Shower

The shower's always a liminal space. Hitchcock knew it. Danaë knew it. Brittany and Amanda are about to know it, but it might be the last thing they know. The water was already running when they noticed it. Neither of them turned it on, and neither of them minds. They dreamed it at the same time: standing under the water while something hummed through everything. They've always heard it, they agree. They're not suffering, and that's precisely what makes it frightening. Desire horror works that way.

The oldest trap is the one that looks like a reward. The crew watches Amanda and Brittany on the monitors and crosses them off the list. Too far gone to be useful, pleasant and empty and finished. What the entity actually wants, Holly explains, is something left to corrupt. Resistance. The specific texture of a mind that hasn't surrendered yet. The ship isn't interested in blank vessels. It's interested in the moment before the blank. Amanda and Brittany stay aboard as warnings. Sara and Kara are the real candidates.

Every mythology has a version of the same story: the clever one who follows the trail and finds exactly what was waiting for them. Sara and Kara have spent the voyage chasing whale prophecies and binding rites, independently arriving at the same conclusion from different directions. The Binding of Waters names it directly: a bride, a vessel, an entity called the Old Groom. What they believe is an investigation is the final stage of their own selection. A note falls out of a book. Sara goes deeper into the ship. Kara stays with a knife, a thirty minute deadline, and the dawning realization that understanding a trap might be the OPPOSITE of escaping it.

Series artwork for this arc was created by Echo Doll in collaboration with Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. Deep Dream State uses human art at every stage of the creative supply chain.

Cosmic horror, psychological conditioning, surveillance, adult themes, dream manipulation.