Far Future Snippet - Nonlucid Dreaming

And with 18 votes, Arthur wins the Far Future Snippet vote for August.

Alas, for anyone hoping for further Camelot shenanigans, we instead have Modern Day Arthur finally once again crossing paths with a Harbinger MC who isn't a lucid dreamer ̷t̷h̷a̷t̷ ̷c̷a̷n̷ ̷c̷h̷a̷s̷e̷ ̷a̷f̷t̷e̷r̷ ̷h̷i̷m̷.

In the close confines of the ambulance, both familiar and also somehow oddly off, the alarm keens from the multi-parameter patient monitor. The sound writhes through your ear canals, wriggling along your auditory nerve, and burrowing into the fleshy folds of your brain beyond.

Ventricular fibrillation.

You notice with a start that the plastic and steel defibrillator paddles are already a cold lump within your hands. But hadn't these things already been long replaced by adhesive pads before you'd ever gained your medical certification?

Phil holds his silence as he continues steering in the driver's compartment. It doesn't matter that he's already dead.

The alarm wails ever louder. It sounds like a cat being mauled. Like a long-lost alarm clock burning in a fire. Like something chomping on the outside of the ambulance with many sharpened teeth.

You've seen this before. This patient lying pale and still upon the gurney. This scene playing out, familiar yet also somehow oddly off.

Wait... hadn't you ̷r̷e̷m̷e̷m̷b̷e̷r̷e̷d̷ ̷s̷a̷i̷d̷ thought that already?

Your hands move without further thought. The patient's chest caves in as you slam down the defibrillator paddles, crumbling to reveal a cavernous maw lined with hooked fangs that descends deep, deeper than the patient's body, deeper than the gurney and the entire ambulance, deeper into the very earth and—

"I was so c̴͓͑͐ḽ̸̏̂̕͠ŏ̴͈͓͎͔̬s̷̤̣͓̋̽̕ĕ̵̫͈͇͚͙́̈́͝," Phil says.

The side of the ambulance cracks open, its fiberglass plastic and aluminum sheeting shattering like so much brittle glass. It bites through the layers of your uniform and scratches at your bare skin.

A gauntleted hand reaches out and clasps your wrist, dragging you back, away from the tableau of the dissolving patient still strapped down to the stretcher.

This is also familiar. From long beyond centuries' reasoning. From a scant week ago.

"Tis a lie, you realize?" the king tells you, even as he still bleeds from the side. "This is not your world."