The Proprietor

You are walking gingerly on the black-tinged shingles of your rooftop. You have a bird’s-eye view of the neighborhood under the grey sky. The belligerent drunkard next door starts yelling about some music festival being held next month. Normally this would be irritating, but you do not quite care right now. The scene fades…

Opening your eyes slowly, you lift the thick bed sheets off of yourself. The alarm you set last night has made your radio turn on; the DJ is announcing that there will be a contest for tickets to a music festival next month. You rise from your bed. It is 5 a.m. on Thursday, another weekday you will spend at work. You go through the motions of getting ready to leave, and walk out the door to catch the city bus.

Ten hours pass. You come home, exhausted as always. You throw yourself upon the sofa, and, having the energy to do little else, you turn on the television and stare at it. You aren’t paying attention to what’s on though; you just stare at the screen and drift into a catatonic state of thought. After hours of this, you opt to just go to bed.

You’re sitting up in bed. It’s dark, but you can make everything out with ease. You turn to the door leading to the hallway. In front of the door, you see a mass of misshapen lines that look like they were sloppily drawn and shaded in with a dull pencil. The mass of lines shakes slightly as you stare at it for some time; it eventually twists into what appears to be the crude outline of a featureless man. As you look at the man, the area surrounding him shakes and twists violently.

[YOUR LIFE HAS GROWN STALE ON YOU HASN’T IT]

Before you can reply, he seems to have read your mind for the answer.

[I HAVE SEEN YOUR PREVIOUS DREAMS, AND I KNOW PEOPLE’S DREAMS BECOME MORE REALISTIC WHEN THEY BECOME TIRED OF THEIR WORLD]

[I AM THE PROPRIETOR OF MY OWN WORLD YOU KNOW]

[IT IS UNDERPOPULATED, SO I AM LONELY, AND YOU ARE BORED HERE, NO?]

[YOU WILL NEVER BE JADED AGAIN IN MY REALM]

Before you can object, the Proprietor extends his arm towards you, holding out a hand as the scene fades to sheer darkness…

You wake up and climb out of bed, disregarding the unusually eerie dream you had last night. You go through the motions of preparing for work again when you stop in your tracks.

Out of the corner of your eye, you think you saw something strange outside of your window. So, you go over to your window, and you are shocked by what you find.

The neighboring apartments, the trees outside, the sidewalks, and everything else have become abstract, and everything is in negative lights. There are no cars on the streets or pedestrians on the sidewalk… only the warped versions of the surroundings you’ve grown accustomed to seeing every day.

You run outside desperately, hoping to see everything revert back to normal. Still, though, the buildings are crooked, the sidewalks sloped, and the whole world is in reverse polarities, with not a single other person around to be horrified with you.

“No one else; I have to face this messed-up world alone. This isn’t my home, this is Hell”, you gasp, dropping to your knees in the middle of the road in front of your house.

The Proprietor materializes to your left.

[INDECISIVE HUMAN, YOU INSULT MY WORLD AND YEARN FOR THE WORLD WITH WHICH YOU CLAIM TO HAVE GROWN TIRED]

He stands there for a long time, appearing to be glaring at you, until he stretches out an arm and seems to point at you. Two beings similar to the Proprietor in their rudimentary sketch-like form appear out of nowhere, lift you up, and carry you away.

Now, you sit in a small, empty corridor, immobilized in mummy wrappings, with a hellish figure appearing before you every now and again, scratching notes as it watches you menacingly from behind a door, while you try to reason with it, plead to have your world back…