Cogs in the Demon Machine

I had a nightmare. It was one of the most terrifying dreams I've ever had. I wrote it down almost as soon as I woke up. I can't describe it in detail here because of spoilers. But it features monsters

So I just had a terrifying yet potentially revelatory nightmare.

Idk how to describe it. It was all very creepy. So, it was winter. But it wasn't how winters are out in the woods or the fields or anything, with everything being peaceful and friendly and full of life, the cold stirring up your energy and the ice bringing forth wonder. Nah, I love nature-winter, just as I love nature-summer and nature-spring and nature-fall.

But no this was city-winter. It was sharp and unforgiving and tinted dark with air pollution. The buildings were gray, the air was gray, the streetlights towered and cars sped by, leaving thick trails of smoke. Candy wrappers and cigarettes littered the ground and the sidewalk was frozen hard under your shoes. It was the kind of day unhoused people dreaded. The kind of day I would have had to suffer through wearing torn shoes and a too-thin coat while waiting outside at the bus stop. It was the kind of day where you really feel the effects of capitalism, in all it's uncaring nightmare glory, beating down on you.

I had just walked out of my school and towards the crowded bus stop at the end of the street. On my way, I met these two girls. They were very pretty but there was something off-putting about them. Something dangerous. They were handing everyone free money. Three dollars, in the form of a loony and a toony. They told me it was for a birthday, which was kind of weird but okay. I put the money in my pocket, beside my bus ticket, intending to give it to someone who needed it. 

I joined the crowd that was waiting for the bus. There were many people waiting anxiously for the bus to arrive. They were just as cold as I was, in pain in the frigid weather. This part of the dream actually doesn't make sense in real life since other people waiting for the bus tend to have much better and more wether-resistant clothes than me. So they tend to not be cold in the ten-fifteen minutes at most that we have to wait. But for some goddamn reason today everyone was wearing s****y clothes made more for the autumn than the winter. Anyways, it gets worse. 

I was waiting for the Number 6 bus. As I usually am. So were a lot of other people. As they usually are. But the first bus sped by us. The second bus was not in service. The third bus was on route to go to all the wrong places. We kept waiting and waiting and more buses passed us by. It was starting to get dark. We were cold. We were desperate. We could see the worry in each others' eyes. We waited and waited until finally a bus came by. It was more of a van than a bus really. Small. But it it could take some of us. We all lined up, chasing the bus as it came to a stop, crowding around the edge of the sidewalk. We tried to all cram in there as much as we could. But the bus driver - a fat man with dark greying hair and amused eyes - sped away after only accepting two of us. 

I was on the bus. I felt really bad that it had left my comrades behind. It wasn't fair. But there was an energy of fear in the bus, sharp and sticky and cloying. Hidden by the uncharacteristicallly plush seats and the merry mood of the driver. I look around. The other people in the bus had anxiety in their eyes. But while talking to them they assured me that the bus would take us to our destinations. 

The bus driver was jovial, in good spirits, and assured us he would take us where we wanted to go. For a while we drove by, familiar buildings passing by as we went down the well-known road. But then the familiar buildings became unfamiliar ones, increasingly unfamiliar ones as we twisted and turned through the streets. I was so lost. I had no idea where we were or where to get off. Eventually the driver took us to the arena district - which was the most posh entertainment district in the city, filled with very expensive clubs and bars and restaurants and casinos and stuff I didn't even know. He made us get off of the bus into the cold, harsh, bitter and unforgiving morning outside.

His appearance had changed. He became tall and slender. The colour of his skin, hair, nails, everything, was the same colour as the winter outside. His dark eyes were full of cruelty, full of a raging, ferocious, corrupted hunger. Not the hunger of not having food, no. Not the hunger of actually being hungry. This was the hunger of wanting more, more, always more. Of never being satisfied. His nails were just a bit to sharp, just a bit too pointed, almost not human. His eyes were just a bit too dark, the colour a bit too indecipherable, and they were hungry, hungry, hungry. They were powerful. And they were raging. Inside him, you could tell, was a bottomless pit. One you could fill and fill and fill and fill and it would still be deep, and dark, and bottomless. His face was set in a cruel, severe expression. He didn't look human. Not really. But almost. You could believe that he was human, if you only glanced over him. Not if you looked at him for a while though. If you focused on him, you could tell. That he wasn't human. He was a black hole given human form. 

He told us that we needed to work for him now. We needed to work to make him money. He told us that he must make money and we owe it to him to work. After all, he had so generously driven us. Never mind that he didn't even drive us where we wanted to go, I thought but didn't dare say out loud. None of us dared speak. We were all terrified of him. We were all acutely aware of the terrible and all-encompassing power he held over us. And we were all aware of the terrible and destructive rage he would fly into if we didn't do as he said. We were all aware that we were stuck. And that he had powers we did not know. Even if there were no walls, no fences, no chains binding us. Even if we could technically make a run for it. We couldn't. He would kill us. We knew that money was what he hungered for. Money was what he used to fill the ever-continuing, ever-reaching, ever-growing abyss inside him. We knew that he had a dark and twisted desire, a cold and cruel desire for money, money, more money. Consuming like some sort of demon. Which we was. No, he was worse. Demons weren't real. There was nothing not real about him.

He said that we had to do the jobs he told us to do. It was freezing and we were cold, cold, cold. But we were terrified. He told us that we had to do repairs and other maintenance around the arena district. We had to repair the tall, shining, artfully architected buildings that people spent their Friday evenings and weekends at. We had to keep the district up and running. Keep it pretty and beautiful as it shone full of metal and stone and glass. We had to serve him. And line his pockets. Nobody could see us. Nobody could hear us scream. Not unless we got away from him. 

He put us to work immediately. We had to scale the large, spiralling buildings without any protective equipment. We had to work up there perching on the ridges and folds 

... I'm too terrified to write any more. I don't know what about this dream scared me so much but I am so f*****g terrified and I need to take a moment before I go on ...

I think I should describe the district. Most of the buildings were really new-age. They had walls and roofs that curved and folded and bent over themselves and twisted and spiralled and rolled like hills. It was all very artistic. It was all very materialistic. It was all very decadent and opulent. There were tall buildings that stretched up into the sky and wide buildings that sprawled out across multiple blocks, connected by twisting, glittering interior bridges. There were glittering and polished windows. Often the windows were from floor to ceiling. Often the windows took up the space of the entire wall. Often the walls were made of glittering metal. A very popular way to gild walls was with folded, overlapping panels of shiny silverish metal. There were also many buildings built with the straight edges and straight walls of the slightly older building style. They were all very tall, very straight, very imperious, as they stretched up towards the cloud-swamped, softly glowing sky. They were very clean. They had large windows, the bottom floors always being made of looming floor-to ceiling windows that were clear as crystal. They had many ledges and ridges. Like I said before all the metal was shining silvery-grey, sometimes more silver and sometimes more grey. But always so very clean. Sometimes it was reflecting like a mirror. Sometimes it was had such a certain lustre that it almost glowed. Sometimes it almost had a sickly yellow tint. Sometimes it had a blue tint. Sometimes it even managed to have a pink tint. The stone, on the other hand, used in buildings, was imperious gray, jet black, shimmery brown, blood red, rich maroon, light creme, or even sometimes granite. Everything was so opulent. Everything was so rich. Everything was so oppressive.

The atmosphere was oppressive and heavy and it was dark and twisted. The surroundings held no life in them. Not any of the spark of life and kindness that lit up the kinder parts of the world. The air was polluted, polluted, oh so polluted. Everything was heavy and pressing. The world, the world around us was uncaring, apathetic, twisted, dangerous, and cruel. It was almost suffocating. An air of danger, hung thick all around. An air of terror, of unholiness, of corruption pressing and swirling in the weight of the air all around. It was claustrophobic despite - no because of - the grand scale of everything. 

We couldn't take in the "beauty" of it. We couldn't notice any of the grandeur. It mattered not to us but rather passed by beyond our reach. 

We were too busy being tired, sick, aching, scared, and cold in our hearts and in our bodies and in our minds. We were too busy being caught up in work, work, work. We were too busy pushing ourselves forward in the repetitive, agonizing, mind-numbing labour we were forced to do. We were too busy freezing and ignoring how we were freezing. We were too busy feeling our life force drain from us. We were too busy being tired, body and soul, and ignoring the tiredness in order to make him more and more and more money. We were too busy trying to ignore how our arms and legs and everything ached. We were too busy pushing ourselves to do dangerous work and feeling how it felt to not know if you were going to die or not. We were too busy not having anything. We were too busy being exploited. We were too busy slowly dying. We were too busy feeling pain and fear and death. Death hung over us ever-present. 

He sent us up buildings, to scale walls and stand on ledges and balance on folds and whatnot, shining and cleaning and repairing without any safety equipment. We had no nets or harnesses or anything to protect us from falling. We had no helmets or any other protective gear. We had no warm clothes to protect us from the majority of the winter's chill. We had to work, work, work at a brutal, frantic pace, pressing our hands and bodies onto the cold of the stone and metal and glass. 

I remember being up high, on top of the curve of a folded, new-age wall. Straddling the curving slope on either side. I had a bucket of cold, soapy water that was making my hands burn but I had to clean the building. All the while making sure I didn't fall off and die. I remember hating it so much and feeling myself die. But I was trapped in a crystal of his corrupted making. I couldn't do anything. 

The people entertaining themselves and going about their day in all the bars and restaurants paid no attention to us, to our misery. They couldn't see us and even if they could they wouldn't care. They had cushy, intellectual day jobs that paid well, that they did in the safety of an office, that they pretended to hate so they could justify their lavish spending habits. Meanwhile the monster was getting richer and richer. And still he wasn't satisfied. He was never satisfied.

Every time we finished a job we had to come to him. He sat ruler-straight, imperious, and ever hungry. And we were aching and tired and we just wanted to rest. But he didn't care. He gave us no rest. He just gave us another job. And we had to go do it. We had no rest. No time to sooth our bleeding souls. No time to find some peace and calm. We only had the constant demand of filling his ever-expanding emptiness with coins that were as poisoned and tainted as he was. 

We didn't want to but we were scared of him, so scared of him, so scared about what he would do to us, what he could do to us. He was unholy, and his unholiness extended out to all the world around us, choking us, poisoning us, feeding off of us. But he was all-powerful. His corruption was everywhere. His spirit reached out in all directions like electric wire, watching us, keeping us in line. 

I wanted to escape, to go somewhere I could call home. We all did. 

I was picking up trash from the stone courtyard of a great library/movie theatre when I figured out. I was between the slanted walls of two cold, looming glass pyramids. Despite the fact that the public sidewalks were littered with trash, the grounds of private property had to be kept clean. It almost felt protected though, between those sloping walls that provided the illusion of privacy. I realized what he was. I realized what he was doing to us. I had felt my life force draining out of me bit by bit but I had never paid attention to it. I had never known why. But now I knew. I felt it. He was drinking us. He was draining our life force and turning it into corrupted money for him to consume. He was slowly killing us and soon we would be dead. I knew I had to escape. I knew we had to escape. But how? We had no power. 

He made us gather around. He told us that if any of us gave him six dollars he would let that person go. But none of us had that kind of money. At most we had three dollars from the girls on the street corner but many of us didn't even have that. I saw his offer clearly for what it was, a ploy to make himself seem good and reasonable while keeping us trapped in servitude anyways. He wanted to seem like he wasn't interested in oppressing us, only in making money. But I knew how he was draining our life force for money. I knew how draining us and oppressing us was inextricably tied to his ability to make money. 

I had to think of a plan.

One time I was working near the very edges of where he was keeping us trapped. I was separated from him by two walls made of rough stone. They were also granting me the illusion of privacy. On the ground I saw some coins. A toony and two loonies as well as a few quarters and nickels. I was shot through with amazement and hope. But upon closer inspection I saw that the money had the unmistakable quality of being tinged with the type of corruption that can only come from him. The money was unmistakably his. And this was a trap. Of course it was, it was too good to be true. Just a bit more than the money I needed to get free, and then some. He wanted me to pocket his change, to bring the money to him asking to be let go. And then he would accuse me of stealing and he would utterly destroy me. He would scrape the flesh off my bones and tear into my throat and drink my blood and bite into my bones and leave nothing left. Maybe he knew I was onto him. And he wanted to consume the last bit of me that he could. But still. I had to get free. I had to get free. I had to get free. 

I pocketed the larger coins, too cautious to waste my time picking up the handful of smaller ones. He could come at any second. I did not intend to give him the money. But I knew that in this world, money was hard to come by and people could use it to keep themselves alive. I intended to give the money, along with the other money I already had, to someone who actually needed it. I don't know what happened after that. Maybe the rebellious act of stealing had given me the power I needed to break out of the spell for just a little bit. But I just started running as fast as my legs could carry me. I ran and I ran and I ran through the forcefield that had been keeping us in. I knew I ignited his anger. I felt it the moment that I was free from the force field. So I kept running. My legs were sore and aching but they felt invigorated. My lungs were sore as I fought for every bit of oxygen I could get. I kept running and running until I reached my home. 

For some reason my home was my science teacher's house. Like, my science teacher from real life. I'll tell you about her or else this part won't make sense. In the "real" world, the world outside the dream, where you and me and everybody lives out their waking lives, this woman was my science teacher and now she teaches other people. I'm not going to tell you what year she taught me because on the off chance that she ends up reading this it would be incredibly awkward for her to know that she saved me from a capitalism demon in a dream that I had. Anyways, she really likes nature and really cares about the environment and taught me a lot of what I know about climate activism and stuff. She's also really nice to all her students and she's a communist. 

Anyways in the dream she was all of that and she was also my mother. 

In the dream I ran to her. And she felt bright and new and green like nature-spring. I told her everything that had happened. She told me that she knew what kind of creature he was. She had travelled the world and heard many stories of what exists beyond the physical reality. He was a Capitalist, a terrifying and dangerous creature that had an everlasting hunger for money and grew fat from harvesting the life force of humanity. She told me she didn't know how to get rid of him but that I must try, and I had her support. 

I was scared. But I was also full of determination. I knew I had to end him. I had to end him immediately. I knew that I had a high chance of failing. A high chance of dying. A high chance of getting enslaved again and having my life force drained out of me. I did not care. I knew I also had a chance of killing him. 

I marched up to him. He looked at me with his terrifying, dark eyes, and he snarled. I told him that if he wanted money he could come get the money. I held a toony up. He opened his mouth and rushed at me. But I jammed the coin into the roof of his mouth, making him bleed. He howled in pain as I jammed another coin into the roof of his mouth and two into the floor of his mouth, under his tongue. He howled in pain as he bled to death. And then finally, he was gone. Dissolved and carried away by the wind. Into nothingness. My friends were free! They were safe! They could go home and rest and live their lives as free people. They smiled and cheered. 

But I still had the coins that I stole from him, which carried his corrupted essence. I was unsure of what to do with them. It was then that I realized. He might be gone but there were so many other creatures that were just like him. That were on the prowl. That were gaining power and draining their own victims and making the world what it was. We lived in hell. 

I startled awake. Out of the dream. Into real life. I was so overwhelmingly scared. I tried really hard to forget about the dream, to stop thinking about it, to put it behind me. But I could remember his sharp teeth and his empty, abyssal eyes and his hard, uncaring expression. I felt his power all around me. And my heart thudded in my chest. He was coming to get me. He was coming to get me. He was coming to get me. But then I realized. That words have power. If I could explain to the world what happened, if I could explain what he was, what he did. If people knew about him. If more people knew. Then he would have less power. Then he would be foiled. I needed to fight him in real life, just as I had in the dream. 

It's true that I woke up terrified but I woke up safe. I woke up in a house that was mine despite not being the home I wished was mine. I woke up secure. So many people don't. So many children wake up separated from their families all alone in dark rooms on hard floors. They're all alone. They're young. They're small. They're uncared for and unloved by all that surround them. They have no one they could call and no-one that would hear them if they did call. They have only their fear. Only their grief. Only their aloneness. They have no-one and they have to be quiet and not wake anyone. They can't even cry. They can't even scream. They have no-one to comfort them. No-one to help them. No-one that sees them as a person. No-one that sees them as a child. No-one who holds them and strokes their hair and tells them it will be alright. They just have to lie there silently, flooded with fear, silently trembling as they drown in their terror and grief. Young and already a victim of the system's destructiveness, of the cruelty of the people who benefit from it. 

And I know because I've met children like that. I've turned my nose up at them. I've stayed silent to their injustice. You don't know what happens in places that aren't the West. You don't know what gets hidden and swept under the rug and never talked about and never taken seriously even if it is. We divide the world up into meet little categories that can easily be sorted. Put strangers in neat little boxes. Think that we can learn everything important about their whole lives from just a glance. We justify our wealth however we can. 

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