Story: Oneiromancy, I

(Part O , II)

There were dreams and then there were Dreams. The man had been having the latter sort for most of his life and he was sick of them. They danced around in his head, lingered menacingly and never meant anything. Flame figures danced in the arms of icy partners and giant pillows roamed the land seeking mountains to bed down on. People spoke to him of total nonsense and animals recited poetry of the finest meter. It was perplexing and often nearly drove him insane.

Sometimes he thought that he was already insane. The thought was a consolation on cold stormy nights when sleep was something best left undone. This wasn't one of those nights, and he knew that if he didn't sleep tonight that he would probably collapse the next day. Sleep would have to happen. The bottle of dream-preventing sleeping pills sat on the small corner shelf of his bedroom, as it always did, and he didn't take one, as he always didn't. Never again. Addiction had been terrible, and the bottle stood as a reminder to be vigilant.

The man brushed his teeth, splashed his face, donned his pyjamas and dropped onto the mattress on the floor. The lamp turned off and darkness prevailed. Sleep followed swiftly, as is tended to, and then after a few moments there were Dreams.

A woman with short blonde hair was looking at him. An owl wearing a tiny blue fez stood on her shoulder. She was speaking but he couldn't hear anything, and a wall of fire was sweeping in from the right of his vision. Now the owl was trying to speak to him too, and it occurred to him that this dream wasn't anywhere near as weird as his usual nightmares. He looked down involuntarily and saw he was standing on nothing but an intangible path of light. The woman was on the path too, a few steps away, but he couldn't get any closer no matter how he tried.

Giants stalked by in the darkness beyond the effect of the Light Road, carrying kippers instead of swords and swinging legs in uncoordinated fashions. Stars twinkled underfoot. The blonde woman was stamping her foot on the Road. Finally she pulled a piece of paper out of a previously absent bag and scribbled on it with a pen she took behind her ear. The Light Road dissipated suddenly and the man fell into a hideous and evil darkness, and then his regular Dreams began. Despite what was about to happen, the man relaxed at the relative normality as the elephants thundered across a plain and then turned into planets made of cheese, pulling the stars with trunks made into rings.

The man slept on, twitching and shuddering occasionally.


There shall be more...