Chapter Text
For a long time, I’d been consistently plagued by sleep issues.
Maybe it was all the time spent on a phone or the junk I’d shove down my mouth on the chance I could indulge. Whatever it was, it was getting bad.
Counting backwards, counting sheep, reading, even taking melatonin didn’t cut it. It got to a point where I gave up, figuring it would just be like this for the rest of my life.
Those melatonin gummies didn’t taste half bad though.
You pop a few, maybe two, and wait some time before falling asleep like a baby. That’s its whole thing, fixing your sleep schedule or something.
They didn’t work at all like they were supposed to, but damn they were tasty! Grape flavored actually.
Back to the story at hand, It was one of those typical days, coming back home and almost jumping into bed, reaching for a handful of gummies to snack on, and then wait for hours to fall asleep. No, it had nothing to do with staring at my phone right before bedtime.
But instead, for the first time in all my usage of the same overpriced gummies, they worked. They worked too well, it was like something in my brain just snapped and now the melatonin was doing its job. It only took so long for my body to accept the aid. It took an even shorter amount of time to fall asleep, a measly few minutes is all it took and boom!
Unfortunately, everything was backfiring on me. It’s the first time I had managed to sleep before the clock struck twelve and now I was stuck in this weirdly vivid dream.
Everybody has weird dreams, but this one felt too real. I could feel the crispness of the air on my damn skin. That’s not normal is it?
I had always heard people complain about hallucinations and absurd dreams after taking melatonin, yet nothing too unusual had ever happened to me. Sure there was the occasional ‘All my teeth fell out!’ dream, but not something trippy or mind bending like waking up in the middle of a forest.
There’s stages to sleeping isn’t there? So what the hell part am I in now?
I suppose at this point it’s not really dreaming is it… Whatever it was, I was feeling incredibly conscious and now paranoid.
It’s reasonable to feel panicked. To go from some measly little sleep problems in the comfort of my home, to feeling deranged while being lost at the same time?
Whatever happened between then and now was out of my control. All I can do is regain my senses and find my way back… somewhere. I’d say it took me ten minutes to get up and calm down before I started walking around and really analyzing the situation. Realistically, I should be dead with my survival instincts, or rather lack of…
To make matters worse, all I have are the clothes on my back. Not my phone or keys or any other trash I’d usually keep in my pockets.
All I know is that the melatonin was messed up and I was getting real close to breaking down.
I wander around, trying to get a feel of this simulation. There’s a chance this could be some matrix situation. I glance around, trying to figure out where I’d landed. In the process of that, I trip over some thick root sticking out the ground.
It’s humiliating, even though no one is around. So I stay on the ground a moment more, basking in my pathetic-ness. Possibly trying to cling to the earth like It’ll bring me any comfort. I crawl over a bit to get away from the stupid root. Then suddenly a voice calls out and makes my heart stop.
“Who goes there? Show yourself!”
Kill me!