CHOOSE YOUR OWN MINDFUCK: A Night in Eighth Block Tower (A59)
Bedlam Bible fans! Explore the Eighth Block Tower! Choose your fate! New posts every Tuesday and Friday. September '23 through December '23. Don't succumb to the huummmmmmmmm...
You’ve decided to go to apartment 511…
You jog up the staircase until you reach the fifth floor. Though it’s been a year or longer since you gave up smoking, the short trot has you winded. You’re wheezing and it’s embarrassing, even though there’s no one around to hear it.
Once you’re standing outside of apartment 511, you lean your shoulder against the wall and take a moment to catch your breath. You’re annoyed it takes more than a full minute to steady your thundering heart. Just another reminder that you’re not the young stallion you once were, and that all those poor decisions you made in your youth are still there, hiding under the surface, haunting you.
In all your huffing and puffing, you don’t stop to consider the details of Bee’s story, because if you had, you would’ve noticed that the door to this apartment is not wide open as she’d initially stated. You also would’ve noticed that there’s no bloody mess in the hallway, or any evidence whatsoever that a headless corpse had just been dragged through hours earlier. This is not the apartment Bee was describing in her story, but you don’t pick up on any of this. Instead, you stand there, distracted—steadying your pulse, catching your breath, and ignoring every tell-tale sign that this isn’t where you’re meant to be.
You twist the knob and open the door to apartment 511.
There’s a man standing on the other side of the door, so close it nearly hits him. He’s bathed in shadows. You’re only able to see the lower half of his face, but it’s enough to get your heart beating even faster than it was before. Something feels off about him. The energy he’s pushing into the air is cold and sinister. You want to turn and leave the moment you notice him standing there.
“What are you doing here?” the man croaks, just above a whisper. His voice is sick and gravelly, as if they’re the first words he’s spoken in months. There’s some kind of white powdery substance on his lips. You mistake it for dust.
“I’m sorry. I must have the wrong apartment,” you say, hoping it’s enough of an excuse that you can turn and leave without consequence. But it isn’t.
“Are you really here?” he asks, then finally steps out into the light. His appearance is enough to stop you from breathing. “Or are you dreaming?”
You hear the question, but it doesn’t occur to you to answer it. You can’t stop looking at his broken face, his long bony arms, his sunken rib cage, or the spaghetti mess of wires that weave through his every inch of skin. He looks like a mad project, some piecemeal machine—like a crime against nature.
“What happened to you?” you manage to say, but he dodges your question. He takes a single step forward and pushes his arm out toward you. There’s something about the way he moves that doesn’t feel real and you find it hard to explain why. It’s like he’s flickering in and out of existence, quick as a blink, like smoke or like light moving through a crumbled reel of ancient film. You see his hand moving toward you, but you don’t find it threatening. Something tells you he won’t do it, he won’t grab you—because it’s impossible. He can’t make physical contact. He’s not real, only a projection, and projections can’t touch the living.
But you’re wrong.
He is real.
And he not only grabs you, but he latches on tight, with both hands, then he pushes his face close to yours. You look into his beady, soulless eyes and they’re so wide and piercing that you suspect his eyelids have been clipped right off.
“I gotta know, man,” he says. His breath smells like burning tires. “Are you one of those dreamers? Like Purple… or Moriah?” Something about the name makes him laugh. “Is that it? Are you with the wasp women? Or the robococks?”
You make an attempt to wriggle free from his grasp, but he has too good a hold on you. He isn’t letting go.
“Robococks?” you ask. “Man, I’m telling you. I just have the wrong apartment…”
He shakes his head violently causing the wires to whip back and forth, showering you in a flurry of sparks.
“Are you telling me you really don’t know? You really don’t see what’s going on here?” he asks. You shake your head. “We’re in a dream, man. We’re all so far from home we can’t think straight. None of us belong here. None of us. We were summoned here… by the dreamers. The Big Dream. It’s got us all, man. You. Me. They even got David Bowie.”
You’re trembling in fear now. This is true madness, staring you right in the face and digging its clammy fingers deep into the meat of your arms. You’re too afraid to think of what might happen next.
“They got David Bowie too, huh?” you ask, hoping to lighten the mood a little. “I guess it’s not all that bad here. At least we have that, right?”
He doesn’t find it amusing in the slightest. You decide to break the short moment of awkward silence with another question.
“What happened to you?” you ask again, hoping this time he’ll respond.
“I’m gonna blow this fucking place to kingdom come,” he says, then belches a cloud of black smoke right in your face. It smells like gasoline.
“What? How?” His response takes you by surprise.
“I’ve made myself into a human bomb. You hear that dreamers! It’s time to wake up!,” he shouts, then falls into a fit of laughter. He hasn’t blinked for the entirety of this conversation, you’re sure of it. He looks up at you with those cold, metallic eyes and says, “Do you think I’m mad?”
How do you respond?
— “I believe you.”
— “I can get you the help you need.” (coming soon)