Enemy of Desire

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

I believe I had this dream around January 11th. It took place on what looked like a massive cargo ship used as a school. I'm not sure what kind of school this was, but the idea of an ocean liner college sounds exciting. The boat reminded me of something from a movie I watched called "Ghost Ship." The film is about a group of people who wake up on a mysterious ship with no memory of how they got there. Anywho, the first scene took place in a very spacious room; it appeared to be the length of several football fields with a ceiling at least five stories up. The walls were made of steel, while the floor seemed concrete. 

The ship was sailing to the United States. I had no idea where we had been, and it didn't matter; the journey was already over. It was currently night, so many of us were getting ready to sleep on mats spread out across the concrete floor. We would be sleeping in a large open room full of shelves and pallets stacked high with the bounty of the world. On this journey back home, I kept my distance from the other students. I did this because I had recently been infected with vampirism and tried to restrain my hunger. As I attempted to lay myself down, I was restless with need. The smell of something delicious was the only thing on my mind. This was the first dream that I hungered for humans, and I didn't know how to feel about it. "If I can last until we pass by some small and lonely island, I can leave this ship and die there alone. "If I'm successful, my classmates will be safe, and I can take these diseases down with me."  

This plan required two things—an excellent human facade and restraint. The pretense of human frailty was harder to maintain than I initially imagined. When some students nearby got on my nerves by attempting to bully me and others, I nearly killed one of them when I tried to create space between him and me. The other students had seen me effortlessly toss someone aside but said nothing. They were suspicious but not aware of the danger that I now posed. As their Blood pumped faster from the excitement, their scent filled the air in such a decadent way. It took so much strength to climb a shelf attached to a wall and sit at the very top to avoid killing anyone. The shelves were maybe only three or four stories tall and proved less helpful than imagined.

As my hunger continued to grow, simply remaining at a distance was no longer enough. I climbed higher and higher; eventually, I found myself at the very top of the room, straddling a metal beam near the ceiling, but even this wasn't high enough. The smell of my classmates was intoxicating. As the scent once again began to reach my nose, I held my head up high, stretching as if to keep my nose above it and avoid drowning. Just as I was about to be overtaken, a disturbance below caught my attention. I dropped down several hundred feet effortlessly to learn what was going on and found my answer. There was the sound of grinding and shredding of steel from a nearby wall. The entire class froze in front of it, too terrified to seek safety. Like me, other students had been turned into vampires and were coming to kill the remaining human students. They were hungry and had begun tearing their way through the solid steel walls between us. The hunger was too much for them to fight.

As students began to back away from the wall, I walked up to my brother and bit him, breaking my promise to die with this sickness alone. Suddenly the metal gave way, and the other vampires began pouring into the room. My brother and I turned to face them as the others came through. One of the teachers, a tall African American human, threw an object like a spear through the first to go through the wall, killing him quickly. But another soon followed with skin that was unbreakable. This brute, this fiendish Achilles, carried two blades, and I faced him with two of my own. Not sure where I got them, but I'm glad I had them. We clashed loudly and vigorously, swinging our blades for so much more than ourselves. As I struggled against his hunger, he challenged my conviction and resolve. Regardless of how swiftly I turned those blades or the weakness of his form, it honestly didn't matter; my blades seemed to have little effect either way.

Deus Ex Machina, a disembodied voice, speaks to me. "If you want to destroy something tough, scratch at it as much as you can in the same place. When a little gives way, the whole thing will be made vulnerable from there." In other words, we would need to make an Achilles heel where there was none. And that's precisely what I did. I swung my blade and caught his neck as often as I could, and even though it appeared to do nothing, I kept at it, dodging his strikes and counterattacks along the way. Eventually, a small crack appeared as if I had been cutting into solid rock the whole time. Digging the blade into the crevice, I turned it sideways, and the man's entire body shattered like a terracotta statue might.

As suddenly as he was down, a river crossed my path, and the details of the ship began to fade away around me. In seconds it was all gone, and I found myself on an island surrounded by sand and trees, the perfect place to die had I still desired to do so. Before me stood another vampire, desperate and hungry. He said to me, pleading almost, "We've been around so long, I can't remember what it means to see." His words didn't make sense; time and hunger had begun to rob him of all his understanding. I don't remember this battle, only its conclusion. He was dead; they were all dead. Afterward, we were greeted by a beautiful sky full of orange and blues. It felt strange to bask in something so beautiful after experiencing something so tragic. Victory did not come easily, and many of my classmates were dead.

Besides the noticeably smaller group of students, there were other apparent changes to the scene after the fight. The ship was no longer a steel cargo ship but an old-fashioned wooden sailing ship. It looked like something out of a pirate movie. Behind us, the corpse of a giant squid began to sink beneath the waves. Its tentacles were outstretched hundreds of feet into the air. Not sure where the giant squid came from, but there it was. My brother and I flew alongside the ship until we reached the shore, where after taking a few steps, we found ourselves in a classroom. All the students enquired about our trip, and none of us spoke the truth about it. Our teacher was not there; a substitute replaced him. Another teacher of ours was teaching a class of children, and we didn't want to interrupt. How long had we been gone? At first, I had intended to sit down, but I left with my brother and a few others in the end.

I found this dream very interesting, and I have several theories about my condition. My initial thought was to kill myself in response to my weakness because I didn't want to give in to the infection. But death seemed so far away. Meanwhile, I decided to separate myself from others for their safety. But nowhere I could run was far enough to escape temptation. When my other classmates, fellow vampires, forced their way into the room, I found the strength to remain human by fighting them. The resolve I needed to avoid eating my classmates was not something I needed to chase after; it was already in me. The act of fighting was like wrestling with the savage I nearly became, and it reminded me of who I wanted to be. On the other hand, my classmates' being vampires did not make them monsters; their lack of resolve to stay human in their hearts made them what they were.