This chapter is dedicated to sugarcrystals, she has been really nice to me and she made the most outstanding cover for my other love child, then she ran. Thanks Phoebe for everything.
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He woke with an unprecedented urge to run. He tried to sit up but his head was attached to something. He reached up and felt around his head, noticing he was no longer restrained.
He pulled on it and it slid off with a wet slurp and he tossed it aside.
He looked at it for a second and saw what resembled a bike helmet, oval and made of plastic, but that's were the similarities ended. It was white and the top was smooth. Around the lower edge wire stuck out a all different angles, hoses filled with brightly colored liquids protruded from three places, interspersed between wires.
Max sat up and pulled a long hose from his nose that seemed to come from the depths of his stomach, it caused him to gag a bit as it came up. He yanked out an I.V hose and removed his heart rate monitor. It immediately started emitting an monotonous tone, one long, high pitched beep.
Next he turned, swinging his legs over the edge of the contraption. His legs got wet when some sort of liquid sloshed from under him and he realized he had been suspended on what he could only describe as a rubber pool float, in some blue, viscous material.
He jumped down to the floor and immediately fell. His legs felt like they were asleep and had no strength. Max willed himself to stand and walk, he pounded on his thighs to alleviate the pins and needles. He stood and he walked, he realized with no small satisfaction that he hadn't gotten mad.
He crossed to the door he assumed led out of this room and turned the handle, ever so carefully and slowly. He opened it a crack and peered out. He saw a long hall, the sound of the flat line piercing his mind. The hall extended as far as he could see in both directions, white and clean, florescent lights dispersed evenly along the length.
He swung the door fully open and began to run, a strange waddling gate to his stride. A claxton began to drone it's lilting call, an alarm for him no doubt. His footfalls slapped loudly on the tiled floor as he trundled awkwardly down the hall.
A light, green snow fell from the ceiling. He looked up, bewildered. When he returned his gaze back in front of him, he saw in the distant end of the hall, a nude, silhouetted female figure walking ahead of him. She turned and he saw it was Sarah. He skidded to a stop when he got close.
"What...uh..what are you doing here?" Max said, the ever present confusion culminated.
"Why, I'm here to kill you." She said and seemed to turn into a undulating, pulsing grey cloud, like a dark, powerful storm rolling across the night sky, then solidified into the horrific black shape of his arch nemesis.
Just then an orderly grabbed his shoulder and spun him, Max lifted his arm straight up and over to the outside of the orderly's. Then looped it back under, spun the man around and swung him head first into the wall and ran.
Ahead was the front door, blinding light flashed and thunder rumbled. He ran full speed and slammed the front door open. He ran away from the place and turned, what he saw was had him awestruck. A huge, sprawling, old, run down building stood before him. It was probably a couple centuries old. Some windows barred, some boarded. The rain pounded, lighting flashed and thunder rolled in the distance.
A figure strolled out of the front door, dressed in a long white lab coat. The rain fell, soaking the figure of Dr. Eva Willis, a cloudy bur, caused by the relentlessly pummeling rain, surrounded her. Lightning flashed.
"Max, listen to me." She said, to Max her voice was distant and muffled. "Max. You need to come back, you can't just rip yourself from the IDT machine like that. The effects of it and the lasting effects of the medication will cause reality and dream to seem to merge." She morphed, like a liquid rainbow cascading over a cloud, from herself into a scarecrow perched on crucifix, then back.
Max scrunched his eyes closed and shook his head vigorously. When he opened them again the rain was green and Eva stood before him, her hand reached to touch his shoulder. Her lab coat was now light green, streaked with dark green rivulettes from the rain. "It's not real." Max said not quite a question, but a tentative statement.
"No, but its almost over now, we just need to get you back for one more treatment." She was gently pulling him toward the dilapidated building. "You can get them back," she took his face in both of her wet, cold hands, looked him in the eyes and continued. "It's almost over." Then Max began to sob, Eva put her arm around him and lead him back into the building amid claps of thunder and flashes of blue white lightning.
YOU ARE READING
Dream Therapy
General Fiction"Dreams have always expanded our understanding of reality by challenging our boundaries of the real, of the possible." -Henry Reed Ex-army Ranger Max was angry and depressed. Mental illness plagued him. Now he's stuck inside his own dreams with only...
