The Dream, page 1

This is a very short story that I wrote a couple years ago. I'm not big on sharing my writing usually, and granted this is not anything exceptional, but I thought it would be fun to maybe have some sort of feedback! I wouldn't categorize it as conspiracy related, but I am a lucid dreamer and have had OBEs in the past, and my dreams are something I try and write down, record, and remember. This was one such instance.
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My eyes fluttered open and suddenly I was awake. I stared at a plain white ceiling, placed high above me. I was not sure where I was. It looked like a place I had been before, but didn't feel recognizable. There was subtle, fluid-like characteristics to my surroundings. The walls in my peripheral vision seemed endless, stretching both ways towards some unseen boundary. I pushed myself up out of the horizontal position I was in and flung the sleeping bag that had been covering me to the side. Once I was sitting up, I was able to look around the room. At first, I saw the outside. To my left was a hallway leading down towards another room with a sliding glass door which gave way to a view of growing green trees and grass, motionless in the delightfully golden sun that seemed to not only brighten everything underneath it but place it in a frame by itself. Truly picture perfect. I saw a sparkling pool, mostly occupied by children with inflatable safety devices on their arms issuing high pitched yelps at one another as they played a game that involved a lot of splashing. And their parents - women gathered to gossip in lawn chairs with paperback books in their hands and floppy hats with flowers in them that were as big as tires draping shadows over their four-eyed faces. The men standing in a circle around a grill and a cooler, beer bellies extended proudly, both hands occupied by either a half empty bottle, a lit cigarette, or a paper plate. There was a park placed directly adjacent to the pool with scores of people congregating to toss a yellow Frisbee with one another, to walk alongside their leashed dogs, or just plainly sit on bed sheets and discuss the happenings of the world or the happenings of their home somewhere that there was no roof overhead. Continuing from outside to in, I did not study what was on the walls. Everything inside with me was uninteresting. Amorphous details of black and brown and blue hanging on the walls that did nothing to catch my attention as the objects outside did.

Then I saw you, laying on the same couch as me. We had been laying almost identically, in the same direction, your feet near my head, so as to make us resemble two Duracell batteries waiting patiently to be put to use. Something was not right though, and my mind picked up on it immediately. You had fallen asleep the previous night without covering up. I picked up my strewn blankets and gave them a quick and violent shake, attempting to dislodge any missing socks or other articles of clothing, then moved towards you with my arms outstretched, blanket barely dragging on the cushy rug, ready to lovingly wrap you up in the flannel cloth.

You laid there so peacefully, arm curled up so that your hand formed your pillow and it squished against your cheek. This was very cute. So cute that the words to describe it would and do sound incredibly lame. Your rosy lips were slightly parted and I saw the air escape through them as you breathed out. You were not drooling, which part of me regretted because of how cute that would have been, but cuteness was not something you were lacking. Once I was standing close enough, looking down on a woman I had so suddenly and readily risked so much for, I deliberately placed the blanketing down over her, leaving no inch of her body uncovered, then gently tucked in sections that did not seem close enough for comfort.

Now that I was inches away, bent over her and studying the delicate lines of her face, the urge to embrace her was too heavy to deny. As soft and as gently as I could, I half-wrapped my arms around her and squeezed just enough so that I could feel the hug deep inside of me. It electrified my heart. I held her and hoped I would not wake her. Her hair coated my face and my airway was filled with the sweet scent of her shampoo, a fruity and flowery essence that reminded me of being young, and of first falling in love. And there were other smells, too. An earthy smell, faint but prominent, that made me picture her laying in a park, her head in the grass, face pointed towards the blueness of the sky, staring at the clouds as they pass by and contemplating the mystery of her own self. It is funny how a woman can have her own scent, at least from your perspective. One that you know and identify with her. Millions of people use the same relatively few types of things to wash themselves with but when that one woman you care about uses something and makes it her own, when she adds her own intoxicating spirit to the mix, it becomes definitive. One whiff of her takes you to another world, albeit a vaguely familiar one. Which is what makes it special. She smells like home. A home you long to settle down in, but have not yet discovered.

Just then, as I was beginning to lose myself in my whirlwind of thoughts, I realized that she was not asleep. At least not anymore. Before I could do so much as open my clenched eyelids, she was hugging me back, and hard. She slid her thin arms up under my own and around my back and pulled me close. The surprise surging through my veins was no match in competing with the swell of euphoria deep in my gut, like a fiery ball of happiness, spreading outward while warming my limbs and clearing my head. There was only one thought on my mind in that moment, a ringing bell of clarity, echoing repeatedly a specific sentiment, over and over. A thought, a feeling, a neon sign in my mind's eye telling me, “This is all that you have been yearning for. This is all that you have been burning for. What you need is right -- ”...

Here is when I actually wake up. I do not open my eyes at first, I keep them squeezed shut, hoping that I didn't actually just dream that. I pray that it was real with my mouth while listening to the voice in my head tell me it is no use to do such a thing. So I switch to a loud and croaking groan instead, caring not who hears it and believes they are listening to the moans of a large and dying animal outside of their window. I contemplate punching my pillow, in some sort of last ditch and childish effort to rid myself of the frustration, then decide against it so as not to disturb the piles of books and notebooks surrounding me. Finally, I open my eyes, allow them to adjust before rubbing them with the heels of my hands, and actually and truly climb out of my bed. A bed that held only me the night before, no one else, and certainly not She who haunts the hallways of my dreams. With how the whole thing was getting to me, I might as well describe her as haunting my actual reality. She was not a ghost, though. She was real. She was warm. She was glowing. She was alive. If I had laid down any longer, the gentle hum in my chest would have steadily increased to an unsettling level, so up and at 'em, it was. Once I had gained my balance, I gave myself a gentle slap on the cheek, put a smile on my face, and tried my hardest to bury the love I had just felt moments earlier, only to see it transform to despair in the same split second