I'm gonna have to ask you to bear with me. When I say this is the most bizarre thing that could've happened to me, you'll see where I'm telling the truth. To start, you need to understand that I was always one with a giant imagination.

I was always imagining myself in distant worlds, whether in class, on the playgrounds, or even in the store. "Always running in my own little fields" as they used to tell me. That was the best way they knew how to explain it anyways. they never quite got it, obviously, especially since, even as I grew up, this tendency never really went away.

The funny thing was, I didn't really get it myself. It was just something I did, just part of me, and that was that. Because of this, though, making friends was more or less out of the question for me at the time. Real life friends, anyways.

Not that it really mattered. Understand that this isn't a sympathy cry. I'm not here to go "Boo-Hoo, I didn't have any friends growing up" or anything like that. It was weird, sure, but I had honestly just as much fun "Running in my own fields" with imaginary friends as I did any of the rare times other kids would actually include me in their games.

Now the adults, that was a little trickier to deal with. Again, they never could understand why I was the way I was. As an adult now, though I can't fully sympathize because of what I've seen as of late, I do sort of see where they were coming from. I guess I'm trying to say that if the shoe would've been on the other foot at the time, I, too, would've probably had the same mindset they did at the time -- "What the hell is going on with this kid?"

That aside, it kind of sucked a bit harder with all of the adults giving me a hard time about it. It wasn't as bad when I was really young, you know? Everybody had imaginary friends growing up. But when you get older, start going to school and interacting with others, you're supposed to lose the habit, right; make actual friends?

Not me.

No, I'd stay in my own fields through all of Elementary and through most of middle school. About the second half of my 7th grade year was when we got me in with an occupational therapist. That was when I would be diagnosed as "high-functioning Autistic". My therapist, Mrs. Helen, sweet a lady as she was, made a big show about explaining how my brain "Just worked a bit differently from others" and that it'd just be "Something to work around" and that everything was just fine with me. Even back then, I remember listening to that and thinking "Yeah, thanks, glad to see they'll PAY you to tell them the same shit I'd BEEN telling them for free."

I say that, but I guess the joke's still on them anyways. They never actually listened to her, either. Either that or they just never actually got it. In their minds, I guess my parents, particularly my dad, expected therapy to be some sort of cure-all. That somehow Mrs. Helen would snap her fingers, say some magic words or perform some gigantic operation that'd make everything all better, I'd be the normal son they apparently wanting me to be. Yet, there I was, then and for the years to come, still always "Running in my own fields."

Like I said, this made things a bit trickier when it came to trying to cope with alienation from life. Tricky, but not impossible. I learned soon how to sort of, I don't know, suppress it, I guess you can say. I learned how to fake normality, basically. Enough, at least, to where my parents wouldn't give me funny or worried looks and to where, at least later on in high school, I made one or two actual friends. Of course, like I said, it was all fake, a front. I never really stopped daydreaming, just found ways of keeping it hidden.

I spent long hours still either locked away in my room or in my back yard, either battling evil space warlords to save the smoking hot robo-princess or ruling the seventh dimension with an iron fist. And before you ask, yes, I was into sci-fi movies, comics and video games at the time, and yes, my parents wanted to blame them for "Influencing my behavior" or some stupid shit, which led them to confiscating them all. So in case you're wondering why you don't hear about me reading a book, watching TV, or playing video games as an outlet, well there you go.

I'm sorry... Look, I loved my parents, okay? I love them, and I know they loved me. I wasn't abused, or at least, I never saw it that way. They weren't necessarily mean or anything, they just... Well, they just didn't get it, I guess.

That's enough of that. I know I just kind of railed there, but I feel like it IS essential to what happened, what I've seen and why I'm writing this now. So, like I said, by high school, I was hanging out with other kids, having normal friends.

I remember it was at lunch one afternoon. Quadir and I were chowing down on cafeteria cheeseburgers that tasted a bit better than what we'd imagine prison food tasting like. The two of us would usually sit together and talk about ideas for D&D campaigns. We were that set of friends, the only two in our school that actually played (or at least took it seriously). We became friends because of it when he was going around asking if anyone would be interested in starting a little after school club for it.

I remember asking him what the hell D&D even was. When he explained to me that it was a game where I'd basically get to control my own fantasy adventure; whether fighting orcs, Drow, werewolves, whatever and saving a sacred treasure, I was instantly hooked. From there, me and him started the "Willow Wood high D&D Guild". Granted, nobody else actually joined, but that was just fine for him and more than fine with me.

After a few campaigns played together, embarking on numerous quests; both standard fare as well as a few he and I both created together, we more or less became the best of friends. The first one of it's kind as far as I was ever concerned. It was one night I was over at his house, I remember, that I decided to tell him about me, about how I'd imagine myself all the time in a distant world. He was confused at first.

"You mean like in dreams and stuff?" he asked.

"No, like, in real life, sorta." He furrowed his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side. "Think of it more as "Daydreaming", I guess. Like, I'm still awake and all, but I can see myself in different places, like the ones from the game."

"Huh. that actually sounds kind of cool."

"Yeah... But Ma and Pop aren't exactly cool with it."

"How come?" I opened my mouth to speak, then froze. Honestly, at that time, I really wouldn't have known why they were so against it. I shrugged.

"Well that's kinda lame." he said.

"Yeah." I said, sighing. For a moment, he just sat at the table, pondering. I noticed the way he'd look at me and back around the room. "What, what is it?"

"What kind of places do you visit?"

"Huh?"

"In your dreamland or whatever, what kinds of stuff do you see?"

"Oh uh... You know... weird shit." He gave me an annoyed look.

"Very helpful." I sighed.

"Well, okay, think like..." I had to pause for a moment. "Think if like, the worlds in D&D were real, but with even weirder creatures." He leaned in closer, eyes bugging out. "I can't really explain it any better than that, I'm afraid."

He frowned, scrunching his lips while rubbing his chin. "Weird, I know..." I said, waiting for him to berate me like the other kids. Instead, he raised his eyebrow, confused before bugging his eyes.

"You kidding?" he blurted, "Dude, you're the perfect partner for this. You realize this means we can make any campaign we want, right?" I just blinked at him. "Bro, think about it, you see weird shit, right?" I nodded. "Don't you get it, YOU basically live out your own D&D campaigns!"

He began pacing around the room, occasionally stopping to look for something. "Dude, what're you doing?" I asked.

"You got any paper on you?" he asked.

"Uh... Yeah, maybe in my backpack, why?"

"Get it, I got an idea." I raised my eyebrows at him. "Just do it, man. Trust me, this'll be awesome."

Without another word, I did what he wanted. I saw him dig through his junk drawer and pull out a couple boxes of colored pencils. I held up my notebook.

"Got the paper? Good, come over here." I went over and he thrust the colored pencils into my chest. "Here's what we're gonna do. Think of every adventure you've been on in your daydreams. When you do, draw whatever you see. We can use these as the setting for some of our campaigns."

"O-Okay." I won't lie, I was actually excited about the idea, even if I didn't entirely get it at first. I guess, though, that was something else that made Q and I work so well together as friends. We were both visionaries, I could envision worlds, while he could bring them together and further expand upon them.

I took the pencils and began to draw. Like I told Q at the time, I couldn't exactly explain what the world I drew looked like. I guess I could best describe it as something you might imagine seeing when you hear about someone tripping on acid. It was a whole spectrum of colors, seemingly everywhere, but done so in a way that somewhat comes together to form a landscape.

"This one of the worlds?" he asked. I nodded while starting to draw these weird, misshapen characters I'd see in this particular "World". "Trippy. So what's it called?"

"Vandronza." I replied without looking up from the paper.

"Cool." He pointed to one of the creatures I'd drawn. "And who're they? 'Vandronzans', 'Vandronzanites'?"

I chuckled. "Close, they're actually called 'Vandroks'. At least, those guys are." I pointed to one of the other characters I drew. "These are the Araks. They're the weaker of the two species, usually getting picked off from the Vandroks."

"Kind of like a turf war sort of thing."

"Ehh, more like a terrorism. The Vandroks are barbarians. In fact, the planet used to be called Araka, until..."

"Until the Vandroks rolled up and said "We own this now!"

"Basically. Every time I go there, I try to help a little bit at a time to beat back the Vandroks. They're some tough little bastards, though."

"What's the resistance like?" I cocked my eyebrow at him for a moment. "You know, the resistance. Arak freedom fighters who try and fight back."

"Oh, that, well... there kind of aren't any. Not anymore." I slid my thumb across my neck and he silently said, "Oh".

"Well then, that'll be our first running campaign then. 'Reclamation of Araka'!" I grinned. Finally, I was not only able to actually talk about this with someone who not only didn't think I was a raving lunatic, not only wanted to listen to me ramble about that shit, but actually wanted to participate, to make it real.

For the next hour, we went back and forth about the world of "Vandronza". We went over battle strategies, which areas of the planet were best to set up fortresses, which of the Vandrok leaders and command posts we'd have to target first, and how to establish safe zones for the innocent Arak refugees. It was easily the most fun I'd ever had in my life up to that point.

Unfortunately, we didn't bother checking the time, which earned us a bit of an ass chewing from Q's old man. It was lights out then, but that wasn't the end of the journey through Vandronza that night. Not for me, at least.

I remember having a hard time being able to fall asleep that night. I wasn't sure why. The room was quiet and it wasn't like we'd drank a whole bunch of caffeine or anything -- only two cans of Monster. Regardless, I just couldn't make my eyes close and sleep. I will say that that was something that'd happened to me before on occasion; me suffering a bout of spontaneous insomnia. It was few and far between, and when it did happen, well, I'd take a run on my own fields until my mind could eventually lull itself to sleep. And that's what I decided to do that night, too.

Except that night, I found out, would be very different. That night, I wouldn't get any sleep at all. That night, I'd see something that kicked off this chain of events that push me to writing this now.

So, there I was, standing on one of the highest of the multicolored hills of Vandronza. Looking around, I could see a group of about three or four Vandrocks prowling around. They moved all wonky like how they always had before, except this time, I noticed they seemed to be running hastily from something.

I looked around, but couldn't see anything or anyone. I was confused. What are they running fro--"

My thoughts were cut short when a low rumble shook through the terrain. The quakes slowly built in ferocity and tempo, until the entire planet shook beneath me. I looked everywhere, but couldn't see who or what could be causing it. I tried to move, only to be shaken down to my face on the multicolored ground. I struggled to pick myself up, only to be nearly blinded by this bright ball of light. It was like I was looking directly into the sun, if the sun was somehow able to burn even brighter than what we're familiar with, if that makes any sense.

The light itself seemed to give off this... this... I don't know, this aura of pure, white-hot rage. I couldn't really explain it, but this light was alive somehow, and for whatever reason, it was enraged at something. It hovered overhead, beating down on me with its blazing light that I could feel starting to burn my skin. Despite it being so bright, I couldn't look away from it.

It was hypnotic in a way. Even when I tried to force myself to look away, I just couldn't! Eventually, the aura began to dissipate, revealing this floating, writhing mass. When the light faded away a little more, I made out that this mass was a disgusting combination of eyeballs, squirming and twitching furiously from overhead. Each one was a different color, some of them weren't even people eyes, either. Some were of various animals, reptiles, and then some of them, I didn't even know how to describe. From the mass, I saw what looked like a set of tentacles, made purely of the burning light, shoot out and snatch up one of the fleeing Vandrocks.

I could hear the poor thing squeal in terror, sounding even more tortured than a pig being led to slaughter, as it was hoisted up to meet the thing eye-level. The Vandrock's squeals escalated in pitch, causing me to cover my ears. I then heard what I can only guess was supposed to be the eye-ball thing's roar of anger that shook through the ground around me, reverberating through my body like it was Jell-O. In another instant, the Vandrock's squeals reached a deafening pitch as he suddenly burst into a blaze of bright scarlet flames.

In two seconds, the Vandrock was gone, vaporized. Through all of this, I could only watch, rooted to the spot on the multicolored hill I was on. I saw one of the thing's million eyes then fix gaze on me from below. Even if I wasn't seemingly frozen by this thing, I wouldn't have had any time to run before the thing had me snatched up like it had with the Vandrock. Searing pain washed over my body as soon as it wrapped its tentacle around my waist.

Despite this, though, for some reason, I was unable to actually scream. I could open my mouth, but I couldn't make any kind of sound. I was brought up to meet the thing's gaze. Every eyeball was looking around madly, each one bloodshot and blazing. I tried once again to turn away, but couldn't. The thing let out a rumbling bellow like it did before, but then I heard what sounded like some sort of words, spoken in another language.

"Tuum est prope!"

I almost didn't even pick up on it, the words. At the same time, though, my mind somehow started to loop these words over and over again. The last thing I saw was this blinding flash of light before shooting bolt upright in the sleeping bag I was in. I was panting furiously, profusely sweating as I swung my head around to get a bearing on where I was and what was going on.

The room was lit by the morning rays of sun from Quadir's window. Everything was still. Calm. Quiet.

I looked at my hands, feeling myself all over. I was still there, in one piece. I began to breathe normally again and looked over to Q's bed. He wasn't there.

Slowly, I worked my way out of the sleeping bag and made for the door of the bedroom. With each step I took, I could hear the thing's words echo in the back of my head repeatedly. I made my way out of the bedroom and out into the kitchen. There, Quadir sat at the table, eating a plate of French toast sticks. "Hey, about time you got up." he said, dipping one of the sticks in a puddle of syrup. "You're just in time for breakfast. Ma made french toast sticks. There's still some left if you want."

"Um... N-No thanks, I'm not really hungry."

"You sure?" his mom asked from behind me. She held a plate of French toast sticks and sunny side up eggs.

"They're homemade, dude." Q said coaxingly.

"N-No thanks, really I..."

"You okay, sweetheart, you look pale." She set the plate of food down and held her hand to my forehead. "You feel warm, here, take some of this." She reached up into the medicine cabinet and brought down a bottle of cough medicine. I did and sat at the table in front of Q.

"Can I get you anything, Danny?" she asked.

"Um... Maybe a glass of orange juice, please?"

"You got it." She poured the glass and brought it over to the table to me.

"So, I've been thinking, about the campaign." I stopped mid-gulp. He brought out the notebook we'd used the previous night and opened it up, pointing to the different areas we'd marked. "I was wondering, since you said the Vandrock stronghold is mostly buried here, in the heart of the high peaks here..."

"It's gone." Q stopped and looked up at me, raising his eyebrow.

"Huh?"

"Vandronza... It... It's gone." I could feel my heart hammer in my chest.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it's all gone. There's nothing left of it anymore."

"How?" My mouth fell open, but I couldn't offer any response. It was then, also, that my stomach began turning over. "You mean we're too late? What about the surviving Araks?"

"D-Dude... There... There aren't any. They're all gone. Everything is."

"So the Vandrocks have already won?"

"No, dude," I groaned, clutching my now aching stomach. "Everything's gone, there's nothing left."

No sooner than I'd said that, I found myself bolting up from my chair, booking it to the bathroom. There, I puked for almost a full minute. The whole time, too, I heard the words repeating in my head.

"Tuum est prope!"

I heard a knock at the bathroom door, followed by Q's mom saying "You okay in there, sweetie?"

"Y-Yeeeah" I groaned, not sure if I had anything in me left to cough up.

"Okay, well, I've called your folks, okay? They're on their way to pick you up."

"O-Okay..." With that, she walked away and I stayed hunched over the commode. For the next ten or fifteen minutes until my folks came for me, I stared into the toilet. Somehow, I could see the toilet sort of begin to shift to resemble the mass of eyeballs. Faintly, I could feel the scorching pain that I did when it grabbed me again. And just like the dream, no matter how hard I was trying to force myself to look away, I couldn't break away from it. I was trapped by it.

What is this thing?!

My folks took me to the doctor's office after that. It took them only about twenty minutes for them to tell my folks that, outside of perhaps some kind of stress related reaction, I was perfectly fine. When we got back home, I ran straight for my room and blocked off my door before throwing myself on my bed. I felt absolutely exhausted, but I knew sleep was out of the question.

Funny enough, though, sleep or no sleep, I would still dream.

"Run in my own field".

This time, It was in another of my made-up worlds. Now, I won't go into too much detail here about this one or any of the other worlds I see in my daydreams -- trust me, if I did, I'd have enough lore to rival George Lucas. But in this one, I stood on a sort of slick, glassy terrain that coated the entirety of the landscape. This world is where I'd usually be trying to save the ice princess from a coup staged by a few of the other natives. As you've probably guessed, most of these worlds stories have something to do with an uprising of some sort. Natives rising up to overthrow a current monarchy.

I guess you could call that "Projecting", couldn't you? I myself feel suppressed, never allowed to express who I was, always wishing I could just be me and be accepted for that, so I ended up creating these worlds around that. Well, that's what I would've thought at the time, anyway.

So anyway, I was standing there, watching two of the natives duking it out in a brutal struggle. Blow after blow, these two crystalline looking warriors pummeled the absolute shit out of each other. Neither one was showing any kind of mercy to the other. Eventually, one of the was knocked to the ground, with the opponent mounting and proceeding to jackhammer his blocky fist into the other's face. I could see cracks starting to form across the fallen one's head.

He wasn't gonna last much longer so I started towards them to try and break them up, when I was forced to stop. From overhead, I watched the sky crack open and from it descended the bright ball of light from the night before. I heard its roar, shaking the ground around it.

The two glacial warriors looked up and, though they didn't have any faces, I could tell they were looking upon this thing in fear like I was. Like before, the thing's aura of light faded away to reveal the million eyed mass, twitching and vibrating at a supersonic speed. All around me, I watched the terrain split apart and almost evaporate.

Even quicker than it had last time, the thing lashed its burning tentacles out and snatched both of the planet natives, instantly vaporizing them. That's when it fixed all of it's eyes on me once again. I wanted so desperately to run, but I just couldn't. I was frozen, forced to stand there as its tentacle lashed itself around me and hoisted me into the air. When I was at eye level, the thing roared at me again.

"Finis omnium restet"

I looked directly into its eyes. All of them. Somehow, at least the ones that were fixed on me, I could look into all at once. Inside them, I could see every world I'd ever remembered visiting in my daydreams. The world with the cyborg princess, the world with the volcano lizard barbarians, And the world with the gorilla people, all of them, in one of each of its eyes.

I could see them as the thing roared again, saying "Quisque finibus. Id enim est prophetia."

This time, I somehow found myself able to speak. "What... What are you?!" I cried.

"I am Creation, the beginning." it bellowed in response. "Every world that exists began with me, from the dawn of time itself. Now, however, the dusk comes to replace the dawn, and each world must return to the eternal dark."

As soon as he'd said that, I watched each one of those worlds meet a grisly fate at this thing's hands. Each one of them was wiped almost abruptly from existence. I was horrified, but not near as much as when I saw that one of them wasn't one of my worlds at all. It was Earth!

It was in the bottom eye facing me. I could see it and everyone in it. I watched this thing descend from the stars as a sort of comet or shooting star before, like all other worlds before, decimating the earth into oblivion.

"The end of all things nears!" it roared before I saw a flash of white again. That's when I was brought back to reality for the third time. I was still in my bed, buried underneath my blankets, sweating while trying not to tear my throat by screaming.

I went upright in my bed. Looking around, I caught sight of my alarm clock, seeing that it was almost 4 in the morning. Everything around me was dark and still. How long was I out?

When I thought about this, though, I realized that this wasn't a night terror. I'd never went to sleep. So then, how the hell did I lose all this time?

Not only this, but I could feel something burning all over my body, as if I’d just been put under a tanning bed for too long. I went to touch my hands to my skin and everything exploded in searing pain. Think about the worst sunburn you’ve ever gotten while at the beach -- and then multiply that by 10,000 -- that’s about what that felt like. I got up and looked in the mirror, seeing that my entire body was now almost cherry red; in fact, I could’ve sworn I could actually see my skin glowing!

What the hell IS this thing, This "Creator"? This question stewed in my restless mind for the remainder of the night until morning. When morning DID come, I was less than motivated to try getting out of bed. Unfortunately, motivated or not, I'd have to to go to church that morning. This, as you can imagine, didn't exactly work out well for me because I couldn't stay awake, or rather, conscious, enough to actually pay attention to a damn thing the pastor said.

I guess, though, the silver lining to this was that I actually didn't daydream (plus the blistering pain was gone). No, I just sat there, in the pew, dazed and drowsy as hell. The downside to this, obviously, was that my folks weren't too pleased with this. The whole way home from church was spent with Mom lecturing me on "Being respectful and attentive in the Lord's home". Annoying as this was, I could've cared less whether she or the Lord thought I was "Being disrespectful" or whatever. I mean, as far as I knew, nothing mattered anymore.

Of course, I still wanted to tell myself that this wasn't the case, that what I was seeing was just the result of my imagination getting a bit too hyper, but for some reason, something deep down told me that this just wasn't the case. That what I'd seen the past two nights was something real. Not only that, but that those worlds, their people and their stories, may not have entirely been made up by me after all.

At school that following day, I ended up all but avoiding people, Including Quadir. This wasn't too big a problem, until lunch when he insisted on wanting to discuss another D&D campaign with me. I really wasn't in the mood, and tried to, as subtly as possible, let him on to this. Unfortunately, he was none too perceptive.

"So I was thinking," he said, "What if we could try and protect the other worlds?" I frowned.

"Huh?"

"From whatever destroyed Vandronza, we gotta make sure it doesn't happen to--"

"Dude, I hate to do this, but can we... can we just please not today?" He raised his eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean can we not talk about D&D right now? Please? I... I just..." I started to shake a bit. Admittedly, I felt a little like a jerk for what I was doing. I knew how much our time playing the game together meant to him, and it wasn't like he saw what I had. That said, though, I stuck to my guns on wanting to take a rest from it for a while.

"Um... I mean, y-yeah, we could, I guess." He put away his notebooks and pencils. Another minute or two passed in silence before he asked "Hey man, be straight with me, is everything okay?" I didn't respond. Not because I was trying to be rude, but because I'd zoned out, the mention of Vandronza spurring once again the nightmare from two nights before. I heard his voice, sure, but I didn't really pick up on it, if you get my meaning.

Instead I could hear the thing's tremulous roars, echoing all around me. I'd ran off into my fields again, and this time, I was scared to. I guess then I was lucky that it didn't last long at all, being snapped back to attention by Q. "Dude, Dan, you there?"

"Huh?"

"Bro, you're starting to worry me a little here."

"What are you talking about?"

"Ever since that little scene at my house the other day, you've been on edge for some reason. Hell, you don't even wanna talk D&D with me. Did something happen? Did I do something wrong?"

"No, dude, it's... It's nothing you did. Just... I don't know, I just don't really feel like doing D&D right now, okay? I'm sorry, I just.." His eyes lowered, nodding his head. Without another word, Quadir picked up his backpack and lunch tray and walked off, leaving me at the table alone. Great, my first and only real friend, and I just HAD to go and run him off.

I pretty much lost what little appetite I might've had left after that. For about the last five or so minutes I had until it was time for lunch to be over, I sat there, brooding. What the hell was I gonna do? What was I supposed to do, if anything? Hell, could anything actually be done about this?

The rest of the week was essentially a drag like this. I'd go entire days without saying a word to Q or anybody, at school or at home. That itself was worrying, sure -- more to my parents and the teachers than me -- but what had me more concerned was the fact that, at no point during that week long period, did I ever daydream. I never once zoned out, imagined, or so much as saw, awake or asleep (Yes, I was actually sleeping during this time) any of the other worlds. I never saw any of the extraordinary creatures or the fantastic landscapes.

I saw Earth. I saw human beings and regular animals and plants. Nothing more, nothing less.

The beginning of the following week saw my folks scheduling me an early visit with Mrs. Helen, claiming that my despondency was worrying them. When she asked me what was going on, if there'd been something that had happened at home or at school, I told her no. She asked me then if I would still "Run in my fields", to which I again answered no. When she asked me as to why, now that's where I essentially clammed up. I didn't know what to tell her.

Could I have told her about what I was seeing? Sure, but what good would it do? At best, you know, she'd tell me I was "Growing out of my imaginative phase" or some hokey B.S. like that. At worst, she'd either prescribe some sort of strong medication that'd probably end up putting me in a worse state of mind than it already was or even try to have me admitted to the 7th floor. In either instance, neither is the problem solved, nor am I even taken seriously.

Ironically, I guess, I decided to use the former possibility as an excuse of my own. I told her that I was just outgrowing my daydreaming tendencies. It wasn't hard for me to do, really -- like I said before, pretty well conditioned myself to fake normalcy even when I was still daydreaming -- but I won't lie and say it didn't feel weird. Perhaps, In one way then, maybe I wasn't actually faking after all. Maybe I really was growing out of it.

She seemed to accept this, albeit skeptically. She of course asked why there was such a sudden change of heart. To this, I simply shrugged. Again, what other explanation was there that sounded any more reasonable? Real quick, let me ask you, what would you have said if it was you? Would you have actually told them a story about some interdimensional behemoth no one's ever seen or heard of before that's only ever appeared in your dreams, a story you have absolutely no proof, outside of a gut feeling, is real? Not likely, right?

No, I simply stuck to my guns and told her that I'd just lost interest in my journeys to the worlds beyond. She went on to ask me if I'd made any friends at school and if maybe they'd influenced my sudden disinterest. I told her about Q and about how he actually encouraged it, but that I just wasn't into it much anymore. As I said all of this, I couldn't shake the growing sort of anxiety that mounted from the pit of my stomach. The feeling that everything I was saying was horseshit.

I get it, It's confusing. I cannot stress that enough. But despite what I've said, it wasn't because I'd quote-unquote "lost interest" in them. I would've loved to visit them again, to "Run in my own fields" again. But I can't -- there were no fields anymore. Not only that, but the fields weren't even mine, ever.

"May I ask you then what is bothering you, Daniel?" she asked. I raised my eyebrow. "You look upset about something, you have this entire time. Has something happened, something other than losing interest in your daydreams?"

I shook my head. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I just... I just don't feel like going on imaginary adventures anymore. Seriously, I'm fine."

"Okay. Well what about your friend, Quadir?"

"What about him?"

"You said he encouraged you to have these daydreams, yes?"

"Yeah, why?"

"What does he think about you not wanting to play D&D with him anymore?" I shrugged my shoulders. Truthfully, I didn't really know. He didn't give me much of a response and, again, I hadn't exactly made much of an effort to see how he was even doing.

"I haven't talked to him."

"Why not?"

"I don't know, okay? I just haven't. Can we please stop now?" For a moment, she just looked shocked at me before nodding her head at me. She started to put away her papers.

"We can stop now for the day, if you'd like." she said. "Just please remember, if you ever need to talk, about anything, I'm here, and I promise, I'll always listen, okay?" I nodded my head before getting up to leave.

That was the last time the subject was ever brought up about me daydreaming. My folks stopped taking me to visit Mrs. Helen after that. I guess they felt the "problem" was solved. Can't really say they were wrong, can I? Well, their problem was. Mine, however, was one that'd carry on.

I may not have ever seen or visited the worlds again after that night, but I never forgot about them. I never told anyone else about why it really was that I stopped seeing them, either, which included Quadir. We still hung out and even played a few occasional D&D campaigns for a time after that, but it wasn't the same as it was before. I wasn't nearly as invested as I was before. The best way I can really describe the feeling was that we were sort of growing apart, if only very slowly.

I no longer held to my imaginative tendencies, while he still did. I saw the destruction of my fantasies while he hadn't seen the ends of his. We were worlds apart, in a way. He still had the gift of imagination while I bore the curse of insight. I knew that they were all real, and that they were all gone now. Naturally, the wedge between us would widen until eventually, we just quietly parted ways, neither of us really talking to the other. So, like every year before this one, the remainder of that year, as well as every year up to the present, I remained alone; friendless and without the ability to run in my own fields, all while keeping the being's words looping constantly in the back of my head.

"Each world must return to the eternal dark."

You're wondering now, aren't you; why the hell am I telling YOU all of this? Fair enough. Well, the answer's simple.

Because I never forgot the things I saw in that last nightmare, the ways I saw each world end inside of each of the things eyes, I became paranoid. It was when I was graduating from Willow Wood High that I was gifted a telescope from my now late grandfather as a graduation gift. I remember the note that came with it read "I'm proud of you. Always remember to look and shoot for the stars. Love Grandad."

Yeah, Go from "Running in my own fields" to "Looking to the stars"... Kind of sounds like a bad joke, doesn't it?

Well, bad joke or not, I did look to the stars. At first it was every night, though again, it was out of panic, not out of fascination. The habit tapered off a bit through the years, doing it only once on a blue moon (pun intended, I guess). I'd gone almost a year and a half without doing it until just last night. I don't know why, but just like how I just knew what I'd seen all that time ago was real, I just knew that I needed to look through it again. That said, I wish to God I hadn't.

I saw it, a bright, golden, burning orb heading straight for Earth. I couldn't see anything past the aura, but I know it's the thing, the "Creator"! It's just like I'd seen. I don't know how long it'll be when it finally reaches Earth, but I know it will, and then that's it -- Game Over for everything. What’s worse is that, the closer the thing, “The Creator” gets, the more my skin burns. I think it marked me that day. Now, I’ll always feel it coming.

I looked to the stars only to see the end coming. And I'll meet oblivion alone, because I was always "Running in my own fields".