The letters keep jumping around and blurring but I find the information I’ve been looking for. Hallucinations typically start after three days of sleep deprivation. I down my energy drink and toss the can into the trash. A fresh six-pack waits for me in the fridge. I have roughly five hours left to write this before things go downhill. The pale glare of the monitor hurts my eyes despite the reduced brightness, but I got this.
Since the age of 13, when I watched the first Resident Evil movie, I suffered from recurring zombie nightmares. The shamblers chased me through dark corridors, ambushed me and ate me alive. I spent my waking hours dreading those dreams, afraid of what would happen once I closed my eyes. My fear was as irrational as it was all-encompassing, making me break out in cold sweat whenever I thought about it. I avoided zombie media like a plague. I still do, in fact, even though I’m no longer afraid.
I can’t remember how old I was when my brain developed lucid dreaming as a coping mechanism. Whenever I had a nightmare, I would know I was asleep and that it wasn’t real. It brought me a semblance of comfort. The horror turned into a movie I could watch, disconnected from the emotions of the protagonist.
Occasionally, I’d get a modicum of control over my dream self. It only lasted for a single action or so but it allowed me to experiment a little. Eventually, I discovered that dying or killing myself woke me up, so I did just that. Most of the time, I jumped out of the nearest window, but there were dreams where I felt brave enough to get eaten by the zombies. Not the most pleasant way to go, I can tell you that, but whatever got me out of that hellscape was acceptable.
It was around that time that I went to a convention and stumbled upon a lecture on lucid dreaming. The speaker and his wife (whose names I’m intentionally omitting) shared incredible stories about their imaginary adventures and how they had learned to shape their dreams. I was intrigued.
They explained everyday habits (called “reality testing”) one could practice to increase the chance of becoming lucid. If you did them often enough when you were awake, you’d instinctively repeat them in a dream to recognize it for what it was. Looking at your hand and counting the fingers is a good example. Apparently, our sleeping brains have no clue how many fingers we’ve got and the dream number is always wrong.
The woman also cautioned us against habitual actions that could be unpleasant or downright scary. If you look into a dream mirror you may see your hair and teeth falling out, your skin decaying, or your whole body aging rapidly until you’re nothing but a dried up corpse. From the way she talked about it, I could tell she was speaking from experience.
When the lecture was over, I approached the couple and shared my story. I wanted to gain the kind of control they had. They were talkative and kind enough to give me a few extra tips to make the most out of the “awareness triggers” I already knew. I was thrilled to put their suggestions to the test.
I started a dream journal and kept it next to my bed to write everything down as soon as I woke up. At first, I didn’t see much of a difference. My nightmares may have acquired a different flavor, veering into new realms of the uncanny, but that was it. Just like before, I would realize I was dreaming and either watched the show till the end or killed myself if I didn’t like it.
The breakthrough happened three or four months down the road. I was having another zombie nightmare but this time I was fully in control. Instead of being a victim whose options were to run or die, I was a hero capable of fighting back. I conjured a machine gun and decimated the living dead with my raw firepower. It’s hard to express how satisfying it was after years of hopelessness and terror.
From that point on, my agency continued to grow until I was able to reshape my dreams in their entirety. I built strange houses, rode dragons and went on secret missions. Sleep became a welcome refuge from the mundane reality of school, part-time work and household chores. Every evening, I was eager to go to bed and lord over my imaginary kingdom.
I practiced lucid dreaming for a couple more years but the novelty thrill was long gone and I started to grow weary of my unlimited power. I didn’t want to give up my special gift but I kept asking myself — what if there was something bigger out there? Something even more exciting than what I’d already done? I was hungry for a new achievement, a milestone I could strive for in my pursuit of dream mastery.
I did some research but most of it pointed towards out of body experiences and hallucinatory trances, neither of which seemed directly connected to my interests. I wasn’t much of a believer in the supernatural and I didn’t intend to change that. I ran into a wall with ‘desperate’ written all over it.
That was when I remembered about those convention speakers. Of course, I had blanked out their names by then, but being the hoarder that I was, I held onto the old program. After a little bit of digging, I found the guy’s Facebook profile and dropped him a line. I wrote a long introduction about not wanting to be a creep and having really enjoyed our first meeting before asking him if he would answer a few questions.
His response came the following day. He confessed to no longer being involved in lucid dreaming — or conventions — and was reluctant to talk about it. I admit, I was rather pushy and starved for answers so I typed out my questions regardless and hoped for the best. He left me on read for the longest time and I was bracing myself for another dead end.
A whole week passed before I heard from him again. “Just don’t,” he wrote. “Don’t search for anything beyond. If your own fantasies bore you, read a book.” I thought he was being overly dramatic and intended to say so but he’d blocked me before I had the chance.
I tried to look up his wife, but if she had any social media presence at all, it must have been under a different name.
Out of options, I began experimenting on my own. If there truly was something out there, perhaps it could be reached through physical movement. I tried flying, digging, diving and just about anything else that came to my mind but to no avail. My brain always conjured a new piece of the world to make my journey endless. It felt as if it was intentionally distracting me from my pursuit of “the beyond” with unexpected locations and exciting events.
I understood that imagination was a bottomless pit of settings and plots, and I had been a fool, thinking I could outrun it. Whatever I did, wherever I went, there was an almost infinite number of details my mind had at its disposal to lead me astray. This conclusion inspired my second experiment.
I started removing things.
It wasn’t easy. The moment my attention shifted to obliterating a new object, my mind would populate the emptiness I had just created with fresh content. It was a struggle but I was getting better. Little by little, the blank space I was able to maintain grew larger. Once again, I was hooked. I stood on the threshold of something fantastical, ready to push the door open.
It took me a long time to make my dreams barren. I had to pause in between sessions because the nights when I practiced were exhausting and gave me headaches. Imagine trying not to think about anything for several hours straight and you may understand why.
I reached a point where the only thing separating me from my goal was the line I called “the horizon.” It was an imaginary boundary where my perception ended. I could not conceive of anything beyond it, and it was always the same distance away. It took me multiple attempts to finally dismantle it.
But I did it.
I don’t know how to describe the emptiness that ensued. Visually, it was like a never ending darkness but without the fear of something lurking inside. There was nothing. Or there wasn’t anything. I don’t know.
We think we can understand the concept of nothingness, but that’s not true. We are creatures embedded in time and space and our minds cannot truly grasp the totality of emptiness. Even I, having been a sole consciousness suspended in that vacuum, find myself at a loss for words. The void I summoned was a complete absence that eluded comprehension.
I tried to create a door to leave or a piece of land to stand on but the nature of the void is that it negates creation. What I was able to easily conjure in my dreams ceased to exist before it was even born.
I choked on my reflex to kill myself and flee. There was nothing that could have caused my death. I wanted to cry, to scream, but the void had made me mute and immaterial. All I could do was wait and hope my sleeping body woke up on its own accord. But waiting is hard when there is no time. Nothing moves, nothing changes. Seconds may last as long as centuries. It’s a terrifying, limitless prison.
I thanked the heavens when the alarm clock brought me back. I jerked up, filled with such a powerful sense of dread, I took a long time convincing myself I was truly and finally awake. I looked at my hands, watched the clock tick and even peeked into the mirror to make sure. My manager called me to ask where I was and I ended up thanking her for existing.
I went about my day, waiting for the memory of the void to fade, as dreams always did. I made a conscious choice not to write about it in my journal. I didn’t want it to stick. It lingered though, and with it, a foreboding feeling I could not shake off.
The whole day, I kept looking up at the sky, dreading the moment the soothing blue turned alarming red and nauseating purple. The time, which had been my ally just a few hours before, chose to betray me. I finished work and came home. The night was drawing near and I didn’t want to be alone.
I spent the whole evening playing games and hanging out on the voice chat. The casual insults and silly banter gave me a momentary respite from the gnawing tension. I even told some people about my nightmare and allowed them to laugh it off. Before I knew it, I was laughing too.
The fear never quite dissipated, but I was relaxed enough to try and get some sleep.
I was very much relieved to discover that my dreams went back to normal: random encounters and action-packed adventures that didn’t always make a whole lot of sense. I remembered how much I used to enjoy them when I’d only just begun lucid dreaming. Suddenly, it was as if I’d never stopped. The next day, I woke up well-rested and at ease. The void had proven to be nothing more than a nightmare.
Once again, I delighted in my imaginary adventures, content to never leave the safety bubble I’d created. I was a pirate, an astronaut, a lover, a dancer. Occasionally, I would spot an odd detail that didn’t sit right with me but I chose to ignore it. A keyhole that showed nothing on the other side, or a box that did not have a bottom were not too unusual in a dream.
But the strangeness continued to spread. Soon enough, there were windows that overlooked pure darkness, doors that lead nowhere and caverns that seemed endless. There were people whose mouths and eye sockets were filled with the void. Cliffs that ended abruptly, with a fall into nothingness. I tried to counter it. I imagined new landscapes, built bridges and brought in familiar characters. It seemed to work for a while. Ultimately, however, everything I invented to protect myself, the void devoured the moment I stopped looking. It was a disease and I had no means to contain it.
Which brings me here, to this day. My once rich kingdom had been reduced to a single room with hardly anything inside because I can’t afford to get distracted with superfluous details. Beyond, the void waits for my inevitable mistake. A momentary lapse of focus that will let it in. I can feel my resolve waning. There is only so long one can stay awake on caffeine and terror alone.
I know that once I let it in, I am not waking up. And I will never die, because there will be nothing out there to cause my death.
Whatever you do, do not search for anything beyond.