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Someone woke me up.

I’m not talking about the gentle shake to the shoulder your mom gives you on a school day, or even the rude awakening your college roommate launches at your face just because he feels like it. No, I’m referring to a wake up call that had the magnitude to rip the seams of this meager little life I had made for myself.

One of the biggest problems with humans as a species is our ability to sense that there is something more. As children, we fantasize about unicorns, fairies, dragons. Most grow out of it. Many get religion. Some hold on to their original whimsies and fight - albeit with homemade props and costumes, in my case - to keep their childlike ideals alive.

Somehow we know, see? Or knew, depending on what kind of adult we become. And with that knowing comes a sort of restless dissatisfaction with the human plight. Maybe that’s why many of us forget, because there is no contentment if we remember.

My own dissatisfaction with the mucus of reality that was thickening around me every day is what eventually propelled me into this state. The only way I can think to describe it is that I was choking; choking on something thick, slimy, crawling up from my lungs. I think I died then, for who knows how long; until someone woke me up. I was blinking in a sudden whiteout and confused by the unexplainable knowledge that up until that very second, I had been dreaming.

“Welcome.” A legion of murmurs that came from one grinning, toothy maw that may have been a human mouth, and that was it. I was alone. Naked, but warm. Floating. I had this nagging idea that I was the only one there; the first one there. The first one anywhere, other than the mouth.

Maybe that was God? And I’m Adam? Or just an atom...

The harsh white light faded to a dingy yellow, and if I tilted my head I could make out an uneven grey line in the distance; like a city skyline without the backdrop of a horizon.

Of course, I was dreaming then too. And I’m dreaming now. So are you. You’re doing it wrong, though, just like I was.

I’m here to wake you up.

Welcome to the Edgelands.