Am I awake? Or is this a dream? Perhaps I'm dead... If I am then surely I have gone to Hell, for no other place could attest to what lies before me. If I am awake, then woe be to earth! I shall call it a dream. Yes, a dream.

Very well then. What do I see? RED. Red upon black upon red, covering the landscape before me. I stand in a field of pain. The sky above is red, scattered in angry, twisted clouds. The filtered sun doing nothing but making the macabre scene more pointedly obscene. Bloody, mangled corpses litter the ground from where I stand till the eye can see no more. No building stands erect. No tree or grass grows.

Putrid, stagnant water fills a hollow to my right. I step closer, for the heat of this place draws the thirst of your soul to your lips. The smell of cooked flesh like a smog hanging over the ground. I near the pool to see that it is not the cool water I desire pooled here, but chilled blood instead. A cloud rises from its festering surface. Buzzing about me, startled by my approach, they sing a happy song of death.

Looking beyond the pool I spot a set of stairs. Placed beneath a ruined portal, it falls down into the dank earth. My thirst and the heat compels me to enter, but I glance around first. Nothing moves except the buzzing flies and the red clouds above. So I step up to the edge of this gaping hole and look within. Darkness confronts me, but still I enter, seeking the coolness of the underground. Hiding myself from that awful red sky.

I see nothing...perhaps my eyes will adjust once I'm in the full gloom. I tread lightly, the steps slick with putrid filth. Once in the complete dark, I stop to look back at that red sun. It's cast light a flow of blood upon the stair. I turn from its glare and walk into the semi-dark, finding myself wondering what next this dream will bring to me. Already it feels like I have been here forever. I walk on and on in the dark passageways below.

Finding nothing within, I wonder about the strangeness of this dream. It is not even a very good dream. No particular horrors have assaulted me, save the sickening vistas above. No monsters, nasty falls or being chased by hordes of demons, just the disgusting sights and gut wrenching stench.

I stop to sit along this endless wall, back against the cool stone. Closing my eyes I think of nothing. But unbidden, my wishes come to me. Wishes of awakening in my soft, clean bed with bright dawn throwing the golden sun in my eyes. Instead of that, I become aware of a sound, a strange sound that started at my entrance here. A sound so low that I had ignored it till now. My eyes fly open and I look hard, back the way I had come. I see nothing of course, so I strain my ears instead.

There! There it was again. A scrambling, clicking sound carried along the corridor to my waiting ears. I try to place its familiarities. I know I have heard this sound before. Only it was softer then, less echoed. As memory dawns, a panic arises in me greater than any I have yet experienced. Bolting away from the source of the chattering, chattering noise, I careen through the passageways before me. Finally, out of breath, I slow. My ears strain to hear the horrid sound again, but all there is, is my own ragged breath and the beating of my crazed heart.

Long moments of dread pass by as my breathing slows. Now what? Standing, head down, hands on knees, I wait for my mind to join with the stillness of the dank dark. Opening my eyes again, I notice a new light down the hall. The faint glow of candle light greets my weary soul and with it a new sound. Thwack! THWACK! Numb, I get up to investigate.

I come upon a man. He holds a cleaver in his right hand, butchering the flesh from some once-human form. His strokes are clean, steady beats, traveling the blade down the long thigh. His other hand, bloody to the elbow, pulls the human meat from the bone as the cleaver severs tendons. I am frozen. Slowly the thigh is done and the man stands, turning from the corpse to place the dripping strip upon a nearby block. Luck is with me and his back remains facing me. He does not know I watch. With a -blink- the spell on me is broken and once again I flee down this putrid hall.

Another dead end. I stop to catch my breath. My panic dying for lack of any stimulus in this perpetual maze. This place is so vast! Much more so than I had first suspected. Unless.... I freeze, thinking of the possibilities. Unless I have been running around in endless circles. This wall, this dead end wall, how many times have I run into one?? Dreams ARE said to repeat. Perhaps if I mark each wall or corner as I come to them, and go on more carefully, I will find my way out.

I search my person for something to use on the decaying stone. Nothing, my pockets are empty. Which of course is another testament as to how wrong this whole dream is! I never leave the house without money in my pocket. So now I must search my surroundings. Up til now I have avoided this, not wanting to look too close at anything in this foul place. I am now forced to scrabble in the corruption littering the floor, desperate for anything. I spot a flake of white by my feet: a bone- white, smooth, sharp, it is the only probable object I see . Taking it, I scrape a large X about eye level. When I’m done I want to throw the nasty little fragment away, but logic stays my hand.

Hours, days it seems I have been ranging here in this unrelentless hall. How ludicrous it is that I have found nothing! Not even one of my own marks! There was a very long hall coming from the stair. I remember it. Surely I must catch sight of that easily enough. I must find my way out of this descent, and climb again to the bloody sky above. Perhaps then I will awake from this dreaming and return again to the blessed sun.

On and on I walk. It is a good thing there is no hunger in this dreaming. For surely I am years now away from my quiet home. Even the thirst I felt above has faded to nothing. I stop to test my sense of how very long I have been here. Except for the crazy cannibal, a giant bug, and the flies outside, I have seen nothing alive. Not even one rat in this entire sewer! And what is a nasty dream without rats I say?

I search the corner ahead of me for some sign that I have been here before, but again there is nothing. I can not comprehend that this place is THIS big!! In an attempt at stubbornness I do an about face and march back to the last intersection. Rounding the corner I look to the place I had only moments before scraped my mark. I found myself staring at an unmarred wall. Spinning around, my eyes rake the other walls to no avail, I search for it. No marks, nothing. Lost, I was truly lost.

The very stone seamed against me! I break out in a cold sweet as the hallway narrows and the ceiling pulls down upon me. Rising panic chokes my ragged breath. My mind quiets to a hurricane’s eye. Then the silence is broken by a chattering...a clicking, a scraping, scuffling, scrabbling sound so far on the edge of hearing that it itches at the back of my neck. Now I feel True terror. The blinding , freezing fear of doom. The sound gets louder, and louder. Coming to me through the air as waves, through the ground as a groaning, and through the walls as a singing thrum.

Suddenly the butcher man rounds the corner I sit against. Catching sight of me, he grins a bloody grin. Gleefully, he raises his cleaver to hack me down. I finally find the will to move, making a break for the only passage left me. I feel the cleaver rip through my suit coat as I skirt around the cannibal. The chattering noise raises in pitch and I feel the butcher’s human breath upon my back. I'm not a speedy man, but the abominations behind me lend me strength. I tear down the endless hall, not realizing there are no turns barring my flight. Then I slip in fresh blood and fall into memory, as I fall on to the cold wet earth.

-Tied to a stake as a cruel joke, I struggle with the bindings while a sweet scent fills my nose. I feel them crawling on my shoes, into my pants, over my skin. Those six legged little scavengers; swarming ants. I scream through the gag and fight the stake. Up my legs, into my underpants, they come. I hear them clawing fabric, clicking over the buttons of my shirt, moving purposefully about , covering my body in an itching blanket. I hear them as they cover me; my face, my hair, they speak of things unseen, unbidden.-

"No! The sound. Stop the sound!" I scream.

My eyes fly open and I look up from the dank earth to see the stairs, rising in deliverance before me. Getting to my feet I feel a tap upon my shoulder. Stupidly, I turn around, and greet the presence behind me. Bone white with blind eyes and blade like mandibles in constant motion. A termite ant the height of the passage. And grinning behind it my happy butcher.

It chatters at me and feels my face with its cadaver like feelers. I am struck dumb by this morbid scene. The thing of nightmare memories turns to the cannibal and begins to sing of my death. It moves over then, to let the butcher pass. And as it does, I notice that it drags refuse out of the nest. Refuse made of bone, hair and flesh.

Butcher man lifts his blade, coming at me with the grinning face of the reaper. I turn to flee but I know with a certainty that he will catch me this time. My feet are as heavy as stone with the knowledge that the carnage above was a product of the corruption below. My mind numb as I reflect on the shredded look of the corpses above. The way the rubble fans out from the entrance to this underworld. Still, I run for the stair. Willing myself up and away. But it is too late.

I feel a fire erupt between my shoulder blades, and a great weight drags me down. I roll as I fall, confronting my attacker. This pain is real. This blood wetting my shirt is real. This man intent upon my flesh is totally real! How could this be? I put out my hand out to ward off the next blow. The butcher rewards me with a sickening thwack and a bloody stump. I looked at my hand being picked apart by chattering jaws and I hear a scream...