A dream I had one time

True story. Every damn word.

The dream I had one time

Ok. This is kind of weird. I’ve never spoken or written about this, so my articulation may be poor, but honestly, from the bottom of my heart, this is a true story. Not some fanciful tale written up as entertainment, but an event that should probably haunt me to this day. I say probably. I am not the sort of person to suffer from trauma, or post-traumatic stress, or whatever it is politically correct to say. What I am trying to say, is that this is the truth. This event, however harrowing one would expect it to be, means very little in the scheme of things to me, but meant a lot to those surrounding me. This is a story about a dream I once had. The setting is important, if you are to understand the relevance of the dream, and the circumstances of my awakening.

            A few nights prior to the dream I went out drinking with friends. The import thing was my drunkenness, as my mother and father are still convinced it had an impact, despite the professionals telling us that there was no alcohol in my system. There is a definite reason for this.

            As I said, we went drinking. We left the pub at a forgotten time and unknown pace, meandering our way to Booneville (what we called my best friends’ house), all four of us pissed out of our skulls. It’s the norm for students in Lampeter to be drunk fifty percent of the time. Lampeter- a small university town in Wales. In between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth, on the border of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire. Barely anyone has heard of it, which is perfectly justifiable, and probably for the best.

            But I digress. We were drunk, on our way to Booneville. We staggered into the kitchen, and I made the horrible mistake of continuing drinking, and eventually we were all naked in the tiny, grimy kitchen. It was early February. Perhaps late January. I’m not sure. It was damn cold though.

            Fast forward and we’re in one of the bedrooms, and I’m fully clothed, vomiting everywhere. Probably my least dignified moment of my university life. I remember throwing up on my friend’s Xbox (she forgave me but I don’t know if the smell ever went away). I was duly escorted home and left to shrivel up in my bedroom.

            From this point on, I’m piecing bits together vaguely. It’s an odd thing. I’m certain that I woke up the next day. Certain of that. I must have made a pot of tea, and switched on the washing machine. I remember doing my laundry and feeling queasy. It wasn’t an unusual sensation, but I lay down to sleep. I didn’t think much of this. I’d demonstrated several times my ability to sleep twenty hours straight. Well that is the setting. Tired, back from a night out (there was no alcohol in my system at this point. Most of it had exited my body via one of two orifices.), I fell asleep. And then I dreamed.

           

Over a decade ago, my family and I took a trip to New Zealand and Australia. I was there again, on the other side of the world. There was a massive orange canvas pavilion I didn’t recognise, and people I didn’t know but may have passed in the street or in a public building everywhere. There was a barbecue. I have an orange blanket. That must have been where the orange came from.

Slipping in and out of this orange dream I could feel my heart beating. Sometimes I feel like this, even now. It is something that scares me on occasions. I feel as though my heart is racing, trying to pull itself out of my body via my mouth. My forehead aches and my eyes want to cry but can’t (unless I’m listening to an Adele album) I have memories of a forgotten fear, I feel as though I am doing something for the last time, and as this moment continues I feel more alive than ever.

I could see through the dream and into my room. I was far away from reality, trapped. Time passed. I knew it was passing, and I knew that the dream wasn’t real. Lucidity claimed me for probably a few hours. I remember that bedroom ever so clearly. For once it was clean (my friend Sian and I had meticulously cleared and organised it in order for me to get back into my crazy landlady’s good books), but it was hard to breathe. There were voices I didn’t recognise and I saw no one other than the unknown dream faces. There was so much orange it was surreal. Then there was darkness. A fearful, pitiful, new and unused darkness that stretched on and on. Yet I knew I was alive. I had consciousness, to a small degree, and I knew I was moving.

How much time had passed, I didn’t know. The darkness stretched into tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow until I remember being carried. This is when everything became clear, so clear, I was convinced that I was no longer in a dream, and that this peculiar set of events was real, however unreal it was.

A man wearing a white coat was carrying me forward down which appeared to be (and most likely was) a corridor in a hospital. I spoke to several women- a mother of a childhood friend, my old swimming instructor, one of my aunts- to name a few. All people from my past and present. They were digging a hole to Australia in order to hunt down my childhood friend’s alcoholic father. Because obviously that’s what a bunch of women who have only met in my bizarre psyche would do.

At the end of the corridor, the man carrying me placed me down and I stood on my own feet again in what felt like an eternity. I walked through a door and into more darkness. Then there was a great and terrible, burning light and I was standing on the palms of a pair of giant, disembodied hands, looking at what can only be described as a demon, behind a curtain of fire.

It spoke to me. Words I couldn’t hear and thus can never remember. I know it was asking me something, but I couldn’t hear it, and I strained and strained my ears until it pained me. Then I heard what it was saying, what it was asking, no, what it was ordering.

‘Step through,’ it said.

I was reluctant at first. But then I felt it. My heart trying to escape, beating and racing until I wanted to vomit my innards onto the hands beneath me. I walked, ever so slowly, off of the hands supporting me, and through the fire. I stepped through the curtain and my view changed. I was watching myself from a distance walk through the flames and into the darkness. I felt so heavy, I wanted to fall but the darkness held me like black treacle. The fire was cool. It embraced me.

Then I awoke. I was in hospital, and people were running towards me in a state of astonishment that initially disturbed me. I can’t remember what they said, I could only feel pain and hunger. From there on, it is a blur. The dream itself was more vivid and alive than the reality I had awoken to. I wanted to return, to the fanciful world of orange and cool flames. I had travelled through something and come out reborn, something I wanted to instantly experience again.

Looking back, it feels as though that dream was a beautiful and terrifying hell. I can never go back. I can only wait for this hell to return to me so that I can enjoy it again. 

Author's Note

I hope you guys like this. It is true, and something I've never spoken of but have wanted to articulate for a while.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

Very interesting story about your true-life dream adventure. I'm not sure at the end if you were physically in the hospital or if that was only part of the dream. If you really WERE in the hospital upon waking up from the dream, then the reader wants to know the rest of THAT story!

As for storytelling, I think there's a bit too much setup here, explaining things going into this dream. If you want to tell all this setup, maybe it could go AFTER telling of the dream itself. I would start with the dream, becuz this is when your writing becomes very powerful & vivid & moving. The description of the dream is fantastical, believable, & full of imagery.

[Kat Mandu]

It did put me in the hospital- I later found out I was in a coma for a few days, which was kinda scary. The rest of the story would end up like a weird montage from a hospital film which is a bit boring in my opinion.

Thanks for the criticism- I have a problem where I use too much exposition alot of the time, something fantasy seems to have cursed me with.

[barleygirl]

I used to be compelled to spend a few paragraphs explaining the "how's" and "why's" of how I came to be involved in a situation, or why I felt the need to write about a certain topic. I still sometimes start out with such exposition, but try to heartlessly delete it, when I realize I'm doing it again. But other people have a writing style that includes injecting themselves into a story, to a certain degree, by showing the reader all sides, even behind the hidden wall, as they say. I think the explanation is fine, but still needing to capture the reader's attention at the start in today's world where people are busy & easily distracted.

[Kat Mandu]

I enjoy getting to the meaty action parts and the actual story but I know that exposition is necessary so I sometimes get carried away with it. Imagery is something I like alot too, so I'm glad you liked it.

[barleygirl]

Back in the "old days" (a hundred years ago), ALL classic writers spent pages upon pages on exposition at the beginning of books . . . look at the huge tombs written by Tolstoy, they're loaded with exposition all thru-out. We've just become conditioned to sound bytes in today's quick media blips everywhere so lots of readers don't care about meandering thru exposition -- they want to be entertained & right away, or the attention span goes elsewhere with the thousands of options available at the click of a button.

[Woody]

damn! I have a hard time believing that this is not the making of a very imaginative mind. I believe you of course. this is quite a fascinating adventure. I can never ever remember dreams in such details. sometimes I even think there were no dreams, though I know we always dream.
boy what a story! I like it and only hope you'll drink again whatever you drank that night so you could regale us with another psychedellic dream. good one, Hannah. and I find it quite articulate.

[Kat Mandu]

However strange and exhilarating it was, I think if it happened again I might suffer brain damage. It wasn't even the alcohol, it was something boring like weird levels of sodium in my blood.

[Woody]

still, I'd gladly try some of the thing you drank the previous night :)