I remember when Icarus showed me this piece he made. 

He told me that it was about this one dream he had, where he was running down a corridor. He could feel spiders crawling down him. He would always tell me how real it felt, how he’d wake up and still feel them. Like something was really crawling on him while he slept. 

He’d run down this corridor, trying to shake the spiders off, but nothing felt right. His legs were like pudding trying to push through hot and thick molasses. Yet the spiders crawled through it with ease. 

At the end of the corridor, there would be a man at a desk with a sheet of paper. He would be taking notes. It felt like each night he would have the dream, he pushed a little harder, ran a little faster. But it was never for the man. No, it was not for him at all. 

Each night, the man would look like someone he knew from a distance. Some nights, it would be Ala, other nights it would be his late mother, Helena. Or Starman, or Taylor Grace, or one of the many parental figures of his life. 

But they wouldn’t stay like that. The closer he got, the mirage of parenthood would slowly fade away as he became this horrific, three eyed creature. 

He would describe him as something with a long, horrific face, with a third eye placed on his forehead. Some nights, he would be screaming. Icarus didn’t know why. 

When he screamed, Icarus would wake up. 

One night, he pushes through, and sees that from his eyes, he is bleeding- a thick, vibrant red ink seeps from his three sockets and flows throughout the room until his socks are dampened by the strangely cold, strangely calming blood. By the time the man’s head is covered, it falls off and into Icarus’ arms. 

Spiders crawl out of it.