Dreamer

Here's another story I wrote. I played around with the style and the format a bit. Enjoy!

As an unfamiliar man (who was supposedly an acquaintance, oddly enough) began to violently attack me, I opened my mouth to scream. Nothing came out but silence. It was at that moment that I knew I was dreaming (you can’t scream out loud in a dream).  I quickly thought of turning my left arm into a Megaman cannon and my right arm into a chainsaw, and I quickly dispatched my assailant. After emerging victorious, thought of a more pleasant place to be and I was there in an instant. My mind, however, was now aware of the deception (the conflict between the conscious and the subconscious, the “I-self” and the “Me-self” has become an all too familiar concept). The setting quickly became unstable, erratic. Very soon after, I was awake (my arms returned to their original arm-like state), and the details of the dream that seemed so real now showed inconsistencies (that dorm room looked nothing like mine) that should have long been obvious.

I had become quite skilled at differentiating the real world from the dream world. It was all in hopes of achieving a state known as lucid dreaming, in which one is aware of the fact that he is dreaming and is able to take control. The ability to do this just seemed so appealing. I thought that the power must have felt godlike, literally being able to make anything imaginable happen with a single thought. I tried to learn different methods to consciously check whether I was awake. I learned more and more about dreams. Soon I was able to remember more and more of my dreams and increase the consistency with which I could catch myself in a dream. At times the results went fairly well, but other times I just could not keep hold of the dream, my mind would get cloudy and all of my different thoughts seemed to come crashing into each other. 

Completely random thoughts and images flooded my mind as I fell asleep (sure signs that I was dreaming). I was quickly able to take control. I built myself a magnificent castle (larger than any I’d ever seen in the real world where annoying limits like resources and the laws of physics are in place) and I was a wise and just king whose subjects regarded him as a great hero (defeating evil wizards, riding dragons, rescuing princesses, and the like). After what felt like an extremely long time (as though I reigned over my kingdom for years), I woke up into another dream. I was in a room that defied all physical logic (there was quite a bit of ambiguity as to which surface was the floor and which was the ceiling). This soon became boring (a twelve by fifteen foot plain white room containing nothing but a bed on the floor at one side and a chair on the ceiling at and I tried to wake up again. I ended up in the same room. This happened again several times. I became anxious (was I to be trapped there forever?). I tried to change the room, but couldn’t. I tried to leave the room, but couldn’t (as though the room was a prison created by my mind for my mind). I suddenly heard a loud, abrupt noise (my alarm clock). Thankfully I was awake again. 

I knew that it was real this time for sure. Reality was always obvious. It was monotonous and I felt like nothing could ever go my way. My fantasy world was beginning to fall apart as well, since dreams had now taken a large and quite upsetting commonality with real life: I have no control.