Last night as I lay down to sleep, I felt a calling, a strange calling that I cannot explain. There were no voices and there was no presence; just a feeling of being pulled away from where I was and towards something, something unnatural. I told myself that I was just tired and falling asleep but this wasn’t true. I wasn’t just falling asleep; I was going somewhere.

Then I woke up. I woke up and realized I was dreaming but it wasn’t really a dream. I was standing outside a place that looked like a warehouse. There was a single door through which one could enter. However, the door bore no passage beyond its frame and still, people kept walking through it. I followed suit and soon found myself inside the warehouse. I had assumed the interior would look a certain way, judging by what I saw on the outside. I was soon reminded of my human mistake.

The large space was filled with fantastical elements. There were little creatures flying around; creatures who, on closer examination, I realized were human themselves. A leopard ran past me and disappeared before my very eyes. It was at this point I realized that I was bereft of feeling. I felt neither afraid nor excited. There was no anxiety, no curiosity, no frustration – nothing.

Then, there she was. A girl I’d never seen before in my life, the detail of her face fades away even now as my memory fights to keep it intact. But she was pleasant, grounded and seemed to know her way around this mythical place I was in. She walked with me and as we moved ahead she pointed at something on my neck. It was a necklace or an amulet or some such thing. It wasn’t small enough to be called a trinket and yet not so big to earn the label of heavy jewelry. I don’t know how it got on my neck and why it was there but somehow I knew its purpose.

It was a device that worked in sync with my thoughts. I would think it and the device would make my thought real. For instance, one second I’d be thinking of a meal that I’d enjoy and the next second it was there before me. I slowly began to realize that every single manifestation was a result of the thoughts of those around me. ‘Help us’, the girl said to me. I wasn’t sure if I heard her correctly, I’m still not sure if those were her words or my mind playing tricks on me but that is what it sounded like.

She showed me photographs of young men and women in their late teens and early twenties who looked haggard and aged. The device, it seemed (as fabulous as it was), was draining the life out of these people and the worst part is they didn’t even know it.

I walked past a woman, a figure of authority. As our eyes met, I knew she was watching me, and she knew I didn’t belong there. Fear. For the first time since I’d arrived there, I felt something and it was fear. I looked around me for the girl who’d been by my side all the way. She was gone. The images and fantastical elements around me began to fade away one by one. I woke up again, this time in my room. I tried to tell myself I’d been dreaming but this morning, I struggle with the possibility that it was more than that.

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