Fiction Idea: Learn to Dream

08/09/15

A long time ago. I had a never-ending dream. I like to think that maybe I'm still in it.

I am unsure of how much this dream has evolved in my memories, and how much transpired in the actual dream, but one place for sure I visited in that dream. How much my visit has evolved in my memories is too unknowable, however.

I briefly referenced this place so long ago now. It was a strange, dilapidated mansion. Overgrown with weeds. Vines coiling up the crumbling collumns. My arrival there was sudden, I had escaped a yellow world full of yellow demons by waking into this place. It floated amongst a white void, its edges cracking into the solid white.

"He's back," someone had said. And a group of people were upon me, welcoming me. And suddenly we were around a camp fire, chatting.

"People visit from time to time. Many who have lost their way. They rarely find their way back again. When they do, all memory of the previous visit is gone. They know not why they come, so why should they remember?"

"And why do you come here?"

"Where else can I see my friends?" Everyone laughs. "We don't remember when we wake. Only the dream knows why we're here, but the main connection is that we're here, together."

And then it was me and her. At a table. Eating rather delicious sausage. This, too, I am certain happened. And she was gone, and I was in a maze.

"You know, it can be much more challenging this," another said, walking alongside me. "One of those crazy labrithns where a door here leads to you walking alongside the roof, upside down." I ignored this person. I was here for one thing. I followed the right-hand wall of this ridiculously easy maze to gain my treasure.

And there it was. Stabbing deep into the cobbled floor. Hilt shining despite the lack of light. I always was a lover of swords. Though, really, I know so little about them. I love them fantasy. And so I went and pulled the blade, to gain my own Excalibur or Master Sword or whatever other easy legend to know of.

All it did was explode in a scattering of smoke. And I was back outside the mansion. Sitting along a mostly empty, incredibly dirty pool. Another guest was skateboarding inside of it.

"The last time you came was a special event, you know?" she flew out of the pool and hovered beside me. "A rare event."

"I am pretty awesome."

She laughed. "That you've come again is a special event, I will admit, and that your first time here was when the immortal visited...." She landed and sat next to me, feet dangling in the empty pool. "Do you remember her at all?"

"All I remember is falling asleep and being unable to wake," I said. I did not even remember where I fell asleep. It was a source of much trickery in this infinitely layered dream.

"Last time you did not even realize you were dreaming, so that is progress. Progress is fleeting here, though." She echoed, and I was inside the mansion, sitting on the second floor, my feet dangling over the balcony.

And then it... it collapsed before me and was gone, and I was in another dream.

Of the countless dreams I escaped that night, that place was but a visit with friends I had forgotten. The first dream I realized was a dream where I did not attempt to will myself awake. Only recently have I regularly decided to stay within a dream.

I wish to visit it again. I don't know if I can, however. I can pretend, at least, and document my way. I'd like to draw it. To make a comic of it, to make it a metaphor for learning to draw.