It starts with a humming; a buzzing sound, deeper than ears should hear, emanating from somewhere inside your skull. You’re probably lying on your back. There’s a sudden realization: you can’t move. You can breathe, but only a little. There’s a weight on your chest. You’re sinking into the mattress, way too deep to be real.
You feel yourself slipping. Wake and sleep dip in and out, and you falter between the two. You’re about to dip into sleep (you’re very aware of this) when something catches you, and hooks you out. But not into awake. Into that thin line that separates the two. You’re here but you’re not. You can move your toes. Okay – maybe one toe. The more you do it, the stronger you get. You’re pulling yourself out of this dream molasses when suddenly— you fail. You’re there. Solidly.
It’s a new world; the thin world.
The first time I go there, I notice the smell first. It’s something rotten, but a chemical kind – it’s what I’d guess someone who’d never smelt rotten flesh would imagine it smells like. I am nauseous.
There’s a faint buzzing, like a faraway swarm of bees, and it comes from a particular direction; so I follow it.
It looks a lot like my home city here, but for one obvious difference: it’s empty. And still. The motorbikes and bicycles stand upright on the road, as if pinned down by invisible feet. There’s not a bird, not a ticking clock, not a breath of wind. Some of the towering blocks of flats stand stories high amongst rubble and crumbled foundations, suspended above walls fallen and floors collapsed away. I see a pile of debris and a broken bed where my apartment building should be, and I look up:
There are my old neighbours, suspended in the air. The woman’s hair is spread across an invisible pillow, the sleep-creases still visible in her cheek. The man must have been half hanging off the mattress, because now his left arm dangles down like a tree-branch, suspended off of the memory of a trunk.
They are the only people I’ve seen. I follow the buzzing.
The closer I get, the louder it becomes. The stronger my nausea grows. It must surely be the answer?
I see a building. It’s brutalist, concrete and low. The buzzing is so loud now, I can hardly think. Like an approaching train, like a million explosions played a split second after one another. That’s where it must be. I have to go there.
And then everything starts shaking.
“Lux! Lux!”
I blink and I’m in my dorm room.
I blink again and I’m nearing the building. Three more steps—“
“LUX!”
Amelia is shaking me by the shoulders.
The shadowy darkness of my dorm room settles into vaguely familiar shapes. My ears are ringing.
“Lux, you were screaming.”
“Why did you wake me?”, I shout, unintentionally harsh. “I was about to get there!”
“Get there?”
“Yes, the building! The small place, with the noise.” I realise what I’m saying must make no sense, but part of me is still there.
To my surprise, Amelia doesn’t look confused. Rather, illuminated by the torch on her cellphone, I see her turn even paler than usual.
“I was hoping it hadn’t—“ She begins, “I thought—“
“What hadn’t?” I interject, perhaps rudely.
“I thought you’d have some time before it started. I’m sorry, Lux.”
“Before what started? You’re not making any sense. It was just a dream?”
As I say the words, the memory of the place, and its realness, is fading faster and faster from me, and it suddenly seems like a dream. No smells, no sounds, just faded pictures.
“I’m sorry Lux,” she says, “It was only a matter of time. There are some people you should meet.”