The Victim ran down the long dark corridor, full of locked doors: he knew he was being chased, and that whatever it was that was chasing him was not far behind. The adrenaline in his blood pulsed through his body, he ran knowing his life depended on it, without knowing what was chasing him; he couldn’t afford to waste precious running time by satisfying his curiosity.
Drenched in sweat, he hurried on, one foot ahead of the other as fast as he could go: he skidded across the linoleum floor which was still wet, slid around the corner, eyes darting from side to side to briefly glimpse the blurred surroundings, no time to stop and think about things; he pulled on the nearest door handle, expecting it not to open, but to his surprise it did, quickly as lightning he jumped into it with his weight, and fell down the staircase on the other side; Stumbling from surprise, he quickly grabbed the handrail, and jumped over it falling to the ground, 10 floors below. Amazed at the fact he wasn’t hurt, he got up, and wished with all his might, that he was a million miles away, he closed his eyes as hard as he could, and concentrated. He could hear a loud roaring noise getting closer and closer to him, and suddenly it was gone.
………………………………………….
He opened his eyes, and woke up. This was probably about the twentieth time in five years that he’d had the same dream. Only this time, the door had opened and there had been stairs. Before, it had always been locked just like all the others, and he’d always been caught just as he woke up. He wondered why this dream had been different, then he realized he was actually awake, which meant he now had to get up. He looked at the alarm clock by his bedside, which read 5.46am. He knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, so he slowly got up.
He reached a hand down checking himself, and slowly peeled away the sticky covers which were now soaked in his sweat. He sat up and swiveled around placing his legs over the side of the bed. He sighed as he got up, and heading for the shower, grabbed a towel from the towel dispenser he’d had installed. He briefly paused at the mirror and looked at his bloodshot blue eyes. He reminded himself his name was Tom, and he was 37: that he was in the comfort of his own home, and not being chased by anyone. He hated the hazy drunken feeling of waking up, and being disorientated, and of not knowing who he was or where he was. He noticed his ever receding hairline which consisted of longish and lanky blonde-grey hair, and a lump on his nose from an accident as a teenager. He felt old. He reminded himself it was genetic and that his mother had gone grey at 35. He noticed that his eyes seemed swollen, and figured he must have been crying in his sleep again.
He opened the bathroom door and clicked a switch on the wall, the rail extended from the wall and Tom put the towel on it, and stepped into the shower. He pressed another button, and a force-field came down around the shower area, he then reached out for another button, pressed it, and lifted up his head to welcome the piping hot steamy water, which sprayed out all around him, and ran down his tall, slender and underweight torso, of which his ribcage visibly protruded through a lack of body fat and muscle.
In his head, he tried to work out why this dream had been different, why the door had opened. As he grabbed the soap, he could picture his dream therapist sitting in her standard issue shrink-seat as she leaned forward. The scent of her perfume reaching his nostrils, as he tried not to look down her cleavage, and her quiet, song-like voice, saying “You finally unlocked the door to your subconscious then?” then giving him more pills. He never really understood the point to his sessions with her. But he went because ever since his wife had died, he’d had recurring dreams, night terrors and the occasional episode of sleep paralysis.
…………………………………………..
When it was time to go for his weekly session with Dr Hazel White, he walked over to his front door, watched the panel slide upwards, stepped into the decontamination area and waited for the door to seal, then he flicked another switch which scanned him and then sprayed him with an invisible layer of disinfectant which hardened into a bodysuit. It then placed a standard issue environmental hat upon his head, which when activated, produced an invisible barrier around his head, joining with the suit so that his body was now able to survive outside the flat.
He pressed yet another button on the brim of his hat, which activated the air converter, which allowed him to breathe in the carbon dioxide atmosphere now existing on Earth. Every time he went through this procedure, he wondered what it would have been like to live in the twenty-first century, and then shrugged it off, realizing how un-advanced the technology was.
He reached over for the button on the teleporter at the end of the road which resembled a twentieth century phone booth, and typed in the destination co-ordinates on the screen. Dr White’s receptionist appeared on the screen, and confirmed his destination and that the receiving teleporter was working. He closed his eyes, spoke the word “transport” in his bored tone, and felt the tingling sensation he’d become used to. As soon as he opened his eyes, his surroundings had changed. He was now in White’s waiting room.
He let his mind wander around the waiting room, and his eyes rested on a holographic projection of an advertisement for “Ai-ilex” which when ingested, enabled the user to have “an epiphany of the truth” to everything they’d ever wanted to know. He didn’t trust those drugs. They’d been illegal at one point because most of the users had overdosed themselves into human cabbages, but testers had simply weakened the dosage to 0.000001% and 99.999999% water mixed with sugar.
There were many other types of narcotics and hallucinogens which it had been claimed were harmless. All legal of course. Everything was legal now that crime could be treated with the cabbage drugs. At least that was what he referred to them as. He hated how people were so consumed with the answers to unanswerable questions, especially the philosophers. Why waste your life finding answers which don’t exist? What was wrong with living in blissful ignorance?
It was this stupid search for enlightenment that had killed the love of his life. His wife Chloe had volunteered for an experiment, which should have been routine, but she disappeared into thin air, in the middle of the experiment, and was never seen or heard from again, apart form in his dreams. He’d loved her like no-one else, and other people seemed to have forgotten what love was, because no-one could understand why he couldn’t get over her. They’d been married for 15 years. They’d been childhood sweethearts, and married at 17. Then when he was 32, she’d gone missing. She was pregnant at the time she vanished, which added to his despair because they’d been trying for so long. She’d been gone now, for 5 years. The dreams had started when she vanished. They were always the same. It was only recently that they’d changed.
It always started out as that fateful day. They left the house, they flew to the laboratory using their antigravity suits, because she was scared of transporting while she was pregnant, he had kissed her and watched as she walked down the corridor. She’d walked up to the receptionist hologram, gave her name and business for being there, and walked through the door she’d been directed to. Then Tom had sat down and waited. He’d waited for a couple of hours: he promised her he would wait for her no matter how long it took.
He got up and asked the receptionist how much longer she’d be. Then he heard a scream, ran through the door to find scorch marks and a pile of dust in the centre of the room. 5 men in white lab coats ran from behind a glass wall and into the room, and a rather loud alarm had started sounding off. “What happened?” He’d demanded. They didn’t know. She had been on the table asleep as part of a dreaming experiment, and then she had screamed in her sleep and vanished. He had demanded they find her and get her back, but the security robot had intervened and given him a sedative shot.
………………………………………………..
He’d woken up in a cell in the basement of the building, but the door of his cell was open. He went up the stairs, found the right floor, then went down the corridor. This was when he’d heard the door slam, and felt sick with fear for no apparent reason. Without turning, he ran, knowing he was being chased, but not being able to explain why or how he knew.
This was when he had tried all the doors and found them all locked. He wondered why he’d been left alone in the basement, in the pitch blackness, and why the building had been deserted. Suddenly he shivered, and every single hair on his body stood on end. He felt the Goosebumps, and then he felt the presence of something sinister. Before he could even think about running, his legs took charge and ran as fast as they could….
…………………………………………………..
“Tom. Tom. TOM!.. Mr. Evans, do wake up please…” He felt a violent shake, then suddenly realised he’d been so absorbed that he’d been ignoring the receptionist for the last a few minutes. “Sorry… Miles away…” He mumbled as he slowly got up.
He walked into her office and noticed that she’d changed her hair colour again. Every appointment he’d had for the past few years, her hair was always a new colour. He wondered when she would have gone through them all, but she seemed to invent new ones, even though he knew it wasn’t possible to discover new colours.
It seemed to be a cross between pink purple and green, but he wasn’t sure how. It seemed longer too, as if she could grow it overnight, by about six inches. He realised he was staring, as he caught her deep green eyes gazing at him.
He sat down in the Patients Pen. No sooner had he done this, than Dr White looked away and sat in her seat. She pressed a button and a robot arm came down, and a laser shone out from it which then scanned his retinas, and then his mind.
She looked at her screen and mumbled “Interesting Mr Evans, very interesting indeed. I see from the dream log chip I installed in your brain, that you finally managed to unlock the last door. Take these pills before you activate your sleeping cycle tonight.”
“You know I hate drugs. You know I was against the dream log. Can’t you tell me anything more about the monster? Or even why the door finally opened?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you..” she winked. “I’m just kidding. But honestly, I think its something you need to discover on your own. There is not really much I can tell you, without speculating, as we both know you don’t believe in it!”
“I guess you’re right. So why do I bother coming to see you, when I could work it all out myself?”
“Because if you don’t attend these regular meetings with me, Tom, you’ll be committed to the home for the norms.”
“Why is being normal such a bad thing?”
“Because you have to be insane to be normal.”
………………………………………………….
No sooner had he left, than Hazel locked the door, and walked across the room to a window. She pressed a button, and another door appeared in the centre of the room. She opened it, and out stepped a man in a white coat. He spoke to her, and told her she had done well.
They walked back through the door, and came out into a room in the apartment above Tom’s bedroom. They watched Tom on a monitor, and as soon as he’d taken the pills and gone to bed, his dream appeared on another monitor next to the first one.
Tom was walking down the corridor as usual, and when he felt their presence, he ran. Remembering what he’d been told, he turned to see what was following him, when he saw the horrific image being projected by Hazel and the strange man, he screamed with so much terror, his heart stopped.
The man in the white coat pressed a button, and the machine produced a laser, which fried the remains of Tom’s body, leaving behind no more than a pile of ashes and a scorch mark on his bed.
800 Kilometres above the earth’s atmosphere, a screen on an airship, showed Hazel and the strange man, watching Tom’s apartment on another screen. A rather greyish finger which was covered in a slimy substance, belonging to the hand of a mysterious Extra Terrestrial Entity, pressed a large red button, and an invisible laser headed directly towards the Earth, aimed at the two humans.
Drenched in sweat, he hurried on, one foot ahead of the other as fast as he could go: he skidded across the linoleum floor which was still wet, slid around the corner, eyes darting from side to side to briefly glimpse the blurred surroundings, no time to stop and think about things; he pulled on the nearest door handle, expecting it not to open, but to his surprise it did, quickly as lightning he jumped into it with his weight, and fell down the staircase on the other side; Stumbling from surprise, he quickly grabbed the handrail, and jumped over it falling to the ground, 10 floors below. Amazed at the fact he wasn’t hurt, he got up, and wished with all his might, that he was a million miles away, he closed his eyes as hard as he could, and concentrated. He could hear a loud roaring noise getting closer and closer to him, and suddenly it was gone.
………………………………………….
He opened his eyes, and woke up. This was probably about the twentieth time in five years that he’d had the same dream. Only this time, the door had opened and there had been stairs. Before, it had always been locked just like all the others, and he’d always been caught just as he woke up. He wondered why this dream had been different, then he realized he was actually awake, which meant he now had to get up. He looked at the alarm clock by his bedside, which read 5.46am. He knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, so he slowly got up.
He reached a hand down checking himself, and slowly peeled away the sticky covers which were now soaked in his sweat. He sat up and swiveled around placing his legs over the side of the bed. He sighed as he got up, and heading for the shower, grabbed a towel from the towel dispenser he’d had installed. He briefly paused at the mirror and looked at his bloodshot blue eyes. He reminded himself his name was Tom, and he was 37: that he was in the comfort of his own home, and not being chased by anyone. He hated the hazy drunken feeling of waking up, and being disorientated, and of not knowing who he was or where he was. He noticed his ever receding hairline which consisted of longish and lanky blonde-grey hair, and a lump on his nose from an accident as a teenager. He felt old. He reminded himself it was genetic and that his mother had gone grey at 35. He noticed that his eyes seemed swollen, and figured he must have been crying in his sleep again.
He opened the bathroom door and clicked a switch on the wall, the rail extended from the wall and Tom put the towel on it, and stepped into the shower. He pressed another button, and a force-field came down around the shower area, he then reached out for another button, pressed it, and lifted up his head to welcome the piping hot steamy water, which sprayed out all around him, and ran down his tall, slender and underweight torso, of which his ribcage visibly protruded through a lack of body fat and muscle.
In his head, he tried to work out why this dream had been different, why the door had opened. As he grabbed the soap, he could picture his dream therapist sitting in her standard issue shrink-seat as she leaned forward. The scent of her perfume reaching his nostrils, as he tried not to look down her cleavage, and her quiet, song-like voice, saying “You finally unlocked the door to your subconscious then?” then giving him more pills. He never really understood the point to his sessions with her. But he went because ever since his wife had died, he’d had recurring dreams, night terrors and the occasional episode of sleep paralysis.
…………………………………………..
When it was time to go for his weekly session with Dr Hazel White, he walked over to his front door, watched the panel slide upwards, stepped into the decontamination area and waited for the door to seal, then he flicked another switch which scanned him and then sprayed him with an invisible layer of disinfectant which hardened into a bodysuit. It then placed a standard issue environmental hat upon his head, which when activated, produced an invisible barrier around his head, joining with the suit so that his body was now able to survive outside the flat.
He pressed yet another button on the brim of his hat, which activated the air converter, which allowed him to breathe in the carbon dioxide atmosphere now existing on Earth. Every time he went through this procedure, he wondered what it would have been like to live in the twenty-first century, and then shrugged it off, realizing how un-advanced the technology was.
He reached over for the button on the teleporter at the end of the road which resembled a twentieth century phone booth, and typed in the destination co-ordinates on the screen. Dr White’s receptionist appeared on the screen, and confirmed his destination and that the receiving teleporter was working. He closed his eyes, spoke the word “transport” in his bored tone, and felt the tingling sensation he’d become used to. As soon as he opened his eyes, his surroundings had changed. He was now in White’s waiting room.
He let his mind wander around the waiting room, and his eyes rested on a holographic projection of an advertisement for “Ai-ilex” which when ingested, enabled the user to have “an epiphany of the truth” to everything they’d ever wanted to know. He didn’t trust those drugs. They’d been illegal at one point because most of the users had overdosed themselves into human cabbages, but testers had simply weakened the dosage to 0.000001% and 99.999999% water mixed with sugar.
There were many other types of narcotics and hallucinogens which it had been claimed were harmless. All legal of course. Everything was legal now that crime could be treated with the cabbage drugs. At least that was what he referred to them as. He hated how people were so consumed with the answers to unanswerable questions, especially the philosophers. Why waste your life finding answers which don’t exist? What was wrong with living in blissful ignorance?
It was this stupid search for enlightenment that had killed the love of his life. His wife Chloe had volunteered for an experiment, which should have been routine, but she disappeared into thin air, in the middle of the experiment, and was never seen or heard from again, apart form in his dreams. He’d loved her like no-one else, and other people seemed to have forgotten what love was, because no-one could understand why he couldn’t get over her. They’d been married for 15 years. They’d been childhood sweethearts, and married at 17. Then when he was 32, she’d gone missing. She was pregnant at the time she vanished, which added to his despair because they’d been trying for so long. She’d been gone now, for 5 years. The dreams had started when she vanished. They were always the same. It was only recently that they’d changed.
It always started out as that fateful day. They left the house, they flew to the laboratory using their antigravity suits, because she was scared of transporting while she was pregnant, he had kissed her and watched as she walked down the corridor. She’d walked up to the receptionist hologram, gave her name and business for being there, and walked through the door she’d been directed to. Then Tom had sat down and waited. He’d waited for a couple of hours: he promised her he would wait for her no matter how long it took.
He got up and asked the receptionist how much longer she’d be. Then he heard a scream, ran through the door to find scorch marks and a pile of dust in the centre of the room. 5 men in white lab coats ran from behind a glass wall and into the room, and a rather loud alarm had started sounding off. “What happened?” He’d demanded. They didn’t know. She had been on the table asleep as part of a dreaming experiment, and then she had screamed in her sleep and vanished. He had demanded they find her and get her back, but the security robot had intervened and given him a sedative shot.
………………………………………………..
He’d woken up in a cell in the basement of the building, but the door of his cell was open. He went up the stairs, found the right floor, then went down the corridor. This was when he’d heard the door slam, and felt sick with fear for no apparent reason. Without turning, he ran, knowing he was being chased, but not being able to explain why or how he knew.
This was when he had tried all the doors and found them all locked. He wondered why he’d been left alone in the basement, in the pitch blackness, and why the building had been deserted. Suddenly he shivered, and every single hair on his body stood on end. He felt the Goosebumps, and then he felt the presence of something sinister. Before he could even think about running, his legs took charge and ran as fast as they could….
…………………………………………………..
“Tom. Tom. TOM!.. Mr. Evans, do wake up please…” He felt a violent shake, then suddenly realised he’d been so absorbed that he’d been ignoring the receptionist for the last a few minutes. “Sorry… Miles away…” He mumbled as he slowly got up.
He walked into her office and noticed that she’d changed her hair colour again. Every appointment he’d had for the past few years, her hair was always a new colour. He wondered when she would have gone through them all, but she seemed to invent new ones, even though he knew it wasn’t possible to discover new colours.
It seemed to be a cross between pink purple and green, but he wasn’t sure how. It seemed longer too, as if she could grow it overnight, by about six inches. He realised he was staring, as he caught her deep green eyes gazing at him.
He sat down in the Patients Pen. No sooner had he done this, than Dr White looked away and sat in her seat. She pressed a button and a robot arm came down, and a laser shone out from it which then scanned his retinas, and then his mind.
She looked at her screen and mumbled “Interesting Mr Evans, very interesting indeed. I see from the dream log chip I installed in your brain, that you finally managed to unlock the last door. Take these pills before you activate your sleeping cycle tonight.”
“You know I hate drugs. You know I was against the dream log. Can’t you tell me anything more about the monster? Or even why the door finally opened?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you..” she winked. “I’m just kidding. But honestly, I think its something you need to discover on your own. There is not really much I can tell you, without speculating, as we both know you don’t believe in it!”
“I guess you’re right. So why do I bother coming to see you, when I could work it all out myself?”
“Because if you don’t attend these regular meetings with me, Tom, you’ll be committed to the home for the norms.”
“Why is being normal such a bad thing?”
“Because you have to be insane to be normal.”
………………………………………………….
No sooner had he left, than Hazel locked the door, and walked across the room to a window. She pressed a button, and another door appeared in the centre of the room. She opened it, and out stepped a man in a white coat. He spoke to her, and told her she had done well.
They walked back through the door, and came out into a room in the apartment above Tom’s bedroom. They watched Tom on a monitor, and as soon as he’d taken the pills and gone to bed, his dream appeared on another monitor next to the first one.
Tom was walking down the corridor as usual, and when he felt their presence, he ran. Remembering what he’d been told, he turned to see what was following him, when he saw the horrific image being projected by Hazel and the strange man, he screamed with so much terror, his heart stopped.
The man in the white coat pressed a button, and the machine produced a laser, which fried the remains of Tom’s body, leaving behind no more than a pile of ashes and a scorch mark on his bed.
800 Kilometres above the earth’s atmosphere, a screen on an airship, showed Hazel and the strange man, watching Tom’s apartment on another screen. A rather greyish finger which was covered in a slimy substance, belonging to the hand of a mysterious Extra Terrestrial Entity, pressed a large red button, and an invisible laser headed directly towards the Earth, aimed at the two humans.