A wall-eyed gopher I was sitting in my assigned seat front row of class A on the west side of the room, no one sitting behind or next to me and my closest neighbor one seat away rarely every looking towards me, even when passing assignments down the row which got tossed on the desk separating us anyway, they never handed it right to me. Class had just ended for the day and the pitter patter on the window next to me had begun to lull me to sleep, though rain or not this usually happens at this time of day and everyone had long since given up on trying to stop me, probably around 2 years ago. It’s easiest for me to sleep where I’m not supposed to, and I have more vivid dreams when I’m somewhere where I’m most likely to get woken up by someone else. I never dream at home anymore. As the rain and the footsteps of my best friends mixed together I woke up in a new world.

I was flooded of memories of being selected by the government for special training. I was transferred to a facility underground. I was the only person who had the gene sequence that could interface with the new anti-demon combat technology. The demons had started to take over the world, and they needed me to fight them, and I was only 17, but I was ready. Half of the country had been killed by them last week. I said goodbye to my friend, who was a girl, that I had known since childhood and my other friend, who was a girl, who I had just met in high school. They would be watching, because when I went to kill the demon, it would be on TV, and the guy who made fun of me at school, who was my new best friend, would watch. And my parents would be watching too. And everyone else I knew, whether they wanted to or not, would have to watch, because I was helping them.

I remembered all of that as I was sitting in the cockpit. There was some other extraneous details not worth mentioning. When you remember a dream, you leave those details out, because sometimes they tell people more about you than you’re even able to consciously realize, but you know you’re not supposed to say them. You keep the dream as close to a story as you can. My legs and arms were absorbed completely into black ribbed sleeves that extended to the top and bottom of the cockpit. I could not move them, I could not move my fingers or my toes, but I typically have trouble with the latter anyway. When I thought about moving them, the device 5000 times the size of my actual body reacted as if it were me, and I could see through its eyes. I was told through communications that they would administer pain suppressant formula. I asked if I could go to the moon if I killed the demon, they told me I can’t leave the device anymore because they had to remove my arms and legs during surgery. I said OK. I thought about all of my friends and my enemies turned friends and the other people who may or may not have really existed in real life and how, for better or worse, I probably wouldn’t be seeing them anymore after this. I got sad even though I didn’t want to see any of them ever again.

The demon returned to Earth. He was facing me on the other side of town. I screamed out at him, and the device screamed too. I thought about using my lasers, but before I could launch any the demon was already right in front of me, and the town had been destroyed. The communications told me that everyone had already evacuated and not to worry, but I knew they were lying, because I still had my arms and legs, I had to still have them because I’ve never ridden on a plane before or run a mile and I still had to do that. So everyone in the town must be dead now. The demon grabbed the right arm of my device and pulled it clean off. I expected to see wires coming out the end of it but there was veins and, oddly enough, hair. Hair in place of veins, and I could tell it was all dirty on the inside. It was gross, but it came from me. My left arm and my legs must be like that too. It made it harder for me to want to use them. I pressed my left index finger into the stomach of demon and ejected the spike, which infected it and caused its trunk to bruise purple, and then when enough blood had built up, it burst. Exposure to the Earth’s atmosphere quickly infected it. My senior officer told me good job, and I wondered if he would even have any respect for me at all if I wasn’t in this exact situation I’m in right now. If I were just a head, I wondered if we could maybe even be friends.

The demon clutched their infected torso and it spread to their hand. They pressed it onto my face. It wouldn’t do anything, but they were just angry. He wanted to show me what I did, but I couldn’t see it. I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see. He switched his grip to my shoulders and flipped me around. He clawed at my back and exposed my spine. Light broke through the clouds and seared the nerves running down my body. The device transferred the pain to my body in the cockpit, and my body in the cockpit transferred the pain to me in real life. The dream explained a pain to me that I didn’t know before. I felt like I would think about every time I went to sleep now, if I ever woke up. The demon reached to grab for my spine, but I was able to grow eyeballs down my spinal cord to look at him. It hurt to look. The grin he had extended past what would be natural for him. It hurt him to belittle me, but he wanted revenge. He began popping the eyeballs with one of his sharp nails. Mission command told me to close my eyes as hard as I could, but this time I wanted to see what was happening. The rain on the popped eyeballs hurt more than him actually breaking them open. The sound they made was like splashing on a hard flat surface. I knew why, because I’m not really here right now. I’m dreaming back in class after my friends went home for the day, and my teacher just forgot to wake me up because they have a date later tonight. I twisted my arms around in their sockets to grab the demon, who had now perched himself on my back to get more comfortable in hurting me. I knew my arms were still there, because this hurt too.

I spread my arms apart. I kept going and going and going. Inside the cockpit the tubes connecting me to the device were plump and leaking. And then, pop, the arms came off completely. The demon had hair in its veins like me. I thought that if this dream continued for the rest of my life, we would become friends because we were alike like that. There had to be a reason for all of this. Then I passed out.

---

I missed my ride home, obviously, so I had to take the city bus instead which was going to be hours. I wouldn’t be home until late at night and then I’d just pass out on the bed and wake up for school again the next day and do it all over again. I noticed something when I reached down for my backpack, 1 hour into the ride, though. Something that wasn’t there that should be. I forgot my homework… on the desk next to me. I guess this is where the real nightmare really begins...