How much time passed before I found myself in the ether ways was as usual impossible to tell. It was abrupt and felt to me as if I had transitioned directly from closing my eyes but, in theory, this was a dream and the same amount of time it should have taken to start dreaming after sleeping was still applicable. Despite it being an entirely lucid and shared experience, it was still difficult to properly analyze since at any given time every person was either within the dream or outside it with nothing that could be shared between sleep and reality to make comparisons. But within the dream I could at least determine that at least a few of the scrubbers foreign to our town had been inside the ways for a fair amount of time before I arrived. That was because the area I arrived in was utterly spotless.

  Green emerald, jagged crystalline edges, all uniform but with the unique differentiation of a snowflake on close inspection, pristine and glittering in the darkness through no source of light. The ceiling, the walls, and the floor all appeared as such in this cylindrical and linear tunnel. Its glass-like appearance looked like it would be painful to the touch, but there was no pain to be felt within this dream even if I wasn’t free from sensations that simulated exhaustion and soreness. This was not the sight that normally greeted me, but the sight that usually saw me off back to the waking world.

  I didn’t meet the individuals responsible for this cleaning upon arrival. This was a shared space that was utilized specifically for communication, but you wouldn’t run into anyone by simply appearing or walking down the tunnel. You had to actively seek them out and then you will be brought to them whether they entered the ether ways from the house beside your own or from the other side of the nation of Hypnoise. It was once believed that the ether ways was a single spot that only resembled a tunnel, but this idea is contradicted by the fact that the filth proliferating from our subconscious is only shared in the tunnel when entered from the same location, which is why all cities and villages need their own scrubbers. One scholar once theorized that the ether ways was only a single band that ran across our world like the horizon and that we were all pulled to the section closest to us, but when he tried prove this by creating activity in a large circle, postulating that at some point of the circle the stains left would be found at the other side of the circle, his theory was proven incorrect. Suffice to say, the ether ways don’t obey geometry and distance as we know it, yet still corelates with our real-world location.

  So, if I wanted to locate and introduce myself to my new coworkers I could have, but I chose to simply walk down a line until I reached an unwashed section of tunnel. I’m wsa sure I’d get to know them plenty in the coming days starting immediately after I awoke from work, but for the time I wished to be alone with my thoughts. It didn’t take me long to find my days starting point. This was good since I would have felt a bit of guilt if they ended up doing all the cleaning themselves. I was still being fully paid after all.

  The splotches and lines contaminating the tunnel were not things that would immediately be found disgusting. They were colorful and ethereal and seemed to bend and twist around the tunnel with ill formed movement that almost felt like crawling. If you only caught a glimpse and moved on you might even find it beautiful, but as your vision lingered a vague uneasiness would well up inside you. The shapes would pull you in and force their impressions on you. What was dancing lines will tease an obscene painting into your eyes without ever settling into its implication. It was all the more horrendous since it made you feel as if it was you yourself that was conjuring the outrageous images to mind and thus staining you with an unwelcome sense of self-loathing. My first day of training I fell into a fit of dry heaving and would have added my vomit to the mess if it had been possible to do so within the dream. It took a week of counseling for me to return and that was after the first three months had been spent acclimating me to the shock the experience would induce.

  By my feet a bucket of water appears and in my hand a mop. This was all routine now, but it had taken even longer to perfect than adjusting to the sight of filth had. Once again, my mind goes back to my days of learning, preparing myself for the arduous career I had committed to.

  It was an institution in the city of Vealt which is located roughly six days by wagon to the northeast of where I now live. The city itself was fairly large compared to what I was used to, but the institute was located many miles away, so I never really experienced much of the life it had to offer in the two years I stayed. It was built at a distance so that our training wouldn’t interrupt the cleaning and use of the ether ways within the city.

  I was unsociable as a teenager and had yet to develop the benign casual friendliness I display to my neighbors these days, but I still made acquaintances just fine with my fellow trainees and instructors. There was only a handful of us to begin with, and we all tended to fall on the dour side of things, neither forming conflicts nor fast friendships.

  It was there, over a two-year period, we all learned the simple act of summoning a bucket of water and a mop within the ether ways. That was it. The cleaning itself took no training and acclimating to the visions of filth would come with time, but summoning a simple mop took the entire two years to passably accomplish.

  It wasn’t actually difficult to summon the image of an object in the ether ways, it’s just that the image would be ill formed and more likely to spread filth than clean it. If someone without training attempted to do so they would create a mishmash of images that their brain would interpret as a mop and bucket and the water would lay new lines and splotches upon the ground the mop head dragged across. In the beginning when we tried to force the image we would always spray splotches of filth from our hands instead. It was a matter of will power and focus, but the way we learned it was routine and iteration. Even now I couldn’t say what had made the difference for an actual stable form of a mop to start appearing in my hand and it hadn’t been perfect even by the time I started work. Even though we learned to suppress our own accumulation of filth while dreaming it took additives in the medication we took before entering the ways to completely shut it down. They wouldn’t make a difference in someone without the training, but without them it would be as if we were constantly walking through our own mop water and leaving trails of dirt.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I wondered if any of that handful I studied alongside would be among our visitors as I began pushing the mop. Not that I would have much to say to them if they were. Listlessly I pushed the mop over the floor, wall, and ceiling as I let my mind wonder. It was best not to direct my thoughts both for my focus and for the monotony. A pair of spindly dancing lines drew my eyes in. The way they erotically weaved together made it easy to tell what thoughts had conjured them, yet it also filled my mind with confusion as If I couldn't tell what their movements implied. The confusion was alien and disgusting to me. It was innocent, far too innocent for my adult brain, but it forced its perspective onto me refusing to accept what to me was clear. It must have been a child walking in on his parents during the night. A scarring, but not uncommon occurrence. Surely it had confused the child, but the parents would have weaved their white lie, and they would only understand what they witnessed sometime in the future, but experiencing confusion I shouldn’t feel made my skin crawl.

  I have felt many perspectives and would feel many more before the night was over. The guilt of the cheater, the pain of the victim, and experience I won’t name, and this is only for matters of copulation.

  It will only be three hours tonight unlike the usual eight. A full shift and a full night’s sleep. The first three hours were always the easiest. For the first three I ignored the passing of time. Then I would tell myself after spending the same amount of time I just experienced, I would only have two hours left. Then I would focus on those two hours and what a short time that was. I could tell the time with a summoned watch, but unfortunately it adapted to my perspective so it couldn’t be used to draw any conclusions about time spent in the ether ways versus time spent dreaming.

  To take my mind off the influence of the filth I played a strange song over and over again in my mind.

  Lift the mop

  Sweep a circle

  The filth tilts and falls

  Make it stop

  I need a miracle

  I can hear a demon’s calls

  It was the tune of a children’s melody sung in the village that I nonsensically replaced with uninspired lines about my work. The dark humor was the closest I would feel to being cheered and I swear I could burst out to laughter at it under different circumstances but would only find it stupid after I finished working. The way I repeated it over and over in my head while attempting to add more lyrics without even fully forming them felt like madness, but I swear I found real comfort in it. It was a shame I couldn’t be this whimsical during my normal life since right now the dull ache ruined the effect.

  An hour had passed, and I broke my rule on checking the time. The decrease in hours today had only made me more impatient. Two hours is the same as when I’m almost done normally.

  I had for the past hour been moving about randomly. I would sweep a large area ununiformly then go through getting the edges and pieces I missed. Now I cleaned in striped partitions. A line directly ahead of me carving out the full circle of the tunnel. One step forward then I’d repeat. I could never stick to the same pattern for too long. I don’t know whether I was hoping to break up the monotony or if it was a natural result of not directing my full attention to the actual act of mopping, but it didn’t matter much either way. As soon as I changed the pattern I would feel as if I had already been using it for hours. There are only so many patterns and I use most of them every day, but perhaps it’s just that I’m not being inventive enough.

  I stepped forward to begin the next circle and my drifting eyes were pulled into the shifting pool of a muddy splotch. I blanched, dropping my mop which dissolved as it hits the ground, fell to my knees, and covered my mouth. I hadn’t had such a visceral reaction in a long time. I’m shivered as I tried to calm my nerves. It wasn't proof of anything, this could have just come from someone’s subconscious, the echoes of some inner demon. These stains can’t be used as proof of a crime. I’m sure…I’m sure no one in or town would have gone that far. I see them every night. Almost every night I see their absolute worst. They’re terrible, obscene, and wicked. They’re gilded pigs, degenerates hiding behind plastic smiles, but not like this. I trust in their constant. It’s nothing but a bad dream spilt out from a tarnished soul.

  I never investigate. I never listen for rumors. I don’t wish to differentiate the truth.

  Two hours had now passed.

  But we did have strangers in town that night. My mind had been unable to shake away the image of the muddy splotch. Strangers like that smiling woman. It couldn’t have been her or any of the scrubbers who left it, but I wonder how she would have felt if she had come across it. Would she continue to wear that same subtle smile. Would the tragic mess to her be…entertainment. I know I’m being presumptuous, but the combination of that smile and what I’ve seen in this dream was dreadful to say the least.

  A muddy water flows

  At its edge I dip my toes

  It drags me in and doesn’t stop

  Sweeping with this human mop

  I continued my delirious rhyme until I found that a little over three hours had passed and there was indeed no filth left around me. I wouldn’t wake for another five hours as usual, but I didn’t need to spend them in the ether ways tonight. Leaving was a simple enough thing. There was no need to lie down, I simply closed my eyes and fell into a true sleep easier than I could have imagined, trading the surreal lucid experience for a real dream.

  Or so I would have thought until I felt a small knobby hand shaking my shoulders to wake me. “There you are, there you are, and that’s our last one to wake. Our intrepid veteran Douglass Draemin himself. The youngest veteran we have! Well gather round gather round everyone.”

  Groggily I opened my eyes and sat on the edge of my cot, the same position all the other scrubbers, who seemed to have indeed awoken before me, were in. In their waking states they had gone from the same terse expressions to having a wider variety of countenances, even if they all tended to lean towards the plain side. There were four men and three women. Among them I only recognized Benjamin Kartwhyle, or Bennie for short, one of our town other scrubbers five years my senior, and the smiling woman whose smile was even wider and more disconcerting to me in her waking state.

  “Alright, alright, gather round everyone and listen well. I’d love to introduce you all to each other, and I’d have loved even more to have given you the full night’s rest you deserve, but there will be plenty of time to get to know one another on the wagon ride along the way and you’ll all be getting more than enough sleep in the coming days. You see what’s happened is…”

  The situation was worse than I could have imagined.