Too Lucid

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.


The prompts: This story must be about someone hearing a strange noise in the middle of the night.


Too Lucid

I need to get that memo out. No, damn it. Focus!

Darkness.

That new girl in the office is really – No! Let it go, let it all go…

Empty space, devoid of time, closed around the peripheral vision of his inner eye and Thomas finally slipped into an alpha state of consciousness.

“He’s there.” The lab assistant looked up at the doctor for the signal to proceed to stage two.

Dr. Samuelson peered through the observation window. He could see the deprivation tank with its neutrally buoyant subject floating just beneath the surface of the conductive fluid. He nodded to the assistant who began slowly turn a large dial clockwise.

The trickle current entered the tank, quickly finding the microscopic equivalent of lightning rods attached to Thomas’ scalp. The electrons jostled each other excitedly for the chance to follow the rods into the depths of Thomas’ cerebral cortex.

Project Lucid Dreams was Dr. Samuelson’s brainchild. He saw dreams as an untapped playground; one where anything was possible. He believed that if you knew you were dreaming, you could safely call up any experience you wished. By inducing an electrical current during sleep, he could wake his subject within a dream. Once “awake”, the subject could play as he wished.

Sure, there had been some failures, but that was to be expected.

Thomas opened his eyes as fear gripped him. He was naked in a cheap, dimly lit, hotel room. His mind raced for reason and rationale. Memories that weren’t there a moment ago filled the void. A single window offered only a perfectly black night. A scratching at the door made him cringe. It was here!

His mind left him as he curled in a corner screaming.

The assistant muted the tone and reported the obvious.

“Another flat-line Doctor.”