Waking dreams

I woke to the sound of silence. Like the intangible beeeep you hear after a music concert, the very lack of sound buzzed loudly in my ears. Sitting up, I tried to get my bearings. Where am I? In every direction, all I could see was blackness. There was no horizon to speak of, merely the point where my eyesight came to an end. Spinning around on what appeared to be a floor, I panicked. I was in a seemingly infinitely large room. I was a fly in space-time's soup. A speck in a canyon of universes. Everything I knew, saw, and felt - was insignificant. My mind warped as it tried to understand the concept. My skin sweat bullets. I'd never felt so alone.

***

I awoke a second time. The cold plane of space replaced by my empty bed. The black of infinity became the black of my bedroom. Only a dream, I mused. But was it? Who knew I was lying here in the dark? In the scheme of things, what did it matter? I shrunk back into the covers, trying to hide, to escape. The walls suddenly shot outwards. The ceiling disappeared into forever, a sudden sense of vertigo twisting my stomach. This was no dream. This is my life.



Inspired by restless nights in an eerie Dutch apartment