Larry the Lamp woke up. He felt himself floating through an empty dark void; a gentle humming whirred in the background. It was cold and silent and he couldn't feel his body. He would've thought it wasn't even there anymore if it wasn't for the realization of a feeling inside him. There was something gross and ancient crawling around in his skin, eating its way through him. He could do nothing about it. The sensation wormed it's way through his entire being; it felt like many tiny needles coated in mud overtaking his nervous system. It could almost be described as the equal and opposite sensation of corruption. All of the sickening filth with none of the cathartic warmth.
He couldn't move.
There was something whispering in his ear. It was so uncomfortably, disgustingly close, like the person's lips were pressed against his ear, but he couldn't hear what it was saying. The whispering crawled into his ear, through the canal, and rested on top of his brain. It was cold and wispy, like nitrogen gas. The cold spread through his body, while the feeling itself seeped into his brain. The words were etching themselves onto his thoughts even though he couldn't read them. It was like he wasn't meant to in the first place.
Larry slowly closed his eyes, and opened them again. Without telling himself to. He... he wasn't in control at all. He couldn't move, or speak, or even blink or breath. All he could do was think, and watch his body do something else.
Suddenly, he found himself in a bedroom. There was a little boy next to him. How odd indeed.
"Oh, somebody's sleepy!-
-Heheh, But that's silly!" he heard himself say.
There was something in between those two notions that he couldn't grasp. The boy seemed to be fighting back.
The person in control of his body continued, "How can you be sleepy, if you don't know how to have Dreams?"
At that moment, Larry decided to check out of whatever was happening. After all, he wasn't in control anyways. Why even bother. He needed to get his body back, or at least get out of it. Being a free floating consciousness might not be the worst in this scenario. Didn't he die though? How could he be here? He was so terribly concerned about his predicament that he didn't even notice much when the whole world turned into a cartoon for a few moments.
He snapped back into the present when he heard screaming. He saw the boy sitting in a tub full of oil, how filthy indeed. His body stepped into the tub and grabbed the boy, then slowly shoved him under the surface. Bad dream... it would repeat over and over again. The words tumbled out of his mouth like a waterfall. Like he was perfectly directed to commit the acts. His movements were so smooth and clear, not like the real him. Perhaps he could just go with the flow of this, he thought as the child clawed at his arms. There was no pain to the frantic attack. It didn't much matter; whoever was in control of him was obviously far stronger than the child.
He didn't much mind being in the situation for now, it was better than being dead. Was it not?
...
The song and dance continued almost forever, it seemed to Larry. His body would dance around the room, singing nonsense while the child loudly sobbed into his blanket. There WAS no way out of this, so he might as well watch the fun. Fun in large quotation marks. Whoever was controlling him clearly didn't know when to take a break. Was existence not tiresome for this mystery person?
"And you can have a dream about eating a drink, and you can have a dream about buying a hat! And you can have a dream about losing your friends! And you can have a dream about burning your fr-"
The world went fuzzy for a millisecond, and Larry found himself back in the void... alone.
Oh wait, no he wasn't, there was someone right over there!
Larry directed his attention to a small object boy curled up in a ball, crying to himself. It was hard to pick up on any characteristics from this far away, but he had thin, silky hair, and a very colorful shirt. Larry was about to edge his way over to him, maybe by... swimming his consciousness through the void(?), when the world suddenly seemed to tilt. The boy flitted out of existence and Larry tumbled over to a lower section of the infinite grayness.
He found himself surrounded by even more people. He saw what seemed to be a clock related object on his own... and a group of food objects huddled together. He also noticed a strange creature and snickered to himself. That wasn't an object or a human, that was a giant butterfly man. How silly!
Wait a minute, he could move! Before, he had been nothingness, but now he could see and move in the void. Perhaps the controller had grown tired of keeping him down? It didn't much matter though, as there wasn't exactly much to feel.
The small crying boy from before reappeared and the butterfly disappeared. Everything and everyone kept flickering in and out of existence, and he even flicked back into that cursed bedroom a few times! As the intensity and rapidity of the switches increased, the void tilted more and more, sending the objects flying to and fro throughout it. As the world shook, the void's gray started to brighten! It was as if someone was mixing up the colors of a drink. The objects were getting quite tangled up now! Oh, it's all such a mess! There were strange invisible walls that they would all slam into, knock their heads against, crack their limbs. But it didn't mean anything at all! What the hell was this?! Larry had long forgotten his concerns about his mysterious possession, he just wanted to GET OUT OF HERE!
The tumbling and shaking and moving increased in frequency, and someone was bound to break their neck at this point. Larry cringed as he repeatedly got crushed by the other objects in the void. They were all so large and it was all so heavy and electric and loud and it hurt so much so much so much.
Then the tilting stopped...
...and the world grew dark.
A pitch black splashed into the gray like paint in water. The humming from before stopped, and Larry felt himself go unconscious yet again.
...
The teachers woke up in a field. The sky was dark.