Lucid Dream

Xander Vos · Lucid Dream

Well boys and girls, it's been a long, hard year, but my Extension English short story is finally complete. I thought I'd start a new thread so as to be able to post the whole thing in its entirety with ease, and to let people know it's finally done.

Went with the name Lucid Dream in the end as it means to be aware that one is dreaming, which is a nice idea I thought and links in with what I'm writing about. So, here it is:

Xander Vos

Lucid Dream

I squinted at the page displayed in front of me as the dim light drifted backwards and forwards, in time with the swaying branches of the trees outside my window. The cool air of the night drifted over me as I sat there, gazing with growing despair at the blank page jammed into my type writer.

The air already heavy with smoke, I reached across to pluck with a practiced ease yet another cigarette from the rapidly diminishing pile of packs, placing it in my mouth and clenching the end gently with my teeth as I flicked the match across the matchbox once, twice, three times.

Light flared into existence as the match ignited, illuminating my failure in its completeness as I bent my head forwards slightly, gently touching the match to the end of my cigarette, before whipping the match from side to side, dousing its light, and merely adding to the smoky haze that inhabited this torture chamber with me.

Pulling the cigarette from my mouth, I blew a steady stream of smoke into the air, and reached out for my half-finished vodka on the rocks and took a large sip, grimacing at the sharp taste dulled only slightly by the numbness my tongue now felt as a consequence of my cigarettes.

Refocussing, I began typing a sentence onto the page, hesitantly, unwilling to make a mistake. Not this time. The words were hard to come by, as if they were being squeezed out of me by a giant, demanding hand, that wouldn’t relent, wouldn’t give me a moments rest, and would keep demanding more words from me until I had been squeezed dry, and then that giant hand would toss me aside, like all the others, and move on to a new mind to squeeze.

Gazing back at the page, I read:

“Still injured from his last encounter with the fearful and tyrannical Lord Langsworth, Sebastian struggled to run, his left leg dragging behind him, broken badly from his fall from the mansion’s third story window. He gasped fearfully, knowing that at any second, Langsworth’s minions may be closing in, hunting him down, never halting, until he was dead, and all was restored to how it had been before Sebastian had ever meddled in Langsworth’s affairs…”

It was crap. Utter poodoo.

The fans would love it.

I kept typing, getting to the end of the first page, and after re-reading, deemed it satisfactory, and ripped it off the type writer, placing it next to the machine as the first contribution towards my first draft. Shoving a fresh piece of paper into the machine, I reached for the keys again, and paused, all inspiration leaving me in that instant. Glancing at the bottom of the previous page in an attempt to keep the momentum rolling forwards, I sighed in frustration as, in merely seconds after having finished the page I saw it for what it was, riddled with lazy writing, stupid clichés, and pointless dribble. Even the fans wouldn’t buy this load of crap.

Growling in frustration I curled the page into a fresh ball, pelting the ball towards the bin. It hit the rim and bounced off, littering the already snowy floor with another rejected attempt at finishing off this poodooish, good for nothing series.

Throwing the rest of my vodka down my throat and taking a last, long drag at my cigarette, I smashed my fist into my leg in frustration, embracing the sharp jolt of pain that it brought with it. With my editor breathing down my neck and daily stories in the local paper detailing rumours and speculation on how Sebastian would finally defeat Langsworth and rescue his good friend and potential lover Amelia from his clutches, the desperation began to build like a strong current against a flimsy dam.

There was no way out.

Well, there was one. I glanced over at my bedside table, and the small, innocuous bag of pills that lay on it, the answer to all my problems, a gateway to another world.

They sit there, and as I locked gazes with them I felt them burn small oval holes into me and through me, trapping me there, paused in mid-thought, unable to tear my eyes away. They’re my apples, but dare I risk a bite?

I glanced away finally, but only to have my gaze trapped by another all-knowing object. The type writer stares into my soul, its toothed mouth grinning at me in a twisted way, tauntingly. I sneer at it and rip the page from its tantalising grasp, pushing the page away from me, turning my thoughts once more away from the series, my eyes searching the room for anything, anything at all, to concentrate on in its place. Inevitable really.

Again the pills draw me in, magnets to the cold hard steel that resides deep inside my soul. Hardened all those years ago. A quick twist of a tap, a rip of a bag, throwing my head back, downing those little pieces of plastic followed by a long drink, oh so long between drinks. But I can’t.

Can I?

I shook my head as if to throw the thoughts residing within it away, scrunched in a tiny ball, as meaningless as the drafts I’d written. I glanced over at the clock on my desk and realised how late it had become without my attention, creeping up on me when I wasn’t watching.

I rose from my desk, taking my glass into the kitchen to rinse it out and dispose of the remaining traces of this horrid night. I threw my empty cigarette box in the overflowing rubbish bag, and flirted with the thought of doing something about it. The kitchen itself wasn’t so much dirty as unattended to, the book having taken up all my time, leaving little of my attention for anything else that needed to be done around the house. It would always be there for me to come back to, though, the story needed to be done now, too many people demanded it.

As I doused the house in darkness, and retreated under the covers of my bed, I knew that as soon as the dreams within my head begun reaching out to take me over again, I’d see his face again. It had been so long since he had gone, but the dreams never left, his arm outstretched as if to embrace me in one final, eternal hug…

I awoke sharply, not aware of who or where I was for an instant, before the memories of the last few months begun flooding back to me, and that hellish evening – so long ago it now seemed – begun to re-enter my mind. I turned to glance at the clock on my bedside table, ignoring the bag of innocuous pills for the moment, concentrating instead on the time of day. It was late morning, I played around in my head the possibility of taking the morning off, going out for a morning run, something I hadn’t done in too long, of cooking myself a big breakfast – the bigger the more time-consuming – or even just to watch a recording of a cherished sporting moment I always liked to watch when I was feeling down, that last Saturday in September always sending shivers down my spine

The new morning brought new hope, as I lifted myself out of bed, and carefully dressed myself. The breakfast was a quick one, the run abandoned, and that fleeting thought of the sport recording I’d had in bed would have to do. Today was a new day, and the sun was high in the sky, the birds singing in the trees, and my book waiting to be finished. The typewriter sat on my desk, glaring at the back of my head as I left the room, favouring the computer in the lounge room for this attempt. After all, I still held the smokey, blurred memories of the last night in my mind, hanging over me, and only a change in scenery would be able to shake it from me.

The computer brought with it other distractions though, and before long I was watching inane videos of idiots tripping over themselves, checking my emails, catching up on correspondences, and anything but opening that document that called to me with a blinking orange.

Sighing in frustration, I pushed myself away from the computer, away from all that, and paced up and down the hall, each time moving closer and closer to my locked bedroom door.

I came to a stop, and glanced at the key in the lock. Such a small, simple key, but turning it in the lock would be committing to opening far more than just this door. Turning that key would break down that barrier preventing me from finishing this series, but turning that key would also break down the barriers I’d put up keeping past memories out…

I turned the key.

Without thinking too much about it, I grabbed the bag from my desk, marching briskly to my kitchen, ignoring the pull of first the type writer and then the computer, the screen now blackened in defeat. The cup was already waiting for me, as if it had known I was coming, that my will was too weak to hold out for much longer.

The water came freely, falling far smoother from the tap than my thoughts had onto a page before now. Not anymore.

Without another thought, the plastic bag in my hand was ripped apart from ease. Here goes nothing…
The water was mildly warm, and I could barely feel the pills as they slid down my throat, spreading their tendrils of despair and horror deep within me. Hopefully, those tendrils would be breaking through the barriers that withheld the final solution. The answer to all my problems.

As expected, the final dramatic march to the sink had unfortunately produced a rather anticlimactic moment – a build up with no end, the predicament I had been struggling with for months now – and I walked slowly towards the couch, in case I collapsed in a hurry. As I got closer to the couch, however, I suddenly began to fill ill at ease, the pills at work deep inside me.

I sat down suddenly as strange shapes formed before my eyes. I glanced about me fearfully, suddenly aware of shapes and images that hadn’t been there before. I shuddered as a wave of nausea ran through my body, and leaned forwards as I felt a wave of dizziness rush over me.

Then it hit.

Falling, falling so fast, can’t stop. Where am I? Where am I going? So dark, oh so dark. And cold, what’s happening? Can’t stop it, nononono, let me out!

wallsclosingintrappingme.

Such a mad world, oh such a mad world.

Why did he leave? Oh dad, why did you have to go? To leave me all alone. So cold, so dark, so alone.

Colours, sounds, smells, shapes, a gritty taste in my mouth, and an undeniably metallic ring sounded in my ear, the sort of metallic ring that a ten year old bike makes upon impacting with a shiny new Mazda. The crunching sound on impact, the screech of tires, the screaming of pain, of shock, not believing what happened, right before my eyes…

I’ve been here before, this place. It calls to me, as if I know it.

Calling.

screaming

I can’t make anything out. I glance around, indistinct shapes blurring before my eyes. Where am I? Last thing I can remember, falling to the ground.

Falling.

So far.

I push myself to my feet, stagger, grappling with my balance in a hard fought battle that I finally prevail in.

Where am I?

This street, bathed in moonlight and light only by the amber glow of the occasional streetlight, this pot-hole in the road, the broken glass, the mangled and twisted body of a bike, the bloodied body thrown so far from it, sticking out at a twisted angle from the bushes.

And the blood. So much blood. Too much blood. Why is there so much blood? Blood everywhere, blood on my hands, blood on my face, blood in my mouth.

His blood is on my hands.

Why didn’t I stop him? No, stay home with us Dad, no need to ride out tonight, roads are dangerous this time of night, especially if there’s a storm brewing, don’t want to put you in danger of anything. I’m fine son, he says to me, before leaving with a quick love you, as if there’s nothing that could go wrong, as if that wouldn’t be the last time I saw him. Saw my father.

I feel a choked sob rise in my throat but fight it down. This battle is too hard-fought though, and it break through my defences, the wail that escapes me hardly more human than the distant siren coming to help my father. Help my father. He’s dead! Why don’t they see it. Why do they bother when they know there’s nothing that can be done. Just going through the motions, sure, I guess they’re just going through the motions, I guess they’re just doing their job, but don’t they realise that each attempt to rip him back from that lonely world that we humans cannot enter, to bring him back to us, his family, the ones that love him, is just driving a new dagger through my heart? That slowly but surely instead of bringing him back to us, they’re sending me too him?

I never lived with myself after that. That’s when the drinking and smoking began. I guess I thought that if I died it wouldn’t be so bad, I’d be back with him. Irrational I know, I mean, who even knows what happens after death? His precious devotion to that foolish, make-believe fantasy Christianity, meant that even if there was life after death, we would likely be spending it in very different places. Either that,

or nothing.

Nothing could happen after my life ended. I could close my eyes, feel the cold embrace of death, be finally at peace with myself.

And then nothing.

Who’s to say that there’s life after death, anymore than that there is death after life? Perhaps we keep on living forever, crossing through different planes as we do so. Or maybe we just were never alive, and that everything we know is just chemical reactions happening in some far out place amongst the stars where nothing really exists, nothing really happens, but where everything we know, our entire universe, is created. Perhaps everything that we are is nothing more than a momentary thought, a flicker of concentration, in the mind of someone greater than any of us could comprehend.

But now I’m starting to talk like him, about the Man upstairs.

It really is kind of funny, how mad this world of ours is.

The broken glass crunches beneath my feet, as I gaze down at the blood on my hands, still not really comprehending it at all. poodoo. How did I let this happen? It’s all too much. I need to lie down. I reallyneedtoliedown.

Darkness again. The wallssoclose. Why won’t they stop crushing me, it’s all too much, I can’t take this, why did I let this happen, how could I do this to myself? What have I gotten myself into? This book, who cares? I don’t care. Me, I certainly couldn’t care less. It’s just a stupid book. It’s not as if it means anything. It’s not as if it’s

real.

Raymond George Turk. That’s my name. That ink on a page, marks made by a piece of metal dragging across the page, is all that I am. Those letters, placed in that order, evokes forth far more than an imagination, far more than a representation. Those letters are me.

Why am I flying?

It feels like I’m flying.

Don’t tell me I’m not flying. Don’t look at me with those judging eyes and ask me, “Ray are you feeling ok?” Just because I say I’m flying.

I can see it all from up here, so I must be flying.

That or I’m God.

That or I’m dead.

That or I’m so frakked up I don’t know my ups from my downs, my lefts from my rights.

It’s all there beneath me. Or above me. I’m suddenly not so sure anymore. But it’s not just Sydney I can see. I can see the past too, and the future. I can see that little baby, so innocent and naïve, believing that he could do anything with his life if he put his mind to it. That toddler, crying at school because he misses his mummy, not ready to go to school and not really caring. That kid, studying hard for exams he’s going to fail anyway. The man, crying at his father’s funeral, giving up on life before it’s really begun. The old man, bitter and alone, not caring about what he does with his life, not having cared for a long time.

Life’s a journey, but we never get to choose where it starts or ends, so why the frak should we put up with it? We didn’t choose to do this or that, so why don’t we get to complain as much as we want, get out of it while we can, stop the hurt and pain before it cuts us too deep.

Cuts.

All up and down my arm, both deep and shallow, fresh and old. When did this happen? I never did this. I haven’t done this yet.

Suddenly it all dissolves, as water trickles down a drain, sliding away from me slowly at first and then faster. Hundreds of needles suddenly stab into my left leg, causing my leg to buckle out from under me, a mutinous limb no longer willing to work with the rest.

I stumble to a chair and collapse into it, pulling my leg into view and stare at it in horror, the mangled, broken leg beneath me is surely not my own.

A sickening feeling fills my gut, slowly seeping through me until I’m cold all over. Shivering. Broken leg, night sky outside, dogs barking in the distance. I’ve been here before. I’ve seen this room, created this room.

These curtains, billowing softly in the warm summer night’s air. The window-pane, slightly dirty, smudged, where just two nights ago a body pressed up against them, gazing out at a suspicious neighbour. That table, those chairs. That door, that wall.

I’ve been here before.

Sometimes people say they aren’t feeling themselves, as a figure of speech, but right at that moment, I really knew I wasn’t myself.

This room was my creation. This world, was my creation. I was the Creator of all within which I now existed.

But how? How could this have happened? This couldn’t be real, God no, it couldn’t be. I’m still hallucinating, surely. Any minute now I’ll wake up to the phone ringing, or a tap dripping, or any of those other sounds that snaps people out of major hallucinations. Well, at least that’s the way it works in the movies and books.

In books…

I brace myself on the chair and struggle to my feet. I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t stay here, I’ll go insane. I can’t be here, just can’t. This can’t be happening to me!

LET ME OUT!

The door bursts open with a start, the light beyond blinding me suddenly, and the shock at finding someone else in this torment with me shocks me to silence, stops me from bursting out with the question hovering on my lips Who the hell are you?

The girl who stands before me, ravishingly beautiful, is the girl of my dreams. She really is. Amelia, Sebastian’s long-time friend, had been created based on my wildest desires, and as such had beautiful blonde hair, baby-blue eyes, and curves in all the right places.

She stared at me with wide eyes, not the shock of unrecognition, but with shock for the state I was in.

“Sebastian! What happened?” She cried and rushed towards me, propping me up and forcing me to sit down again, eliciting a cry of pain that rushed unbidden from my lips, much to my embarrassment.

Weak, you’re weak. You’re not a baby. It’s just pain. Physical pain, temporary pain. Something that won’t be with you in days, weeks, months time. Following your every waking move and haunting your restless nights…

I was still stunned to silence, now at having my fears confirmed. Whatever had happened to me, whatever was happening now, I needed it to end. This couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be real. How could I be here, at the centre of my final book?

Amelia, mistaking my silence for pain, quickly went about easing my pain in any way she could. I remembered now how I had left the final book with her and Sebastian agreeing to break into Langsworth’s house, to steal a priceless item they thought he had stolen from Sebastian’s family long ago, with Sebastian barely escaping with his life after Langsworth released his pack of hounds upon the boy.

Try as I might, I could not bring myself to protest her treatment. I could not tell her who I truly was, ask why I was here, in any way indicate that I was somewhere I did not belong. This had less to do with my initial shock, as to do with some unseen force, something greater than I understood, seemingly giving me an invisible, knowing wink, to keep the charade going, to not give away the game.

By the time she had worked my leg into a splint, and I was able to stand, she gestured me to the door.

“Come on Sebastian, we have to get out of here, it’s no longer safe for you here,” she said, he eyes conveying silently the fear she felt for my safety, and deep down I felt some sense of understanding, that even if I had not intended them to, Amelia and Sebastian did indeed hold within them unspoken feelings for the other that transgressed mere friendship.

As suddenly as this thought arose within my mind – much more sharp than it had been moments before, perhaps a sign that the drugs influence over me was waning – I realised the ridiculous nature of it. The thought that these characters, these creations of mine, were any more than mere two-dimensional ideas brought forth from my mind was bordering on the insane, perhaps an after-affect of the poisonous lies the pills had fed my naïve mind.

This woman, standing before me, was an invention of a lonely, anguished man who was suffering through unimaginable pain. She was not someone who had been delivered into the world as a wide-eyed youth, who had developed from a small baby, to an innocent child, to an experienced youth, she had been delivered straight into the world as she was, imagined out of thin air, brought into being merely because I thought it. She was no more than that, and no less. Everything that she was, her desires, ambitions, thoughts, fears and loves were what I had made them. She was no more her own person than a television set was able to control which programs it conveyed to its audience.

She looked at me, a look of bemusement shrouding her beautiful eyes in a layer of doubt. “Sebastian? Are you ok? You haven’t said anything. Did Langsworth do anything to you? Anything we hadn’t expected?”

Finally, I shook my head, “No, no, I’m ok Amelia. Just a bit rattled.”

I realised that I would be treated as a madman if I told her the truth, if I screamed for her to let me out of whatever sick trap this was, that she wasn’t real, that none of this was real. If this was to be the prison my mind created, I may as well go along with it willingly, rather than kicking and screaming.

As I slowly walked out the door, trailing her like a love-sick puppy, I glanced around at the dimly lit street. I had created this world, everything within it, and yet it was incomplete. Patches appeared wherever I glanced, as if I were watching something on a screen, with static distorting the complete image. The end of the street was shrouded in darkness, as if nothing existed beyond it.

Perhaps nothing did exist beyond it. Perhaps this world was just my creation, nothing more. I suddenly felt ashamed, strangely guilty at the thought of gifting my characters with an incomplete, illusory world in which to live. The feeling of guilt was an odd emotion to direct towards a creation – feeling sorry for a broken dish washer that is being sent to a garbage tip, for instance, completely ludicrous.

As we walked from, presumably, Sebastian’s house, towards hers, I recognised the directions – past the bakery, turn left at the lights and down the hill, and then left at the tall blue house – and again felt absurdly out of place in this model, this representation of what until shortly before had been nothing more than ink on a page and thoughts in my head.

Before we reached her front door however, I felt I owed it to the woman to be honest with her, and grabbed her hand so suddenly she let out a shrill shriek, enough to frighten two possums that had been crawling along an telegraph pole’s wire.

“Amelia, what would you say if I told you I wasn’t who you thought I was, if I wasn’t Sebastian?”

“What do you mean?” She said, her brow furrowing in that maddeningly cute way my ex-wife’s had.

“I’m Ray, Ray Turk. I wrote all this. I created all this. This house, this road, this street, and you. None of this is real, it’s all in my head, and you need to tell me how to get out!”

“Oh my god…” She said, taking a step towards me.

“Yes, yes exactly,” I murmured, giving her an apologetic look, “I’m so sorry, but it’s true, and you need to help me figure out how I’m supposed to get out of this… this madness!”

“That fall must have been harder than I thought!” She murmured, and I realised she was speaking to herself.

“No, no it wasn’t! I’m not Sebastian! I’m Ray!” I all but screamed at her. Panic welled within me, threatening to spill forth into full-blown hysteria. Why wasn’t she listening to me?! This girl was meant to be smart for Christ’s sake!

“Oh darling, we’ll get you inside and settled down, you’ve had one hell of a day,” she said, moving towards me and placing a hand on my brow, “Oh look at that, you’re burning up. I’m sorry, I told you not to go in there on your own.”

“But I didn’t!” I hissed, pushing her hand from my forehead, “No one did! None of this happened! It’s all make-believe! I thought it up, and I could just as easily un-think it… I could!” I finished rather lamely, realising how strange that idea must sound to her, that with the power of thought I could un-conjure her.

“Go ahead then,” she said.

“What?”

“Make me disappear, with a snap of your fingers and a wave of your wand,” she said, with arched eyebrows.

I paused, taken aback by her reaction, but keen to demonstrate that this world was mine, that I was the God of all that existed within it, I had control over it. For once in my life I had control over what was going to happen, what people felt.

I paused, and concentrated hard, feeling more than a little ridiculous, and within a few moments of anticlimactic silence in which I attempted to make the possums vanish into thin air, I realised with a sinking feeling how wrong I had been.

“You see?” She said, “I’m as real as you, this is all as real as everything. Don’t stand there before me and tell me you’re God, Sebastian, I won’t have it, you hear me? God created all of this and only he can be rid of it.”

I was struck then by how apt her analogy was. I had been so focussed on the control I assumably held as God of this world, that I hadn’t paused to consider the idea that this world, much like my own, could very well run on its own. I had created it, but from that point forward it was out of my hands. In writing my books, I had created a world, through several specific characters, but the rest of it operated in silence, never interacting with The Plot, but still existed.

In that instance, the clarity of the situation struck me so hard I stumbled on my feet – and with a hiss of pain remembered the injury I had apparently suffered from Langsworth’s cursed third story window. I had been so self-absorbed in my writing, so intent on finishing the series, of resolving The Plot, that I had not considered the possibility of it remaining incomplete.

Who was I to dictate the specific outcome of every insignificant detail in these character’s lives? By recounting how they lived their lives, who they married, what children they bore, when they died, I robbed them of free will. As ridiculous as that sounded in my mind, I pondered the truth behind it.

A name is ink on a page. Raymond Turk. If I wrote that on a page, it was merely symbols on a page. It meant as little as Sebastian Williams, yet so much more. One was the name of a living, breathing organism, with hopes, dreams, desires, fears, and pains, whilst the other was a character in a novel.

Who was I to say that one was more important than the other? One had been brought into the world through a loving mother and father, the other through merely a loving father, and yet I was robbing that soul of a life.

As the night wore on, Amelia and I spoke about many things, from her childhood – of which I had created so little, and yet of which she spoke of so much – to her ambitions in her life. Every time she told me of an ambition of hers that I had not created, that I had had no part of, a small dagger of horror stabbed into my heart. Everything she said shaped her more as a real human being, and less as a creation, a mere figment of my imagination.

Finally, after having lost track of the time, we both acknowledged the need for sleep, and after settling me carefully in a spare bed, Amelia gave me a gentle, warm smile, as if by looking into my eyes she could read my soul, could know me. That night I slept soundly for the first time in almost a year. That night, the dreams didn’t reach me.

As the sun broke on the horizon, announcing the arrival of morning in this twisted world of mine, the haze of shadows that had shrouded much of my creation in darkness parted, and the unknown became known. When I awoke, I was at first disoriented. Not just for the fact that I was in a strange bed, but even when I came to my senses, the bemusement at my predicament struck me. Why I was still in this world, why the drugs I had ingested had not passed through me by now.

An eternity of dreams can be but a minute of reality.

Leaving the house behind me in a daze, I stumbled into the street, glancing around me. What had seemed so ominous the night before appeared before me now as if it were a scene from a children’s movies. Birds sang in trees, the son shone gaily on the dewy grass, and laughter could be heard from houses as children went about their morning rituals.

Could this be the same world I had experienced the previous night? That I had written about all these years? The world I had written about had been dark, grim and frightening. Sebastian and Amelia had struggled in a world ruled by evil and tyranny, where no one seemed to raise a finger in resistance as slowly the world was brought under the strict control of an evil tyrant. They had struggled through adventure after adventure, waging their private rebellion against one of his lieutenants, Lord Langsworth.

And yet this world, this world seemed at peace. How this was the world I had created, I could not fathom. It was as if in being drawn into this world, the negativity that had existed within it had been sucked from it, replaced instead by a single, depressed and depraved human being.

But no, Amelia had mentioned the previous night that I had just escaped Langsworth’s clutches, that we had had to leave my house behind, travel to her house, to escape from any pursuit I may have brought with my from my latest escapade.

My latest escapade.

It was incredibly easy, in that moment, to slip into the role of Sebastian. As someone once said, “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” At that very moment, I could hear Lennon whispering in my ears. All those around me were me as I was them; we were all each other, part of a greater entity, part of a greater whole.

Amelia came up behind me, slipping her arms around me, and in that moment, in that instantaneous moment in which the warmth of the sun enveloped my body, and her body, still warm from sleep, nestled behind me, I was in perfection.

And, as has been my lot in life, that moment couldn’t last. The warmth that enveloped me remained, but the dizziness that overtook me ensured that the next moment, in which I re-opened my eyes, saw me returned to my grungy, disaster of a home, face down on my couch, with a small wet patch eked out on the couch around the corner of my mouth.

The groan that slithered its way from deep inside of me broke the silence that etched the moment into eternity.

As I awoke fully, the memory of where I had been, of what had happened, returned to me. As I stood, slowly, surprised to find my leg once more uninjured, repaired, as if nothing had ever been wrong with it.

I guess nothing had been wrong with it.

That moment of perfection, the feel of that, that Goddess against me pulled at me, and the happiness that had built up within me over the course of that night came crashing apart, that moment of ecstatic joy ripped from me cruelly and carelessly. Of all that my life had been, I had known in that instance I was at perfection, that that world of mine, created so long ago out of desperation at having nothing going right for me, the world that, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I had spent hours experimenting with, slowly crafting the perfect world in which to create a story that would appeal to the masses.

Because that’s all reading is in the end.

“Reading is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once, and is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead…”

I read that once, long ago, in my childhood perhaps, and at that moment the words came floating to the surface of my mind. Calvino’s belief in an invisible world beyond our grasp was a world I had experienced, a place where, once the shadows of mystery and doubt were removed, the greater picture, the unattainable truth, could be revealed.

In the land of the dead…

I checked the clock on my microwave, noting idly that it was merely an hour since I had consumed the drugs that had sent me onto this journey of self-discovery. It had awakened me to my true self, to true knowledge, to a greater understanding of what it meant to experience joy.

And now that had been taken away from me, as everything great in my life inevitably is. This cruel, frakked up world of ours had done more damage to me than the world of my mind ever had, or could.

In the land of the dead…

I glanced briefly around the chambers that had been my prison for so long, the computer idling in the corner, reaching out to me to switch on its screen, to sit down once more and be trapped within its grasp, not letting me go until it had sapped any and all of my creative energy.

But not again.

The story that had once ruled my life ruled it no longer. The characters I had created that existed within that story had their own lives, I understood that now. If I were to finish the story, to publish the conclusion that the public so craved, I would seal the fates of those that deserved to choose their own.

Who was I to decree who was to live and who was to die? Despite comparing myself to Him when I had walked the streets of My world, I was no God. I was a Creator, my mind had spewed forth an entire world, but it was not my place to determine how it ran.

The story would remain incomplete.

The door to my apartment slammed shut, creaking open slightly once more as the latch failed to catch. I had ceased to care.

The stairs rattled under my feet as I strode imposingly up them, knowing in that instance what I needed to do, and how desperately I needed to do it.

My apartment was on one of the lower levels of my building, and yet the time it took for me to reach the roof seemed to pass in an instance, as if time were trying to catch up after I had experienced an eternity within an hour.

I glanced around the rooftop of my building, so plain and devoid of beauty, of life, of evidence that someone out there had cared enough to make an effort and create something worthwhile to fill this empty space.

The waist-high wall that ran around the edge was made of a course material, and when I gripped it I felt a twinge of pain beneath my hands. The pain felt good, it felt real, as real as Amelia’s touch had been only moments before.

Thoughts were rushing through my mind, too fast to comprehend, too fast to pause and consider which of them deserved precedence. All I knew at that moment was that the world I was in, this world that had treated me with such cruelty and disregard over the past thirty-something years, was more of a lie than the world of my books.

That world, that unattainable world, was within my grasp, had been within my grasp, before this world had ripped me back from it, afraid that if I remained too long beyond its boundaries that I would be lost to it forever.

Afraid to lose me. I snorted, it was too late to show any sign of care for my existence now. Now there was nothing left for me to do except this. To return to my world, to the world of perfection, in the land of the dead…

My foot stumbled slightly as I rose to stand on the edge of the wall. I glanced down at the street far below, the people passing by without a thought for the man standing directly above them. So little care, so little regard for another human life. This world of ours, that had once been so lively, so beautiful, so engaging, had become corrupted by those in power, far more than the world of my creation had been.

For a long time I had believed that my world, ruled over by the dark tyrant was the one that was morally corrupt, but now my eyes had been opened. It was not the damaged world, the world that was in a state of moral disrepair was the one that arrogantly placed itself above all others, believing that those who knew of other planes of existence were crazy or frauds.

“Amelia…” I whispered, as I leaned forward,

and jumped.

Dakoth

I shalt read this thouroghly upon the setting of the sun good sir.

Crozeus

And I shall not.

Sirak Sazen

I'll read it tomorrow when I don't feel like my eyes have been bathed in chili.

Xander Vos

Keep in mind all poodoo s and fraks are meant to be the actual word, not what the censor makes them. Razz

Darth Samuel

Korus, you know how to bypass the curse censor. DO IT!

Xander Vos

Meh, I've forgotten.

Xander Vos

Cool reading my story you gaiz. Sad

Dakoth

Well then, better late than never.

I've always been a fan of the first person writing, its more challenging. I think you did a pretty exceptional job of capturing the plight of most writers. From thier own accounts many view creating literature as a painful soul-sucking process that demands you sacrifice yourself to it.

Of course your boy Ray didn't go all emocidal over writers block, Moreso over the raw cruelty of the world he lived in, where there was no plot, no sense or discernable purpose tied to what happened.

I have to say, I felt his descent into madness and finally to some sort of insane moment of clarity was especially well done. The rapid shifts of thought and stream of conciousness style kept me very immersed, and it touched upon many of the most base fears and questions every person has, which is more than enough to make someone think those uncomortable thoughts.

I think that about covers it for praise, time for protips!

Protip 1! In the very beginning you used drifted twice in very close proximity to eachother, not that theres anything wrong with that, its just a pet peeve of mine what with over a quarter of a million words out there Smile

Protip 2! Who locks their bedroom door from the outside? Ah well it was good symbolism.

All in all very good.

P.S. I totally didn't realize he was talking about hugging his father till you mentioned him. I totally assumed that the loved one he had lost had been his gay lover. I don't know what that says about me =/

Xander Vos

Thanks for that, it means a lot to me that you spent the time to read it. Smile

I agree about the use of 'drifted' didn't notice it, but I don't like it either. I had to submit it a few weeks ago though, so nothing that can be done now. Razz

Haha that's true, hadn't thought it could be perceived in that way, perhaps that says a little about both of us, that I didn't think to specify that it was a father he had lost not a lover. Wink

Door locked from the outside is surely allowed under the guise of poetic liscense Razz

works better in terms of him being on the precipice of grabbing the pills, but he has to not only overcome a physical barrier placed in front of him, but a mental one as well.

Dakoth

Yeah, it fit in very well there, to the point where I didn't stop to say, "HAY W8" until after I had begun typing a response. Suspension of disbelief wins again!