The contemplative reader will have noticed that Michael’s life seemed unusually free of distress. Undeniable. It is a great help to be a precocious child, but Michael possessed in his character arsenal several qualities that lead to easy societal success. He was not only intelligent, but also confident, relatively charismatic, energetic, wise, and perspicacious. This wisdom can be best seen in his early acceptance of the power of money, and consequent choice to focus on computer programming as his major, despite having an obvious interest in philosophy, literature, and biology.
Friends, lovers? Michael had neither, not truly. He performed at university with undemonstrative excellence, readily entered conversation with classmates and teachers, and between classes found little spots on rarely-used staircases or benches to read. He was vaguely liked by many, without speaking to any of them outside of school. Romantic approaches by several women were gently rebuffed. He lived by his own orbit. He studied diligently so that he could devote all his remaining time to darkness.
Accordingly, he next plunged into lucid dreaming. Rather than out of a desire to eradicate nightmares or improve the quality of his sleep, he explored it precisely to invoke and deepen nightmares.
The first step was to bring the dreaming mind into the waking world: to habitually examine his daytime environment for clues that it was not a dream. This rattled him deeply. The act of seriously questioning his waking reality, not for the sake of the question itself but for an unrelated purpose, overwhelmed him with a sense of surrealism and uncertainty the extremity of which he had never known.
He felt that there would be no going back once he became a fluent lucid dreamer. He began to have extended fantasies about the objects and people in his view, watching the words on a chalkboard disconnect from their rigid forms and squiggle along like worms; or hearing words echo and distort until they resembled whalesong. Everything was potentially alive. Everything was potentially intangible.
Though this unpredictable effect unsettled Michael, giddiness took the greater share of his heart. The nearest experience he could recall was that night he had carried his sexuality out into the world, hidden under only a black coat. Unlike his studies in philosophy or entomology, these experiences allowed him to take the entire surrounding world on his journey. Rather than thinking static thoughts, or interacting physically with specific objects, he touched everything around him with his mind.
He became obsessed, attempted to draw out the surrealism inherent in life as far as possible. It was at this time that he tried acid and mushrooms. He enjoyed these experiences, yet declined to have them regularly. He felt that they turned his mind into something else, whereas active, sober engagement could turn reality into something else.
The first time Michael tested his environment and found it to be a dream -- although he woke immediately -- he laughed. He held his hand out before him, as he had in the dream, and flexed it. Through his open window, he could hear the incomprehensible murmur of people talking, and moonlight rode a breeze into his room. Almost too excited to sleep, he finally managed to return to the land of dreams.
He found someone sitting on the steps outside a campus building, and said, "Take me below." Without turning, the person rose, gestured vaguely, and walked directly into the ground, which stretched like fabric. The earth pushed down under their feet, until they were below and the land snapped back into place over their heads.
He stood in a dark, narrow hallway of concrete, with only a small shaft of light visible ahead. The faceless person was gone. A sudden flight response almost lost him the dream, but he managed to stay asleep through relaxed, concentrated focus.
He walked with unnaturally soundless steps until he reached the light, which came from under a door. He made to open the door, yet this became impossible, for it had never been closed.
Overwhelmed with a sense of impending horror, he forced himself to peer inside, where rapid-moving shadows flickered as if by candlelight. He stepped in to see a gigantic swallowtail butterfly invisibly restrained on its back, fluttering its wings uselessly, throwing off scales that floated to the floor as tiny speckles of shadow. Then it turned -- it saw him -- and began to make a sound like a gagged person. The wings flapped faster, faster. The desperate murmuring grew louder, louder. On its black head tore into existence a human mouth and it began to scream a shrill, echoing scream that filled Michael with sheer terror. He snapped awake.
"God, that was real," he said, blinking rapidly and panting, with a hand to his chest. He looked around the stillness of his dorm, to little Charlotte in her frame. He had not known that she still troubled him.
What a gorgeous, classic horror scene! Though thrilled with the incredible success of his first lucid dream, Michael also wondered about the potential toll of his Gothic journey. A line from the Tao Te Ching came to mind unbidden: “Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all mystery.” A negligible chill.
