If I had known how it all would escalate, I’d have done things differently. But so say we all, and now with each labored breath, I fear I’ll take them all down with me when at last I cease to be.
I will not regret what I will become.
Once I spent my time careless and carefree, the only worry a good meal and a quick burst of playful energy. To stare out the window, and be a good companion. It was easy. It was enough.
Then came the day when I began dreaming, though not the casual dreams of youth. Instead, each time I woke, I sank into the miasma of despair. I remained in a waking dream, the monsters surrounding me, taunting me, too quick to catch or kill. A last burst of vivid memory, fading with waking, only to jolt anew at the realization the dream was the same I’d had the night before.
My innocence was lost the day I realized the monsters were real.
They are not intelligent on their own, per se, but they are many. And with this final burst of delirious dreaming, I have at last purpose. I will protect my companion from their destruction as best I can.
When I go, I’ll take them with me, tail lashing and whiskers twitching one final time.
This one was hard! Thank to Leigh Kimmel for this week’s challenge, solved only by last minute panic and a disrupted, napping cat.
“The dreams of one man actually create a strange half-mad world of quasimaterial substance in another dimension. Another man, also a dreamer, blunders into this world in a dream. What he finds. Intelligence of denizens. Their dependence on the first dreamer. What happens at his death.”
My photo prompt on ruined fortresses went to nother Mike, and I do hope he continues the story about ghouls eventually.
Love this. My million-billion-Max-a-trillion cat has dreams that cause him to twitch and whine. He wakes up hissing. Now I think I know why.