THE BEST DREAM OF MY LIFE

I had this dream almost two weeks ago, shortly before The Cafe was wiped clean, like a carcass on an African plain. I had this posted a few days before, but of course, it was brushed away by a mistake. Tell me what you think this means. Though I had a vag

 

(I can’t remember all of it, but I think I’ve managed to hold onto the more important elements of it)

 

Adventure, wild, crazy, wondrous adventure.

 

Ritzy restaurant, pretty business woman.

 

Lap top.

 

A picture was taken of me with the laptop, in the dream. Impossible…although I suppose not, now, at this point in time. At this pointing reality. This was a dream, after all.

 

The Pretty business woman allowed me to stretch and play with the features of the picture any way I wanted, change my limited appearance in any way possible. Futuristic computer technology.

 

Eventually, a beautiful woman emerged from my wonder and tinkering.

 

The beautiful woman was printed, photocopied, whatever, into a real set of twins, the identical image of what the picture of me came to be on the laptop camera, because of my imaginative and wild doodling. Extremely attractive, they were…me, but not me. Living, different photocopies of me.

 

“Talk to them,” the business woman said over a tall, ethereal wine glass. “See what they say to you.”

 

“Won’t they say what I’d say if I were talking to me? How can they be independent of me, when they came from me?” I asked, confused and scared.

 

Yet, curious.

 

“They both are and aren’t you,” the woman said. “They will evolve beyond you. Talk to them.”

 

“Hello,” I said in a small, embarrassed voice. I don’t know why I should’ve been embarrassed. Maybe I felt as if they could sense the strange attraction I had to them…at first. After a few brief seconds, the attraction to them for anything more than curiosity ceased.

 

As though it had never been.

 

Each of them responded in her own way. We talked for what seemed like hours. Eventually, we laughed together. After a while, it was as if I had known them for years.

 

Grand, fantastic adventure followed. A voyage through terrifying, erupting volcanoes; a flight from the grip of frozen badlands, from Death Lands. Across a land ruled by vicious, man-eating dragons. A virtual trip through a pirate video game, as crazy as that sounds. Through an immense labyrinth. Through EVERYTHING on this adventure, the twin women were with me, helping me out, saving my life, allowing me to save their lives, on occasion.

 

Giving me water when I was parched, giving me comfort when I was afraid.

 

The thing is, nothing about this was sexual. In no way at all was it about sex at all. They were my truest friends.

 

Hauling me out of crevices, shoving me into the future with sometimes brash concern and love. We fell down laughing together. Discussed the nature of reality during down times. We were a segmented whole, I felt. For some reason. They were my everything.

 

Throughout this dream, these evolving female (non)copies of me became my associates, then my companions, then the BEST friends that I could possibly ever have, in this life or the next, beyond this life, better friends than God Himself. Completely loyal to a fault, charming, funny, thoughtful, intelligent. Could there be better friends than this? Could that be possible? I didn’t think so. Not at all. I loved them in a way that I’ve NEVER loved anything or anyone.

 

Nothing compared.

 

After all this, the final test, (and that’s what this years-log journey was, a massive test…a test of what, I still don’t know) we came to a maze. Somewhere close to the end of my journey, the first materialized twin died, leaving the younger twin to grow old and wise and crippled…bearing a loose resemblance to Mama, but she wasn’t Mama, that’s important to know and understand.

 

I escaped the doorway of this impossible maze with this wheelchair-trapped woman at my heels, in my head, in my heart and soul, only to have to leave her in the end in this maze, because the doorway out began to shrink when I crossed the threshold. In an instant, it became too small for this dying, incredibly aged twin to come through. I had to leave her, and it was the most painful thing that I’ve ever had to feel; in this world or in the world of dreams.

 

“You can do this, slide down the ladder,” she said, while I tried my best to pull her through this shrinking door to another impossible world. Screaming and swearing and jetting snot with every tug.

 

The Ladder. On the other side of the door was a ladder that trailed down the side of the building I now stood on, a ladder so impossibly long that I couldn’t see the bottom of it. I was afraid to slide down the ladder, but the remaining twin kept saying, “You can do this, Broadie. My sister and I helped you through these trials, you saw our strength, our power, but our strength was your strength, for we never existed,” in a sad, yet determined voice.

 

No!” I kept saying, “NO!” I was beyond grief at this point. “I LOVE YOU!”

 

With the shadows of her gesticulating left hand (and the steel skeleton of her battered wheel chair) visible through the tiny square of the door, the remaining twin spoke.

 

“Yes, I have no doubt of your love for my sister and me, but what you don’t realize is that in the face of OUR love for you, your love is nothing. We died to help you through this. Now go.”

 

Still, I couldn’t imagine anything being as painful as leaving she and her dead sister to such an intolerably harsh place, an incredible reality where no one should have to walk, or roll, for that matter.

 

In the end, she said, “Down the ladder, Broadie, you have to get down the ladder, quickly.”

 

Wrenching my hand from hers, feeling as though I was now leaving the best parts of my personal reality behind, down the ladder I went, screaming and crying in agony the entire way down this ladder that took forever to descend, yet, only seconds to descend. Just before my feet hit the ground, time ran out for the ladder, and it turned into concrete, brick, something like that. It crumbled, spilling me onto the earth, right on my a*s.

 

When I rose from the ground and walked from the building, which had been more like a water tower when I’d first stepped upon it, I saw a heavyset woman walk from a door set into the base of the building. In her hands were a pen and a pad, and she scribbled furiously as she walked slowly in my direction me, where I stood.

 

“What’s going on?” I asked, now soaked to my underwear. I realized at that point it had begun to rain the second I stepped from within the maze.

 

The woman didn’t answer me. She only looked at me and said, “You’ve gotten through this, which means that you’ll never have to go through it again. You’re done. Leave.”

 

What was strange about these words was that though the woman seemed irritated with me for having accomplished escaping such a mad world, she also seemed oddly proud for some reason. There was a begrudging pride in her face, and her voice.  I stared at her in wonder.

 

“Get your tall, narrow a*s out of here and get on dry clothes,” the woman said. With that, she turned and began to walk back to the door of the building.

 

At that point, I woke up.

Reviews

[Mark]

Whoa. Alice through the Looking Glass, in a sense. And Xanadu ... waking and remembering parts so vividly yet the whole being lost in an opiate haze. It's definitely something you could use to write a sci-fi novel with if you care to take it further. Stands on it's own as-is. An interesting short story (with some edits). Good story-telling, B. And a fucked-up cool dream as well.