A Dream Still Untold

Dreams.

A vast sea of untapped potential bound only by one’s own perceptions.

A limitless world of one’s creation, unchained by the norms of society.

For one facing the tedious wall of creativity such as yourself, endless tales await. More words than one could ever put pen to paper reside in the recesses of one’s own mind. A daunting amount of experiences greets you that can’t help but be forgotten once your state of consciousness shifts back to reality.

Once again, your eyes open, having escaped from that world, regardless of your desire to do so. The dull, bland scenery of your room greets them every morning – a simple array of bookshelves and wardrobe that are hardly worth mentioning.

A dreadful glare of brightness peeks out of the corner of your window, barging rudely into your life. You simply want to pull the covers and drown yourself again in the darkness, but eventually, the heat accumulating around you becomes stifling.

The moment that you lift yourself from that self-made prison is the moment that the sun declares victory, its cheery glow having emerged triumphant once again at dashing the memories of your escape from reality. With each motion, you feel the familiarity of your potential stories slip away, lost into the void.

You despise this moment. You hate the feeling of it all disappearing. But nonetheless, you have no choice. Or that is, until today.

You never hesitated when your long-time friend, Bill, suggested that you try to record your dreams using a nifty device he created. Rather than rushing to jot down any minute detail that could be recalled, the temptation of having them preserved to access anytime far surpassed any skepticism at the procedure. The excitement of retaining what was deemed as fleeting is like honey on your lips.

A morning of impatience and rushed actions sends you barreling to his place; your reward – a cumbersome metal helmet wrapped around your head. Your voice echoes back towards your ears as it bounces its way for an exit. But Bill hears you. He says to you, “sweet dreams.”

A brief nap is what was scheduled, but unknowingly, that is the last time you see his face. Before long, darkness overcomes you once more, and you bid the current world farewell.

As you expected, the world of dreams is filled with raw concepts unbound by reason. Common sense no longer applies as you wake up riding on whales that graze through the clouds in the sky. You reach out and take a swipe, and instantly, it turns into cotton candy stuck to your hand. Common sense tells you that it is merely water, but in this place, you shrug it off and extend your tongue towards it. Your reward is a sweetness that rivals the tastiest cream from your favorite bakery.

You lay back and close your eyes, enjoying the slow bobbing motion as the whale continues to sail through the endless blue sky.

There is no sun here.

Of course, that feeling doesn’t last. The next moment your eyes open, a grassy field greets you. Furthermore, the whale is gone, and you no longer feel the wind in your face.

Looking down, you see a brown mane attached to a mare. Turning your head, you realize that you are sitting atop it. The mare simply turns its head towards you and gives you a ‘neigh’ in acknowledgement. Smiling, you reach out with your hand and caress the silky strands between your fingers. With your other hand, you place it against your chest, feeling something cold and hard.

Apparently, now you are wearing armor. As the mare takes a few steps forward, its metallic clinking confirms its presence on your body. You instantly feel knightly. This new role has become yours now.

You don’t question how your clothing changed. You don’t need to. Aware that nothing you see here is reality, you instead close your eyes and enjoy the feel of the wind against your face again. The panting of your mare and the clanking of its hooves across the field tickle against your ear.

You dare not open your eyes, for fear that the scenery will change again. However, when you finally do, your will to remain here has prevailed. You continue onward to see how this journey unfolds.

Quickly, you find that the passage of time and distance feels almost nonexistent, as your mind jumps from place to place, only recalling the details most important to you. After all, it is but a dream. There is no need for the lull of transitions. No heavenly body in the sky dictates your actions. No blinding glare interrupts your routine. You find it futile to think too hardly about figments of your imagination.

Practicalities are best left when a measure of reality exists.

For that reason, you simply drift from scene to scene, fully immersing yourself in the majesty of your inner world. One day, you find yourself exploring caverns in search of treasure. Another day, you greet the heavens while standing upon the highest peaks. What will greet you on the next day and thereafter?

A romantic starry sky? A haven of enchanting ladies? The fiery depths of hell?

Wherever you end up, one thing is for sure – the grandest sights await your arrival.

On your journeys, people approach you, giving off a sense of familiarity. It does not matter that you know virtually nothing about them. Your lips mouth the complimentary statements to counter their dialogue. It feels as natural as if they had been by your side the entire time. The thought that their name escapes you doesn’t even cross your mind. They are your acquaintances, your companions, your sworn brothers and sisters – but only for as long as the scene plays out.

The same goes for your lover, who you wake up to one day. An entire relationship carved out and handed to you, and all that matters is that you reach out into the darkness and touch her silky hair, caress the skin along her face, and reach in for a kiss. The response that you get is everything that you imagined it to be – soft, passionate, and just a tad bit messy.

You slowly wrap your arms around her figure, basking in the warmth of another, but soon, the scene slows to a crawl. Even here, you struggle as to what action to take next. Your lack of experience in this domain apparently has its limits. With a shrug, your mind laughs it off as silly details and resets itself to something more akin to your nature.

Every day feels much different from the rest, but you hardly have the time to notice. The skin on the back of your hands grows wrinkled. Your hair shows speckles of gray, an eyesore in the otherwise perfect mane atop your head. You hesitate to peer at anything reflective as you would only become depressed by how your face has sagged and weathered. Even here, time is merciless.

But with every journey comes an end. And before you know it, you are no longer the hero of that story. Your mind has decided that enough was enough, and thus, erases it from existence. Like a whim of the Gods, you lose everything and awaken as another.

Revived, you look upon the expanse of this new world, not with regret, but with an endless thirst for discovery. You rub your eyes; the memories of your past life fade away, your hands like erasers. You are a brand-new person as you take your first step here.

This happens not once, not twice, but continues without any end in sight. At some point, you briefly stop to wonder when you will wake up, but the next new shiny thing catches your eyes. The temptations of the unknown are far too strong for you to resist. And slowly, each cycle brings you farther away from your original self.

With each moment you open your eyes, a possibility of a brand-new horizon greets you. What you see is what you get. There is no option but to live in the moment. And so you do, casting away the doubts that your previous life held. Your previous goals are forgotten in place of the urges before you. Your life exists purely for each fleeting scene. You react not as a man of reason and experience, but one that captures the essence of every moment and bends it to your whims.

The flow of water rushing against your body as you desperately hold onto a shark you just stabbed.

The clink of gold as you dump it atop a weathered wooden table in a bar, with your companions hovering around you.

The sinking despair you feel as your fingers start to slip from the last safe haven protecting you from the blood-thirsty demons below.

The grip of your scepter as you watch your subjects, and your kingdom, pledge their allegiance to you.

Sometimes, the grandest result graces you with its blessing. Other times, the cackling laughter of a doomed future awaits. Regardless, there is nothing for you to fear. There are no memories pulling you one way or the other. They have all been cleansed with a blink of an eye. You feel nothing but a sense of familiarity as you dive headlong into each moment, without fear, without consequence, and without the baggage of what you believed to be yourself.

When one wakes up each day, not knowing whether the person looking back at you in the mirror is the same as before, at what point are you still you? You laugh at the brief crease of worry adorning that face as you turn away to begin a new challenge. With an existence so fleeting, there is no room for such things. You avoid the invasive glare poking at the corner of the mirror’s reflection. Yet, you cannot escape from it this time; it has finally come back for you.

That is why, when your eyes truly open for the first time in a very long while, you calmly glance over at the person rushing by your side, treating you like a newborn that had emerged from his mother’s womb.

Strangely, his words echo in your ears louder than any voice you remember hearing.

“You’ve finally come back to us! After 100 years, no less! My ancestors and I had essentially given up hope of you doing so!”

There is no sense of shock. After all, you’ve been in stranger circumstances than this. Instinctively, you’ve turned into a person that takes nearly everything in stride. You decide to play along like always.

“Oh? Asleep for 100 years? What has caused such a strange event to occur?” The adventurer in you is amused by this setting. The curiosity overcomes any sense of caution.

“An accident, by my great-great grandfather, the friend who placed you in the dream recording machine. Fortunately, your body remained preserved, despite your mind being trapped for so long.”

You stare at the face talking to you, trying to recall traces of the friend that you once had. You give up because you can’t recall the original person to begin with. That was lost many lifetimes ago.

The man, dressed casually in a polo shirt and khakis, walks over to a shelf and pulls out a book from the neatly arranged line of texts. You glance around, seeing a simple study typical of anyone in scholarly work. The contraption and medical bed you were just lying upon feels quite out of place compared to the rest of the room.

“Here. Hope this jogs your memory.” You intuitively take the book and flip through its pages. The story is nothing more than a hero’s journey, something hardly relevant to the current situation.

Unknowingly, a sense of nostalgia hits you, but the cause is unknown. Reason has become estranged from you; rather, you live in the moment, like always. That is what you decided long ago. Yet, a feeling of displacement starts gnawing at your side.

“This was a book written from your recorded dreams,” the man finally says.

“My dreams? What a silly thing to do.”

“From what I heard, you were the one that accepted the procedure in the first place. However, my ancestor panicked when he was unable to restore your consciousness. Over time, he had convinced himself to care for you in penitence. But at the same time, he decided that it would be a waste to simply discard the dreams that were constantly recorded only to be overwritten due to a lack of storage space. He set about fulfilling your desire – that of turning your dreams into writing.”

You chuckle at that last statement. “And he made money from that?” But the response you get causes you to stiffen.

“Yep. They became instant hits. The shelves that you see here are a complete collection of the writings stemmed from your dreams. I, myself, am working on your next piece. It’s been more than enough to cover the costs for your care.”

You eye the shelves once again, this time with avid scrutiny. For once, a measure of surprise adorns your face. At a glance, there were tens of books. You hardly believe that such a thing exists.

As you take your first step off the bed, your legs feel the gravity of the situation. Immediately, you stumble forward and into the arms of the other man.

“Whoa there! My ancestors and I might have done all we could to preserve your body, but you still need time to readjust to normal life. Let me help you.”

Wordlessly, you nod, motioning for him to bring you to the chair next to the shelves. Shakily, you pet the title on the cover of the book in your hand before cracking it open once again.

The Hero and the Tale of Ever Darkness, you mouth silently as you dive into another’s adventure, rather than your own, for the first time in forever.

Hours pass as you become single-mindedly absorbed in the books along the shelf, each tickling the recesses of your mind. A vague sensation of familiarity dots your thoughts during each one but never enough to trigger the return of any memories. However, you feel the passion bubbling up from each line, creating a vivid display of imagery as it seemingly envelops you for the second time.

Part of you is jealous that your own so-called dreams could move you so much, despite being penned by someone else. Another part of you is grateful that you could experience them once again, rather than losing them forever. It would be ever so bitter to have forgotten that which was so precious to you. By the end, you don’t even mind that they were written by another’s hand.

It is what it is, you tell yourself. The many lifetimes within the captivity of the dream world guided you as such. You take things in stride as you normally do, or would have if you had still been in the dream world.

Rather, it seems like reading these stories begin to jostle your mind, like an electric current finding its way to a long-lost toy connected in a forgotten room. Seeing these scenes sparks a hint of other dreams that still lie in waiting.

The clink of a cup of tea interrupts your musings. The man from before, who you have only learned recently is called Will, sets it down before you, an offer of refreshment to reenergize the nerves.

Slowly, you reach for it, knowing full well that your movements aren’t what they used to be. You bring a second hand to steady it before tipping it towards your lips. The hot liquid tickles your tongue reactivating the senses that have been dormant for so many years.

The taste of milk tea immediately pricks at your memories. The sloshing liquid and bittersweet taste are not as you imagined, but then again, you are no longer confined by your own mind. Still, you can’t help but be disappointed that it doesn’t taste like rich buttercream and the essence of nature. Nor does it lift your spirits before facing an insurmountable challenge. The taste is simply there, as it should, and nothing more.

However, it does succeed in stirring one part of you.

“My pen and paper. I feel the urge to write. To fill in the gaps of stories that are still untold.”

For a hundred years of dreams, the books that resided here couldn’t possibly be all that came of it. After all, it only takes one image to start an idea. One vision to create a story. Surely, this is not all that your creativity could amount to.

And so, after Will passes pen and paper to you, your pen hovers slightly at the top, waiting to scribe yourself a new story, one of your own making and not at the whim of dreams.

After several moments of hesitation, you stiffen at the realization – it was never about the lack of details or creativity within your own mind. Rather, everything had been caused by a different issue.

Just how does one start such a grand story in the first place?

Your mind fumbles and flails, tortured by the dam of ideas held back by your limitations. You panic as you have no boat to coast along its flow as they seep through the crevices. Quickly, you try to find some foothold, any measure of ground to place your foundation on. Eventually, the trickle becomes a gush. The gush becomes a torrent; it drowns you, sending you back to darkness.

The sensation of warmth upon your head rouses you. A brightness invades your eyes; the sun is still dreadful. As if blinding reality glares at you with its cheeky grin, you shield yourself from it. But this time, there is no darkness for you to hide behind, no dream to distract yourself with.

You have no choice but to face this day and all of its undesirable, little details. The sound of your acquaintance on the other side of the room enters your ears, the smooth rhythm of continuous typing makes you feel inadequate. Occasionally, a sip of tea taunts you from that direction.

A new story unfolds with or without you. You question yourself.

To continue dreaming or to act? What do you wish for?

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Hallo!

This was a bit of experimental writing. 2nd person, present tense. A self-imposed challenge. The theme revolved around writer's block and people sleeping on ideas. What if you had an immeasurable time to come up with ideas? Even then, you won't necessarily know what to write, what to convey. It is truly a struggle, when the ideas keep coming but you don't have the time or ability to put them down in a satisfactory way. An idea is an idea. Anyone can come up with it and snatch the thunder away. If you don't push forward and make it happen, then you will end up seeing it somewhere else at some point.