Chapter 2 – Real or Unreal?

That night, Michael had a horrible and extremely vivid nightmare. Inside that nightmare, Michael seemed to be floating in space. ‘Seemed” because, whilst he could see a seemingly unending number of starry nebulas in front of him, he saw nothing else beside it, only a vast, vast nothingness. And it was also eerily quiet. He tried to turn around and noticed that he couldn’t even move so much as a finger, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t even move his damn eyes. Slowly, but surely, panic began to well up in him. The more he tried to move, the more it became obvious that his efforts were futile, the more he panicked. Just what was going on? Where the fuck was he? And just why couldn’t he move his body?! Wasn’t this just a dream of his?! Then why did this feel so real and just why didn’t this feel like a dream at all?! Michael wanted to cry right now, but even that simple motion of showing his emotion was denied from him. He tried to move himself frantically. No matter what it was, he has to be capable of moving at least some part of his body!

After, what seemed like an eternity, he finally managed to move a part of his body! Although all that he managed to move, was his left eyelid. He did it! Now he just had to get the rest of his body to move! Spurred on by his panic of being stuck like this, unable to move and finally getting back the control of a small part of his body, Michael put even more effort into trying to move. And he succeeded. Well at least for some time, because after regaining the control over his eyes, he was simply unable to regain any more control over himself. And even that small part of control that he finally had, felt like it could slip away any moment. Michael became really desperate, he hated feeling this helpless and this space together with the eerie quietness didn’t do much to help improve his state of mind.

He put all his effort into maintaining the control of his eyes through moving them bit by bit. This though put such a strain on his eyes, that they quickly became bloodshot. They even started bleeding after a short while and Michael wanted to scream out in pain, getting even more panicked, since he couldn’t even do that. He tried his absolute best to keep his eyes open, despite them bleeding and hurting like hell. The pain though, only got worse and worse. By now, Michael complete threw the idea, that this was just a dream away. It hurt way too much for it to be just a creation of his dreams. It got so bad, that he couldn’t even focus on anything anymore. So Michael did the only thing he could do right now, if he wanted to lessen the pain. He simply gave up. He gave up what little bit of control he had over his body and waited for the pain to lessen.

But the pain didn’t lessen. Instead of becoming weaker, the pain got even stronger. And not only that, even started to spread throughout his body. Slowly but surely it was crawling throughout him. It felt like he was being eaten from the inside out. Michael was about to go insane from all this pain, but it seemed like he wasn’t even allowed that kind of release. Even this was denied from him.

Strangely though, the last part that this extreme pain spread to, was his brain. He hoped, no he begged and prayed for the pain to end, or him to lose consciousness after it reached there. But whatever it was, that was giving him so much pain, it took its time. It only reached out for Michael’s brain, after it had enveloped every other part of him in unbearable pain.

The moment it reached his pain though, there was… nothing. Nothing at all. He noticed that he didn’t feel any pain and he also didn’t feel panicked and desperate anymore. All he felt was a strange calmness. And while Michael was glad that all of the things he just felt were gone now, he also found it strange that they were gone in a way, as if they had never existed to begin with. As if he just imagined feeling all of it. He became worried and confused. He was sure that he didn’t just imagine all of this. But when he tried recalling all the pain he was sure he felt just moments ago, all he got was that there was nothing. He tried hard to recall all, that he felt, even if it wasn’t really a pleasant memory.

What happened next though, was something that Michael didn’t expect. There was suddenly movement inside this vast space. But it wasn’t him that was moving right now. He was still incapable of any kind of movement. Instead, the nebulas in front him began to move! Shocked, Michael watched, as all the nebulas in front of him, slowly made their way into a single direction. All of them seemed to be moving towards him! He seemed to be the goal of the Nebulas! He couldn’t really see it, but Michael assumed that the ones in front of him weren’t the only nebulas in this space. He was quite sure that there were others all around him. This thought, didn’t help in distracting him from what he saw happening right in front of him though. On the contrary, it made him feel anxious as to what came next. He really didn’t want to know. Though he didn’t want to know what came next, at the same time, some kind of curiosity overcame him. Somehow, he wanted to let it happen. No, he felt like he just had to let it happen! Not that he could do anything to stop it anyway.

After, what felt like hours of simply looking at the nebulas in front on him move, they were finally about to reach him. The moved extremely slow by now, so slow even that Michael could barely make out any kind of movement. It almost seemed like the nebulas were mocking him! Michael got angry at that thought and wished for these nebulas to get going already and do, whatever it was they planned on doing! It seemed like the nebulas heard, what he just thought, because suddenly, they all started converging into him and they did so in a speed, that made their slow movement from before feel like a lie.

More and more nebulas converged into him and suddenly Michael began to feel weird. It felt like every single part of his body became sentient, as they started moving around without him even wanting to! They all just moved in a disordered fashion – each of his legs, as well as each of his arms just moved at random. One of his legs, his right leg was bending itself and then stretching again, while the other leg seemed like it tried to turn itself by 180 degrees. On the other hand, his right arm seemed to imitate a snake, as it was pointing upwards and did a slithering motion. His left arm was just hitting back and forth though, which could be considered luck, as he was able to see it thanks to that. This was definitely abnormal! He couldn’t even see what his limbs, except for maybe his left arm, were doing, but he certainly felt it! Especially the movement of the leg that tried to turn itself around, which felt quite painful!

At the same time his skin started changing its colour! And it didn’t just change into one colour, it changed into several different colours at once!  His skin colour changed again and again! First it became a weird mix of yellow, red and green and yet, just a second later, it was a mixture of blue, purple and yellow. His skin just seemed to change at random, without any sort of pattern visible! He wouldn’t even know of these changes on his skin, if it weren’t for his left arm, that was flailing around inside his view!

And as if that wasn’t enough, now his whole body started to expand! It became larger and larger, inflating like a balloon. Michael could feel himself gaining lots of mass and yet despite that, he didn’t feel terrified and creeped out by this at all! No, on the contrary, he could feel himself calming down and relaxing instead! It felt like he was becoming whole, without even having known that he wasn’t so before! He started to enjoy the sensation of all this happening. It made him feel good. Like everything was how it was supposed to be. A puzzle falling into place. He relished at this and wanted it to last forever!

Just as he was thinking that, the last of the sheer endless number of nebulas around converged into him. And when it did so, several things happened at once: His body, that had inflated to an unbelievable size, deflated, and went back to its original size. Though as soon as it finished deflating, there was a blue wave coming off him and together with it a loud, explosion like sound. This was the first sound he heard since this whole thing had started! Sadly, Michael didn’t have the time to enjoy this moment, since the changes happening weren’t over yet. The next thing that changed, was his skin. There was another, smaller and soundless wave coming off from him and together with it, the colourful display, that was on his skin, left him and returned his skin to a normal colour. Now he at least looked normal again, though somehow, Michael felt a bit sad about losing all these colours. 

While he was feeling sad at his loss, Michael noticed something. He was making a sad face. Yes, Indeed! He could move again! Michael cried out loud in joy as he noticed that. Together with his joyous cry, there came another wave out of him, which resounded in this whole space. This fourth wave seemed to have triggered a chain reaction, as now there were several loud explosions happening all around Michael. He didn’t even have to look around to see that they were happening everywhere in this space, somehow he just kind of knew it, felt it happening. When the explosions ended, there were all kinds of stars around him, filling this space up completely. Again he didn’t have to move around to know what there was. He was feeling it. There were red and white dwarfs, supergiants and many more. He was amazed looking at them. But it was at the same time an extremely weird sensation, being able to look at all the stairs that existed in this space even though he shouldn’t really be able to, considering how big and how far apart stars normally were.

As Michael was contemplating about these things, he felt his consciousness fading from this place. He felt the dire need to close his eyes and think about nothing, so he did exactly that, even though he really wanted to continue exploring this space too. Closing his eyes and emptying his mind, he disappeared from this place.

When he woke up, to his alarm ringing, he groggily sat up and looked around for it. Though what he saw next made him shout out loud “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!”.

Akuiya

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! The chapter this time is about 2000 character long :) And again: Please tell me what you think about this chapter and please do tell me if you find any typos or have suggestions c: