He didn't use to have nightmare. Not often, anyway. He could probably count the number he had in any given year on a single hand.

Or, he could've before this September. Suddenly, it was every night now. It was the same every time, but different. A jumbled mess, sudden shifts from one scene to another, no sense of relation or connection between them.

It was worse when a scene lingered, though. Things...broke down, sort? Bits and pieces of everything he'd seen already would bleed into what was there, destructively, disgustingly. It felt like the world, or maybe just his mind, was melting into some undifferentiated soup.

Then it started happening in real life, and quickly from there became something he couldn't even hope was just some kind of delusion.

So he ran. He left a note for his partners and flatmates, hoped beyond hope that this wouldn't be the last time he saw or spoke to them, and took his car, and just drove.

He didn't know where he was going. Too soon, he didn't know where he was, except that it wasn't the city. He switched the car to four-wheel drive but even so he doesn't think this sand is good for his car, so he pulls it up onto the exposed black roots of one of the metal trees, turns off the car, and tries to think.

This isn't helped by the emotional chaos roiling inside his skull. One moment he's calm and quiet but on the border of falling asleep, the next he's blowing up the unfairness of it all, or collapsing against the steering wheel and bawling his eyes out, missing his partners and his friends, or overcome by the absolute conviction he needs to do something about this (but no more idea as to what to do, or even really what he's doing something about), to slipping in a dark and cold and hollow depression, and back again.

Eventually, he crawled around to the backseats of the car and slept, messily and intermittently.

He's awoken by the shine of a crystal sun peeking over the horizon, cast into bars of light by the dark trunks of the trees. It's a beautiful sight. He feels a little hungry, but the light feels nourishing enough on its own, which is a pleasant experience.

His emotions are still more swingy and difficult to control than normal, but without the added issue of being sleep-deprived, it's more manageable than last night. At least enough that's able to string coherent thoughts together during his calmer moments, and return to them and build on them.

Eventually, he arrives at the notion that he recognizes this place, in terms of vibes at least if not the specific details. Specifically, he recognizes these metal trees and black sand as being one fragment of a bunch of different tableaus from his nightmares. There's maybe a dozen others he can piece together, and when he focuses on one, he can feel something. It's not a physical feeling, more like a feeling of familiarity, like walking through a building or navigating through a website whose layout is familiar. He knows how to go there.

He knows how to go home, too. Or at least, back to somewhere like home, the way that this fucked up forest of metal trees is like his nightmares. It's a small blessing but it's a balm all the same.

If he focuses for longer, he can picture it with surprising ease. He's always had a good ability to visualize, but animating that image in his head has always been remarkably difficult and draining, but when he peers out with his mind like this, it's effortless to watch people walk by, to watch the leaves of the trees rustle in the wind, to watch asteroids fly through space, and more.

As much as he wants to stay here, he wants to go more. He needs to go, and he can always come back here later. So he crawls back into the drivers seat, though he doesn't turn on the engine. He gets the feeling he doesn't need to, and he figures it's better to save the wear and tear on his engine and the gas in his tank. Instead, he picks one of the calmer images in his head, a sort of apartment cut into stone, and goes.