This story begins here.

I have to admit, I think to myself as the helicopter comes zooming in for another strafing run, both miniguns firing as fast as they can spin – I think that I’m getting the hang of this lucid dreaming thing.

Down below the rooftop that I’ve made into my command post, the waves of velociraptors are still coming.  They’re not alone, either – there are now tyrannosaurs, ankylosaurs, all the great terrible lizards of my childhood, brought to life and turned against me.  But they are failing.

The AR-15 wasn’t cutting it, so I closed my eyes and imagined mortars, bombs falling from the skies.  And as those came into being, I called up men, men with guns and helicopters and tanks and willing to put their lives on the line to protect me.  The men cheered, and attacked, and the dinosaurs fell in droves.

Despite all our firepower, however, we weren’t gaining ground.  The monsters were smart, cunning, using the side streets to their advantage.  They could flank the soldiers, could tear them apart at close range.  But we held our own.  And the men knew that it doesn’t have to hold forever.  Just long enough.

Long enough for what, however, I’m still not sure.

Unfortunately, the sallow man hadn’t been as clear on how to get out of the dream.  Would the drug wear off?  I don’t even know if time is moving at the same rate.  Perhaps, in the real world, wherever that is, only a few minutes have passed.  I feel as though I’ve been fighting for years.  And my mind is growing weary.  I can’t hold out for much longer.

“Gotta wake up, I gotta wake up,” I whisper to myself, sitting down behind one of the armored bunker walls.  There are flying monsters now, pterodactyls, screaming death cries as they bombard the rooftop.  The anti-air flak cannons are holding them at bay for now.  It probably won’t last.

Can I make myself wake up?  I teleported myself to this place, summoned men and weapons from nothing.  But in those circumstances, I knew what I wanted to pull from the ether.  I cannot remember where I was when I fell asleep.  I don’t know where to send myself to.

So instead, I call out of my memory what I do know.  And a minute later, at the other end of my pistol, stands the sallow man.  He does not look happy to be there.

“What is this?” he hisses at me, taking a half-step forward.  “Not my place!”

I gesture at him with the pistol.  “Shut it, toothy,” I command.  “Just tell me how to dream myself out of this hell, and you can run off to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

The sallow man looks agitated, his hand movements even jerkier than usual.  “Dream yourself out?” he repeats.  His hand rises to stab down at the chaos below me.  “You do not want to leave!  You fight the way out now!”

He points down at the dinosaurs, at the battlefield, but I don’t understand.  “They don’t want to set me free!” I shout.  “They want to kill me!”

However, the sallow man nods rapidly, bobbing his head like a bird.  “Set free!” he insists.

The meaning behind his words finally sinks into my head.  I step forward, out from behind the armored shielding, gazing down in horror at the erupting battles.  Is the cryptic fellow right?  Do I have to die in order to wake up?

Behind me, the sallow man seizes the opportunity to make his escape.  He spins his finger in a circle in the air, summoning a doorknob.  He wrenches open the door in the thin air, ducking around it into the utter blackness on the other side.  “Customers,” I think I hear him hiss to himself before he vanishes.

Standing on the edge of the rooftop, I weigh my options.  I am fighting a losing battle here.  No matter how many men I call forth, I can do nothing but hold the line, and every second requires my sustained focus to keep that line.  With each slip of focus, I am being pushed back.  My forces are slowly retreating back towards this building, my lone tower.  Eventually, I’ll be overrun.

I tilt my head back, gazing up into the sky.  “If I’m going out,” I announce to no one in particular, “I’m doing so in a blaze of glory.”

And above the city, the circling bomber opens its bay doors.  It carries only a single payload, a single weapon.  That weapon, like a thick, finned sausage, slips free of the clamps that bind it.  It tumbles downward towards the city below.

I raise my hands up in one last gesture of exultation.  My middle fingers stab up, my last act of resistance against the monsters that come rushing in.  And then everything goes white.

For just a second, there is pain, agonizing and crippling pain, in every single fiber of my being.  And then there is nothing.

******

“Hey, he’s coming around.  What should we say?”

“Give him time.  The first time on the drug is always the hardest.  He will have to readjust.”

For a moment, my eyes crack open.  There is still whiteness.  But it seems so much more mundane, so much more… normal.

My eyes drift closed once again.  I’m not yet ready to wake up…

Continued from here.

The first creature, its head covered in sleek green scales, sticks its head around the corner.  Those big eyes, always in motion, immediately track onto my presence.  Its mouth is hanging slightly open, showing off row after row of razor-sharp yellow teeth.  It sucks in air, preparing to emit a piercing screech to alert its fellows as to my presence.

I put three rounds into its brain.

Now that I think about it, the AR-15 is not the best weapon for this.  It is loud and powerful, sure, but that loudness keeps the beasts tracking after me.  But as the monster collapses down to the ground, twitching slightly but unable to cope with its skull being spread across the wall, I have to admit that it’s crudely effective.

The other animals will have heard the shots, will already be moving in.  They don’t seem to back down, no matter the odds.  I grab the weapon and clamber to my feet.  Time to move on.

As I hurry down the alley, ducking around sharp corners, I try and pull at those still-fuzzy memories of how I ended up in this place.  I was fairly sure now that I was dreaming.  The hollow quality of the sounds, the way that all the details I’d usually see blended together into smoothness, the way that the world sometimes seemed to lag, only to jerk into focus when I tried to pay attention to that lag – it all reminded me of dreams.  I couldn’t be certain, but it was rapidly becoming the de facto truth in my head.

Yet, despite this conviction, I didn’t remember how I had gotten here.  It was something white.  Small and white.  And there had been letters.  Two Fs, stamped nearly on top of each other.

Ducking around a dumpster, I squeezed my eyes shut briefly and tried to concentrate, to pull up those memories.  Small and white.  And round.  It had been a pill!  A pill, with 2 Fs stamped into it, sitting in my palm.

There had been someone else there.  A man, a sallow man.  His skin had looked so yellow, especially compared to the whiteness of the pill in my hand.  He had grinned at me with too many teeth, all pointed in different directions.

“Good shit,” the man had uttered, nodding down towards the little pill.  “Franz Ferdinand.  Lucid dreams, you see.  Like the song.”

I had no idea what the man was talking about, but I nodded.  I didn’t want to get him upset at me.  “How much?” I asked.

I didn’t think it was possible, but the man’s grin grew even wider.  “Sample,” he said, nodding towards my hand.  “First one’s free.  Try it.  Good shit.”

As the baying of the velociraptors began to grow louder again, I curse at myself.  That deal had shady written all over it!  But I could remember now, the chalky taste as the pill had slid down my throat.  Franz Ferdinand had given me lucid dreams, all right, but they felt more like lucid nightmares.

The damnable lizards were getting smarter.  I could hear them now ahead of me as well as behind.  They were getting their bearings in this ruined city, figuring out the side paths, moving in from multiple directions to corner me and trap me where I couldn’t escape.

I tilt my head back, gazing up.  The buildings are brownstones, three or four stories with flat roofs.  If I could just get on top of one of those, I think to myself.  I could snipe down at the dinosaurs, not have to face them on flat ground.  On top of the building, I might stand a chance.

I squeeze my eyes shut again.  And when I open them, my feet are crunching on the gravel of the rooftop…

To be concluded!

Author’s note: for best reading experience, pull up the album version of Franz Ferdinand’s “Lucid Dreams” and listen to it as you read.

I’m stumbling down the street, hearing the sirens raging in the background.  I risk a despairing look at the boarded-up buildings, abandoned apartments and tenements that lined both sides of the street, but I know that they wouldn’t be any help.  The doors would be bolted, nailed shut, and I’d waste valuable, precious time.  Time that I don’t have.

“Shit!” I curse to myself.  When I glance over my shoulder, the street looks clear for the moment.  But I know better.  The velociraptors are closing in.

As I run on, the street never seeming to end, I try and remember how I got into this situation in the first place.  Wasn’t there something about a lab accident, about some sort of containment breach?  My memories felt so fuzzy.

I try to pump more energy into my sagging, flagging muscles, but it does nothing.  I’m feeling as though I’m running in quicksand, or tar.  I’m slogging through three feet of syrup.  This is like struggling in a dream.

Wait a minute!

Something about that last thought digs at me, worries away at my brain like a rat terrier with a toy.  Wasn’t there something about dreams?  Some sort of drug, or treatment?  “Lucid dreams.”  Why did that sound so familiar?

I lift my head up, looking around the curiously deserted street.  This couldn’t be a lucid dream, I tell myself.  If that was the case, I’d have some sort of weapon, something to defend myself against the surely oncoming horde.

My hand falls down to my belt, where such a weapon would be.  Sure enough, there’s nothing there.  But I’m suddenly aware of something else – something long and hard, bouncing on my back as the strap looped over one shoulder digs into my chest and armpit.

I reach back and pull the item around.  My eyes go wide.  In my hands is an AR-15, sleek, black, and looking deadly!  I swear that the weapon hadn’t been there a second ago, but I don’t want to question it too much – in case, at my doubting of its existence, it vanishes back into nothing.

The velociraptors are growing closer.  Their cries, reptilian and filled with unfeeling rage, are getting louder, echoing off the buildings.  But now, I have a weapon.  I have a chance.

To be continued!