AWAKEN, O DREAMER, FOR YOUR TIME IS AT AN END

“You alright?”

Carter’s question barely registers as Reve stares at the half-eaten biscuits and gravy, his hand arched over and resting on the rim his fourth cup of coffee.

“What? Yeah.” Reve shakes his head, squints, and rubs his left hand against his furrowed brow. “Just not sleeping great.”

“Insomnia back?” Carter asks.

“Never left.” Reve chuckles then brings the mug to his lips. He sips the slightly burnt and bitter tasting black liquid the diner serves where no amount of sugar could ever mask the taste. But it is familiar and strangely comforting. And also a buck ninety five with free refills.

“And it doesn’t help,” Reve continues, “that when I do manage to fall asleep, I’m plagued with intense dreams and nightmares, so end up waking up even more tired than I was when I went to bed.”

“Anything in particular? I know the whole dream thing is more your territory, but you never know. I might be able to offer some insight.”

“A lot of it is variations on a theme. Like traveling by bicycle insanely far distances. Animals that are just slightly off from how they should look. But there’s one dream in particular. It’s pretty much on repeat. There’s been other offshoots of that dream too. Can’t tell if they’re supposed to be prequels or alternate versions, or what.”

“So what’s the dream that keeps repeating?”

Reve nods slowly and gathers his thoughts.

“So it starts with me in my old room in my parent’s house. Everything is exactly how it was when I was a teenager. Light coming in through the thin, white, metal blinds. If I’m standing with my back to the window, my bed is to my left, pushed fully in the corner perpendicular to the wall with the window. To my right is a desk, and the closet is directly across from the window. In between my bed and the closet is a bookshelf, and mirroring the bookshelf on the opposite wall is my tall, wooden dresser. The bedroom door is in the far right corner of the room in almost like it’s own little alcove because of the way the closet was built in the room. Anyway. I’m mostly looking through the books for some reason, but the only ones I can really remember looking at are these coloring books of different cultural style art. Like Japanese stuff with samurai and oni. Think there is one with Hindu stuff too. Designs are intricate, like a coloring books for grownups, not cartoony Crayola shit. They aren’t colored in though. At the same time, I’m having flashes of going through the closet and the dresser, trying to pack clothes, and whatever else, to take. But there’s too many shirts and jeans to get it all. Way more options than I know I had in real life. Think I’m packing it all in paper grocery bags. But the thing is, I know I’ve already moved. I’ve already done this. I don’t need any of the stuff here, but it’s like I need to take it, even though there’s too much to take. But I don’t want to take two trips. I don’t want to prolong the move, so I’m going to have to leave shit behind. I already have stuff in both my house and apartment, which that’s a whole other recurring theme, so I’m not really sure why I’m here for any of this in the first place. I’m not a teenager again in the dream. I’m me right now. And that feeling of not wanting to be here and that I need to get out, which was already present at the start of the dream, becomes my only focus. That’s when it becomes painfully apparent that it’s beyond quiet. Not a peaceful stillness. Like the absence of all sound quiet. I feel panic build in my chest. I need to get the fuck out of here, and I can’t get stopped by my parents. I somehow know they aren’t home, but they could step out of nowhere at anytime, so I have to move. So I steal into the hallway, and stealthily walk down it. It’s the same size as it always is, but it feels cramped. Oppressive. It’s lit like an overcast day, but it almost vibrates with a non visible darkness. And I get the feeling that as I reach the end so I can turn right and get the door that leads to the garage, that something is going to step out from around the coroner. Nothing ever does, but I have the same fear every time. I know the house is empty, but there is a presence, and I’d rather not meet it in person. I open the door, and step into the garage, which is open, and try to get my car. It is, of course, between two other cars parked so close to the front and back of my vehicle that there is no possible way that I can get it out of the driveway. I walk down to the street. I know if I turn left to get out, it will lead me into another set of dreams I’ve had, and increase the likelihood of being caught. So I turn right and follow the road. It curves right, then left, then right again, and leads me to another choice. I can turn left, and take that road right or left, but that, again, will lead me to another set of dreams. Or I can continue straight ahead. So keep moving forward until I find myself in a garden. Like one of those fully enclosed ones where the walls are hedges and the roof is vines growing over arches. The quiet and shade here are the peaceful kind. No ominous presences. No fear growing in my chest. Just a place I can walk through that will gently take me out of the dream. Which it mercifully does.”

Reve shrugs and takes another sip of coffee.

“Wow. Business school definitely didn’t prepare me for trying to unpack that.” Carter laughs. “But I’ll try, if that’s okay.”

“Be my guest.” Reve waves his hand, open to whatever insight Carter might have to offer.

“Granted, this is all off the top of my head, but I would interpret, at least some of it, as you still processing trauma, for lack of a better word, of your youth. Fear that you’ll get caught up back into the negative cycles you’ve tried to escape from as you got older. Your attempts to be who you are, apart from your family, as represented by having both an apartment and a house, but yet there is a lingering attachment to the past as shown by all the stuff still in the room of your youth. And at the same time, maybe trying to grasp onto some of the good memories that exist amongst the bad. The uncolored coloring books might represent some feelings you have of unfulfilled goals you had when you were younger, that, for one reason or another, were never attained. Then, not to repeat myself, but the sense of being trapped by both generational curses and trauma, as well as the things that specifically happened to you. Your desire for escape and freedom from that lingering... evil I suppose, and the subconscious hope that you can be free of it as represented by the garden.”

“Hmm.” Reve nods slowly.

“How’d I do?” Carter laughs.

“Not too bad.” Reve chuckles. “Probably a lot of truth in what you said.”

“It’s funny.” Carter mulls over his words for a moment. “I know I've been fairly vocal about reconciliation in the past, and I know it’s a touchy subject, but now, the more I’m thinking about it, maybe the reconciliation you need to make right now is with yourself.”

“Maybe.” Reve pokes the prongs of the fork at the remainders of the biscuits and gravy and contemplates Carter’s words.

“Fuck. Fuck. Not again. I don’t want to be here.”

Reve is aware of the dream as soon as it starts again.

He had spent the rest of the day on generic tasks, and was careful not to obsess about the dream or the conversation, but here he was again.

Reve drops the coloring book, heads into the stifling hallway, and into the garage.

As always, his car is trapped, and he will have to continue on foot.

“Just get to the garden. You’ve done this over and over. You know how to get out.”

Reve steps into the road and feels the heat and rough surface of the street.

He looks down at his bare feet with trepidation.

“This is different… Don’t think about it. Just need to be careful.”

As he concludes the thought, Reve looks behind him to see someone following.

What was, perhaps at one time, a man, now a gnarled and twisted mockery, pursued Reve. This person’s tunic of putrid rags draped over his flesh which was cracked and leathered by the sun, and coated in filth and dirt. He walked upon a wooden plank that ground into the soles of his feet, continually mashing them into a fleshy, bloody, infected pulp.

As quickly has he dared, Reve turned and hurried down the road.

“Focus on the garden. Get to the garden. You’ve got to get out. If he touches you, it’s over.”

Despite Reve moving faster than his pursuer, the abomination was gaining ground.

Reve turns the corner to see the neighborhood has been bombed out.

“No. No! Maybe the garden is still there. Please. Oh, God. Please.”

Reve navigates around the potholes of blood and mud, slowing his progress.

A careful dance of steps and hops leads him through the damage, and to a crater he will not have time to circumvent.

The pursuer is close and reaching out.

“I don’t have a choice…” Reve turns back to the crater. “Please…”

Reve leaps forward as the pursuer swipes out at him from half a step behind.