Dreamworld

It had been three days. Three days awake and lost in this maze the overseers called “Dreamworld”. It was an accident that he had woken up anyway. A fluke in the tubing bringing the drugs into his system had brought him to consciousness. The kink, small as it was, ruined the whole experience and now he couldn’t sleep. It was a side affect of the drug Dimethyltryptamine. In its enzyme state, which is what they were given, the drug causes euphoria, illusions, and a dream like state-of-being for as long as it was run into the Dreamer’s system. More than that though, he was no longer provided with the essential vitamins and nutrients loaded into the pack to keep him alive.

Highly illegal in almost every country, the rich pay big money to spend time deep underground in the Sierra desert, sometimes going weeks without waking. The drug is run as long as you can pay for it and it, being highly addictive, had ruined many of the rich and powerful in the last three years that “Dreamworld” has been around. Many of the destroyed people came looking for the place after their fortunes had run out, desperate for a fix or hoping to lead the authorities to the highly sought compound. Many of them die from the withdrawal, their last words crying out for more of the drug that put them there.

Searched for by many, found by none. For years the higher powers in the U.S hunted for the mysterious underground network, but were no closer to obtaining its whereabouts than when they started.  The desert, an inhospitable wasteland that stretched for hundreds of miles simply contained too many, abandoned mines, ghost towns, old military stations and nuclear test grounds to search properly. So “Dreamworld” went on. Its high-profile clients bent on an escape from reality, disappearing for weeks only to turn up half crazed and unable to sleep. Or, found huddled in the desert, the life gone from them like the drugs that bleed from their system. 

The youngest son of the Sheik of the United Arab Emirates was immensely wealthy. His family, being rich from the oil sands, allowed him to go anywhere, do anything. And when he heard about “Dreamworld” he wanted to try it. Even if it was in America, a nation he despised, his was the life of opulence that could not be denied. So he came, with his billions of familial dollars to bank roll him, he tried it once and was immediately hooked. He stayed for a week, the I.V drip running the liquid straight into his blood stream strapped to his back. Now, with the drug no longer in him, the waking death was upon him.

Back home in the Saudi Desert, his name had been Assad. Here in an American dessert he was only client 01323. This was to protect the clients against discovery by the authorities that heretofore, had been unsuccessful. He wandered the dark maze of padded rooms and steel hallways trying to stay away from some of the other Dreamers to this dark asylum. Still on the drug, they had a penchant for over-reacting to the presence of another human being. Their drug addled senses give Assad the demon features and fiendish characteristics that only the insane can hallucinate.
After the first confrontation with the psychotic denizens of this shadow labyrinth where he almost died, Assad decided to avoid them. The first one he saw had tried to stove his head in with a large pipe, thinking him some sort of monster. Their wild cackles and frenzied lashings could be heard for miles and made staying out of sight easier.

He ran from them, for three days he ran, until his breath gave out, running until he stumbled and collapsed and was unable to hear the shrieks of the man hunting him. He thought he would pass out there, in the dark, cold hallway under the earth but the moment his eyes shut, they snapped open again against his will. He tried again and again after that, but each time his eyes shut they would open of their own accord. This frightened him. Coming from a background where disciplined mind and body operations were commonplace, the thought of being unable to control even the simplest body function unnerved him.

Assad’s eyes were now red rimmed, and even though he was off the drug, his sleep deprived brain was now creating the hallucinations that naturally occur after three days without rest. His body was exhausted too. No sleep and no drugs had forced him into a painful search for any of the people who ran this place or, failing that, a way out. There was none to be had and no exits to be found.  Nothing but passage after passage of flickering or dead lights and the insane who walked them. Food was becoming a problem too; the malfunctioned packet on his back was no help now. The nutrients it would normally provide to sustain him were cut off by a twisted bit of chance.

The tunnels that were used to make up the mine shafts went forever, enough space for Dreamers to run amok in their individual Dreamscapes. Assad was almost jealous of them, almost. He knew he wasn’t going to last much longer living off of the condensation he licked off the walls and the few worms that had managed to creep through the cracks. If he was going to make his escape, today was the day to do it.

Assad was in a new section of tunnels now and the slight rise gave him hope. Perhaps it would lead to an elevator, or an exit point. Anything at this point would save his deteriorating sanity.  An echoing bang rang off of the tunnel ahead. He looked up and a shudder rocked his small frame. Sometimes it was hard to tell if what was around him was real or just a by-product of the drugs and his sleep deprivation. He crept forward towards the sound being as quiet as he could. Another series of bangs and he stepped faster, limping against the pain in his side.

He came to an impasse, where the way forked ahead. The banging could be coming from either way. He chose left, the slightly elevated tunnel his only reasoning. The banging was getting louder with every step he took. Slightly more hopeful, he dragged his feet faster and up ahead a bright light began to form. The banging stopped and then he could hear soft voices speaking. That stopped him short. Now he knew that it was not the insane that dwelt here that were ahead. It was the unaffected humans who weren’t here for drugs. The Dreamers inside would not be nearly so subtle as to use quiet voices.
The light grew stronger and Assad slowed his pace to a slow shuffle. Up ahead was a corner and so he pressed his body against the wall and tentatively looked around the corner. Another twenty feet ahead were three people working on an elevator that, no doubt, lead to the surface. The light they were working by pierced Assad’s skull, driving him to his knees. For a moment he thought he lost consciousness but once again his rebellious eyelids snapped open and he remained awake. The throbbing in his head only grew worse, and he clutched his skull trying to hold it together.

It was a few minutes before he was weeping, unable to stop the pain and unable to even close his eyes. Soon he was aware of forms around him and, through his tears, he could see the three men pick him up and carry him toward the surface. They said nothing, content to hold the writhing figure of Assad and almost nonchalantly toss him onto the elevator. He could feel his ears pop and he knew they were going up. He tried to deal with the pain enough to sit up and get his bearings. A single motion upwards and he was slammed back down onto the steel floor. He cracked his head against the bottom sharply and cried out in pain. Rest, all he wanted was rest. Who were these people? Where were they taking him?

“Please,” he whispered, “take me out of here.” He was rewarded for this with a kick to the ribs.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Assad was picked up again and half dragged down another hallway. This one was well lit, with the clean rigid structuring of a hospital. Unable to shut his eyes again, longer than a blink, he endured the searing ache that came from being in a well lit place again. Every move by him to cover his face with his hands was met with a gruff rebuttal that he did not understand and a slap for his impertinence.

They stopped in front of a door and one of the men withdrew a key card from his pocket and inserted it, opening the door. Assad was roughly taken inside and seated on a hard backed steel chair in front of a desk. Behind the desk was a man in a white lab coat. Everything about him was cold and unflinching to his new guest.

“Don’t talk, I won’t care what you have to say anyway. For some reason your drug pack malfunctioned and now you are in the stages of serious withdraw. You probably can’t sleep. That is the first stage. Soon your mind will begin to deteriorate and then you will lose bodily functions and will die without any more of the Dimethyltryptamine.”

Assad started to speak, but one of the orderlies silenced him with a sharp blow to the back of his neck.

“I said don’t talk. Now, there are two things I can do. I can put you back on the drug and release you back into the mine. Or, I could kill you. You most likely have seen the other Dreamers down there. After a while, if their money doesn’t run out, they will die anyway. The drug is just too strong.”
Assad’s eyes widened. There was no way out. He would die here in this god-forsaken facility at the hands of this mad man. There was only one thing to do. He lunged, going for the windpipe. The man’s eyes narrowed and he grabbed Assad’s hands and pressed the weaker man back into his seat.
“That was foolish. I guess you made up your mind about where you would like to go. I won’t kill you though. No, you can go back into the tunnels. But I am not going to give you the drugs either. Gentlemen take this man back into the mine. See that he is stripped of his clothing and remove his eyelids. I don’t want him missing a moment of his untimely demise.”

The screaming never stopped all the way back into the tunnels.