The Dream

Last night I had the most profound dream of my life.  I was lost inside a labyrinth, deep in the Earth.  Someone was calling my name.  It was a girl’s voice, soft and luxurious, like the ringing of a bell.  It wasn’t the voice of anyone I knew.  There was a desperation in it I’d never heard before.  Since it was my name she was calling, I wondered if I was responsible for her being lost.  She kept calling me, so I kept going forth, drawn to her voice like a moth to a flame.  From out of the deep and darkest chasm of the Earth, it felt like an angel was calling me, and I needed to be cleaned.  

I came to a path that went downward and curved around, the way a spiral stairway does.  The ground was white, and the walls were crystal blue.  Down and down I went, into the sub-cerebral cavern of my mind.  The further down I went, the colder it became and the harder it was to breathe.

“Chrisssss”, came the voice again.
        I became conscious of dreaming, as sometimes will happen in such lucid dreams.  But I continued on like I wasn’t.  Dreams are more real than people give them credit for.  If you can become conscious in a dream, does that mean the real world is also an unconscious creation?

Soon the right side of the path dropped off into complete darkness.  Up ahead it curved around the jagged edge of a cliff.  I thought of throwing myself into the abyss and ending the dream, but she was still calling me, and I had to save her.  On I went.

Mr. Booth, a former teacher, was suddenly in front of me, whispering, Go on, she’s there waiting for you.  She’s been waiting a very long time.  You abandoned her.  He pointed down an incline towards what appeared to be a snowy cave, then drifted off into the shadows.   I walked down, step by step.  Her sobs echoed off the walls of the cave, reaching every corner of my mind.  The echoes intersected one another with great bursts of spiritual tears that were raining down inside my head.

I entered the cave.  Its walls and floor were transparent sheets of ice.  As I slid myself over them, I became aware of a great void below me.  Looking down, I could see through the transparent ice, into nothingness.  Looking up I could see through it as well, a complete transparency.  There was no sun up there: only the recesses of my mind, which seemed eternal.  

I rounded a boulder and walked upon a rocky, snow-packed surface.  It was freezing here, and I breathed out vapor.  Then I heard behind me that same crying, as clear as the crystal surrounding me.  I’d finally found her.  As I turned around to look at her, my eyes grew wide, and my heart went racing.  The girl was... Denise?  She looked sad, but beautiful at the same time.  Her sobs thickened and she started crying at a more rapid pace.  It seemed like the more she cried, the colder it got. 

Her tears turned into icicles that fell from her eyes.  They layered on top of one another like clouds of smoke rising from a volcano.  Soon there was nothing but ice, and a sharp siren of panic rose from the abyss below.   The ice exploded around me, into a million shards of crystal.  I wanted to save her, but I couldn’t.  Before I could make a move, I awoke to the real world, a world that had thrown me away.   I righted myself out of bed, muttering one single name...

“Denise?”