Perhaps In My Dreams

Diagrams. Dashes. A tangled web of interconnected lines, jot notes, and commentary. A pen alternating between the lips of its holder and being pressed too hard against the page, casting a long shadow under the light of a flickering lamp with a bulb mere inches from the end of its intended lifespan.

The pen hesitates.

For a moment, silence. More furious scribbling.

Silence...

. . .

"I CONCEDE! I've damn well HAD IT."

I damn near screamed at the top of my lungs. With a roar and a rake of my disfigured hand, I snatched up several of the papers that littered my desk, crushing them and abusing them until they rather resembled a lumpy snowball. My lamp, feeling the vibrations I sent through my desk, shuddered as if threatening to tip right over. The words tormented me; bits and pieces of stories that danced just beyond my reach. Their whimsy was too tantalizing to be pinned down in strokes of ink. It infuriated me.

My exasperation seemed to have given the neighbours' dog a fright, as I heard barely-muffled barking through the walls that was sure to set the whole building into fits. I always thought I did my best work at night, although it seemed that my "best work" these days included the rousing of the other occupants of my present dwelling. It was scarcely more than a closet, and I was almost certainly overpaying for the space I got.

I stood from my desk. It would probably end up being another night of the same - that is, staring at my notes until my eyes could take no more. In fact, I swore I could feel the bags underneath my eyes stretching down past my cheekbones. Exhaustion was a hell of a thing with me these days. Might as well turn it in, I thought to myself, Nothing else is going to magically sprout itself from my pen at this hour, anyway. And if that mutt won't shut its gab, I'll never hear the end of it from Mme. Kolshoka. The land lady took none too kindly to being woken up, and my neighbours were almost sure to sell me out as the source of the dog's incessant barking.

As I tucked myself into bed, I heaved an exasperated, exhausted sigh. Oh, how I longed for the days when my imagination wandered down pathways and corridors that seemed just within reach. Back then, it wouldn't have been so hard to put the pen to the page. Back then, my notes wouldn't have ever been so discordant. Back then...

Back then, it struck me, I was visited by Others. Oh sure, my days were filled with mundane things. Your typical, run-of-the-mill business. Things like long division and debating my position on the works of Shakespeare. Playing ball with the other kids at school. Those others, my peers, were not the Others-with-a-capital-O that I was remembering only now, in my frustration.

When I was alone there were... voices. No, more than voices. They were real, genuine people. I had no name to apply to them, so I simply referred to them as my Others; after all, they were the only other people who were permitted in my room after curfew in those days. They spoke to me, words cloying and enticing, always telling me of their world - something implacable. They walked through walls and altogether did not seem to care for the physical world, nor its confines. They seemed more than content to dance through walls and swim between the floorboards. Anything to get back to their world. But whenever I sought out a way to reach them, I wound up with a scraped knee from the hardwood floor, or a bloodied nose from smacking gracelessly into the walls. Inexplicable, of course, to my family and friends. I guess my reputation as a klutz started early.

I once asked my mother of such a place as where my visitors had come from, when I was just a boy, but she only gave me a puzzled look. And that is me embellishing the description of this look for you; 'puzzled' may be a kinder word than I would have used as a boy, though my remembrance has been blunted by the tides of time. What I do remember is how she chastised me so, telling me, "Bentley, your imagination will be the death of you one day. Why, I suspect you'd wander in front of a bleedin' car thinking of these made-up places and people." It occurred to me then that she thought my Others were something pretend. But to me, they couldn't be any more real.

Even I would be surprised as an adult, hearing those tales from my youth.

As a writer I suppose I am, by default, assumed to be embellishing my stories. Particularly when the topic of "imaginary worlds" arises. But I swear to you this: as I nodded off that dreadful night, I found myself in the world of what I had once written off to be my wildest dreams.

At a glance, it appeared to be a park of some sorts. All sorts of natural growth all around, benches, a pond... but upon closer inspection, I couldn't help but notice the overabundance of feathers that covered the pond's top. Curious... I thought to myself, and stepped closer. I knelt and dipped my good hand into the pond in order to move some of the brown, fluffy-looking feathers out of the way, but upon closer inspection, the pond wasn't merely covered in feathers. Nay, it was entirely FILLED with them. I recoiled my hand quite quickly, in case there was something unpleasant lying underneath. I'd already had enough manual damage for one lifetime, thank you very much!

This bizarre landscape was something I couldn't quite wrap my head around, but that quickly became the least of my issues. A voice - a young girl's voice - caught me off guard from behind me. "Uh... Hi." I scrambled to my feet, letting out an embarrassing whimpering noise that escaped my lips before I could catch it. She looked harmless enough, but I was still unsure as to why she had addressed me... and moreover, where she had come from. I asked as much, "Wh-whoOO... are you?"

God, my voice hadn't cracked like that since I was a boy. I put my hand to my throat instinctively, and I realized that I seemed to be missing the stubble that I had been meaning to shave. In its place was smooth skin; a truly foreign feeling. It was only then that I realized that I must've been some eight inches shorter than I was used to standing at. I inhaled sharply, my question hanging in the dead air, hand frozen to my neck as if it were a metal pole in the dead of winter, and my palm was a tongue. I asked a follow up question without waiting for an answer, voice lowered and full of dread for the impending answer, "What happened to my body?"

 

Anyone else might have been scared the day that the eagles came soaring into view, but the sight, the feeling, and the warmth of their copper-eyed gaze and the wind that cropped up around them was always something cathartic to me. Some days, it was hard to imagine my life back home- the metal nightstand beside my bed or how cool it felt in winter months to grab ahold of while waking up in the morning, the way that the sun or the moon's light would come flitting into view between a bamboo-shaded veneer... the inviting touch of my sweetest lover. 

It was in those times that I remembered, though, that I missed her with such an intensity that I could almost see her beside me in the dreamscape that had inhabited my world for what had felt like ages. Occasionally, something in the feathered sky above would falter, nearly insinuating that one was there to free me of my confines, or otherwise join me amongst my life with the eagles, and it was always a double-edged blade of a feeling. The ratio of chance as it applied to the likelihood of either situation's happening was unknown, and thusly, an even 50/50 shot based upon the lack of information gathered at that time, and while I'd always hoped someone would reach out- to feel my battered heart and to hoist me from this place that was simultaneously a prison and safehaven so that I may live again -I would always fidget, I would always hesitate... You don't want to be in the situation that I am.

The eagles were brothers and sisters to me, and though they didn't have names that I could particularly discern, they had unique personalities that gave my interactions with them a different feeling of love and security depending on who it was at the time that I was interacting with. Even then, trapped within their feathered halls, it was hard to be grateful even as they fed me the foods of their people for sustinence, bathed me in golden wine and roses, and clothed me in something warm and finer than any earthen material one could imagine so as to keep with the turbulence of the mountain, even as it was produced merely by their graceful behemoth wings.

But it was today, of all days, that a ripple was seen in the fountain skies above. The five eagles shrieked mightily, in shock and subsequent disturbance, as the malformed hand of a boy came peering through the eternal sun of their mountain. Their feathers, plush and carried by the lull of the wind, moved more violently as the boy dug through the sky, a flowery scent permeating the great expanse of the eagles' domain as they gathered, wings propped, and ready for flight.

I grabbed onto Horatio's tail feathers.

My sunshine.

My warmth.

There was not a world without Olivia beside me. To wake up from this dream, despite the security, despite being able to hide away from all that could ever have hurt me in the real world, would be nirvana, at this rate. To meet her again, to see her in my arms again after all of this time without... 

Not even the eagles could compare.

We flew, and as the hand receded, the eagles began their descent back towards the mountain, but I did not falter. No, I jumped, and when I did, I grew. As the mountainous terrain below me became nothing more than an anthill, the great eagles rescinding to their corridors in sadness and pain for the loss of a brother, I felt no regret. Returning to the world above the fountain was quintessential, and it was now reality. 

One layer down, perhaps many more to go, but as it were, it seemed as though the Shadows had an opportunity to gather more at the park.

A young boy.

A woman.

And me.

Naked.

Something I hadn't noted was that, in leaving the eagles and their commune, I would shed their clothes on top of it! So, here I was, 6 feet of stark nudity, standing before them. With a blank expression on my face, I was pretty damn happy to find both caught in their own conversation as I immediately dashed into the nearby bushes thereafter.

"Think, Joey, think..."

 

I watched with what I suppose one might call sheer splendor at the scene unfurling before me, despite its idiosyncracies. Now that I was shed from the world that the eagles had once provided so lovingly to me, I realized that such a utopia was not right. We are meant to feel love as much as we are pain - either would feel so trite without the other working in tandem with it! And further yet, Olivia... Her black locks, her sea blue eyes... I would fly to her like Horatio if I could, right in that moment, but first things were first.

"Where am I? What sort of land is this? Is this real life, or is this just fantasy? I'm caught in a landslide..."

Miraculously, a grown man had changed from his initial form into that of a small boy, Benjy Buttoning on me right in the flesh. I was glad I was able to catch the bottom end of that, since it helped me realize that, hey, this must be a dream, right? "No escape from reality, though. Maybe these two have some sort of answer..."

It wouldn't have been my first choice in most cases, but there was not much else there except for green as far as my eyes could see, besides that well that the eagles had guided me into so long ago to feel their warmth. I crept up to them, a little cautiously yet in a way that I would've hoped I could play off as a casual stride. Scratching at some scruff around the backside of my neck, letting myself stretch after so many years of comfort beside the eagles, I shot 'em both some finger guns and said, "H-hey, pallies! H-how's it goin'?"