The Inmost Night

There are many who have designs upon this world And dream of wild and vast reformations I have heard them talking in their sleep Of elegant mutations And cunning annihilations I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses And in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe Which they with their new designs would make straight and sound But each of these new and ill-conceived designs Is deranged in its heart For they see this world as if it were alone and original And not as only one of countless others Whose nightmares all precede Like a hideous garden grown from a single seed I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep And I stand waiting for them As at the top of a darkened flight of stairs They know nothing of me And none of the secrets of my special plan While I know every crooked creaking step of theirs

“In the dream I am in my bedroom, sitting upon my unmade bed and wearing my pajamas. The room is partially illuminated by beams from a streetlight shining through the window. And it also seems to me that a whole galaxy of constellations, although not actually witnessed firsthand, are contributing their light to the scene, a ghastly glowing which unnaturally blanches the entire upstairs of the house. I have to use the bathroom and walk sleepily out tot he hallway…where I get the shock of my life. In the whitened hallway - I cannot say brightened, because it is almost as if a very fine and luminous powder coats everything - are these things lying up and down the floor, at the top of the stairway, and even upon the stairs themselves as they disappear into the darker regions below. The things are people dressed as dolls, or else dolls made up to look like people. I remember being confused about which it was. Their heads are turned in all directions as I emerge from the bedroom, and their eyes shine in the white darkness. Paralyzed - yes! - with terror, I merely return a fixed gaze, wondering if my eyes are shining the same as theirs. Then one of the doll people, slouching against the wall on my left, turns its head haltingly upon a stiff little neck and looks into my eyes. Worse, it talks. And its voice is an horrific crackling parody of speech. Even more horrible are its words, as it says: “Become as we are, sweetie. Die into us.” Suddenly I begin to feel very weak, as if my life were being drained out of me. Summoning all my powers of movement, I manage to rush back to my bed to end the dream.”

The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone.