Self-Righteous Storm

When I opened my eyes, I found myself sitting in a chair in a field of blood-red grass. I tried to remember how I'd gotten there, but my mind was completely blank. The sky was covered by what I could only describe as a rain cloud with hundreds of red eyes staring down at me.
"Hello, little beast," the cloud chortled and boomed and growled all at once. Gash-like mouths appeared all over the cloud's body as it spoke, radiating some kind of white-looking light which physically shook me.
Through the nausea I got just from being in this thing's presence, I managed to stammer, "Who are you, and why am I here?"
"You should know why you're here!" it roared with laughter, mouths opening so wide they engulfed its entire body. The strange light and laughter they emitted made me writhe on the ground in agony. Even after it closed them all, my body was ringing like a struck bell.
The cloud opened one huge eye that took up nearly the entire sky and murmured, "Does that remind you of why you deserve punishment?"
"No, not at all!"
"Well, I will not fall for your trickery!" it screamed, bathing me in light again. "Now die!"
The ground gave out from under me and I tumbled into a pitch-black void.
----
When I opened my eyes, I found myself under the thing I'd seen last time. I flinched as I remembered the pain it had put me through.
"Hello, little beast," it chortled and boomed and growled all at once.
Assuming it remembered me, I screamed, "What do you want from me now?"
"I want to escape this purgatory!" That horrible light started leaking from it once more, but I closed my eyes and shielded my face with my hands.
Even though the nausea still hit me, I stood up straight and bellowed, "What are you trying to do?"
"What are you trying to do?" the object repeated in my voice, magnified by its thousands of mouths. As hard as it was to stand, I weathered the pain, and when the cloud opened its eyes, I stood ramrod-straight, defiantly staring at it.
The cloud unleashed a sulfuric downpour, and I gasped as my skin bubbled and my flesh sloughed off my bones.
"You must think you're so strong!" it howled. "Well, that is why you must die!"
The ground ripped like paper, and I screamed as I fell into the empty space beneath. I noticed how the fissures traveling through the ground stopped at a faraway grove of trees, which was hovering in mid-air even as the rest of the ground turned to confetti.
----
When I opened my eyes, I was sitting under the cloud again. This time, as the cloud said, "Hello, little beast," I ran towards the grove.
"Where are you going, human child?" When I didn't answer, the cloud began roaring in hundreds of voices, blasting beams of light so powerful the whole world turned a uniform white. I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and prayed I was still running in the right direction.
The light peaked in intensity as a torrent of insults beat down on me. Then all the sound and light vanished. When I opened my eyes again, the grove of trees was still within sprinting distance. I bolted underneath the grove just before the ground started breaking apart. As the heavens roiled with the cloud's anger, the thick canopy overhead protected me from the light, but covering my ears only marginally helped with the sound. I shivered silently on the roots as the ground beneath crumbled away.
I started to believe it was all over. Then I felt something dripping onto my head and smelled brimstone all around me. As I watched in horror, the trees began to dissolve and my skin began to burn and bubble as the rain started to take effect again. I screamed in agony as I broke into pieces and tumbled down once more. The last thing I heard was the cloud's innumerable voices screaming, "Die!"
----
The minute I opened my eyes, I ran towards the grove of trees again. The cloud started asking, "Where are you -" but I shouted up to it, "Could you stop trying to kill me? I don't know what's going on!"
To my surprise, the cloud listened. It murmured to itself, vaguely humanoid sounds that decayed to the rumble of thunder. Finally, I heard a medley of baritone voices whisper and mutter, "I won't attack you any longer, child, not even with the light of my mouths."
Not completely trusting the cloud, I rushed back to the trees. From underneath the canopy, I squeaked, "Why were you attacking me?"
"I'll explain it to you clearly, then, as you seem to have forgotten." I could hear an undercurrent of rumbling behind the cloud's voices, but I wasn't sure if that meant the cloud was angry or not. "Seconds ago, my adversaries sent me to this plane of existence, robbing me of the bulk of my power. I feel that you must be one of them."
"I don't remember that, I remember... waking up on a chair, and then you killing me, and that happening over and over again."
The cloud went so silent I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. I was relieved when its voices crackled back to life. "If you are speaking the truth, I misjudged our situation. I can only believe that, if our perceptions of reality are that different, they must be controlling what we perceive. They might even be - " The cloud screamed and I saw hundreds of colorful spots zigzagging across the ground. I ran out from under the trees, suddenly worried for the monster.
"Hello, little beast," it chortled and boomed and growled all at once, perfectly composed once more.
"What do you think - ?" Bolts of lightning shocked me into submission.
As I writhed, the cloud roared, "I can think of only one thing - that you must die!" as the the ground crumpled beneath me. For the first time, I started to cry.
----
I was screaming at the cloud to stop before I even opened my eyes, though my face was dry when it had been wet a moment ago.
"Why should I stop? What should I stop?" the cloud hissed and thundered, and I tried to remember what it had said.
"They - they're controlling what we perceive!" The tears were starting to fall again. "I see that - that - " I couldn't remember the words, no matter how hard I tried. I crawled into a fetal position and shivered in the open field. The cloud just watched, one huge red eye straight above me, until I could finally stand.
Then it let out a thousand anguished cries, as light in dozens of colors danced from all the corners of the sky. As I watched it obviously lashing out in pain, I got an inkling of what was happening.
The second it repeated its opening line, the right words flooded from my mouth. "You see that only a second has passed since they trapped you here, but for me, that time repeats over and over. I wake up here, you kill me, and the cycle repeats. But I think the cycle is actually repeating when they..." Now I faltered. "- shock you? Or something, something that makes you scream in pain."
The cloud didn't respond, so I broke the silence myself. "I don't really know what's going on, and I would love to understand more. Frankly, I don't remember how I originally got here - "
"I assumed you volunteered." I heard a single soft female voice this time.
"I don't remember. Maybe I did. But I have to get out of here - "
"I think I know how this works." More and more voices started speaking. "This is no ordinary world - this is a dream! They've trapped us in your mind, in a dream they control! That's why I can't use all my powers!"
Over the crescendo of voices, I screamed, "What can I do?" and somehow the cloud heard me. The voices bickered amongst themselves for a few seconds before coming to a sudden conclusion.
"You have to concentrate, and I suggest you concentrate by repeating words that would also alert me to the reality of the situation. Something like, 'You and I are in a dream and I have to concentrate to get out.' You should say that phrase, and I only hope I will always - "
The cloud screamed again, and I frantically repeated what it had told me to say. My fear evaporated into thin air as the cloud stopped its opening line in order to listen to me and told me, "Then close your eyes and focus on repeating the words."
I did as the cloud instructed until the phrase morphed into gibberish, all while the cloud made a terrifying ruckus above me. Even when its memory reset and it temporarily stopped, as soon as it heard what I was saying, it made so much noise, and so many different kinds of noise, that it was physically affecting me to the point it felt like I was floating in the air.
I kept floating faster until it was like falling upwards, and when I opened my eyes - 
----
I jerked awake, body covered in tubes and arms strapped to a table. I was under the open sky in a field of black stones, with medical equipment strewn everywhere and people in lab coats either rushing elsewhere or gawking at me.
"What happened to the sedative?" one of them yelled. "The subject is conscious!"
As I looked around groggily, trying to recall how I'd come here, a woman approached me and asked, "How are you awake, Mina?"
As I lay there panting, memories flooded through my head. Only a few were relevant - the cloud destroying buildings while rocket launchers shot through it, my body being wheeled on a gurney into the heart of the raging storm, the cloud's single eye glaring down at me as the scientists flipped a switch. But something was bothering me about those memories - I couldn't remember what the cloud had actually done.
Who had struck first? Why?
Before I could focus on remembering, the woman asked again, which got me to wonder: how was I awake? I could remember what had happened, but I couldn't explain it well. Finally, I rasped, "I don't know. I'm sorry."
The woman sighed. "Please give us a little more information. We have to make sure it doesn't happen again."
I figured even a bad explanation would work. It was hard to even speak, but I managed to say, "There was... a lot of light... and sound?" I winced as a siren blared in the background. "I felt like I was flying and then I woke up. I'm sorry, it's hard to explain."
I heard someone behind me say, "I might be able to help." The person walked in front of me - a bald man. I realized both of them were wearing lab coats.
I asked, "Are you both scientists?" but neither of them were listening anymore.
They walked away from me, and I heard the man whisper, "It seems like the apparition managed to convince her to get out."
"That's not good." The woman stopped in her tracks, and the man stopped beside her.
"It gets worse, Samantha. Rolling the tape back, it seems like the bounds we put on her dream state are... well, what we know for sure is that she lost her memory during the dream."
The woman - Samantha - pinched the bridge of her nose, then ran her hand down her face. "Do we know how to fix that?"
"No. We don't know."
I had to interrupt at that point. "You know, you could just talk to me! That's one way to fix it."
They turned to me, and the man said, "Samantha, we might not have enough time - "
"No, Daniel! That's actually a great idea." Samantha walked up to me. "What do you remember?"
I squinted, then gave up. "Just tell me why we're doing this. The cloud - the thing you call an apparition - can you tell me what it is and why you trapped it in a dream?"
"It started years ago. First, we received a warning that many of us would be exterminated. Then, the thing you call a cloud rolled in over the ocean as a thick fog. It used the voice of every person it murdered to scream that all living creatures had to be destroyed and repurposed. It referred to itself as a 'righteous storm' that would cleanse the world if left unchecked - and we didn't want that. We don't call it a cloud because a cloud isn't the only thing it can look like. It exerts its own will on other things, from clouds to cake to cats to kids, and it can manipulate them however it wants. That said, possession means instant death, because it doesn't really think of living beings as 'anything more than complicated wind patterns' - its words, not mine."
"Oh." The quote unearthed a memory. My eyes had been glued to the television screen as glassy-eyed corpses destroyed a city and dismembered each other. All the while, a churning mass of dirt, metal, and broken bodies was crawling through the streets on dozens of limbs and metal or concrete poles. As it passed, one of the corpses turned to the camera and slurred those same words - "None of you behind the screen are anything more than complicated wind patterns. I am your apocalypse, a righteous storm ready to bend you to my will."
I realized I was biting my cheek hard enough to draw blood. "So... what am I doing? Why do I have to be dreaming?"
"Long story short, that thing could sense the chemical reactions in our brains, but it seemed like there was a disconnect where it couldn't understand the difference between, say, us and a wind current. After studying the apparition, we realized how to communicate with it, but it still wasn't convinced we were actually, you know, feeling emotions as opposed to going through the motions. Thankfully, it seemed to have similar emotions to human beings, so we came up with the idea of forcing it to see through the eyes of a human being - specifically, sharing a dream with one." 
"That seems like a really nice thing to do." 
"Yeah, but there were actually a lot of different things being done - experiments in controlling dreams, attempts to capture and control the apparition, and probably other stuff. This is a really big project - and you're an integral part!" She pointed at me. "Basically, you volunteered to be the test subject for a lot of different things in a short amount of time."
"I... volunteered?"
"Oh? Surely you remember the bold choice you made, volunteering to contain that thing." That stirred a memory, and I shook my head. She sighed and smiled. "It's a shame you don't remember your own bravery."
Her cheerful voice made the newfound truth sting even more. "You don't get it. My parents forced me to sign. They didn't want me around, and they wanted the compensation money you gave to the volunteer's family. I guess, to some extent, they needed the money..."
That wiped the smile from her face. "I'm sorry you signed under duress. That said, you can't go back on it. We need you to keep holding that thing hostage. That said, I - "
She screamed unintelligibly, her face still calm, then fell to the ground. As she lay coughing, I could only muster, "... What?"
"What did I say? I..."
"I guess I don't even have the subtle control I thought I had." Samantha said without her mouth moving. Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then widened in horror. She screamed, "The machine! Check the machine - " before something exploded and screams filled the air. I turned my head, and my blood chilled as I saw a swirling mass in the sky pushing away the real clouds. A single discolored eye blinked onto its surface - not red, but a color which made everything around it less red like a screen being dimmed.
I turned my head back to Samantha, who was mouthing "Knock her out" to Daniel. Before I could respond, the world went black.
----
I opened my eyes in a huge bed with white sheets. I looked around, confused even before remembering what had happened. I looked around cautiously, expecting to hear thunder at any second. After a few seconds, I heard someone walking towards me, and I braced myself for the worst.
"Mina, you're finally awake!"
"You're Samantha, right?"
"Yes! I'm so glad you remember me."
"So... what happened?"
My hypothesis was that the apparition didn't understand qualia as a concept, and I was right! It made a distinction between its own qualia and ours, but once it realized how we felt... anything, at all, it just remade and resurrected everything somehow!"
As I lay back down in shock, Samantha continued, "It worked! I can't believe it actually worked! I have to admit, I wasn't expecting our naïve psychological hypothesis to be so close to the truth, but it was!"
The ease with which it had brought people back to life unnerved me. "How do we know it won't turn on us?"
"On the one hand, we can't ever know, but on the other hand, we're pretty sure it won't! We just have to trust our instincts - "
She was talking more and more loudly, but she couldn't stop me from hearing something in the background. "Is that... screaming?"
"No, don't get up, don't look - "
----
I was lying under a clear open sky in a field of black stones. Turning my head, I found myself face to face with Samantha. From the waist-up, she seemed fine, but there was nothing below the waist.
"Please wait," she said almost perfectly, save for her glassy eyes drifting from my face and her mouth only barely moving in time with the words. "I promise I wasn't lying to you. I can fix this, and I will, but it'll take some time."
In the background, people were being reconstructed from the ground-up, then carried away by huge waves of dirt as they kicked and screamed. That didn't include all the scientists, whose bodies were strewn all over the ground like forgotten toys. It was terrifying, but it made a sick kind of sense. At least some of them had wanted to control it, and it had no proof Samantha was any better.
For a second, I wondered why it felt so right to side with whatever that thing was. Was it because the scientists had tortured me too, even if by accident? Because it seemed to be making good on its promise? Maybe just because it could kill me and they couldn't?
A baked potato landed softly on my stomach. "You will be hungry soon, if I understand correctly," Samantha's voice said as her body flopped onto the ground. "I hope this can serve as a show of goodwill. I will gladly feed you for as long as you need without charge, human child."
I couldn't argue with a promise like that. I ate the whole potato, then closed my eyes and tried to dream of a better world, hoping to wake up to one too.
Category:Monsters
Category:Dreams/Sleep
Category:Science
Category:Lovecraftian