A Man With My Face

Trigger Warnings: Descriptions of vomit, insects, implied gender dysphoria and mentions of past self–harm and death

I don't see how sharing is going to help, but fine. At least this way you might have a record of it. Are you able to share what I talk about in session posthumously? I guess it wouldn't matter much to me anyways, I'm a goner no matter what confidentiality rules you do or don't break. I mean, something is going to kill me, so maybe you'd be doing exactly what you're supposed to, but it won't do any good.

I've never been able to lucid dream as people call it. It sounds nice, getting to live a whole different life while you're asleep where you decide what happens, but my brain just can't seem to do it. I guess these are in a weird gray area between lucid and not. I can control what happens, but I never realize it's a dream, and it is absolutely not nice. What happens in the morning doesn't help with that.

Anyways, it always starts the same way. I'm standing in the middle of the forest, digging through the wet dirt with a shovel. The handle is never sanded down quite enough and I feel the splinters in my hands more than I feel or even sense anything else. I know that they're telling me to stop. I never notice when the sun starts setting, I'm not even halfway done digging when it's completely dark outside. In the corners of my vision, the dark branches reach towards me like hands, but when I turn around they're just that; branches.

You know how sometimes because nightmares are made up by your own brain, you know something without having experienced it? Well, in this case I know it's cold in the forest, but the temperature doesn't register to my nerves. The closest my body gets to acknowledging the cold is through the burning in my throat and lungs from breathing in the dried-out and frigid air. I keep digging, keep breathing anyways—although in some versions of the nightmare I give up on the latter—my breaths falling in sync with the slam of the shovel against dirt that's just dry enough to not be considered mud.

My clothes aren't well-suited for digging a grave in a forest at night. Right— I'm always wearing the same thing: the simple white dress my mother always wanted me to wear to formal events when I was little. Obviously it shouldn't fit me anymore, but during this, it always fits too well. I always hated that dress, I was so thrilled when I first heard it tear when I put it on. I didn't want it to fit me anymore, I wanted to leave it behind. However, for all its faults, the dress makes me feel safe. I feel invisible in it, like nothing that wants to hurt me can see me. What wants to hurt me? I'm never sure until I see it. But I'm telling this in order, that doesn't come until later.

I'm digging the grave for hours, much longer than anyone could reasonably be asleep, but then again, that's how time usually works in nightmares. The bottom fills with water, and I always groan about it ruining my shiny black dress shoes, as if I have any real attachment to them. I never get tired. Something I can't recognize tells me I have to keep digging if I want to be safe. It doesn't make sense, the grave isn't even for me, and I know nightmares rarely do, but this one is different. I've resigned myself to dying without ever knowing anything about this nightmare, but that doesn't stop me from wondering.

Eventually I do finish the grave. Climbing out is a struggle that leaves dirt stains on the white fabric of the dress, and I relish in having any control over it. When I stand up, there is a man with my face, my height, and my eyes standing in front of me. I am always shocked to see him, even more so that he looks so eerily like myself. He has a scrappy beard and a mustache over his thin lips as he smiles at me. He smiles at me and I know that this is the man who the grave belongs to. The man who looks like me pulls me into a hug, and I know I am not safe the moment anyone sees this. Terror washing over me, my hands go to his neck and squeeze with all of their strength. The beginnings of tears prickle in the corners of my eyes and in my own throat for this stranger that I was overtook with the need to make no longer exist. He doesn't fight back and he doesn't look surprised, he simply lets me choke the life out of him. I feel his pulse slow under my fingers as what was likely around a minute or two passes. It's too dark to see the light leave his eyes, but I know that's what happens.

I catch him in my arms as he falls limp. I hold him tight as he had held me as I lower him into the grave, embracing him until getting to a point where I can't keep contact anymore and have to drop him unceremoniously on the flooded dirt ground. His body makes a loud splash in the dirty water. I'm the only one who can possibly mourn him, and so when the dam breaks and it all becomes too much, I fall to my knees and sob violently over the grave of my own creation and the man I put inside it. My chest heaves and I painfully gasp for air as the force of my emotions take me by surprise. Every now and then in this nightmare, I wonder who will be at my own funeral to mourn me. I consider myself an amicable person—you remember how I was the last couple sessions—I have plenty of friends and family members and yet there always feels like there's this distance between us, something that blocks the flow of the relationship that I can never get over.

Then is when things start to fall apart. Sometimes it starts with a rumbling, or a snapping of a branch, or by coming up from the grave; squelching through the dirt. I always know it decides to show up because of the man that looks like me; because of the kindness I showed to him, even when I wanted him dead. I was caught. Once it's fully formed it looks… a bit like if a couple dozen people were turned into dark, viscous, oozing slime, then all mushed together into some amalgamation. Each body is speaking, but it's impossible to hear what any individual one is saying over the cocaphany of the others. I don't know how it moves so fast, I can never remember it having legs, but I suppose that's how nightmares work. It races towards me, and I know it wants me dead.

The first couple times, I tried to fight it. That was when I still thought this was a normal recurring night terror, and that the bruises and scratches I woke up with were a coincidence, maybe the result of me sleepwalking. Then the injuries started getting more concerning. A moderately severe scrape on my head that coincided with when the amalgamation slammed me into the rough bark of a tree. A shallow laceration on my arm that it had given me as I tried to scramble away into the forest. I stopped trying to fight it when I had to rush myself to the hospital to get stitches for a deep gash in my leg.

When I run, things go about the same every time. I get some superficial scratches and bruises from branches that my mind was racing too loudly to warn me about. My nightmare figures out that my heart should be racing, and so makes it feel like that is truly what happens. I scream at the top of my lungs hoping that anyone is around to hear and willing to save me. Another branch leaves a deep cut on my cheek and I cry out in pain, but I can't slow down, not if I want to live. I can hear it storming after me, its wretched body squeezing through every branch I try and maneuver around to add an obstacle into its path. I beg through more wails for somebody to come do something about it. My dress becomes as torn and ragged as I am, something I don't have the capacity to be grateful for.

Every single time, no matter what direction I run in, I always end up tripping and falling back into the grave. My body makes a splash, and I breathe in a load of the murky water. The man with my face is next to me, lifeless, and so I pretend to be too.

Then dirt falls on my face. Shovel–full by shovel–full, I am buried alive and I don't even argue. Whatever was keeping me alive has given up, leaving me to fend for myself, and I lack the energy to. When the grave is completely full with dirt, I can feel my skin begin to warp and rot. The repulsive, disgusting feeling was completely unable to be relieved through scratching, with my arms trapped in place by my sides. I have no choice but to let it spread, from my hands and feet, to my arms and legs, to my abdomen and torso, to my chest and neck, and finally, to my head and face. Maggots are wiggling around in my flesh, feasting on the rotten, hollow version of myself that remains. I want to vomit but I don't have the bodily functions to do so. I want to claw all my horrible, rancid skin off but, once again, I can't move my hands enough to reach the rest of my body.

Usually, that's when I wake up. Any injury I sustained in the nightmare is still there, as well as the injuries from the previous ones. It's almost something I've gotten used to, waking up to new blood stains on my sheets and pillow. I don't bother to change them anymore. But that's not what happened a couple nights ago.

I went through the horrific feeling of decay, same as usual, but before the dirt started falling, I didn't pretend to be dead like the man. I sat up to catch a glimpse of whoever was going to bury me. Above the grave stood a woman in a white dress, with my face, my height, and my eyes, but with a black slime oozing out of her mouth.

She spoke to me, in a gurgling, deathly voice, can you tell what is wrong with you yet? She started,can you tell why you need to die?

Then the dirt fell.

I woke up vomiting maggots and dark, viscous, oozing slime, very nearly choking to death on it trying to get all of it out of my throat. I haven't slept since then.

So, what do you think, Doc?

No, I haven't been hurting myself again, not intentionally. If I was I would've made up a better lie, not something about creepy nightmares that hurt me in real life. This isn't because of the move either, a new apartment doesn't give you hospital–worthy injuries in the middle of the night. I'm not making this up, I've just been wearing long sleeves for a reason, look. I actually probably need to change that bandage soon, how much longer do we have left in the session? Got it.

Why am I certain I’m going to die? I mean, yeah, it's a little black and white, but just look at the situation. I don't think there’s really anything I can do to stop that from happening. Do I have proof? Well, there was the whole don't you see why you need to die thing, which feels pretty transparent to me. I mean, I don't think there's any universe in which I don't kill the man.