The Key is to Know Thyself

The day was overcast–barren tree branches against a blank sky. Bleary eyed, I was drinking a cup of coffee over the sink and hoping the caffeine would transform into motivation to accomplish all the reading I had to do for class. 

A clatter came from the direction of my room. Strange. I was pretty sure my roommate was out at the moment. Perhaps something had fallen off my dresser or desk. I did have a lot of junk just kind of tossed on any spare surface. I poured the dregs off the coffee down the drain and shuffled back to my room. 

At first glance there seemed to be nothing out of place. I mean, it was a little hard to tell. Clothes were tossed over the back of the chair, and books and papers were stacked in haphazard piles on the floor, and my dresser and desk was cluttered with an assortment of stuff I was too tired to find a place for somewhere else. 

It was, in fact, the tidy spot on my desk that caught my attention. Absentmindedly wiping my mouth in case of remaining coffee drips, I approached my desk. 

Da heck? There was a key lying on top of a sticky note written in a cursive hand I hadn’t ever seen before. I glanced around the room, and back out at the rest of my empty apartment. Was someone else here? I only heard silence. 

I learned closer, reading the note. Short. Just two words. Know Thyself. Well. That was unnecessarily cryptic. 

The key was one of those fancy looking antique ones, brassy and with an end decorated with interweave loops. I picked it up and almost dropped it. There was a little spark and tingle in my fingertips, like getting shocked by static electricity. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I felt as if some presence loomed behind me, watching me. Instinctively, I turned. 

A doorway–or perhaps “portal” would be a more appropriate term–cut through the space in the middle of my bedroom. A large rectangle, almost the height of my room, right before me, and through it, a beach leading up to an ocean. For a long second I just stared. This was impossible. I was dreaming, right? I had made coffee this morning, and not some weird hallucinatory tea, right? 

There was my bed, covers sloppily thrown over my sheets, the gray carpet, and then slicing through space like the air was a wall, a scene of the sun setting over the ocean, untouched wet sand and the hiss of waves breaking on the beach, and then on the other side, more carpet, and my slightly leaning bookshelf propped up against the wall. 

Like some kind of sleepwalker, I just walked forward. There wasn’t really a thought or a decision made–how else was I supposed to respond to a magical doorway appearing in the middle of my bedroom? 

Wet sand squished between my toes and a shock of cold water rushed over my feet. I turned to look back, but there was only empty beach behind me. The doorway had vanished. At this point, I ought to have been panicking, but instead I just wanted to understand. I found myself walking deeper into the water, feeling the waves pour between my feet, and then swirl around my calves. Where would this ocean take me? Ahead of me, the sun melted into the sea and the sky was stripes of navy, blue and orange. 

When I looked back again, the shore had vanished. There was only water, frothy and playful, cold and salty. Without realizing it, I had already gotten waist-deep into the waves. I moved deeper, the ocean floor eventually dropping from beneath my feet. As I watched, a large wave, a deep aqua veined with white froth, swelled up. It an instant it towered over me. I threw my hands over my head and tried to move backwards, but all in vain. I felt the surge of the water tug me forward and then the wave swept over me in a crash of cold water. I plunged into the sea, like I had been shoved into the depths by a giant hand. 

I sank quickly, too stunned to even struggle upwards. The ocean swallowed me up. The dark water begin to be pierced through with thin beams of light, like someone was poking pinprick holes into the fabric of the ocean.

And then I was not sinking at all. I was suspended. The pinpricks of light were no longer beams, but shimmering points. A sky sprinkled with tiny gold and silver stars, like glitter strewn across a canvas of black paint. 

And then I was falling, air whipping past my ears, the blue atmosphere suddenly enveloping me. I had no air in my lungs to scream, or any control at all to do anything but gasp shallowly as I plunged through the layers of the atmosphere. 

And then I landed, a bank of clouds catching me like a net. For a moment I lay there, just taking in big breaths, one hand on my chest, feeling my racing heartbeat beneath my breastbone. I slowly climbed to my feet. Above me the sky was a deep blue, wisps of clouds drifting overhead. The “ground” on which I stood was just a blanket of cottony clouds, and on all sides they billowed up into soft columns. 

I took a step forward, puffs of air accompanying my footsteps. The clouds beneath my feet were soft as chinchilla’s fur. As I moved forward, I caught glimpses of movement within the pillars of cloud nearby. I tiptoed across the carpet of clouds, although there was already no sound, just the expanse of air around me. 

I reached one of the nearby pillars. I could see shapes, like shadows swirling and shifting within it. Holding my breath, and briefly shutting my eyes, I stepped through the veil of cloud.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing in the center of an ice skating rink, a spotlight shining down on me. Empty air had been replaced by an Olympic stadium, a crowd of cheering onlookers in a ring on me. Music began to play, echoing through the arena, and I began to skate across the ice, the blades of my skates scraping against the ice. I leapt into the air, spinning for a moment, before returning to the ice with a triumphal flourish. I went through the whole routine, and ended with a final spin before raising my arms towards a cheering crowd. 

It felt real–the chill air, the scrape of blade against ice, the roar of the crowd, the blinding light in my eyes. It felt like a memory of accomplishment. But I had never been a figure skater. I had never performed. This was just a dream I had briefly carried as a child. 

I emerged from the other side of the cloud pillar, still breathing hard, the chill of the ice still burning on my cheeks, the cheers still echoing in my ears. 

I ran to another pillar, plunging inside. 

My name was being announced over a microphone. I was walking across a stage, dressed in a long black robe. A man, also wearing robes, but ones that looked like they belonged at Hogwarts, and a little cap as well, handed me a diploma case and shook my hand. “Congratulations!” I turned to face a clapping audience and the flash of a camera, before walking across the rest of the stage. 

And out the other side of the cloud pillar. They were all dreams–not the kind you had when you slept, although maybe those were here too, but all the hopes and wishes I had ever had. 

I walked towards the next pillar. But as I did so, the sky darkened and the clouds grew thicker and thicker. 

I was walking through a fog now, the sky obscured by darkness. The ground beneath my feet was no longer soft, but hard and gritty. Asphalt, perhaps a little wet, as if it had recently rained. Fog swirled around me, no longer the cheerful movement of the clouds, but somehow more shifty and ominous. It was a starless night above me. The only light emanated from a line of streetlights glowing weakly, barely able to push back the inky darkness. 

I stepped into the halo of light shed by one of the streetlights. Instantly, it was like someone had pulled a plastic bag over my head–my vision blurred, and I couldn’t draw a breath. When my senses returned–I found myself sobbing. I knelt beside a hospital bed, a thin, papery hand clutched between my hands. The monitor beside the bed held one long beep–a flatline. I looked at the face of the person in the bed. My mother. With a strangled cry, I threw myself backwards…

And fell back onto the asphalt in the black, foggy night. Trembling, I picked myself up. I inched around the circle of light and then ran. I stumbled right into the next cone of light. 

Bitter wind whipped through my ragged clothing. Around me lay a ruined city landscape, ash falling from the sky. Few buildings remained–most were scorched piles of rubble, glass and concrete and steel all twisted together. The sky was filled with smoke. I turned in a circle, but smoldering, crumpled ruins surrounded me. I didn’t make a sound. I just ran. 

I stumbled back into the darkened street. This time, I ran in the opposite direction of the streetlights, my lungs burning for air and tears still streaking down my face. 

As I ran, the street around me disappeared. I found myself running through a long hallway, wooden walls rising up on either side of me. Asphalt gave way to smooth planks of polished wood. I slowed my pace, finally coming to a halt. I bent over, catching my breath. When I finally could breathe normally and had stopped shaking a bit, I saw that I was in a long hallway, doors on either side. Ahead there must be windows of some kind, which let in a orange-yellow light, like the sun might be setting outside. 

Still breathing heavily, I cautiously turned the doorknob of the closest door. Maybe a way out? 

The door swung open, and I stared out at my childhood backyard. My brothers crouched in the long grass, peering intently at something. One of them pointed–a large snail. I knew if I walked through that door I would find myself a child again. I closed the door and tried another. 

This time it was one of my high-school classrooms. I saw my friends passing notes to one another as my old history teacher wrote notes on the whiteboard. I squinted at the marker on the board but couldn’t read it. Maybe I couldn’t remember what that lesson had been about. 

I had seen enough. I didn’t want to relive my memories at the moment. 

I wanted a moment of peace. This was suddenly all too much. I wanted to crawl back to my bedroom, to the overcast day, to my pile of reading. 

I noticed another door in the hallway. This one was painted green, however. I opened it. 

A series of steps led down to a large evergreen tree, branches thick with needles and vibrant green. Grass and flowers spread out below it, and a stone bench sat beneath it. A path of hexagonal polished stones led to a small, still lake. Beyond the lake, forests hemmed the bottom edge of a snowy mountain range. I stepped outside. The grass was springy beneath my feet and the air smelled fresh, like after a night rain. I sat on the bench, beneath the shelter of the evergreen tree and gazed out over the lake and the forest and the mountains. 

I could hear a breeze in the trees, and the twittering of birds nearby, and the gentle lap of the lake against the shore. This was a place I could spend a long while just sitting and breathing and watching. 

After some time, I noticed that I gripped something in my right hand. I looked down, uncurling my fingers. The key lay in my palm, a gleam of bright copper now. I ran my thumb over it and then gripped it between my thumb and forefinger. 

The prickling sensation ran down my spine again. When I turned to look behind me, the doorway once again sliced through the space. This time, when I gazed through it, I could see the gray carpet of my bedroom instead of the sea. 

I stood and walked towards the portal. I paused in front of it for a moment, taking in this rectangular cut out in the middle of empty space. And then I stepped through, stumbling back into my bedroom. 

Everything was as normal. I collapsed onto my bed, the key falling from my hand onto the covers. I stared at it, at its brassy loops. When I picked it up again, there was the static shock, but no portal appeared. I rubbed a hand across my face. Had it all been a dream?

But the key still lay in the palm of my hand.