Jerking up in a cold sweat. Hyperventilating. You adjust to the darkness around and you take a quick glance. You’re in your room. You begin to calm down and think.
Why did you wake up?
You begin to recall fragments, like shards of shattered glass. A dream. You search for more shards trying to put the pieces together, but they’ve disintegrated. A sharp sparkling dust. You take what you get and put the pieces together, examining the cracks between. You start to remember major moments in that dreams.
You vaguely remember being in a mansion, and that you got there through an airport terminal, which you got to through a library. You ignore the absurdity and think about what happened in the mansion. You were surrounded by friends, enemies, family, teachers, and strangers.
Ring!
The sound echoes through your mind and resurfaces the memory of the doorbell ringing. A girl was standing, in the middle of the street, but nobody was at the door. Confused, you close the door and continue your night…but the doorbell rings again. You open the door and the girl is there, but closer. This repeats a few times and she gets closer and closer and you get more and more afraid. The last time you answered she was 5 feet away. This time, you look through the glass on the door instead.
She’s standing at the door.
Her face is bloody and disfigured, and she’s wearing a demonic grin. Her messy hair masks parts of her face. You slowly back away from the door. After three steps, she lashes out, shattering the glass. You catch a glimpse of her hand and she pulls it back, cutting her wrists on the broken glass. Her nails were sharp as knives and long as a pencil, but they looked well kept.
You shake yourself off and realize the situation you’re in. You run away and she grabs your loved ones through the portal she created in the door and slashes them. You try to save others but you’re too scared, so you run to the top floor and hide. You watch everyone trying to stop her and failing.
Suddenly, the screaming stops and all is silent. You think it’s over. You think you’re safe. You peek out from your hiding spot and see her towering over the corpses of everyone you know and some you don’t know. She jerks her head towards you and starts to sprint. She leaps to the top floor. She crawls toward you. You can smell the death in her soul. She lifts her hand and…you wake up.
No conclusion. The story ends without a resolution. In the middle of the action. Why?
Why do we wake up before the end. Why can’t we die in our dreams. Why can’t we know what comes after.
Dreams are built from our imagination, so why can’t we imagine what happens after death. If we can imagine a demonic teenage girl with nails like Wolverine’s claws murdering hundreds, why can’t I imagine my own death.
I suppose it’s because death is too complex for us. We couldn’t comprehend such an experience, so we can’t imagine what it’s like.
I think when we die, we enter a dream. At least, that’s what I hope happens. I would love to be able to dream and die and enter another dream. An endless cycle, forever dreaming. Living thousands of different lives. Being a part of thousands of different stories.
