In the World of Dreams...

My dreams are darkening again. The past week has seen them become so vivid and me so lucid it's as if I'm awake. But to live through this...

Last night I dreamt I was standing in front of a pool, cool breeze caressing my cheek. And then it struck me, this fire scorching strongly in my forearm. I could feel the muscle tightening, the searing shooting through my veins. I clutch at the pain, trying to smother it before it consumes me. And then an invisible dagger plunges deeply into my chest. I can't breathe. I swear my heart is going to rupture. I'm shaky on my feet, struggling to stay conscious...and then my chest implodes and I collapse into darkness.

I find myself in an office, a man sitting across from me telling me I'm alright. Yet I hear a whisper in my ear telling me he is lying. "I had a heart attack," the voice reveals to me. I'm dying. At most I have is three months and then...

All I can do is mourn. I haunt my bedroom, the shades pulled, brooding on a short end to a tale that never truly began. The phone rings. It is my ex-wife. She tells me she wants me back. All I can do is choke back the sorrow, swallow that vile taste as I tell her no. She doesn't know I'm dying. I don't want her to know. I push her away. I keep her from me. I refuse proper closure. She doesn't need this pain. Better she hate me than pity me. Better she forget me than obsess over my memory. I want to die alone, what few ripples that event cause upset as few as possible.

And then I wake to reality, my eyes bleeding tears; my throat thick and tongue swollen. My mind tortures me so. No, I am not dying physically; just spiritually every day. I am in one of my downward spirals if you couldn't guess. Sometimes it takes sheer will to pull myself up. What can these dreams be but a torturous subconscious.

Sometimes I love my dreams. I fly ever so high, beyond the clouds, that veil that hides such beautiful realms. I've seen empires and spoken to legends. But then the demons come, clutching at me, dragging me into the darkness with them that I may see what lurks in the world of shadow.

This is all metaphorical mind you. I have had supernatural events occur but those were frightening and I brought those on myself because I dared to seek out answers I never should have. I have seen the dark man cloaked in shade staring down at me, the void his face, the silence of the grave his voice.

I am a strange man, a fluid man, a being without purpose or fate. I am a cruel irony in this clever equation dubbed Existence. I am a superfluous piece, an unnecessary cog whose absence would cause no trouble for the machine to continue running. So I have no reason to be. I have no purpose. Does that mean I never should have been?

I live for my dreams and yet I fear what they bring. Either way, the terrors and the glimpses of Paradise are far more preferable to the waking world of bitter reality. I do not belong in the world of men. If only I could tear free, find that horizon, claim a star for myself, and weave such wondrous tales with a faith so true that they became real, my soul breathing life into fiction.

But I am in a downward spiral, and the bottom does not exist. There is only void and the light grows ever so distant. Perhaps I should stop looking up at that fading sun and look only toward the approaching abyss. Why reach for that I shall never touch.