Dream eaters

Spiderwebs stretched across a hazy sky colored in perpetual twilight. Beneath them, the city fought to ignore the fine webs spun above their heads. Amidst the crowds of terrified people walked a number dreamless souls, the ones who'd lost themselves to the eyeless spiders that crawled across the skies. Those that could still dream at night were often plagued with nightmares.

Though the skies never changed, clocks still functioned, and at night the city's dreamers gathered at the Center. The unassuming building had no windows on the lower ten floors. The upper ten were nothing but tinted glass, where the researchers did their work. From those windows, they watched the dreamers approach the building, and they sighed at the ever-decreasing number of arrivals. On the lower floors, security guards dressed in muted blues and violets led the dreamers through narrow hallways, into large rooms filled with tightly organized rows of beds. In each room, four black-clad collectors waited by the walls, with small wire cages in hand.

The clocks ticked away as if to fight the unchanging sky, and one by one the dreamers closed their eyes. As they fell asleep, butterflies filled the rooms; pale, delicate creatures barely larger than an eye. Their wings seemed to glow in the low light of the rooms as they darted about, searching for a way outside. The silent collectors crept between the rows of beds to gather the butterflies, slowly guiding them into the cages. It was tedious, but they couldn't let the dreams get damaged.

A young collector let out a hushed curse, startling the others. An older collector, the trainer, walked over to them and asked what was wrong. The young one shook their head and whispered an apology and held out a hand. In their palm was the crushed remnant of a dream, its wings fluttering faintly as the trainer sighed.

The trainer said nothing. The young collector surrendered their cage and walked over to a wall, the hand in which the dream died clutched to their chest. Once the remaining butterflies were gathered, two collectors locked the cages and carried them to the labs. The trainer, meanwhile, led the young collector to the back wall of the room.

They ran a hand along the surface of the wall. A faint line appeared and the wall split open, revealing a field of grass surrounded by low rose bushes. The trainer stepped onto the walkway and waved the young collector into the garden as the wall sealed shut behind them. It wasn't much of a garden, with only a few patches of flowers scattered across the grass, but the walkway surrounding it was carved with many types of flowers. Above their heads was a light that rivaled the nigh-forgotten sun.

The young collector took a trowel from the wall and studied the walkway. When the trainer asked what flower they wanted, the collector pointed with the trowel at an image of morning glories, and the trainer reached into the stone. The carving disappeared from the stone and became real in the trainer's hands. The two stepped over the roses, and the young collector began to dig.

When the hole was deep enough, the collector placed the dream into the soil. The trainer set the flowers on top of its body, and the two finished burying the young collector's mistake.

The young collector turned to the trainer with a question in their eyes, though they didn't have the words to speak it. The trainer understood even without words, and simply shrugged.

"It would have died anyway," they said. "These dreams were going to be poisoned."