I had a dream last night.
I am walking down a road. It is unfamiliar to me, but not unknown. I’d never been down this one before, but the terrain, now that I knew. There’s a little bit of me, that tiny voice that loves the ‘unsafe’. This road has huge warning signs all over it. As I walk along, the person walking besides me (changing every second from person to person, everyone I ever knew and loved) keeps asking me to stop. Keeps telling me it is dangerous. Some try to move me away from it physically, but I somehow find the urge to keep going irresistible. The tiny voice in my head is having the time of its life, egging me on. ‘It will be so much fun. Aren’t you bored of being so nice all the time. Aren’t you just sick of doing what everyone else asks you to do? This one’s the biggest challenge I could find for now. If you conquer this, well, you will be basking in the rewards later, and these people will be your side, applauding you then.’ The voice is crazy with glee, overshadowing everyone else’s, and so I pay heed to it. Ignoring the pleas, ignoring the threats from some of my friends. I keep walking. Slowly, my companion fades. In phases, there is someone suddenly walking besides me, and a few steps later I am all alone. Even the voice in my head has left me. I have no company anymore, and if I have to walk down this road I am all by myself. I look back, once, to see if I should really go back, but there is nothing behind me. Nothing at all, just black emptiness. I look ahead and there is the road stretched out in front of me, flooded with blinding light. There is clearly only one way to go.
I’m walking and with each step I take, the ground behind me vanishes into nothingness. The road seems really easy. Is it really the one I’ve been seeking when I was walking through all the others? I know there is something brilliant waiting for me at the end of this road, but the details elude me. I just know that I have to keep walking, and while I cant wait to reach the end, I don’t want the road to end either. I realize that I’ve begun to run, run really fast, and it is so graceful, so fluid, that I almost shock myself into waking up. As I run along, the landscape keeps changing constantly, but one thing remains constant, the road behind me keeps turning into nothing. If it weren’t for the changing landscape, and the fact that I could feel my body move faster than ever, I would be simply standing in the same place staring out into the light, with nothing behind me. I have an aerial view of myself as I run, and I am the line that divides the road from nothing, as I keep moving, the darkness keeps moving, engulfing with it more and more of the road. As I run along, I still catch odd glimpses of people I know. People I’ve loved. Some just stand there, and I am unable to make out any more because I have run past them, and they have been engulfed into nothing. Some I spot from a little distance, they seem to try to mouth something out to me, but with the sounds of my footsteps and my breathing, I can’t hear a word they say. I try to stop a couple of times, but I am unable to, its like I am now a machine that has been set to run at a predetermined sped in a particular direction. Few, very few, try to run along, I spot them for longer periods, trying to keep up, stay with me, knowing I cannot understand, just quietly running along, with the occasional smile that is both meant to reassure me of their presence , and at the same time, sad. ‘Why sad?’ I wonder out aloud, ‘at least you care enough to try to keep up. The others didn’t even take a step‘. As soon as I say this out, their look changes to one of hurt. I do not know why, but immediately after they are left behind too.
I’m confused now, I want to continue, but I still want to stop and go back. I realized I can only go forward. My body has stopped being controlled by my brain, and is just moving ahead, and I realize all I can do now is give in, and wait and watch. I resume my aerial position, and watch as my body moves along the road, with the darkness moving in from behind. It suddenly hits me, I am not running away into the light, I am running away from the darkness, which is engulfing me fast from behind. I am surprised that my body knew this before my mind. Now I am glad that I’m moving away, though I am afraid what it means that my friends are being left behind. As soon as I think this, I spot one more moving ahead. One of my closest friends, my rock. Long before I reach there, my friend has started to run, knowing that keeping up will require a huge head start. I know that my heart would be a little hurt, lacking the logic that my brain has. I would only have seen it as my friend running away, leaving me behind. My brain understands, grasps the concept of the true friend and the fact that my heart will never forgive my friend for leaving me behind. I suddenly realize what me heart is asking my body to do, and I try to go back, force it into reason, but the attempt is futile. I can only watch, shocked, as I see myself catch up, and push - put out my arm, and use all the super-human force I seem to possess - my friend into the darkness.
My mind is reeling. From up here, with this objective view, I finally get the look of hurt on my friend’s face, and am ashamed of myself for putting it there. Another one lost into the darkness. All sorts of thoughts are running in my head now. Jumbled, in random order, with little or no reference. I am thinking back to all the times I let my heart decide before my mind, and I think back to the outcomes. Whoever said, listen to your heart over your mind, did they think it through? While I am still coping with the thoughts, still wondering about the kind of person I’ve been, I happen to look ahead, and happen to see what I instinctively know my body has not, the end of the road. Just as the darkness behind me, there is nothing beyond that point on the road ahead, and I am hurtling towards there. Even though I know, that I haven’t been the best person, survival instincts kick and in , and I rush towards my body, determined to get it under control again. I have to make it stop. I don’t know what will happen when I stop, will I just be stuck on the road, between two worlds of darkness? I shall be alone, I have myself pushed away anyone who ever cared. But I know I must stop. I have to. The aerial view I have shows me that we’re almost there at the edge. My heart and body still won’t listen to my mind. On the contrary, I see a smile on my lips, albeit disconnected from my eyes. My eyes look elated, not in a happy kind, just in the sense that says it knows its goal is achieved.
I am too late, in the end I won’t be able to save even myself. I see the light slimming down to a sliver and the last thing I can see is myself, jumping off the edge of the road, (which now seems to be a cliff) into nothing. And then there is only the darkness. The last thing I feel, is my feet leaving firm ground and jumping into nothing, the darkness I’ve been running from. As I feel the lurch of the ground slipping beneath my feet, I jerk awake, breathing as though I had actually run all that way. I do not know if, when I jumped, I managed to fly, or if I fell.
- Stephen King
Note: Didn't exactly think this one through. The work of a truly insomniac mind.
The brain is hazy between the real and the dream now.
~
Song Recommendation: Run Away by Staind
Posts
