Feasting on dreams

Trigger warning: suicidal ideation

NOTE - This story is heavily inspired and contains elements from two incredible short stories - “Digesting darkness” by Daniel P Douglas, and “Dream weaver” by James Scott. Enjoy :)

The first time I ate someone’s dreams, it was an accident.

It was the forgotten hour. The place between the deathly silence of midnight and the tranquil quiet of twilight. The place no one really knows exists. I thought it was all a dream myself. I floated up above the twinkling city lights, put among the clouds in a starless sky. Then I saw it. A little girl’s dream, of running among sun-soaked fields, being free.

I craved that freedom.

And before I knew what was happening, my hands were reaching for it, twisting it and threading it through my hands as it shattered into streams of light, flying into my mouth. The joy, the mad, endless, cosmic joy I felt, was the most heavenly I’ve ever felt in years.

I don’t remember how many more dreams I took that night, I don’t remember when I floated to my bed. I just woke up. As if it was all a fantasy. But every night, I did it again, and again. And every morning, I’d wake up a new person. Better, smarter, happier. I knew it was real, and I also knew I couldn’t stop. It had become a new fixation, and every day I became more obsessive.

Today was the ninety-ninth night of me dream-feasting. By now it had become second-nature, like clockwork. I saw a man dreaming of becoming the richest human in the world, and I poured it down my throat like red wine. I watched a young boy fantasise about a date with his crush - sweet, pure love that I gulped down before he could take another breath. I felt I could do this forever, I could live on people’s hopes and happiness for the rest of my life. After all it wasn’t harming anyone, it was certainly doing the opposite for me, so it would be okay. I was on an exhilarating, surreal, cliff-edge high. But I was plummeting to the ocean.

And I didn’t realise until it was too late.

The hundredth night, I jumped from the window and soared. But something wasn’t right. I saw it first. Or rather, I didn’t see it. The sky was always starless. It was the dreams that lay out before me that would guide me, that would illuminate the dark. And now, it was blacker than the devils cloak. I stead there was blood light, the red feverish glow of nightmares, emerging from every window and slithering toward me like fanged snakes. They’ve been increasing lately, but now they surround me. I hear ghastly screams, deathly voices that drown my confused thoughts. Then something bigger. A crack. Loud and jarring, ringing clear above all the noise. I frantically look and fly around to see where the noise came from. It took a while to realise it was from me, deep inside my chest. My vision blurred and turned red. My mind took me to my heart where I could somehow see light trying to escape from my fractured heart, ready to burst., heaving with the glorious sun rays of thousands of dreams.

I suddenly felt as ancient as time, as frail as stained glass yet heavier than the ocean. I was falling slowly, unable to keep myself a float.

“What the hell is happening?” I had to clutch my chest to stop the dreams from escaping, and bite my lip until it bled. The dreams started screaming, begging me to let them go.

“The world will go black, if you keep us in here. You will be destroyed. You have to let us go!”

“Then why did you come to me?” I screamed, though no one woke, they were too engulfed by their terrors.

Of course I wasn’t expecting them to answer me, they were merely voices in my head. But they did, because they were something real. “We thought you were a dream-weaver, here to make us come to life. But you’re nothing more than devilish dream-feaster.”

I paid the dreams no mind. I didn’t know how to stop this, I didn’t know what to do. I coulnd’t let go, not now. Not after I had spent night after night collecting them.

Before I could land on the ground I flew, or stumbled back home, clutching myself tight like a madcap throughout the whole night. I prayed everything would end by dawn. But it hadn’t. And the sky had gone darker. People just thought it was strange weather, but I knew different. The dreams were speaking the truth. But I held on. This carried on for days, and soon I was forced to shut my eyes from the excruciating pain of it. I couldn’t go out, eat, even move. I was barely existing because of the dreams fighting their way out so vigorously. In a desperate plunge for mercy, I stood at the balcony of my window, eyeing the concrete grey fifty feet below. I braced myself, ready to jump. Because I would rather die than live in a life where I don’t have these dreams to myself. Where I have to face everyone and everything without any fantasies to keep me afloat. But there was one star in front of me. In the apartment opposite adorned with vivid flowers on the balcony, and paintings on the brick walls. Incredulously I had never noticed. And somehow I saw the colours without seeing them. A little boy, who looked so much like me when I was that age, slept by the window. He dreamt of everything he already had, except the one thing he desperately wanted. Love. From his parents who forget about him. He dreamed of the life he has now, and it blended in with the colourless windows. It was so close I could see it. So I could steal it. It was so close. I reached out, it comes to me once more and my fingers curl around it but… I didn’t take it.

“This boy, his dreams are made out of sorrow.” I whispered, to the night, to the dream, to myself. I go back, to all the dreams I had stolen, seeing them finally for what they are, and not the free drugs I could grab and forget about. The man who dreamed of wealth, he barely had eaten enough food to live on to the next day. That young boy dreaming of his date, he didn’t even believe he had the courage to ask her on one. The girl dreaming of running, the one who started this - she was so ill she couldn’t walk and never even went outside. It was so easy to find the truths about them, hidden in the darker corners of their dreamscapes. These dreams gave them courage, hope to face the next day, to better their lives. And I couldn’t have that. I have been dreaming their dreams for so long, and without knowing it I had carried their sorrow too. Now it was time to confront my own. The sorrows of my life. The way my parents were never there my whole childhood, the bullying at school that always burred the rubble, the quiet critiscm at work that made me shrink into nothing, everything. But those hardships don’t define me, my dreams do. What I do next does. And what I did, for the first time in decades, was face it all, one by one. And one by one, I let their dreams go. I heard them sigh in great relief, and I did too. I just had to unclench myself, and they rushed out of me, streams of colour bursting into the night sky like fireworks, they couldn’t wait a moment more after all. The skies are full of stars once more. I watched them go, with tears in my eyes, but with a smile. Now they were free, and I was too. That night, I dreamed my own dream, much like the boy in the apartment opposite, about love and togetherness, about kindness and friendship. The dream told me that I could be all these things and more. And that one day, I would find what I searched so desperately for. And as dawn rose, brighter than ever, the sun bursting to life, and people happily bustling about, dreams restored, I believed it. I believed that my dream would take me where I needed to go. I am no longer a dream-feaster, though I sometimes fly through the night for the thrill. A dream-weaver may be my next endeavour, but for now I am simply learning to finally dream my own dreams, and believe that they will one day come true.