A short story titled "The Dream City"

So after a while of not writing and just generally having writers block, I decided to write something that might give me some inspiration down the road. "The Dream City" is what I ended up with and it's pretty short, just over a thousand words long but kind of interesting to write. Dreams have always interested me, and the prospect of having a lucid one was something I'd love to have. Anyways, for my other stories I'll have the next chapters up  probably by the end of the week, but more likely early next.


Enough of that, here is "The Dream City"

Bored with what he was doing in life a young man stumbles onto the subject of lucid dreaming and decides to try it out. He sets himself up one night and uses a technique others have used to successfully enter a lucid state.

He fails the first night.

Craving the possibilities of a lucid dream, the man tries again the next night with mixed results. At one point in his dream he almost became self-aware before the dream imploding. It was this, the fact that it was becoming easier to lucid dream after more than one night that drove him to try one last time.

This time it works. He becomes self-aware in his dream and decides to go crazy with anything and everything he wanted to do. Running through the city-scape which his sub-conscious generated, he begins to try everything in which he always wanted to do in the real world but never had the courage to do so. He tried imagining fantastic cars and other vehicles which drove him through the city at break-neck speed; he also tried his hand at creating buildings in the sky, only to have them plummet to the ground. The world was his oyster and he was having the time of his life and nothing could get him down. After playfully running away from some of the dream women he had imagined up, he found himself at a dead-end in an alley-way. Puzzled, he turned around to go look for those lovely women which he had been running away from.

When he exited the alley, he noticed the large buildings had become much darker than they were before. So much so that he felt an unnaturalness about the way they were presented. Something was wrong and he started to notice it. The once bright, vibrant city had changed into a dark, gloomy city which held no happiness what so ever.

As he walked onto the street a sudden feeling of despair and terror rain through his entire being, he had stumbled onto something that for some reason had taken up residence in his mind. This was no longer a dream in which he could control, but a nightmare which he was painfully aware of. He began to run in the direction of where he first entered the city but found the maze-like layout confusing and found himself helplessly lost.

For what seemed like a few hours, the man ran and ran through the city, hoping to find "something". He didn't know what he was searching for, he just knew that if he found it then everything would be okay. He first thought that it was a way out he was looking for, but ended up realizing that if he really wanted to leave the city then his mind would allow that to happen. It was evident that this was not the case so he ran through the streets looking into the store windows.

As he ran the city became more and more dark and distorted, spiraling and curving at unnatural angles, the city was becoming something that could never have been designed by a mortal. Never the less, he continued his search until he found a street which had a dead-end. Considering this was the first street which finally had an ending, he concluded that it was time to find what he was looking for and began to search the surroundings.

He looked into the shop which blocked his way to find a dust covered store which looked like it had not been touched in years. Nothing decorated the shelves nor were there any pictures of what must have been sold there at one point, just the dust which covered every surface. Just as he started looking around he noticed a slight disturbance in the dust on the ground. It looked like something had dragged a dry mop or something from the front door to one of the back rooms. He felt like this was what he was looking for and ran to the room that led to the back room and tried the handle. It was unlocked and opened easily when requested.

Inside he saw a small glimmer on a counter and went over to it to inspect it, what it looked like was a small set of keys which had many different shapes and colors. It had been placed there only recently from the lack of dust on it, by what the man did not know. All he did know is that whatever had overtaken his dream was about to be ejected. He took hold of the keys and was now in a room with innumerable doors which stretched endlessly down a hallway.

Realizing that the keys in his had been for the doors he began to look at the keys, one by one, to try and find the right one. After looking through a few of them, he noticed his gaze gravitating towards an ornate looking one which looked like something his grandparents might have used back in the old days. Taking the key in hand, he went over to the closest door and put it in and turned it. With a click, the door became unlocked and he found himself in his dream which he began in.

Feeling entirely too exhausted from the little adventure he had, he decided it was about time to wake up. As the world around him began to slowly dissolve away he saw a shadow appear on the horizon. This shadow was running towards him with all its might for reasons unknown. Just as the shadow was about to attack the young man woke up in his bed, with the feeling of cold sweat on his skin. He had seen what the shadow looked like up close, and decided from then on not to try and lucid dream. Some things from the unknown are better left undisturbed, lest he finds himself in the dream once more, only this time to have the shadow which looked of death and made of nightmares to finally catch him.