Ridiculous Dreams

“Anything you write in this notebook will come true for 24 hours.”

His first instinct was to laugh.

The way he had gotten hold of this notebook was nothing short of a movie plot where the protagonist receives something life-changing by sheer accident or luck.

A dog chasing a random boy it sees, which leads the boy to collide with an unassuming old man, which subsequently leads to him getting the supernatural notebook: that was straight out of a B-tier fantasy film.

While the scenarios that he went through might have led the young and aspiring Kaito to believe in this notebook’s magical powers and write something, he was not young anymore. He was old - thirty-four years old. He was certainly not aspiring anymore. He had given up on his ambitions. His dreams had withered, like the empty cans of beer strewn around the floor.

He threw the notebook aside.

He got up and made two cups of instant ramen. He put three cans of beer in the deep freezer so by the time the ramen was done, they would be a little more chilled and colder.

With his preparations done, he sat down at his desk and opened his rusty laptop that he had been using since his college days.

He opened a streaming site and started watching the newest installment of the show ‘1777’. It was a science-fiction movie where a boy gains the power to peek into people’s past, and when he discovers his parents’ past, he has to confront them. The show was interesting, and Kaito had been keeping up with it for the past two years.

He did not move from his spot until he was done with all six episodes. For six hours, he sat at his desk, watching the show, eating his ramen, and drinking his beer, with the glowing screen the only source of illumination in the otherwise dark room.

By the time he was done, the time was well past 9 pm. He felt like chugging another beer. This was his fifth one for the day. The whole ordeal with the dog had stressed him more than he would like to admit, so he needed more beers than usual.

While his tolerance for beer and alcohol in general had increased significantly after he started drinking regularly for the past three or four years, five beers were still a lot. He started getting a little tipsy. However, it wasn’t just a little tipsy, which he realized after he took a step, tripped on a discarded plastic bottle, and landed face down on his bed. He was lucky it was the bed. Were it somewhere on the floor, he might have cracked his skull open.

He lay on his bed, face down. There was nothing on his mind. No thoughts, no feelings, and no emotions. It was empty. Not even black. Just static.

However, that state did not last for long.

Something started surfacing to the front of his mind. It was not just one thing. It was a cluster. A group of a certain something. As he waited for them to float up, his body started feeling heavy, especially his chest region. That was a cue that something unwelcome was coming. He braced himself.

And it came. Thoughts, feelings, and emotions. They came. In a cluster. And Kaito was cluster-fucked.

What he did not want to think or feel. The carbonation of the chilled beer brought with it the emotions, the feelings, the wishes, and the regret that he had suppressed in his subconscious mind to the forefront os his mind.

It came in waves. Raging waves: often crashing against each other and dispersing into droplets.

He collected those droplets and soaked himself in the extracted memories from those remains.

The last time he ever saw his mom. That day, when he got angry with her over some trivial matter and did not eat the udon she had made, the last udon she had ever made for him.

The time when his girlfriend left him. The words she had hurled at him. It was as if she were driving sharp nails into his heart. Those nails remain in his heart. His chest contrasts in sharp pangs of pain as if to remind him of those nails.

The day he got his first fan letter after the publication of his debut novel. The love and the praise that he had received.

He relived those moments in his drunken stupor. The memories kept rocking his brain, and he could not sit still.

The feelings were too heavy. The emotions were too loud. The regrets were too bitter. And the pain was far too sharp.

He knew all of these were too much for him. That is why he tried not to think about it. However, now that he had no control over his senses, he was being flooded by everything, all at once. The accumulation of all that assailed all of his physical senses. He could not stand it anymore.

He started rolling in his bed. Cradling his head, he rolled from left to right and vice versa, screaming as if what he was feeling was taking a physical toll on him.

He got a little too close to the edge. The moment he realized he was about to fall, it was already too late.

With a loud rumble, he fell on top of the pile of garbage. Remains of water splashed his face and lower body while spoons tried to impale his shirt. While he did groan in pain, thankfully, he had not landed face-first on the solid ground.

He tried to prop himself up, but failed. He slipped again, his leg sent a few cans of beer flying while his hands cleared a bit of plastic. There was also a packet of black, ball-point pens that his head was lying on top of.

He had bought these when he had just gotten his first book published.

I will need them to sign tons of autographs. The reasoning behind that purchase flashed in his mind, and he couldn't help but chuckle wryly.

“Shit.” He said, as he tried getting up for the second time and failed.

He gave up on trying to get up. He knew that the state he was in, he wouldn’t be able to get up by himself for a while.

While his senses were numb and his body movement uncoordinated, he felt his hands touch something.

He turned his head slowly to where his right hand was stretched.

At the end of his blurry sight, he saw something black. He realized what it was.

He pulled it closer to him.

“Anything you write in this notebook will come true for 24 hours, huh?” He muttered the words inscribed on them.

He realized how ridiculous that was.

A wish coming true just by writing in a notebook? If that were true, he would not be this miserable now. All the feelings and wishes he had written in his now lost journal would have come true by now.

And why was it just 24 hours? If you can grant a wish, why not make it last a lifetime? What kind of half-hearted miracle was this?

While these reasonings were forming in his head, there was also a childish part of him stirring beneath the surface. Too much alcohol had altered his brain functioning.

While he knew how truly ridiculous this was, the feelings he had kept bottled up had started consuming his conscious self. A small part of his drunken and unguarded part wanted to believe.

He took out a pen. He opened the first page of the notebook.

He thought. He remembered. He relived.

The moment his mom had suddenly passed away. It was writing that gave him room to breathe.

The day his girlfriend left him. It was writing that kept his heart from shattering.

The days when he struggled to become a book writer. It was writing that gave him the push to keep moving forward.

Writing was what had kept him alive for so long. Without that as his support and his escape, he would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. He would not be here. He would not have been able to publish his first novel. He would not have seen people recognizing his effort. It was all thanks to writing.

If he could write again, if people were to believe in his writing again, maybe, just maybe, he could still go on.

He closed his eyes. He relived the moments of joy during his debut days. It was so bright and dazzling. Like the flame in a dark cave. Like the laughter in an empty room. Like hope breaking through despair.

He wished for that. He wanted to taste it again.

He uncapped the pain.

In the notebook, which he had thrown away as ridiculous, the unambitious man wrote, like a child writing his deepest, purest wish.

“I wish people came to love my writing again.”

He stared at the words, wide-eyed. Like a child gazing at stars in a night sky, hoping a shooting star would pass by and make his wishes come true.

He kept gazing at it until he passed out: from beer or the sheer bliss of his dreams is something even he did not know.