i was sitting in my bed, scrolling through my phone, when i got a text from my sister. it was brief, saying only one thing: "what if i found you." after that, she sent a picture of herself. she was smiling, and though her eyes were oddly wide, i didn't think much of it. i didn't even respond under the assumption that she was fucking with me.

a few days later, an envelope appeared on my front porch. i opened it to find a pair of eyelids inside, their dried goo glueing them to the paper. i was horrified, but ACAB, so i was against contacting the cops. (this is so embarrassing. i usually follow logic much better than this, even when dreaming.)

i began getting more texts. i got them from everyone i knew: my mom, my dad, my friends, even my coworkers and manager. they all said the same thing, "what if i found you," and all were followed by a selfie with wide eyes- though i now knew why. after a few weeks, though, they died down.

i was awakened by the sound of my phone buzzing. i checked it to see another text from my sister: "what if i found you." then followed an image of herself, but this time, she seemed to be somewhere dark, and i could see the light of other phone screens around her.

everyone who had sent me a text before was sending another. they were, of course, all copies of one another, but this time, i could see them all traveling together for some reason, and as picture after picture flooded in, i could see that they were all outside on the road, walking barefoot.

they were on the road outside my house. i hid under my bed, but i was still so terrified when i heard the window to my bedroom open that i woke up in real life.

me and sal crtscreen signed up for a reality tv show wherein we'd be under the influence of controlled dreamstates that viewers could witness. the idea behind the show was that you'd be placed under the ideal circumstances to help you grow as a person, and the viewers would get to watch us grow and change. we were accepted, and so we were given drugs to put us to sleep.

it was wonderful at first. i was at a beautiful lake filled with sea monsters, but i couldn't find sal. every time i tried to find it, the world around me would change so that i couldn't do anything but play into the role the producer wanted me to play. it began as simple pushes back towards the lake- i would attempt to walk into the nearby woods to find it only lead me back, etc- but the more i struggled, the worse it got, the more my own mind folded in on itself.

when i tried to wake up, things got WAY worse. i wasn't allowed to. i had my desires and perceptions being pulled on a leash and i was plunged into what was essentially the worst most intense drug trip possible. the world around me was a haze of sensory confusion. i could taste colors, see textures, and smell ideas. i was too overstimulated to do anything, unable to even process the world around me. now, even when i stopped struggling, it didn't let up. they were trying to break me, and it nearly worked. i could practically sense the malice in the way they tugged at my neurons, and it terrified me.

the only thing that terrified me more was the idea of sal being in the same situation. i found a loophole. i killed myself in my dream and woke up in a long hallway full of sleeping people hooked up to IVs. my senses were still being muddled. i felt dizzy and like nothing was real. i was hallucinating like fucking crazy.

i ripped out my IVs and staggered out of bed. i was wearing a nice suit that marked me as the "main character," though i couldn't fathom why they dressed my sleeping body for a role that happened wholly in my head. i couldn't see sal in the beds of sleeping people, so i stumbled outside into the parking lot, limbs like jelly. i could still barely focus. the producers were still actively trying to trick me into knocking myself out, such as making me miss things like curbs and make cars look like beds, and confuse my senses until i gave in. the hallucinations & sensory confusion was much less powerful now that i was awake but much more dangerous.

it was pouring buckets outside. i almost got hit by a car in the parking lot that some poor soul was driving, tripping out of his mind. i looked inside other cars, of which there were dozens, to find people asleep inside, eyelids fluttering. some were dead. i saw one car whose side had been caved in and a young girl crushed under it. her father was still asleep in the driver's seat.

i continued to push forward. i walked out of the parking lot and onto a bridge that connected the parking lot to a section of street. under the bridge was the ocean.

there was no bridge. i fell into the freezing ocean and felt salt water fill my lungs. then i woke up.