The sound was loud and insisted on staying.
For a moment, it seemed they were really ringing at the door but it happened to
be all in the dream. The sound was horrible, louder than anything he had heard
in the past. He wanted to wake up but couldn’t until he forced his body to
answer to his command. It hurt, like peeling of a Band-Aid. The sound then
stopped and he felt he was back at his bed but the truth was his own brain had
deceived him. Unable to get him out, it had just transported him elsewhere.
First, he seemed to be sleeping in something
similar to a bed but then the feeling fade away and he started falling and
falling and falling through consecutive holes in a deep blackness of his
subconscious mind. He felt the wind on his face and his ankles but did not
worry. Somehow, he knew that he would land softly somewhere, eventually. The
area kept changing color, sometimes being red and other times black again.
Again, he felt he had woken up but this time
he knew it wasn’t real. He hadn’t landed anywhere, instead having appeared in a
grassy field with small hills and nothing else in sight. Then, the sky changed
and it became nighttime and in the ground a forest had sprung up to life. He
automatically entered the forest and hoped to find a proper exit to his dreams
from there. Maybe there was a door or something special he had to do to end all
of this nonsense.
He felt trapped in a world similar to the one
in Alice in Wonderland but the difference was that Alice’s world was at least
funny and interesting. His dream world was seriously boring next to it. Having
realized he wasn’t able to wake up by his own will, he tried to change the
world he was in but all he could achieve was to make some flowers appear. As
night had fallen just minutes ago, he could barely see them so he tried to
change night back to day but al he could do was getting the sun stuck in the
sky, casting an annoying twilight all around.
Walking became harder as his eyes had to be
covered because of the light. He walked as if he had become blind in a second,
touching everything he could and doubting every step he walked. Then he reached
a cliff and had to stop moving. But that didn’t change anything: he still
slipped and fell, again falling through holes and for a long time.
Then, he actually woke up for a moment and
realized he was very warm beneath his blankets, so warm in fact that he had
been sweating a lot. He removed his short in a moment and fell fast asleep once
again. Surprisingly, he wasn’t wearing a shirt either in his dream. Apparently
his subconscious liked the idea of being shirtless so much that it had put him
in a tropical setting, which he appreciated.
People he knew were all around: his family,
some of his friends, even people he had never been very familiar with. They
were all in the beach, playing volleyball or laughing or splashing water to
others. It was a small paradise and the sun felt real on the skin, on his face.
He wished the dream wouldn’t end but he knew that wasn’t possible, not even if
he died in his sleep.
He stood up and walked down the beach, smiling
at his mother who was attending to a younger him and then watching how many of
the guys he had dated were casually talking in a small group. They all smiled
at him and waved their hands and he knew it was very strange but still waved
his hand and smiled too.
There was a pier he hadn’t noticed before,
made of cement pillars and wood planks on the floor. He walked slowly on it,
feeling the wood on his feet and the warmth of the sun on his cheeks. He really
wanted this to be real, to be the world he lived in. Not only because of the
beautiful setting but because he didn’t feel any worry, he didn’t feel he had
to do anything. It was just perfect.
At the end of the pier there was a man, taller
than him and shirtless too, that looked at the ocean. All he could see of that
person was his back, which didn’t look bad at all. And as he saw him, he
realized he knew who he was and that he had to talk to him, to see his face and
to hug and kiss him and share his life with him and cherish every single moment
they were able to be together.
But just when he was able to touch the man’s
arm, the scene changed and the guy was behind him, with his arms around him. He
had no idea why, but he wasn’t compelled anymore to see his face. Maybe deep
down, in some other level of consciousness, he already knew who that person was
or at least what he looked like. Maybe that’s why he didn’t mind turning around
and stop watching the sunset beyond the perfect blue ocean. It was the first
time in his life he finally felt at home.
As it happens often, his body chose that exact
moment to wake him up. He opened his eyes sad, frustrated to know all that had
happened was a lie and that there weren’t any arms around him hugging him,
making him feel alive and safe. He turned his head for a minute, realizing it
hadn’t been his brain that had woke him up, it had been the rain in the window.
It was very dark outside and he knew he had some more hours to sleep, after all
it was Saturday the next day so he wasn’t precisely going to wake up early for
anything.
This time, it took him a while to fall asleep,
as he kept analyzing what he had seen in the dream, trying to remember more
about the man in the pier. But his mind finally let go of the thought of
someone that didn’t existed and just surrendered to the few extra hours of
sleep.
This time, he ran through some destroyed
street. There were bricks all around and graffiti on the wall and he felt he
was in some serious thing because he couldn’t hear anything besides his feet
stomping on the ground. He finally stopped running and went up some stairs, to
the second floor of a typical movie motel. He had never seen one of those in
actual life, but he had seen so many in movies and TV series that his brain
must have design it from similar memories.
He entered a door on the second floor and
locked it. The room was all done in a clear ‘70s style, with the orange and
brown curtains smelling of pot, silky sheets on the bed, furniture in gold and
silver and a TV set with no remote control. Everything was on point and he
knew, again thinking of himself as asleep, that he had seen some place like
this one before. He was sure of it.
Suddenly,
someone entered the room and he just had seconds to run to the window and jump
towards it. Whoever was behind him had starting shooting and his only option
had seemed to jump through a window. He landed on the pool below, which was
rapidly tainted with his blood. He had no idea how but he managed to get out of
the pool and run down the street again. His body was aching but he had no idea
where it hurt exactly. He just ran, preventing more damage.
Out of nowhere, a neighborhood of tall
skyscrapers and perfect sidewalks appeared in front of him. He entered the
closest door, which happened to be a department store. He went up one floor on
the working escalator and sat down by all the men shoe section to check his
body. Only one bullet had hit him, on the right thigh, but it didn’t really
hurt. He cleaned the wound with a shirt he grabbed from a table and decided to
look for supplies or at least something to eat.
Common sense drove him to the lower level of
the department store. The supermarket was there and he suddenly felt very young
and happy. He grabbed a cart and started grabbing various things he had eaten
throughout his life: cookies, beverages, fruit, vegetables, cooked meals that
smelled delicious, water and even deodorant. He went around with his shopping
cart, happy about life and all it had to offer.
Then, the man from the pier stood in front of
him. He knew it was him, even if he couldn’t see his face. The man had been the
one firing at the motel and this time he wasn’t going to miss. He had him in
his hands and one last horrible thought crossed his mind: “What if I really
died here? What if I never wake up? What if this was all a trap?”
