I just had my last summer vacation before I officially graduate, and that’s why it was very special to me. I can confidently say that this is one of the best summer vacations I have ever had. I travelled around the country and most of all, all my friends were in town together. Now, onto my friends, I shall only quote ‘Rhea’ and ‘Ana’ here as they are the only ones relevant to this story. Initially I met them both in my after-school classes and from there, our friendship grew. But now, all of us are enrolled in different universities so it’s very difficult to organise a get together since all our vacations start at different timings.
So it was an amazing coincidence that all of our vacations aligned. We met not once but on multiple occasions. However, near the end of this vacation, things ended up taking a bit of a mental toll on me since, all of a sudden, everyone moved away again. We had a last get together as a mini farewell to each other before our respective universities resumed.
This is where things start getting a little blurry and weird for me. One day I get home from my university and every part of my head hurts. I was originally planning on completing assignments but the pain just got worse with time. Eventually, I reach my limit, so I turn on the AC, draw my black out curtains and wrap myself in my duvet. Before I knew it, I was already asleep.
I wake up feeling like I have slept for too long, but my headache is gone so I feel refreshed. Without thinking I turned off the AC; I could feel every hair on my body rise due to the coldness that flooded my room. I take my duvet off and get up from my bed. As I walk towards the door, I feel there’s something weird with the way I’m walking, but without thinking much of it, I open my door. It opens into a dystopian looking world made from silicone and covered in, what I can best describe it as, orange saw dust.
Now, I have always had lucid dreams. During my teenage years, the lucidity amplified, but slowly, as I grew up, it faded away. However, remnants of that lucidity are still left and at times I can tell if I am dreaming or somewhat control my dream, though it’s extremely rare for me. However, whenever I realise I am dreaming, and do not enjoy it, I can close my eyes and think about waking up, until I actually do. In this case, I could tell I was dreaming. I close my eyes and start thinking about waking up, it takes unusually long, but I do wake up. Again, it feels like I’ve had the longest sleep, and my room is unfathomably cold. I once again turn off the AC, take off the duvet, get up from my bed and walk towards the door.
Upon opening the door, I see hundreds if not thousands of cicadas covering every inch of the walls. Surprisingly, I am not scared, it’s almost as if I was anticipating this. I immediately realise that once again I have mistook this dream for my real life. So, I close my eyes and start thinking about waking up. As I’m doing so, I remember Ana telling me a few days ago about a ‘false awakening’ incident she had, where she “woke up” about 2-3 times before actually waking up.
I hoped that I would actually wake up this time, and I did. Again, feeling too cold I turned off the AC. I take off the duvet and start walking towards the door. I take a deep breath before opening the door because this time I did not expect anything out of normalcy. To my disappointment, nothing beyond that door was normal. The door opened into a library, one which I could not see an end to. I walked and walked; slowly, it grew onto me. As I scoured the different paths I realised I have been here before. Sometimes, I did tend to have repetitive dreams, where I would end up at the same location again, but thinking it was normal, I never thought much of it. But this time, something was different. This time, the deeper I went into the library, the more I wanted to explore. Huge window panes covered the walls of the library. I couldn’t tell if it was night or day. To be honest, I could not tell anything at all. All I saw was a void. It’s not that I wanted to stay there forever, but something about that place provided me with a level of comfort. All of a sudden I broke out of the trance; I wanted to leave. So I close my eyes and once again, think about waking up. I woke up, but this time, I knew I definitely hadn’t woken up. This time I could surely tell something was not right, and even though the setting was exactly the same as other dreams, I just knew it wasn’t my home. So, I went on with the same routine. I turned off the AC, got up, walked and opened my door to something, not normal. I can’t even remember now how many times I did this, but I knew one thing, I was getting exhausted and scared.
Finally, I woke up, something about this time just felt natural and homely; the same level comfort I felt in that library, I felt it here. I turn off the AC and walk towards the door. I was confident that it’ll be the same old house I’ll walk into this time. It wasn’t. On opening the door I saw Rhea and Ana, they looked at me with the most caring and gentle gaze. Ana then proceeded to ask me, “It’s time for your tea, isn’t it?”. I smile at her and say that they’ve already left and I know this is not real. They look at me with pity and tell me that they will never leave ‘in this life’. Just like my other dreams, I should have started panicking by now, but for some reason I found solace here. I sit down with them and we start talking, they pour me some tea and it’s almost as if this was my real life. I thought to myself, what if I just accept this as my real life and live here? As I was lost in this thought, Rhea offered me something, I cannot remember what it was, but upon receiving it, I replied, “Thank you for this, it’s so difficult to find it where I live”. To which Rhea said, “Here, you can get what you never will, so why don’t you stay with us forever?”. A sense of immense dread took over me, it was almost paralysing. The more I looked at my friends, the more I realised that it wasn’t them. I panic and run for the door, taking a last look at my friends, as they sit there silently, giving off an extremely menacing aura. I close my eyes and hope with everything in me to wake up, because somehow I felt I wasn’t alone in this dreamscape.
I woke up, but again, I knew it wasn’t my life. So I stuck to my routine and kept waking up multiple times; God knows how many times I did this, I lost count. I can’t even put an exact number to it. But I just know it was a lot, and some of the dreams stretched on for weeks, if not days. The feeling of doom had taken over me, what if I never get home?
Finally by some miracle I woke up, but this time I felt that all my life has been drained from my body. I just kept laying down on my bed, after a few minutes I catch something moving from the corner of my eye. Something in me told me that I dare not look at it. All I could tell was that it was tall and skinny, with its big eyes looming over me. I could feel its gaze burn me. The same menacing aura engulfed my room. Tears started falling from my eyes, uncontrollably. Why can’t I wake up? Why can’t I wake up? WHY CAN’T I WAKE UP?
Now, I did actually wake up, and by actually I do mean I woke up for real this time, or at least that’s what I think. Upon waking up, I was greeted by my very irritated mother. She never liked it when I slept during the evening. I come from a religious family, and in our culture it is believed that one should be awake during dusk to invite gods into their home. However, it is also believed that sleeping does the opposite and instead, invites something evil. But I was never one to believe in such superstitions.
She gave me a good earful about the same, but while leaving she said that she came to wake me up but I was completely knocked out. However, she told me that from the other room she could hear me mumbling something in my sleep, and the AC being turned on and off multiple times. After entering the room once and seeing me dead asleep, she taunted, “How much will you sleep? Don’t you want to wake up now?”, to which I replied, “No”.
Hearing all this, I’m even more terrified now. I have been so disoriented ever since I woke up I can’t tell if this is my real life. What if I’m still dreaming? What if this is one of those dreams which stretched on for days? Whatever it is, I can tell I am not alone. I always feel the menacing gaze, watching me.