevity of
life here in this dirty and muted world. I want only escape to the worlds of
colors that I have been shown, and yet I fear the blackness of night.
    Then the dream begins again, each time more terrifying, more appalling,
and more compelling than ever it had been before. I drift down and land
running through the interminable night. Blood-soaked dreams fill up my head.
I run through the night and it seems that all of the life that I have ever
known is that of the proletarian girl that I am in that dream. I cannot
remember then my old life, only the memories of that girl. I run and I try to
hide and then they come, they follow me, not chasing me, but a slow stealthy
pace that says that they are sure to catch me sooner or later and that they
are in no hurry. Their placidity frightens me, more than the menace of the
dreams which haunt me. They come, and when they catch me they take me to a
place far underground. Water drips in the distance and yet I get the feeling
that this was once a place of much importance, for it is not desecrated by
graffiti or such vandalism as most forgotten places are. Old and  moth-eaten
tapestries line the walls, and where the walls have been left bare they
appear to once have sported great and colorful murals. The ancient carpeting
that adorns the floor has worn away in most places but its softness in the
corners that I cower in comforts me. There is no hope of escape from this
place, for it is strung with traps and pitfalls: the whole world down here is
a great cenotaph, a crypt full of old memories and ghosts of the past.
Sometimes I almost feel as if I should know the way out but I lack the coin
to pay the gate keeper,  the boatman on the river of time which flows towards
eternity. The place where they take me is deep underground, though I feel
that this was not always so, for there are windows through which you can see
the very bones of the earth which writhe like giant rib bones around this
outmoded palace, taken over now by darkness. There I wait, in some grand
hall, the warmth of the air suffocating, like being inside a living body. I
cower down, there in a far corner and vow that I shall not submit to them
this time, that I shall not drink of their blood, and that I will never,
never become one with them. Yet their power captivates me, their very
darkness fascinates me I long to go to them for they will accept me as no
other would. Born an outcaste, I have fought all of my life to retain some
humanity, some sense of morals through this abusive world. They have none.
But, a code of honor and love among their own. I strive for some sense of
goodness, grace and mercy, when I could have so easily been a human monster,
cold cruel, unforgiving, pitiless.  For the humans murder without compunction
for a mere difference, they are intolerant of all change, and they fear, and
will destroy, what they do not understand without even seeking enlightenment.
And these things ask me to be all that I have fought not to be to the people
that cast me out, the people that wounded me, that did not see me. They offer
me a family, something that I have never had, and stability,  they have much
honor among themselves, and will risk anything to protect one of their own
kind, and they view my kind as sheep, but dangerous ones, and have no
compunction about killing them.
    And then they come, and are kind to me, a harsh sort of kindness, a show
of near respect. They talk with me and tell me of themselves, of the
atrocities against my people that they commit, and they change their forms
for me, so that I might not be terrified by them. The cup comes around – a
great goblet encrusted with jewels, steaming with fresh blood – and by then I
can have no fear, for they have burnt all of that out of me, and I drink, and
the visions come. They show me of their past, and the ways in which they
split off from man. Revered as gods, then tortured as devils. They themselves
have been as persecuted as I. Bred from humans for their psychic powers they
evolved and their powers grew until finally they had mastered the ultimate
power, the power to live forever. And the humans feared them, and they tried
to destroy their creations. The People, for that is what they call
themselves, fought back and finally were forced to hide underground, like
rats in a hole, and there they waited, for centuries, until they could no
longer stand sunlight save for that of the dying sun at the very moment of
nightfall as the darkness crashes down and collides with the darkening earth.
They became creatures of the night and were lost in its infinity. And their
powers grew. They tell me that it was I that set them free, that they
recognized my soul when they chose me for the feast. I tell them that I have
no recollection of this, that they must be mistaken but they do not listen.
They tell me that they wish to convey to me their powers, for they feel that
I have earned the right to become more than human, and that they wish for me
to be one of them.
    I do not understand all that they say, but I know that they hold me in
high regard as the savior of their people, and that they do not consider me
human for they think that humans are merely lambs for the slaughter. They
tell me terrible things too, of how glorious the kill is, and the thrill of
the hunt: they do not realize that I do not remember things from lifetime to
lifetime. They describe to me the feel and flavor of the souls of humans,
that they are sweeter than their own blood, yet that my people are merely
slugs, not fit to live, dangerous, and that is why they sport with us.
    I think that these are terrible things mostly because I am coming to
believe them, I have seen the harm that mankind wreaks upon our universe, the
way we slaughter and pillage and rape the land, and the way that we hold
ourselves superior over all creatures. But in a way this is what the People
do, and they are no better than we.  I long to be one of them but their very
gruesomeness sickens me – to be among them I would be the monster. And yet I
see that I am already all that, a monster, and to them I have committed the
greatest sin – I have walked through the world uncaring and have never felt a
kinship with my kind, I have never had Family. And yet they do not condemn
me, instead they offer instead ultimate peace. I  cannot accept, and yet it
is all  I want in the entire world.
    The visions overwhelm me: my human body cannot bear them for too long or
they will scar my mind. And then they ask me. They say that they have told me
of the good and the evil of what they are and how they became and  that now I
must choose between our two races, and if I say no they will  kill me, take
my soul and become a part of them anyway. They will kill me because I know so
much about them and because I have already begun to change, and I will bring
others to them and they will die.
    For moments I sit there, still in the corner, their huge bodies towering
above me, no longer cowering but I cannot say no, the pull of their greatness
is too mighty for me to refuse, and I fought for my life all of my days, I
cannot give it up so easily now. Yet how can I say yes and forsake my own
kind, to  become a monster, a traitor. But my decision is already made. And
they knew it. I said to them that I would become one of them, even though I
knew that they knew. They laughed then, and I didn’t know why, and they said
“But brother, you already are! From the minute that you doubted your will to
be human your faith in humanity faltered.” And it was true, I felt the hunger
for human souls rise like the tide within me, and I screamed, and they laugh
ed. But I will not die alone, and the only way that I may die, is in the
light.
    Then I awake, but instead of greeting the dawn with open arms I see only
the dying sun. I have slept through the day and into the night. I run out
into the night and know that I will never again be satisfied with ordinary
life again, remembering the taste of human flesh. I walk out into the city.
    The sun rises and I wince, but it does not harm me, I walk as in a fog
through the motions of ordinary life, in slow motion as if I am underwater.
Revelations break over me as I walk down the streets, like a sheep blocked in
on all sides by the pressing bodies of other men, smelling of soap and sweat
and skin. I go to work and sit at my desk, under the singing lights. And they
suck the life out of me here in this bland world. I long for the ever more
brilliant colors of my dreams, to be away from this place of filth. And they
overcome me so that I do not know if the reality I have known all of my life
is the One True Reality. I do not think that it is.

    All of this fills my mind, it deludes me with dreams I cannot separate
from reality. I wake and rise from bed, escaping into the streets for the
solace of company, the light of this world blinds me. I stand there, upon the
sidewalk and the visions come, and yet I know that I do not sleep, life in my
head is only waking dream. I walk through the nights and I will not sleep,
because I fear my dreams of death, but the blank screen fills my mind and my
head fills up like a great calm lake in which a pebble is thrown and the
ripples spread from its center….