Always Dreaming

The World Between Worlds

An all so familiar tune chimed in the distance, seemingly from every direction. It felt like Eli was jumping between wavelengths, he could hear everything, and yet he failed to understand any of it. His alarm continued to blare, neither loud nor soft, panning around him, its source unpinnable.

Whispers.

Screams.

A platonic aura?

Eli could not make any sense of the space around him. It felt like he was floating in a space filled with nothing, and absolutely everything. He could barely comprehend what he felt. The lightning. He could still feel the crackling electricity charge through his veins, the smell of his own seared flesh invaded his nostrils once more, eliciting a gag from within himself. His heart thudded violently as his death replayed over and over again in his head. He clasped his chest, his lungs struggling to keep oxygen within them. An eerie thought entered his head, the one thought he was struggling to repel, was he dead?

"Unfortunately that appears to be the case."

His body flipped around. He struggled to maintain his balance as his feet found a cool surface to settle upon. The world before him was upside down, or was it? He couldn't tell by the ominous view which was before him. There were pulsating balls of light zipping in seemingly random directions as Eli struggled to keep track of them, their nature graciously hypnotic while at the same time unsettling. As a few of the lights zipped past him, he heard a plethora of different voices emanating from them, words which he couldn't understand and yet it felt as if they were giving him all the answers he was seeking. "You're back?", whispered the voice, seemingly that of a child's. In the distance, doorways of light seemed to beckon him towards them, their light unnaturally appealing, a trance seemed to come upon him the longer he stared. He felt as if the possibilities were endless. The hoarse voice from before tore his attention away from the doorways of light, effectively breaking his connection with the pulsating lights as he no longer heard anything emanating from them.

"You never fail to surprise me, do you?" The voice echoed throughout the space.

Eli's shoulders tensed, as a chill ran down his spine. This aura. A weight unlike anything he had ever felt before had settled upon his shoulders, bringing him to his hands and knees. He could barely manage lifting his head, his eyes darting left to right as his vision gradually blurred. The shimmering black surface upon which he groveled upon began to branch with vein-like cracks, as beads of sweat ran down his forehead and settled upon it. This was not the afterlife Eli had been hoping for. For starters, it was meant to be a glorious spectacle, wherein the gods themselves dined with the souls of the dead, reminiscing on the lives they had led and eventually, meeting those which they had lost, within the paradise of their new heavenly bodies. And then, they would meet with 'The One', deciding on whether to remain in this paradise or to be reborn into the vast multiverse. At least that is what Eli's dad has constantly rambled on about as Eli plugged his ears, struggling to fall asleep. Mom would then barge into the room and pull Dad out forcefully by his ear, but that didn't stop him from finishing his wild stories. Those really were good times. A time wherein his family had still been whole. But this... this was nothing like the old barf had told Eli it would be. In fact it was the complete opposite.

"What a beautiful memory" the voice cooed, snapping Eli out of his thoughts. He heard chains dragging in front of him, as a silhouette emerged from the darkness. The weight on Eli's shoulders only grew more intense as the figure approached.

"You...you can read my thoughts?" Eli sputtered out as he willed all of his energy into his arms, forcing himself upright. Of course he can read my thoughts, this dude is clearly a god of some sort. Eli was not going to have some creepy deity peering into his mind and extracting his secrets...not that he had many, but still. A smug look managed to plaster itself across Eli's face, as the only thoughts running through his mind were pink elephants, effectively disabling the god's mind reading capabilities.