Monster

"What is that?!"

Trevor tried to voice his surprise, but found that no sound was propagated in that vast dream world. He was too shocked to do that. The sounds were gone, and with them the calm the young man felt in his heart.

Tentacles emerged from the void.

The air trembled!

The nebula roared!

The world wept like doomsday!

'Shit!' He tried to move, but he couldn't. It was like falling on black pitch, there was no escape from that invisible quicksand.

'Damn!' The young man moved his arms, clenching his fists before punching the space around him.

Trevor couldn't stop being irritated by his own weakness. It was as if reality itself was mocking him, constantly throwing him against deadly and senseless dangers.

The heavens did not move with his efforts.

The tentacles reached Trevor's position with ease, taking a pacifier out of a baby's mouth would have been more difficult. Despair increased as his heart sank into the deep waters that seemed to come from hell itself.

Trevor found himself being engulfed by those tentacles slowly. The heels of his feet were bound, like a vegetable parasite tangling in the trunk of some self-sufficient tree to steal its precious elaborated sap.

This action made the lad's green eyes jump forward, and as soon as his foot was completely tied, those black tentacles started to pull him back! Trevor didn't give up, lunging forward to gain momentum to free himself from his bonds.

Such movement caused him to lose his balance and fall from the sky.

There was nothing to stop him from falling: once moving, always moving.

It was at that moment that Trevor realized just how big that dream world of his was: no matter how far he fell, there was still more space available for him to explore. It was like games produced using non-Euclidean math as a basis, which left the player confused about the workings of space.

'No! I'm not taking this shit!' Trevor tried to move, to no avail.

The tentacle never stopped stretching to accompany its endless fall.

He felt that from his heels, the tentacle grew and went to his calves. Each time those things grew, Trevor felt less and less in his own body. From his slender calves, the weird monster reached his thighs and groin.

Trevor's expression turned grim, but it was hard to make out due to both his lack of blood vessels and his lack of a static face. In this spectral form, nothing about him was palpable: everything seemed to be nothing more than a heap of black gases, gathered in his current humanoid form.

The monster didn't stop.

Waist…

Stomach…

Chest…

Part by part, Trevor was losing control. As if they were playing chess, Trevor and the monster competed to see who would win the game. Unfortunately for the former, however, the latter was clearly making use of cheating programs!

Piece by piece, the chessboard grew clearer as Trevor found himself running out of ways to plan his victory. There was no way to call a judge to say that his opponent was cheating. The world was unfair, reality was cruel.

Trevor's heart filled with bitterness, his arms had long since been taken by this parasitic monster. Only his head was free to look up at the white sky and the black nebula.

'Is this my end?

Trevor smiled and his row of ghostly black teeth came into view.

'But isn't that good either...?

His eyes lost their usual unshakable determination.

'It was getting boring anyway…'

His cheeks lifted in a slight friendly expression.

'Since the beginning, I've just been drowning in madness…'

His eyelids drooped, sealing off his vision.

'What sense of it? What is the meaning of life? Isn't it all temporary after all?'

His head was completely engulfed by the black tentacles. There wasn't a ghostly patch of skin left that wasn't swallowed. If any observers looked sideways at all of this, they would see long black strands extending from top to bottom.

What was curious, however, was that these black filaments were shrinking, like the springs of a rusty toy that after so many uses, stopped having the same efficiency that it had in the past in terms of expanding and retracting.

In that strange place, time passed slowly.

The black nebulae continued its usual battle against the vast white sky.

The black filaments continued to contract back, pulling Trevor's body with them.

Such a scene was similar to a cargo ship turning its engines to pull heavy chains from the depths of the sea, which had at its tip the anchor that enabled the ship to stop its movements.

In no time, the process of pulling that humanoid-shaped spectral anchor came to an end. The infinitesimal point that generated the tentacled monster pulled the unconscious Trevor closer to itself.

A cruel mouth opened and began to devour his body.

Black blood fell from the sky and rained down into the endless white abyss below.

The monster didn't care about these details, as if there was a portal to another dimension inside its stomach, the monster swallowed parts of that humanoid spectrum until there was nothing left behind.

The remnants of the existence known as Trevor Anirth were swept away from that plane.

The monster, in turn, began to shrink into a singularity.

After getting as large as 1 Planck Length, the unnamed thing moved to one of the black nebula outcroppings, where it hovered over a small colorful fragment before disappearing from view. The dream world returned to its usual configuration, black and white fought for dominance once again.

.

.

.

Everything was dark.

In this absence of light, noises of sea waves moving echoed.

The water came in...

The water came back….

The water came in and then came back...

The rhythmic movement showed no signs of pausing.

Those black waters were churning, bouncing with everything around them.

Right in the center of all that heavy dark liquid was an immobile human body.

It was a dead body.

The black hairs of that body were floating lifeless.

The corpse's eyes were open, exposing its dull green irises.

Suddenly-!

"hHAgh!"

The human figure was revived!

The young man spat out the dark waters from his lung as if it were amniotic fluid.

That person trembled like a newborn, out of control over his own body.

Later, this lad stopped shaking, heaving a deep sigh.

"I'm still alive?" Trevor wondered, no joy or sadness contained in his tone. His eyes were squinted as his right arm stretched up: it was perpendicular to his eyeballs.

Though he wasn't extending his four limbs and head, Trevor had no trouble continuing to float in these dark waters that seemed denser than mercury. His outstretched hand curled into a fist, enabling Trevor to feel the joy of being in control of his body again.

There was no sign of it on his face, his face remained as cold as the Extreme South Sea.

Trevor stopped staring at his hand, making no effort to hold it out. His arm dropped like a tree trunk in the middle of the river and created even more ripples in that chaotic sea of dark waters.

"Fucked... All the time, I just end up fucked. What is wrong with me?" Trevor didn't even have anger in his voice, it was like he was describing another character he created for his fictional story. There was no emotion hidden behind Trevor, whether it was his intonation or his expression, both were like blank slates.

"When I first woke up, I went crazy."

"When I woke up the second time, I broke my arm."

"When I woke up for the third time, I tore my feet."

"When I woke up for the fourth time, I almost died twice."

"Now, I woke up again in this strange place after dying…"

Trevor had a faraway look that went beyond the hazy void above his head.

"Is my dad really worth all this endless effort...?"

The young man's black hair continued to swim in the dark waters beneath him.

"Hha..."

"Hahahaha..."

"AHahahhahaha!"

Unlimited insane laughter swept the sea of dark waters.

"In this unhappy world, in this rotten and dirty world, who cares about my desires but myself? My father is still wandering missing somewhere in this world, I can still find him. I'll give up just because life is unfair...?"

Trevor smiled with sheer mockery stamped on his face.

"Am I going to give up just because the world is cruel? Hmph!"

The smile faded under resolute expression.

His brows were as firm as the Western Mountain Ranges.

Trevor didn't say more to himself, he gritted his teeth and shifted his body to get out of this dark waters. The liquid was too thick, to the point that Trevor managed to step on some of its parts to get up.

The room was still dark, no light entering Trevor's pupils.

The dark waters were erratic and tortuous, moving like snakes during their mating meeting. Trevor couldn't see a thing, nor could he stand up for long without falling down and swallowing hard gulps of that dark water.

"Where are you?"

Trevor yelled, his voice going to the beyond and not returning in the form of echoes. Desolation was king in this dark world, and Trevor was nothing but insignificant in that immensity.

"Where are you, monster?!"

The little ant was not intimidated by the giant elephant. This tiny creature continued to climb the colossus' plump legs, gripping the hinges of its skin with its little legs and using its jaw to carve a path for itself.

"Didn't you enjoy eating me? Come! I am he-!"

Trevor lost his balance and fell before he could complete his sentence. The dark world paid him no attention, as if he was unworthy even to be able to speak in that place. Trevor was irritated by this, never in his life had it occurred to him.

The young man stopped struggling with the currents and lay still, finally managing to float to the surface without having to worry about falling. Trevor noted that maybe he was too agitated in this dark world.

'My feelings here are amplified, or rather, my calm is the only feeling being suppressed...' Trevor did his best not to worry about it. This dark world was dangerous, underestimating it and continuing to throw himself against the currents was futile.

'What does this place want from me?' Trevor was lost, and that feeling started to make his heart flutter. As soon as he noticed he was getting shaky once more, Trevor closed his eyes and pictured his father's face.

Trevor saw Jake's warm face smiling at him, which washed away the feeling of despair in his chest: filling him with hope. Calm was hard to come by, but the lad didn't give up.

At that moment, the eyes that were the same color as spring seemed to have morphed into those of winter as he considered the situation coldly.

'Right. If I can't go somewhere walking in this water, how about I swim and explore what's under me?' The very definition of madness itself was to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

His hope and anticipation grew, filling him with happiness.

Trevor soon lost the urge to move to get out of there, feeding on the future and forgetting about the present.

Trevor dreamed of getting out of this dangerous situation, he dreamed of finding his father, he dreamed of telling his father the crazy things that happened to him during these recent times, he dreamed that his memories came back, he dreamed of living happily ever after.

However…

Trevor frowned slightly.

How could he live happily ever after without his family being complete?

His mother was dead, Cecilia Herona was buried and would never be part of his life again! Trevor started to cry, the sad feelings broke his happy bubble and made him furious. Why couldn't the world be happy forever?

'This world knows no justice: it's cold, cruel and unforgiving.' The moment Trevor saw that flawed world, his bubble of dreams melted like summer ice. The young man wasted no more time, he took in large amounts of air and swam down with all his might.

His muscles contracted and relaxed, the back and forth movement of his muscle tissue transforming the chemical energy of the potassium pump into kinetic energy that gave him the means to move in this water denser than mercury.

The weight on his back increased by every millimeter he descended down. The enormous pressure choked Trevor and threatened to make him breathless. Feelings of desperation assailed him as he thought about that possibility, but Trevor gave no chance for chaos to set in and imagined his father's face again.

Despair and hope danced to the sound of the dark water moving in the background.

The dance between them became intense, despair pushed hope away. Hope, in turn, was not satisfied and fought back: pushing despair away in the same way.

In no time, the dance turned into a fierce fight!

Despair has stepped on the foot of hope, hope has punched despair and despair has kicked hope. The fight was endless, each of the two fought with everything they had to gain an advantage over their respective opponents.

However, something beyond expectations happened the next moment.

Over time, the struggle between hope and despair became more intense. The blows were faster, more deadly and didn't care about the safety of the ones who launched them. Hope lost its eyes and despair lost its legs.

Suddenly the two began to merge!

From this merger, a child emerged…

It was motivation!

Despair and hope merged and gave origin to motivation. Trevor's mind has never been so resolute when now, nothing in this world could stop him from pursuing his goals! Everything else was secondary when compared to what he most wanted!

The dark world began to shake.

The dark waters began to ripple more than ever.

Suddenly, Trevor hit the bottom of the ocean. His feet found something steady for balance, but Trevor didn't mind that shit and swam even deeper! He punched the bottom of the ocean until it fended off!

Golden-orange lights began to well up from these cracks, which spread like cobwebs everywhere!

The bottom of the sea of ​​darkness has collapsed!

The dark world shattered when Trevor saw something he would never forget for the rest of his life.

Before his green eyes, an orange-gold world shone like the sun. In the middle of that orange world, a huge monster that was big enough to swallow whole buildings with one bite, lay imposing like an immortal emperor.

Trevor's eyes jumped forward at the sight of it.

What was in front of him was not a monster, but the monster!

And worse, that colossal creature was looking directly into Trevor's eyes!