[M] Luci has a Dream

[Luci]

Luci is so tired.

She hears the faint echo of four beautiful, haunting notes.

Luci is so tired.

She is sinking, a thousand feet below the surface of the Nexus Fountain. Her body is dissipating, prismatic globules dripping upwards and leaving a trail of rainbow droplets to mark her descent.

Luci is so tired.

She is weak now. She watches the trail of her essence stretching upwards towards salvation. She knows if she can just hold on, she can swim back up to the top, follow her breadcrumbs, and breach the surface.

Luci is so tired.

Her thoughts drift away like the particles making up her physical form. First her memories, then her emotions, then her last dwindling strands of ego.

Luci is so tired.

Her physical form dissipates into nothingness.

Luci is Asleep.

It is the beginning, and the world is without form, and Void.

Then there is light.

Two tiny golden pinpricks, too immeasurably small to even be said to exist. But they are getting larger, and Luci is getting closer.

She collides with them at the speed of light, and the two golden pinricks become her eyes, and she can See.

Trillions of stars are racing past her as Luci hurtles through space.

The stars stick to her face, her hands, her stomach, and they become her skin.

She passes the surface of a red giant, and she kisses it, and the fire becomes her lips.

She smashes through a ball of dense prismatic gas forming a start, and she gasps, and breathing it in, it becomes her lungs.

She breathes in the sounds of the Astral Realm, and they blur together into four haunting notes, and she sings them back, and the notes become her voice.

She is thrown into a supernova, and it burns through her chest, and it becomes her heart, and she cries.

And the Astral Realm hears Luci cry, and it responds.

Billions of stars coalesce, spiraling into themselves, and there is another form.

He is smiling an easy and familiar smile. 

An elf.

[Luci]

***

Luci awakens on a rumbling subway car in a dark tunnel, the overhead lights flickering.

She has the faintest memories, slipping through her thoughts like water through clenched fingers. The tighter she tries to grip them, the faster they seem to fade.

Like a dream.

Across from her sits a pretty young elf. He is smiling easily, his white hair drifting lazily across his face. An American Spirit cigarette hangs from his lip. Without preamble, he begins to speak.

“You know in Hinduism, the universe is a dream, basically. Or a play, some people say, but I say a dream. An almighty god dreams the universe into being, then it wakes up, then does it again. It’s just that, it’s not a lucid dream, you know? You ever have a lucid dream? Where you’re in a dream and then you realize you’re in a dream and you’re all like ‘woah, I can do anything, I can fly, I can have sex’ whatever?”

Luci nods, slowly, as the elf lights his cigarette, the smoke swirling up to the top of the subway car.

“So this almighty being, right, creates these avatars to live in it’s dream, the only thing is, like, it has to forget that it’s dreaming, otherwise what’s the point? Like, it wants to experience the love, the pain, the excitement, the fear, everything. How is it going to experience fear if it’s just like ‘oh there’s nothing worry about, I’m fucking omnipotent’? So it forgets. And all these puny little mortals, scurrying around, running our daily lives, fucking and dying and doing our taxes, that’s just the great play. That’s just the allmighty just breathing out, and then breathing in, that’s the universe. We’re here for it to experience all there is to experience, you know?”

Luci nods, her eyes on the elf.

“So that’s basically it,” he says with a shrug. “That’s, you know, that’s the Omniverse. ‘This is the Omniverse. You interest me, so I’ve decided to make you a part of it’. We are all Omni breathing out, and one day, he will breath in, and all the chaos and bullshit he put us through, he’ll breath in too, and I hope he fucking chokes on it. This place is a fucking meatgrinder, you know. And I’ll never forgive you for bringing me here.”

Luci blinks slowly at the elf.

“Yeah,” he says neutrally. “Yeah you fucking did. So I’m twice damned. I’m a reflection of you, torn from your subconscious, given life and light and a spark of the divine. Not a whole torch, not like you, fucking Prime. But I got a spark. I’m alive enough to feel pain. Alive enough to know how irreversibly, unconscionably fucked I am. Because of you.”

A prismatic tear slides down Luci’s cheek.

“Save it,” the elf says casually. “So you are avatar to Omni, so I am avatar to you. You’re a mommy, how does it feel?”

He does not wait for a reply, but instead lights and passes Luci an American Spirit cigarette. She reaches for it with a shaky hand.

“You’ve hit bedrock, baby,” he says as he leans back in his seat, his arms spread behind him like Jesus Christ on the cross. “You fucked up, and there’s no crawling your way out now. You better make the best of the Omniverse, or it’s gonna make the best of you, in a real fucking ugly way. You got a choice to make, you know.”

The subway car seems to rumble more strongly. The darkness outside them becomes less omnipresent; spiderweb cracks of liquid sunlight begin to appear on the windows, cracking them.

“Are you going to play hide and seek,”

The car is lurching uncontrollably now, the wheels are screeching. The cracks in the windows become gashes of brilliant white light.

“Or are you going to show these motherfuckers what one crazy bitch can do?”

The train derails. The windows explode and Luci is bathed in searing white light.

***

[Luci]

***

Luci is lounging in a field of tall, soft grass, propped up on her elbows. She is naked, save for a pair of heart-shaped glasses covering her eyes. Above her, the sun is shining and eerily perfect yellow, warming every inch of her. A cool breeze flows across her body, giving her goosebumps and causing the grass to tickle against her warm skin.

In front of her is a calm, tranquil pond. She leans forward for a moment to observe her reflection, a pretty young woman with skin made of swirling psychedelics lights. She removes her glasses, and her eyes are bright golden pools, her pupils forming intricate geometric shapes formed from neon lines.

She leans back in the grass again, breathing in the sweet smell of honeysuckle and lilac, and sighing.

Beside her is a straw haired teenager in overalls, holding a fishing pole already cast into the pond, radiating an aura of calm. They are humming to themself as they pull out a long corncob pipe and load it with tobacco that glows a dull red, gradually mixing words into their rhythm.

“Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.”

They sing with a voice tinted by shades of gender and overlaid with the drawl of the american south. They place a coal on top of their pipe and light it with a strange golden lighter.

“So it’s like, you remember when I was talking about sleepwalking, right?” they ask Luci.

She nods, although she does not remember meeting the straw-haired fisher until moments ago, when she had awoken in the grass.

“So yeah,” the fisher continues. “When you fall asleep, your brain releases a pair of chemicals, GABA and glycine, which paralyze your muscles. This is extremely important, because if those chemicals aren’t released, you would just react to all these dream stimuli. Like, if you dreamed about seeing a tiger you would run off while you’re still asleep and smack into a wall, and you wouldn’t really get much sleep that way. Sometimes this system malfunctions, it can lead to things like sleep paralysis, where you are paralyzed before fully falling asleep. So sleepwalkers often have too few receptors for these chemicals, they don’t work properly. A lot of sleepwalkers, they dream and sleep with their eyes open. They can prepare food, have conversations, drive, even murder people all while they are asleep.The reason their brain doesn’t tell them ‘hey you aren’t asleep, this is real life, not a dream’ is simple; because to the brain, there is no difference between dreaming and living. Compare this to memory.”

The coal above their pipe crackles, shooting a tiny stream of green sparks as they pass the pipe to a grateful Luci.

“Memory,” they continue. “Is deliberately muted, vague. If it wasn’t, if we were able to vividly recall every memory with perfect clarity, we would never get anything done. The brain would interpret is as it interprets a dream, as something exactly as real as your normal waking life. Like the tiger. If our memories worked with perfect accuracy, we just run away any time we remembered a tiger, which wouldn’t leave us much time to gather berries or invent calculus. But it kind of puts the difference between memory and dream into stark relief, doesn’t it? Like the Brain-In-A-Var theory, right?”

The straw haired fisher motions for their pipe back. Lucy takes a long drag before passing it back to them.

“Brain-In-A-Vat theory,” the fisher says with a mouthful of smoke. “Is based on Descartes’ Evil Demon theory, which is based on Plato’s Cave allegory, which may be based on the Hindu Mayan Illusion. Basically, can you prove that you are not living in an illusion created by an evil demon? Or in more modern times, can you prove you are not a brain in a vat, your neurons connected to wires fed into a computer that release chemicals and electrical impulses identical to those the brain would normally receive? The answer is no, no you fucking can’t. You can’t prove that you aren't a brain in a vat, or prove you aren’t under the control of a demonic illusion, or prove that you aren’t dreaming. You can’t even prove you aren’t dead.”

The breeze seems to quiet, and the sun in the cloudless sky grows warmer on Luci’s body.

“You know the brain survives 5 minutes after death,” the fisher quips. “But considering how the brain interprets time, that can be a lot longer. Like how sometimes it can seem like a barely a minute ahs passed since you close your eyes before you have to wake up? Or like, you ever wake up and see the clock and it’s like 5:30, so you roll over and have this amazing expansive dream that lasts for hours and then you roll back over and it’s 5:31? There are a lot mroe than just five senses, like the sense of balance, or your sense of time. ALL of these senses can be manipulated, and are. Time flies when you’re having fun, but slows to a crawl during the last five minutes of class before the bell rings. So there’s this theory that when you die, that five minutes of chemicals pumping and neurons firing, that can be your entire lifetime. We could be living in that, right now, you know?”

Lucy nods, slowly. She sits up and stretches, pulling the warmth of the sunlight into her. She reaches over towards the straw-haired stranger, placing a delicate hand on their thigh.

The fisher’s rod starts to whir, and they sit up in excitement.

“Woah!” they say as they start to reel it in. “I think it’s a big one!”

Luci doubts it; the pond is small and still. But the rod is being bent forcefully downward, jerking the fisher forward.

“Help me out here?” the fisher implores,a s Luci obliges.

The two of them grab hold of of the rod, letting it bend back and forth, using every ounce of their strength to pull upwards.

A shadow starts to appear below the surface of the pond.

“Almost!” the fisher promises. “Almost got it!”

The fisher catches Luci’s eye and winks. They let go of the rod, but Luci does not.

She is yanked forward and disappears beneath the surface of the pond with only the tiniest of ripples to disturb it’s otherwise placid surface.

The fisher grins as they relight their pipe and start singing to themselves.

“Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.”

***

[Luci]

***

Luci sighs as the cool waters of the pond envelope her sun-kissed skin. The swirling colors that make up her form respond as well, the velvety reds and tangy oranges slowly fading as the heavy blues and sour greens brighten. She lets her body sink, turning backwards to stare up at the surface of the lake, watching the prismatic bubbles escaping her nose and mouth float towards the surface.

Beside her is a grinning amaranthine water nymph. The nymph is swimming in quick spirals around Luci, her bright green eyes pouring over Lucy with interest.

Lucy rotates her body languidly, and sees a glimmering underwater city below, twinkling with pink and green lights. Somewhere in the city, a pinprick of blinding bright white light catches her attention.

She hears four haunting, beautiful notes coming from the city. They grip her soul, washing over her like the first nostalgic waves of true love.

She angles herself to sink more quickly, drawn like a moth to the flame, but the city only seems to get further away. In frustration, she starts to swim towards it.

The nymph circling her giggles and shakes her head.

“To move forward, you must go backwards,” the nymph quotes, her voice squeaky and energized. “To go down, you must go up.”

Lucy nods and begins to swim upward, only to find she can’t; no matter how hard she struggles, she simply sinks, and the city below her gets farther away.

The nymph giggles again, little purple bubbles the shade of her skin escaping her mouth.

“There is no up and down underwater,” the nymph squeaks, holding her sides, struggling to get the words out from laughing so hard. It takes her some time before she is able to calm down enough to speak again.

“Come on,” she says, her eyes twinkling mischievously. “I know a shortcut!” she says as she swims off to Luci’s right side.

Luci follows her, navigating through the water easily, and after some time the pair come to the entrance to an underwater cave. The entrance is glowing softly, pulsing with multicolored light. The nymph turns back only when she is about to enter the cave to wink and flash her impossibly white teeth at Luci, and then swims inside. Rolling her eyes and stifling a grin as well, Luci follows.

The cave is surrounded on all sides with bioluminescent flowers of all colors. Pulsing pink morning glories, vibrant blue sunflowers, ruby red violets, royal purple roses, and more bizarre blossoms aside.

The smell is intoxicating.

The cave is narrow, but large enough for the two to swim side by side if they chose. It winds slowly downward, left, then right, sometimes spiraling. Sometimes Luci thinks she is actually swimming upward. She quickly loses any sense of direction as she follows the nymph deeper and deeper into the winding cavern.

After several hours, she realizes the nymph is speaking to her.

“Humiliation is the penultimate emotion,” the naked nymph squeaks in her high voice. “Shame is a cosmic force driving all of culture and behavior. It’s an evolutionary response mechanism, you know? Back when people were huddled in caves, coming out only to kill and eat, banding together for protection. Shame meant risking ostracization, it meant your family abandoning you. It meant death. Thus, shame became the weapon of choice for those who seek to control, to manipulate their clans. It is these arbiters of shame who hold all power, and always have, throughout history. Only by destroying the concept of shame, by burning it to the ground, destroying it beyond the power of memory or history to recall it, will we ever be free.”

The cavern opens into a small chamber covered in brightly glowing red and orange moss. All around their heads, tiny yellow kappas spin and twirl through the water, buzzing excitedly around them like a school of fish. There are several exits, but the nymph leads Luci through one of the larger ones, and they exit into another tunnel, this one filled with blinking daisies.

“This of course bears the question,” the nymph continues, without glancing back behind to check the Luci is following. “What is the meaning of life? Hedonism is the fullest expression of the rejection of shame. And to be clear, I am referring to complete moral nihilism here, not the watered-down individualist viewpoint of ‘so you harm none, do as ye will’. Hedonism as the weapon of freedom is not a philosophy compatible with moral relativism, or Confucian moralism. Likewise it is not a return to barbarism, of warlords with their harems and ego-inflating crusades. They are driven by fear of shame. It is not a return to Greek decadence, with their wine and orgies at the expense of the poor. They too, are driven by shame. Hedonism is utopian by definition, it is a riot of empathy climaxing in a singularity of ecstasy where the needs and wants of all beings are met simultaneously and infinitely.”

The tunnel begins to narrow and slope sharply downward. They dive into an underwater field of glowing rainbow chrysanthemums, each with petals blinking in alternating colors. Luci cannot help but pick one. Again, the same four heavenly notes ring in Luci’s ears, spreading through every nerve. The nymph does not seem to notice.

“Not too far now,” she squeaks. “It’s just a few more hours and-oh wait, no, we’re here.”

The tunnel opens into a glittering underwater city. On the floor of the pond is a great coliseum flashing pink and purple from each column. Massive golden chains tether each column to a an island floating hundreds of feet above it, each adorned with towers and cathedrals and shops and homes. Flitting freely from island to island are the residents; mermaids, nymphs, kappas, crocodile-folk, kobolds, selkies, qalupalik, nguruvilu, and stranger creatures besides. Beside them are humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, hobbits, orcs, and other humanoids, and they are riding on the backs of everything from sharks to jellyfish to sea serpents. On a far off island in the distance, a bright white light catches Luci’s eye.

Reverberating through the water, emanating from the white light, are four haunting notes.

Luci rockets through the water like a torpedo, the burst of water sending the nymph tumbling backwards as she squeaks indignantly.

Just as Luci approaches the white light, it disappears. She halts, blinking in confusion for a moment, and then she notices the ripples in the water. She blinks again. How fast is it moving, that even SHE cannot see it. She hears the siren song again, coming from high above, and before the first note is completed she is speeding towards it again.

This time she keeps her eyes locked on the little speck of white, following with her ears as much as her eyes. Surely enough, as Luci gets nearer, the light banks off to her right, but she is prepared and turns with it.

Left, right, up, down, backwards, forwards; the chase quickly leaves Luci with no sense of direction. The lights of the city blur into a speeding prismatic tunnel, with a bright white light at the end that is seeming to get smaller and smaller. Luci squints, and she realizes the light is a person, and then they are gone.

Luci drifts aimlessly for a moment, her head swiveling back and forth, and then she hears it.

The four notes.

She follows them blindly, and finds herself in front of a titanic coral reef, stretching higher than she can see. Built into the coral reef is a very plain looking wooden door, with the same white light peeking through it’s edges. The door is ajar, and the faintest hint of the four notes is wafting through the crack.

Luci opens the door, and steps into the blinding sunlight.

***

[Luci]

***

Luci steps onto a rumbling red railroad car. She closes the glowing white door behind her, and it disappears into the wall, leaving only a dim outline of white paint to show it ever existed. The car is open on either side; behind her, verdant fields of purple and blue grain wave in the wind, as far as the eye can see. In front of her, a vast pink ocean with gently crashing waves. Off in the distance, Luci can see the outline dilapidated sky-scrapers, then only a patch of darkness, sitting fat and swollen, a blot of inky blackness marring the pristine landscape.

Luci leans out of the train car, looking down, and sees it is rumbling down, not a track, but a road paved with yellow bricks. The path is winding, back and forth, sometimes cresting and dipping like a roller coaster. Luci pulls her head back in the train cart, and fixes her attention on the man in the corner.

The railcar is completely empty save for the young man. He has multicolored glowing skin, like Luci, but blotchy and still, instead of the constantly swirling watercolors that make up her form. He has a short afro, flashing quickly between glowing pink, then green, then blue. He wears a bulky green army jacket and baggy jeans. His shoes, once pristine white basketball shoes, are now covered in softly glowing graffiti.

His eyes are galaxies, constantly swirling, zooming in and out, stars and comets wheeling past.

Behind him is a graffiti mural of a scantily clad woman with a lightsaber. Her flaming red hair matches the colors of the lightsaber perfectly, and Luci can feel the heat emanating from the picture.. Her torn clothing waves in the wind with her hair, and she is fixing Luci with a hostile stare.

In his hands, the man holds a spraycan.

“Hey,” he says casually, and Luci nods to him. “I know you, don’t I? You’re a tagger?”

Luci nods, slowly.

“Yeah, I know you,” he says, confirming his suspicions. “You’re that Acid Girl from Udditi. You’re a long way from Kansas, baby. But hey, so am I. That’s why I ride the tracks, universe to universe. I think we met in that one astral realm in the universe where time was running backwards and everyone only had beta brainwaves. You started Glitter Mafia or something, and I was rolling with Revolutionary United Front. Damn, we caused a lot of trouble, right? You new here?”

Again, Luci only nods. The train does a loop, but the gravity inside the car does not seem to notice.

“That’s what I thought,” he says, eyeing his own painting and sighing heavily. “Well, there’s no getting back now. At least, I never heard of anyone leaving, and I’m pretty good at hopping universes. If anyone has a shot though, it’s you. But you’re definitely going to need a can. You look like you came from Atlantis; did you get a flower?”

Luci lifts up her hand, showing him the prismatic chrysanthemum.

“Arite, good,” he says, his galactic eyes on the flower. “That’s a good base pallet. Now what you’re gonna do, you’re going to feel for the Vibes. In the Omniverse, the Vibes are strong as fuck. The strings of reality are loose and thick; reach out to them. Grab them.”

Luci closes her eyes, and begins to meditate. She feels the rumbling of the train cart, hears the wind rushing past her, tastes the ocean spray in her mouth, inhales the scent of the chrysanthemum. And beneath it all, she feels the Vibes. The tagger is right; the strings making up this universe are thick and loose, like Luci. They are simple, easy to manipulate, the physics of the world working on a poetic level, like it was created by a child.

She lets the flower float in front of her freely. She exhales, reaching out her hands to slip the strings between her fingers, wrapping them tightly, intertwining them in a tight sphere around the chrysanthemum. When she is satisfied, she pulls the strings, and opens her eyes.

Floating in front of her is a prismatic bubble, containing every color of the rainbow and several others as well. She pops it.

A spray paint can falls into her hand.

Luci shakes the can vigorously. The tagger turns away politely, adding some details to the edges of his mural as Luci paints herself some clothes. A pair of worn sneakers covered in glowing graffiti. A pair of ripped jeans. A tie-dye spaghetti strap t-shirt. A thin hoodie. A backpack. A set of pens with glowing tips. A roll of blank stickers. A bag of drugs. A pack of cigarettes. A lighter. A gun.

“That heater isn’t gonna be worth much down here,” the tagger says. Luci nods again, rolling the desert eagle over in her hands, examining it. It feels light, hollow, less real. “Down here, in the OV, a weapon is only worth what you put into it. This universe isn’t all nymphs and DMT. This is one of the bad ones. If you’re gonna survive, you gotta be ready for it. You wanna paint?”

Luci nods, and begins to paint.

First, she covers the entire compartment with glittering, winking stars. She paints herself, floating through space, her skin shimmering and pulsing with color, her hair waving with the wind. Her painting floats around behind her, watching her work. She paints the outline of a subway car, and a handsome, smiling elf with an American Spirit cigarette dripping from his lip. He winks as she passes him. She paints an adrognyous straw-haired teenager in overalls, a fishing pole in their hands, and paints a little pond on the floor of the compartment. The teenager tips their straw hat at her and puffs their corncob pipe. She paints a stunning underwater city, and a beautiful nude purple water-nymph to giggle in front of it. She paints the tagger with his galactic eyes.

And in the center, she paints a figure.

It is glowing white so bright it is blinding, and only the dimmest outline of it’s form is visible.

“I guess you’ve seen the White Rabbit,” the tagger comments idly. He sighs, and shakes his head. “You be fucking careful, now. You don’t wanna follow that demon. I know she looks good, I heard she sounds real good too. That’s a fucking SIREN song right there. She don’t give a fuck about you, she will lead you astray, get your head all kinds of fucked up until you don’t even realize you’re exactly what she - oh,” the tagger says, seeing that Luci cannot take her eyes off the white figure in the center. “Oh, I see. You just don’t give a fuck, is that it?”

Luci nods absentmindedly, her eyes locked on her own painting. The tagger sighs again.

“Then you’re gonna need something heavier that peashooter,” he says. He begins shaking his own can, the little metal ball bearing ringing. “Here.”

He begins painting on the roof of the car. Luci and her paint creations all stop to watch him. His movements are wide and steady, unlike Luci’s short chaotic burst and slashes. He paints massive pair of eyes. They are galaxies, constantly swirling, zooming in and out, stars and comets wheeling past. He reaches up and plucks them from the ceiling, and they shrink to fit his hand.

He holds them out to Lucy.

“Here, you can have my eyes,” he says, a grin on his face.

Luci stares at him.

“Go on,” he says. “I don’t mind. I know a lot of taggers have a  thing about sharing art. But I trust you. I like you. I think if anyone can break out of this universe, it’s gonna be you. But to do that, you need survive. Take ‘em.”

Slowly, Luci reaches out and takes the eyes. She stares at them, feeling the heat in her hands. She slide them up to face, wiping them into her own eyes.

The comets and stars and galaxies join her own geometric shapes and tye-die rainbow, fading into the background. She feels the strength of the art surging through her body.

“Thank you,” she says in a dreamy voice. Her face is one of ecstasy. She lights a cigarette with a shaky hand, and exhales a dark purple cloud filled with stars.

“For sure,” the man says, eyeing Luci wearily. “Now listen, there’s something you should know-”

Luci’s head swivels around so fast her hair creates a gust of wind in the compartment. In a blur she is at the opening to the compartment again, leaning out of it with one hand. The echos of the four notes are burning in her skull.

“Ah fuck, you hear it again, didn’t you?” the tagger says, with stress in his voice. “Listen, before you go you need to know something-”

A bright white blur explodes from one of the train cars in front of them, streaking across the pink ocean at breakneck speed, ripples emerging from each footstep.

“Wait! I didn’t tell you-” the tagger calls, but it is too late.

Luci is already speeding across the surface of the ocean in pursuit.

Heading for the city of darkness.

***

[Luci]

There is only the song.

It drowns out the sound of Luci’s worn sneakers slapping against cobblestone.

It drowns out the howls of the nightmarish creatures lining the sidewalks.

It drowns out the screeching of tires and the screams of the innocent.

Luci races through the streets of the city of darkness at top speed, following her ears and her heart, as the sights of the city blur into darkness. She catches only the faintest glimpses of the White Rabbit; a flash of whtie light reflected onto the wall of a tavern, or making a hairpin turn down a darkened alleyway.


Luci runs.

Her heart is screaming in her chest. Her legs are burning. Her lungs are about to burst.

The glimpses become more fleeting. The figure gets farther and farther away. The song gets fainter and fainter, and then disappears.

Luci stops running and doubles over, resting her hands on her knees. She takes deep, gulping gasps of air, her vision swimming. A part of her notices the air is thick and fetid, and tastes of death and poison, but she doesn’t stop drawing breath. She pulls out her spray can, and huffs for a few seconds, exhaling a small cloud of gold and rainbow glitter. She straightens up, panting less desperately, and observes her surroundings.

The darkness is oppressive. Aside from Luci, the flickering street lights and dying lanterns provide the only illumination. They cast strange shadows onto stranger buildings; massive stone towers that blend into glass and steel skyscrapers without rhyme or reason. Everything seems dilapidated and, when Luci looks closer, hostile. The lid to a mailbox across the street opens and closes with a harsh metal squeak, its jagged eggs looking like a mouth with frightening teeth. A fire hydrant appears to scowl at her, a thin stream of mist escaping and sounding like a hiss. Luci draws her jacket around her shoulders and mutes her bioluminescence, hoping to not draw attention.

Her head swivels around sharply as she hears the high-pitched revving of a motor, and she shrinks back against a wall to an alleyway, poking her head out and looking up the street.

A riderless orange dirtbike tears out from behind a corner, its headlight roaming up and down the street as it revs its motor menacingly. The street suddenly gets very quiet. The mailbox stops squeaking. The fire hydrant stop hissing. The air hangs still and foul in the absolute silence.

A predator.

It’s headlight beam sweeps over the hydrant, but the bike ignores it. The beam finds the mailbox and buzzes slowly towards it, but seems to lose interest, and continues up the street instead. It’s beam fixes on an electrical box, and the bike begins to inch slowly and cautiously forward. When it is a few feet away, a crackling sound splits the air, and a burst of sparks shoot from the electrical box towards the bike. The bike revs its engine and scurries out of the way, it’s motor shrieking, but it retreats to the middle of the street.

Very suddenly, the bike whirls around, and fixes it’s headlight directly upon Luci.

The motor revs, and Luci’s hand goes to her spray paint can hanging off her hip.

The back wheel begins to fishtail, and Luci shakes the can in her hand, the little metal ball bearing rattling.


The back wheel catches and the bike lurches forward, it’s engine screaming.

Luci draws her hand back behind her shoulder, her finger pressing down on the cap of her spraypaint canister, and a long golden line of glowing paint emerges.

The bike is charging, and it hops the curb, it’s front tire pulled upwards on a collision course with
Luci.

She slings her arm forward, the long golden rope erupting into a whip of multicolored flame.

The whip crackles as Luci snaps it forward. The tip collides with the front tire of the bike with a bang, sending it veering off to the left with an angry howl from its motor. In the blink of an eye, it has circled around again, and charges Luci once more.

Another snap, another bang, and now the headlight of the bike is cracked.

The orange bike roars its rage at her, revving in the street, spinning itself in donuts, before fixing itself to charge once more.

The pair stare each other down for several tense seconds, and then Luci cracks her whip, and the bike speeds down the streets again, screaming it’s rage.

Luci slips her spraycan into the holster by her belt, and creeps back into the shadows

***

Luci is spray painting a mural onto a red brick wall in a darkened alleyway. The dumpsters watch her with interest and apparent malice, their lids banging softly.

A pair of glittering rainbow wings.

She uses long, slow strokes the length of her body. She follows every curve with a careful, steady hand. It is several minutes before she stands back one final time, observing the mural, and seems satisfied.

Luci walks up to the mural and places her fingertips against the rough red brick. She pushes, and her hand seems to sink into the wall. Then it is her arm. Then, it is her body.

A two-dimensional painting of Luci appears on the wall, blinking slowly. She stretches, and then smiles; she is in her element. She stands in front of the rainbow wings, adjusting herself until the lay behind each shoulder blades. She closes her eyes, and the wings flap.

Once. Twice.

Luci grins, and steps out of the wall back into 3-dimensional space, her face turned upwards, ready to soar across the city.

She remains firmly on the ground.

Luci looks around in surprise, and sees the pair of rainbow wings are still painted onto the wall, dripping sadly, rather than on her back. She sighs, then straightens up.

Her wings may be gone, but her feet are still with her.

She strolls down the alleyway, hiking up her backpack.

And walks casually through the dead-end brick wall on the other side.

She doesn’t know that shortly afterwards, a riderless black harley davidson would rumble down the alley.

It’s headlight would wash over the mural of the wings, and it’s engine would scream in fury.

It would peel off in a screech of tires and an angrily firing tailpipe, followed by a pack of a dozen riderless motorcycles.

In the back, an orange dirtbike with a cracked headlight follows dutifully.

***

Luci is in a tavern lit by dimly flickering torchlight.

The tavern appears to be something out of the middle ages. Stone walls and floors, with thick wooden benches and stools. Tapestries line the wall, portraying horrific monsters and acts of cruelty.

She sits on a creaky chair in front of a smoldering fireplace, sipping a watery ale from a chipped glass, thinking.

A man with an octopus for a head pulls up a seat beside her.

The two stare into the fireplace for some time before he speaks.

“I have always had a fascination with nightmares,” he says in a posh english accent. “I suppose it is similar to the joy one experiences from a rollercoaster. To get so close to death you can taste it, feel the blood pounding in your ears, your heart about to explode within your chest. The key difference being, of course, that you rarely are aware you are wrapped in a nightmare when you are in one. On the contrary, on a rollercoaster the rider is quite aware they are in little danger. They trust in the mechanics who built it, in the operators who control it. But in that moment of cresting the hill before the plunge, your body disbelieves your brain, fear and panic grip you, and for a moment you taste death, and you are alive, but only slightly. Intellectually, you understand there is no threat, and you laugh. A nightmare offers no such recourse. It is pure, undiluted, believable fear.”

The man takes out a cheap fat cigar and, holding it with one of his tentacles, lights it. Lucy follows suit, pulling out a long, thin cigarette and lighting it, never breaking her gaze with the fireplace.

“I became a nightmare chaser some years ago,” the man continues. “Starting with dreams of falling. Some Dreamers love the flying dreams, where they soar upwards, uncontained by gravity or logic. I, however, craved the screaming, the loss of control, the stomach dropping faster than the body. I started to crave more. For some time, I became enamoured with bug dreams. Dreamers covered in giant centipedes gnawing at their toes and fingers, stuck in giant webs unable to move as they are inched closer and closer to a fat, swollen spider. I became a nightmare collector around that time, which is where I got this head. My tastes have since become more eccentric. I found some absolutely monstrous creations in my travels, would you be interested in seeing any?”

Luci shakes her head, a single rainbow tear flowing down her cheek.

“Come now, no tears,” the man says sternly, wiping Luci’s cheek as she shudders. He licks his fingertip, sucking the remnants of Luci’s tear with one of his tentacles. “They can smell it. They can taste it. Fret not, little dream chaser, for you have found yourself in kind hands. I know that which you seek, and where you can find her.”

Luci stops crying, and holds very still.

The man emits a wet sort of chuckle from his octopus head.

“Oh yes,” he says wryly. “You are not the first dreamer the White Rabbit has led astray. She is at war, you know, and fights her war with unsuspecting soldiers such as yourself. I have seen many come through this city of nightmares, this age of darkness, and none leave. Still, none have heeded my warnings yet, and I see no reason you would be the first. You must go west. You will see a skyscraper, with red stone at the bottom, and glass and steel at the top. It will have a  great needle atop it with a flashing red light. That is where she wants you to be, do you understand?”

Luci stares at the smoldering fireplace for a moment before flicking her cigarette into it. She stands, and nods.

The man with the octopus head claps his hands together, and rises as well.

“Perfect!” he says happily. “Then my job is done! If you ever wanted to return the favor-” he says, moving towards Luci with his hand out.

In a quantum flash, Luci has her gun in her hand and is pressing it into the man’s stomach.

“If I ever see you again,” she says quietly. “I’ll fucking ventilate you.”

He barks out a wet laugh.

Luci begins to walk backwards out of the bar, slowly, her gun trained on the man with the octopus head. He is waving cheerfully to her as she leaves out the back.

***

Luci is walking westward down dark, ragged streets when she first hears them.

The rumbling motors to her back, the screeching of tires.

She hears them moments before they turn the corner, a few blocks east, to her back.

There are no headlights this time; the pack hunts in darkness.

A dozen riderless motorcycles explode from behind a corner in a roar of metal and rubber. A massive black Harley in the lead. As they round the corner, their headlights flick on, and Luci is bathed in light.

She runs.

Luci rounds a hairpin corner and has to jump over a mailbox, stumbling as she lands. One of the bikes behind, a red Honda, isn’t so lucky, and slams into the mailbox with a bang, it’s motor howling in pain. Two more crash into it, and a gasoline fire lights up the night.

She ducks left into an alleyway, and sees it is blocked by several sentient dumpsters, their metal lids flapping angrily. Luci veers into the brick wall, the world warps, and then she is running on the wall as easily as if it was the ground. She loses one pursuer as it crashes into the dumpster, but the rest of the pack is not deterred, driving up onto the alleyway walls and following in her wake.

The alleyway splits off into a T intersection, and Luci banks right without a thought. A twelve foot tall chain link fence guards the end of the alley, barbed wire curling at the top. Luci does not hesitate, and charges it at full speed. At the last possible second, she holds her breath, and her body become pale and translucent, and she passes through the fence like wind.

Behind her, the pack of bikes leap over the fence, most of them clearing it, except for a blue kawasaki. As it crests the top of the fence, the barbed wire lashes out like a frog’s tongue and wraps around it’s front wheel. The wire proceeds to engulf the bike like a python, but Luci is already gone.

Behind her, a half dozen riderless motorcycles led by a black Harley Davidson rev their engines hungrilly.

In front of her, several blocks down, is a skyscraper. It has stone on the bottom, glass and steel on the top, and a towering needle atop in with a blinking red light.

Luci explodes in a blur of rainbow light.

Behind her, screeching tires and roaring engines and barking tailpipes.

The sound of the bikes fade into the distance as Luci rushes down the straightaway towards the skyscraper, all but one; the unmistakable low rumble of the harley.

Luci clears the blocks in twenty seconds, or a lifetime, depending on who you are asking.

She phases through the wooden doors of the skyscraper, emerging in a lobby with stone walls, wooden furniture, and anachronistic flickering fluorescent lights overhead. At the end of the lobby, a dishevelled looking modern elevator waits with it’s doors open.

The wooden doors explode inward behind Luci as the Harley collides with them, and she is running again, her worn sneakers kicking up dust from the wooden floors as she scrambles to the elevator.

Luci falls backwards into the elevator, curling into the corner. She can smell the exhaust, hear the motor roaring in triumph as the bike launches forward. She tries to hold her breath, focusing on the photons making up her form, willing them to let her phase through the floor of the elevator, but she knows there is no time. She draws her knees up to her chest and puts her arm in front of her face, bracing for impact.

There is a bang like a gunshot, and the shrieking of metal on metal.

The elevator doors have slammed shut on the front wheel of the bike, which is revving its engine furiously.

Luci exhales.

Sharp metal spikes emerge from between the elevator doors, piercing the front tire while the bike howls. The elevator starts to move upwards, and there is a great grinding sound, and the tire is bisected, the front half dropping into the elevator at Luci’s feet.

The lights in the elevator shift as it begins to rise steadily, pulsing through the colors of the rainbow. Cheerful, upbeat elevator music starts to play through its speakers.

Luci sits on the ground, her hair stuck to her face, panting desperately.

“Hello there, traveller” the elevator speaker says. It has a calming, professional, female voice, and Luci can hear its smile. “You’re probably wondering why I saved you.”

Luci lights a cigarette with a shaking hand. The voice giggles.

“I’m sure you know it was not out of the goodness of my heart. This is a land of nightmares, little dreamer, and I am a product of my environment. I am an evil elevator; that is all that I am. Perhaps I saved you from your predator so I could just eat you up all by myself, is that what you think?”

The pulsing lights are transitioning faster and faster, and the elevator seems to be accelerating upwards.

“I cannot say that I am not tempted,” the elevator muses. “I am always hungry, after all. Maybe you are afraid that I will raise you to the top floor and drop you. We would both die of course, but I’m sure you are aware of the parable of the frog and the scorpion. It is very much within my nature to kill.”

Luci watches the speaker on the ceiling with wary eyes as the elevator accelerates faster and faster.

“The truth is, little dreamer,” the speaker says with a sigh. “I have been contracted to bring you, safe and whole, to the top of this building. Now ask yourself; what could anyone offer to an evil elevator to make me do such a thing?”

Luci stubs out her cigarette on the floor of the elevator. The colors are flashing so fast now they all blur together, the g-force sticking luci to the floor.

“That’s right,” the voice says pleasantly. “The promise of even more suffering awaiting you at the top!”

The voice keeps talking, but Luci cannot hear it over the rapidly rising pulleys. The force of the acceleration makes her bones ache, and she screams.

The elevator stops.

A chime, and the doors open.

“Safe travels!” says the friendly elevator.

***