Follow the Leader

One day I woke up realizing that I was travelling down the wrong path, and had to turn back immediately before it became too late.


Five minutes later, I consoled myself with the thought, no, no, you're going the right way, don't worry, when you reach your destination, all of this will have been worthwhile, don't worry...Then I remembered a quote that said something like, "it's the journey, not the destination, that matters", and my mind was uneasy again. Shouldn't the right way feel a little more, well, right? To this, my internal thought bubbles changed their tune, telling me, well there is no one right way, nothing's set in stone, relax, don't worry, etc.

In other words, there's no such thing as fate and destiny?

Exactly. Just keep doing what you're doing, and everything will be all right.

I didn't argue this. Instead, I went back to sleep.

***

That afternoon (as a vampire, I slept during the day), I had yet another discomforting dream.

I was journeying through evening's blackness, stumbling barefoot on gravel road, trying to keep up with two trucks. Follow the leader. The trucks approached a lake, a black lake that was not illuminated by the moon and stars that hung in the sky, and to my astonishment, the first truck drove into the water and sailed away.

There was a rough man in the second truck, and he stuck his head out of the window to look at me. "Shit," he said, "this really sucks," and he ventured into the water after the first. Being compelled beyond my dream-will, I dove into the water after them.

The two trucks and I floated and bobbed through the water, as though invisible strings were pulling us to some unknown destination. I could not fight this, I could not turn around and go home. I couldn't move my arms to swim away. What if people see you flailing your arms? You'd look like an idiot. So I stopped trying and was carried along my dark way.

Next scene. The streets were drunk and swaying but the people were sober, and they were looking at me. I stumbled through the nightlife, filled with every kind of person, and tonight, even the junkies were sober. And here I was, a sight to be seen (though I was not drenched from my previous excursion), stumbling across the road, laughing at them all, weren't they all prudes in this, looking at me so critically, wasn't I the unrestricted, uncaged bird! I could barely walk but I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.

By the time I got home, I was barely capable of movement. I was beginning to dislike this drunken feeling, this lack of control over my own body. When I finally fit the right key into the right lock, I fell down, face-first onto the worn, dark carpet. I couldn't get up to save my life, or close the door.

However, this scene doesn't end in a blackout like you might expect. As I quickly faded away, I heard a woman's voice, a voice I recognized as my sister's (I don't have a sister).

"Get up, we have to go," she called from the unlit staircase.

Amazingly enough, I got up. I still had some control. I wondered if she was a white mage.

As soon as I had climbed the stairs and was within a five foot radius of her, I could stand up straight, and even walk without leaning on something.

She pulls me toward a window, urging me forward. "We have to go."

I expected to fall through the window and break apart on the cold cement below - but through this window there was only grass, and the foot of a great mountain, glowing in the sunlight. She began to climb with expert skill, and I tried, I really tried, but I fell behind.
"Come on," she said to me, "you can do this."
"I'm still so weak..."
She looked at me hard, infusing me with strength or courage or something (she has to be a white mage) and somehow we both made it to the top. I immediately looked down to scope out what I assumed would be a horrible fall (I could hear my bones smashing already), but right beneath my toes was just a large, open field, with the brightest grass and the sun shining to the perfect degree, no drop, no instant death. Paradise?

My sister was already walking into this god-field. She was naked - I looked down to see her clothes in a heap on the mountain's peak. Follow the leader. I ran to catch up, my clothes left behind in the same spot as hers. And then I realized how different everything was.

First of all, I was no longer the youth I had been at the start - I was now an aging woman, sagging and a little fat. Apparently she had gone through the same transformation as I, but she didn't appear shocked - she smiled as though she'd known this all along.

I was happy. I was walking inside paradise's waiting room. And I guess we weren't the only ones, because we came across a large group of (fully-clothed) individuals, youthful like I thought I was minutes ago, and they were watching us. This ain't no sideshow attraction, folks. I didn't care that I was naked before these people and neither did my sister. But you look like a fool! We just kept on walking, smiling all the while.

In an instant, everything changed again. The skies were now furious red and stormy and a great shadow was cast on this once-lovely world, greying the grass and destroying everything beautiful that I had been feeling. The young people were naked now, too. Follow the leader. And to my horror, they appeared as demons and were having the most terrible, inhuman orgy. Awful screams and savage teeth and tearing claws and eye-socket fucking and if this is, once was, had ever been paradise, the gods must have packed up their bags and ditched town.

Paul was there, in the corner of this movie I was watching, and he had the same sentiments toward the sight as me. "Look at that!" he shouted. "Look at what they're doing! That's fucking disgusting!"

I woke up, opened my eyes wide to erase the images still fresh in my mind. Lit a smoke, tried to blow it the fuck out. This was the new nature of my dreams, and of my life. I was afraid to sleep these days, so I didn't sleep much. However, my real life didn't offer any solace, as these demons began to seep through the unreal into the real, blurring the line, a virus that was corrupting everything that I thought, or felt, or saw, or touched. And me.

Too afraid to sleep, too afraid to be awake. A coward to an enemy I didn't know how to fight, I opened up a book and hid.