The First Blink

I

    Sandy corneas, grinding against leather-dry eyelids during the first moment of regained consciousness. There's an impossible dark smudge in the middle of an otherwise gray slate of earth to the east. The sun is just light enough to be distinguished from the surrounding liquid paper sky. All sounds are coming in like they are the only justifiable things in this "world". That's when they became self aware. The Thought Monsters, that is. They were waking up, one at a time, and had been for what most people would consider to be two weeks. The ones that did not wake up were dragged into that vicious black structure in the middle of the ashy field. They couldn't speak. All they could do was let their liquid black eye socket reservoirs glimmer and roll around in their skulls as they stalked endlessly towards The Barn. The Big Black Barn.

                                                                                   II

    "I am completely scared now, for everything I look at flies away into a huge angry mouth in outer space. The teeth make the most god-awful "Klak!" sound when they close. I am in Rocko's bedroom. You know, That cartoon that used to play on Nickelodeon in the nineties. There are so many TV's in this room, but they are all full of cold, mind-numbing, static. Every once in a while, I see that it might be more than digital snow flurries, because for a second, it looked like millions of gray people, bumping, pushing, shoving, and completely unaware of each other. The wind is howling, due to the lack of roof in this cartoon room. The mouth's lips could be those of the man-eating plant in The Little Shop of Horrors. My mother's outside in the rain drinking Bloody Marys and biting her fingernails. She won't look at me anymore these days. I think it's because I have made the conscious decision to undergo a process that slowly converts me from human to demon. I can't really imagine what the difference between the two could possibly be, but I don't want to consider another day of being an entity that can make choices.
    --Some of the shadows, that flash by as I completely switch scenarios, seem to be thinking now. I hope they don't discover their own existence, because that would give them a need to leave.--
    I'm in high school again. We're talking about the football game on Friday. I know that most of my friends will be enjoying that game in their own sanctioned style of clothing, but I'll be wearing the uniform that I've been wearing every football game since the year of 2007. Yes, that's right, and why shouldn't it be? I'm in the marching band. I am a man that beats on things so that everyone can put in their two cents without causing a headache. What classroom are we in? I don't remember this one. For one thing, the floor tile pattern is different. Black and white checkerboard. And outside, the forest... well, it's about three feet away, and dripping with darkness. MY FRIENDS ARE EATING EACH OTHER ALIVE!
     That was last night's dream. Is it possible to see things that can't possibly be happening when you first wake up from one? I wonder, because if not, someone was in a hurry to leave my room this morning."

-My friend, Pyne's, description of a nightmare he had last night. [From Krim, Subject 14]

                                                                                
                                                                                     III


    [Status Report: Courtyard. CODE-44JADE. Directive: Observation.]


        Subjects 1 through 23 have been reactivated for observation. They possess poor motor functions, and are seemingly unaware of their surrounding conditions. Some subjects have been observed dragging the dormants into the focus generation laboratory and piling them pyramid-style in the south-west corner of the facility. Three subjects (3, 14, and 20) have regained their higher brain functioning, and have been moved into Red Sector, floor 4.
Influence levels do not present a hazard.

    [End Report. CODE-6FRED. Directive: Shut Down.]