The Descent

The Descent



    It began with a dream. Doesn't it always? I was a twenty-six-year-old single man, living a fairly normal life in New York City. I had an apartment, a job working as a data processor in a skyscraper. I went on dates, had relationships, but hadn't found the "right one" yet. I felt like my entire life was before me.



    Then, after a long day of work, I came home, ate a small supper and went to bed. The soft fabric of my bed sheets and quilt had never felt so good. My mind was simply exhausted; if I saw another number on a computer screen, I might explode. I fell asleep quickly, as you can imagine. But halfway through the night, I began having a dream - no, a nightmare. I horrible nightmare - and at first, I didn't even know it wasn't real. It seemed so... palpable. I could the walls around my room suddenly light on fire, consumed in flames. The glass of my bedroom's single window felt so real, and when I opened it, the gust of cold wind from a New York winter felt as it had my entire life in that city.



    In my nightmare, I scrambled out the window, trying to avoid the flames that seemed to be not only filling my room, but specifically coming towards me, heading straight for my open window. I closed it in an attempt to block them, walking out on my fire escape, but they shattered the window and moved towards me again. I clambered down the fire escape as fast as I could and slipped on the condensation from the winter air on the last step, landing hard on my back against the concrete sidewalk below. I looked up to see if the fires were coming - but they had gone back in my room. The window wasn't even broken anymore; but my room was still burning, the flames spreading to other parts of the building. I called out to the people on the street for help, but they just walked passed me as if I wasn't there or making any kind of noise. I tried to touch their faces, but they didn't react. Suddenly in my dream I was compelled to hurt them, out of a desire for help and hatred for their ignorance, so instead of simply touching their faces I pushed my fingers through their skin, their eyes, their throats. I felt their blood on my hands, warm despite the chilled air, as if it were real.



    Then, I abruptly woke up, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. I could almost hear my heartbeat, drumming as if the events of my nightmare had been as real as they seemed to my mind. At first, even awake I couldn't believe it hadn't been real. I got up and felt the walls - maybe all of it had happened, but just a long time ago, and they had repaired my room. But why hadn't I remembered it before? Or had I? Though I remembered going to bed only a couple hours before, I began doubting everything I thought and believed about my life - paranoia set in. I was suddenly convinced that I was much older than I thought - at least forty - and that those the memory of those years had been forcefully removed from my brain by some conspiratorial government agency trying to make me forget what they had done, their failed experiment on me in my room - which, I thought, used to be some kind of government laboratory.



    Somewhere in the back of my mind, deep in my soul, I knew my nightmare wasn't real and that my paranoia wasn't real, either. But I watched my mind as if at a movie theater, my thoughts and perceptions flowing by so quickly, outside my control. I wanted it to stop, but I also didn't. I was compelled to permit my insanity's continuance, and so despite my yearning to escape it and my fear that it would soon consume me, I - or, my brain, or something - let it go on.



    I grew more and more paranoid as the early morning hours passed, the first rays of the sunrise just becoming visible through my apartment's windows - but I couldn't tell. I had every light in the house turned on, wanting to make sure no government agent got in without me noticing. I took my bookshelf and my bed and pushed them against the only door leading out of my apartment. But what if they came in from the ceiling, busted a hole through it? They probably made the ceiling of that apartment weak intentionally, in case I realized their evil and tried to tell someone. I knew I had to get out of there fast. But where could I go? The government, I was certain, had eyes everywhere, and with their vast wealth and power, they could get anywhere and do anything in a matter of minutes.



    Then, I suddenly got the idea to change my appearance - but not with something like shaving off my beard, or cutting my hair, or a disguise. I went to my bathroom, took a knife, and without hesitation began cutting my face, making deep holes in my cheeks. Though I screamed in agony and fell to my knees, my mind pushed me on, and I continued until I had made a deep pit in each cheek. But that wouldn't do; they could still identify my skin, my eye color, my fingerprints. So I poured my two bottles of bleach across my body, letting it make my skin an unnaturally-pale white. The fluid also got in my eyes and mouth, which blinded me momentarily and forced me to vomit. But I knew all of that was necessary to avoid the government agents.



    I wrapped a thick bandage around my face to stop the bleeding from the cheek wounds I had inflicted, and though the pain from cutting myself and bleaching my skin almost overwhelmed me, adrenaline pulsed in my veins as my mind's delusion forced me to continue down my path of insanity. Even though I had changed my appearance, the government agents would arrive at any time, so I had to leave quickly. But before I left, I went to my kitchen and got a butcher knife, which I tucked in my jacket pocket. I then went out the window in my bedroom and down my fire escape. The steady stream of people passing down the sidewalk looked at me with a mix of fear and compassion, but all kept walking. But, one unsuspecting, kind woman stopped and looked at me, then asked if I was ok. But I immediately saw her for what I thought she was: a government agent. So I pulled out my butcher knife and killed her. I didn't want to do it in front of so many people - most obviously government spies - but I had no choice. I couldn't just let her take me.



    As the people around me stopped and yelled in horror, some taking out their cell phones, I knew they were calling in more government agents, so I took off running across the street. Several cars almost hit me, but I got past them and continued sprinting down the other sidewalk, then down a series of alleyways and across many more streets until I was physically exhausted. I was already tired from my hard day at work - which by then in my state, I barely remembered - and from all the pain I had inflicted on myself. I collapsed in an alley beside a trashcan, only barely conscious. The world seemed to spin around me, and my pain felt like fire across my skin. Though my mind still told me - no, screamed, yelled at me - that I had to run, I had to go before the government got me, my body refused. I laid there in a state of emotional panic and physical exhaust for... I don't know how long. I know that I saw the sun rise high in the sky, and then begin to set before I regained any control over my body.



    But by then, my paranoia had escalated. Suddenly I began hallucinating. I saw government airplanes and helicopters descending all around me, men in SWAT uniforms coming down ladders with rifles aimed at me. I began running as fast as I could, their bullets hitting the walls around me and just barely missing me. But then the alley abruptly caught on fire; I didn't know where it came from, but I knew the government did it. The brick walls on either side of me were covered in flames and they were slowly edging down to the ground I was running on. Up ahead, I could see the end of the alley, bright and promising, but the flames covered the ground at the alley's end, and the gap was almost closed where I ran. I could feel their heat against my feet even through my thick running shoes and I struggled to run only in the tiny land remaining that wasn't enflamed. But I knew, it was the end.



    I turned around, and the other end of the alley was also completely consumed in fire, the walls and ground. Only a small circle around my feet remained, and I could hear the government helicopters nearing, their gunfire all around me.



    Then, out of the thick, opaque black smoke all around me, four police officers walked towards me on either side. They held one hand out comfortingly, telling me that everything was alright and they were trying to help me - but I knew better. Their other hand was resting firmly on the pistols at their sides, and I knew that they were simply government agents sent to retrieve me from the trap they had set. I panicked and took out my butcher knife. I managed to cut two of them, but the other two grabbed me and then the others helped, one on each limb. I struggled as hard as I could, feeling such a powerful, piercing sense of dread and resentment and deep confusion and horror that I am still surprised I didn't have a seizure.



    I continued to struggle as they took me out of the alley, still engulfed in flames, to their vehicle: what appeared to me to be an eighteen-wheeler truck, painted completely white. They tossed me in the back and before I could escape, locked the truck's massive doors. I felt the vehicle start moving, and I scratched at the metal doors holding me in, breaking my fingernails and causing them to bleed. But then, two men on either side walked up to me and grabbed each of my limbs again - but this time, the government hadn't sent agents disguised as police officers. These were government scientists, with white jackets and plastic gloves. Their faces with all the same: wide-opened eyes, a bright, insane smile etched across their faces, and a low, continuous laugh coming from each of them, like nails being hammered into my skull.



    I screamed and cried, but nothing I did stopped them. They took vicious snakes and put them on my skin, letting them bite me and poison me. I felt their toxins burning through my veins, and slowly started losing control of my body again, as I had when I collapsed in the alley before. I watched in horror, unable to move, or to resist - either the things I hallucinated happening, or the insanity completely destroying me. They kept putting snakes on me, and their poisons eventually stole my consciousness. Just before I passed out, I had one last thought: they have me.



    Though it seemed like days, months until I woke up again, I now know it was only an hour, and when I did regain consciousness, I was strapped to a bed, surrounded by psychologists and neurologists and physicians in white jackets, all gazing down at me with a mix of sympathy and diagnostic perplexity. But to me, they still had those crazy eyes and smiles, their laughter reverberating in my mind persistently. I wept and tried to scream, but they had put something in my mouth - I couldn't see what it was - to prevent that. I tried to move, but the straps were tight against me and completely inhibited any movement. And in the back of my mind, as I had been the entire time, I watched as I lost myself, lost my sanity, and mentally perished. I was no longer a participant in my life, in control of my actions, thoughts or feelings; I was simply a spectator of what my brain had for some inexplicable reason decided to inflict on me. I didn't know why it had happened, or if it would ever be healed. But I simply knew that there was nothing I could do about it. I would be as I was then for the rest of my life.



    And now, twenty years later, nothing has changed.