Pestilence and The God of Dreams

By WD Seitz

Entry for Vocal Media’s Short Story Competition

4701 Words

They called her many names. In Rome, she was Morpheus or Hypnos; in Iceland, she was Nott, the raven-haired goddess of night, sleep, and dreams. To the Polynesians, she was Pahulu—a dark sorcerer, summoner of nightmares. She never liked that name. It made her into a monster, a wrathful creature meant to be feared. With every title there came an expectation, an idea of her that she must embody. It got exhausting, manifesting a concept of herself millions of times to thousands of different cultures. So she gave herself a human name, after one of her favourite authors, whose mind was always so tender, like laying in a field of flowers: Alice. The God of Dreams.

Alice was a goal. She invented her own idea of herself; a woman, with gentle eyes and soft brown skin, all curves and no angles—welcoming, kind. Alice wore little round glasses and dressed like a librarian; all plaid, except for her pants, which were brown and perpetually ironed. Her hair, a kinky bundle of almond, buzzed around her head and shoulders as if it were electrified. Alice was not an evil sorcerer, nor a wrathful God. She would never allow herself to embody those evil, nightmarish creatures the humans sometimes imagined her as. Alice was an architect, engineer of the unconscious, and dreams were her life’s work. When she prepared the stage of a dream, golden threads unfurled from her fingers, and power fuelled her veins in the stead of her blood.

In the realm of the Gods, there was an archive of sorts; though it was more of a massive, spiralling theatre, suspended in the inky darkness of space. Alice built the Colosseum of Thought around herself; a metaphysical structure where all the dreams she ever erected could be cached. She wandered its halls now, her gaze cast downward, tucking her hands behind her back. Alice passed rows of sky-blue curtains, knowing that if she were to peek behind them, she would slip and fall into another world—like missing the last step in a staircase. Except the curtains were doused in grey dust, sodden, and speckled with moth holes. It had been years since she constructed anything close to a dream.

Alice halted before a narrow door stretching the height of the wall. The door was painted entirely black, including the knob; an obscure imitation of a shadow. How long has it been? Alice thought, her fingers buffering inches away from the handle. The Ward was the ultimate source of Alice’s inspiration; a section of the Colosseum dedicated entirely to lucid dreamers.

Alice paused for a moment longer, then flung open the aperture, striding into the Ward like a strong gust of wind. Here, the Colosseum of Thought degraded into a weather-beaten shell of a building. The floor was carpeted and ripped; grey strips of paint curled from the walls. If Alice listened closely, she could hear the faint skittering of mice. Despite the run-down nature of the Ward, it was bustling with life—possums hissed from beneath the floorboards, and Alice startled as a hummingbird battered the inside of a vent, flapping its wings erratically. Before most animals were born, their consciousness roamed the Colosseum of Thought, learning about the world through the dreams of the living.

It didn’t take long to choose a dream. Alice walked several feet into the Ward and picked it at random. A frayed, pale blue curtain swaying in the light of the hallway. Alice glanced briefly at the name carved into the wall, embedded above the curtain in jagged slashes: Charlotte Miller. Alice held her breath—was this really what she wanted? There was still time to change her mind.

Alice pried open the curtain. The floor gave out beneath her, and she was momentarily suspended in fuzzy darkness. Then, her whole body jerked awake, and she stumbled headfirst into a thicket of thorns. Alice raised her eyes to the set before her: she was standing in a forest. The trees were tall, but transparent, and she was able to put her entire arm through them. When Alice inspected the sky, she quickly realized there wasn’t one. The dreamer’s subconscious had not bothered to conjure it. This dream was fractured, a skeleton, and not something Charlotte Miller would remember. Alice frowned, then waved her hand, unable to stop herself. A blanket of stars bled from her fingers, dyeing the horizon a navy blue, transforming the sky into a sparkling glaze of twilight.

She paused to admire her work, but only for a moment—there was so much more to dream construction than making things pretty. Humans lived such troubled lives; their problems ranged from the death of a loved one, to the stress of a new baby, and everything in-between. It was Alice’s duty to help them process those emotions in unique, sometimes jarring ways. Dreams, the biochemical solution to solving the predicament of life. All Alice wanted was to make the humans happy. And for years, she had succeeded, able to twist those deep-rooted issues into something more manageable. But she had hit a creative block, a catastrophic event that challenged the limits of her power, causing an epidemic of fear and loneliness. She dared not linger on the problem for too long, out of fear that it would send her into another year-long depressive episode.

As Alice wandered through the ethereal forest, she let her power seep from her, dousing the ground with ferns, nettles and heaps of dripping moss. She sighed, and a waterfall of fog spilled from her lips, settling between the towering oaks, elms and evergreens. From between two wiry branches, Alice constructed a spiderweb, glittering with mildew. Then Alice opened her mouth and sang, emptying her voice into the thickets, creating a symphony of wind, of leaves rustling, and birdsong. She focused only on her gift, her Godhood; the feeling of mist kissing her bare skin.

After a minute of walking, Alice broke into a grove of clover and wildflowers; the heart of the dream. Sure enough, the dreamer was there, curled up against a dead log. Charlotte was shaking, hugging her knees and hiding her face. The child’s skin was pale and damp. Her cries were soft and whiny, like that of an eight-week old puppy. Alice took a moment to assess the situation. Why was Charlotte crying?

Alice touched the child’s shoulder. Charlotte recoiled, gasping. “Where is my mom?” Charlotte demanded, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Where is she?”

Just as Alice was about to reply, she felt it: the presence of another. She turned, scrutinizing the dark spaces between trees. The song she sang earlier had gone quiet; there was no twittering of birds, no rustling of undergrowth. A hair-raising silence took its place, and Alice’s whole body froze, listening. Charlotte’s fear fumed off her like the swirling smoke of a collapsed fire, and her cries caught mutely in her throat. A branch cracked from above. Alice peered into the eaves of a cypress, searching.

Charlotte grabbed hold of Alice’s arm. “Don’t let it touch me!”

A massive, worm-like creature collapsed the upper branches of the cypress and fell several feet down, landing belly first at the edge of the grove. Alice’s eyes widened. It was not a worm, but a dragon, infected entirely with boiling black hives. Its face was an enormous circle of flaxen teeth. Barbed spikes cascaded down its back and curled around its stomach. The serpent writhed toward them, and the hives burst against the sharp stones, creating a trail of black sludge. The forest floor sizzled and died. Charlotte pulled Alice’s arm, but Alice only stood there, gawking at the creature. In all her life, she had never seen a lucid dreamer conjure something so detailed.

She was perfect.

“It’s going to eat us!” Charlotte screamed. Alice turned away from the dragon and ran, taking the child with her. She was about to attempt something that had never done before. In fact, it might have even been forbidden—she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like she had a rulebook. Alice raced through the forest, dragging Charlotte behind her. The serpent was at their heels, crashing through the wood, poisoning every beautiful thing Alice had forged. A deafening roar rumbled throughout the dream, and Alice shuddered, surprised by her fear. Usually, nightmares never bothered her, because she could see them for what they were. But Alice had not been the muse of this nightmare, had sworn off nightmares all together, in fact—she did not want to be a wrathful God, nor a witch like Pahulu. Charlotte summoned the creature all on her own; a physical manifestation of the plague.

They kept running, and as they drew farther from the heart, the dream faded. Alice generated an exit: a small castle door in a field of white, the forest breaking into shards around them. Charlotte stopped running. She stared at the exit like it was a new nightmare, an illegal thing, a place she mustn’t go. Alice yanked Charlotte’s arm, pulling her through the veil and into the Colosseum of Thought.

Alice floundered into the Ward, head spinning and hands shaking.

She did it. She stole a human from a dream.

Now, it was time to go.

❖

If one were to ask Enola if she liked her job, she wouldn’t have known what to say. There were moments where she enjoyed the work, but mostly it was a compulsion, an unsatiated need. Enola was a custodian for the Colosseum of Thought. Her entire purpose was to sort, organize and clean. Once, her job had been easy, but now that Alice was gone, the Colosseum had fallen into disarray. Dreams slipped from their auditoriums and roamed the halls; Alice’s study was bombarded with spiderwebs, and a sour-smelling black mold had crept into the Ward. Enola placed her hands on her hips, glaring pointedly at the fungus blighting the floor. She dropped to her hands and knees and began scrubbing. Her joints groaned in protest, and sharp pains ricocheted up her legs, but she ignored it. Everything had to be perfect for when the God of Dreams returned.

“Hello?”

Enola glanced briefly at the child standing awkwardly in the frail light of the hall. The girl thumbed the ends of her straw-blonde braids, her ankles coyly crossed. Enola sighed. This was the second time the dream had tried interacting with her, but Enola didn’t have time to deal with it. First, she had to clean the floor. When the scrubbing didn’t work, Enola removed a flat wedge of metal from her toolkit and scraped the mold away, creating a pile of flaking black mire.

“What… what are you?” The child asked in a small voice. Enola grunted in reply. She swept the mold into a pan and tossed it into a plastic bag hooked to the back of her cart. She knew what she must look like right now: perpetually hunched, with wrinkled green skin, and a hollow, ghoulish face. The ghoulish look had less to do with what she was, and more to do with how tired she felt. Enola stared down the hall, where the pale curtains swayed back and forth, and the lights flickered sporadically. All her efforts, and for what? Termites chipped away at the walls, water leaked from the ceiling, and the mold just kept on blooming, infecting the Ward with its darkness. How was one grey-haired, beastly custodian supposed to cope? It doesn’t matter, Enola thought, lifting her chin and straightening. I have to keep trying. Everything had to be perfect. If it wasn’t perfect, and Alice returned to find the Colosseum in shambles, Enola would never forgive herself.

“Where is the person who saved me?” The child demanded, and Enola shrugged, wondering if she should even interact. When a dream escaped from its auditorium, it was often confused, wandering aimlessly through the Colosseum and spouting nonsensical questions. This time, for whatever reason, Enola chose to respond.

“You should really go back to your room.” Enola said, and pointed down the long, spiralling corridor of the Ward. “It’s down there somewhere.”

The child paled. “I am not going back to that place.” She looked around wildly, her braids swishing over her shoulders. “Where’s the lady that saved me? The girl with the glasses and curly hair, she saved me, she made a door…”

Enola, focused on the next batch of mold, halted mid-scrub. She looked up at the child, frowning deeply. “You say she made a door?”

“Yes! Out of thin air. That’s how I got here.”

“What is your name?”

“Charlotte. Charlotte Miller.”

Enola hoisted herself from the floor, using the wall and her cart as support. She hobbled toward Charlotte, her brow knitted thoroughly together. So, the child wasn’t a dream. Charlotte was a living, breathing human being that had somehow trespassed into the Colosseum of Thought—with the help of Alice?

But if that was true, then where was Alice now?

Enola opened her mouth to speak, then realized Charlotte was crying. The child’s face screwed up, her cheeks burned red, and it took several tries for her to form a complete sentence.

“Where—where is my—my mom?” Charlotte choked. Enola stared, resting her pointed chin in the cusp of her gnarled forefinger, a hundred thoughts racing through her mind. Charlotte wanted to return to her parents, to wake up, but Enola quickly realized she couldn’t let that happen. This child was the key to finding Alice, to returning the God of Dreams to her proper stead. “I don’t know, my dear, but I’ll help you find her.”

Charlotte’s tears dwindled as she reached out and took Enola’s hand. Enola meandered to the exit, pushing the cart. Heat rose up the back of her neck, and she glanced guiltily down at Charlotte through the corner of her eye; it was wrong to trick the child, but what choice did she have?

Enola took Charlotte through the Ward’s entrance and into the heart of the Colosseum, where the marble halls sparkled a mosaic of white, blue and purple. There were rows of sweeping sky-blue curtains, pancaked on top of each other and stretching endlessly toward the ceiling. Enola couldn’t actually see the roof—at approximately a hundred metres, a dense fog obscured her vision. Charlotte gasped, while Enola frowned. There, splitting the gap between two balconies, was a long crack of dark, tar-like mold.

“This is amazing!” Charlotte cried. Enola shook her head and kept moving forward. If Enola was going to convince Charlotte to stay, she had to show the child something so extraordinary, she would forget all about her parents.

“This one is my favourite.” Enola told Charlotte, stopping before a curtain so old, it looked as if it would disintegrate at the slightest touch. Enola pried open the curtain, and they tripped over nothing, falling endlessly into a pit of static and darkness. Enola’s whole body jerked as if electrocuted. She gasped, waking up into the dream.

They stood upon a crumbling red cliff, overlooking a vast ocean, the sea a great stretch of dark glass. Enola felt the salt lay thickly on her blemished, sagging skin. She closed her eyes, breathing in the cool night air. When she opened them again, there were thousands of glowing-green lanterns beneath the water. The lights merged and intercepted, weaving around one another like a school of fireflies trapped in a jar.

“What are those?” Charlotte breathed, and as if on queue, the lights simultaneously propelled from the water. The creatures looked almost like dolphins, with slick, rubbery skin and arched, hairless wings. Spheres of green light dangled from their foreheads. Charlotte staggered backward as the ocean surged, overflowing with the sheer force of them. Enola watched, smiling dimly, as the strange sea-spawn scattered across the previously darkened sky. This dream belonged to twelve-year-old Maria Mitchell. Maria would grow up to become the first female astronomer in the United States, and Enola liked to believe it was this dream that inspired her. Maria was up there right now, riding one of the creatures throughout the newfound galaxy.

Charlotte tugged on Enola’s sleeve. She pointed down at the ocean, now lightless. Somebody was standing above the water, thousands of feet below, looking back at them. The stranger was dressed in black and grey robes. They wore a leather-hide beaked mask, with small pockets of fishnet for eyes. Enola scowled, her hackles ignited—this was not part of the dream.

❖

Charlotte Miller lay on a spread comforter, her head turned limply away from the doctor.

“Can I please see her?” Mariah, Charlotte’s mother, choked back a sob. She thought briefly that this would be the perfect time for a husband to console her, but she was unmarried. Then, she thought perhaps a family member would do—but Mariah’s family had given her the cold shoulder ever since Charlotte’s birth, seven years ago. And now that she was sick, not even a stranger would comfort her. Truly, Charlotte was all she had. 

Mariah watched the crow-masked doctor inspect Charlotte through a porthole window. Even though they were both sick, the doctors were taking every precaution. The doctor lifted one of Charlotte’s arms, assessing the black sores eating away at her skin.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t. We don’t know if it will make you worse off.” The doctor’s voice, muffled by a thick sheet of glass.

“She’s been asleep for two days now. That’s not a typical symptom, is it? Is she comatose?” Mariah straightened, trying to catch the doctor’s gaze, but she could see nothing through the blotched leather mask.

The doctor crossed his arms. “It can’t be possible.”

Mariah stiffened. “What? What’s happening to her?”

“I think—I believe she’s having a dream.”

“A dream?” Mariah gawked at the doctor. That couldn’t be right. It had been three years since the start of the bubonic plague, and the world had changed in two drastic ways: the first, over twenty million people had died. The second: the human race no longer dreamed.

❖

Enola watched, mesmerized, as thousands upon thousands of people unearthed themselves from the sea, as if they were crawling from their graves. All of them wore that long hooded mask with a protruding beak. Enola thought they looked almost like priests, and her skin tingled beneath their steady gaze. A ripple shimmered throughout the horde. From the centre of the ocean, the water sucked and spewed like a toilet getting unplugged. Enola glanced at the sky, duly noting that there were no longer any stars. The dream shook beneath Enola’s feet, and an enormous, five-hundred-foot serpent erupted from the whirlpool. Its face was a swirling circle of teeth, and its body was engulfed in hives, oozing with steaming black sludge. Jagged wings unfurled from the creature’s back, and the dragon launched itself toward them at breakneck speed.

It was a nightmare, and a familiar one. Pestilence. Enola knew in her heart that this was the cause of Alice’s disappearance, and was also probably the source of the mold befouling the Colosseum. But Alice didn’t make nightmares. Something was very wrong.

Charlotte screamed and wheeled around, running toward a small door Enola hadn’t noticed before. The door, round and hobbit-like, was lifted slightly off the ground and hung in the air. Charlotte threw it open and jumped on through, Enola following close behind. They stumbled into the Colosseum of Thought, panting and shaking, adrenaline coursing through Enola’s body.

“What is that thing?” Charlotte cried, and Enola patted herself down, brushing the dirt from her clothes.

“Its name is Pestilence.” Enola said in a small voice, side-eyeing the darkness behind the curtain. “Did you make that door?”

Charlotte blinked. “I—I don’t know. I was scared, and I had to get out, and suddenly it was just there.”

Someone bumped into Enola’s shoulder. She lurched back, her eyes widening as she took in the scene before her: hundreds of people in crow masks, drifting through the halls of the Colosseum of Thought. This close to them, Enola realized they weren’t wearing masks at all. The leather was fused to their skin, stitched to their grey flesh, and there was nothing but shadows behind their netted eye holes. Their robes sagged from them, and the people—if they were people—looked almost made of clay.

“I want my mom.” Charlotte whined. “I want to go home.”

“You can’t.” Enola said before she could stop herself. The sight of the strange crow people wandering through the Colosseum had startled her, and she spoke without thinking. “You summoned that door. Alice brought you here for a reason. I think—I think you’re supposed to replace her.”

“Replace who?”

“The God of Dreams.”

Charlotte recoiled. “I’m dreaming?” She looked around, her gaze trailing after the creatures passing them by. “How long have I been asleep? How long have I been here?” Her gaze settled on Enola, wild and fiery. “I have to wake up! My mom needs me. I have to see her. How do I leave?”

“You can’t.” Enola repeated firmly. “You are the new God of Dreams.”

“No.” Charlotte’s hands curled into fists. Tears sprung from her eyes. “I want to go home.”

“I can’t do it all on my own. There’s only one of me. Pestilence is destroying the Colosseum of Thought, and I can’t do anything about it. I’m hopeless. I’m a failure. I should be able to do this, it’s my job, but I just can’t—I’m not—I’m not good enough. You have to stay. You have to take her place.”

Charlotte bared her teeth and held out her hands. A ball of darkness began to form; a wavering sphere of black-purple light. If an aurora had a shadow, Charlotte would be holding it. She raised the ball above her head, aiming it directly at Enola.

“I thought you were nice. But you’re just awful. You’re like an evil witch!” Charlotte launched the ball of light at Enola. “Have a taste of your own medicine!”

Enola staggered backward as the sphere exploded around her. She blinked at Charlotte, fighting the overwhelming dizziness of the blast. The Colosseum dipped and swayed. Enola dropped to the ground, overcome with the sweet, enveloping darkness of an eternal sleep.

❖

Have I ever had a dream?

Enola sat cross-legged in a void of nothing. It was the space between dreams, the grey matter of the subconscious, the seat of the amygdala. She sat, looking down at her hands, which were knotted and twisted like the roots of an old tree. I don’t think I’ve ever even fallen asleep before. Sleeping wasn’t particularly nice; she felt on edge here, as if she were sitting on the dark side of the moon, waiting for something mysterious to happen. What would her mind conjure? Was she even capable of dreaming with Alice gone? She realized, with grim certainty, that she did not want to know.

Something told Enola to look up. She peered into the shadowy nothing-ness, her jaw set, her gaze dim.

Oh, she thought. I found her.

Alice was sunken and terminal, with reddened, bleary eyes. She kneeled in a pit of darkness, her body swollen with bruises. Suddenly furious, Enola marched over, grabbing Alice by the hair and pinning her to the ground. She kicked Alice in the ribs, then the jaw, knocking out one of Alice’s teeth. You’re worthless. A failure. Not good enough. I hate you.

Suddenly, Enola realized what she was doing. All this time, she had been here, beating herself to a pulp. Alice stared into the emptiness of space, her face weighed down by dark circles; a trembling shell of a person. She looked like a rag doll. Enola hesitated, her fingers ghosting the edges of Alice’s soft, curly hair. She bent over and held Alice’s face in her hands.

“I’m so very sorry.” Enola breathed, her voice a soft ball of cotton in her mouth. “You didn’t deserve that.”

Enola put her forehead against Alice’s. 

Alice opened her eyes. The void stretched out before her as a vast, endless gloom. What was this place?

Then, Alice remembered: she was dreaming. Charlotte had knocked her unconscious.

Alice snapped her fingers. A door popped into existence, and she stepped graciously through it, a lock clicking into place behind her. Alice blinked, staring at the ceiling of the Colosseum. She groaned, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palm, then sat up. Charlotte stood over her, her chin trembling.

“It’s you!” Charlotte cried. Alice hauled herself to her feet.

Oh, Charlotte. She looked down at the child she had stolen and flashed her a quick, soft smile.

“Charlotte, I am so sorry. This is all my fault. I never should have taken you from your dream.” She reached for Charlotte’s hand. “I’ve only been making this sickness worse for you, when I should have been helping you face it.” But it wasn’t too late. Charlotte was still here, which meant Alice could still make a difference. She pulled Charlotte down the hallway, into the rabble of nightmares. The crow-people leered at them as they passed. Alice took Charlotte to the Ward, where the mold was starting to fester, and Pestilence was sure to be waiting.

The moment Alice thrust open the shadow door, Charlotte halted. “I don’t want to go in there.”

Alice grasped her hand firmly. “We’ll do it together.”

The Ward unfurled before them, spiralling outward into a maze of worn, dishevelled curtains. Black mold dripped from the ceiling, creating smoking holes in the floor. Alice turned her nose up at the stench of death and rot, of three-week-old roadkill, left out in the sun. Waiting several feet down the corridor was Pestilence; the Black Death; the dragon of Massacre. Steam oozed from its cavernous, razor-sharp mouth.

“If it touches me, I’ll die.” Charlotte said, and she spoke with such sobriety that Alice completely believed her.

Alice reached into the air, plucking seemingly at nothing. A bowstring dangled from her fingers, the colour of snow on a moonlit night. She pulled the string taut, pinching the ends. When Alice released her fingers, an arch of gold took their place, holding the string together and finishing the weapon. She gave it to Charlotte, where it shrunk, becoming suitable for her small hands. 

Charlotte stared momentarily at the bow, then drew it backward. A gleaming white arrow glittered into existence, and Alice nodded respectfully; it was fine work.

Pestilence charged, banging against the walls, shattering the ornaments that hung there. The floor caved in behind the dragon, becoming a bubbling, rancid tar pit. Charlotte’s hands shook. Alice steadied them, warming them with her own. “Now.” Alice commanded, and the arrow released from both their hands, puncturing Pestilence through the roof of its gaping mouth. The dragon flew backward several feet, then curled up into itself, where it released a blood-curdling scream.

“Again.” Alice said darkly, and Charlotte released the bow, driving another arrow through Pestilence’s heart. The serpent spasmed like a fish out of water, then went still, dissolving into a kaleidoscope of ash. Alice sighed, feeling the glow of Charlotte’s relief.

Alice turned to Charlotte then, her hair growing to her waist, her skin lightening. Beaded bracelets spawned on her wrist, and her clothes folded into a long red dress. She took inspiration from Charlotte’s mind; her mother, with luminous brown eyes, wrinkled at the corners. She smiled, and the dimples were stolen from Charlotte’s memories. Alice perfected even the mole protruding from Mariah’s cheek. “Char, it’s time to wake up now.”

Charlotte turned to Alice, beaming. She took one step forward before Alice blinked, and then Charlotte was no longer there. There was only the Ward, neglected and decaying. At least the mold was gone.

Perhaps that was all the humans needed. Quarantined from the world, locked up like zoo animals, they were unable to hold hands with even their loved ones. Alice could take the face of anyone, and be there to brave their nightmares with them.

Alice rolled up her sleeves. The humans had been deprived of dreams for three years, which meant there was a lot of work to be done, and a manifesto of nightmares to make.