Echoes from Below

The song was ethereal and unnatural, like the sound of metal scraping against metal.

It was that radio application!

The sound didn't travel through my ears. It vibrated in my head directly.

I suddenly recalled the first rule of the Listening Guidelines.

[This station's signal may extend into dreams. If you hear the broadcast while dreaming, firmly believe that you are awake.]

Awake? How could I possibly be awake? I kept telling myself that it was all a dream and that I needed to wake up quickly.

'Wake up!'

However, the song got closer and louder.

Outside my window, something enormous drifted past. A vast black silhouette, blocking what little light that had filtered in.

That thing stopped right outside my window.

A huge, murky eyeball pressed against the glass of my window, staring at me. It was laughing.

I could feel it laughing. The excitement of a predator when it found its prey.

[Believe that you are awake.]

I bit my tongue. It hurt.

I could instantly taste the stench of blood, but my blood did not spread in the water.

On the contrary, it went down my throat.

I was still not awake.

The eyeball was pressing firmly against the window.

Crack!

A long crack started to form on the window.

What would happen if I did not follow the rules? If I did not believe that I was awake, would the dream become reality?

I took a deep breath. Or perhaps, I should say, I took a deep mouthful of water.

Looking at that eyeball, I kept telling myself that I was awake.

"You're awake. You're at home.

"You're working. You're having breakfast."

I kept repeating it as a mantra when something miraculous happened.

The eyeball seemed to sense some confusion and backed off a little. The song started to stutter as if the line reception was bad.

The water started to subside and suffocation crashed in. I suddenly sat up, gasping for air.

Cold sweat had drenched through my pajamas. Outside, the sun was starting to rise.

I touched my ribcage. No gills. The skin there was a little red as if I was having an allergic reaction.

I let out a long sigh. Thankfully, it was just a dream.

I got out of bed to get some water. When I walked past the living room, I saw my phone on the couch.

The screen was black. I headed over, thinking about picking it up. I had just touched it when I withdrew my hand as if I had just been electrocuted.

Beneath the phone was a damp stain. It was not large, about the size of a palm.

However, the shape was a handprint.

Four fingers, sharp tips, suction-cup marks embedded in the palm. It perfectly fit with my phone.

My vision spun. The dripping sound I heard last night was no hallucination. Something really came over and touched my phone.

I rushed into the bathroom and washed my hands viciously until my skin burned raw.

I looked up at myself in the mirror. I saw my pale face and sunken eyes, but something else caught my eye.

I turned to the side to look behind my ear. There was a patch of skin the size of a fingernail, covered in a thin, translucent membrane.

I gently scraped at it with my nail to peel off. It was hard and curvy. Under the bathroom light, it refracted a rainbow sheen.

It was a fish scale.

I called in sick. If I were to head into work in such a condition, I would most probably be seen as mentally ill and sent to an asylum.

I flushed the fish scale down the drain.

Then, like a thief sneaking back to the scene of the crime, I switched my phone on once more.

I could not follow the rule about exposing it to the sunlight for three hours. It was pouring outside.

The weather was so gloomy, just like the deep sea in my dreams.

I tapped into the Echoes from Below application once more, but there was no sound. The waveform interface was gone and replaced by a basic discussion forum.

There were not many posts, but every single title made the hair on the back of my neck stand.