I thought my story ended with teeth and fire.

  I was wrong.

  I was aware of Dreameater’s presence, but it was never there when I looked back. Is it maybe in my shadow now? I looked down to see seven vacant spots across the shape of my head, where the shadows feared to spread. We stared at each other, this duality of dark and light that was coming to define me. My mind hurt the longer I looked, like it was straining against an impossible magic eye puzzle.

  I can’t just stand here. I’m going nowhere. I have to move.

  The space was hard to comprehend. It was like the halls that trapped me, still clinical white; but now the barriers were gone. I almost longed for the claustrophobic feeling of those unending walls and hallways, they at least gave some scope of shape and scale. This was just empty whiteness. It had been days since it consumed me, days without seeing a door. Once again, I just plodded forward and obeyed the intrusive will of the Dreameater, having no destination in mind. There was nothing for me to see but this oppressive white. Dreameater and I never stopped; I never got tired, hungry, or thirsty. I just kept going forward across this flat white plane. I couldn’t remember if it was yesterday or an hour ago that I finally stopped mumbling to myself how crazy this seemed.

  There was a luminosity to the terrain. My eyes couldn’t take in any details beyond the never-ending white before and beyond me, like I was trying to drive through a snowstorm with high beams on. The hill took me by surprise, a sudden and severe one that my shadow urged me to scramble up. The incline was sharp enough that I couldn’t imagine traversing it by car, but I still climbed it.

  At the apex of this hill was where the scenery had changed. Once I crossed that threshold, the doors manifested behind me with a thunderous sound. There were hundreds of them now, rupturing the fabric of this dreamspace and sealing themselves in place. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a certain sense of awe filled me. There was a temptation to head back, assuredly one of those dreams must lead somewhere cool or quiet; a place for me to just stop moving and breathe.

  “Not yet,” my shadow said with Dreameater’s voice, the shape of its mouth illuminated by orange flame.

  I heard the stomach of my shadow growl with a terrible and sinister bass. Apparently Dreameater was not afforded the same reprieve from hunger as I.

  There were two doors at the top of the hill, one standing tall in an empty space, the other laying on the ground at an odd angle. The free standing door was covered in this mold that tendrilled away in spirals on the ground, following a lazy pattern that meandered over to infest the prone door. These meaty tubes of purple and black lazily rose up and down, as if to mimic breath. Or blood pumping through a vein.

  “What are these?” I risked a question to my own shadow.

  “Prey,” my shadow responded, “Sick. Look.”

  Dreameater did not explain further, but I could feel the urge to look over the hill’s decline.

  I’m not really good at recalling art or artists; but I think what I saw reminded me of an MC Escher illustration. There were doors everywhere, more than I could count. They sat at odd angles, suspended in the air or protruding from the ground. A mass of them made this imposing spire, towering well over the hill and piercing through the flat white where I assumed the sky began. All of these doors were connected by inky tentacles, some forming huge mounds against the pristine white.

  “Why are we here?” I got those words out before a terrible hunger began to clutch and shred at my stomach. The pain was so severe that it doubled me over. I was drooling relentlessly, spattering the untextured ground.

  “Sick dreams. Eat.”

  I voiced a refusal; I didn’t understand what was asked of me. I was so hungry that I could not think. My shadow leapt from the ground, grasping me by the wrist with all of the strength and heat of that red bear. It hauled me to the free standing door and threw it open to expose what lay beyond.

  Dreams having normal coloration was such a startling deviation from the saturation of light that I had become accustomed to. My eyes adjusted, but I was struggling to focus over the ravages of my hunger. The sky in this space was oppressively dark, with hundreds of luminous eyes casting gazes of purple and orange downward. Those eyes were so bright and alien. They never seemed to blink.

  There was a hill in the dream, but it was wrong. It was a mound of bodies, all of the exact same man. At the top of this hill was a golden throne, upon which a scrawny man sat; surrounded by a trio of the same woman, dressed scantily and dancing to entertain him with lifeless eyes.

  “Keep them safe. I’ll keep them safe and she owes me for it. Gold star. This is my gold star.” The throned man was mumbling to himself, but his words drifted to my ears. Had my stomach not already been gnawing away at itself, I would have felt sick. Owes you? Like I owed him? Like I deserved it? You fucking animal.

  One of the dancers had a sudden spark of will and tried to flee, but Shit at the Top of the Hill caught her by the hair and backhanded her. The scream for help she let loose echoed through the dream as she was cast down the monument. I remembered screaming like that, back when I had my old name. Her clones applauded his brutality, caressing her assailant’s arms and massaging his shoulders as they cheered. He laughed loudly, another sound like thunder. He struck the other two to the side, leaving them to take the same prolific tumble as the first. My right eye twitched, a reflex from so many times being swollen shut.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I deserve it,” they called out with each heartbreaking strike of their forms against the mound of bodies. “You’re so good to me and I don’t love you enough.”

  King Shit began his descent, deliberately stomping down the hill of bodies. He clenched his fists as he loomed over the first woman again, something unseen was gnawing and snapping.

  “Sic him.” I commanded and my shadow obeyed. It ripped and tore and went ablaze as Dreameater emerged.

  A bear running at full tilt is a terrifying sight, especially my seven eyed friend with a mouth of flame. King Shit froze up, gaze snapping up to the rampaging Dreameater. The opening rake of glowing claws tore through his chest and ripped away the dream. The blank space was replaced with some sort of field at night. I think I saw a gray trailer before the red door slammed shut.

  The hunger was punishing, it was quickly edging in on the type that I’d imagine drove people crazy; as if I hadn’t found that threshold already. The door vanished, leaving a mass of writhing meat vines and eldritch eyes where it once stood. I had to confirm my suspicion; that I could get back to the Waking World through one of these doors.

  Just like how I wound up in Johnny’s home.

  I rushed over to the other door, shadowless and with that mound of eyes levying an oppressive gaze on my back. The pulsing of the veins feeding the door quickened in the rhythm of a panicked heart. There was sobbing beyond that portal, ripe with pain. Those tendrils lashed at me as I took hold of the handle, welting my forearm and hand.

  I forced the door and dove inside.

  I stood in an unfurnished living room, there was this constant sound of hammering that assaulted my ears, nearly loud enough to drown out the sobbing from above.

  I cast a look back, through a window. I saw no immediate threat, just a deck being built, torn down, and built again by invisible workers. I started up the steps to my left, pulling my hand away from the banister when I encountered a thin layer of some sticky, purple fluid. It looked repulsive, but smelled sweet. The scent was so tempting that I almost licked it up, just to get something in my stomach to stop the pain.

  I wiped it off on my pants as I followed the sound of the sobbing man. Soon, I was at the master bedroom’s door; doing my best to ignore the randomly sprouting eyes that popped out and then retracted in the purple wallpaper.

  They were following me. Watching me.

  I was entirely too hungry to care.

  I opened the door forcefully, cracking one of the hinges off the bright white frame. It wasn’t a bedroom I entered:

  It was the kill room in a slaughterhouse, dingy concrete with a drain to collect some yellow, pudding-like fluid in the center. Suspended above it was a man; the same that made the hill in King Shit’s dream. Held aloft by those purple meat tendrils, his fat wept out of lacerations across his frame. In the wake of the matter fleeing, I could see muscle building upon itself to a grotesque degree.

  Even through the pain and the sobbing, even as the tendrils pumped more muscle on, he made his face gentle when he looked at me. The profound strain to keep this tone kind was audible, his genuine concern outweighing his suffering.

  He asked me if someone named Marla was safe.

  I told him yes. I didn’t know if I was deceiving him or not; but maybe some deception could be forgiven as mercy. He nodded enthusiastically, face going serene at my claim even as his right eye went this flat and baleful green. He told me that she would be okay, that she was the strength in their marriage.

  “Even still...sometimes it’s not admitting weakness to ask for help.” He said that he was changing, that it hurt so bad that he could feel his sense of self rotting away. I told him that I could relate, that I knew it was scary. His name was Carlos, he abruptly told me that.

  My stomach growled with anticipation when he asked me to kill him. He didn’t think he could stay a person. His face went wretched with agony and rage, spewing a furious roar that reverberated through the bones of the structure. The eyes that grew from the walls bugged out and bulged at the sound, all fixating on me with their profane gaze.

  My hands were around his neck, clamping down. This was murder and I knew it, but this man was sick.This was mercy. This was the most humane solution that I could offer to him: to stop his hurt, to end the pain.

  No.

  This wasn’t humanity. This wasn’t mercy. I couldn’t do it.

  Carlos begged me to finish the job as he bulked further, that green infesting his left eye like a drop of ink dropped in milk. A primal solution brewed in my mind.

  I tore him free from the tendrils and threw him to the floor. The things already in him squealed in protest, writhing beneath his skin like worms in freshly tilled soil.

  I plucked them out, gentle as I could with these sharp claws. I fucking ate them; devouring their rubbery flavorlessness like raw calamari. My stomach filled with a drifting warmth that radiated satisfaction.

  I guess I’m the Red Bear now. I guess I have become Dreameater.

  The dream was cracking, shredding away with each consumption until nothing was left. Reality came to me, kneeling on the bunker floor, with purple and black ichor dripping down my chin and collecting in a mess on the metal floor.

  Carlos was across the room, pressing his back against the wall. He was wet with sweat and fear, shaking where he stood. Rightfully, his face was slack with panic. That expression worsened as my tongue fished a portion of worm from between the new sharpness that had taken my teeth.

  I scared him. That felt real bad, but it paled in comparison to what he must be going through. He was stammering, struggling to say something about “Alvin” and “Marla,” but it wasn’t getting through the haze of his panic. I slicked the ichor from my mouth as well as I could before I tried to send him a smile; like the one he cast at me in the dream. I tried to emulate his compassion in my words. I told him to leave, to go find Marla.

  There were no more words between us. He gave a shaky nod as he backed away. He didn’t break our eye contact until his back was to a ladder. I felt my posture relax as he began to clamor up and out, the resounding clang of metal against metal announcing that he closed some sort of hatch behind him.

  I crawled up on the sweaty cot, head growing heavier and heavier. Sleep was coming for me quickly, I was weighed down by such a large meal.

  Finally, I had a purpose. Finally, I was something more. Sure, I was changing; but change hadn’t scared me in years.