Dream With Eyes Awake

photo by Teodoratan.

There was this guy once who could begin to dream while he was still awake. He would stare at a certain spot in the room with unfocused eyes, begin breathing deep and regular, and then wait for the curtain to fall. Or rise, depending on which side you’re standing on. Once his thoughts took the form of images that began moving on their own, it was all he could do to hold back his excitement and maintain the balance of dream and wakefulness, like cupping his hand around a sputtering flame to shed just enough light on his subconscious.

What did he dream about in those moments between hemispheres? He dreamt of the cars he had stolen in his youth, submerged at the bottom of a lake after the wild rides across town had come to an end. He dreamt of beachfront mansions flooded by the tide, hallways filling with sand, water crashing at the base of a staircase, escape routes cut off, the foundation sliding into the sea. He dreamt of fishing in pools of water so clear that he could see the shadows of fish curling among the rocks, the glint of green scales. The line tugged as he caught a big one, but as he dragged it to shore he saw that the fish had long been dead.

All the while he dreamt, his eyes were open, scanning back and forth, up and down, fingertips twitching until, without reason, his eyes stopped their rhythmic movement and drew their focus back to the room at hand. He would start to laugh, or look sad, or still afraid as the dream wavered like drapes in an open window, dissolve away like cotton candy on the tongue.