Unknown World

She woke up especially thirsty. It could have been the 2 am homemade pizza she ate before bed with her bottle of light beer, or the general lack of water with which her body had been deprived over the weeks. Slightly sore from dragging her groceries home 3 blocks the day before, she rubbed her shoulders to find relief and wished she had someone there to do it for her. The residual emotions from her strange dreams put her in a distracted mood. She grabbed the nearly empty water bottle that had tipped over the night before as she had stumbled to bed, rubbed her eyes and tried to remember what her dreams had been about. She flopped back into her disorderly bed, and stared at the blank ceiling. Flashes of her dream were playing back in her mind like a disjointed slide show.

She saw darkness. She saw people gathered around a car. She remembered the need to evacuate. She remembered that a storm was coming, a very large storm. She remembered being very afraid.

As she kicked the sheets and comforter off of her, she staggered to the coffee maker. She decided to get up, knowing full well her body desired more sleep. But she didn't want to go back into the nightmare.

As she hastily scooped her breakfast blend into the filter, she wondered why her dreams were so constantly filled with fearful moments and feelings? Where were the amazing dreams in which she did not want to wake? What could these nightmares be trying to tell her? What could they possibly signify?

She ate her cereal and drank her artificially sweetened coffee as the memories of her dream slipped away into her subconscious like a chest sinking to the bottom of a dark and deep sea. It was just another one of her bad dreams, and soon she would forget about it, just like all of the others.

But somewhere, deep inside of her, she wondered whether all of these twisted stories and experiences were memories from another life? Were they actual experiences her soul had once lived through? Were they messages from a divine source? Or were they merely just a collection of the everyday exposures of the modern world strung into a story that seemingly made no sense?

She knew her questions would never find their answers. But she hoped that tonight, there would be a different story...a different dream... She looked forward to the unknown world that awaited her. -M