Lucid Dreaming--Marissa

 

Adrenaline shot through my veins rushing all throughout my body. My eyes opened only to be met with rays beating through the slits of my fingers as I raised my hand to the sun. The sand was warm and the air carried a crisp, fragrant breeze. A scent that somehow seemed familiar to me, although I had no recollection of anything before that. The scent of an inflorescence of jasmine. Every fiber of my faded jeans and t-shirt were soaked from the waves that lapped up on shore, surprisingly welcoming and warm. I sat for a few moments on this mysterious beach, peering out to where the skyline seemed to touch the ocean. Finally, I stood up and started to walk along into a seemingly endless beach until, it appeared, almost out of no where, stairs leading to an extravagant city. I approached the steps and started to climb, being immersed into a world full of artificial lights that made up for the lack of stars.

...
Instead of the wet clothes from the beach I had on before, a new, black dress took its place, along with some diamond earrings that dangled down. As I looked behind me, nothing was there except the towering urban complexes and a multitude of people that bustled around, each with their own conversations. I tried calling out to them, hoping someone would listen. At last, I caught the attention of a woman who appeared to be in her early forties, making her about twenty years older than myself. She had flowing dark, brown hair and deep, blue eyes that seemed to examine the very content of my soul. “Excuse me,” I said. “Where am I? I mean what city is this?” She seemed puzzled at first but then answered my question. “Well, you see we are in New York.” Her eyes began to dart different places and with each place she set them, sparks of light appeared and quickly faded. She did not acknowledge their existence, or perhaps even know that they were there in the first place. Being stunned from the light show before me, I did not notice at first that she had already begun walking away. Something inside me grew. A feeling of intrigue and connectedness I had felt towards her. “Wait!” I cried. “Please, wait for me.” The lady did not hear me and opened these glass doors into what was a restaurant and took a seat at a table with flickering candle light. The room looked as if it had no ceiling or walls, just continuing black that went on until you stepped outside and finally realized that it was a building in which the restaurant was located. I took a seat at the same table, in the chair straight across from hers. Suddenly she looked up and everything became silent. The soft music playing in the background slowed and finally stopped. Suddenly I blurted,“I am sorry, but I get this weird feeling that I know you in some way, have we met before?” “I believe you asked me a question when I was walking in the streets an hour earlier.” That caught me off guard. If my memory did not fail me, I had been walking the streets only moments ago. I suppose I had been staring too long as she asked,”If you don’t mind me asking, why are you sitting at my table?” A blank expression came over me as I could not form an answer. “Well, I...” a long pause came between us. “If I’m being completely honest I don’t know why I am here, where this place is, or how I got here. Strange things keep happening too, such strange things.” “Like what exactly?” she replied, clearly interested. “Well like the walls and the ceiling of this room, or my new dress, or the light that follows you, everywhere you look!” I shot, without even thinking. Suddenly, the woman got up from the table and looked around. Every single one of the customers glanced at her, then simultaneously corrected their stares at me. I fixed my eyes on the woman’s blue ones that seemed to jump out and scream how scared she had become. I tried to apologize, but at that moment, everything was consumed in darkness.

...

Just then I awoke once again to the tickling feeling of grass against my skin. Long hills rolled, dotted with orange trees and their sweet blossoms. All of the sudden, I had a memory before the beach, upon seeing the trees. I was walking down an orchard with the same exact trees, laughing as a younger girl trailed behind along with a small white dog. I remember feeling content, happy, and above all, safe. As quickly as the memory had appeared, it began to fade into the recesses of my mind. A white house appeared at the end of the orchard and the trees seemed to part ways making a dirt path so I could walk across towards it. On the porch, an older gentleman sat drinking tea, with a complacent look on his face. I ran up and called out,”Excuse me, sir, what place is this?” He looked down at me and laughed. “Why, you don’t know where you are?”

“No sir, I do not.” He put down his tea and pulled out a straw sun hat from a table beside him that I did not see before. As he placed it on he said,”Well your in California. A quiet old orange orchard in California.” I became even more confused. How was I in New York only minutes before, and now after opening my eyes I was all the way across the United States. “No, no that isn’t possible,” I cried. “This all is so unreal.” When I uttered those words the clouds started to almost spill from the sky and then pour out rain droplets till yet again, everything on me and around me became soaked. The way the clouds formed was unnatural, very surreal. The man started to walk back into the house and the orange blossoms began to close. Tears formed at the corner of my eyes. I wanted to have another memory. Just one more so I could figure out just exactly what was going on. It was right then and there, one came. One came of me closing the door to a room in an apartment, turning out the lights, and falling asleep. After that all I recalled was washing up on the beach. Soon I realized what exactly was happening. Although I felt alive, I never felt fully awake. As if my ability to grow tired or weak was disabled. In fact, now upon thinking of it, I had never woken up at all. Repeating after the last dream, the world I was in turned dark.

...

Upon my awakening, I walked through the new dream with newfound confidence. Here I found myself in a dressing room of a certain outlet I could not put my finger on. I walked outside and saw a large complex resembling a mall that did not seem to have any visible exits. As I walked outside, I sat at the base of a water fountain near a boy my age. Unlike many other people I had seen in the different dreams, he seemed to have a lost look on his face. Although, then I remembered that everything was a figment of my imagination. So I decided that I had only been lucid dreaming, destined to wake up at any moment. “Crazy,” I said to the boy. “This is all just a part of a my crazy dreams.” His eyes grew huge as he met my gaze and said,”Your dream? This is mine.”