The Oneiric Orrery

2016-2020?

I am in a vast industrial city. A scant few people are gathered nearby, chatting beneath a maze of twisting overpasses and derelict skyways. There is the soft and constant thrum of engines but I see no vehicles.

I listen to the conversations but only make out white noise. I realize I am dreaming. I allow myself to fly. I look at the highways above. They are totally blank, featureless.

I fly further up and see the city ceases to exist beyond the block I’ve already seen. There is white void beyond.

Atop the highest bridge there is a man in a grey suit. He is looking away from me. I land near him and try to talk but cannot. He says, quiet, authoritative: “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

He knows I know. My blood runs cold. He does not turn around.

I woke up in a cold sweat, heart beating rapidly. My chest hurt most of the following day.

Summer 2021

I am in a desolate world of smog choked skies and gray-green rocky terrain. There is a lasting stillness. Ruins of industrial structures occasionally dot the landscape but most of it is made up of chaotic rock formations.

I meet few others in my wandering and we speak few words. I explore for what feels like days. I find ancient munitions stashed in a cave but take none.

I make my way to a vast ruined tower made of a wireframe of patinated copper — Like some strange transmission tower. I make the arduous climb and find at the top a great slab of untarnished brass. On it is engraved a message in an unrecognizable script. Somehow I understand that it invokes demons.

I look out into the distance and see a troupe of giant clockwork elephants made of patinated metal marching towards the tower. Their distant, hollow trumpeting fills me with dread.

Autumn 2022

I am on the outskirts of an empty industrial park and silent highway. It is midday and the air is chill. Nearby a giant concrete pipe opens out to a drainage pond. I enter the pipe. Fresh water runs through it, and walkways are present on the sides.

A sprawling web of tunnels expands from this initial point. Being in the tunnels is relaxing. It makes me feel happy. I do not know why. Sometime after I enter the maze, I realize someone else is with me. They act as if they always were even though I do not remember this.

Eventually we hear other voices. My companion tells me to hide. Three people are gathered in a sort of concrete atrium with metal slit windows. They just want to swim in the pool at the bottom. I do not feel threatened by then but my companion assures me they will hurt me if they see me.

We evade the group. We wander deeper into the tunnels. I feel nervous.

Winter 2022

I awaken naked in a room overgrown with plants. The bed I woke up in is blooming with flowers. There is an incredible smell in the room (best compared to perhaps narcotic florals with orange blossom, spice, and some faint aromatics. I’ve been wanting to blend something similar ever since)

I cover myself with vines and leaves and head out. I begin to recognize the overgrown environment outside as being the ruins of my college campus. It is around midnight. Strange towering organisms form biological streetlights.

The cafeteria has been converted into a massive, towering greenhouse and indoor plaza. Within it, a council debates the future of the society living here. They greet me kindly, but sheepishly, and barely seem to acknowledge me. Still, as I arrive their conversation takes on a new urgency, as if my awakening was some manner of fell omen.

I begin to realize I have slept for many, many years. I worry what has become of those I love but feel strangely assured I will find them.

Winter 2022

I carry a sword in one hand and its sheath in another. I am wearing a dress and nothing else. It is covered in small jewel tassels that glow faintly.

It is night outside. Strange trees of blue-black bark jut out of dark, moist soil. They bear glowing leaves in shades of blue and violet. Manifold smaller plants sprout all around, sporting similar-colored leaves and bearing glowing cyan & pink flowers. Their pollen visibly wafts through the air in great flowing vortices but feels strange to inhale.

I begin running through the wetlands from something unknown. Soon a massive creature is upon me. It is the size of a 2 story building or so. Fleshy limbs and a coating of slick dark scales. I slash at its ankles and narrowly avoid its syringe-teeth. More pieces of it emerge from the treeline: amorphous globules, plant residue and wetland muck. Tendrils restrain me, though I keep fighting for a time. Eventually I am fully restrained and splayed out yet somehow manage to continuously dodge every attempted coup de grâce.

The massive monster comes down with its jaw (which is a portal) unhinged. I twist my body such that the sword pierces something important as it falls upon me. It falls fully; goes still. I am still restrained, now by its corpse.

Winter, early 2024

In a tiny trailer house with massive windows. It is night but very bright outside. Something is falling. It looks at first like snow, then static. I look out the window and see a mansion engulfed in monochromatic fire, casting static as ash. The structure twists and curls into itself, never fully collapsing.

My mother is there. She is crying. She won’t answer any questions.

Officials of unknown affiliation arrive. They carry weapons. We hide under a couch.

Winter, early 2024

On a train very late at night. A child with a knife threatens another, then stabs them, but the knife is fake. I arrive at my destination and yell thanks to the conductor.

It is some sort of rural town square. There’s a few lights on in small commercial buildings but I walk to a path into the woods. It forks, but I don’t hesitate for a moment. I take the left path and eventually find myself before a decaying mansion. There is a long-disused red car parked outside. A fresh human corpse rests on top of it. I pick it up and start to leave.

Spring 2024

I am lost in a fog desert but find a coast and walk along it. Eventually I make out sandstone and concrete structures in the fog. They have windows of homemade glass and sparse color in their architecture.

Dozens of people live there. We do not speak the same language, but it seems like they are some sort of anarchist collective. One denizen takes an interest in me and shows me a place I can stay — inside a large sandstone structure on concrete stilts, perforated by many windows. The bed I am offered overlooks much of the town. It is dim and cozy inside. I know that I cannot stay but I do not know why.

Spring 2024

A doll-like automaton of steel and brass is cast out from her home on a small island with sharp rocky cliffs.

She leaves on a wooden rowboat. It fords a dark sea beneath an impenetrable canopy of grey-green clouds. Monsters are everywhere, tails flicking above the surface and black shadows trailing across already dark water.

The automaton is upset. She believes the people of the island were too foolish to understand her genius.

She nears another landmass with large wooden docks and rusted iron buildings. It’s inhabited by a collective of people dressed in dingy, antique lab smocks and protective equipment. Before arrival, a creature with metal tentacles draws close to her boat, curious. She kills it with a spear.

The people of the docks are set into a panic and begin locking themselves down in their metal structures and hidden bunkers, fearing a coming flood and retaliation from the monsters of the sea. People wail in anguish and terror. The automaton stands unmoved but for vague annoyance.

Spring 2024

In a dingy theater backstage. A well-dressed man looks at me expectantly. I put on an ornate dress of interlinked bismuth and apply uncharacteristically colorful makeup.

The curtains raise, revealing an opulent old theater with vaulted ceilings and draped velvet over the walls. A kindly older man directs me to raise my arms and position my body just so. Dozens of birds descend from the rafters, covering me and pecking at my flesh.

Blood runs down my body. I feel euphoric.

There is no audience in the theater.

Summer 2024

The sky is dark and sickly. The sun is dipping below the horizon, veiled by a silken layer or clouds. Winds blow furious across the hills. Trees fall under the force of the gale as faraway lights of infrastructure flicker out.

My grandmother sits outside the house. I beg her to come inside. She will not listen.

I am later in an attic. An old television is tuned to the weather channel. There is no meteorologist, just the screen. The entirety of the world is red on the weather radar. The forecast displays an image of a gray world devoid of atmosphere and pockmarked by craters.

First Encounter: Early Childhood

Strange lights circling the ceiling of the room in dark of night. First noticed them well before I ever experienced sleep paralysis. Occasionally visited throughout childhood. Saw them more often during paralysis episodes. I did not see them as strange except in retrospect: each time I remembered them I felt terrified.

First Encounter: Early Childhood

Unclear if dream or hallucination. One of my uncles made extremely vivid surreal art on huge canvases. Amid broken sleep I saw the painted creatures wending out from the canvas. Like skins sloughed from boiled tomatoes. This terrified me, but I already found the paintings terrifying.

First Encounter: Childhood, 6 or 7 years old?

Horrible smiling face, contorted impossibly. Utterly still and static, occupied all of my vision. Made a horrible laughing noise. First ever incidence of sleep paralysis; when my nerves broke free I screamed.

First Encounter: Childhood, ~8 years old?

Figure in the corner of the room wearing a wide-brimmed hat. Tipped it at me. I thought that was the thing people did with hats when they were mourning so I was rather frightened.

First Encounter: Summer 2018

Silhouette reminded me of those nurse-nuns that had the fancy hennin. Very sharp needle like fingers. Needles don't bother me personally but I worried I was dying after being injected with something lethal. No, just sleep paralysis again.

First Encounter: Winter 2019

Enveloping inkdark tentacles/roots/vines. Writhing just darker than the black of the room. Felt oddly comforting but I was still disquieted from the paralysis.