Ronaldo began as he always did. As a hand.
One would look upon him and assume he pulled himself together from the primordial ooze splashing about his pupil, but no. It was as a hand that Ronaldo best caught the tendrils of a dream, allowing his form to pool into existence. It was when he was just a hand that he could really take in the sights around him. Hands see things that eyes can’t.
Before Ronaldo could fully absorb the dream space before him, he felt the icy air creeping upon him. Wind howling on the glass. Odd. Ronaldo had never been glass before, but I guess there was a first time for everything. He sensed a darkness that had nothing to do with the void stretched out before him and even as his eyeball finished materializing, the darkness never let him out of its sight.
The darkness crept inside of his body, coating his rib cage with the faint stirrings of despair. Ronaldo had a good sense about others’ dreams so he knew there was something here he had to observe. Something he had to witness. Only… he was unsure he would be able to see beyond the shadows that stitched his skull shut, closing in on him.
Ronaldo blinked, soaking in the sounds of sadness tapping at the window and stared into the void. He mused, as he did every time he took corporeal form, that it was odd to stare back into yourself when you’re nothing like what you’ve been before. Ronaldo couldn’t remember when he first slinked into a dream to become something more than the eternal endless empty but he knew he couldn’t go back into the indefinite unknown forever.
So he untethered himself from what he once was to become what he was tonight. Ronaldo looked down and felt uneasy watching the scraggly shadows of his body swirl onto themselves like waves crashing onto shore, waiting to spill back into the void from whence he came.
Ronaldo understood why he built himself a window now.
Whatever would have been the point of eating this man’s brain if not to experience something? Anything! A moment of being before slipping back into nothing. There would have been no point if he squandered the dream immediately upon entering it by fleeing.
A chill creeped through the glass as Ronaldo stared, eventually inviting the shadows to rejoice and seep further into the core of the unnervingly bright eye as it blinked out of existence.
He left content he saw what he came to see.
—
The man would wake and recall nothing of the night before. But somehow, as he went about his day, he felt less alone than usual even though he hadn’t left the house in weeks. He felt like someone could see how hard he was trying, even if it was merely trying to wash some dishes. It felt silly to toast a non-accomplishment like slipping a sponge around a mug, but he simply wasn’t able to wash that mug yesterday so it held a certain significance for him all the same.
(e)Reader 