We are two mariners, our ship’s sole survivors, in this belly of a whale

Posted on 10 Nov 2017 @ 1:32am by Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant
Edited on 10 Nov 2017 @ 1:42am

1,525 words; about a 8 minute read

Timeline: Circa MD 94 of Season 3, Episode 15, “Emanation”

[ON]

Lake ir-Llantrisant’s Personal Log, Supplemental Entry:

I had the dream again. Was it …two more times? Maybe three? I don’t, uh, I don’t want to think about the possibility it has been every night. I can’t really face a recurring dream. Not recurring every night. Could I have dreamt it more often? Could I have dreamt it and forgotten about it? If I knew I was having this dream every night, I don’t think I could face ever going to sleep again.

Except--

Even--

Except it’s not. It’s not the same dream. Not exactly. I don’t know a dream exactly like this one. You know the one. He came back.

Ofred.

I dreamed of Ofred again. From his maroon turtleneck to his buckle-adorned coat, Ofred was dressed as if he were a merchant, maybe a buccaneer. When I was still staying on Earth, in that old house in San Francisco, I dreamed of him twice. The first time, he appeared sitting on the ottoman at the foot of my bed. His posture was hunched over. To look at him, he appeared disoriented and maybe even a little defeated. He spoke of being lost, of being far from home. He asked me to take him home. He-- then he-- I don’t remember, exactly.

“I wanted to be smart,” Ofred said to me, when he appeared to me another night I was sleeping in that house. I was laid in the bed. He wasn’t sitting on the ottoman on this night. “Smart like Starfleet. Smarter than Starfleet. I wanted to know. I wanted tactics.”

Ofred was sitting on my bed that time. Sitting beside my feet. As before, his hair and his close were sopping with water. It dripped down his face, it soaked into the bedclothes. His posture was slouched and his gaze was lost somewhere in the middle distance. When he talked about smarts, I remembered something. I remembered something else. He told me I asked too many questions the last time. He told me he had asked too many questions too, like it was a warning.

That wasn’t the only warning. Ofred shifted his weight, shifted towards where I was laying. “It’s not smart to want so many things,” Ofred said. “That much wanting to be things, leaves your own things behind. Leaves you behind.”

All I can think is: blank paper, I’m blank paper. He told me not to question him, and I question everything. Every minute of every day, I question every single thing I’m told. If you tell me it’s hot outside, I think about if I’ve noticed the same or if my body temperature might be different than yours. If you ask me how I am, I can’t just say fine, I really have to question myself deep inside. If Ofred tells me not to ask questions, that’s all I’m going to do. Therefore: Blank paper, my mind is a never-ending sheet of blank paper.

“Blank paper begs to be filled,” Ofred said.

I don’t remember having any sleep disturbances before. Nothing before the past few weeks. Why, only now, am I finding myself overcome with sleep paralysis from time to time? It’s only then, it’s only when I dream of Ofred that my body loses its muscle tone. I can see him, I’m lying in my bed aware of him, but I can’t move. I can’t react. Even breathing and speaking and screaming are off the menu. Is this a new kind of anxiety dream? Another variation of the test you never studied for or a performance you never memorized? Am I dreaming about the sensation of sleep paralysis, or have I awoken and experienced sleep paralysis for myself?

I woke up wet last night. It was the first time (I think it was the first time?) I dreamt of Ofred in my bed aboard the Hathaway. He was sitting on my legs this time and he was looking at me. He was looking right at me. What he said… I don’t remember what he said so well… I don’t remember good. But he was lost. I know he talked about being lost.

I questioned him. I couldn't help myself. In my mind, I asked myself why he was tormenting me like this? Why had he followed me from that old house?

"You think I follow you?" Ofred asked me. His mouth opened into the shape of an oh. I would have sworn he looked surprised and he looked offended. But then he laughed. It was a diseased sound, filled with more bile than mirth. Ofred said to me, "I'm the one that's cursed. I got stuck with you."

When I woke up, I was wet. I don’t know, no, I know. It was sweat. It was my own sweat, my own cold sweat.

It’s that sensation, it’s that horrible sensation where you’re having a dream about laying in your bed, in the same room where you’re sleeping. That means when you wake up from your dream, it’s just like you blinked. You wake up in the room, in reality, but it looks and it feels exactly the same as your dream. You don’t know you’ve woken up. Worse, you don’t know you were dreaming. It’s all smeared together, like when you press the two slices of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich together. If you tried to pull it apart, you couldn’t tell which side was smeared with a dream and which side was smeared with wakefulness.

When I woke up with the dread sensation that Ofred was in my room, I tore off my bed in a flailing terror, shrieking as I went. I jumped off my bed so violently, I toppled my mattress off the bed frame and it teetered to the deck. I think some part of my training kicked in? I evaluated what little I could see of my surroundings from the dim starlight and I took hold of the mattress as if it were a shield. A weapon. I ran headlong towards the closed door of my bedroom, and thrust the mattress through where I had seen Ofred. I slammed the mattress against the door, and pressed it there with all my might. I don’t know if I stood there for an hour or for thirty seconds.

Eventually

I let go. I put down the mattress. There was nobody there. Nothing there.

End log.

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