The Astral Train

There was a tentacle hanging from the clouds above, an organic landmark that resembled the tongue of a giant creature hanging from its gaping mouth.

I was on a train It seemed, but how I got on, was a mystery even to me. The World outside the train’s glass eye presented itself morose; a veil of crimson draped the trees, like the sky had spilled a giant bottle of aged wine and it seemed like there was nothing else for miles outside of the mist.

The trees stood inelastic in ritualistic praise; the jagged branches reached upward as if begging the giant tentacle to touch them. I could swear there was something watching among the mist. Even more terrifying, what was attached to the tentacle above the shroud of red clouds?

“Sir, ticket,” the man that stood before me was kissed by shadow, a wide brimmed hat obscured his features and he stood as still as carved stone, holding out a hand as dry as tree bark.

I hesitated, before searching my person for a ticket, anything. Nothing, “I’m sorry sir, I don’t think I have one.”

He kept his hand extended, his freakishly long limb didn’t sway in the air, he just stood. The many faces around the train turned toward me, as if they heard me, they felt that I did not belong.

I knew I didn’t belong. How did I get here?

A violent shriek pierced the air, it was guttural and caught the attention of the veiled specters on the train.

“I don’t know how I got here, please! I’ll find a ticket!” Some rows over a naked body flailed on the floor – his clothes were torn to shreds and he seemed as unbelonging, displaced and lost as I did.

There was a hound lurching over him, something inhumane in structure, something from some hell, somewhere.

The creature stood above its victim at least twice the height of any human, but it wasn’t standing on two feet, it was bent backwards bridging on its hands and legs with its swollen belly sticking upward.

The nightmare didn’t end there.

The creature’s skeleton stuck out of its belly like an open cocoon birthing an unfinished specimen; the head was that of Venus flytrap, if all it consisted of were irregularly shaped, talons for teeth.

The man scrabbled about on the dirty train floor, falling, tripping on his own desperation but the creature had a tight grasp on the man’s bare ankle. The entity tore at its prey’s back with two axe shaped limbs and dragged the man away into the next car, a guttural shriek was the period to what seemed like a very short life.

Every faceless specter on the train remained involved in their endeavors, immersed in silent whispers among themselves, while some eyes still preyed upon me.

Was that going to happen to me? I didn’t have a ticket. Shit.

The slender figure infront of me raised his head slight, exposing a straight line for a mouth under that wide brimmed hat. No signs of humanity behind its impersonal grin and cracked, thin lips. “Sir, ticket.”

I struggled to remember just how I got onto this train of infernos, let alone my name – the air had become oppressive, thin and cold. I wasn’t sure of much, but I knew I did not want to die here.

“I don’t…remember where I placed it,” I lied. I felt naked, hiding my fear somehow made me feel exposed.

“Let me help,” the man raised his head to the dim light of red emanating through the train’s window.

His face resembled the wings of a moth, with patterns running up and down its dried features, no nose, and his two eyes looked like they held the constellations, black with the occasional glint and glimmer.

An opening appeared a couple centimeters above his lip, and something slithered out. My heart sank, a heat spread underneath me.

The thing slithered itself onto my arm, not unlike a centipede it danced on a thousand small needle-pricked legs and stopped at my forearm. And just like that, the pain that seared through me became a staple reminder of my mortality.

It wrapped itself around my forearm and squeezed pressing its thousand venomous teeth into me.

I reached for the tendril wrapped around my forearm, but it would not budge, it was hungry, feasting and could not be bothered to acknowledge my combative fingers grasping at it. It just got tighter, like the knot in my stomach.

I pushed the man out of the way, as panic set in. I would die, here and now, with no memory of who I was, nameless.

The slender figure walked toward me as I ran past the eager faces of those sitting, spectating. No one cared to help, but their eagerness sent shivers down my spine.

The tendril unlatched itself from my arm and scurried back up the man’s leg and back into the hole it came from, it lived there. The man’s eyes shut as he let the creature burrow back into his face. Immediately he curled his lips in disgust.

He reeled back his head, “You sir, do not belong here, I can taste your filth, it consumes and displeases me – it displeases the omnipotent,” He directed a finger out the window toward the limb hanging from the sky. “I can taste your violations on our sainted soil, so can he.”

The tentacle in the sky had begun to tremble violently, the trees among the mist had begun to bend and wretch in place as if alive, the fingers of giants digging outward from beneath the soil. This hellish inferno was connected, a single organism detecting me as its disease, a sickness.

I ran as hard and as fast as I could, but just as I reached the door to the next cart, the damnation that had dragged away the man minutes before had appeared infront of me. I was its next victim.

The world shook, shivered and trembled – this was it.

I let out one final deafening yell that cut through the alien air, and just like that the creature’s axe limbs cut through me heated steel through butter.

…

….

…..

I woke up in a puddle of my own sweat, my clothes felt like mush under my fingers as I grasped for my chest. I heaved, feeding into the air around me with what felt like a new pair of lungs. The candles around me danced violently as if disturbed by my consequential rising. I had been lying on my floor.

The silence around me was immediately calming.

I looked at the pile of books across from me on the hard wood floor. Reflecting on what I had just witnessed while catching my breath.

The Astral projection Guidebook

Astral Dynamics

Astral Projection Made Easy

The Multi-Dimensional Human VOLUME 1

Visiting Cosmic Worlds Techniques and Cautionary Tales

It was that last book that carried the most important bit of information. One I should have taken with more heed:

Excerpt from chapter 11, paragraph 3, sentence 4…

“…it is important you do not stray to realms too far from your human avatar without proper experience. This will cause a thinner thread between your subconscious mind and your body. if that happens, you risk not only the memories that tie you to your human form but ever returning home…”