Chapter Text
The building was enormous. Fancy. Possibly a deconsecrated church? To be honest, it was more the size of a cathedral. At least it seemed that way to me. Dark grey stone, looming towers, stained glass.
And I was walking towards the massive wooden doors. Why? No idea. I was carrying a heavy mass of cable, wound into a loop.
I heaved one of the doors open and stepped through. The door’s weight slammed itself shut immediately behind me, and when the beam of sunlight from the opening had disappeared, I was plunged into not-quite-total darkness. It felt like total darkness as my eyes slowly adjusted. There was another set of doors in front of me. This was some kind of entryway or foyer. It made sense if this was indeed an old church. Congregation members thanking their spiritual representative after a service. Junk like that. Religion wasn’t really my thing. Too much pomp for no reason.
The interior door was much lighter and it opened with ease.
It was an old church. It had to be. The pews were all pushed against the walls in rows and were extremely dusty. They sat on thin maroon carpet. At least, I thought it was maroon. It was pretty dark. My eyes started to adjust again and I realized the front of the church was not church-like in the slightest. It was a performance space? A music venue? It was definitely set up for a band. Guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, microphones. All that crap. Maybe that explained why I was carrying a coil of cable. The area was decorated with little touches that seemed out of place. Pillows, string lights, plants. Plants in this lighting? The old church chandeliers were on, but you could hardly tell. Against the back wall was a huge symbol of some sort. Symmetrical. Straight lines in different directions around what looked like an archway with an X in the middle. Like a bunch of symbols lumped together to make a bigger symbol. Strange.
Suddenly, the space was no longer vacant. Four men filed out from a door I missed during my assessment and started fiddling with the instruments. Two of them were fucking enormous. The other two were closer to my height, but I was still shorter than all of them. They were dressed in various shades of black, mostly, though one of the tall ones wore a bright red shirt with frills down the chest. One of them wore an open, flowing robe and pants that seemed to be of the same material. But what made the scene terrifying is that all four men wore masks. They were different from each other, but still similar. The one with the red shirt and one of the shorter men had masks that mirrored each other, black and gold. The shortest of them had a mask that was like it in style, but not detail. The man in the robe had a mask different from all the others. It was mostly white, a red version of the symbol on the wall over where his face would lie under it. The mask had six eye holes (the others only had two) that were covered with mesh, so his eyes were not visible (the others had regular eye holes; all three had blue eyes) and the area around the mouth was cut out, where the others were covered, and had red filigree along the cutout’s edge. And every bit of exposed skin on the four of them was painted black. Even their fingers. And the lips of the man with his mouth exposed. They hadn’t noticed me, and I was too terrified to move or speak. Frozen in place.
I must have made a noise that I didn’t realize I’d made because all four of them turned to me at once. The shortest one of them shot out of the space with the instruments and stood before me.
“What are you doing here?” he growled, the sound even more frightening because of his mouth being covered by the mask.
“I don’t know...” my response a whisper.
“Jeez, II, you don’t have to be so mean,” the tall one in the red shirt said, bounding over to join us. “Hi sweetheart. Let me take that from you- it must be for something.” He reached for the cable and it vanished into thin air. The three of us gasped.
“This is a dream,” the second shorter man said, putting down his guitar. The fourth man still stood silently, observing the scene.
“M-My dream?”
“All of us,” Red Shirt Man said. Realization dawned on the short one’s face. The one Red Shirt Man had called II.
“Vessel’s request!” he said towards Red Shirt Man.
“Vessel?” I asked. They both turned toward the robed silent one. “Who the hell are you and why are we all dreaming the same dream?!” I was starting to panic. Red Shirt put a painted hand on my arm.
“It’s okay. Let me give you the short version.” He gently led me towards the other two and soon the five of us were looking at each other. “We are all vessels for a deity called Sleep. Well, Sleep isn’t actually the god’s name but that isn’t so important.” He pointed to the Robed One. “That’s Vessel. Technically he is Vessel 1, but no one ever says that.” He pointed to the short one who’d growled at me. “That’s II. You know, Vessel 2. But again, no one says that.” A long finger poked his own chest. “I’m III. Vessel 3.”
“III!” II sighed, exasperated, “You’re not making this short.” II turned to me, motioning to the other shorter one. “That’s IV. We’re a band. Our music serves as offerings to Sleep.”
“So what in the hell does that have to do with me? Why am I sharing a dream with you?”
“Vessel!” III exclaimed happily. I looked at Robed Silent One. Not being able to see his eyes was beyond unnerving.
“Vessel has been feeling lonely,” II explained, “So he asked Sleep for a companion. Someone to fulfill the needs we can’t.”
“And that’s supposed to be me?!”
“It looks like it,” III replied.
“But I don’t even know him!” I yelled.
“But Sleep must think you’re perfect for him, or else you wouldn’t be here in our practice space.” III informed me, “This is sacred space. No one comes here except for us.”
I gulped.
“Does he ever talk?”
“He won’t talk in a dream, probably,” II said, “He has to concentrate on maintaining it when we’re all together like this.”
“And in person, he’ll be quieter until he’s sure of you,” III said.
“If I’m some gift from your god, won’t he be sure? Isn’t the god sure? I don’t like the idea of being someone’s present, by the way.”
“I can understand that,” III said gently, “But Sleep wouldn’t choose someone incompatible.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” things were starting to swirl around me, “This makes no sense. Gods aren’t real.”
“Sleep is real.” A new voice. The Robed One. Vessel. He was speaking. III almost gasped at the sound.
“Is this how I’m supposed to be your companion ?” I spat the word. “In dreams?”
“No,” Vessel said, almost as a sigh, “We will meet when the time is right.”
“When will that be?”
His exposed mouth curled into a smile.
“You’ll know.”