Chapter 174: Day 173

Day 173,

My throat hurts too much to talk.  Almost even hurts to breathe.  Writing helps take my mind off it.  Lin and Huan told me I was screaming all through the night and they couldn’t wake me.

I hate that I put them through that.  Must have been horrible to watch.

Then again, my night was hardly better.

The mists must have been out yesterday, for I dreamt of the Catacomb Depths once more.  Wakingly vivid and memorable as ever.

Early in the dream my interminable claustrophobic wandering found a break from the norm.  Once more I stepped from a tunnel out onto one chasm-spanning bridge among visible dozens and hidden hundreds.  Two things set this bridge apart from others I’d crossed.  First, it ramped sharply upwards.  I’d long since learned not to let inclines raise my hopes, for it seemed apparent upward bound paths inevitably led deeper down rather than staying level, but still it was a welcome novelty.  The second, more intriguing matter was that it was decrepit.

True, everything in that place had an air of being ineffably old, ancient even, but it was all in good repair, buried and untouched by time.  Worn, yes, chipped and cracked, sometimes, but never crumbling.  Certainly no bridge I’d seen before had outright holes in it like this one.

Even had the bridge gone down instead of up, my curiosity would have compelled me to overcome my dread and cross it.

Just over halfway across, the main walkway of the bridge was fallen away entirely, leaving only the supporting guardrails at either side.  With little trust in my balance, I straddled that connection and pulled myself forward, inches at a time, on my belly.  Of course, it wasn’t the crossing but the dismounting that did me in.

Believing myself to be safe, I shakily stood up from the rail.  As I swung the outer leg over I must have placed my foot on a loose stone, for I tumbled backwards.  Flailing, I found brief, clumsy purchase back on the railing but lacked the strength to overcome my momentum.

I screamed as I fell.  Doubtless the first of the screams of the night that echoed into the waking world.

I know not how long I fell.  I lost track of the bridges I passed on the way down, even the ones I passed close enough by to reach out for in a vain attempt to halt my descent.  They never did more for me than wrench my joints and batter my body with impacts on the way down.  A new scream of pain each time.

Eventually, I landed, with a sickening crunch.  How it didn’t kill me I don’t know.  Nightmare logic perhaps?  Or maybe I was already dead.

At any rate, both of my legs were most certainly broken.  And an arm.  Probably both arms, but one moved enough to drag myself, however painfully.  And drag myself I did, for in that place, even when there’s not the sense of an other that I felt following Bartolome’s funeral, there is always a feeling here that above all else, one must keep moving.

It felt like hours more still that I crawled.  Stopping from the pain every few inches.  I was on the threshold at the bridge’s end when I finally woke.

I fear the next mist night, for the chance that I may find my dreaming body still in that state.

For now, I find myself grateful that my other sleeps are near-dreamless.  I got little rest last night, and though it is barely past noon (or so I am told) I think I’ll try to catch some proper sleep.  I’ll write more when I wake.

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