Dreams On a Sleepless Night
The first thing I notice is the smoke—the smell of it. An acrid, cloying stink overwhelms my senses and crawls over me like a billion ethereal tendrils. Fear grows inside: a grotesque, unyielding terror. It saturates me until my eyelids feel frozen shut. I am sick to my stomach. I hurt so badly I want to die.
With substantial effort, I force my eyes open. I see a wall aflame, dripping molten sheetrock, silvery and mercurial. It is the central wall of a strange, dark room. The wall holds for now, but the ceiling it supports bends in a convex arch. I know I must escape before it buries me. But I cannot move. I am frozen by indecision, and indecision is the only decision I can make.
I look down. I cannot see the carpet, yet I feel it beneath my feet. It is covered with serpentine, undulating rivers of gray and white smoke. The light and dark patterns make the floor appear as a nest of engorged, angry snakes, all slithering aimlessly in directions that lead toward me.
Flames engulf everything but the wall behind my back. I am paralyzed, unable to turn my head as rabid fingers of fire reach out for me. They are inches from my face, taunting me with hot promises of pain. I think I would take death, but not the pain; yet I have no choice. There are no windows or doors in this hellish, glowing place.
Directly across from me, the central wall melts. Its twisting makes it appear sentient. I watch the rippling flames burn large, perfectly round holes into it. I can almost hear the structure shrieking in horror. When the smoke intermittently abates, I see three large holes. I expect to see another room or the cool night outside, but I see only savage flames licking the boiling surface with hot orange tongues.
Suddenly, the fire lies down like a weary beast. It heaves on the floor, its chest moving in the throes of a hideous death. My eyes leave the beast and focus on the holes in the wall. Inside each, a word is written in smoke, quivering as if borne on a hot, ephemeral wind:
INNOCENCE BETRAYAL FEAR
In the place where Innocence floats, I see the face of a child, alone and longing for her mother’s hand. Her eyes are sad and bewildered. She does not understand how vast the world is because her own world is small and careful. Her mother, entwined with her own desires, pays scant attention. The mother’s world has grown large and twisted, full of conflicting emotions. She wakes with a thirst she cannot satisfy. She wants more than she can have and has more than she wants; in this sad discordance, she and the child are alike.
In the dark hole in the middle floats Betrayal. I stare at the word as it writhes in its own serpentine hell. I begin to see eyes staring back—eyes of lost loves, of entanglements gone awry, and of true love shredded by a heart hardened by deception. The eyes glow and glower until I am forced to look away. The pain is too fresh to endure.
The fiery beast boils in a tortured sleep, moaning as it is covered by a blanket of roiling ash. I raise my eyes to Fear. Its letters are bulbous and ragged, far bigger than the other two. The hole cannot contain it. These jagged letters seem living organisms, separate serpents born of destruction. Fear grows like a cancerous cell, eroding the burnt structure.
The place where Fear lives explodes, sending shards of half-molten plasterboard flying like shrapnel. A jagged piece pierces my chest. I am frozen in terror, watching the red liquid of life spurting from my punctured heart.
I watch as Fear swallows Innocence and Betrayal. The blood disappears into the smoke. I feel disembodied, floating above the dying beast of fire. Fear has sucked the life from innocence, mated with betrayal, and left me to die.
The wall collapses.
My body lies motionless in the rubble, drained of feeling. Yet, I can see that each piece of debris is a bit of memory: traces of laughter, a baby girl, a woman’s whisper, a locomotive chugging through the night, the smell of dying things on a blue October day, snowflakes falling from a leaden sky. Most of all, I see dead dreams and life’s ultimate betrayal: lives consumed by the monster of fear.
It’s 1:20 AM. I see the green glow of the digital clock. I’ve been sleeping for an hour. My heart is pounding; I am warm and thirsty. I get up for a glass of water. My heart races so fast I fear I will fall face-down on the hard floor and die—alone in this house of uncertainty.
I sit in the quiet hours and try to calm myself with pleasant thoughts, but not a single one visits me. I feel totally alone. The phone holds no solace; no one has called. The clock now glows 2:17 AM. I must be dead, I think. No one can feel this isolated and still be alive.
I look down at the pale blue carpet. There are no snakes of smoke. The wall is dull and needs painting, but there are no holes, no words. There are windows and doors—ways to escape—but I have nowhere to go and no one to see.
All I know is that the two motivations of life, Love and Fear, are playing out their hands in an implausible game of poker. All I can do is sit at the table and watch. Innocence has forsaken me; fear and doom have befriended me. The clock tells me it’s 4:08 AM. I wait for the sun, though I doubt it will do any good.
I’m tired and defeated. Even sleep betrays me. The rain dances on my windowsill—it’s 6:19 AM, and the spring rain slowly washes away the dreams of the night.
And then I realize…
Life is just a dream after all.