The Nightfall Game:The Lightkeeper's Tale

 The Nightfall Game:The Lightkeeper's Tale

“I can’t stop seeing your face,” she began, the Lightkeeper. “So long ago when the winds were still wild and the world still free. So long ago, when whispers were the sound of music and music was but a notion yet to evolve. Long enough to forget, most would say. Just long enough to remember, and remember, and never forget that all things begin at the beginning.

“We were never an exception.”

She opened her dark eyes and stared across the room. Her eyes fell upon no one, but they never did. Of all of them, all who played this Nightfall Game, she was the most reclusive, the only one of them who did not speak outside the tale she told. The Lightkeeper—although no one knew what that titled bestowed—a petite woman who always sat in the darkest corner, always in the same robe of the darkest black, always with a single glass of wine so dark it, too, neared black.

Her stories never told a story.

“The lighthouse,” she continued, her whispers barely audible in the tavern’s deep silence. “Where I waited at world’s end for you. Do you remember,” she asked, “the brushes, and how they rested between your fingers? Do you remember my hands, my fingers, and how they molded with yours and became one, and how we became one? The paint, and how you called it your life’s blood? My tears, and how you called them your life’s greatest failure?”

She swirled the wine, sipped. Swirled. Sipped.

“Do you remember my words, my desires? Paint me something beautiful, I asked.

“And you said, what was it that you said?”

“‘Beauty cannot be painted, because beauty cannot be seen by instruments as blind as our eyes. We cannot see beauty. We can only feel it.’”

“Then what will you paint me?” I asked.

“And you smiled and touched my hand. A graze of the fingers, but enough.”

“‘Something you can feel.’”

“And you took my hand into yours and pressed it against my chest, my heart, and insisted that I must feel, that seeing is not enough and will never be enough. You must feel, and believe, and know, to truly see. Or else you are blind.

“And you painted me something beautiful in those days so long ago. Not beautiful in itself. It’s what you draw out of something, and someone, that’s truly beautiful and miraculous.

“And then, like all good things, you passed into the west on a ship that never returned. I waited, and in your absence I began the work you never finished. I painted you a hundred scenes. I painted you a world, hoping you’d find beauty in it, hoping you would return to capture what was rightfully yours.”

I can't think of anything other than dream doors now, so that's the title even if I hate it

Have ever you looked back onto your life and thought yes, that’s why that happened, now I finally understand, now it all finally makes sense when I thought none of it would ever make sense. Or maybe why something didn’t happen?

Have you ever looked back and found that so many things that never made sense, that you thought would never make sense, finally do?

Maybe not. Maybe you have. I hope you have.

--

This sort of thing has been happening to me quite a bit lately. Logic is coming from unlogic, and even that makes a sort of quasi-logic that’s a little frightening.

A lot frightening, actually. But a good fear, which is the best fear, and consequently the only fear you shouldn’t truly fear.

--

There are some things I say quite often, but only because they’re important to me and I rest much of my sanity and happiness on them. Dangerous, I know. But I live dangerously. I’m like Fonzi; I only dress in leather and tight jeans and I punch jukeboxes.

Everything happens for a reason. I don’t know when I started believing this, or why—I assume something must have begun the initial belief, but nothing too important if I can’t remember. Anyway, the older I grow—and I’m an old man—the more I believe something I once only just wanted to believe. It makes more and more sense. Everything does happen for a reason. You live like this, you’ll find yourself paying extra attention to everything. It’s rather amazing.

--

And dreams. Remember how I never shut up about dreams? Well, if you don’t remember then you should probably reread all my blog entries. I’m sure you’ll find many embarrassing things I wrote about myself, some of which are the consequence of a tad bit too much alcohol—good thing I’m cutting back a lot on that, because of someone.

Dreams. Usually I write about nightmares, because I don’t tend to dream anything other than nightmares, or at least some form of mentally damaging dreams. Not really nightmares…but something. My mind is fucked.

But nightmares or not, I’ve always said how dreams are more important than most people will ever admit or acknowledge. Now, I know I’m crazy for far more reasons than my obsessions with dreams. In fact, my dream obsession seems like one of the sanest parts about myself. Because, lately, dreams have very much directed my life and opened doors that may not have otherwise opened. Dream doors?! No, let’s not go that far. Let’s not be that crazy. Not yet.

Although dream doors does not have a nice ring.

--

So that’s it. I feel crazier than ever, but in a good way. I think the people who are crazy but know they’re crazy are the happiest, but then you’re not really crazy at all, since you know you are. You’re just you, and you’re happy, knowing that everything is happening for reasons and that dreams are dreaming and nightmares aren’t always nightmares and that even the dreams have reasons, extremely vital reasons to your waking self and waking life, and yes, all that.

Letter (8)

Letter (8)

The last time I wrote you letter I had to stop halfway through.

--

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t even a letter. It was forced and meaningless. I wasn’t sure where I was or where I was going. Now I at least know where I am, for now.

--

I was trying so hard to reach you that I was moving backwards, to somewhere I could never escape from. Somewhere between North and South Dakota, maybe, somewhere that’s real but really isn’t, somewhere you slip between the cracks and sink deeper and deeper into nothing.

--

I didn’t want to go there, not alone, so I stopped writing and stopped thinking for awhile. This was a few weeks ago, I think. Time blends. Reality blurs. Time repeats itself. I didn’t think that was possible but now I’m almost sure it is. The past exists to be repeated. Even those things you believe will never happen again.

Those moments, or moment, that seem incapable of replication.

--

I’m in South Dakota now, in a town that does exist. It’s not one of those cracks in the world. There’s nothing special here. I don’t have anything grand to share. I don’t do anything special or meet anyone worth mentioning or see anything that’s worth staring at. Well, one thing, but we’re not there yet.

What happens in the world, it doesn’t seem to happen around me.

 But there’s something here. The air is crisp in this part of the world. Crisp and clear and you can see forever. You can smell the sky, the night, and in the night, the stars. I breathe deeply, the cold air into my lungs, and breathe out, and suddenly I can’t see forever. Suddenly I’m lost deep within a frosted cloud of my own creation, and just as suddenly, it’s gone.

Or maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe the cloud isn’t that big. Maybe I’m just lost in other ways. Maybe the cloud just looks bigger at night—nights like tonight—when the air is so crisp and the sky is so dark and the stars, the stars, the stars are endless.

--

I’ve been camping near a mountain’s summit, a bit below where the wind isn’t as strong. At night I climb to the summit with my sleeping bag and lay beneath the stars. There aren’t lights here. It’s a lot different from back home. There’s more stars, more everything.

I think I’m becoming part of the sky, and I think I’m okay with that.

I’d take you a picture but chances are you’d never see it, and even if you did, it wouldn’t be the same. There are some things you must see or experience, some things that pictures and even words fail to describe.

I’d tell you about the stars, I would, but it wouldn’t make a difference.

We Build, and Destroy

These words have been stuck in my head the past few days, although I don’t know why. I find myself at work, or at home, or half asleep, with a phrase lodged in my mind. We built these walls to block out the world. That’s all. It’s simple, I think. And extremely complex, I think. And when I say, I think, I mean I know, because I know there’s something far deeper to it, something I can’t quite grasp and will never understand. It’s just one of those group of words, for lack of better words, that join together form something far greater.

I often start stories, even novels, based off of a single sentence or just a few words.

My latest novel, Autumn’s Song, derived from two things. One of lesser importance: these words, which I couldn’t separate myself from—there came such soft rains. I was in bed one day, somewhat depressed and lost, as I so often am—in bed really, since I often write and edit in bed…not the depressed part!—just thinking, again, as I so often do. And it came into my mind. There came such soft rains. It was raining that day, I think. And this was awhile ago, while subbing for Griswold, after I read a Ray Bradbury short story—I think that’s who wrote it, about soft rains. So yeah, maybe I borrowed a bit, but Bradbury is one of the best, and all good authors borrow.

And so, we built these walls to block out the world. Again, I somewhat know where these thoughts derived from.

I build walls for myself, around myself, so I will not get hurt. I don’t like letting myself be vulnerable. I really don’t like letting other people truly know me, so I sort of put on a persona of sorts, another me, a good me I let the world see. Because it’s easy for me to let someone into who I truly am. When I have, or tried, I’ve been hurt, and in ways that are hard to describe, broken. So We built these walls to block out the world. There’s going to be a story from these words, eventually, when I put all the pieces together and build something from nothing.

But that’s all I have for now—the same words that have been stuck in my head for more than a week now, mostly at work where all I do is think, and think, and text my best friend, and text some more, and think some more, and that’s about it. And sometimes random words pop into my head. The ones I just described. And maybe because I work at a package store—Cheers, Darling. Cheers, Darling. Or maybe that’s from my favorite Damien Rice song. I don’t know. And maybe there will be a story from that, eventually.

Eventually.

We built these walls to block out the world, to separate ourselves from everything, from the outside, even from ourselves.

And It Will Stay With You

Lately I seem to blog late, late at night when I’m either thinking too much or can’t sleep… mainly because I’m thinking too much. Tonight is no exception.

Last night I didn’t fall asleep until 6:20am. Sleep has been a burden. As I posted in my last blog, sleep is scary, and really, it is for me. At least recently. The past two days. Lately I feel like Anne Frank—thank you for telling me to read that, if you’re still reading this—blogging my personal life rather than things I’ve written. But writing is writing and learning to be more open and all those good things.

Last night I really didn’t want to fall asleep. I attempted to fall asleep to music, hoping it would somehow stop my dreams, but I couldn’t fall asleep using that method. And last night I did dream, but the dreams didn’t bother me. They had nothing to do with me or my life, thankfully. They were just my usual nonsensical awesome dreams.

But the night before, as I mentioned, I dreamt, and I’m not exaggerating to say that the dream was devastating. Before I called it a nightmare, but I don’t think I should. It wasn’t a frightening dream by normal standards, and nothing bad happened in it. No ghouls or ghosts or aliens and whatnot.

But you know when you’re trying to extinguish a fire and it won’t quite burn out? And you’re like hey, fire, why aren’t you burnt out by now, shouldn’t you be cold coals and ash and not flames? Oh wait, now you almost are…but oh fuck, shit, fuck fuck fuck fuck shit, fuck shit, the flames are now huuuuggggeee because of this crazy-ass fucking dream and now I can never extinguish these flames! It’s like that. You think the fire is extinguished, and then your subconscious lights it aflame again, and you find yourself in a state of fucked-uppery.

So, today, at work, all I could do was think and try to understand my current state of life, and for the first time in…years I think, I was actually angry. Legitimately angry at my mind for seemingly working against me, for bringing such vivid and breathtaking and destructive dreams to reality. Because the dream was that real. Reality.

But maybe the anger is misplaced, or even unneeded. I put credence into dreams, perhaps more than I should. Let’s face it. We’re all fucked up. We, as people, are fucked up. So maybe I shouldn’t even trust my own thoughts, or what I’m trying to make myself think. Maybe my subconscious knows best, knows me better than I know myself, and is showing me the truth through dreams.

Because this has never happened to me before, ever, and I really can’t shake it or begin to explain what feel like inadequacies and shortcomings on my part. When I think I’m good, really good, I fall asleep and dream the most vivid and memorable dreams I have ever dreamt. Beautiful dreams. So beautiful.

And it ruins part of me.

And revitalizes part of me.

And I don’t know what to think or do or how to act when I’m always so good at controlling everything in my life.

So I just stop thinking, or caring, at least on the outside.

So I think I’m just conceding. I can control my conscious during waking hours. I think what I want to think and believe my beliefs. I have fun and enjoy life, etc. I can…look past the past, not forget—never forget—but at least progress.

But it almost feels like none of it matters. I reach a point and I dream again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and it hasn’t failed yet. It brings me back to somewhere I don’t want to be, but to somewhere I really, really want to be, and, again, I don’t know how to explain what’s happening in my own mind.  

I remember reading this somewhere in Italy, I think, when I lived there for a few months. Some artist said it—I forget who—but it resonates. And I’m paraphrasing.

When you see something beautiful, truly beautifully, something that steals your breath and captures you senses, remember it, and store it, and never forget it. For it will be your inspiration, your dreams and nightmares, and it will stay with you forever as part of you.

Sleep is Scary, so don't do it.

You supposedly remember fewer dreams when you sleep less hours.

 I should clarify.

REM naps increase dream recall rather drastically, as sleep is never deep and dreams…lay on the surface. Sleeping longer, along with waking up multiple times and falling back to sleep, is also often conducive to remembering dreams, mostly due to the later hours that fringe upon REM.

The last few nights I have slept from 5 or 6am to 11am. My dreams, normally, should be very difficult to remember, but they have been extremely detailed, preserved, and as usual, haunting. Actually, most of the dreams were rather interesting, especially one with me stuck in a world where time is suspended in motion, where everything you do almost instantly undoes itself. Of course I went crazy in the dream and started running people down in a truck. It was a very long and very confusing dream.

Right now it’s 4am, so I’ll post this tomorrow at a more reasonable time. Lately I haven’t had much motivation to blog, but to be fair I haven’t had a lot of motivation to do much more than attend the gym.

This is all connected, I promise.

Everything is connected, as I’ve said both here and to people and a person.

It’s odd, that I stay awake all night when I sort of hate night, or at least sleep now, because all I do is think and dream dreams I don’t want to dream.

I always wonder what motivates people, especially at the gym when you’re beating yourself up to become stronger and look nicer. What are they thinking? What inspires them? I usually think about things that frustrate and even anger me, of which there are too many. Today, and for a long foreseeable time, I thought about the dream I had last night. It was amazing, and horrible.

When you’re not trying to forget someone—some things aren’t intended to be forgotten—but at least put them in the back of your mind, that very same mind fucks you over through a dream, or in my case, many dreams. Last night I had one of these dreams, the first one in many weeks, and, surprisingly, it was by far the longest, most vivid, and most…personal?

I’m aware of how confusing the above paragraph may be, but I don’t intend to change it. Read it slowly, and more than once.

And while I usually describe my more interesting dreams, this time I will not. As much as I love public forums and sharing with those who care, I just as much like keeping some things to myself. Besides, details aren’t important.

Yes they are. To say otherwise would be a horrible lie.

But oh well.

And, so, I just felt like ranting about nothing and everything tonight, because why would I be sleeping right now anyway?

And yes, I sort of am wary to sleep tonight. Today I woke up not remembering my dream at first. Then, about ten minutes later, something triggered and it all came rushing back. I said something explicit, sighed, and just sat there for awhile staring at nothing. I was shocked for multiple reasons—one reason being how deeply the dream and the person in it affected me—and even a little sickened. Not in a physical sense, but emotional. So now I’m wondering if I’ll dream again, and if the dreams will be along the same lines, if I’ll see the person and think the same things and wake up wondering what the fuck my mind is doing when I sleep.

The Nightfall Game: The Seafarer’s Yarn

 There's nothing relevant or exciting or particularly good to say about myself and my life at this point, so here's the next installment of a The Nightfall Game.

The Nightfall Game: The Seafarer’s Yarn

“A tale of loss,” the Seafarer began. His year to begin, his tale to weave. He sat in the tavern’s corner, in the light of a single candle’s withering flame. An ancient, sun-scarred man, his dark cloak smelled of sea salt and low tide, and his pale gray eyes, when you studied them in just the right light, showed the sun setting across the watery horizon.

He spoke only of loss, knew not much else, and what else he did know he never shared.

“So long ago when we found her in an oarless rowboat drifting across the sea. She was nearly dead, haunted by the sun and sea. And she should have died. No food or water, she should have died, but life gives to us those rare blessings. Doesn’t it? And those less rare curses.”

The Seafarer’s listeners silently nodded, faces only partially visible in the dim candlelight.

“The next day she vanished, after she gave the gifts she came to give. A locket to Otten, and within that locket, a portrait of his wife painted beyond the delicacy of hands. ‘She waits,” said the spirit girl, for she was a spirit girl, ‘And she will wait forever, always, as you sail these seas.’ And Otten, how he wept and cursed the gods by names I cannot utter, and beneath the stars those gods summoned him into the sea.

“A bright red rose to Laurn. A bright red rose deep out at sea. ‘A rose from your gravestone,” the spirit girl said, grief in her dark eyes. ‘Still fresh, as are the memories of you face, but even that will be forgotten, someday, as you forever sail these seas.’ And Laurn, pale after so many years beneath the sun, stumbled into the quarters below deck, where we found her hanging so peacefully, her bright eyes finally dull.

“And she came to me last of all, did this spirit girl. I wanted nothing from her, saw the affect of her words and gifts on my crew. Two more souls had already joined the sea. I did not want to be third. Yet I could not unhear her words. ‘A stone, from land,’ the spirit girl said, handing me the stone. ‘For you will someday walk upon the earth, someday long from now when all you know and care for will be dead and gone, and you will be alone to live again.’

“And me, my friends, I did not cast myself into the sea or slip a noose around my neck. I leaned upon the starboard rail and searched the horizon. I did not see land, but I knew it was there, somewhere, and that when I found it I would have to start all over again. A curse, I knew, but my ship had been cursed from the beginning. And men, all of us, all people, we share the same curse of death and desolation.

“And so the spirit girl left my ship with one soul less than she came to take. The stone I kept for myself.”

One Step

45,918 words later...maybe I can sleep again. Edited four times on the computer, then twice over on paper, I've never edited anything I've ever written with such zeal and dedication. Now I know what Ellis means when he says he slaves over each and every word, the structure and meaning behind and within everything. It's hard, I think, with fantasy, when you have 500-1000 pages. This book is just 148 pages and not fantasy. I have no idea what genre this novel falls into. By far the most difficult and rewarding thing I've ever written. Now comes the fun part. Writing a synopsis for it, the cover letters, the other tedious things that I will begin tomorrow. Right now I'm just staring at the folder this thing is in and feeling very pleased with the last edit and what was changed this version--my version--of the end product. With this out of the way, and it is out of the way, I can start sending tons of stuff out again, as I didn't have the time previously.

I remember the exact night when I started writing this and how everything came together so quickly, and how, from that moment, it possessed me as things usually do. Yes, I've written six novels--all much longer--before this, and two half finished, but that's not something I brag about since none of it is published, and while each "finished" product felt like an accomplishment, this felt like much more. Perhaps due to the subject matter or how mentally draining the novel was to write. Maybe I should write happier things, but that's not me. Maybe it can be at some point in time, but probably not.

I'm thinking far ahead, I know, but this novel will have a dedication page when published. That's the only part left unfinished, in my eyes. In my eyes.

The Nightfall Game

I’ve been brainstorming for my blog for a long time now, trying to decide what sort of thing to write. Flash fiction, I know, but something semi-continuous, yet, at the same time, something that really doesn’t make me commit. The blog is mostly for fun and the writing isn’t all that serious. I barely proofread it—I’m sure there’s many mistakes I overlook, as I tend to blog late at night read most things over only once.

Regardless, I’d still like to present something worthwhile both for myself and those who read, something to post other than the Letters and my own rants about life and whatnot.

I started the blog for a reason, so I suppose I should continue it for a reason.

So, brainstorming, I started thinking about a Neil Gaiman short story. If you haven’t read him, you should; everything he writes is fantastic. Anyway, I forget the short story’s name, and I don’t feel like searching through my books for it. In essence, a bunch of people—Months of the year, actually. You know, June…July…November…those guys—come together for an annual meeting of sorts to share stories. It’s a contest, if I remember correctly.

And so my idea was born. I think it’s hard for me to write short stories because I can never write from my own mind or thoughts, if that makes sense. I have to get extremely deep into the character, become the character(s), and I think that’s harder in short stories than it is in longer pieces of fiction. You have less room, less time, and it’s a different sort of skills that I’m still trying to hone. But if someone else tells the stories for me, a group of characters I create before their stories, then it somehow feels easier. I’m aware that that may sound insane, but that’s okay. I understand insanity very well.

Also, writing this sort of thing is good practice, since I should be writing more short stories in hopes to publish them, as publishing is very much a snowball effect. Once you’re in, it’s easy to get deeper.

I suppose writing and publishing is a lot like having sex.

They both make me cry.

Wait, what?

--

The Nightfall Game

Prologue

They gathered as they always did, beginning so many years ago. It was an ancient game they played, and at the same time, not a game at all. Played, lived, obsessed over—it depended on which one of them you asked and how well they spun the lie.

They gathered as they always did, near the shore where you could watch the sea roll in and out through the salted windows of the tavern, where you could hear the waves crash against the stones as black as night, where you could feel the wind gust through the cracks in the walls. Lanterns burnt inside, their flames always flickering and always yellow more than white, creating more shadows than light. But they, those who gathered here, never fretted over the lack of light and excess of shadows. Their stories belonged to the shadows, were better off told in darkness than light, better off whispered.

They gathered as they always did, eleven in all but only ten who told their stories. The eleventh, a grizzled man behind the bar, poured their drinks and filled their flasks, but mostly he just listened to their stories.

That’s needed, even here. Someone to hear the stories, an evenhanded listener crouching on the outskirts, his one good eye watching the speakers one by one, one by one.

He was the only one of the eleven who ever gave his real name, and although he was as ancient as the rest of them, from a time nearly before times, when the stories, their stories, led to the creation of all other stories—although he was similar to the others, he wasn’t one of them. His name was Gallan, his true name, and he was the tavernkeep, and he was a simple man surrounded by some of the most complex men and women to ever live.

He wasn’t one of them—and after all these centuries he knew he would never be—but he was close enough to be a judge, to have a voice, to change the world again and again, and to always share their regret when they stood from their seats and emptied their tables and slid on their cloaks and coats and left the tavern for the night, and for the year, until the next year, and the next and next and so on.

Stories like this, they go on and on.

No, Gallan wasn’t one of them. He resembled them closely enough, as any man resembles any other man. His long white beard was a beard—hard to argue that. And his one eye—cloudy blue now—could see well enough. Almost as well as two eyes. Curse fishhooks. He wore a gray cloak that anyone else could wear, and black boots and a thick woolen shirt to fight off the chills.

Even so, he wasn’t one of them, but he belonged with them on one single night, every year, for so many past years that no one bothered to count anymore.

And so he readied the beer and wine and whiskey. The casks in place, the barrels full and tapped, the bottlenecked glasses filled with their burning, murky contents. He readied the tavern—although it had been readying itself since they last departed a year ago—because they would be gathering soon. And voices would fill the tavern, and words would be spoken, yarns spun and tales told, stories, and at the end of it all, a decision, a judging, a verdict, and they, those would played this Nightfall Game, would accept fate and leave again.

I Almost Went Blind and I'm Haunted by Desert Roads and Demons who Spit Shadows and Beautiful Women Stranded in Blizzards

Have to post before I forget too much of my dreams from last night. Before that, however, a brief anecdote. Hopefully my…stories are lucid, as I’m not tired as much as I am exhausted. I slept about three hours last night, followed by nine hours of work, so please have patience.

I won’t repeat myself too much. Although I didn’t spend last night how I originally intended, it was still quite excellent. Last night I blogged very late, and I’m not even sure what I said so I won’t bother to mention last night’s post more than I just did. I was half asleep and not entirely sober, so rereading it would likely be a very sobering experience.

Regardless, I still got home at a decent time and, since I was getting up at 8am for the gym before work, I went to bed at a reasonable time, before all my plans were ruined in some way or another.

Rather than fall asleep around 2am, I instead journeyed into one of my insane nightmare phases that are becoming harder and harder to escape; this kept me more or less awake, and haunted, until 6am, when I finally fell asleep—we will return here soon.

I wake up horribly tired at 8am, but I’m very committed and too stubborn for my own good, so I prepare for the gym followed by work. I eat and take my pre-workout supplements and do all that fun shit, and all the while my eyes are burning. Horribly. Bright red. To the point where they almost look to be bleeding. I can’t even keep my eyes open or look at anything, and it’s so painful that I’m becoming sick. In my exhaustion I didn’t bother to correlate my burning eyes to that I’m using the final drops of my contact saline solution, and the solution is not at all working as intended.  Essentially, I’m shoving fire into my eyes and not bothering to put out the flames, but I’m too tired to process this, so I let the burning continue until I’m nearly blind.

And so then I decide to drive, naturally assuming nature will run its course and I’ll be fine soon enough. About two miles later I nearly crash my car because, guess what, I really can’t keep my eyes open. I’m for the most part blind, driving with my eyes shut, and so I force myself to turn around. The gym is not in my future today, and, well, I rather not die or kill someone else. Also, the pain is making me sick and I’m close to throwing up. I have an extremely high pain tolerance, so I assume this must be bad.

So I at least make one intelligent decision for the day. Quota reached.

I arrive home and remove my contacts, since I’m going to sleep for about an hour before work, and sure enough my eyes feel instantly better. Still burning, but not the oh my god I need to rip my eyes out burning. Now it’s just a numbing pain even when my eyes are shut.

And so I go back to sleep. And that’s the end of that end. My eyes still hurt, but at least the new solution is working as intended, and tonight, sleeping more than three hours will likely rest my battered eyes.

But let’s get to why I couldn’t sleep in the first place.

Dreams, so many dreams, which, as you may know, is nothing to me. I’ve brought this upon myself through practicing lucid dreaming and increasing my dream recall, so I can’t complain, and I’m not complaining, but I am sharing.

Regrettably, or perhaps thankfully, I don’t remember most of my dreams from last night, but I remember enough to still disturb me, as the overall sentiments and atmospheres were unbearably distressing.

The first dream doesn’t sound like much; it’s what I felt that bothered me. I was in my room playing my Xbox 360, a game fellow gamers may know—Borderlands. It’s an apocalyptic futuristic shooting game and one of my favorites. Anyway, I’m stuck before the game even truly begins. I’m playing on an impossibly hard mode, a mode that doesn’t even exist. I keep starting the game over and over again. My character, which quickly becomes me, begins on a deserted road all by himself. Desert to both side, seamless and flat and seemingly forever. Scorched. There is no life. And my character is limping, already half dead before I even begin. So I start playing, and slowly, I just fall to the ground and die. I take a few limping steps, fall to one knee, and die. And I do this over and over and over again, for hours, dozens of times. I just keep dying, and watching myself die. Such a pleasant dream. My subconscious is fine.

The next dream is even worse, as it woke me up and didn’t let me fall back to sleep for awhile.

 So this right here, this paragraph, see it?, this all happened in real reality—An exact week ago I think, I was at my friend’s house and we were discussing scary movies. She, or maybe it was me, mentioned The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which I think is a severely underrated horror movie. We started discussing the most frightening scene, which we agreed is when Emily is at college, in her dorm room all alone, with the devil inside her, and there’s tons of contortion and whatnot. Good stuff. It’s one of those images I can’t get out of my mind to this day. Sure enough, as she’s flicking through channels, the movie is on, and not only, it’s that scene. We, of course, watch it.

I wanted to watch Masturbating School Girls 5, but noooooooo.

Flip ahead to my nightmare. No masturbating school girls. Sigh. Just one brief scene. There’s a man sitting on a park bench. He’s alone, and by alone I mean the rest of the world doesn’t exist. No ground, no sky or backdrop. Nothing. He’s wearing a tan coat with a hood, and the hood is up. His features are so normal they don’t warrant detail. He opens his mouth impossibly slow, until it’s too wide, so wide it would break in real life, and the darkest shadows I’ve ever seen begin to engulf his face. He’s screaming, silently, in horrible pain as shadows eat his face, and him, and eventually the entire nightmare fades to black.

The third dream is the worst, even though it’s not at all a traditional nightmare.

I’m at work, the package store where I put my English degree to quality use, and I’m behind the counter at the register. I turn around to ring someone up, and that someone happens to be a friend who likes to haunt my dreams—that unresolved conflict thing, so at least I sort of know why this keeps happening. Far too often. In the dream I know she’s not 21, so I shouldn’t be selling her anything, yet I just stand there like an idiot as we make small talk—the smallest talk possible. How are you? Good. How are you? I’m okay, alive. You look good. Yeah. Thanks. You too. Yeah. Yeah. Not much considering the circumstances. Do you have any blueberry syrup?

Wait, what? Yes, asks if we have any blueberry syrup, and for some reason I’m sure we do, only when I walk around the store looking for this syrup, it’s nowhere to be found and I can’t but feel like I’m letting her down, and this is familiar and not at all new, although I’m not sure why. Instead of working, I’m just fumbling around and staring at her and trying to talk, wanting to talk, and then, suddenly, there’s a blizzard outside. The blizzard of the century, the entire world in a whiteout.

I still don’t really care. I’m just trying to talk to her.

And my friend Mike comes in from outside insisting we leave with him, or else we’ll be stranded here forever and starve.  

I agree, but only because my friend who I haven’t seen or spoken to in so long also agrees, and together we follow Mike out the door, and the next thing I know we’re in his car. She and I are in the front seat, and for some reason Mike is in the backseat…where he’s driving the car by a system of ropes and levers tied to the steering wheel. No one is talking, as no one is sure what to say, and when I want to say so much, and do so much, there’s only silence and inaction, and snow outside. The entire world buried beneath snow. At one point the car nearly flips, and Mike in the backseat laughs wildly as my friend and I just stare through the windows, into the white.

I had more dreams, many more, but they’re not substantial enough to record, and seeing as this blog is somewhat of my dream journal that I share with the world, I rather not waste time and space—the internet is lacking space, of course. And so, between, these threes very vivid dreams and more, I only slept a few hours last night. The rest I spent in these dreams, and half awake thinking of these dreams, and fully awake haunted by these dreams, and so on and so on.

Overall, a decent night.

I have a headache.