Self Found

Corinne let her eyelids rise slowly, and as her eyes focused, she stared out into… nothing. No beaches. No taverns. No manors. Nothing. A white abyss permeated every inch of her vision, and a fear of solitude began to creep into the pit of her stomach. Even so, she knew she wasn't alone. She could feel his presence lurking even in her bones.


She did not have to look at him to see him. His very essence was outlined by the void, his eyes casting an intense glare that tugged the hairs on the back of her neck.

"What is this?" she asked him, not wanting to reveal her anxiety. “Where am I?”

He stood blinking at her for a minute before answering, “Where do you want to be?”


“Don’t,” she spat back through clenched teeth. “I’m done with your riddles. I’m done with you. I won’t play this game – ” She was abruptly cut off when Morpheus grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet.

Despite his angry grip on her arm, his fingertips digging painfully into her skin, he spoke to her softly. “This is no game.”

“Then what is it?” Her voice full of contempt, refusing to react to the discomfort in he was causing her.


“You still don’t get it.” He shook his head at her incredulously. “What do you want it to be?”

“I don’t want it to be – I don’t want it to be anything!”

“Well, look around you.”

She looked around, once again taken aback by the nothing that encompassed them. “I – I don’t understand.”


“You forget just where you are, Corinne. This is your mind. Your thoughts. Your dreams.” He released her arm and stepped back. “I have only led you to them.”

“You’ve corrupted them.” Corinne frowned in confusion.

“I’ve enhanced them.”

“You’ve trapped me in something unnatural.”

“I’ve exposed you to something extraordinary.”


She paused. “I won’t do this with you. You’ve toyed with me for long enough.”

He looked away from her, seeming to consider his next words. “Corinne, if you were given the opportunity to bring about any action, to encounter any given thing, to see anything happen… what would it be?”

Corinne didn’t answer but her mind went racing, imagining different scenarios in which Morpheus lay dying, writhing in agony, punished for this insanity that he had thrown her into.



She lowered her eyes, embarrassed at the anger and brutality that was clouding her thoughts. But to her own shock, Morpheus was crumpling before her, his body trembling at her feet. His cries, strangled with blood, met her ears with stark clarity, as though his death sounds were made only for her.


“Now do you understand?”

Corinne screamed involuntarily and jumped back when Morpheus’ voice broke her from the anguish that played out before her. Morpheus was standing, unharmed at her behind her, his broken, bloodied counterpart fading into the oblivion. “What is this?!” she cried, her words mangled through her hyperventilation.


“That has been the wrong question all this time. What makes you think that it will be right on this occasion?” he answered smoothly. Reaching out, he gripped her shoulders. “Breathe. Think!”

She forced her lungs to stop their desperate heaving and her heart to slow its pumping of fear and adrenaline through her veins. Hysteria slowly abating, she knew what to ask. “What are you?” she whispered.

He smiled, and the smile became a laugh, and the laugh became hardened into a growl. Stiff arms were pulling her toward him, and from within his chest, she felt an unnatural heat waft from his form. “I am the dreamweaver,” he told her. “The keeper. The soul forsaken. The incarnate of lost reverie.”



“And what the fuck,” she breathed, “does that mean?”

“It means that you have been chosen. I knew when I first saw you, but I had to be sure. Again and again, however, you have proven to me that it is you who can bring about the end. For with every end, there is a beginning.” His fingers burned into her skin.

“Riddles, Morpheus.”

“You are my successor. You are my end. I am your beginning.”



He released her and made a grandiose motion toward the abyss. “This is your kingdom, to do with what you may.”

Corinne let herself go limp. Her brain was shifting with alarming speed but coming up with nothing of use. She was a successor to a vast emptiness? Her thoughts manifested at her feet? Morpheus, whom had plagued her for what seemed like ages, was something of myth and imagination? She was missing the central puzzle piece to make it all fit, but she didn’t want it. What she wanted was a way out.

“You can have a way out,” Morpheus startled her out of her trance. Even her thoughts could not provide her sanctuary. “You can have anything that you want. Anything that you will. You must simply free me and take my place. Give me the key.”

All this time she had been searching for a physical key. A charm. A lock. But now she realized. “Assent.”



“Assent,” he repeated. “This world can be everything that you want it to be. That dream it to be. You no longer have to return to that untraveled, unloved, unnecessary life of humanity. Give it to me,” he pushed. “Stay here and live out your truest, greatest fantasies. What you’ve always wanted.”

“And if I don’t?”

His eyes darkened. “Then we will remain here until you do. And I will enact your truest, greatest nightmares. Your torment of me, will be torment of yourself.”

She frowned. “My torment? My torment of you?”

“There is only one way out of this for you, Corinne,” Morpheus said, disregarding her. “And only one way out for me. I have been the man, here with you this whole time. Did I not follow you to every whim your enacted, granting your every wish. Did I not restore you, your sense of life? And yet, you hesitate to free me, when this is all you’ve ever wanted.”



Corinne stood quietly for a long moment, letting the knowledge of everything that had befallen her come down with heavily on her shoulders. She had begun this journey living through the lives of others. Faceless names on her computer screen. She had been looking for life, looking for fantasy when she found Morpheus, and had she not seen the strength of love? Felt the pull of the supernatural? Danced in musicless sands? Lived more lives than she could have ever dreamed?

Dreamed. She had wished to lose her monotony of her humanity, and managed to lose it all. She was trapped here.

She looked up at Morpheus, her vision clouding with eminent tears. “No.”

His frame buckled, but he recovered quickly. “You will free me.” Heat swirled under his words.



She shook her head. “I will free myself.” The moment that her mind released the impulse, the knife materialized in her hand.

“Don’t!” He leaped at her, but it was too late. With swift motions, she had opened the arteries in her wrists, and as if at her command, her heart began beating faster, harder, forcing thick ropes of blood from her body in massive spurts.



He seized her, stepping into the pool of blood that was forming at her feet. “You’ve broken the cycle!” he moaned. “You’ve trapped me! You would die to destroy me?!”



As her vision tunneled, a deep darkness overcoming her, she smiled. “Morpheus. It’s just a dream.”