Never Alone

Our own minds are indescribable at times. They give us images, impressions, thoughts sometimes so strange. So visceral and bizarre, that were we to share them, the world may think us mad...

 

The dream.

It's always the same.

 

Not that you'd call it a dream, I guess the perceived terminology would be a nightmare, but then the surreal nature of it doesn't even lend itself to that definition particularly well. It starts normally enough; it's the beginning of an ordinary working day. I'm in the bathroom, I'm showering, and yet something feels wrong. The only other person in our flat is my wife and yet I feel uneasy. The steam has built up to such a level that the world outside my shower cubicle is unclear, a misty haze of indistinct shapes and half formed familiarity. I see my wife, or at least the outline of her. She's standing in the doorway to the bathroom, her head tilted slightly to one side and she is inhumanly still. Unnervingly without motion. "Honey?" I call to her, looking for that reassuring spark of comfort that we all crave. But by this point I know that it isn't going to come, I know that this is the dream, I know that I am doomed. And yet I can do nothing to halt the course of events, they play out as ever like an old video tape. Without alteration or hesitation. She moves. After the longest time of standing there, the longest time of blood freezing inaction she moves, but her transit and it's fluidity are not that of the woman I know. Slowly and yet without delay she advances upon where I stand. At this point I always seem to wipe a clear view into the steamed up glass, perhaps hoping that what I know I'm going to see, will somehow reassure me. It's true that the face upon which I gaze when I do so is not an unfamiliar one, and yet still it is not the face of the woman I love and her eyes are cold, and her gaze is empty. She flings open the door and her arms extend as they have to me so many times, but this isn't a loving embrace. This is not the initiation of some often repeated ritual of love. This is the end. Her grip is somehow vice like, as if it were not the grip of a human being at all, but that of a machine or creature not of this earth. As I fumble and grasp at nothing and the world seems to darken at the edges, I find my fingers grasping at her face, at that so familiar and yet terrifying visage upon which my eyes have gazed so many times. Perhaps it's the oxygen deprivation or perhaps it's simple human instinctive desperation, but I begin to tear at the flesh... Bloody chunks of seemingly human skin and muscle tear away like that of a Snakes. It feels wet and rubbery and seems to be torn from the creature beneath it with improbable ease. The creature beneath it... The creature beneath it is not my wife, at least not the wife I thought I had. Not that angelic face into which I stared and promised a lifetime of myself to. The face is mechanical, metal, cold and gleaming with red ruby eyes that glow, like an ominous fire glaring into my fading soul. And soon there is nothing to claw at, nothing to tear from. The robotic beast who wore the face of love tightens it's unchallenged grip and throttles me so mercilessly that my very voice ceases to be heard. My very breath tightens to an inefficient rasp, and my very blood pours from my eyes as they bulge forth like over filled ballons fit to burst. I can scream no more, see no more, breath no more, think no more. This indescribable horror is my world as I prepare to leave it permanently...

 

Then I wake up. Always that moment, always then. I'm in bed, obviously, and it's dark. But I'm not alone. My wife is lying next to me, her back facing me as she slumbers. The dream already fading in my mind, I reach out to touch her shoulder, the feeling of warm skin I hope will help me to forget the images which swim in the raging torrents of my mind. She turns to face me and I hold my breath, recalling the most harrowing moments of my recurring nightmare. But the sight I see brings only joy and resolution to my heart. Her features are human, her face is soft and warm, neither metallic nor cold. And her eyes glow only with that familiar semblance of love which has lived within for so long. I smile back, my eyes gathering tears, not only of relief but also in lament of my tortured mind and the horrific parodies of life that live within it. I pray inwardly that these demons will leave me alone, that the dreams will cease, that the notions of torment and paranoia and horror will let me be. Just let me stay in this moment and gaze upon her forever as we are just here, just now, in this utterly perfect moment... But I know that they won't.

 

As the days pass, I catch myself cowering when my wife enters a room suddenly. The feelings quickly fade once she speaks, once she smiles. They fade but they don't leave. Still I am at the mercy of my private and ever increasingly bizarre anxieties. If only she knew, she would surely think me a raving madman. At night the nightmares come for me, the dreams worsen and the visceral nature of their content becomes ever more vivid and without distance from the real world. Each time I awake and my relief is less. I am left with a knot of dread, nagging at the very core of my unstable being... Is my wife mechanical? Is she here to kill me? Has she always been as she is or was she at some point replaced? So many questions, a world of questions and none with an answer I can find.

 

The days wear on into weeks, into months. Each time she smiles at me it comforts me less. Each time I gaze into her eyes, I can recall only the fiery red glow of those eyes which ominously bored into me as the solid grip snatches life from my soul. My mind is wrapped tight around these horrible thoughts, so tight that I fear it may soon snap... One day snap it does. I'm a coward, I have no physical action to take, and despite my fears I could never bring harm upon the form of this creation I have come to love. Indeed I know that to attempt to do so would be futile, as it's strength far outranges my own. And so I leave, I run. To where I do not care. Away, far away from these cacophonous fears these dreadful foreboding's. From place to place I roam, sleeping rough on occasion. Sometimes managing to secure a bed for the night.

 

One evening, I'm at a hostel and on the television I see the face of my wife, pleading for my return. Asking the public if anyone has seen me or knows where I can be found. As I gaze upon the flickering image displayed on the screen, I see only that of the machine and it's emotionless mechanical eyes burning into me. I will never go back, I will never be caught in it's crosshairs again. This I promise myself as I leave and take to the road once more....

 

As my journey goes on, I begun to realise that these robotic sentinels are everywhere. The one that took the face of my wife was not alone, it's engineered brethren stalk the night across every acre of this land. Every pub I sit in, every cafe I eat at, every hotel in which I fail to find sleep. I feel them staring at me, I sense them assessing me. I hear them reporting my whereabouts and I scream inside as I wonder how and if I can ever be free of this vile predicament... One afternoon I am in a restaurant eating. I don't enjoy eating anymore but it's necessary. I need my energy if I am to outrun these creatures of hate. As I stand to leave one of them approaches me, it's angry and wants to know why I've been staring at it. I hadn't even realised that I had been. The creature has the form of a large burly male, not that it matters, they are all the same metallic horror beneath. I need to get out, need to get away, need to escape. I unthinkingly lash out, flailing and squealing like some wild animal. Shocked, or at least appearing to be, the creature strikes me hard. It's unearthly force knocks me to the ground. Those around us intervene and create distance, I take the opportunity to run.

 

Not looking where I was going I realise that the door through which I ran is not the exit, but the door to the toilets. I take a moment, catch my breath. Looking at myself in the mirror, I realise that there is something unfamiliar about my face. The very gaze of my own eyes contains something that I do not recognize, something that doesn't belong there... My face has been cut from where the machine hit me, and it bleeds keenly. Still my face unnerves me, what is wrong with my face....? The horror of what I'm realising, of what is becoming clear to me as I touch the flesh of my own image as it looks coldly back at me is all to clear but no less blood chilling as it hits me...

 

I claw at the cut on my face, ripping and tearing at it desperately. I need to see....

 

Strips of bloody and moist skin and muscle tear away from my skull as I savagely rip through this false artifice feeling no pain. Feeling only the most palpable emptiness mixed with the realisation that I should have known this all along... I gaze into the mirror and the metallic gleaming construct seems almost to smiling at me. A mocking cruel grim of triumph. The burning red eyes which have haunted my thoughts so many times now gaze not only at me, only from me.

 

This evil was always inescapable.

This evil was always with me.

This evil lived within me and this evil was simply and truly me.

 

Then I wake up, and it's dark. Cowering in my bed I whimper. I am not alone, the outline of my ever present wife lies next to me, her back to me. I get up and go to the living room and sit on the sofa with my head clutched in my hands. I'm yearning to be alone, but I am not alone.

 

I'm never alone

Author's Note

Thank you for reading