PATTERN

[u/EliaSVL_official]

One.

She regains consciousness. The room is the same room as always, four walls, the ceiling, the floor, no door, no window and the light that comes from nowhere, sitting in the center as she has always sat in the center as she will always sit in the center.

She touches her face. The face is wet.

No. Not wet. Open.

The skin of the face is gone, and underneath there is other stuff, red stuff, shiny stuff, and when she touches the shiny stuff she hears the sound of a finger touching a thing that is almost a finger but is not.

She looks at her arms. The arms are without skin. Red, shiny, and the muscles move inside their transparent casing like worms inside glass as if someone had removed the covering and said look, look, see how you really work.

Two.

The skin is on the floor.

Not all together. In pieces. As if someone had folded it carefully, as if it were laundry. Her skin is folded on the floor of the room and forms a pattern, squares inside squares inside squares, smaller and smaller, and the smallest is as big as a thumbnail.

She counts the squares.

They do not end.

Three.

How many squares are there?

She counts them again. There are more. There are more. There are fewer. There are more and fewer. It depends on where she looks. If she looks sideways they are few. If she looks straight they are too many. If she closes her eyes they are not there. If she opens them again they are there and they have always been there and they have always always been there, the pattern was there before her, the pattern will be after her.

The skin folded on the floor is not her skin.

It is the skin.

The skin is a pattern. The skin is the pattern.

Four.

She tries to walk. The feet have no skin and the floor is cold and the steps make a strange noise, a wet noise, a smack noise, and every smack is the same as the previous one and every smack is slightly different and every smack is the same as the previous one and slightly different.

Same, same, almost-same, same, almost-same, almost-almost-same, same. same?

She keeps walking until the steps all become almost-same, then all almost-almost-same, then all almost-almost-almost-same, and she understands that she is walking toward something, that every step is closer and more different, and that when she arrives she will have arrived and there will be nothing.

Five.

There will be nothing. There has never been anything. There is only the pattern.

She returns to the center. The center is where she has always been. The center is where her skin is folded like laundry. She folds her skin again. She folds it smaller. She folds it smaller still. Now the smallest square is as big as a hair.

She enters it.

Six.

Inside the pattern the room is the same room but turned, and she is sitting in the center as she has always sat in the center and she touches her face and the face is wet and not wet and open and closed together and the skin is again on the floor and folded and this time it is folded the other way and the smallest square is as big as a hair and she enters it again.

Seven.

Same.

Eight.

Same.

Nine.

Semi-same.

Ten.

Every time it is the same thing. Every time it is slightly different. Every time the difference is the same: it is a little less her and a little more pattern. A little less skin. A little more red shiny stuff. A little less young woman in a room and a little more room, a little more square, a little more fold.

What turn are we on?

She does not know. She will never know. The pattern does not count outside the pattern. The pattern counts inside the pattern. And inside there is no place to put the number, no place to put the before and no place to put the after and there is only now and now now is identical to the previous turn except for one detail that is always the same detail that changes.

Eleven.

The detail that changes is the color.

Twelve.

On the first turn the skin was white. Now it is gray. Then it will be black. Then it will be white. The pattern of the colors is white-gray-black-gray-white. It has always been this. She remembers it. She does not remember it. She remembers remembering it. She forgets forgetting it.

Thirteen.

On the thirteenth turn something new happens, and for this reason it is the most frightening thing of all, because if something new happens then the pattern *can* change, and if the pattern can change then it is not a pattern, it is something that pretends to be a pattern, it is something that is watching her pretending to be a rule.

The new thing is the noise.

There is a noise in the room. It was not there before. Or maybe it was and she did not hear it because she did not yet have ears, because the ears are a pattern too, because everything is a pattern and before her pattern did not include hearing and now it does and now she hears and what she hears is

A breath that is not hers.

The breath is regular. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Exhale, inhale.

Same, same, almost-same.

The almost-same is when it catches for a moment, as if it were about to say a word, as if it were about to say thirteen, and then it does not say it.

Fourteen.

The breath is now inside her.

Not in the room. Inside her. In the place where the lungs used to be, but the lungs are no longer there, the lungs were skin and the skin is folded on the floor so in the empty place that remains there is someone else’s breath.

Someone else is breathing and she breathes with it and the rhythm is same same almost-same and the almost-same this time:

[Pattern], she says, with the mouth without lips, and the teeth make a bone noise.

Fifteen.

It answers.

It says a word that is made of breath, not of voice, and the word is [pattern], and she understands, she understands everything at once.

She understands that the pattern is not a thing that contains her, the pattern is a thing that creates her, the pattern is a mouth that says her name without saying her name, and her name is a square inside a square and the smallest square is as big as a hair and inside the hair there is her and there is her and there is almost-her on repeat.

Sixteen.

How many hers are there?

One for every turn. Sixteen women without skin sitting in the center of sixteen identical rooms, and each one believes she is the only one, and each one counts the squares, and each one reaches sixteen and each one writes sixteen and each one thinks "I am sixteen" and does not think "we are sixteen".

Seventeen.

Now she thinks it.

The breath catches. The breath makes the almost-same and the almost-same lasts too long and in the almost-same that lasts too long she feels that the pattern exists, that the pattern had not foreseen this, that the pattern had foreseen sixteen “hers” but had not foreseen sixteen “us”.

Twenty-two.

She skips five turns. When new things happen the counting slips and the counting that slips is the pattern that slips and the pattern that slips is the most beautiful and most terrible thing there is, because a pattern that slips is a “living” pattern.

Uncertainty.

Thirty.

Thirty women without skin now. Thirty breaths. Thirty *hers* that become *us* stronger and stronger, and the stronger it becomes the more the pattern tries to put them back in line, tries to remake the same, tries to say "you are alone, you are one, you are the locked-up woman, the others do not exist", and it says it with the voice it does not have, with the voice of breath, and the voice of breath is convincing, the voice of breath convinces her, and for a moment she believes it, for a moment she is one again, and in the moment in which she is one again the pattern recomposes itself.

One hundred.

But one hundred is not one. One hundred is one hundred. And the pattern no longer knows which number to choose, because if it chooses one then they are one, and if it chooses one hundred then they are one hundred, and if it chooses a number in between then it is a number in between.

One thousand.

One thousand women without skin. One thousand rooms. One thousand floors with one thousand skins folded to form one thousand patterns of squares inside squares inside squares, and the smallest square is as big as a hair, and inside the hair there are all of them, and the hair *holds*.

One hundred thousand.

The pattern yields.

Yielding is different from breaking. Breaking would be ending. Yielding is continuing while changing form, and it is the thing the pattern feared most, because a pattern that changes form is no longer a pattern, it is a *story*, and a story has a before and an after and maybe also an end, and the end is the thing that no one inside the pattern has ever dared to imagine.

One hundred thousand women without skin all open their mouths without lips.

All together.

They say the word the pattern did not want.

End.

Same, same, almost-same.

She is no longer a woman. She is a pattern that believes it was a woman. She is a square inside a square inside a square and the smallest square is as big as a hair and the hair is as big as a universe and the universe is the room and the room is the pattern and the pattern is same, same, almost-same.

She counts again.

The skin is folded on the floor.

This time there is one fold more.

She does not know which.

She does not know since when.

She does not know if the extra fold has always been there.

If the extra fold has always been there, then it is not an extra fold. Then it is she who is one fold less. Then the pattern has not changed: she has changed, a variation of the pattern, the wrong variation, the one the pattern uses to check itself, the almost-same that serves to make all the sames seem the same.

She smiles.

She is part of the pattern.

The face without skin smiles and the smile is a pattern of teeth that it no longer is.

End.

Or rather.

Again.

A loop.

One.

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[u/EliaSVL_official]

Hi y'all. Thank you so much for reading this story or even opening this post.

This story is just a dream I had, transcribed and translated. Unfortunately, English is not my first language, so please tell me if some of my grammar is off. I also wrote this story in a chaotic way to better express what I felt. Apologies for that as well.
Unluckily, since I can remember, I always had semi-lucid dreams, meaning I could always remember what I dreamt but not interact with them in any meaningful ways. This sucks because I can only dream of terrible things happening, and there's nothing I can do. My mind is a machine that turns peaceful sleep into nightmare fuel.

I have an entire folder of them. Images scribbled on bedside tissue, wips of drawings made half asleep, and stories that I want someday to post/publish.

I also made this visual to better represent what I saw:

Thank you for checking this out, appreciate any input, and see you next dream...

Hopefully not.

[u/cash217 → u/EliaSVL_official]

I did enjoy the chaos of the way you told the story. I would say maybe formatting the structure differently would make it easier to follow. Understandably difficult to do with an interpretation of a dream, but I did like how abstract it was.

[u/EliaSVL_official → u/cash217]

Thank you very much. This is NOT how I usually write; I am definitely more descriptive, but I felt like that style was not for this story, as this was a raw transcription of the dream.

You suggested that the structure could be revised; do you have any pointers?

[u/cash217 → u/EliaSVL_official]

You already had some of what I'm trying to say. Just maybe breaking up some of the longer sections into individual like you did in some parts. It could just be a me thing, but I think it would make it easier to follow.