Ever Dream This Man? - Session 3
Horror fiction told through the medium of a solo journaling RPG. My playthrough of "Ever Dream This Man?" by Adam Vass and World Champ Game Co.
This is a continuation of the series I started recently documenting the narrative of my playthrough of Ever Dream This Man? by Adam Vass and World Champ Game Co., a lightweight tabletop RPG that sees players diving into their recurring nightmares to uncover the truth behind an entity that appears in their dreams known only as This Man.
If you haven’t read the previous sessions, I recommend clicking the links below to catch up on what’s happened so far. Check out the first session especially to get a quick explanation of the game and how it plays, my initial set-up for my game, and a link to the Spotify playlist I am using as inspiration.
Enjoy!
Song 4: Tuesday - Malibu Ken
The mouth of the hole in the walnut roots grows together, trapping me inside for good. But I feel a gust of wind from behind for a moment. It leaves and comes again soon after. Again and again. I am curious. I can’t turn around though. I shuffle backwards, suspecting I’ll run into a wall of root, but I don’t. The passage keeps extending. A rim of light fills my periphery and grows longer and so do my limbs and so does my body.
I pull myself out from underneath a couch. An oscillating fan blows a hot summer day around an apartment living room. An errant meatball is skewered on the fork I hold. It’s coated with a skin of dust and hair follicles. It’s still good, I think. Down the hatch it goes. It’s not still good. It spoils the rest of the spaghetti for me. Just as well. When I try to grab the plate from its precarious perch at the corner of the coffee table, I knock it over and splatter the hardwood.
It’s no big deal. The disgusting pile joins a depleted, cratered minefield of pastas past. Hardly a problem. Hardly a mess next to the rest of the room.
Flop back onto the couch. Narrowly avoid the spring sticking up from the cushion, tipped in crusted blood from a few misaligned descents. Quaff the glass of water that I poured a month ago and just remembered. Grab a greased up remote with old cigarette ash caked in the creases and flip on the tube, squinting to make out the small bit of the screen peeking out from a pile of dirty laundry that started as a still good to wear stash.
A newscast, maybe. I think I see the edge of an anchor. They say something about This Man. More people have seen him. They show a drawing of his description, but its not right. Or is he different now? Or different for just me?
Nate.
Nate!
Andre is here. Andre has been here. Andre is always here.
You live in a pig sty! I want to be dead. You want permission to live. Fuck you, dude. Look at this shit! Look at it! Stop shouting. Look at what you’ve done!
Look at what you’ve done!
LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE DONE
He keeps screaming that phrase over and over. I try to tune it out, but the words spill out of his mouth as grubs and worms that wiggle and squirm and grow and fill the room.
They push me from the couch to crowd surf me towards the underside of the dining table, where an old supreme pizza thrives. A brilliant ecosystem of living cultures that has taken most of the table. I watch its surface writhe with mold spores celebrating the summer solstice with dances and offerings of red pepper flakes for their gods. Their tribal lands extend from the eastern edge of the table inland toward the leaf, where a massive river of cheese divides them from the western peoples. The river runs to the southern expanse and off the side in endless dairy waterfall.
The bugs are waist deep now. The currents in their movement sweep me in and through the waterfall. The vomit hits my mouth sooner than the smell hits my nose. The cheese coats me, a membrane of fat. I’m swallowed up by the bugs, churned and chewed until they contort to spit me out like a sunflower seed. I am so slick now. I glide across the floor. Straight into the wall. Straight through it.
The neighbor doesn’t seem surprised to see me slip and slide over her kitchen linoleum and down the hall. I take in a quick, quick tour of the place as I go. It is clean, no, immaculate. I am fouling it with my presence.
You’re better than mess.
Did you say something?
You’re a bit of a mess.
Who the fuck are you?!
Momentum carries me through her bedroom and out the wall that faces the street. I am airborne. A moldy mozz missile plunging to the pavement. I bullseye a manhole cover, leaving it spinning cartoon-style. Splashdown in sewage. Drowning in shit. Sinking. Sinking deeper. Deeper still. The feeling goes from sludgy to spatial. Starlight pinpricks glisten in the distant dark. Fluids boil and vaporize and escape, they cool me and they freeze me, till I am a comet passing through the cosmos.
Song 5: The Luckiest - Ben Folds
Eons gone by, a ship comes to pass me in the endless night. Another ball of ice, just like me. It comes on fast, faster than anything. Then it shoots by, and for the briefest moment I see the other traveler.
I know that sweater. That ratty old thing I gave him from my closet in eighth grade that he never grew into. But he’s turned away from me. Doesn’t know that I’m here, hurtling through the void I’ve been in since I last saw him. And then he’s gone.
Alone, alone, alone. Eons more, with only planets and asteroids to delight me every few centuries.
But he comes back. He’s made a lap of the universe, exiting and reentering on the other side to pass me again. I’ve had time to think, to imagine all the things I could say to him. I can’t get the words out. He’s moving too fast, like he did that night, the shards of ice trailing him look so much like windshield, and I’m afraid to call out. To ask him to stop. The stopping is what kills you.
The millennia roll on like this. Comings and goings. And sometimes I do get the courage to shout through the vacuum. He doesn’t hear it, of course. Other times I freeze again, form another wall of ice around my body, vainly wishing that I’ll eventually gain the mass to pull him into my orbit. But I know. Even with eternity stretched out in front of me, it will never be enough time. These flashes of him are all I can have. It will have to be enough.
No. No, it’s not enough. I can make more time. I can fold space and bring us together. If I can’t, then what was all the journaling and meditation and practice for? Just give me inches, inches here and there. Subtly altered trajectory turned massive course change over time. Believe. Believe. Believe he is closer, and he will be closer. When you wake, you will be dreaming.
Another lap. I don’t think it worked. Another lap. Wait, maybe? Another lap. Yes! I am doing it! The change in distance is microscopic, but feels like miles for two celestial bodies. Closer, closer, closer.
C’mon, Stu. C’mon!
And slam! We collide. Our frosty exteriors shatter, careen off to other galaxies. I lunge out to grab him by the arm. His speed nearly tears mine off. But I catch him. I pull him in close. I pull him in tight. Smell his scent, even without oxygen. Caress his skin. He is warm. Mercifully, impossibly warm. I slough ice melt from his eyes, and they start to stir. Please. Please see me. Know that I am here. Know I didn’t forget you.
Then, just as sclera seeps past eyelid, he bursts. Becomes stardust. Not again! The cloud of him billows away. Not again!
I inhale so deeply I become a black hole, sweeping every part of him past the event horizon. He courses through my lungs, the life-giving air inside of me once more, and I remember the feeling. I had pushed it out of mind so long ago. Terrified of the longing and the emptiness.
I cast you out into this space, my love. Left you broken and bleeding at the feet of the wolf of nothingness. Let it feed on your carcass. But no more. I will carry you with me, as I should have done, and head off in search of brighter stars. And we will bask in their light forever.
I exhale, still just a man it seems, and the particles of him drift away. It was asking too much, to keep him. I don’t have the strength to bear the extra weight of a whole life unlived. I have only the interminable waiting, inert amidst the inky dark, rime encrusted and alone.
It may not seem like it, but this was actually a good session! After three prompts in succession that forced me to manifest This Man more and more, the cards finally gave my character some breathing room to wrestle with his dreams and find more control. They still have a ways to go before they are a match for This Man, but I’m more hopeful now. Subscribe so you can tune in next time, and have a good one!
If you enjoyed this, Session 4 is available now.