Dreams

The boy awoke from his slumber. Too many times he had found trouble sleeping, yet his dreams had become so intense they had outgrown his reality. He could no longer seek refuge in his own world, or even hide behind the wall of illusions he had spent lifetimes building. His dream had caught up with reality, and to his much-maligned displeasure, it had turned into a bittersweet nightmare.

The boy dove into a new experience; he thought of it as an epiphany. He saw visions of past, present and future worlds, images of broken hearts, suffering souls and broken bodies. He also saw visions of his beloved, and in his dreams she walked away from him every time he tried to get closer to her. She was the damned treasure chest to his pirates’ ship, the guarded jewel to his cave of darkness.

The dreams brought him back to past versions of himself. A sort of déjà-vu, or even more a moment of clairvoyance from which he could reflect upon his past life.

The boy grew frustrated by the minute; he could see and remember all of his dreams clearly, yet he could not interpret any one of them.

Granted, the visions had reached a point of unpredictability, where the dream would take the shape of the boy’s fears and turn them into a grueling place, or a horrible memory.

And each time he would be transported to that morbid place, to face the memories he feared most, he would wake up in shock, struck with fear and unable to catch sleep again.

He recalls one of his journeys. He had been blown away into a land of serenity, where nature’s grassland was refurbished and transformed into a white paradise. The sky was clearer than he could remember. He recalls seeing a bright light; however, he could witness no sun. The wind gently caressed his hair and he felt at peace with himself.

Suddenly, the wind blew and an army of countless men fell at his feet. They were all identical: tall figure, short hair and a very pale face. The boy had thought of them as mimes.

At first sight, he attempted to communicate with them, speaking numerous sentences in different languages, but he had gone unheard. The men all stood in the same position, and froze as if waiting for instructions. Then, they circled the young boy and began chanting in unison, while raising both hands to the sky.

The boy fell under their screeching sounds, intimidated by the uniformity of their synchronous movements. It was as if they were designed to obey a set of instructions and nothing could disrupt their harmony.

As the wind blew stronger, the boy heard whispers in the air, yet he failed to identify a visible source. The chanting intensified around him, and the light that once surrounded his white paradise started to fade before completely disappearing.

In a shattered world where the value of the heart is so often lost in favor of a molded whole, he was the only individual that remained. His thoughts persisted, yet he could not hear them from the aching presence of the ever-rising uproar of chants.

The boy felt so lonely, disconnected and rejected that he sought escape. In his world, with his heart increasingly sinking under the weight of the masses, he had no one but himself to turn to. And in spite of the misdirection, the confusion and the despair he had gathered in his soul, he had not lost sight of what was truly important: a world in his own image, a place of ideals, where laughter, music and innocence were the liquids of an elixir destined to restore truth amidst uncertainty.

The fallen paradise was devoid of light; yet in the boy’s heart, the light shone so brightly it disrupted the movement of the hapless masses, forcing them to retreat into the arms of the wind.

Radiating with light, the boy had uncovered a hidden truth concealed for the ages under the Earth’s remains. His body shivered with excitement, his mind drew a blank, and he woke up in the realms of reality, troubled with what he had just witnessed.

Was the journey he sought a revelation? Or was it an illusion born out of desperation and sickness of living in a world where morals and values are trumped by evil intentions?

In any case, it was a sign of hope, and a dream worth holding on to. For no matter how frighteningly real his visions had gotten, the boy knew this was a dream worth living out in the real world.