“I don’t believe that you can remember your dreams,” he challenged.
I asked, “And why not?”
“Because I can’t.”
I answered, “Just because you can’t, it doesn’t mean that you should tell me that I can’t.”
He paused and said, “That’s true.”
* * * * *
This is how I know.
She looked at me with those crazy, sickening eyes. Terrified, I hit her with a stick. And suddenly I saw my friend, still there underneath that veneer of a lunatic that she didn’t know how to remove. Everyone was afraid of her, poisoned seemingly beyond repair. But I had to try to save her. We ran across the street in this foreign city, and they hid behind the dark wooden desk as we dashed up the stairs for a hiding place. I couldn’t feel my legs anymore; I never seem to be able to run in my dreams. Anchored to the floor, unable to move, I thought it would be the end.
And then he appeared out of the blue. I didn’t want to trust him for he had turned on me time and time again. I looked at my friend and she was fading before my eyes. I didn’t have a choice anymore. He took my hand and dragged me up the slope. We reached a room full of windows. Windows where men who couldn’t remember their names sat by the ledges, smoking their pipes in silence. They seemed as though they had been there for a lifetime and forgotten the existence of the outside world. It was quiet not because they were mute; rather, none of them had known what to say.
We could hear them coming for us. There was no other way out but down. We could see the concrete pavement below, and a small expanse of grass that we could try to reach, but it would be painful. A moment of hesitation later, we each held onto stacks of old newspapers, as though in futile hopes of them breaking our fall. I looked at them both.
And then I jumped.
