by Gold Baron
Your image throws out behind you like a thousand reflections in a mirror, then slingshots out in front of you and back into you, laying you low like a shot to the gut. Your edges blur like bad television reception, and you lose your pastrami on rye in the blackness.
"I've been waiting for you." The voice coos from somewhere deep within, reminding you of your grandfather's voice: strong, caring, wise. "I have something to show you."
Your form solidifies. A light seems to separate from the darkness, like a ship coming out of the fog, and it blinds you and basks you in a warm, peaceful light. The great wings beat a wind past your face. You see an outstretched hand and gratefully accept something real in this dream.
Your voice croaks, choked like a mouthful of dust, "Where are we? Where is this?"
The light flickers, then grows stronger. You feel drawn to its peaceful warmth. The voice answers back, from the same deep canyon as before, "The void, where all things happen, or are yet to happen, where the past meets the present, where the future is born, that gap between the conscious and the mind." You hadn't expected a riddle, but the answer seemed satisfying, and you let it stand.
The angelic light pauses, and your gaze falls upon a patch of light, like a scene performed on a stage. An average middle-aged man kneels there, flecks of gray through his hair, but still young by most accounts, his lips moving in some unheard conversation.
The light broadens, and a second man, tall and powerful, holding himself with pride, steps in, and the kneeling man slumps away, grief stricken across his face.
Your guide parts from you, and you reach out like a child denied its mother, yearning for that warmth, that light, but as it enters the spotlight, it too becomes a man, standing opposite the tall, darker figure. Where one stands clad in black and green, the other shines in pearly white and silver with hues of blue.
The grief-fallen man cries in pain, and it pierces your ears like pain you'd never felt before, and as you shut your eyes and cover your ears, so does the gray man, a shadow like a puppetmaster looming over it, pulling unseen strings for some greater purpose.
The light broadens further and takes a red hue, a shapely woman with crystal blue eyes joining the fray. With horror, the black-clad man lunges at the woman, and she shrieks away as the white-clad man stops the blade above her head. She runs to the fallen man in the middle as the two powerful figures draw a fierce battle.
The grief-stricken man seems to regain himself, his eyes sparkling with life, until the woman falls lifelessly into his arms. You see the shadow pass out of her mouth and eyes like a sickness, and the man hungrily drinks it in, revenge on his lips.
You hear a sound like shattering glass as the fallen man's heart breaks like a string on a piano. He draws forth the flaring blue shard from his battered soul, and it screams wildly as it passes through the two battling men.
And the light goes dim, and you are again thrown into darkness.
You spark up from your sleep, the salty taste of blood on your lips. In horror, the rising sun casts through your windows, and you see bloody lines smeared over the walls, the ceiling, the floor.
You pull away flat against the wall above your bed in complete shock, one simple realization reverberating in your mind: death has passed this night.