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I know they are all around me, and I know that I am the last real person sleeping in the living room of Jeffrey Lowlett's house in downtown Manhattan; that living room that was once a lifetime ago filled with drunken party-goers and hormone driven sexual romps.
I'd fallen asleep in the arms of what had been a beautiful girl, although I know now that if I were to wake up I'd find myself staring into the eyes of a monster.
Time doesn't go by at a normal rate here, in the world of dreams, and although I know that my salvation is the upcoming dawn I have been turning towards it hopefully for the past three weeks.
In my dreams I dream about waking up, and when I awaken to find myself still trapped in this labyrinth of sewers and industrial hell it is only the fear that prevents me from screaming.
They'll find me, they'll find me and do something to me and then there will be ten monsters that wake in that living room in downtown Manhattan. It wouldn't be ME that woke up, it wouldn't be ME that went home to my single bedroom apartment and fed my cat, it would be IT.
IT would live my life for me and I would be thrown into Oblivion with the rest of them; cast aside to spend an eternity never dying and alone in the black and dreary (or at least that is what I have imagined it as).
My name is Zachary Berkler, and let me start from the beginning:
I fell asleep next to the girl who was named Christie, a tall thin spitfire with bright red hair and pale green eyes and a nose so adorable you wanted to kiss it (and I did many many times). She and I hadn't had sex, I was too tired which was well and good because she didn't want to go at it in a room full of sleeping people (and I do love so much, a girl with class); we simply snuggled and chatted until the alcohol fully kicked our brains into a buzzing whir and the last thing I remember was telling her I wanted to see her again at some point.
Light blinded into my eyes and I flew awake with a yell, dazed and confused and ignoring the small voice in my head telling me that there was a small problem with the situation that I should really pay attention to.
"Hey man, it's Zach right?" a male voice said, cutting through the light.
There's something wrong here, Zach, said the small voice in my mind.
The ground.
The ground wasn't hard like the hardwood I'd fallen asleep on, the ground was rough and gritty and it stank. My immediate thought was that Jeff had blown a plumbing pipe and it'd leaked onto the floor into the living room.
I half mumbled a response to the voice and pulled myself up.
"Oh ******** it smells awful, how long was I sleeping in that s**t?"
I brushed my hands off on my jeans and rubbed at my eyes with my forearms, trying to blink away the dark spots obscuring my vision. Everything was hazy and drunk.
I heard Christie's voice through my blindness and I turned towards it with a smile. The smile froze on my face and my vision swam.
"...What? I... I-I didn't hear you right."
"I said we're not at Jeff's anymore, Zach. Will, get the light out of his eyes, let him see for himself."
The light (flashlight?) clicked off and for the first time since awakening I got a good look at my surroundings. A large group of people I recognized as my fellow living room crashers stood uneasily against a concrete wall.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Second thing was that the smell of death and excrement was fitting, considering we all appeared to be in a sewer (although on retrospection it was purely the IDEA of a sewer, too many valves, too many pipes, too industrial) and the only real source of light was a couple of dim lamps alongside the far wall and the flashlight that the fellow named Will had just finished using to wake me up.
Zach something is really, really wrong here.
"Christie, why is your hair blonde?" I stammered, honestly paying more attention to the fact that her nose looked drastically different than I remembered.
"I don't know Zach, why do you have that massive mole on your cheek?" came her quirked response, shaken but trying to find the upper ground.
My hand flew to my face to feel the mole that hadn't been there for over five years. I'd gotten it surgically removed as a teenager, I told people it was for health reasons but the truth was that I was tired of being able to look down and see it.
I said nothing, which is good because Christie apparently hadn't finished talking.
"Why does Will have crooked teeth now, why does Bobby over there weigh four hundred pounds when the last time I saw him he looked about 230; Zach why the ******** are we in a ******** SEWER?!"
I'm serious, you need to look harder; there is more here than you're seeing and you really need to see this, Zach.
I checked my pockets, nothing.
No phone, no lighter or smokes or wallet.
It's not like I had much money or anyth-
A rumbling cut off my thoughts; low and slow but building in intensity, I saw the walls shake and the water beneath us tremble.
Zach you need to think, think ******** hard because this is more serious than anything else you've ever done.
A light clicked in my head.
"Christie."
"Yeah?"
"Why are there only nine people here?"
Off in the distance I thought I heard a rat shriek, but may have just been my imagination.
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