Beard Warden

January 31, 2007
The fragment I retained takes place in a dingy, sunlit room. The building in which this room is found is undoubtedly very old. The floors are hardwood, softened by years of seeping moisture. The walls are a sickly but bright shade of yellow. The room is rectangular, and I am standing against one of the longer walls, halfway down its length, facing one of the corners opposite me. The window is behind me, but I cannot see it, and I do not move. In the corner that I face is a workbench. Green paint is peeling off its sides and front, and the wooden tabletop is stained and well-worn.

On the bench stands a man, his back to the wall. I do not recall any of his features, save that he is wearing dark clothes; possibly a t-shirt. He is looking straight ahead, and his expression is neutral. With no warning, an object flies across the room from behind me towards the man. It is a barrel, jet black. I would estimate its speed to be around 80 miles per hour. It strikes the man square in the chest and promptly splinters, for though it is made of metal, its contents are extremely volatile, and the impact causes an explosion of size sufficient to occlude my view of the man. Through the blaze, I catch glimpses of him. He is entirely unscathed. He seems not to have noticed that anything has happened.

Next I remember, the man and the bench are gone. In their places stands a decrepit refrigerator of the earliest style. It is covered in untold layers of grime, with the tiniest hints of a teal finish visible underneath the filth. It is not quite wedged in the corner, there being a couple of feet of space between it and the far wall. The door to the bottom chamber is ajar. I fear the machine without knowing why, but the reason is soon revealed.
Another man walks toward the fridge from behind me. This one wears a white t-shirt and khaki shorts and has a shaven but blemished face, dark hair, and a moderately-sized beer gut. As he approaches the door, it bolts open. The interior of the chamber is the color of a moonless night. From the depths of this blackness, two impossibly long and skinny arms shoot out and seize him. Their hue is a pallor beyond that achievable by one still alive, and the hands sport jagged, filthy fingernails. With the man in their grasp, the arms haul him back in with such astonishing speed that the inertia alone must have snapped his neck. The space which he comes to occupy is far too small, and cracking bones and ripping flesh are audible as his body is shattered and cleaved in twain. The last part of him to be pulled in is his head, and his chin catches on an edge of one of the shelves. The force of his movement causes his skin to separate from his skull, and his face lies there for a moment, limp like a rubber mask, before it too is yanked into the impossible darkness.
Following this, utter silence. I am paralyzed, my eyes transfixed on the point at which the man vanished. Suddenly the darkness within the box recedes slightly, and the assailant becomes visible. There, on the topmost shelf, sits a head, presumably leading to a body. It seems to belong to a young girl, though it is twisted and corpse-like, and fearsome to look upon. The skin matches that of the arms, and the hair is limp, sparse, and black. The face is mostly unremarkable, except for the eyes. They are massive and completely black, save for the irises, which are blazing yellow, and the blackness of the eyes creeps in upon them from inside and out. As I first see it, it is staring straight ahead, past me down to the invisible end of the room. When I register what I am looking at, I avert my eyes immediately; I somehow understand that if it catches my eye, my fate will be gruesome in exceeding. I shut my eyes and edge along the wall, toward the door in the corner ahead of me. I reach the doorway, step over the threshold, and wake up.

February 26, 2007
It is cloudy dusk. I am sitting at a picnic table in the center of a small town with two women. The buildings are white clay. We are probably in Mongolia. We have traveled here from America together. One of the girls wants to travel to western China to get a blackberry reed stalk for her sister back home, because she promised she would. Yes, blackberries are reed plants in this dream. I keep telling them that, to get to western China from where we are (the western border of Mongolia) we would have to walk 4,000 paces which, in this dream, is apparently a fucking lot. Trying to think of a solution, I notice a couple of decorative plants on the table at which we are sitting. They are reed plants. Peering between the stalks I find a blackberry. It is slightly smushed but still acceptable. I pull it out and toss it to the woman with the sister. She seems grateful, but it looks as though only a west Chinese specimen will be acceptable. Giving up, I decide to wander around town. We three are the only people in sight. I walk through a random doorway and find myself in a basement. There are two simple grates in the floor, through which firelight is pouring into the room. I find that, as I face the grate and look down through it, a couple of words appear in the lower right of my vision. It is the name of that place, which I do not remember. I remember wondering whether the monsters within are too high level for me. Looking back up, I notice a door at the end of a short hallway. It looks to be made of rusty wrought iron. I walk up to it and my fucking alarm goes off.