Blood, laughter, and beatings. Feelings and experiences.

Stop it! Wait a minute, there’s something else. I feel something else—Screams! Lots of screaming!

Red stains on the stone walls. Cracks in the walls.

Every time a body hit the ground, dust curtains were raised, showing their claws, wanting to scratch his face. He turned away and closed his eyes; not to avoid seeing the violent massacre, but to avoid getting dust in his eyes. It was annoying to have to wipe it off later.

Once that frenzy of screams and squeals stopped, he reopened his eyes and came across a mysterious scene.

Strange as it may seem, the curtains of dust and dirt, which had been frozen in the air, became so dense that not even the sunset—that scarlet glow that came in from who knows where—could pass. The specks of dust had created a brown specter that covered the murders as if they wanted to cover the horror in that cave.

Then, the stone walls lost their shape in the dark.

The scene of the tragedy had dissolved into an absolute black, devoured by a tar pond.

The cave, if it was one, had turned into a giant void that reminded him of outer space. Those long, uneven clouds of dust beat like a heart, and with each beat, they released a luminescence that was staining the earth a purple color mixed with green.

It was a cold nebula that struck a strong sense of déjà vu there, deep in his mind. He’d seen it not long ago, a few years back; but that feeling evoked an earlier time. Not from years or centuries or millennia ago, but far back; perhaps from the very begging of the universe. The feeling was shuddering, and the nebulae, terrifying.

He stepped forward, and his foot struck something. He didn’t need to look down to know it was a body. It was the body of one of the students.

He avoided stepping on the corpse; he hated crunching of his ribs when they broke—he hated it from the time he used to practice a daily autopsy—but he hated, even more, to step on something that wasn’t solid.

He skirted the body and headed for the exit.

But what exit? The sunset light, which had indicated the way out, was now dissolved in that fabulous stellar tapestry. There was no exit there.

It doesn’t matter, he thought. He knew there was a way out, and that it should be ahead of him, just a few feet away. He walked, leaning against the rough wall of the cave, but his hand sank suddenly as if the rocks were trying to swallow it up. He lost his balance, staggered, and almost kissed the wall. He looked where his hand had lost support and discovered a hole. Someone had dug a hole in the wall.

“Tee-hee, tee-hee.” He heard children laughing. “Tee-hee, tee-hee.”

You damn kids! he growled, shaking a hand as if the laughter were mosquitoes. You’ll see when I catch you all.

Yes, he knew those kids, but from where? He didn’t remember.

He found another body, and this time he stepped on it. His foot sank into the torso of one of the murdered boys. He felt the crackle of the ribs, and something wet on his foot. Blood and guts. Gross!

To prevent his own weight from burying him even more in the body, and from making that mess worse, he jumped. But he ended up hitting another corpse, one that was on its back and with a rock pick stuck in the heart.

The dead man had his chin down against his chest, staring at the rock pick, with his arms open, as if he were showing his tragedy to anyone who passed by, saying, ‘Wow, man! Look at what they’ve done to me!’

He pivoted and stumbled across the next body on the trail. This one had the head open, literally. It was a girl’s.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Five young men dead. No, six. There was another one who was killed outside of the cave, in the woods.

Why did you do it, Brun? he asked, and suddenly, though he hadn’t said it aloud, the name he mentioned rumbled in the rock tunnel, creating echoes.

The purple glow of that nebulae sea beat hard, following the rhythm of the echo: Brun, Brun, Brun, Brun…

He felt weird being there; he’d almost forgotten he was in a cave, and at the same time, in outer space.

“Brun’s done it,” he said, this time out loud. “Brun’s awake.”

Brun had awakened, so he woke up.

Broga opened his eyes.