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everything starts with a dream. i have discovered a new type of nightmare in which i am stuck in the grocery store — i must pace ever-expanding aisles and nothing could remind me why i came here. sometimes i fight people at the hot food bar, when there is one. i never make it to checkout.
this type of night terror has a name of sorts. when actions form the kind of chain one might see in the sims, that’s a quest dream. i have no broader mission, but there is a sense of obligation which injects those actions with urgency. everything is do or die. sometimes i lose teeth, friends, lovers — never mind that i myself usually do not know where i am or where i am going. i carry on regardless, certain this is not purposeless.
the dreams multiply as waking hours become their own sort of nightmare. sanity makes itself scarce. sometimes i drive directly into the floodwaters which impede the causeway. sometimes the elevator breaks and my stomach and i plummet together. i always know when overwhelm is at the root of it all — my mind makes sure of it.
i still dream of the people i know, the places i’ve seen before. but something has leveled up in my brain to take these threads and force them into carefully considered submission. nothing remains outside what was already written.
