It's flickering in front of him again, the impossible flame in white. Nothing feeds it as it hovers in the dark space before him, but he can hear it spark and spit clearly. This fire steadily wicks low and then blooms high in procession, illuminating his small eyes in brilliance and warmth. Like a love-struck moth, he gets closer and closer to it. Each of his steps holds an eagerness to them. An eagerness he has never known to muster.

What wonder and comfort the mysterious light brings to him. But at the same time, he feels its hidden destructive potential radiate out in waves whenever he reaches out to try to grab it. It's almost calling out to him, but that power could only ever be a danger to the world.

Dwelling within itself is a heat stronger than he has ever felt before. It's an intensity waiting to ignite, waiting to be free. Or should he say he's waiting to be free?

Min-ho moves a step closer within the darkness he knows is his mind somehow, but something he can't see ripples like a watery surface and keeps him back from the flame. He fiercely but in vain starts to pound the force with his fists. But, like always, the force does not yield.

Desperation comes on like thirst. It claims his senses. He can only think about the ember in front of him. He needs to claim it, or the monsters chasing him will eat him. They'll eat everyone.

Break! Come on, break. What is this anyway?

"What is this all about? Why does this happen every night?" he whispers in tears against the invisible wall, his shoulders sagging in defeat.

Behind him, something wet and dark comes to a stop in a heavy pitter-patter. Min-ho's bottom lip begins to quiver as he slowly turns around to see the thing he runs away from every single night. Even in the dark of this realm, he makes out the horrid bent-over shape perfectly.

Fuck, such a dark thing shouldn't be able to breathe, but it does heavily. Its face is riddled with open drooling mouths, and the teeth in them are black and broken. Its limbs number many and range from short to long. It has no eyes, but it sees in the dark just fine. It has no ears, but it still sways happily to the fear-filled breaths of its unlucky target.

It begins to laugh like it's told a jest and slightly hisses in delight. At the sound of the distinct cruel laugh, Min-ho feels gravity instantly increase. One green-toned tongue snakes out of one of its mouths, and the twisted creature uses it leisurely to lick its entire face as it continues to laugh horridly. The young man across this dark thing is cold and so pathetic. Soon, the bent-over monster starts to cackle maddeningly, loving how much fun it has every night destroying this Highborn slowly and painfully.

Min-ho groans in dread as he sees it blur before him. He knows what will happen next because this always ends the same way. The ever-recurring fatality seems to be his doom to relive every restless night.

The dark thing is soon right in front of him, face to face. The young man's expression becomes anguish as the thing grips his slender shoulders. Its touch is so cold that it burns and steams on contact. Min-ho hisses in pain and starts to choke from the dryness in his throat caused by his dread.

The creature leans in and elongates one of its many jaws. Min-ho braces for the pain he knows is coming. His heart is in his throat, and his stink of fear is in his nostrils. Faster than a human, it comes down between his shoulder and head, biting into his neck. Only this night, something is different. This time, the young man tries not to scream.

Because damn it, not this time! It's been years. Years of having this same old nightmare. He refuses to scream for the six hundredth time. This is the first time he's ever tried not to.

Behind him, he feels something new. Something he can only describe as power. The same white flame that he can never reach explodes and reaches him.

Min-ho opens his eyes and witnesses the creature searing and charring into black. It screeches back in surprise due to the damage. The deafening cry indicates that it is very new to pain. It has never felt such a burn while haunting this one until tonight.

For Min-ho, a new pain emerges also. His ears and head are splitting like bare hands are ripping him apart. He can't hold it back now, so he screams out his agony, too. It jolts him awake in the real world.

A moment of hard inhales and exhales later, his reality is settling around him. His nose is filled with a musty odor of Downey and used socks, proof he is now in his room and awake. A manic laugh escapes as his racing heart finally starts to slow. He reaches for his fine black hair with a shaky hand and runs it through to wipe the sweat away. The image of the creature is still fresh in his mind, but the image of the flame is, unfortunately, not. The knowledge of it is suddenly just -poof- gone.

It's dawn outside. He already knows it without looking out his balcony window. Like every morning, he feels like it's been nine at night just a blink ago. He brings his knees to his chest and starts to laugh into them some more, but soon, the laughter turns into heavy, anger-filled breaths. It's just not fair that he's forsaken, dreaming the same nightmare every night.

His eyes feel bruised when they're not, and his limbs feel light and heavy all at once. This is how Tom must feel when Jerry hits him with a baseball bat, for sure. 

Sleep deprivation is once again a blanket draped over his existence, and he knows it won't come off anytime soon. For the start of dawn means the start of his day.

Both shoulders hurt. There's an area on his neck where he feels a familiar sting, but for once, it's fading away faster than ever. Swinging his legs over his twin bed triggers the many hurts all over his sore body. The labor of yesterday's work is still under the surface, it seems. He starts to get up, and immediately, things begin to crack and cramp. A bit too much like an old man, he staggers to his bathroom.

Before his mirror, he looks himself over, finding the familiar and baffling marks on his bare shoulders. He tells himself they don't look like fingers, but the idea hardly hits where it should. On his neck on its left side, he harbors a stain of healing green, mildly damaged blue, and downright painful purple. It's such a disgusting bruise, and it's never healed. Never in four whole years.

Sure, he's been seen by a doctor or two, but both arrived at the same conclusion. He sleepwalks and ends up hurting himself in the process. It's a bogus diagnosis, but it's more believable than a monster in your dreams causing the actual injuries, right? At least for sleepwalking, they give some nice little pills that should help you minimize your episodes.

He tries not to remember what it was like before the sedatives or the anti-psychotics he takes. But before the fog they produced, the man was consumed by hallucinations all the time. Instead of sleeping through a nightmare, his entire vision was pure nightmares playing out in real-time. Running through the streets like an insane person, yelling at the top of his lungs about creatures that only he could see, running from things that seemed only to see him in return. That was his life not so long ago.

His reflection is frightening to look at. He always has this picture of himself, his better self, in his head, so every time he looks, he's taken aback by what he sees. Staring back at him is a slender man with pale skin and dark-near-purple circles under his oddly blue-colored eyes. Zombie, all that he was- is dead, and all he sees is the death of it in the mirror.

Min-ho. Who the fuck is that?

There was a time when he knew himself. But that was back when he saw the same things most people do: the sun, the sky, the grass, and the joy of just being alive. Oh, yes, there was a time he was mentally healthy.

Many couldn't relate to someone who suddenly lost their vision, but he can. He would rather become fully blind than look upon the world with the cursed eyesight he has now without his pills, so with much anger but resignation, he takes every bottle out. Then he takes out every pill and swallows every one of them with cold, metallic-tasting tap water.

On cue, his nose begins to bleed while he's bent over the sink. He picks his head up and doesn't pay any mind to it like always. Min-ho only has the strength to summon a causal nose wipe but then moves on to look for his clothes. Everything is on the floor or under his sheets instead of his closet or dresser. Maybe one or two shirts are still clean, but most things have been used about three times this week.

Energy is a funny word to him. It used to mean something, but now it's like an idea he can never truly grasp or put much faith in. Laundry? Please, just breathing is tough enough.

The first things he sees, he picks up and changes into. The picks are a deep green t-shirt, dark blue jeans, and a black hoodie with a shoe print on it that he has to smack off. He feels slightly better than before now that he's ready for the outside world.

There's one thing he always has neatly ready: his backpack. He picks the military-style thing from the floor and throws it behind him as he starts to his front door. Next to the door is an AXE body spray, he picks it up. As he dispensing a heavy mist of it all over himself, he knows the funk of sweat is still pretty present, but oh well.

On his way down the stairs, he remembers he forgot to brush his teeth. But then he remembers he talks only when needed and has gum in his desk for emergencies. In a last-ditch effort to pass for typical, he runs his fingers through his shaggy bangs to fix them the best he can while he opens the door to his building.

It's fresh outside and a bit moist because of the morning dew. People are trickling out of their own buildings, rustling breakfast out of kitchen foil, or chugging hot brew from their thermals. Most of them look just fine and even happy. He swallows down the stab of longing. Yep, that longing to wake up fully rested and, at the very least, remotely fine.

The smell of morning always makes him nauseous, but he swallows the feeling down and keeps on walking towards the subway. He takes out his outdated phone and plugs his ears shut with his buds. Then, with a swift tap on play, he picks the first song of the day.

"Coming Undone" by Korn.

It's always nice to have someone tell it back to you how you see it. But he has been undone for years now, and so he wonders how much of himself is really left to undo.