Yume Nikki Chapter 5

You're dreaming. A never ending nightmare. You, running away from the sickening being showing its organs, go back through the road you came from. By doing that, at least you'll be surrounded by the landscape you were becoming used to. You'll find some relief. Or so it should have been.

Before you know it, you're walking through an unknown place. You were supposed to be going back through an straight road without any forks. Going by common sense, this should be impossible. The road under your feet is unchanged, but the trees that grew all around you have disappeared. Your eyes can see an unending darkness, interrupted only by raindrops.

Puzzled, looking around, you gaze at the strange things floating over your head. They look like big crosses. A symbol of sin... but also a symbol of atonement and redemption. If you believe, you will be saved. So, going back to the road was surely the right choice. Without a doubt, getting away from that disgusting organ thing was the right decision.

Your walking pace has become rhythmical, as if you were trying to push yourself forward. After all, for beings that came to save you, they look quite ominous. As if they were standing over a gravestone, with the putrid smell of a corpse lingering in the air.

The crosses rise in frequency, but by no means they get closer to you, and their saving help is nowhere to be seen. The crosses have now grown eyes, and follow your every movement persistently. They look at you, and nothing more. Being in their gaze gives you an indescribable feeling of oppression, and you increase your pace while still going straight ahead, as if trying to shake something off you.

The crosses keep increasing in number, and their gazes multiply with them. To add oil to fire, looking close to them, you realize that they have some kind of raw s.e.xual aura to them. In short, they look like genitals. Even though they were saving symbols just a few moments ago, in some unpleasant way, they have become something that you would definitely never seek help from.

The road goes on endlessly, and the crosses looking at you keep increasing in number. Like when Jesus Christ climbed the hill of Golgota, no one has come to your aid, and the view around you seems to be scorning you with vulgar gossips no matter where you look.

You can't bear this for so long.

Without thinking of how far you've walked, you suddenly stop, turn on your heels, and start walking back. The image of someone going forth and back... is the image of someone lost. You ignore all the malice and spite surrounding you, and walk with your eyes fixated on the road. Before long, the road stops, and the sea of trees is, once again, before your eyes.

Forest are well known for suicides. With its trees, bugs, wild birds and many other animals living in them, they should be a cauldron of life... but the shadow and stench of dead lingers in them. Leaving the city, civilization, and in a place where living beings are not armored by common sense, those people that are too weak seek to end their lives. If you were to die here, you would melt in a huge whirlpool of life, and after devouring every bit of you away, there would be nothing left.

As if you were seeking exactly that, as if you were an applicant for suiciding, you start roaming around while breathing heavily. The forest becomes increasingly stepped, and the thin path make it even harder to go on. At some point of the road, the red and yellow lights indicating "Stop" or "Danger" from a traffic light can be seen in the distance. As if to advert your eyes from everything, you open your umbrella and cling strongly to it. Amidst the falling rain, you allow yourself to feel some rea.s.surance and take a breath. And you suddenly notice.

There was something laying in front of you. And that something was a dead body. It's lying there, facing the floor, over the puddle of its own blood. As if it was ran over, the corpse was smashed flat. There was almost nothing left that you could identify as limbs or head, making it hard to recognize it as a human corpse the more you looked at it... but, of course, you couldn't decide to mess with it any further looking for anything. It was already badly decaying, and its skin was of a poisonous green. While maggots had already bitten and teared his skin, it was still possible to see he used to be an adult male, now filled with holes. The mud on the rooting corpse, mixing with the rain, changes and blurs the color of his clothes and hair, that wave without resistance.

There was also a ran over frog. That exactly is the first vivid experience with dead for most children living in rural areas. The limbs of a frog are quite similar to a person's, and it's organs are arranged in a similar way. That's the reason why they are so often used as the subject for dissections... and end up meeting such violent deaths.

It may be an effect of the pouring rain, but there is barely any odor here. You frown, put your umbrella over your shoulder, and squat besides the corpse. And down there, as if you impulsively wanted to say something, you opened and closed your mouth without making a sound. Desperately. As if you were trying to bear with a headache. Or as if you were trying to make a confession.

In the real world, you can never meet again the dead. You won't meet them by the street, and never meet their gaze again. That's why, when you meet one in a dream, it usually means you were really attached to them, keep a feeling of guilt, or had some other kind of deep relation with them.

You're there, immobile. In a sense, seeing a corpse is like ascertaining that all humans will someday undoubtedly die. Life always ends in dead. Without exception, a bad end awaits everyone. What you are facing now is suggesting such an ominous future.

The corpse, of course, showed no reaction. The only sound that could be heard was that of the air coming and going from your lips. As if you were hiding something deep inside you, and wanted to finally let it go... but in the end you stop and leave it in the depths of your heart. With your teeth clenched, as if something was trying to get out. But as if, in the end, it was stopped on its way.

The traffic light shakes over your head, worn out by the weather, and suddenly falls. Right on you. You can't react, and over the weird sound that could be heard, you are only given enough time to look upwards... In a kinda comedic way, the traffic light makes a direct hit on your head. With the last electric spurts, the traffic lights blink in green and red before shutting down for the last time.