Pursuer
Their hands grasped and pulled at my clothes. Their arms spindling to catch me at every turn. They formed paths corralling me into some unknown direction for some unknown cause. I punched and kicked. They seemed to take no damage, feel no pain.
They stared.
Young and old. Tall and short. Looked at me with unfeeling eyes. Their bodies blocking me, closing in and their fingers crawling to stop my movements and haul me towards my fate. Hopelessness started to creep up as neither my screams or attacks seemed to deter their drone behavior. My foot slipped as a young man grabbed me and I slammed into a door. Heavy it swung open and and cool winter night air rushed into the building. The boy hung on to my shirt his face unchanging, but he would not budge out the door. Arms and hands slowly started to slither from around him to retrieve me. I pulled at his grasp then grabbed on to his jacket. I pulled as hard as I could to drag him into the snowy night, but he did not budge.
“Not liking the night air, huh?” I spat as my hands slipped from his jacket and I fell back into the snow. The door closed.
The moon hung high in the sky and illuminated a white canvas of hills and snow covered houses. Snow was falling heavily even though clouds did not seem to cover the whole sky. I looked towards the building I had tumbled out of it. It looked like an elementary school. A blocky one story building that sprawled to my left and right. Every thirty feet there were floor to ceiling windows which cast yellow light into the night which held the shadows of the rows of people inside. I heard something moving, clicking in the dampened winter night. I rose to my feet and started to run. What ever it was I didn’t want to find out.
The snow picked up and I moved through suburban Midwest neighborhoods. Most lights were off, but as I rounded a house I saw a couple working in their garage which was open. The old man was sitting on work stool tinkering with something small on his workbench while his wife tended to some plants on the other side of the garage. I approached slowly.
“Good evening” I gave a wave as I entered the light being cast from the garage.
They both took a glance at me and the women moved to the end of the garage concrete.
“I know this must seem very weird, can I use your phone or Internet to see where I might be, I am a bit lost.” My request was jumbled, I was waiting for a rejection when the old lady smiled and waved me over.
“Cold night we got here, come in, you can use my phone.” She pulled out something that looked like a retro bronze blackberry. I moved cautiously towards her and took it in my hands. It was heavy, but it reacted fast to my commands I entered. I pulled up what looked like the maps app and stared down at the location.
I was close to home. How I ended up here,who those people where and what was going on was mystery, but home was west. I gave a smile to the old women and handed back her phone.
“Of course dearly, one movement” she moved into the house and returned with a long black jacket. Usually I would wave off the polite gesture, but it was snowing and I knew that i needed it.
“Thank you” I pulled it on and it fit perfectly.
The night grew colder as the wind and snow picked up. The street lamps now held a halo of snow and power lines slumped under the new found weight. I moved again past dark sleepy houses and into a road that serpentined into the woods. Houses lined the left side and tall pines to my right. I sat to rest for a moment and heard it again. The clinking mechanical sound. I peered out into the snowy haze. Blue lights, barely able to be seen through the snow, crept closer. Each mechanical click, the lights materialized more clearly. I stood up immediately. Fear struck me, what ever it was it followed me all this way. And if it followed, it wanted to take me back. The lights illuminated something in the haze. It looked like a wolf. It stood on four legs, which moved in a clockwork fashion. Two legs clicking forward while the other two clicked back. Everything to its head to its tail moved with precision. The fact that I could hear the movement was even scarier. It was so loud even with the storm and snow creating a chamber of muted silence. I moved away from it, at first in a walk then to a full out spring up the winding road. The lights disappeared and the clicking faded.
I followed the moon towards the only place I knew. I was far. too far away. I entered another neighborhood. This was a higher place where the houses had their spread of the land. Street lights lined each side staggered from each other. I zipped up the coat and moved down the streets. The snow never stopped. The cold seemed to be getting colder.
Then there it came. Piercing the silence veil once again. The clicking returned. I spun towards the entrance of the neighborhood. Blue lights entered where I had just been. Every time i rest it pursued. It needed to no rest. I outpaced it.
I started to run and heard it click in pursuit.
The pace then changed. The clicking got closer together. My body filled with adrenaline and I poured my spirit into my legs.
The clicks sped up. They grew louder.
My heart sank, my energy drained as my spirit cried to a higher power. The helplessness that I had felt in the school building came back in full force. Panic and fear mixed and welled inside.
It was out-pacing me, no matter how fast I ran, how far I went, it would now catch me.
I turned to see the blue lights illuminating my surroundings. My foot caught a stone porch and I fell backwards staring into the blue lights.
The thing looked as if a wolf had been taken in by a mad technologist, stripped of all its organic flesh, bones replaced with pistons, claws and teeth pulled and in there place syringes leaking drugging death. Two eyes black, unfeeling, cold reflected the blue lights that lived insides its rip cage of matte white steel. A wolf reborn as a cybernetic nightmare. I screamed and tried to take a swipe at it, but as soon it came within biting range, the needles sunk into my leg. They penetrated the skin with a sharp pain and then I could feel what ever it salivate inject into my veins. It slipped through my bloodstream and every part of me felt warm and my vision started to swim.
I can’t go back. This nightmare. What is it? What is happening? Don’t take me. My conscious faded.
This came from a dream I had recently. I changed a few things here and there. Dreams can be very jumbled and confusing. The over arching feeling was the helplessness and hopelessness. No matter what I did it seems that I was being out matched, pulled into something that I could no escape. There were times of hope, but then valleys of crushing realizations.
The wolf had a name in my dream (abdos? Albatross? or something like that) I cant remember, but the name was very strange. I awoke when it bit my hand. I changed it into the leg as I feel that made a bit more sense.
Be wary of your dreams. Who knows what they could mean.