Skinned State

Do you ever get dreams about the games you play? Like when you play a video game for too long or at a daily pace and all of a sudden, it sneaks into your dreams? They never usually make sense and at times are mostly wish fulfillment things where you get an impossible thing that you somehow wanted. But they happen because they influence your mind well enough on a subconscious level. That's happened to me. This is going to be a story about my dreams.

As I'm posting this anonymously, I can comfortably admit that I'm a speedrunner. Specifically, I deal with all things concerning Super Mario 64. Any challenge that comes across my way or is suggested, I do my best to complete it as fast as possible. I'm nowhere near the best at it of course. And I'm nearly ashamed to admit I've had more failures than successes. But there's money to be made, and I've grown to have a good enough fanbase that likes what I do. And because I love the game so much, any time I fail is just another excuse to get back up again.

That changed recently. Not because I suddenly got a dream about Mario finding himself in the Bowser Room all of a sudden, God no. If I stopped playing games just because of a single dream, I would've quit years ago. It wasn't a nightly occurrence but it happened more than once a week at least. Before the dreams were mostly about playing some strange level of Mario 64 with some abilities that never could've been coded on the hardware at the time. Standard stuff really. Then the dreams became suffocating.

It started a month or so ago after a pretty long gaming session. It was a 24 hour charity stream where I'd try to beat Chaos Edition. No speedrunning attached, just trying to get as many stars as possible. It was my first time trying it out and, pretty inevitably, I got nowhere with it. But fun times were had and we raised a lot of money for a certain group in need. Anyways as soon as I got in bed that night, I was sleeping like a log. I got into a dream instantly.

In it, I was just playing Super Mario 64. It wasn't anything all too special, just exploring the castle. I was trying to jump into the paintings but I wasn't going through. There was some text saying it was unavailable or something. So I just kept running through the place. I eventually tried out the room with the stained glass window of Princess Peach. I was just running through my last options here so I tried jumping through the window to try out the Secret Slide level. And I did manage to jump through.

But there was no level transition. I was just behind the window now. I could somewhat hear footsteps behind the window, so there was a stage behind it. But I couldn't do anything to change where I was looking. So I tried to run back to the window and get back to the castle. The last thing I remember from that dream before waking up was seeing the window break with no one on the other side.

I woke up in a cold sweat after that. I could just about remember what had happened, I made sure to jot it all down on my phone before I forgot any of it. There wasn't anything wrong with the dream at first. To me, it was just an interesting story I could tell in my chat. But as it turns out, streaming for a full day has its drawbacks and I was completely worn out from streaming. So after making a quick announcement on my account, I went ahead and had a break day. It was pretty much a day of nothing and of no importance. Things got more interesting when I went back to sleep.

In the dream, I was back in Super Mario 64. Instead of inside the castle, I was on the outside at the beginning section. The only sounds I could hear were footsteps from Mario himself. Looking towards the castle, I saw that the Princess Peach window was gone. From what I could just about barely see, there was a small area inside it. I dashed through the open area and tried to get back into the castle to see it up close.

Trying to open the front door just told me that the door was locked shut though. So I jumped into the moat to try and find the door there but nothing of the sort was there. Running around the area got me to notice the fact that the cannon was ready to be fired. So putting two and two together, I jumped into the cannon and after some careful aiming, shot myself towards the room.

My flight got stopped when I crashed into the side of a bed. It was a a pretty simple room. It had a large pink bed to the left, a table with a little chair and a mirror to the right and an untextured brown door at the opposite end of the red room. I tried to exit the room through the door but I couldn't do anything with it. I think it just blended in with the rest of the wall after that.

So instead of trying to leave, I tried to mess around with my surroundings. I jumped onto the chair and table, with nothing happening. And then I jumped onto the foot of the bed. Someone appeared in the bed. It looked somewhat like Princess Peach but a lot darker. A lot redder. I walked over to where she was. That's when she screamed at me.

I felt like I was having tinnitus when I woke up. I was digging my fingers into my ears to try and plug it out. The scream was a shrill and harsh one, like that thing was disgusted at me being there. Her head contorted as she screamed as well. It jutted straight down past her chest as she woke me up. The ringing sound went away after a while. The rest of the day was spent recuperating from that. I know it sounds stupid but it shook me up a bit. I hadn't been woken up from a dream like that before in my life. I needed some time to myself.

And after that time, I was off to sleep again. Before I went to bed, I took some melatonin after reading that those supplements can guarantee good dreams. And while it didn't seem likely, I didn't want to risk having to be woken up from another stupid Mario 64 dream. And it worked. The dream was simple and delightful.

I was on a sailing boat, traveling across the sea. Someone was guiding the ship while I was down in the quarters, watching the water through some glass. I saw all kinds of fish down there, swimming around the deep blue. I saw rocks down there, piling up high and close to me. I even saw a small shipwreck down there. Coral had overtaken it. It was a long and forgotten ship. Something was rising out of it. Out from underneath the boat, something big was coming up. It was coming fast. I barely had time to react until it bumped up and cracked against glass, revealing itself.

It was a corpse.

A fresh, recently skinned corpse.

I fell over backwards and found myself in another dream. I was back in Peach's Bedroom in Super Mario 64. It looked a lot more full than before. The missing wall had been put in place. Cabinets and a wardrobe were placed over where the door leading out was. And Mario was standing still just in front of them. The corpse who wore Princess Peach's clothes was still in the bed. I heard her speak to me. It was in a drained voice. It was like her vocal chords had fallen out of her throat and the whispers that came through that throat was all that could be heard. She said to me:

you've done something wrong you've broken me from my beauty sleep i cannot be complete without my sleep i'll be taking your dreams now so that you'll be incomplete this is what you deserve broken dreams.

I woke up again after that. 4 hours of sleep. That's the last time I've slept. It's been 4 days since then and I can't find myself sleeping anymore. I can barely move around my house. Everything feels so sluggish. I can't commit to work or hygiene anymore so I stay inside and try to keep myself awake. I don't want to try to sleep anymore. If I come close to it, it's because my body can't handle it and I pass out. But I'm still awake in this state. Sleep paralysis is what it's called I think. I can't move a muscle when I'm like this.

And there's always someone in my room when it happens. She stands in front of me and forces me to look at her. She makes me look at what's left of her face. I hear the blood from her exposed skin drip onto my carpet. I hear her breathing ever so closely to me. The only thing I don't see is her eyes. They're not there. I don't know why but they're just not there. I don't know how she's able to stare at me. There's a part of me that wants to die from exhaustion. But that's the worst thing that can happen. I shouldn't die. What if she's there for me when I go?