The Dream Keeper

J A   C K scaled the rest of the miniature plateau, falling twice and hitting the same outcropping he’d hid from the ‘triceratops’ on, and when he made it to the top he found a small cave. About twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high at its tallest. Angular, some rocks about half his height off the ground. One wide enough for him to sleep on. He got some of the tall, straight plants – hard-barked, black, some nine feet tall near the river but the ones near the cave no taller than him – and built a fire. He cut his hand, and it was exhausting, and he only had success after the sun had already gone down. But now, at least, he could keep away the bugs. He’d only had to kill one – a two-foot centipede. The others were all small enough for him not to notice, or scared away. There was a puddle in the corner of the cave. Six feet around and three deep. He submerged himself in it, the closest to a bath he’d get here. He’d drank some scummy, opaque water from it. It tasted li...

I woke up too early and couldn’t fall back asleep. I dreamt I was falling down a long tunnel. It was a tunnel made of lacerated people of different races and sexes and such, but they all had my face. They laughed at me. As I fell, I recall a flesh-colored spider chasing me down, waiting for me to hit the bottom and eat me. This was evidently some trap it devised, this spider requiring as much psychological suffering for nourishment as flesh and fluids. When I hit the bottom, impaled on hairy spikes made of legs the spider had shed like a snake sheds his skin, the spider started to eat me. I screamed and kicked, but it didn’t help. I could feel teeth sinking into me, moving upwards, swallowing me. I’d set up my room to be the most comfortable thing for something like me. Dark, because the sunlight stabs my eyes and gives me a splitting, screeching headache like tearing metal in my mind. By the end of the day I feel like the sun is eating me alive like a million cockroaches. ...