So about 26 hours ago I was reading an essay on the development of the various Orphic religions in the Mediterranean and I started falling asleep. I forced myself awake, and started floating in that liminal state where I didn’t read the essay so much as the essay’s influence upon my subconscious mind manifested itself before me. I had a great idea but forgot it. I saw Orpheus everywhere, ever-reborn in new forms. He was a sexy young man with long black hair in a British 80s band’s black and white press photo. The image must have been entirely a product of my mind, cobbled together from the indie rock press photos of my teen years, before MySpace and Facebook.

I turned off the light and closed my eyes. I was assaulted by monsters and rotting flesh. There was a devilish creature there with me: he was tall and lean with large horns. I was in a cave. It was dark. I was ripped apart, or, even worse, forced to watch it done to others. Torture surrounded me, and the screams of the afflicted. Finally I ran into this giant bank of images like the monitors in a tv production room or a security center, only more organic and evil. Each had a monster (one even had an evil clown), but as I moved so did the monsters. Then I realized I was seeing myself being tortured and killed on every monitor in real time and the movements of my selves on the monitors were perfectly synced to my own. Every small movement of my body was changing how the terrible things were happening to me. No movement of mine would make the violence stop. I screamed, and awoke.