The weight of the chain suppressed the rhythmic clanging of the anvil and his wife. He could feel a hot sweat and pressure overwhelm his senses. He'd never work at that forge again, there was too much pain. Not a chance in Hell.

  Whispers of another world raised from the rippling space above the forge. There was his family, it was all of them together the last time he'd made that cursed motif. If only he had taken them home.

  The hammer met the anvil and a steady rhythm like a heartbeat pulsed through in a trance. Fragments of memories of children, of a mother, of a father, of friends, of his wife all danced in the flames beside him. He could see them, it was all so vivid. The haze, the promise to show them his finished piece.

  They haunted his dreams. The call of two infernos summoned him that day, one was raging close, burning his skin; the other was this incessant ring, the chatter of a devil looking to bake his heart and sprinkle it with salt. An address and a tragedy, he ran, he ran until he saw it.

  There was smoke piling high, sirens sang, mirrors shattered. The reflection of his half broken wife, a thick red wine dripping down from every orifice, and breaking through her skin. A son whose face was peeling off, teeth clear through the left side of his face. His mother and father were all there, and three other cars were torn asunder. That's what this was, it was all a dream.

  The forge was just a dream, he'd never go back there. Not after that day. The statue of that monkey, the cursed motif was just a dream. It had to be!

  The metal display plate on the wall, of that whale she loved so much. It was swimming through the sky over that desert. It was just a decoration in a dream. It had to be a dream. The reflection in the plate showed a man with hollowed out eyes and maggots crawling through those spooned out crevices and out through his wide round nose. Worms and caterpillars squirmed from the man's mouth, breaking through his broken teeth.

  It HAD to be a dream.

  His head was severed, on a grated stainless steel rack. He saw his pure blue eyes, wide open. The diorama of the monkey riding the whale the shelf above him. He'd made it when he first opened that maker's space. The plant that was his only pet when the kids were born, was wilted. Its crusted veins made cryptic circles. It had to be!

  A dream. A dream.

  Bob woke up, a cold sweat soaking him from head to toe. Yeah, that was a dream, but it was all true.

  The alarm started blaring, and Bob just scurried to the bathroom. The filth kept piling up, Bob practiced his aim by shooting projectiles from his stomach into the toilet. The dream wouldn't die, he couldn't stop it.

  He tried to relax, to feel real again. The water running down his body always brought him back to the world he was supposed to be living in. The clanging of the forge kept ringing through his head this time though, his heartbeat matched its rhythm. The pain of that day condensed into a single stream that flowed through his bushy white mustache, down into his coffee and vomit stained beard.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The grown man: Bob, the father; Bob, the maker; Bob, the builder. He whispered with shaky breath, "Can I fix this?" And for once, he couldn't, not this time. He looked at his shaking, callused hands forged over decades of manual labor. He gave his youth to the smithy his dad ran. He gave his early adulthood to the construction sector. The manufacturing job gave him his friends, but it took another half of his life. He opened a makers space for his buddies, and it would take him until his dying day.

  He just kept listing the reasons he kept living. Just reminding himself of it all, but it felt like a waste. It always felt like a waste, but today it felt like more of a waste since it wasn't calming him down. There was no overwhelming pressure crushing the dread. It was just despair.

  Bob was dressed in a fine suit and cane as he sent himself out into the world. He took a walk to his shop, he stopped driving after the incident.

  Thoughts moved back to his daughter, she'd been the first to die. She loved whales, she became a marine biologist to study patterns in their calls. Her team tested a theory that whales had a full blown language. She was always so impressive. The songs followed a consistent rhythm, like his cursed heart. The most common sounds occurred twice as often as the next most common sounds, a distribution that before we thought only occurred in humans.

  She'd been so excited on that call, but he'd seen a storm behind her. He asked her to come home before the weather got worse. Then the hurricane started. The sea rocked her off the vessel, and there he watched her die in front of him.

  He looked up and saw it. That MOTIF. He couldn't remember where he saw it for the first time, but it was always there. Now, even the clouds mimicked this curse. A monkey riding a whale. It's always that damn monkey, even in the skies themselves... and that whale!

  No it has to be a dream. He wanted to wake up, he had to wake up.

  Bob dropped on the sidewalk. Collapsed before he'd ever gotten to finish that tribute. He lay face up, that cloud above him only felt like it was getting closer. Like he was plankton waiting to be filtered from the water. He couldn't feel his breath anymore. He couldn't feel the heartbeat anymore. It felt like peace. Finally, some peace.

  His astral form passed through the ethereal baleen, it shredded his soul into pieces. As if all the experiences from his life were being separated and compartmentalized by something greater. One part was the emotional experience, the one that tortured him in life. One part was his experience with the forge. Another part still was his experience raising a family. Some parts were closer to other bits, like they were one. The memories of family didn't so much overlap with the experience of their tragic loss, but they were close. The memories of individual family members were separated, and like that every creation he'd ever made. Every experience was separated locally, but when you zoomed out it would look like only a few separations existed. Zoom further out, beyond yourself, and you'd see no separation at all.

  Stories like that repeated all through space and all through time. On one planet, furred creatures with wings lorded over their world. These were known as dragons, and were the first space faring race. They were reduced to filtered plankton at the end of their several centuries long lives all the same. Size didn't matter, nobility didn't matter. You all ended as nourishment for some esoteric actualization of a whale mounted by a monkey.

  Many whales existed everywhere at once. One day, the whales began to converge. Serving as ships that carried souls, they all joined as one. With their convergence, a sea of reunions was stirred. Enemies met, lovers connected, and families mingled once again. Bob saw his daughter, his son, and his wife. The him from childhood saw his parents. All moments lasted forever just as all futures were made brief.

  The cacophony of uniting souls all joined into one, and that soul was RAGING.