Greetings, I am a deity of another world, born on Earth, reborn into the role of god for another universe. But for me to tell my story, you are going to need to hear it from the beginning. Otherwise, nothing will make sense.

Let us begin.

My name is Nicholas; I was an avid lucid dreamer, but now… not so much. The issues all started when I was rather young; I was around thirteen or fourteen, but I do not recall exactly when. Much like all kids my age, I hated going to bed; the more time I spent sleeping, the less time I had to play games. Every now and then, I would have friends over, and we would pull an all-nighter just to fall asleep halfway through the next day, exhausted. But one summer holiday, I decided that I was going to test myself; I was going to see how far I could go.

Every chance I had, I would stock up on snacks and games, I would arrange for people to come over in a day or two, then I would start my binge. The first few tries were absolute failures, but I quickly learned better ways of obtaining consciousness. It became apparent that good hydration was needed; I figured since I had to pee every few hours, my body was working more, so staying awake to finish its functions. To my knowledge, I am correct; I have never bothered to look up a more scientific reason behind that. Small amounts of food were also needed, but I do mean small amounts. Again, I figured if I was permanently a little hungry, my body would stay conscious to look for food. Finally, I had to keep my brain active; the longer I was awake, the more time I needed to spend engaging my brain.

Three or four good attempts down the line, I had reached a high score of five days; I was impressed with myself. I knew I could have gone longer, but I was starting to hallucinate badly. Everywhere I went, I saw hands; at first, they were human-like. They had no scary factor other than there were floating hands everywhere. They would crawl on the walls, creeping around corners and giving me frights when I was not expecting it. But late into the fifth day, they all started dying. They lost all their color, then the fingers started to snap and crack, bending in unnatural ways. Where they once used to run like cousin It, they then started limping around, staining the walls black with a sticky tar. At this point, I figured I should go to bed, clear my head.

Sadly, I knew my holidays were coming to an end, and with that, my experiment came to an end too. I had to focus on school too much to allow myself multiple days of consciousness, but that was alright, as I had just found a new goal, lucid dreaming.

A friend of mine at school was talking about lucid dreaming, a concept to me which was foreign. He explained it to me simply as the ability to control dreams. Naturally, I was interested immediately; the concept of controlling dreams was amazing. As soon as I had free time, I researched lucid dreaming; I learned all about reality checks and instigating lucid dreams, all from blogs online. Throughout the rest of my high school years, I would attempt lucid dreaming from time to time, but it did require a lot of effort, so I seldom attempted it with very few successes. Eventually, I left high school and started my journey into real life in the form of tertiary education.

I moved to a city where I had family and friends nearby, both of which had moved in the pursuit of education. I was living by myself on the twelfth floor of an apartment building; it was ideal for me as I liked to relax by watching movies and falling asleep at the time. When I was not visiting friends, I would just do my work in my room, then I would chuck on a movie and slowly fall asleep. A couple of weeks into my time in the city and my friend from my hometown mentioned lucid dreaming to me again. I did not have much on, so I figured I might actually give it a go, a proper one where I don’t give up after a week.

A few weeks down the line, I started to one-eighty from my earlier self; once I finished my school work, I would go to bed as early as possible. I started to look forward to sleeping; I was starting to gain some decent ground on my lucid dreams. Eventually, I had it to the point where I would achieve lucidity at least once a night, not always lasting in length, but I would get a few moments of being a god. Eventually I had a break from uni so I spent most of my time trying to master the power of lucid dreaming. Until one day when I encountered a… hiccup with my testing.

One day while I was getting ready for bed, I heard a knocking at my door; looking at my clock, I decided that it was late enough that I could have said that I went to bed early, so I decided to ignore it. Five minutes later, I heard the knocking again while I was on Facebook. This time it was loud, the door flung open, and this thing entered my room. It dripped with tar and crawled all around my room, filling it with its thick tar. I could feel myself suffocating, then my eyes opened, and I was awake, actually awake. This time I ran through my reality checks, and they cleared me; I figured I must have fallen asleep straight after hearing the knocking. That was the start of what was to happen next.

Over the next few weeks, I started seeing more and more things from my dreams while I was still conscious. Not all of them were bad; most of them would just pop up in the corner of my vision, disappearing as I turned to see them better. I could deal with these flickers in the corners of my eyes, but I could not deal with losing my ability to lucid dream. While I could still reach the point of realizing that I was dreaming, I had started to lose control over my world; I was no longer the thing in charge.

Once again, I started to hate sleeping, and I started avoiding sleep. While the lucid dreams were not scary, they had me on edge, the dreamscape would constantly change, and the door constantly appeared in front of me. I never touched them, I walked around them, or I sat waiting for the dream to end. Once I started to avoid sleeping, the hallucinations got bad again, probably due to the lack of sleep. I was stuck in an endless cycle of being awake for days on end to avoid dreaming, then once I started to hallucinate, I would go to sleep to gain back my sanity, then I would start again.

I eventually made it through my year of uni with minimal damage; deciding that I did not like to study, I left and moved away to another town where a friend lived. I flatted with him and his partner of the time, I got a job, and everything seemed to be alright. Then, out of nowhere, nightmares. They were unrelenting; every night, without fail, I would have a nightmare. Never the same scenario, but the locations and the monsters were reoccurring. Each night I went to sleep, I would catch glimpses of this horrible world; sometimes, I would be in it, and other times, I was floating above, watching as everything unfolded beneath me. This affected me a lot. I started losing sleep once again; I was terrified of sleeping for a time. I sought help, but their answer was to take sleeping pills; I told them the issue was not sleeping; it was that I did not want to sleep. No one listened, not really. Eventually, the nightmares faded, leaving me to once again sleep with relative peace.

Fast forward a short while, and I am living back in the city with a much better job. I am working and surrounded by friends and family. I could not be happier. It was around this time I started writing my dreams down, collecting them, learning how to write a story. Then, one day while some friends from out of town were visiting, I had an incident. I went to the supermarket to grab a few things when I got talking to an individual in the underground parking lot; I do not recall what we talked about nor for how long. But I do remember blinking and him disappearing. It was not until he disappeared that I realized he was from one of my nightmares. I went home and freaked out for a while before falling asleep. That dream was the start of it all.

In my dream, I sat facing an individual; I could not make anything about him out, just that he was human and him. He spoke very quickly, always referring to himself as ‘You,’ as in reference to me. He was adamant that we were the same, divided by the thin line of time. He said that he would show me the world I was to one day create; in return, I had to tell his stories to the world. I saw nothing wrong with this, so we shook on it, striking our deal mere days before heading back to my hometown.

Note for all who read, never make a deal in a dream. It is too easy to manipulate truths there.

I started to have nightmares again; it did not scare me this time; this time, they were fascinating. I thought that would be the only side effect from our deal, but I had missed the fine print. Each time I was to walk near my room, I could feel my eyes. Any time I was down that side of the house, I could feel eyes; they would burn into the back of my head, but every time I turned around, I was greeted with nothing. Again no one believed me when I mentioned this.

As time went on, I found the less I typed, the more I felt depressed. I found out that I had displeased dreams when I was not typing, so he would mentally start lowering my mood. I tried everything to raise my spirits, exercise, friends, relationships, family, gaming, drugs, but nothing worked. Once I started writing again, I would be pulled from the bad thoughts and return to being normal.

Now please focus, for we are nearly to the modern day. This part is very important.

I said it before; I will say it again. Never make deals in your dreams.

Since moving away from the house with the eyes, I have been free from its gaze, but now it is worse. I recently moved in with a friend; it has been great having a close friend for someone to live with. For the majority of the past months, I have been great, but recently it has gotten worse. It does not matter if I am awake or if I am asleep; I see that other world; I see Hollow. When I sleep, it is a vivid world that feels as real as this world. When I don’t sleep, I see parts of Hollow bleeding into this world. Regardless of whether I sleep, I have the eyes on me again, but it is not only one pair; I feel hundreds. I can feel the worlds starting to collide; the worst part is, I don’t know which world is real. They both seem so large and while I have memories from both, I see more Hollow than I do Earth.

Each day I see more nightmares walking around me; I long for sleep at the end of my days. But I get no rest from my sleep; there I wait for me, telling me more and more. Every now and then, the talks stop being about Hollow; they start to be about me. Every time the other me and I talk, he becomes more possessive; he sends those he trusts to haunt me. While I feel the countless eyes watching, I can nearly feel the touch of those sent to ensure I last till my time has come.

I am afraid to sleep, I am afraid to be awake, I am terrified to be near mirrors, for I know what lurks within. I keep busy during my days to distract myself, but distractions only last so long. I am nearing my breaking point, and I don’t think I will make it to my prophecy…