Ziggurat

He had not always dreamt of the ziggurat. Before, when he dwelled in a steel and glass hive, working under pale fluorescent lights and watching black seeds rise towards the stars, the ziggurat was not there.

Everything was perfect. The farm, the smile of his daughters before school, of his wife behind a cup of coffee. When had he swapped asphalt for crops, glowing screens for gloves and scythe?

Sometimes his slumber was black and silent and he woke up happy to a new day, equal to all other days. Some other times, he saw it while awake. Beyond the creek, past the treeline, purple in the dusk. Cyclopean stones rising to the sky. The next moment he was sitting on the table again. It was morning, his daughters kissed him on the cheek. She smiled behind a cup of coffee. Had her eyes always been the color of the ocean?

The window rattles under the storm. The night is dark. Inside, an amber light. The family in front of the fire, curled up under blankets with geometrical patterns. His wife reads a thick red book.

The smile on his face wanes as he looks out the window and into the storm. There’s the ziggurat.

He shuts his eyes and grips the blanket. When he does, his eyes open on the other side, and through his fingers the air escapes from the breach in his helmet.

Darkness everywhere.

It is cold.

This is the heart of the ziggurat.

Above him there is an unknowable figure. While he tries to stop the flow of oxygen leaving his suit, the creature looms over him and its words break through his mind, tearing his brain apart like a dull knife.

“Do not fight. Come back to them.”

The blanket over him. The warmth from the fireplace, from his daughters snuggling next to him, from his wife with eyes of honey. On her lap, the thick white book.

He thinks of tomorrow morning, of a cup of coffee, of his daughters on their way to school. Of how the creek will flow downstream with its belly full of rain. He looks away from the window, breathing slowly, filling up his lungs. Then he shuts his eyes.

Back to the darkness.

“Fuck off,” he says between gritted teeth.

Duct tape in the pocket on his left arm. He seals the crack in the helmet, and the hissing sound almost stops. The figure ebbs and melts into the darkness. Reeling, dizzy, he gets up and turns back.

He will find a way out. He is not sure how, but he will escape the ziggurat.