Dreamscaping: Part One

Xander woke suddenly and without warning, it was dawn. Disorganized shapes shift and tumble into focus, organizing into a recognizable form, and order is briefly restored before the chaos. “Once more into the fray!” he hears echoing in the memory of a dream that is already fading. The chaos is struggling to hold on, and his mind is fighting to restore the balance. He is aware, briefly, of two worlds, in one space and time. With this awareness, the chaos dissipates and the brief existence of the shadow of a dream of a fractured reality is fading into the harsh tones of his alarm clock. Thus, Xander wakes once again, weary and tired. He suffered only momentary disorientation that usually follows his unusually vivid dreams. Now sunlight was intruding into his bedroom, notifying him that, regardless how long thinks he slept, he had spent the night soundly in his bed and it was now time to get up.

“What is it like,” asks one doctor “when you dream?”

“I reach through my mind into the night, searching, endlessly searching. Reaching, grasping, pawing, clawing, biting, and straining to reach the unreachable. Loosely bound prose floating through the air, vanishing into dust with the slightest glace, with realization reality vanishes into the night. This is not how it is supposed to happen.” Xander said. “There, in the mirror of my mind, I see myself, seemingly safe in bed, a tempest raging beneath the surface, I am suddenly not myself, and something new flows through my mind.”

“Go on” Said the doctor, as he took notes in a rapidly filling notebook.

“Sometimes, I hear an echo of a voice,” mused Xander, “saying; “this night he will not dream, there will be no reprieve no more will nightmares wake him. For he slept a sleep that not even death could wake him from. When the dawn breaks, he will wake to find the world he left the world he fears to find. Nothing will be what it seems, and what things seems to be will not be what they appear. Up will be left and left will be down, down will be up, and you will be forever changed yet altogether unchanged. I hold his life in the palm of my hand and bend his will to my own, he will by dancer on the world's stage, through him I will splinter time and mold it to my liking.” And I begin to dream, not falling, or drifting, but thrust deep into a dream you would never wish to dream, and I wake, cold, alone, and unsure.”

“That is no way to spend a night.” Said the doctor, closing his notebook, “I would like to try some new medications to help you sleep.”

That is how it usually goes. They then offer him the latest drug to help him sleep. He tried them once, and woke more exhausted than he had ever been in his life. He does not try them anymore. Whatever Xander’s problem is, a pill will not fix it. What surprises him most is that no one ever asks what actually happens in his dreams. Maybe they don’t care, or it does not matter. However, he has grown attached to them you might say. Most people do not dream the way he does. No one has ever said, “Oh I had one like that too” when he talk to them about his dreams. Xander only ever has one of three dreams. He is always himself, mostly anyway, just different versions of his self....