Dream of Death

I only wanted to relax, just a moment of calmness and serenity. And I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe if I hadn’t acted so rashly, if I had just been slightly less reckless than I was, things would be different; they would’ve changed. But if anything good came out of this, it is that I have learned many things from this experience, even if I cannot use them in this life…

It had been a long day. And I had a long night ahead of me. Some days I wish I would never have to see the night. That it could just…not happen. But I would have to bear through it. I looked at my watch. It was two ten in the afternoon. Class had ended already, so I didn’t have to leave for another five minutes. I sat down, leaning against a tree. Its branches hung down so they formed a cavern, a shelter against the pandemonium of the busy world outside. As I watched the peoples rushing about outside, I saw my own reflection in the puddle of water from last night’s rain. My own green eyes stared back at me from the silver pool of water, emotionless. As the pool reflected the busy colors of the afternoon rush, they seemed to swirl together, a psychedelic splash of color on an otherwise bland strip of asphalt.

I woke up with a start. It was two thirty. I must have fallen asleep and missed the bus. Sighing, I sat back down. As I watched the setting sun, it hit the cavern at an angle that flooded it with light. As the light faded away, I saw the opening in the tree. I got up, and decided to get moving. If I was going to have to walk home, I might as well begin now, but as I stepped out into the open, I had the feeling that something was wrong. Everything was still. Even though most of school was gone, it was quieter than normal. Usually you could hear the sounds of traffic, the singing of the birds, and the dogs barking. But nothing was moving, like the whole city had become some sort of ghost town. The only thing missing was a tumbleweed blowing across the ground.

I backed up into the cavern. Stumbling on the bench, I nearly split my head on the rough rock of the cavern wall. As I sat back down on the bench, I watched the opening of the cavern shrink, until it was nothing. I was completely surrounded by darkness. Completely surrounded except for two green eyes staring at me from the blackness.

“…” I felt something. As if some unseen thing was speaking, but I could not hear it. No, not unseen, there were those two green eyes.

“Come,” they said.

I could feel some force pulling me towards them as if there was another person inside of me, wanting, no, yearning for me to come to those two green eyes. But I held back.

“No! Not until you tell me what happened! Why is everything dark? Why was everything quiet outside? What has happened?!” I was almost screaming when I finished. But those two green eyes just stared back and simply said, “Come,”

I could no longer resist. I began to walk forward. As I approached the eyes they seemed to grow. They were getting bigger. Or I was getting nearer.

“Why did the branches become stone??” I asked. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed answers.

“You interpreted it as a cavern so that is what it became.” They replied in that quiet voice. It was a voice that was calm, quiet, almost a whisper, yet powerful, something that could not be contradicted, a voice that could not be argued.

“If that is true, why did everything outside stop?! What HAP–!”

“Silence,” the voice said. It stopped me mid sentence, a vibe of power that resonated in the black void that surrounded us. And those green eyes, they grew bigger with every step I took, and the more they grew, the less control I had. I could not stop even if I wanted to. “The outside world stopped because you requested it to, whether or not you realized it.”

That voice! It evoked a rage within me that I could not control, as if it was releasing all of its power into my anger, thus fuelling its own intense power. I was no longer hearing it, but rather feeling its words as if it were thoughts rather than words spoken aloud. And all the while those green eyes simply stared their emotionless stare, enraging me even more. I lost all control over all my emotions. “I requested nothing that even implied that time stops! And–!” “You did wish to relax did you not?”

“Do I look relaxed?!” I screamed. “I want answers now. Why does everything I imagine come true? Why am I becoming angry if this is supposed to be relaxed? Why are there two green eyes floating in some infinite void??”

“Everything you imagine is becoming true because this is a dream. You are becoming angered because the two green eyes are your balance. They are a part of you that is the opposite of your emotions. When you first yelled out, you caused them to be serine thus invoking your rage. The infinite void is I. I am the dream state that is the connection between you and your balance. Understand that.”

The voice remained calm as it spoke, causing my wrath to grow to an unbearable point. I was filled with an immense hatred at those two green eyes, perhaps because I did not understand them. I was feeling so enraged right now. But they simply stared a blank emotionless stare. It may have been from this rage, the fact that I did not understand, or both, but whatever caused me to do what I did next, I would end up regretting it forever.

“If this is a dream, then why is nothing going the way I want it to?!” But even as I said this I knew it wasn’t true, every question I asked had been answered, every request I had was granted. But it was too late to change anything, for as the bright green eyes exploded in a flash of light the last thing I saw was a bloody knife embedded in my chest.

And who would be holding it but my self, my own perfect doppelganger, identical down to the last detail, the brown hair, the slightly torn shirt, even the chest: a silver dagger stabbed into the skin. It was like a perfect reflection of me. And as I looked into those eyes, those glowing, green, emotionless eyes, those dead eyes, it was then that I understood everything: My hatred was born from my own lack of knowledge. I did not understand my own being, so I hated it. I killed the one thing I understood the least, and for that reason, hated the most. And that is life. One cannot understand and live the same life.

And that is my Story