My warm breath ricochets off the surface in front of me, back onto the skin of my jowls. I see darkness, but within that darkness, an infinite amount of possibilities. I'm on the road, the warm summer air is heating the cool frames of my sunglasses as I travel to somewhere far away. Destination unknown, just traveling, always traveling. Every time I take a different path with fluctuating experiences, utilizing varying transportation methods. I begin to float, but I am not actually moving. It is as if the ground beneath me is simply sinking away. The wind picks up, the sun sets as the moon lapses into being, and suddenly, I am above a city. The bright ambient lights are off-setting at first , but I grow used to them quickly. The cacophony of car horns, metallic scraping, pounding footsteps, and atrocities being committed complete the atmosphere. Sometimes I am that atrocity. I soar down to the streets below and my ankles absorb the shock of the landing. It's never as painful as one would anticipate. I wander through the dark alleys, dragging my hand across the damp, rigid, bricks. I hear whispers from the walls telling me where to go next. I have a calling, a civil duty to uphold. The collective conscious of the city is screaming to me, asking me to do what they do not have the courage to do. After the deed is done I melt back into the shadows from whence I came, and wait patiently for the next task. With no warning and no control I transcend to another setting. I move on to another life, with no recollection of the past world.
I am five years old. I stare up at an amusement park, bewildered by all that is going on around me. The noisy gears of the machines grind and whir, drowned out only by the carnival medleys shrieking from the loud speakers implanted in the various coasters and carousels. It is too much to take in at once and I begin to feel anxious, something does not seem right. A sense of familiarity kicks in, but never has anything so familiar felt so uncanny. Swarms of people flash by as though they are images imprinted on film reeling swiftly through a projector. Amongst the multitude of scurrying figures, one woman stands still, like a figurine mounted inside a snow globe surrounded by thousands of free falling flakes. She turns to face me, and as I stare into the pale blue puddles of her eyes, I begin to weep. Electric impulses speed through my nervous system, my vision blurs, heart skips a beat. They're letting me know that somewhere, somewhere else, a bell is ringing. I feel the breath again and there is a blinding light. An orchestra of zippers, Velcro, and papers crumpling reverberates against the cold cement walls. Not completely aware of what's going on, I follow the crowd and scuffle through the corridors, my footsteps acting as a sort of metronome against the linoleum floors. It is then that I am finally aware of where I am. I am back in the real world, back in the school, out of the comfort of my dreams. My destination in this world is predicable, the journey not so immense, nor as intriguing. My legs begin to tingle as the blood rushes back into the tired muscles. The woman from my dreams is now just a pale shadow in the banks of my memory.
While the environments of my imagination tend to differ, there is a catalogue of fairly constant variables. There is usually the girl. Not always the same girl in a physical sense, but one that provokes the same types of feeling whether she's there or she's missing. Except for this one. This one always leaves an ominous, almost haunting, feeling. She is not visually disconcerting. It is not her sandy-blonde hair, porcelain skin, or even her murky blue eyes that frighten me, but rather the way she looks at me with them. Her eyes cry for help that I can not provide, and it seems that she knows this, and for that she resents me. I have no knowledge of who this woman is, or what she is meant to symbolize, but she makes my blood run cold.
I wrote this in high school. It's one of the few things I still enjoy reading now. (Descriptive essay on Reoccuring Dreams)
