Building A Dream Upon Words

I was exhausted that first night. You know, the kind of tired that’s almost painful? Your body screaming for you to close your eyes and your mind begging you for silence, yet still you fight to your last breath for that extra minute of consciousness. I was hanging on by a desperate thread because I needed to erupt my thoughts onto the page, terrified they would all be lost by morning. I had finally broken it you see, my streak of melancholy that put a wall up between me and the craft. For so long the act of putting words to paper had seemed so unimportant, so thankless and so trivial…until that afternoon, when I had found it. A leather wrapped tome, ancient looking and buckled closed with thick, riveted straps; a mysterious wonder that you would only ever think to find held firmly by an elderly wizard on a fantasy adventure. It had remained on the antique store shelf only for as long as it took my hands to catch up to my eyes and rip it into my possession. The icing on the cake…it was filled with blank pages. I sat at my home desk and wrote long into the night, a grand story of heroes journeying through danger to find a greater meaning, until my body eventually took control and forced my head down onto my new inanimate muse and forced me to sleep.

The ocean. Its relentlessly gentle rhythm had always soothed me. Rocking back and forth. Swaying in the salty air. The smell of sweat…the fist against my chest…

I was hauled forward to wakening by a thick, hairy arm that had grabbed hold of my collar, wrenching me from where I had slept leaning backward in my chair, clearly yearning to be horizontal. The glaring sunlight burned my eyes as I flickered them open, the world coming into view for the barest moment, only to be immediately stolen again when a torrent of salt water slapped me in the face. Before I could recover I was thumped on the back of the head by a hand that felt five times the size of my own.

“Wake up geit! Break times over, get rowing, we’re coming into shore!”

My senses allowed to recover, I looked around to find myself no longer at my bedroom desk, but on the hard bench of a long ship, oar handle resting across my lap. To my right was a blonde bearded brute, armoured in leathers with a hefty war axe at his hip. I looked down to see a similar outfit adorning my foreign body. I had somehow grown a huge bushy beard myself and had arms as thick as tree trunks. I wore the same armour and found the hilt of broadsword sticking into my waist.

“ROW YOU ARGR SWINE!” A terrifyingly deep voice bellowed from the stern of the ship behind. I grabbed the handle and pulled, not willing to risk the wrath of the man behind such an utterance. Physical labour having never graced my normally slender build, I was pleasantly surprised to find how easily I could now drag the heavy pole through the raging waters. Graced with an effortless job, I took the chance to look around and rather than feel any fear, was comforted. I knew this place…had spent all night creating it in my mind. I was sitting amongst Ragnor’s raiding party, about to carve a wedge into the eastern shores of Anglo-Saxon England. It was just a dream!

The crunch of sand under the bow of the ship and the pouring of bodies from its sides was exhilarating. It was one of those dreams so vivid it almost felt like a new life, having also managed to gain lucidity, I was not going to waste this chance. I launched myself over the timber wall of the vessel and planted my huge feet into the shallow waters. Drawing my sword I roared an excited battle cry toward the army of men, who stood fast, pulling back longbows at the top of the beach.

I saw the red swirling into the still waters at my feet before I noticed any pain, felt the warmth of the blood on my cheek and finally processed the image of the arrow that had come directly toward me an instant before. Confused I raised my hand to my face and felt the shallow gash that graced my jawline, painting my fingers crimson.

Why didn’t that wake me? Why am I still here? Oh god…

I threw myself in an awkward roll over into the boat, and laid prone below its protective walls, tremors running through my limbs at every thud those longbows slammed into the timber. I could hear screams, more angry than afraid, and I could smell the blood vaporising into the air.

“Erm…what the hell kind of dream is this!?” I cried to myself “This is my tale, I’m not supposed to get hurt”

It was my story and that’s how I knew deep down, every Norseman was supposed to die. Apparently that now included me.

My eyes darted around the floor of the ship, desperately looking for an answer I couldn’t possibly find in the grain of the wood. Until my view fell upon a satchel, stored underneath my own seat. I commando crawled forward and pulled it out, tearing open the bag and finding my new writing book, complete with pen. I had heard enough fantasy stories to know there was only one logical thing to do next and so I flipped it open to a new page and began to write. I sped through the most basic, safe and comforting prose I could generate and stopped only when men stormed my safe haven and smashed me over the head, rendering the world black.

I awoke gently, to the sound of placid string instruments and children’s joyous laughter. The pillow behind my head was soft and the wall of book shelves that stretched beyond the red fabric of the couch I laid upon was a comforting sight.

Had it really worked?

I sat up and gazed across the huge sitting room, panelled with dark wood and littered with comfortable seating and hardwood furniture. The music playing was from a trio of actual live musicians, ignored in the corner of the room. I could see children playing in the expansive and perfectly manicured gardens outside the immense windows that allowed filtered sunlight to bathe my face.

“Ah Mr Rogers, I trust you enjoyed your nap?” A female voice asked in high class English. I looked to my side to see a regal woman, wearing a beautiful flowing gown, hair tied into a tight bun and hands clasped in front of her waist. “As our honoured guest, please do make yourself at home” She said, absolutely dripping with sarcasm before she walked out of the room.

I stood and raised a hand to the back of my head, where I found only a tender bruise and when I pressed my hand to my cheek, I felt the crusty healing of the arrows slice. What had been terror in the midst of battle turned to curiosity in the safety of this stately home. A home which belonged to Lord Winterbury and his family, whom I was visiting on some mundane pleasantry and where nothing worse could happen than some harsh words from the aristocracy.

“It must be the book.” I muttered out loud. “I’ve been writing for years and this has never happened. So it has to be the book…”

I looked around then, wondering if it had appeared with me in a similar way to before. I turned up the couch cushions, pulled novels from the shelves and scattered papers from a nearby desk. I scoured the place until I realised in my panic, it had been right in front of me, sat neatly on a coffee table in front of the largest fireplace I had ever seen in my life.

“Ahem.” A man dressed in livery cleared his throat from the doorway “Dinner is served Mr Rogers. If you would please follow me, Lord Winterbury and his ladyship await. The housekeeping staff will take care of this…ahem…mess.”

I followed what must have been the butler to the dining room and had you been waiting for me in that lounge, you would have seen me come bursting back through that door, sporting glistening eyes within an hour. You would have watched me claw my book open and scratch a tale into it with rapid abandon. To think I had imagined to be safe in such a toxic environment!

The next few weeks I began to gain some level of control, learning to act more convincingly as my written character from each story and spending more time exploring each world of my own imagining. I ran down metal hallways, firing a laser gun backward at the deadly and acidic alien creatures in pursuit. I took down terrorists, outnumbered in a locked down skyscraper. I was a male nanny to three beautiful but troublesome children. I flew fighter jets for the military and I landed on one knee with a cape billowing out behind me, arriving just in time to rescue helpless citizens. I did everything. My imagination never seemed to grow dry and the words poured from my hands into ink. I felt more alive than I had in years and reignited in my passion for the power of the written word. I never wanted it to end, but the dwindling pages of my favourite tome were beginning to concern me. I didn’t know what would happen when they ran out, but I figured I should return home before they did, for fear of remaining stuck forever in the musings of my own mind. 

It was such that after I had solved the murders of several young women and put their serial killer boyfriend behind bars (it was easy when you had already written the ending) I found myself with only two pages left. I considered what to construct as my final magnum opus. Logic would dictate I write myself back into my own life…but what fun would that be? Instead I daydreamed of living forever within a tale that described laying on a sun kissed beach, wealthy beyond imagining and serviced exclusively by bikini clad models. However remembering my teenage years of excess I knew such indulgence left the soul eventually wanting more. There was nothing sadder than becoming tired of pleasure through lack of hardship. I considered instead a life of fame, where I was held in high regard for my art but again thought back to all the celebrity warnings of such a trapping. Perhaps a fantasy world? One full of strange creatures and magic or maybe even, dare I think it, a romantasy where I could fall in explicit love with one such mythical being…

I spent a considerable time remaining in the dingy, liquor smelling detectives office of my current imagined world, ignoring every knock on the door and the rumbling of my own stomach. I went back and forth, considering every option from every angle before finally, after what felt like an eternity, I began to write. I squeezed through tiny lettering as much detail as I could fit on those final pages, then laid down on the cold leather of the office couch and slept.

“Good morning sweetheart.” Her melodic voice whispered “I know its Sunday but it’s time to get up, we have a big day planned”

A smile graced my lips before I opened my eyes to the new day and the rest of my life. I rolled over in the billowing clouds that were my linen bed sheets and looked into the eyes of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. My wife. Before I could form a single word the door to our townhouse bedroom burst open and our two children, an older boy and younger girl bundled on top of me in the best way.

“Good morning PaPa! We love you!” They giggled before being ushered back out of the room by my gentle partner.

“I’ll get them settled and jump in the bath. You just get yourself up and ready and we will head out, okay sweetie?” She said.

“Okay, I’ll be right there” I replied, beaming.

Once the door had closed once more, I dropped down onto my back and chuckled at the ceiling.

Good choice. This was the one.

I slowly dragged myself up and did a quick search for my leather clad tome, not expecting to find it and almost glad when I didn’t. I pulled open my drawers and dressed in the expensive clothes within, choosing a watch for the day from a selection in the pull out case in the top drawer. I was halfway across the spacious, but not too luxurious bedroom and about to reach for the door handle when I heard her voice echoing from the adjoining bathroom, that must have had another entrance.

“Honey, could you help me dry off? She asked.

I turned and excitedly made for the en suite door, entering to a steamy parlour where my new love bathed. I grabbed a towel from the rail and stepped closer, where peering in between the bubbles I laid eyes upon the iridescent scales of her tail, glinting in the misty light.

“Come on now handsome. If you don’t get me dry I’ll never get my legs back and I’ll be stuck here at your mercy forever…or is that what you would prefer?” She winked.

Definitely the best choice I thought as I climbed and half fell into the bath.