C23 (2/2)

”Father.” Its head was covered with eyes, and every eyeball was rotating.

I'm fucking still in a dream.

What should he do? How do I wake up? I thought as I retreated down the corridor.

Even if I kill myself, I will die if I don't wake up. How can I get out of here?

”You spied the hunter of the forest because you were his prey!

”The direction in which the hunters come from is the only way out of the forest!”

I remembered the advice that Vadoma had given me the last time she saw me.

If Maria is really controlling my dream, how did she get in?

She entered my dreamscape, and she must have been my way out!

There must be an entrance, and once I find it, I can go out --

I looked around. There was not much time left, and although I was in the hallway, this was a dream. Dreams and the real world were not equal in terms of physical location and timing.

”The door you see is a wall, the wall you see is a window, the window you see leads to death, not to where it came from …”

Everything that Vadoma had said that I didn't understand, I understand now.

When we first met, she had already told me the characteristics and flaws of the dream through a parable.

”The door you see is a wall, and the wall you see is a window.”

The meaning of this sentence was that the gate in the dream world was not necessarily the real world's gate, and the window was also not necessarily the real world's window.

I must have fallen asleep in the bathroom. In the real world, the living room was outside our bathroom, but the kitchen was the first thing I saw. The sofa was in the wrong place, and we didn't have a TV.

I can't judge directions by the pattern I see now.

The dream created this world to guide me to the place that Maria wanted me to go. In short, I couldn't get out even if I were to take the elevator at the other end of the past corridor, even now.

But since he couldn't tell the exit from its appearance, where was the exit?

A bunch of weird babies whined and crawled over to me.

On the window at the end of the corridor, there was a red ”EXIT (Exit)” written on it.

”The window you see leads to death, not where he comes from.”

I remembered Vadoma's warning, if I really went through this exit, I would really fall to my death.

Where was the exit?

604, 605, 607 … I backed away down the corridor, almost to the end.

Eh, why is the door to Room 608 missing?

The only side of the corridor was the apartment. The West was superstitious about the devil, so there wasn't any room for 606. However, the place that should have been Room 608's door was now just a brick wall.

On the brick wall, a house and a few flowers were outlined with chalk. On the house, there was a small door that was painted with white chalk.

It was a children's sketch with a door about the size of a palm. There was a number written on it, 43.1

43?

I thought of the Guide for the Rehabilitation of Mental Illness that Johnson had given me.

”This is the only hint I can give you! The truth is in there! ” Johnson's words echoed in my ears, but at that time, I thought he had gone mad.

My mind was racing, what Johnson wanted to pass on to me wasn't the contents of the book, but the number of pages!

This number was the ”truth” that Johnson wanted to tell me.

When he said ”the truth is in there,” he didn't mean that the truth was in the book, but that the truth had to do with the number 43.

The little monsters had already gathered around me and were tugging at my clothes. They hissed in my ear.

One of them suddenly opened its mouth and bit my ankle, and for a moment I was in so much pain that I broke out in a cold sweat!

Was this really a dream? Why is the pain so real?

”Don't believe what you see in your dreams!” I repeated this phrase over and over in my mind. Gritting my teeth, I reached out and pushed at the small door painted in chalk on the wall.

The door opened.

Everything was gone, except for me and the wall in front of me.

I tried to reach forward, then my feet, my whole body, through the little door in the chalk painting, into a dark hallway that was bottomless.

After walking for an unknown amount of time, another door appeared in front of me.

It was an ancient carved bronze door.

The door was carved with images of the Infernal Realm. The sinners were tortured, over and over, in the fire, with their bodies full of cancer, or stuck in boiling oil pans, or bobbing in the heat of the asphalt, struggling to crawl through the doors in different directions, as if the light between the doors were their only hope.

However, no matter how long and how many hands they had, they were unable to reach the edge of the door. The evil spirits used their thorny whips to whip them, and the wild beasts of hell dragged them into the abyss.

I was shocked by the lifelike sculpture. After staring blankly for a long time, I gently pushed the door open.

The light outside the door stung my eyes.