Like Grains of Sand in the Wind

I open my eyes, and I see you.  

You don’t ask me who I am, or where you are, or how you came to be here.  And I feel no reason to give any explanation.  I think, somehow, we both know and understand perfectly; and yet, at the same time, we don’t for some reason.  But none of that matters right now.  I offer you my hand.  You take it with no hesitation or fear.  And so we begin our travels together.

Where we are going neither of us can say.  All we know is that we are going.  And as we go, the landscape shifts with every blink of an eye.  Whereas a rational mind would be left confused and terrified at the chaotic sights before it, the two of us barely perceive it.  As far as we are concerned, this is absolutely normal, as if it’s always been this way.  In fact, if we were to slow down and take time to process it, we might feel elated, energized by what the future might hold for us.  In a way, we still do, without registering it properly; we just continue to let ourselves go with each experience as it crashes over us like rolling waves that cannot be truly felt.

So many things to see, so many things to do, and we seemingly have a slow eternity of immeasurable time to experience it all.  We glide over a sea of golden sand set against a sky of crystal blue.  We move down corridors of glass and marble that stretch for miles in every direction, and yet it seems to take but a single thought to cross to the other side.  Houses of elaborate artistic design are cast in a pure white light, their edges barely tinged in soft pastels; they are ours to roam and explore at our leisure.  

As we walk, our feet don’t feel like they’re moving at all, and yet, surely, we are.  But are we?  Or are we simply teleporting from one beautifully painted scene to another?  Are we flying?  We look down to see an ocean beneath us, purple waves rhythmically swaying back and forth, to and fro against a now orange sunset (or is it sunrise?).  For a brief moment, we let the reality of the situation hit us: we are, indeed, flying.  Sailing the heavens with our arms outstretched, our hands still tightly clasped together, we gracefully soar among the clouds high, high above.

White stallions and unicorns race alongside us, galloping at top speed and yet still unable to overtake us.  Eagles and dragons and angels and airplanes and others like them join in, all keeping pace with us as we laugh like giddy children at the exhilarating rush of the moment.

We are clearly laughing, and yet no noise seems to be coming from either the two of us or anyone else around us.  We all talk back and forth to each other, engaging in much dialogue without seeming to utter a single word.  Have we become telepathic?  Are we truly saying anything to each other at all, seeing as how, even as we speak, I cannot recall what is being said?  It doesn’t matter.

At some point, we find ourselves among friends and family, reliving some of our most memorable moments with them.  Some of them seem to be memories, at least, while others feel like a brand new day spent with them.  We scarcely notice as some of the people randomly pop in and out of existence while we chat away with them about absolutely nothing.  

You immediately begin to light up as a vaguely familiar family pet bounds up to you.  You greet each other mirthfully as if you have both found a long lost friend.  It tells you how much it has missed you today, how it loves you as much as you love them, and how it loves the taste of human chocolate mint cookies way better than its own food.

The fields and meadows are green as we run barefoot over them.  As we do so, we are made distinctly aware of the fact that, no matter how hard we try, we cannot run very fast; our feet feel as if they have gotten much heavier, as if they are weighed down or stuck in really deep, thick mud.  This does not bother us, really, but we can’t help but notice and wonder why.

It suddenly grows dark.  No one knows when or how, but everything is gone, and we are running in slow motion through a black void.  We are floating through it as if we are in outer space, not knowing for sure whether we are upside down or not.  We are not frightened; rather, a sublime calm covers us as we slowly rotate around each other.  Are we spinning, or are we standing perfectly still as the world spins around us?

We are standing in a dark room full of hooded people walking slowly around us.  They don’t seem to notice us as they silently shuffle among themselves, but for the first time the two of us begin to suspect that something is slightly off.  You start calling your boss at work, asking them what is going on here.  And as you do so, you realize that some of the people in the room are not hooded; you don’t recognize their faces, or if they even have faces.  All you do know is that, as soon as you turn away from them and then turn back, they disappear.  

Your boss is not answering your call; it never occurs to you why you would even try to contact them in the first place for something like this.  You begin to scream in annoyance at your phone, but no noise passes your lips as you try in vain to make sense of this absurd situation.  It is then that the hooded figures turn in our direction, their invisible gazes all fixed on us. 

All of them begin to blur into each other as they walk toward us, their arms outstretched.  We immediately try running again, but the slowness of our gait, as we have feared, prohibits us from putting enough satisfactory distance between us and them.  Do they actually mean to do us harm?  We feel it is so, and that is certainly more than enough reason for us to flee for our very lives.  

Alas, we could run no faster than our lead shoes would allow, and soon the perceived threat came not from behind us, but from above.   A great, hairy spider with a baby’s head and rows of sharp teeth begins to descend upon us, whether directly above us or in front of us we have no clear idea.  Following it is a huge, monstrous snake with bright, yellow eyes that seem to pierce into our very souls and fangs as long as our forearms.  And close behind it, flying on a gnarled, twisted broomstick comes a cackling witch with disjointed chicken legs, a large, crooked beak of a nose and sharp, pointed teeth.  We both stop dead in our tracks as these three abominations slowly make their way toward us, lurking, snarling, snickering.  They are transparent like smoke, and yet they look and feel so real to us.  And to our absolute horror, we find ourselves completely paralyzed; we cannot move, we cannot escape.  We will surely be eaten, or worse.  At that very instant, we feel ourselves begin to fall.  As quickly as it began, though, we stop falling as the whole horrific scene blinks out of existence.

Our hearts are pounding, hammering away at our chests as if they are about to burst.  We can feel cold sweat cling to our skin, making us feel very clammy and icky.  And yet, as the monsters fade from sight, they also seem to fade from our very memory.  It feels as if it had happened a while ago now.  But how long ago?  A few minutes?  A few days?  A few years?  None of it matters now as we spin back into darkness, waiting to see where it will carry us.

You see standing before you the love of your life, smiling brightly at you and happily chatting with you about something probably too insignificant to bother remembering.  Without thinking, you draw nearer to them and press your lips against theirs, wrapping your arms around them to bring them closer to you.  You feel no fear, no shame, no regret as you give yourself completely to this moment frozen in time.  I can feel their warmth enveloping you from head to toe as you embrace each other tightly, their kiss the only thing that feels so real to you right now.  I can see the happiness radiant on their face, and it so perfectly matches yours.  You want to make love to them.  Right now.  It feels so right, and yet… will anyone see you?  Is it really the right thing to do?  Right now?  As these thoughts begin to cross your mind, your naked lover begins to fade away from you, much to your crestfallen disappointment.  Then you look up at me, a sudden realization flashing in your eyes, and you try to say something but no words come out.

And then you begin to vanish, slowly fading away before me.  I frantically reach out to grab your hand, only to desperately clutch at thin air; and as you disappear completely, leaving me alone in the black void, I think I can surmise a single word being mouthed on your lips:

“...dreaming...”

Dreaming?  Wait.  So is this… was this all just a dream?

I suppose it does make sense.  The flying at the beginning, the houses above the ocean, the family pet that has been dead for many years now, the monsters that couldn’t possibly exist, the one true love that could never be…  Yes, of course it was all just a dream, which must mean it is time for me to wake up then, right?  Then why are my eyes getting so heavy?  Why do I feel so… sleepy?

Just then, to my shock and horror, I realize just what you were trying to tell me as you faded away from existence, the whole thing:

“I… I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”

Then it hits me.  Those things in the dream were not my own.  Not my own images or memories, not my own emotions or desires…  I myself am not the dreamer, but a product of your own dream.  I am the dream, and you were the dreamer.  It was all you.  You were the one who created me, who gave me life; and now my entire existence depends solely on whether you are asleep or awake.

And now as my eyes begin to close and everything around me starts to fade away, I feel so very afraid.  I can feel the empty nothingness closing in around me, threatening to swallow me whole; even the darkness and endless void I’m floating in will all soon disappear, to be replaced with I know not what – if anything at all.  Am I dying?  Is this what death is?  God help me, I am so terrified right now!

As my consciousness fades, I can feel you waking up, reacting to the violent change as you transition from the realm of dreams to the world of the awake.  You remind yourself that what you went through was all just a weird dream, maybe even more than one dream.  I can feel you trying to understand what you had just experienced, trying to force it make some kind of sense.  You reflect on how, in times past, there were some dreams you found far easier to remember than others.  In fact, the more you try to remember what transpired in this dream – the harder you try to recall what my face even looked like – the more I can feel myself fade away, like grains of sand in the wind.  Pretty soon you will only remember jagged fragments of this dream – if even that – or else you will forget all of this, forget me, entirely.

As I slowly evaporate into nothingness, I can dimly hear an echo in the back of my mind, like some kind of distant memory or something along those same vague, blurry lines.  It is telling me that all of this has happened before, and it will continue to happen again and again, every time you fall into a deep sleep, and then awaken anew with each morning.  And now my fear is slowly turning to hope, however small it is.  I now look forward to the future, if such a thing exists, as I lay here – dare I say it? – dreaming of the next time I get to see you.  To hold your hand in mine again.  To see what you see.  Feel what you feel.  Fear what you fear. Love what you love.  For you and I to, once again, become as one. 

And so, dear dreamer, I look forward to the next time you close your eyes and drift off into unconsciousness, for then, finally…

I open my eyes, and I see you.