It was coming again. That darkness, that fading blur in his eyes, that tingling sensation that felt like the beginning of a migraine. But it wasn’t a migraine. It was much worse. Migraines, even ocular migraines that impaired his vision, didn’t rip apart the fabric of reality, cause him to blackout, and lose track of time. Jeremy’s mind, even if the cerebral technician said he couldn’t find anything weird, no longer felt like his own.

“And this has been going on for a month?” The back-alley technician was cheap and his cluttered workshop reflected that cheapness. The exhaust tubes coming out of the vents were enough to make Jeremy feel suffocated sitting on the reclining medical chair. He was used to cheap food, cheap drinks, and cheap tech so why not cheap and easy doctors?

He moved his hands in front of his face, feeling the intense, numbing prickling through his fingers. “More and more, yes. Happening more often for longer periods.” And it was happening now and this time he might lose a few hours. The symptoms were always the same. Tingling. Numbness. Shortness of breath. Nausea. His vision became clearer, almost as if he were suddenly hyper aware and then the visions happened. The “clarity” was becoming more apparent, the tech’s eyes glowing a bright blue behind his goggles.

The room was dark but everything was so vivid. Light from the tech’s dozen monitors was blinding. Jeremy figured this workshop was like any other black market medical center in the city. Small, cramped with cerebral devices and medical utensils everywhere; the place was steeped in shadows and the smell of grease for some reason. He shifted from the uneasiness in his stomach. It was coming faster now and there was nothing he could do about it. Closing his eyes, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to see the hallucinations again, not in a place like this.

“No damage to your brain stem, no imbalance to your serotonin levels, brain chemicals in order.” the tech was reading from a touchpad, reading out the diagnosis scans. “No other damage. I don’t know, man. Not everything can be solved by a brain scan. Have you had any hormonal changes?” He laughed.

Jeremy didn’t. The LEDs on the consoles behind the man were glowing brighter and brighter making him tear up. He was convinced he was broken. The visions were very real which meant that everything he had ever experienced could have been wrong. If reality could be distorted what was the point in doing or believing in anything? He tried to determine if the visions came from past memories, or perhaps from video games or simulations he had played.

But it was too late. It was here. Reality faded. Lines blurred. His heart raced as much as he could feel it. Double vision. Triple. There was an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, an odd feeling that what he was looking at wasn’t real. And then it started.

Jeremy tried to stand from the medical chair. The tech grabbed his arm. But the hand, gripping his arm tight, dissipated into water and the chair itself melted below him, dissolving into liquid metal, almost rubbery and sticky. He fought against it, turning over to crawl away but the amorphous goo sucked in his leg and then his waist. This was going to hurt. Suffocation always did. The goo surged over him and pulled him down, clinging to his skin, engulfing his body. He wanted to scream in defiance, to fight, to try and grab onto something, anything but there was nothing solid. He fell into the void. the black, stickiness all around him, morphing, expanding into an ocean of sea water. Floating he could see the rays of the sun above. The chair was gone. Reality was gone too and he was left in this place of morphing images and shapes and he would be trapped here for a very long time, alone, drowning in insanity, wishing he could return to the black-market room, even if it meant putting his health and life in danger.

The ocean water shifted into utter darkness. His body drifted slowly down, colliding with a rock, his back flattening. The water was gone, evaporated. He squinted to determine where he was and found that he was in a massive black cave. Subconsciously he expected to see bats but instead saw something far worse hanging from the cracks and crevices. An army of spiders of varying sizes descended on their thin webbing. Jeremy shielded his face when he heard the rushing of insect legs, falling towards him like a waterfall of pebbles.

“No, no!” he yelled. When his eyes opened and he saw that he was standing in a field of yellow grass the dread slowly subsided. But even now it hung in the back of his mind, the mind that was clearly breaking apart before his very eyes. He could still feel the anticipation that something horrible was about to happen despite the beautifully serene landscape. There was an earthy scent that blew in the wind. But his heart sank. This peace never lasted long. Even in his real life, if “real” meant anything anymore, it never lasted. The nightmares always knew what he feared most and the worst kind was the anticipation of the fear. That unknowingness, that blindness, that he wouldn’t be able to see what was coming next.

In the sky, high above the atmosphere a moon started to grow larger, its craters becoming more detailed. The moon grew so big that it created a massive shadow across the field. His stomach lurched. He began to run because there was nothing else left to do. The moon collided with the field and created a brilliant explosion that sent him flying, sending him into another vision, another realm, another place.

A powerful headache struck him next, another symptom, and the visions came faster. On a hillside bruised with fallen bodies he looked through painful eyes, and over the armor-clad corpses, and saw a massive horde of calvary charging in his direction. He held his head and sank to his knees. He was surrounded. There was nowhere to go. He wished there was meaning to these visions, something more that could give him a reason for any of this. Was any of this even real? Or was his mind cracking into a million pieces? The thunder of hooves surging towards him shook the ground. He closed his eyes, letting the horses trample him, sending his pulsing head into a sinking sand pit, then an executioner’s block where he was beheaded, then a jail cell with rusty bars where he sat starving, then he was tossed into a boiling cauldron where a giant was making stew out of his melting flesh. He shook, he screamed, he gasped and pleaded but the visions wouldn’t stop. One moment he was flying in the sky on the back of a massive bird, the next he was trapped in a mausoleum, cornered by flesh-eating ghouls. At the bottom of a barrel slowly filling with shards of glass. Surrounded by furry gremlins who wanted to be his friend. Strapped to a table with alien creatures picking him apart. Trapped in a coffin, six feet underground.

He pleaded for the madness to stop, begging for answers why. Pulling at his hair and gasping he then tried to scratch out the skin of his forehead. The wood of the coffin smelled like cinder. If he wasn’t going insane these visions would surely take him there. If he was here in this mental kaleidoscope for much longer, he would be lost forever. As he lay there, trapped, struggling to breathe, he searched frantically for the reason why. Was he being drugged? Was he infected by some parasite? He punched at the wood. He wanted someone to blame but he didn’t know where to direct his anger. Was the black-market tech involved, even though he had never met the guy before? The government? Perhaps he was trapped in an underground bunker being experimented on. His parents? For giving birth to a person with such an afflicted mind.

Tears moistened his cheeks and when he opened his eyes the ancient wood of the coffin became a door. He looked down and saw the handle, realizing he was standing in a closet, a sigh of relief escaping his lips. The door creaked open and a burst of cinnamon, vanilla, and relief hit him. A warm, glowing light touched his face next, almost blinding. It came from the front doorway down a hallway. The glow was the morning sun coming through the windows of the kitchen and living room and the smell was also recognizable. He could see the beech tree in the yard outside, swaying in the breeze, sprinkled with rays of light. His eyes were still glossy and they remained that way when he came to the kitchen looking for the tray of cookies, expecting to see his mother but she wasn’t there. But he wasn’t sad. Seeing the kitchen as he remembered it from childhood, the stove with tiny handprints on the glass screen, the messy counter with bowls of flour and measuring cups, an apron hanging loosely from the sink, he forgot about the nightmares and the monsters. All the pain and the anger evaporated into the open air of the yard outside. After taking a long look at the yard, standing at the doorway, he closed his eyes. And then suddenly it was all gone.

He smelled the ocean, salty and airy, refusing to open his eyes. At least it was bright and he was outside. But he couldn’t take it anymore, his heart couldn’t handle the stress and the fear. For the first time in his life, he felt no fear at all. Because he finally understood there was only one way out. If any of this was real, he would at least have to try.

He opened his eyes and found that he was standing on a cliff looking down into the waves crashing against the rocks below. Yes, he would at least have to try. To end it all. The harsh wind beat on his face, pushing him back. But the wind didn’t stop him from falling forward, his legs going limp. The falling felt like heaven. There was a chance he would end up in another scene, another place, another reality but it didn’t matter. For the moment he was free and he wished he was back to a normal life. But as he fell, he thought about his parent’s home and how it appeared to him. The visions, the nightmares, they had always been based on his fears and his thoughts, the tension that the next vision would be more horrible than the last, feeding each other, permeating into more madness and other horrible things. It was his thoughts that created the hallucinations, his thoughts that controlled them. His sadness, his fear was self-inflicted. His sadness was his own disaster. Although distorted by dreams and nightmares, the visions were his own fault. It was too late though. The crashing waves approached. He embraced it.

And collided with the beams of a railway. He saw stars and stood on the train tracks, barely aware of his surroundings. When he saw the train coming down the tracks, he realized he was in the subway that he took every day to work, the train honking loudly, brakes shrieking. The last thought that went through his drowsy mind was whether or not this was real. But he knew the truth, that his reality was his own, and it was too late.