I plummet from a precipitous height, at a speed I can’t begin to comprehend. I pass through stone, like a ghost. Am I dead? Or dreaming, sure to awaken before the scream echoing through my brain finds an exit?
* * *
Escape. The dreams take me to fantastic places, landscapes of vivid, glorious color. Vibrant tones and brilliant hues make me forget the black-and-white depression of my daily life. Forget the pain. Forget the anger.
My nightscapes are fabulous, fantastic Seuss-like worlds in vibrant tones, with brilliant intensity. I view these worlds from unusual vantage points, as dreamers often do. Worlds seen from on high, while I float over the scenery like a bird, soaring at great speeds or hovering, at will. Or watching from within the sea, like a dolphin surveying the coast. Other views tilt dizzily, landscapes askew or upside-down.
I am addicted to these dream worlds; to the ability to float, to soar, to melt into the luminous landscape. When I awake, reluctantly, the why and how of these dreams fade as quickly as the blink of an eye. But the where lingers.
Then my dismal life returns to engulf me like waves sweeping over a drowning man, shoving my melancholy into even lower depths. I become enraged, angered to be pulled away from my nighttime wanderings.
After a time, the dreams become more compelling. No longer observing from the sidelines, I become an integral part of the dream, an integral part of the scenery. Strolling down candy-colored lanes, wandering through lush green meadows, frolicking on white, sandy beaches alongside sparkling turquoise oceans, my dreams are my life.
Suddenly the colors begin to fade. The candy-colored lanes turn into snake-infested hallways; the lush green meadows become tangled forests; white, sandy beaches morph into cold, pounding surf. I am drawn to the edge of terror, then jerked back into the blackness of my bedroom. Relief at deliverance is quickly overshadowed by the need to return to the adrenaline-charged nightscape.
I am convinced that I had somehow found a doorway to another world. A door which I could open and shut, at will.
What fools we are, hopeless creatures who believe we control our own destinies.
* * *
This dream, this nightscape, frightens me and yet excites me. The motif is bleak and dismal. I wander through a land colored with a greenish tint, underlying grays and blacks. Every detail stands out: the black taste of ash; the branches of a single crooked tree; the blood pounding in my ears; the sour aroma of impending doom. I linger in a clearing, with forest on all sides. A road snakes off into the forest. The moon appears and disappears behind thickening clouds. Even before the storm surfaces, I feel a blowing power, smell the impending rain, shiver to the electricity in the air. The feeling is malevolent and terrifying, yet utterly seducing.
I am drawn to the path as though it were a lodestone. I leave the relative brightness of the clearing and enter the tangled obscurity of the forest. The wind whips through the narrow path, and I pull my robe tightly against my body.
The devil seems to lurk behind every tree, but still I press forward. I imagine vampires, werewolves, and all the legends of hell coming out of the darkness, but still I continue on. Whatever lies ahead, I am convinced it will be more exhilarating than the miserable, depressing world I left behind.
The wind roars and seems to tear the trees to shreds. The rain attacks with a vengeance, and even in the density of the forest I am not protected from the downpour. Soaked to the skin, chilled to the bone, I continue to follow the narrow path to its ultimate conclusion.
Suddenly I am aware of a new odor, faint and hard to identify, but growing stronger and more repugnant as I approach the edge of this seemingly endless forest. I move faster, anxious to emerge, while at the same time fearful of what that repulsive odor might divulge.
I exit the woods into a rocky overhang. The path ends abruptly at the edge of a deep canyon. I turn, panic-stricken, back toward the forest, but the trees have transformed into the walking dead, blocking my escape. The hopelessness of my situation attacks me as viciously as the stench of the rotting bodies that face me.
This is a dream, my brain screams, yet my senses feel otherwise. Each venture into this world of dreamscapes has become more real, has touched more of my five senses. I fear now, too late, that this time I will not wake.
Gagging, regret floods my senses; longing for my former life mingles with realization of the futility of the invocation.
I hear the unearthly laughter of the corpses when I hurl myself off the cliff.
As I plummet, I feel the initial rush of adrenaline, then the free fall, falling, falling, faster and faster. The cliff walls surge toward me, recede away. I pass through stone, like a ghost. Am I dead? Or dreaming, sure to awaken before the scream echoing through my brain finds an exit? Still falling, I wait for the final impact.
As I read your vivid descriptions my mind quickly transports to that scene, and then on the next one that you have so well described from your dreams. I hope your real life does not reflect that dreary boring room that you describe and escape in those vivid dreams.
Of late I have been having horrific dreams of both types. Dreams of vivid color and content (men can dream in color, too) and one recurring dream where I am violently thrown from my bed by a strong muscle spasm (these are real, violent spasms) and I end up falling towards the floor, just like in your story, waiting for impact that never comes because I have, so far, not left the bed.
You do leave the reader pondering whether the nightmare is for real or not. Only you know the answer to that. From what I've read and from my own dream experiences, one awakens before the final impact of a fall. So, your last sentence is literally a "cliffhanger"...
The Butcher's Boy
- 2011 Readers Favorite Award Silver Medal Winner in Horror - Fiction
A Paranormal/Chiller by Michael Robb
Thirty-one years ago, Buxly the Butcher went to trial for killing h
WEIRD RHODY is a short story collection featuring five strange tales all set in Rhode Island and written by five Rhode Island authors. The anthology is a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, the Ocean State's famed author of pulp horror.
