The Forever Dream

The Forever Dream

         This is the truth as I believe it.
         I was camping in the woods alone and as I bedded down for the night, everything felt strange. The atmosphere had a brittle taste to it as if it were made of a substance that might shatter. Even my sleeping bag felt like it was trying to strangle me. It seemed the night itself was pressing against me like a living creature trying to get in and gobble me up. I tossed and turned, and the more I turned, the more my bag strangled. But eventually, I must have fallen asleep.
         Sometime during the night, the trees had started to topple; and each falling colossus had chopped down others. The entire region was a chaos of broken timber--trunks and branches titanically rent, splintered, crushed. In the nightmare, I wrestled in and out of the ruins as I traveled north. The wind ripped through the carnage, and I burrowed in the underbrush, scuttling, scraping, hitching, and humping myself along. My muscles shuddered like wet mud. There's nothing left, I thought. And I'll either die soon or wake up from this horrible dream. But sometimes the sky opens up from underneath.
         I awoke cramped and chilled beside a pile of dying embers, below me, the sound of a raging river. I thought that if I could build something to hang on to, I could ride the current and bypass the fallen trees. There was no lack of wood, it was scattered everywhere. I worked on it the entire day until I collapsed exhausted, and slept.
         I wandered close to consciousness. The next time I looked, I saw the gray of dawn in fragments through the broken trees. The ground moved as malformed bugs crawled everywhere, their homes displaced by the ripped-out timber. Some trees were so heavily veined with termites that the wood looked leprous. The smell of rot was everywhere and was becoming more severe. I had to get out of there.
         I slid my makeshift raft into the black river, fell upon it, and curled into a fetal position, thinking, what is a dream with no end?
         The raft rocked in the heavy current, shuddered, and then suddenly began to fall apart. I groped heavily for the logs as I was dumped into the icy cold hoping to keep my head above water. The logs smashed me in between them as we raced downstream. What was to be my only hope of survival was now trying to kill me. I was underwater, caught in the strongest part of the current and being dragged across the bottom like a ragdoll. A sharp rock ripped my back as I tumbled across it, and another glanced at my forehead nearly blinding me. The water hammered me past a fallen tree its branches raking across my back and legs. My lungs throbbed, my heart sped up, and I began to feel as if my ribs had become a vise that was squeezing vital organs between its jaws.
         My mouth opened, begging for a gulp of life-giving air. I quickly smashed my lips firmly together and tried to get my feet beneath me to launch myself upward but the river was unforgiving in its rage. I continued tumbling underwater.
         Thankfully, I was spat out upon a shallow sandbar, gasping for breath. Dragging myself to shore, I stood upon weak legs, my muscles twitching from over-exertion. Scanning the area, it looked as though I had ended up right back where I had started. All around me were broken trees that were rent, splintered, and smashed. Within the fallen debris I spotted my tent and sleeping bag. I saw myself sleeping, tossing, and turning, caught in a terrible nightmare. The sight set me ablaze as if my brain were kindling, my thoughts rattled in its chamber of bone.
         How could this be happening?
         I had to wake myself up and end the nightmare. As I approached my sleeping body, it awoke and stood facing me. "Who are you? What's going on?"
         "You're dreaming," I said. "This isn't real. You have to wake up."
         "I am awake. You're not real."
         "No, it's just a dream. We can work together to end it."
         "But . . . how?"
         "We could build a raft and leave this area. Then we'll wake up."
         Together we ran off toward the river and built a raft, only to return later to see me in the sleeping bag.
         We began again.