I woke up with a pain that I’d never felt before. A bitter shock of blue—shallow waves—horrible nightmare breathing. It was all wrong. All of it. I woke up too soon. How was I to know that they only come out when we are in the deepest of sleep. They explore our world as far as they can, before we wake up. Before it’s not safe anymore.
In abruptly closing the door to my dreams, I cut off its tail. Some sort of dream worm. Crystalline fluid seeping out of its wound. Smell of distant thunderstorm. A sonic shape wriggling. Its colours shifting around into patterns and forms I’d never imagined. If it wasn’t for the immense pain that awoke me, I’d still believe I was dreaming. But I felt awake. Pain always makes you feel awake.
It stopped moving and faced me. I looked at its translucent, manifold skin and it spoke to me. Its body failed to move but I heard the voice in my head. At first I couldn’t understand it, but could feel tongues of black silk, soft as star-shine. After a moment, like the tuning of a radio, it became a piercing turquoise sound accompanied with faint hum of distant world.
It warned me of an immense energy. An almighty cosmic body. An entity fallen from higher planes. Sinking to ours. It described this entity as ineffably misshapen with leagues of scorched flesh wrapped in a tangled labyrinth of unhewn tendrils. Like vile cat whiskers, they protrude, reaching out to corrupt time and space. Bulbous lumps of misery form mountain ranges on the colossal fiend while ruins of ancient cities adorn its flesh. If one were to explore these cities that were abandoned aeons before humankind was even conceived, I wonder what unimaginable secrets one would find, and what godforsaken monstrosities exist there?
As the worm continued to explain to me, I could feel my mind unfurling as the incongruous image of this looming thing became clearer. I could see the one defining facial feature on it; a soulless non-eye the size of a sun. A space of pure emptiness that instilled a truly universal empathy in me, and then crushed it.
I could see it holding onto or attached to a sort of ghastly ovoid container, equally vast in size. An embryonic planet? It seemed frozen in the early stages of its development—against its will. What horrors lay within this sack of obscene proto-matter? What dreadful existence could this unspeakable thing that is beyond human imagination birth into?
My feeble body could take no more as I felt like I aged tremendously in the space of minutes. The worm told me that this it would reach our world soon, but could not say exactly when, as it lacked words pertaining to time in its dream language.
I asked what can be done about this wretched nightmare entity and what will happen when it arrives here. The colour of the worms voice dulled as it said that our neglected dimension has been found and to accept the fall. As if reading my mind the worm continued saying that even if I were to take my own life, I still would not be safe.
That was the last thing the worm communicated to me, as the wound I inadvertently gave to it led to its death. If only its body was still here, then my madness would be justified, but it faded with soft pastel tones resembling a gentle awakening.
This knowledge haunts me. My attempts at doubting that I even came into contact with this creature from a distant dreamland fails. I knew it was real. Inside me, towering archaic doors revealing infallible feelings of cosmic fear were now opened.
One look at the changes in our world is enough to see that what I say is true. Something unutterable is rapidly approaching us, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
UMBILICAL DISCORD 