I fell to earth, a bullet …
The other day, I fell asleep, with Azriel at my breast, and I fell into a nightmarish world straight out of an offspring between Matrix, Bladerunner, and Total Recall with Aeon Flux-injected screams.
Inside my tiny room, metal walls all around, I gave birth to my daughter Azriel, and they came, the men in gray suits, seemingly plastic and huge like the horrors from the Furnace series by Alexander Gordon Smith, and they plucked Azriel out of my arms, still covered in blood and muck from being inside my womb, and took her out of the room. Then one of them rolled in a cart, a filthy, rusty cart, with a naked, brown-skinned, long-limbed baby that almost looked human. I instinctively drew away, and tried to sprint through the door where they took my baby through, but was held back by their iron hands. I screamed. Darkness descended. Then color rushed back in, and there were no hands holding me back. The changeling baby was dead inside my arms. I threw it down, choked back my vomit, and ran out of the room. I see before my eyes, hovering buildings upon buildings, buildings upon many more tall, spindly metal buildings with glass eyes, held together by cable wires, and I looked one way down the walkway, and it goes endless into the horizon. i turned my head to the other side, and I see the same vista. I looked upward, and see that the buildings have ascended far into the heavens. I looked downward, and the buildings descended down into the dark. The earth was not visible, but I knew it was there. I backed long enough to make a run for it, then I ran fast enough to leap upward, and up I went, passing buildings after buildings until I came to where I needed to be. The walls were clean. Brilliantly clean and crystal clear. I could see inside the walls. There were no one around. I quickly went inside, and I came to the opening of a maze of clear hallways, around and around. I ran through it, following the heartsong that could only be my child. I came to the other end of the maze and in front of me was a door. I looked through the window and saw newborn babies in their little bed-carts. I pushed through the doorway, and I noticed that around their tiny wrists were the metal bracelets with laser-cut engraving on them. I could not read them. I found Azriel, and quickly I picked her into my arms. Alarms went off, and the men in the gray suits poured into the room. I turned and ran. Before I turned, I noticed beyond the men in gray suits were people, polished and clean, on their wrists similar metal bracelets with engraving on them. I knew them to be thieves of my baby and countless other babies, that they were going to take Azriel and raise her to be one of them. I ran, and together with Azriel in my arms, her face snuggled against my breast, we leaped off the walkway, and dove straight to the earth, like a bullet screaming down into the darkness.
Then I woke up, in cold sweat, and I looked down at Azriel, watched her little full mouth making suckling motions, and I lay back down and let her nurse.
