literature

The Dreamer

Deviation Actions

Published: Sep 30, 2010

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Literature Text

`<discontinuity>`

reach out your hand. open air. a surface! grasp with your hand. bed sheets? eyes crack open. glare, white light. sunbeam. try to recall, remember, relive. you can't? the past feels... distant. foreign. alien. here your body feels colder, heavier. weaker. even the air here is different. tasteless. the sound of leaves rustling. distant chirping. second attempt at sight. glare, it's so bright! shut again. listening. all is muffled. finger your ears but your hands shake, even your fingertips feel cold though you know the air is warm. am i dead? think, remember the past, think! there is something, like a dream... faraway places. a sunny afternoon, a twilit evening, a hillside picnic, a long drive down a dusty road. it feels like love... without a face? who is she? who was she? ...was? how much time has passed since your past life? dreamer awakened! open your eyes, try to see! third attempt, glare glare glare... blur? look left, crane left, a neck made of stone. there is a tall window, so bright, but all is blurred like looking through water. water? can't remember the taste... all feels so dry. why is the world a blur? hands to your face, shaking hands, cold hands... rub your eyes with fingers like bones. look to see them. whose hands are these?! skeletal! bony! wrinkly! elderly? ...who am i? i am me. ...when am i? from a time long passed? i remember... pieces. jagged, fractured pieces. glimpses. there was a time, so long ago, i lived and loved. now, i know, i must be so old. where did my years go? a dream hovers teasingly at the periphery of consciousness. recall it, damn you! something smells like dread. you recall blinks, stop-framed blinks of the dream. slideshow nostalgia. driving, a setting sun, a tree-lined road, winding. forested hills. a voice, a sweet voice, like honey in your ear. to your side she speaks, oh God her face! she glows, she shines, her gaze, her aura, pierces you to the soul! she means... Everything. the road rolls forward and now she is sleeping. an angel, asleep, at peace. memories come flooding. your eyes are now wide but you realize, in this dream, they are so heavy. no, don't fall asleep, dreamer! but he cannot hear you, you cannot keep the dreamer's eyes from closing. there is a brief lapse of time and a shriek, the sound of thunder, a tearing, everything is so loud and so fast! lover's face is wrought with fear, her expression now frozen in your eyes and a tree so fast screams in your face. collision and you feel suddenly cold, where is she where is she?! you find her, beside you, but she is no longer screaming... asleep once more, adrift and at peace, dreamer's eyes become the wellsprings of sorrow. vision blurs and darkens as comatose slumber is embraced and those eyes close for one last time. <discontinuity> reawakened and remembered, your eyes bleed the deluge. you must have been hibernating for decades, of guilt, of pain. sleep now, again, and forget.