When I woke took the pill I realized the absolute gravity of everything around me. Things that originally made no sense whatsoever suddenly began to become rational, and the haze that one feels in a dream cleared.
Clarissa grabbed me by the hand and made me turn to her; she pulled me close and held my eyelids open, checking my cornea. She told me later that she'd been checking for blood, as the majority of people that have taken the pills have gone blind.
She sent me on my way, and told me to avoid the Crevice, as that's where the majority of Cleaners stayed. The atmosphere was constantly changing from humid to dry, crisp to choking; yet the scenery was a gradual change, the trees around Clarissa's cabin became rocks, then the tree-shaped rocks became bushes, and then finally just large boulders sitting on red soil.
Wildlife was scarce, almost non-existent, but I was sure that I was being watched. Eyes peered at me from the shadows, and crackling gravel gave away the locations of non-visible beings.
I did exactly what she told me not to, and I saw the Crevice.
Imagine something unimaginable.
The largest gap I have ever seen, with a horizon that curved upwards; I couldn't comprehend the impossibility of the sight, and it made me hurt to look at it too long.
I came across a field of hands, growing from the ground at the wrists, swaying in the nonexistent wind. I stepped on one and it gave me the finger.
The thing about the Abyss is that it's constantly changing to your perspective, yet you share the space with every other sleeping being in the universe. You may have to travel a hundred kilometers, but you will find another person, as real as you are. When stuck in the dream delusion, a person in the Abyss will usually stay in one area, while the environment changes around them, creating the illusion of travel.
We are dropped in specific places, great distances from any other sleeping person. The chances of an accidental run-in are very low, and as a result, I had to travel the better part of my dream just to reach a woman named Janine; she was also dreaming, but I had no intention of waking her, I wanted to study her.
Janine was trapped in a nightmare, and her environment reflected her inner fears. I came across her when she was huddled in a bathtub, naked and bleeding from the mouth and nose. She saw me, but didn't want to see me, and as a result I was almost invisible to her.
I spent that entire night watching her have her nightmares, and the entire time she never moved more than one-hundred meters in any direction.
She had a sex dream, and let me tell you something: those are worse than nightmares. You may wake up and think you had a great time in your erotic dream, but the s**t that comes out in reality is absolutely horrifying. I saw spiders, tentacles, opposite genitals growing out of strange parts of her body; after two minutes of that I left, traveled to what looked like a miniature clock tower in the middle of a field.
When you're dreams end, did you know that you fall asleep in your dream? This obviously only happens on a night when you sleep through until you're rested, but as I sat sat down I felt myself becoming tired, and oddly enough when I closed my eyes and opened them in my bed, it felt as though reality were the dream.
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