There once was a fellow named Todd
who started feeling incredibly odd.
When he went to bed,
a voice in his head
said “Obey me, for I am your God”
Chapter One – The Awakening
Todd woke with a start. Had he heard a voice? Was someone in his room?
He flipped on the nightstand light and scanned the messy room. “Anyone there?”
Nothing. Probably just the cat. Or the drugs. He peeled a stiff sock off his thigh and reached for his underwear.
Wait! There is was again. It was like a voice but not… More like a air escaping a beach ball, but coherent. He couldn’t make out actual words, but it sounded like speech. A kind of breathy whisper that was appealing and horrible all at once, like a porn star with a tracheotomy. He looked around the room again. Nobody there. No sign of the cat, either. So maybe it was the drugs. But those were last night and he felt fine now.
Slowly, Todd crossed the room, sniffing clothes before putting them on. Walking to the window, he pulled the curtains open and stopped…
Outside his window was a scene that wasn’t there yesterday, or ever. A bright sun coexisted in the sky with two moons. Blue grass and spindly black trees covered rolling hills that went far into the distance. In that distance, at the end of a winding road, there stood a castle.
He stared, trying to make sense of it. Maybe his house had moved in the night. Maybe the city council had demolished all the homes and roads surrounding his apartment and… and… then he saw a thing. A thing on the hill. A thing on the hill that looked like a cross between an lizard and a filing cabinet. It was walking upright, chasing some flying thing that was exactly what you’d expect to see if you were expecting to see goat eyes on a toilet brush violently flapping its batwings in an attempt to escape a hungry lizard cabinet.
The t-shirt he was holding dropped to the floor. Either his eyes were glossing over or the window was fogging up. He blinked. It was the window fogging up, like something huge was breathing on it. He could hear the breath, the almost comprehensible exhalation. When the fog had almost covered the whole window, lines started forming in the moisture as if drawn by an unseen finger. Slowly, lines turned into letters, letters into words. The words spelled out a sentence: “OBEY YOUR GOD”
Todd fainted.