Terrible dreams adorned the walls of the path to paradise, and the damned gazed in ecstasy.
There’s an irony in the fact that the one place where we remain truly powerless is the hallowed hall of our own sanity. The world outside ceases to exist when the dream begins; the box is gone - and the cat is no more. I know now that dreams are what lie between the first light and the last, a mere hallway between the primordial breath and the briefest of deaths.
You might wonder where this is coming from, what my sources are and if I’m truly ‘all there’ in the head, the honest answer to all those questions would be ‘I don’t know’.
I’ve tried hard to trace my dreams back to where it all began, and I always end up on that ashen, bone-charred field, shivering from the cold as I gaze at the man in the casket.
I saw him for the first time many years ago, I was still a child then. His stiff corpse was tucked snugly into a mahogany casket. He looked no different from what I imagine any other deceased man would have looked like, and yet there was something remarkable about him.
I can’t recall why I was at the funeral, not knowing who the man even was. In the years since that day I’ve resigned to the theory that he must have been a distant relative.
I could see him perfectly, his face was lit up without a shadow from the cold, bloodshot sun directly above us. He was neither handsome nor ugly, the perfect visage of a stranger; it was a face created to be forgotten.
And yet for so many years I’ve tried to forget him. After the best of my efforts I’d manage to erase some recollection of his clothes, sometimes of his nose, but I was never fully successful because there was something remarkable about him - his eyes still flitted around under dead lids.
The man in the casket dreamt, and I would’ve called it a miracle if it wasn’t for the unholy smile on his face.
I dreamt of that wretched place for the first time that night. We stood at opposite ends - the casket-man and I. Behind him shone a blinding white light, and all I could make out was his silhouette and what looked like a paintbrush in his hands; his posture was relaxed. Between us stretched the oddest hallway I’d ever seen. People I’d never seen before gazed at the walls of the hallway, some were entranced and others wailed in fear.
It was hard to discern the size of this macabre gallery, the strangers would be replaced by others at random intervals, each person reacted differently to what they saw on the walls. I tried to move closer to one of the strangers to ask where we were, but I could never move in the dream.
I returned to that place every night since then, unable to move but free to look around at the promises on the walls; some were of flight, and some of unimaginable wealth, of lost love and ancient joy. Many nights would pass, and I looked at the painted promises in quiet satisfaction.
I had grown to enjoy my retreat to the dream, years had passed and I was comfortable in our familiar anonymity until my shocked realization that the dream had changed. The walls were the same, of course, and the hallway hadn’t been altered in the slightest, the man still stood there- only he was closer than before, or rather, I was closer.
I realized that night that every dream brought me closer to the man who waited, his silhouette an ever-larger presence with every visit.
I write this now in the presence of fleeting dusk, the daylight evades me these days, and the nights are almost permanent. I’ll have to go back there soon, and he’s ever so close now. I can see him a little clearer in my dreams now, his brush drips red.
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
andulkaphoto
2087
pixelskylines
origamiaround
