. . .
“The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous."
–H.P. Lovecraft
. . .
From: gemini.kit@dmail.com
To: leighanne.songfall@dmail.com
Date: December 12, 2012
Subject: IT KNOWS YOUR NAME
Good evening, Mrs. Fall.
My name is Gemini Kit.
I… really have no idea how to put this all into words so I’m really sorry if I’m all over the place. Please bear with me.
I just think it’s time for me to let someone know that something horrible has been happening to me. And I am inclined to believe that I may not survive the night. However, don’t think of this message as a call for help or something. I’m not asking for that (and I sincerely doubt anyone can really help me at this point), I just want to talk to someone who wouldn’t think of shipping me off to the nearest asylum after reading this. I want someone who most likely knows and believes in my story, no matter how outlandish it is bound to be.
Because before I even searched you up on the net, I don’t know you truly existed… because I have never known you or even your name beforehand but… that thing…
It had somehow told me your name in dreams.
It wants you to know.
I would have asked how that was possible, how come it even knows who you are; I would have asked a lot of things… I have so many questions but I doubt you and I have the time for that.
My story started somewhere around three weeks ago, I’m not so sure anymore. But what I do know since it was nearing Christmas, I usually come back home late–I’m a nurse in Brooklyn’s general hospital and it was usually busy around the holidays–and my shift usually ends past 1 in the morning and surprise, surprise: I’m dead-tired by the end of it all.
Before I change clothes and get some much-needed beauty rest… or I’ll end up looking like a zombie when I show up at work again, I’d cuddle and feed my Bengal cat, Kit-Kat until I pass out.
That’s when I first had these dreams.
The dreams are… strange, vivid and it all felt so incredibly real, like an unwanted memory (that I prayed to God wasn’t mine) my weary brain is forcing me to relieve through time and time again.
One moment, I was lying flat like a starfish on my bed with my cat curled and resting on my stomach, purring loudly but at the next second, when I opened my eyes again… I found myself floating somewhere above of what seemed to be the remains of a crumbling city.
If that wasn’t confusing enough then, here’s another: for some reason, I seemed to be drifting deeper and deeper almost aimlessly in the depths of the ocean.
When I tried to look up, I can see shadows of what seemed to be like a swarm of fishes’ overhead, an enchanting blue light glimmering from somewhere beneath me. So I immediately tried to push myself up when I realize it was getting brighter the longer I looked but found myself sinking instead.
But strangely enough, (because it was just a dream, or as my mind likes to tell me, so I don’t really question anything while all of this was happening), I couldn’t feel the suffocating pressure of the water the more I descend, there was only the cold and the feeling of being drenched from head to toe.
And in my dreams, I was never afraid of the idea of drowning because I wasn’t even drowning in the first place… I was just sinking.
Instead, I only look down as the distant glow fades into nothingness. I kicked and flailed my arms and legs about, staring down at the now gaping darkness below me that appears to go on and on as I continued to fall for what seemed and felt like an eternity.
As I descend, I slowly passed by torn down, high towers embedded with what seemed to be like glittering stones and I’m not just talking about the tiny gemstones you’ll see displayed in jewelry stores, I mean, precious stones bigger than the size of a human being (even now, as I try to recall, I couldn’t find the right words to describe these lost treasures properly: no such words could do justice to their beauty, the sheer size, the feeling of being so small and so insignificant at the face of something so grand and precious and… and so maddeningly massive–!), you have to see it for yourself–though I pray you never will–and you’ll know why I am truly at a loss for words… but I’d try my best to explain:
The structural design honestly looked like something you’ll only find in dreams; they appeared to be moving, growing in size even as though they were going along with the flow of the water, the high towers looked pointy on the top and gnarled like claws, tipped with an edge of danger, with indistinct shapes and patterns I couldn’t put a name to…
And they seemed to be shifting in ways the mind could never hope to understand the more I looked. Because the longer I did, the more my vision seemed to fray around the edges.
…As though it was something not to be gazed upon.
…As though reality itself was denying its existence.
When I finally dared to tear my eyes away from the abandoned ruins that came from a time long gone, that’s when my ears caught it:
The sound of something like… was it singing?
No, it was humming.
A faint, sad-sounding melody that made my chest grow tight and my heart heavy as it continued to go on and on somewhere in the distance. And now, I know why some sailors in the stories of old have been successfully lured by sirens and have drowned to their deaths.
It was faint, at first.
Which may be the reason why I wasn’t able to notice it because the more I fall even further to the unknown depths, the more I can hear it… growing louder and louder until it feels like my eardrums are about to burst even as I desperately clamped my hands shut over my ears.
In fact, in my first dream, I think it did.
Because the second I felt one of my foot brushes over something… something that feels so thick and slithery (like a mass of crawling syrup), I saw the chasm of darkness below me suddenly yawning wide, wide open–until a rich shade of blue slowly, so slowly blinks back at me.
And while it had been eerily slow, its mere movement caused great shockwaves, making the water ripple and the ruins around me shudder and rumble.
For a moment, it feels like the world has held its breath.
And in that moment, I had no idea what I was looking at.
But every fiber of my being was blaring loudly at me, in the forefront of my mind like a warning siren to look away, get away, some sort of primal instinct screaming danger, danger, RUN–!
And then I woke up… with my ears bleeding.