Doorway to a Dream

An endless tick followed by an endless tock. 

Fear awaited him around every corner. Doom loomed over his home like a heavy fog. He waited for it to suffocate him as he lay on his cold slab of a bed. Just as he closed his eyes, an alarm the sound of a hundred nails on a hundred chalkboards screamed in his ears. He sat up, unfazed, and looked around the empty room he lay in. He watched a fly crawl across a whitewashed wall. It flew into the air, around the single light that hung in the middle of the empty room, and back down onto the floor, which was also white. His gaze fell upon the clock as its endless noise continued to ring in his ears. He knew that he and the rest of his block were looking at the same thing. It was round like most analog clocks, with a black trim and white background for the numbers and hands. It's only difference: the number six was painted red, like blood.

And, of course, it counted years instead of hours and months instead of minutes. They made sure it would still count seconds, though, so that the noise could be drilled into their heads every moment, and the sound could drive them mad as it kept them from sleeping. Neo walked to his bedroom door, squashing the fly with his foot as he went, and watched the sheet of white metal slide open with a metallic swish.

He walked out of his bare room and through his equally empty kitchen. He sat with a bowl of bland cereal at the counter, which faced the one window in his whole house. As Neo looked across the street, he could see the faces of all his neighbors, looking out their identical windows looking back at him. Neo looked down at his cereal with its watered-down milk and imagined it to be a white sky filled with stars. Immediately, a high-pitched ring sounded in his ears and he forgot what he was thinking about.

He knew that in his bedroom, that number six glowed red. A bell rang outside, signaling it was time to go to work. Neo got up from his chair and walked to put on his shoes. 

"Good morning, Mom," he said as he walked past the picture that hung on the wall.

He stood in front of his door and waited for it to open, just as all of his neighbor's doors would. He heard the sound of doors opening, but he never budged. Strange, he thought. He was about to look out his window to check if the usual line of blank-faced people were walking towards the city that held their jobs, but something caught his eye in the corner of his room. A figure moved through a shadow in the corner of the room and dashed into the bathroom. Neo sighed and closed the window blinds.

"OK," said Neo, "the window is covered, you can come out now."

"No," replied in a deep voice from the bathroom.

Neo dropped his head. "Fine," he said as he walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind him,  "but I still don't understand why we have to meet in here every time." 

"I told you, we can't risk being seen," replied Arthur as he flicked on the light.

Before Neo stood a giant of a man. Neo had never asked his age, but assumed Arthur to be at least fifty years old. He stood tall but had a slight lean to him from his bad leg that was supported by a brace. His brown, dirty trench coat went down to about the tops of his muddy, black boots. He wore a shirt that used to be white, but was now stained yellow and brown tucked into dark brown cargo pants. He fiddled with a black knit beanie in his hands, covered by gray fingerless gloves. He had gray hair and a long gray beard; his face was withered and old but he had a certain kindness to him. He had crows feet from the many times he had smiled, and his eyes shone bright with a childlike wonder in them.

"We must leave," he said. "They found us--the Soviets. Someone must have reported us. They were waiting for us outside of the wall, right where our hole was."

"What happened to the others?" asked Neo, "Did they get all of you?"

"No," replied Arthur, "but only a few of us made it out before they stole all of the air from our dream world and filled it with carbon dioxide."

Arthur watched the look of horror creep onto Neo's face as he thought of all of his friends who had been suffocated, trapped inside of a dream.

"We must leave quickly," said Arthur as he opened the secret hatch door that Neo had hidden behind his toilet. "The Soviets know that you are one of us; they will be here soon."

Just as he finished his sentence, a loud knock came from Neo's front door.

"Open up, Mr. Barlow," said a voice from outside. "We know you're in there!"

"Quickly," said Arthur as he crawled through the small door.

A loud boom came from the front of Neo’s house as he scrambled out the door.

The two ran down street after street. As they went, Neo saw posters hung up on the sides of buildings. 

"See Anyone Sleeping? Report And Earn $10,000!" that poster was hung up so high no one could miss it. Another one said, "Work For Your Country! Be Proud" and the last before he and Arthur ducked into the subway station, "Tired Of Half Of Your Town Being Wiped Out Every Six Years? Pay The Low Price Of $10,000 And Don’t Worry About It, Move To The Upper Class!"

"Where are we going?" Neo asked.

"We are meeting up with the rest," replied Arthur. "We have a safe house in the city where we can open a world and escape!"

By now, he and Arthur had made their way to the subway. The subway was a long, silver cylinder with no windows and no wheels. It traveled through a tube that was just the perfect size for it. Neo and Arthur slowed their run to a jog and then a walk. They passed by people that were tall, that were short, that were fat, and that were skinny. People looked like they were dead, people who looked as though they were about to die, and people who looked like they had never worked a day in their life. Arthur stopped short, and Neo bumped into him, almost falling over. Arthur quickly pulled Neo into a corner behind a trash can. Before Neo could shout at Arthur, he pointed towards the entrance of the station.

"Look," said Arthur.

At the entrance, three men in uniforms were walking down the steps, guns in hand. The roar of the train's electric engine sounded as the metal cylinder cruised into the station. Neo watched as hundreds of passengers filed on.

When the doors were about to close, Neo said, "Come on, we should go now so they can't follow us."

"Not yet," said Arthur.

The train doors closed, and in an instant, it was gone.

"Now," said Arthur. "Quickly."

Arthur sprinted towards the tracks with Neo on his heels. As the two jumped down into the tunnel, Neo heard the shouts of the armed men behind them. As they ran, Neo heard shots ring out in the distance coming from the men behind them. He looked back to see the men running only a distance of three hundred meters behind. Even worse, Neo began to hear the sound of a train stopping at the station. Neo was about to look back again, but Arthur stopped him.

"Just run," he panted. "We aren't that far."

Far from what? thought Neo. He heard the shots fire overhead; they were closer now, much closer. He heard the train doors begin to close. He heard the shots overhead. He heard the engine of the train start. Everything felt slow. He felt as though he was running through thick honey, like he wasn't even moving. He heard the men behind him yell,

"Stop! Stop!"

It was as though they were asking time to stop, not the train. A flash of light shined bright in the dark, silver, endless tunnel. And all of a sudden, Neo felt a rough hand grab him and yank him into, once again, darkness. The only sound Neo could hear was the blood rushing through his ears. Then, the strike of a match. Then he saw the light of a candle held by Arthur, who was lying on the ground. 

"Made it," he whispered. Neo looked around him and saw that they were in a sort of mine shaft. A lone tunnel held up by wooden beams went in either direction that Neo assumed was perpendicular to the subway tube. 

"That way is to the city," said Arthur. "This tunnel will lead us to a safe house where we can sleep."

That word, sleep, seemed to echo throughout the tunnel as if a thousand voices had said that word.

"How did this tunnel get here?" asked Neo as they walked through the burrow.

"Ever since the Soviets took over America, tunnels like this have been spread everywhere. This one leads to every safe house for sleepers in the city," answered Arthur.

"How many houses are there?" asked Neo.

"At least twenty. And those Communists don't know about a single one." Arthur said this last line with a kind of proudness in his voice.

The two reached a ladder that seemed to go up forever.

"Here we are," said Arthur. "Home."

As they climbed up the ladder, a feeling of dread came over Neo, though he wasn't sure why. At the top of the ladder was a hatch door, and when Arthur opened it, light blinded Neo. Arthur poked his head out the hole and said,

"It's just me and Neo. You can come out."

As they climbed into a room that looked almost identical to his kitchen, Neo watched many different faces emerge from behind corners and out of shadows. Faces that he knew, faces that had sheltered him from the harsh outside world after his mother had died. Faces that made him sad. A woman stepped forward and wrapped both Neo and Arthur in a fierce hug.

"We are so glad you made it!" said Patty, "How was your trip?"

"Oh, not too bad. Had a run-in with some officers but made it out okay," replied Arthur.

"Art," said another woman who was old enough to be Neo’s grandmother, "you shouldn't joke about things like that. What if Neo had gotten hurt?"

“I'm okay, Folma,” said Neo, “really.”

"See? We're fine!" Arthur said, "Everything is great! We are all here and safe, and you know what that means!"

"Yes," said Patty. "Tonight we sleep, but first we party!"

And party they did, all night long. So loud that no one noticed Neo escape to the front of the house where he unlocked the door. When Neo returned to the party, Arthur was waiting for him.

"Where did you run off to?" he asked.

"Just the bathroom," replied Neo. "Where is everyone?"

A slight smile tugged on the edge of Arthur’s mouth. "In the living room, about to take a little snooze."

Arthur and Neo walked into the living room and witnessed what looked to be a ritual meant to summon a demon. Every member of the party sat on the floor, their backs leaning against a big, glass chair that Patty was sitting in.

"Arthur, Neo! Just in time! Sit, sit," said Folma.

Arthur and Neo sat with their backs against the chair.

"Everybody ready?" asked Patty.

They all agreed in silence. 

Patty responded enthusiastically, "Here we go!"

In an instant, Neo felt as though each of his eyelids weighed ten pounds. He felt his head droop and his eyes roll back, but before he fell asleep, he jumped away from the chair. Neo lay on the cold floor for a moment and then got up to see what looked like a hole that was ripped in the air. He looked through this portal and saw his friends, his friends saw him, and he saw the look of horror on their faces as they watched the Soviet officers walk through the unlocked door and into the room. They all ran towards him as fast as they could, but before they got to him, a gunshot rang throughout the house and filled the room with smoke. Neo watched as Patty’s body slumped over in her chair, and then as her body in the dream faded.

"I’m sorry," said Neo, even though he knew they couldn't hear him.

Arthur banged on the portal door as if he were trying to smash the seal open.

"It doesn’t matter now," one of the officers assured Neo. "With the owner of the dream dead, no living thing could come out of it."

"You may go home now, Mr. Barlow," said a Soviet officer to Neo. "We can take it from here. Your ten thousand dollars will be waiting for you at your house, and we will send you more when we locate those other safe houses that connect to this one with those tunnels you told us about."

Neo returned home, not a tear in his eye, and walked past the money that lay on his kitchen table. Neo sat on his cold slab of a bed and watched that clock, knowing that it would be the last time he ever had to listen to that sound ever again.