Learning the ropes

"Ah, welcome back wanderer..." You hear the voice speak to you once again, but you still are trying to wake up, er, trying to fall asleep? It confuses you more than anything what is delaying you from moving, but regardless, you still do get up to look at the shadowy form.

"I see that your day was very...tumultuous?" The voice asks.

"How do you know about my day? I thought you only existed within my dreams or something..." You tell it, and a surprisingly shrill giggle escapes from the voice of the shadowy figure.

"Wanderer...I exist whenever I am not observed."

The shadowy spectre paces around you in circles.

"I guess I am similar to another human concept...Schrodinger's Cat, I believe it was called?" It says, and you nod your head. The concept sounds familiar...not from school, but from some anime you remember someone showing you one of those nights you were wasted out of your mind. Something about...vampires? Nazis? Something like that.

"Essentially, as long as I remain unobserved by the eyes of the living, I take my true form...but as long as there is even a single thing that looks my way, I appear to you in this form that you see now." It explains, and something in your brain seems to connect.

"Wait, so then...you were revealing your real form last night?" You ask it, and the pacing suddenly stops. You can almost sense that it is...confused? But it quickly gets composed once more.

"Wanderer, you are quite a clever one. You were able to not only walk, but even attempted to talk to others during your nightmare. It was quite commendable, especially for a first-time wanderer of the labyrinth. It takes some people many, many chapters to be able to do such a feat." It says, and the usage of the word "chapters" immediately catches your ears.

"Chapters?" You ask it, and this time it is immediately ready with an answer.

"A passage of time not defined by the typical human usage of stuff such as weeks, months, years, centuries, eons...whatever else is used. To me, time has come and passed for so long I simply have divided my existence into chapters based on who has come and passed just like the time. For example, my clever wanderer, you are the twenty-seventh chapter of what I presume to be my life." It answers, and you merely nod.

"Twenty-seventh chapter...so there were twenty-six others who could access...whatever this was?" You think to yourself.

"So, what, was there some special reason to tell me that I am the twenty-seventh wanderer?" You ask it, and another shrill giggle comes from the phantom.

"I never said that you were the twenty-seventh wanderer...I merely said you were my twenty-seventh chapter in life. And as for the special reason...there simply is none. Like I told you before, mortal, you are here because of a lottery. You were lucky, that is all you were." It turns around from you...or towards you, since its lack of physical appearance means there's no difference between back or front.

"However, I did say I had kept you around for being...entertaining, and I would like you to continue entertaining me. That is why I will teach you how to control your own dreams so that way you may continue this journey of yours." The spectre tells you. Without warning, a door appears between you and it, the same door as the previous night.

"Enter, and begin your lesson." It commands, and with no other option, you enter through the door.

The scene is not much different from the previous night, either. It is the cafeteria once more, the same girl in the center, the same younger version of you asking her out and getting soundly rejected, the same dread of reliving this scenario coursing through your body and chilling your spine.

"Welcome to what is known as the Dream-Dom, otherwise titled The Dream Domain. It is where one's subconscious runs wild and rational thought gives way to the wild and absurd...at least, that is what it is normally. Now that you are learning to control it, though, that will change." It says, "introducing" you to your own dreams...again, weird.

"Now then...what direction do you want this nightmare to turn towards?" The spectre asks.