Chapter 8: What My Soul Does When I Am Asleep by Stephen Simpson
The scent of many lemons fills the air surrounding me. I
breathe in the smell and it fills my lungs. It reminds me of the lemon meringue
pie my grandma bakes so often. I can actually taste it on my tongue.
Looking up toward the slight hill across from me, past the
valley filled with green, glistening grass and a scattering of little daisies,
I see him walking toward me. Further above him, the sun glows and the light casts
a luminous light around him.
As he nears me, he looks up and, in his eyes, I see a love that is more than words. It seems infinite, and I am sure it mirrors the look in my own eyes.
His eyes light up with a smile, as he stops next to me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
I smile as I look up at him.
He sits down next to me, pulling his legs up to his chest as
he wraps his arms around them.
He tilts his head to me. “I’ve missed
you. This place just ain’t the same without you.”
I reach for him and fold my hand around his arm. “If it
looks as if I am avoiding you it's not on purpose. I think I am just so
exhausted with my grandma being in the hospital and everything.”
He lifts his hand and closes his fingers around my hand on
his arm.
A thrill rushes through me as his fingers tighten around mine.
I lean in closer and plant a gentle kiss on his fingers linked through mine. Turning
to face him, I lift my free hand and place it on his chest. His heart is
pounding, even faster than my own. “Sometimes I wonder if you are really real.
Are you embedded in my subconscious and my mind is only preparing me for the next
life, or are you a residual memory from a previous life, cause why do I always
dream of you, when I do not even know you when I am awake? You aren’t even a part
of my conscious life.”
With his free hand, he takes a strand of my hair into his.
“I don’t know, Gaby. Most times, after I wake up, I cannot even remember
dreaming about you, or if I do, then I cannot remember your face clearly. Yet,
when I start dreaming of these fields, which I know so well, once I see the
tree, I know I have been waiting to see you. I have been looking forward to
coming back here.”
“When
I am here with you, I know I am attached to the consciousness of a body, so why
when I am fully awake, working in unison sub-conscience and conscience, do I
not remember this?” My fingers tap against his chest. There is no mistaking the
flash of pain I see in his blue eyes. “People walk in and out of our lives all
the time; when did you walk into mine?”
“I
am just happy to be with you now.”
“But
what if I wanted to be with you when I am fully awake? What if I did not want a
different life apart from you? I have this fear inside of me that I could grow
up, meet someone, and have children. I could grow old, happy, and content, but
what if sharing all these life experiences with you is how it is supposed to
be? Before I wake up and forget I was even here with you, I want to know why I
dream of you, specifically. Why?”
He chuckles. “I wonder if it would be regarded as cheating when
I am sleeping next to my wife or partner one day, but my soul leaves to meet up
with you.”
“Would
it?” I do not even want to consider the possibility of him having a girlfriend,
and I know he is hopelessly too young to have a wife. In my mind, a door, which
will release a flood of doubts, threaten to open, but I avoid the very thought
of it.
He says, amused, “We cannot help what we do in our dreams.”
“Is
it only dreams, though?”
“Most
of them are, I’m sure.”
“But
what if it isn’t? I have looked up the meanings of dreams and every dream is
supposed to have a realistic connection to our lives. I read somewhere, they say
we dream because our brains file and catalogue our daily experiences.”
He looks at me thoughtfully for a moment as he considers something,
then he says, “What about when a person dreams of falling? How is this an
action of storing daily experiences? It’s not as if the person really fell and
fell and fell. Also, I know I don’t know you when I am awake. You are always
just a nice dream I wake up from. I know I am dreaming of the same girl again,
a recurring dream, I always convince myself, but I don’t remember if we had a
conversation or what we did. I don’t even remember your face clearly.”
“The
falling dream is supposed to have some sort of meaning. Probably that you have
no control over your own life, or something like that, which seems funny in
itself, because who really has any control over their lives anyway, when there
are so many variables surrounding our lives, and just one slight variation in any
of those can change everything we thought was control into chaos?” I stare at
my fingers on his chest, as I say, “And, I know for a fact, you are not a daily
experience of mine, either.”
“Also,
what happens when you have a Deja-vu? When you are having a conversation with
someone, and you have the definite feeling it has happened before? Or even when
you see a place where you know for a fact you have never, ever been? How can it
only be a memory filed away somewhere if it has never even happened before?”
“I
read the other day that having a Deja-vu means a person is in the right place,
at the right time.”
“Which
means if I am in the supposed right place, at the supposed right time that
everything is predestined. That there is indeed a plan for our lives, and that
everything is not just random, sometimes lousy things, that happen to us.”
He shifts his body and turns to face me. My hand drops from
his chest and lands on his thigh. He takes it into his with his free hand and
links our fingers together. Our entwined hands are between us, resting on our
legs.
“Do
you want to hear something strange?” I ask.
He nods his head.
“The
other night I was standing on this high hill, and there were these rows and
rows of terraced houses behind me. In front of me, there was this pathway zigzagging
down into a large expanse of green. As I looked across the park, and across the
view of a small town, there was a mountain range blocking the rest of the
horizon, and then suddenly this massive wave came over it. I wasn’t even scared
or anything. When I woke up, I wondered why I did not feel panicked when I saw
the tsunami coming over the mountain, but then I realised it was because I felt
safe on the hill, and it was high enough so the water rushing over the mountain
would not affect me. I was only there to be an observer. Two days later, I decided
to walk a different way to school. I have been walking to school my entire
life, always the same way, but on this Monday morning, I decided a change was
needed. I turned right instead of left as I walked out of my front door, and
through narrow streets lined with terraced houses, and then right there in
front of me was the exact same scene I had in my dream, obviously minus the
wave of water. I recognised it immediately. It was such a profound feeling of
strangeness; I knew it was not just a mere Deja-vu because this dream I
actually remembered.”
“Do
you think when I meet you for the first time, I’ll also have a feeling of
Deja-vu?” he asks.
I say, “I don’t even know where you are. In a world with a
couple billion people, how can I ever hope to find you?”
“We
have the here and now.”
I turn away from him. “So, you are just happy to have the
here and now?”
“No.”
His hands fold around my upper arms and he turns me back to face him again. “I
am just being realistic.” His hands move up the sides of my shoulders and then
he pushes his fingers into my hair, pulling my head closer to his lips.
The feelings I have for him, already consuming, become more
urgent, more important. They are undeniable. I press my lips against his. My
soul demands more, as my lips move against his. He inches me down until we are lying
down on the grass. My hands move around his waist, then tug his shirt free from
his pants, and I run my fingers up his back. When he presses against me like
this it is easy to forget all the questions I have and to only be in the right
here, right now, with him.
He moves his lips away from mine and kisses me lightly on my
throat. His little, soft kisses inch lower and lower, leaving me breathless.
His grip around my waist tightens and pulls me closer to him until it feels as
if I am moulded to him.
“Wait.”
My lungs fill with the lemon-scented air as I push my palms against his chest.
His grip around my waist tightens as he lifts himself to
look down at me. “You want me to stop?”
The very thought of what could happen, with such urgent need
and desire, sent my own feelings spiralling. It is more than I can ever
imagine.
“It’s
okay, you can kiss me again.”
The instant his lips crushes mine, I melt into him. My entire
body feels alive; I can even feel the blood rushing through my veins, his heart
beating in tandem with mine, small stones poking into my back.
Then I am walking along a dirt road in a little town, I stop
in front of a house.
The house sits on the corner of the street and it does not
have a front garden, but wide steps lead from the sidewalk up to the front
door.
Bright sunlight reflects off the white walls. The windows
are open and a breeze dances with the lace curtains.
The front door is closed, and the weathered light blue paint
is peeling in long strips from it.
The brass knocker looks dull and neglected. A strong gust of wind pulls the lace curtain out of the open window, billowing it out in the air, looking like the wings of a white dove. The wind lifts the hair away from my face, then I turn and walk away from the house, and am walking up a set of dark stairs.
All work created and posted on this blog is the intellectual property of Stephen Simpson.
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