Implode

I began lucid dreaming at the age of 6. I will never forget that first dream wherein I melted into alarming awareness. For me, dreams were, and have always been, a fearful place. When I was a boy with large doe eyes, I would creep around the halls of our ancient family home. The floorboards would creek beneath me, almost as if to protest, and I would lurk from one shadow to the next. Anything to avoid sleep.

My mother found herself confused, irritatingly so even. She was baffled that her boy refused his sleep well into his childhood. "This should have ended by now," she'd grumble, tugging me by my baggy pajamas and back towards my room. I grew to hate my bedroom. The old bookshelf towered overhead like a midnight tree, reaching after me. The night light did not help. The door open did not help. My mother's gentle yet strained soothing did not help. I was distraught and lonely, wondering why I could not sleep without an intense feeling of panic, and oddly enough, fear.

Now that I am an adult, I realize it was the dreams. Confused and young, I was never certain what the night would bring me. More often than not what it brought me was unsettling visions, strange new places, and to be honest, nearly anything but rest. As I got older, I learned how to manipulate my dreams. If I closed my eyes and willed for the atmosphere to change, it would dissolve into something new. I could create a different atmosphere or think my way awake. The trick that always worked for me was to sit down in my dream and wrap my arms around my legs. I would rock as hard as I could, until I rocked myself back into my conscious eyelids. I would startle awake, huffing triumphantly. In this way, I could escape.

During my twenty ninth year I became extremely unsettled during the night. This had not happened to me for many years. I had ventured into what I described to others as a "dreamscape", which was composed of different settings my brain had built for me to explore. I could find my way in and out of these places with ease. There was not much that could hold me any longer in the way of dreaming. I simply could force myself awake or change the atmosphere to another setting. Until one night I could not.

The dream began in a giant grassy plain. I had not seen such a place before. I could smell the grass and feel the air brush against my arms. The hair on my arms shifted with the tug of the wind, and my brows furrowed in confusion. I remember thinking, "Am I asleep?" This did not feel like a dream. The air shifted slightly, and the light transmuted, adjusting to my anxiety. I nodded firmly, confirming silently to myself that I was in fact dreaming. The sky was soft with peculiar widespread clouds. There was nothing else around me for what appeared to be miles. Not knowing what else to do with myself, I began to walk.

During my walk I could hear birds singing and chatting at one another but could not see them. The sun loomed overhead, blocked slightly by the cream cheese spread of clouds. I blinked up at the sun. The sun blinked back at me. I gasped slightly and was suddenly aware that the sun was alive. "I am dying," she whispered at me, gently and without priority. I tilted my face upright towards her and closed my eyes. My body felt as if it were being held. I swayed in the milky dream and licked my lips at it. It is wonderful to bask in the sun of your dreams.

"We are all dying," I said matter-of-factly. "No need to lose your head. Everything dies." I said this with so much confidence, although in my life I was not a confident man. I was not sure of the way of things and was reaching a point in my life where uncertainty was the most certain thing. There was no knowing what would happen in any given situation. Still, in my dream I stood firm on the words I had spoken. The sun chuckled, soft and melodic, and the sound of it stirred my sex. I opened my eyes to stare at her. Her face was soft. "What do you know of death?" she asked me. Suddenly I became afraid.

"I know that we all die." I said smoothly. This made the sun laugh again, but this time, the laugh was hard and unsettling. I wanted to wake up now. I knew that this dream was growing quickly into a nightmare- I could sense all of the familiar signs. The way my body felt in this dream shouted at me to run. I closed my eyes and sat down on the ground. I hugged my arms tightly around myself and began to rock. I rocked hard and smooth, trying desperately to escape. The sun continued to laugh. I opened my eyes at her, terrified. "Let me go!" I shouted up at her.

The sun did not relent with her laugh, which was quickly becoming an aggressive cackle. "You cannot escape me. I am dying. If I die, you will die. That is the way of the world. We die together." The dream began to quake at the seams then. My entire body felt engulfed by the rays of the sun, although it did not hurt. My brain and face felt an intense pressure which brought me to my knees. I was aware that the sun was fading, and the loss of her rays was causing the earth to shift and change. "Wait, please," I gasped, reaching towards her. "Too late, baby." And with that, the sun engulfed in on herself, releasing an ear-splitting screech.

I jolted awake, back into reality. My body was doused in sweat. My head felt heavy, and my mind felt weakened. I could still smell the grass, still feel the warmth of the sun's smile. I could still feel the way my body felt as the sun died. I could not go back to sleep for at least an hour after this. I walked the length of my tiny apartment several times, shuffling my fingers through my hair and beard, pondering on why I had not been able to pull myself form the dream.

The next day I remember was normal enough. I went to work. I bantered with those around me. The weight of the dream lingered throughout the morning, as they often do. Nothing unusual. I smoked more cigarettes than I normally would and thought back on the dream a few times throughout the day. This of course was also very typical post-dream behavior for me. That night, when I crawled into bed, I snuggled down deep into my blankets. I had not thought about the dream for some time by this point and was ready to fall into a blissful slumber. This of course did not happen.

The dream came back to me. The grass was the same, the smells, the pattern of the clouds. Nothing had changed. I was aware that I was dreaming, and aware that I had been here before. Regardless of my knowledge of the dream, I was unable to control the outcome. I was cognizant of the stages of this place, but only in the background of my thoughts. The dream ended in the exact same way: I startled awake, I gasped and sweat, and I climbed from my dampened sheets with disgruntled disgust and confusion.

I paced my apartment for a few hours. I had not had a reoccurring dream since my first lucid dream, when I was 6. That dream had been simple enough; a little boy floating to the ground on a transparent blanket close to his family home. An adventure up the sidewalk to the front door, opening the door to the awake world, confused and sleepy eyed. That dream had not caused me any anguish. This dream felt loud and violent. This dream commanded my attention, demanded I react. But how was I meant to respond? What was I meant to do?

This question stuck with me on into the next day. I did not banter as much with my coworkers and found my work overly draining. The dream was so vivid that it had offered me little rest the previous two nights. I was dragging myself around, peering out from droopy eyelids at my surroundings. My mate noticed and commented on my haggard appearance, questioning if I had gotten any sleep. I had shrugged and responded "God, who's to say?" Confused, the mate wondered off, deciding not to press the matter further.

That night I laid down and swallowed a capsule of melatonin, something I had only ever done in cases of emergency. However, I was desperate to not have that dream again. I was longing for a well-rested night, longing for peace, longing for a drug induced slumber that would block out any thought process. Within an hour, I had fallen asleep. I quickly opened my eyes back in that now familiar field. The motions were mechanical, and my body knew the way to the certain and unsettling end of the dream. I ran through the dream and awoke the same way I had the past two nights- sweating, huffing, and leaning towards insanity.

Frustrated, I tugged all of the sheets and blankets from my bed. I heaved them into a messy pile on the floor, grunting and yelling out obscenities into my empty home. The dream was not so terrible, yet it disturbed me to my core. Something about that atmosphere and the soft taste of freshly cut grass in the air clung to me like a disease. There was nothing that was incredibly unsettling about the dream, aside from the pressure of the dying sun. As far as dreams go, I had experienced worse. The weight of this particular dream was dragging me down to a low point and I was entirely unsure of why. How could such a mundane nightmare return to me and cause me such grief?

I didn't want to go to work the next day, but I did. Somehow, I managed to lug my tired body from one task to the next. I avoided lengthy conversations. The world no longer felt like my place. I felt as if I belonged in that terrifying field, standing with the sun, being laughed at and taunted. I could hear her laugher as I sipped my third cup of coffee. I could see her smile in the black steaming water. In a matter of days my life had been consumed by the pressurized rays of that dreamy sun.

None of it made sense. For a week straight I returned to that dream. The force of it drove me nearly to insanity. My performance at work was slipping. I had spoken with my boss, who was fumbling and busy with another coworker, and begged for patience. I retired to my desk and looked out over the cubicles, listening to the clicking and shuffling of our work. After seven days and two nights of this nightmare, I found myself sitting at my desk, watching through to my boss's office as he spoke to a coworker, and heard the coworker shout a terrifying phrase: I am dying.

The words plunged me upright. All of my attention became focused on the coworker. She was a frail woman, and we had all known that Josephine had taken ill the previous year. Riddled with an uncurable cancer, Josephine had concluded that she would work until she could not anymore. We all knew that the truth was that Josephine could not afford to quit her job. We all knew that there was no help for her in this world, aside from herself. "I am dying!" Josephine shouted, her typically raspy voice clear as a bell. I could not hear the response, but watched as Josephine shook her head fiercely. My heart raced. I clung to the sight of her as if it would save me.

The little woman shook with anger and burst from the large office in a fit of rage. Her face was pinched and red and pouring tears. She ran to her desk, gathered her things, and ran off, crying loudly and without concern for who might see or hear her. Quickly, I stood from my desk and stormed my boss's office. He looked at me with shock when I shoved my way in, closing the door tightly behind me. "Hey-" he began, but I quickly cut him off, raising both hands and approaching him quickly. "Josephine is going to do something awful," I blurted out, without knowing why, without thinking. I knew this to be true.

My boss wrinkled his nose at me. "...Josephine was terminated this afternoon. She wasn't happy of course but..." his voice trailed off. He seemed to be searching for the right words. Impatient, I planted both hands firmly on his desk. "You have to listen to me. I can't explain it, but she'll be back. I have to get out of here, you have to call the police!" I was speaking louder than I wanted to but knew that what I had to say was urgent enough that it needed to be heard. My boss shook his head at me and rose both of his hands, ease off.

"Calm down," he sort of chuckled at me. I shook my head again. "No, no. I have to get out of here, we have to leave!" I roared at him, and turned and stumbled out of his office. I ran to my desk to gather my bag. I yelled out to my coworkers, I begged them to leave. "She's going to do something awful, we have to leave!" I hollered. My voice landed on deaf ears. I recieved looks of shock, looks of dismay, and looks of concern. No one approached me, and no one followed me as I rushed from the building. I did not look back. My physic felt insane, and my brain felt melted. I felt defeated and afraid but knew that I must leave that place quickly.

The news came a few hours later. When Josephiene opened fire on the office, she took three lives, and injured twelve. I sat in my living room staring at my TV with a blank expression. The news woman was speaking hurridly and miserably. This was a shock, they said. This woman was widly beloved, they said. I leaned into my couch, my shoulders relaxing. The woman did not previously own a firearm, they said. She was not a violent woman, they said. My body relaxed into my couch. I could feel myself falling asleep, the release of the events tumbling over me like waves. As I drifted to sleep, I listened to the news reporter's voice. "Witnesses say that the woman shouted that if she was going to die, they would all die with her. These were Josephine Miller's last words before she..." I fell asleep.

I woke to the sound of my cell phone ringing. Without thinking, I asnwered. "Hello." The familliar voice of my boss pulled me into full awarness. I did not know what to say, except to ask if he was okay. I was shocked to find that he was still alive. "When Josephine came back and I saw her, I knew it was true. What you had said. I...she asked me, what do you know of death? And she shot me. She shot my leg..." His voice sounded as if it had been drug across a bed of rocks. He began to cry softly into the receiver. I listened. I wanted desperately to reach through the phone. A million questions popped into my head. The only one that escaped my lips: "Was she laughing? Did she laugh?"

The other end of the phone went silent for a long moment. It felt like ages. "She laughed like a mad woman. It felt like an explosion in my face. How did you know?" he wondered. I had not had much rest. I was shocked and also relieved. The nightmare had ended. I sighed into the phone and laid back onto my couch. "I had a dream." I answered simply. We did not talk much longer, and after that, we did not talk again. He did not return to work. I did not have the dream again.