The dreamt up labyrinth of puzzles

You know those cliche dreams where you wake up in a labyrinth and try to find your way out with all those nonsensical puzzles?

Yeah, I have those. Or at least I had those, but I think it’s good to just start a little before the beginning or something that resembles a beginning.

Before those weird-ass dreams, I had normal dreams or a normal as they come. Some dreams about dying, some about more intimate matters and some, well, I’m not really sure. I tried throughout my childhood, teenagedom and adulthood to write them down. I almost started doing it when I was 17, but alas, I never did.

We’re nearing the beginning with the purchase of my apartment, my very first one. Now, I am not going to bored you with details about the process or how it came into my possession, but we’ll start at the point I slept there for the very first time.

I actually slept over at my parents’ house before everything was ready in my apartment (I was not sleeping on the floor and especially not without my fairylights). Then, when I had finally gotten everything in my apartment and had gone to bed, they began. Those weird dreams.

This had been the first time I had had (brilliant use of my vocabulary, I know!) a dream where I knew I was in a dream. It didn’t really feel like a dream though.

How the dream and, eventually, dreams played out was strange to say the least. I “woke up” to a wall with a circle etched into the concrete-looking, or maybe it was stone wall. On the walls on the sides of this circle wall there was a little stream and waterfall fountains, at least that’s how I remember it.

I touched the wall with the circle and it opened. Revealing many pathways I could take. Then, as cliche as it is, I woke up.

After that I had many dreams in this labyrinth as I figured it was. As time went by some of the walls became mossier and some started cracking. Like as if the labyrinth was ageing as I used more time figuring out its puzzles. And the puzzles were, again, with no sense.

My “favourite“ would be the one in a room with a circle door closed, a pool in the roof (don’t ask) and a bunch of podiums with different types of balls used in sport. The solution was of course to throw the balls that were made for water sports in the pool and that opened the door.

Some other puzzles were just plain weird and couldn’t really be called puzzles. Two buttons on podiums, one red and one purple, were in front of the door. The solution was to throw off the buttons off the podiums, push the podiums away from where they stood, realise that there was two switches under the now pushed away podiums and flick the left one. Why the left one? I still don’t have a clue.

After six weeks of nonstop dreams of this labyrinth, it stopped. I had seen that it had started to fall apart in the last five dreams, to the point that some of the doors were just gone. The whole labyrinth was almost gone apart from a few stones and walls in the last dream and then, like I said, the dreams stopped and I had pleasant dream about puppies.

This felt strange. I had talked to my friends about this and they just brushed it off (like everything else I say). My parents were worried, but I didn’t want them to be, because then they would just baby me!

A week had passed and I had no answers. I had considered doing one of those boards with red thread, but I had no clues. One of my actually slightly understanding friends saw I was down and asked if I wanted to come with her and her friends on a trip. To be honest, I had nothing to do. I made games as a hobby and wanted to maybe do something like that as a job (mom wouldn‘t let me) and all my creative juices had stopped and reserves of it had run dry. I said “sure why not”. This, miraculously, turned out to be a good thing.

I had gotten away from the group when they were all chatting after setting up camp and eating and went a little deeper because, well, something felt different. A huge wave of deja-vu hit me, like I had been here before.

As I would like to to turn your attention to, I usually forget dreams, so when I experience deja-vu I usually start to remember my dreams. I started to think about one thing.

What was I dreaming about before the labyrinth dreams?

I walked a bit further, I felt like I knew where to go. And there it was, in it’s original glory albeit a little mossy still, the labyrinth! I was completely shocked at the revelation. On the inside, instead of the circle doors being merely etched into the walls, the space had been filled with something looking like gold. Actual gold.

The puzzles were weirdly enough the same. The puzzles with the solutions that cannot work in reality, gravity that doesn’t follow its rules and so on. I pinched myself a couple of times and asked myself if it was a dream, but it wasn’t.

I got to the final room after an hour or so (it was easy since I knew the solutions to the 30 so puzzles). It was the most beautiful room I had ever seen, with beautiful gold, silver and other metals and gems in the walls making such unique artwork. It depicted something similar to a light-source and a creature with that light-source as their heart.

There was a podium at the very end of the room, with a shiny crystal lighting up that section of the room. The podium carried a small black box with a yellow dot on it. I opened it up and a paper with something written on it.

Congratulations. You passed.

The labyrith started corrupt, the beautiful metals and gems dissapeared and the labyrinth started cracking and falling apart. The piece of paper exploded and knocked me out.

I then woke up, seeing that something had exploded (so it wasn’t a dream) and swiftly returned to camp where I had been told I had been gone for several hours. I never spoke about the labyrinth to anyone again, nor did I ever get any more info about it.

Which leads us to today. It has been three weeks since the incident and I am hoping for that it won’t take more than a month to get answers.

Sad thing is, I don‘t have dreams at all anymore. Mom mentioned in passing that I was growing out of those nonsensical dreams and that she was relieved. I ignored it and started writing everything down so I wouldn’t forget.

I am still hoping that I’ll get the full story, and that I’ll finally remember everything I forgot. Everything.