The Mire of Wakefulness

The static hum wasn't just in his teeth; it was a low thrum that vibrated through the cold concrete floor beneath him. Jared was stretched out, face pressed against something rough and gritty, the smell of damp dust and decaying metal filling his nostrils. His eyelids felt heavy, cemented shut with a kind of internal resistance, each blink a monumental effort against a suffocating pressure. He tried to remember where he was, or *who* he was, but his mind offered only a blank canvas, scarred with a deep, unsettling grey. A grey like the underside of a bruised cloud, stretched thin.

His neck ached, a sharp, insistent pain that bloomed from the base of his skull and pulsed behind his eyes. He grunted, a rough sound that scraped his throat raw, and pushed himself up onto his elbows. His muscles protested, stiff and cold. The parka he wore, an olive-green monstrosity, felt too heavy, too thick, clinging to his skin with an almost clammy dampness. It smelt faintly of woodsmoke and something sharper, like old coffee grounds left out in the rain. He fumbled with the zipper, the cold metal catching on his stiff fingers, and finally managed to pull it down a little, letting in a sliver of the frigid air.

He was inside something, a cavernous space. Ruined, obviously. Massive concrete pillars, flaked with ancient paint, soared up into what should have been a roof but was now just a jagged aperture of grey sky. Rain, fine and persistent, sifted through the gaps, peppering the broken floor around him. Rust-coloured stains bled down the concrete walls, like old, dried blood. Everywhere, there was rubble—bricks, twisted rebar, shattered panes of glass glinting dully in the anemic light. A gust of wind, smelling of wet asphalt and something acrid, rattled a loose sheet of corrugated iron nearby, a sound like an old man clearing his throat, endlessly.

Memory flickered, teasing and elusive. He had a name. Jared. That was something. But Jared *what*? Jared *doing* what? The thought felt like grasping smoke, dissolving the moment he tried to hold it. He remembered… a dream? A dream of falling. Or flying. Or both, at the same time, a sickening lurch in his gut that now felt like a residual echo. Was this the aftermath? Was this the landing? He scraped a hand across his cheek, feeling stubble, a faint cut near his temple. It stung, a real, sharp pain. Too real for a dream, surely? But then, dreams could be cruel, couldn't they?

He pushed himself further, sitting upright, his head swimming for a moment. He swallowed hard, the dryness in his throat a rasp. His boots—heavy, scuffed work boots—were caked in what looked like dried mud. He flexed his toes, feeling the uncomfortable crunch inside, the way his socks were bunched up on his left foot. He tried to stand, knees knocking together, a clumsy, awkward movement. The ground felt uneven, treacherous. He put a hand out, bracing himself against a leaning concrete slab, its surface cold and abrasive beneath his palm.

The air was bitterly cold, hinting at the depths of autumn outside. Through a gaping hole in the wall, he could see the skeletal silhouettes of trees, their branches stripped bare, etched against a horizon that was a uniform, oppressive grey. The landscape beyond was a monochrome blur of broken structures and low, scrubby growth, punctuated by the occasional skeletal mast or rusted tower. No colours, not really. Just shades of grey, brown, and the dull, oxidised red of exposed metal. Even the leaves that clung desperately to a few hardy saplings outside were muted, desiccated things, not the vibrant golds and crimsons he vaguely remembered from… from when? He squeezed his eyes shut. Nothing. Just the grey.

He started walking, a slow, shuffling gait, his body still protesting every movement. The rubble shifted under his weight, small stones skittering, sending little clouds of dust puffing up. Each step felt like a conscious effort, a test of gravity. He noticed a patch of moss, bright green, clinging determinedly to the base of a crumbling wall. It looked out of place, a defiant splash of life in the general desolation. He reached out to touch it, his fingers hesitating just above the damp, spongy surface. A tiny, almost imperceptible tremor ran through the moss, like a shiver. Or was it just his imagination? His hand hovered, then he pulled it back, a sudden prickle of unease crawling up his arm.

He rounded a corner, the interior of the ruined building stretching on, deeper and darker. He saw glints of metal, coils of wire, the rotting remains of what might have been furniture. Then, a flicker of movement. He froze, muscles tensing. Near a particularly large, gaping hole in the wall, where the rain was coming in thickest, a figure sat hunched over. A woman. She had her back to him, wrapped in a threadbare, dark cloak, her head bowed. She wasn’t moving much, just a slight, rhythmic sway. What was she doing?

He cleared his throat, a dry, rusty sound. "Hello?" he called out, the word feeling oddly foreign on his tongue. It seemed to hang in the damp air, absorbed by the vastness of the space. The woman didn't respond immediately. Jared took another hesitant step, and another. The sound of his boots on the gravel seemed impossibly loud. He saw what she was doing then. She was sketching, a small, worn notebook balanced on her knee, a stubby pencil clutched in her fingers. Her strokes were quick, deliberate.

He was close enough now to see the details of her work. The drawing was of the very space they were in—the broken pillars, the crumbling walls, the rain-streaked light. But it wasn't exact. The pillars were twisting, almost fluid, and the rain wasn't falling in straight lines; it was swirling, like smoke. She looked up then, slowly, her head tilting. Her face was young, but lined, her eyes a startlingly clear blue set in a smudged face. She looked at him, not with surprise, but with a kind of mild, ancient recognition.

"Morning," she said, her voice low and calm, like still water. She didn't ask who he was, or what he was doing there. Just 'morning.' It threw him. "It's… morning?" He looked towards the grey sky, which gave no indication of time. It could be noon, midnight, or Tuesday for all he knew. He felt a weird, desperate need to know what day it was, what year. "Do you know… what day it is?" he asked, the words tumbling out, clumsy. He felt foolish immediately.

She smiled, a small, sad curve of her lips. "Does it matter? It's always this day, isn't it? The day after. Or the day before. Depends on which way you're looking." She turned back to her sketch, her pencil scratching softly against the paper. He watched her, a knot of confusion tightening in his chest. "I don't… I don't remember much," he admitted, the words tasting like ash. "Where are we?"

She didn't stop sketching. "In the grey. Or maybe just outside it." She paused, her pencil hovering. "You just got here, didn't you? Came up from the mire." She glanced at him, her blue eyes piercing. "It’s always a shock, the first few times." *The first few times?* What did she mean? He felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the pervasive cold.

"The mire?" Jared repeated, his voice barely a whisper. "Is this… is this a dream?" He hated the question, hated how desperate and childlike it sounded. He wanted it to be a dream. He wanted to wake up. He pinched himself, hard, on the arm. A sharp, undeniable pain. He even drew a little blood. He showed her, a frantic, pathetic gesture. "Look. It hurts. This is real."

She watched him, her expression unreadable. Then she slowly, deliberately, reached into her cloak. He tensed, bracing himself, but she merely pulled out another sketchbook, identical to the first. She opened it to a blank page, then extended it to him. "Draw it," she said. "Draw the pain." His brow furrowed. "What? Why?"

"Because that’s how you know it's real," she said, a strange intensity in her voice. "Or how you make it real. For a moment." She gestured vaguely at the ruins around them. "Everything here… it’s drawn. It’s remembered. It’s wished for. Or it's feared. Every brick, every flake of rust. It's all just… ink." He stared at the blank page, then at the tiny dot of blood on his arm. He couldn't draw. He wasn't an artist.

"I can't," he managed, shaking his head. "I don't… I can't draw anything." He felt a tremor start in his hands, not from the cold now, but from a profound internal shift, like tectonic plates grinding deep beneath the earth. The air around him suddenly felt thicker, heavier, pressing in. His vision blurred at the edges, the lines of the concrete walls wavering, softening.

"You have to," she insisted, her voice gaining a new urgency, though her face remained calm. "Or it starts to unravel. It always does." He looked at her, then back at the shifting wall. Was it his eyes? Or were the rust stains really beginning to ripple, like spilled paint on water? The sound of the incessant rain seemed to deepen, to become less distinct drops and more of a pervasive, crushing roar.

He felt a sudden, dizzying lurch in his stomach, worse than the falling dream. The ground beneath his feet seemed to tilt, and for a terrifying second, he thought the entire ruined building was swaying, about to collapse around them. He stumbled, putting a hand out to steady himself, and his fingers passed *through* the concrete pillar he had leaned on moments before. His eyes went wide, pupils dilating, his breath hitching. He blinked rapidly, frantically, but the pillar was gone, shimmering like heat haze, then solidifying back into place, looking exactly as it had before. But he *felt* his hand pass through it. He knew it wasn't right.

"What was that?" he choked out, fear, cold and sharp, gripping his throat. He turned to the woman, his eyes pleading for an answer, for some solid ground in this liquefying reality. She was looking at him, her blue eyes unwavering, but her face seemed… indistinct now. A little too smooth, a little too perfect. Like a drawing that hadn't been fully coloured in. Her charcoal pencil was moving faster, sketching furiously in her notebook, capturing the shifting air, the blurring outlines of the ruin.

"You’re waking up," she said, her voice flat, devoid of emotion, or perhaps, any real substance. "Or you’re falling deeper." She didn’t offer the sketchbook again. She just kept drawing, her movements robotic now, precise, frantic. He looked back at the wall, and this time, the entire surface was shimmering, the rusty blood-like streaks elongating, stretching like taffy, pulling away from the concrete. The grey sky above them began to crack, not like glass, but like old plaster, revealing hints of something else, something vibrant and impossibly bright beneath.

His head snapped back to her. "Waking up? But… I'm already awake. I have to be!" He needed to convince himself, needed to hear it. The words felt hollow, echoing strangely in the vast space that now seemed to be stretching, expanding, the proportions feeling all wrong. The distant rattling of corrugated iron was now a high-pitched whine, like a strained wire. The cold intensified, piercing through his parka, reaching his bones, making them ache with a deep, systemic chill.

He took a frantic step towards her, then another, but she seemed to recede with each movement, as if the space between them was stretching, elastic. He stumbled over a piece of rubble that had been there, then hadn’t, and then was there again, now a smooth, unnaturally round stone. He dropped to his knees, his hands scrabbling on the ground, seeking purchase, something solid, something real. The gravel felt like a thousand tiny needles, then like soft, powdery dust, then like wet, spongy earth. It wouldn’t stay the same. Nothing would.

The woman’s hand, still sketching, began to blur, her fingers elongating, becoming thin, translucent lines. Her eyes, those startling blue eyes, widened, and for a fleeting moment, he saw a glimmer of raw terror in them, before they too began to distort, dissolving into swirls of blue pigment. "Hold onto something!" she screamed, her voice echoing, fragmenting, becoming multiple voices, overlapping, fading. "Anything!"

He tried to grab onto a broken piece of rebar sticking out of the ground, his fingers closing around empty air. The metal wasn't there. Then it was, cold and sharp, then it was gone again, leaving a phantom ache in his palm. The smell of damp dust and decaying metal was being steadily replaced by something else, something sweet and cloying, like overripe fruit, mixed with the sharp tang of something electric. He looked up, his gaze sweeping frantically around the cavernous ruin, but it wasn't a ruin anymore. The concrete pillars were twisting, spiralling upwards like petrified trees, their grey surfaces painted with strange, luminescent mosses that pulsed with a faint, greenish light.

The cracks in the sky above were spreading, widening, revealing an impossibly vivid kaleidoscope of colours—deep purples, brilliant oranges, electric blues—that pulsed and swirled like a liquid nebula. It was too much. His head throbbed, a relentless hammer against the inside of his skull. His stomach churned. He wanted to scream, but no sound came out. The woman was almost completely gone, just a faint outline, a smudge of charcoal and blue watercolour, her hand still making impossible strokes in the air, trying to capture a reality that was actively disintegrating.

He closed his eyes tight, squeezing them until spots danced behind his eyelids, trying to force it all back, to make it stop. He opened them again. The familiar concrete floor was gone, replaced by soft, cool soil, and the stench of decay lifted, giving way to the faint, sweet scent of something green. He was no longer in the building. He was lying on his back, under a sky streaked with bruised purples and yellows, staring up at the skeletal branches of a massive, impossibly twisted tree, its bare limbs clawing at the fading light. He gasped, a guttural, choked sound, and the woman was gone, her sketchbook abandoned. Only the tree remained, and a single, crimson-coloured leaf drifted slowly down, landing gently on his forehead, cool and utterly, terrifyingly real. Or was it?