Wake up.
Lately, I've started dreaming again. Not intentionally. I'm much too scared to go to bed without some soju these days.
I thought I was free from the bottle. After all, it's not like I was drinking it. I thought that just the touch of refrigerated glass was enough, cooling me down while I laid in bed, a firm compress against my aching forehead.
I suppose you can never be truly free from something if you don't go a day without thinking about it
"Are you ready to begin the interview?"
Booze gave me dreamless nights. The lull of the dark would pull my eyelids closed and when I opened them again it would be the morning. I cherished those peaceful nights, before the guilt of living filled the auditory void with the pounding of my heart.
Last night, I ran through a mineshaft, empty yet claustrophobic. The night before, it was in my childhood home, a blur of brown and glass. The week before, I was biking down the first street I ever knew, asphalt still sparking with the blood of my scraped knees.
Every time I woke up, my heart raced. By the time I clocked in, greeted my coworkers, and booted up my laptop, those dreams faded into the recesses of my mind, damned to be forgotten over whatever report I'd have to fill out next. Or at least I thought they would.
"ji5ging1 saan1 zo2 keoi5 laa3, nei5 jiu3 fan3gaau3."
Okay.
Maybe it was because my memory was bad enough as it was, so that lesser dreams wouldn't be remembered. Maybe I was just prone to latching onto nightmares and the emotions they evoked even in an unconscious "me."
Maybe.
There was a period in my life, I remember now, where every night I would have a nightmare. There were no happy dreams for six years — there was no way to explain to my parents how much I hated going to sleep. They couldn't understand that their son woke up every night panting and clutching his heart, bed creaking to mask his gasps of fear. That he was so used to being afraid he could get up immediately and calm down by the time he picked up a toothbrush.
The first dreamless night I can remember happened when I started reading after dark. Hiding under the sheets so that light wouldn't escape, I read — read until I passed out, awakened only by the blaring of my alarm.
"This… 'democratization of writing?' Tell me more about it."
For a child just barely starting puberty, those few hours weren't enough to dream. Ironic, then, that those years where I slept for just two or so hours a night were some of the best sleep I could ever have.
Nobody could understand me, I realized. My friends would call me stupid. My parents would force me to sleep, those kind bastards. Because I couldn't tell them about myself.
I used to be afraid of a floating red dot. It made no sound — I'm not quite sure if it ever moved in my dreams either.
(No — it must have. One nightmare had multiple dots converge on me.)
"Nǐ mèimei hěn kùnhuò. Tā zài nà qún lǐng jiǎng de rén dāngzhōng zhǎo bù dào nǐ."
Zhīdàole.
The dream always started the same. Myself and two others are on the second floor of my childhood home. Something crashes below us, and my friends would race down. I fumble with my shoes and run down after them — but those seconds could be minutes or even hours and I wouldn't know. No matter what, the outcome was the same. The red dot would be waiting for me around the corner and once I touched it, I would wake up in a panic.
Any hack psych would tell you about my fear of being left behind. That's not a hard analysis to make. The real question was why the embodiment of that fear, the most common dream I have had, was a ball of red light, accompanied by the percussion of a racing heartbeat.
A while ago, I had the dream again for the first time in maybe five years. Instead of putting my shoes on one at a time, I ignored them and got to the stairwell. The dream fought back — the two friends ran down the stairs faster than I remembered. I didn't care. Rather than run down the stairs, I jumped down to the first floor and followed right behind them.
Maybe the dream broke. Maybe it wasn't used to this development, that deviating from the script was possible. It didn't populate the setting for a bit, and I was just running down a hallway side-by-side with the two others for a moment, until we reached the backyard.
Unlike the shoes whose laces could take decades to finish or the stairwell that had angles possessed by red spirits, there was nothing unfamiliar with the backyard. It was just as small as the one my family had, and every detail was perfect — until I noticed a river filled with koi fish following the fence between us and the neighbors.
My friends' mouths opened but no words came out. Perhaps the sound didn't update either from the script deviation, but I didn't need them. I felt the intent to act in those moving lips.
I grabbed the fence and climbed it with their help. Despite the barrier, nothing stopped me once I made it over. The dream just ended, as though the script could no longer be followed.
I would never have that dream again.
Strange, isn't it? For a man plagued with nightmares, you would assume I'd be comforted with the fact that I'd conquered a recurring one. One less dream to haunt me.
I felt left behind.
"A part of me wishes I never took this job." I don't think I've ever met someone who didn't think that. Me too. I hate that what I do is "necessity." I hate that the lives of so many people are in my hands. That amount of responsibility doesn't suit me.
I can lucid dream. Most times, I can tell that I'm in a dream long before the fact forces me to wake up. I can even recall a few times that I did do so, just like with that red dot. But most times, I don't want to.
Lucid dreaming sounds fun. Becoming a god within your own world, however brief your sleep is. But it's such a fucking disappointment.
Is there a point in being a god if nothing matters?
"ngo5dei6 heoi3 gan2 zung1gwok3 dou6gaa3. nei5 zi6gei2 wui5m4wui5 jau5 man6tai4?"
mou5 man6tai4.
I read about all the gods on our files and can't help but feel pity for them. If a god has no witnesses, do they ever really exist? Your entire existence is defined by being superior to someone or something else. Isn't that embarrassing?
My first time being a god in my dreams, I found myself looking down upon a city of lights, an oneiric Manhattan. There was so much I could do, so much power at my fingertips. I could fly, I could destroy, I could create — anything that I wanted.
And that made me unable to do anything.
Choice paralysis is something that haunts my every indecision, and that specter followed me to my sleep. Yes, I had all this power, but every second that passed was a second closer to waking up. I was afraid to do something only to never see it come to pass. Or that the dream would only become worse.
So all I did was fly around. Witness, even. I didn't want to disturb this vibrant life beneath me, so fragile that millions would die with a single thought, the city curving around the world I could see so that I was never truly left alone in this haze.
Maybe that's what gods feel too.
I used to pass the days fantasizing about being someone who could save the world. I doubt that's an uncommon thing — the desire to be useful, to get recognition.
Now, I'm helping others as a faceless cog in my section. But that's alright, I suppose. Helping anonymously certainly is a step up from being the face of uselessness.
A lot of people expect us to be the final boss, but really, most of us just do technical or clerical work. So, so much paperwork to handle that we might have more cubicles than field agents at this point, especially whenever budget comes into discussion.
And truth be told, I'm fine being static like this for now. Clock in, fill out reports, adjust numbers as needed, clock out, get food, go home, sleep. Repeat. The gears turns, but at least I have time to ignore myself.
"wéi?"
wai3, baa4baa1. san1nin4 faai3lok6.
"san1nin4 faai3lok6. Thank you, thank you."
There was a dream I had once, where the entire world was replaced with trains. Subways, to be precise. Just tracks upon tracks of subways all suspended in the air, a fleet of R68s ruling the skies. You could get into the train cars easily, but going out was a pain in the ass. So people spent their lives in those cars, their only recourse for moving around being to use the train connections to move to another car on the same train.
I remember, though, seeing people leave holding a key. Any key, really, not some specialized key for opening train doors or anything. A man taught me that just believing that the key worked was enough. Maybe that was my dream telling me the rules governing this world. Maybe it was myself reminding me that I was the ultimate master of my dreams.
So I believed. I simply willed the doors to open and they did. I stepped out — and I fell.
Thinking back on that dream, seeing the sky all around me made me believe that gravity still applied to normal people. Just not trains.
"nei5 zan1hai6 hou2mou4jung6! jat6jat6, nei5 dou1 wui5 man6 tung4 jat1joeng6 man6tai4."
I'm sorry.
"nei5 jau5mou5 nou5 aa3?!"
Of all the dreams, I've had, there is one that is my favorite.
I was walking to the train with a friend. Friend is probably not the word for her. We were classmates who hated each other since day one for no reason. We've long since reconciled over a dinner together.
The world was quiet. Neither of us spoke a word, our footsteps echoing through the dreamscape. Around us were wrecks of metal, crashed cars, destroyed buildings. Gone were the fires and alarms and smoke of carnage, replaced with char whose final embers had long died away. A world after. A quiet world removed of life. But we were still here.
We walked underneath the elevated train tracks, those that supported subways to run over streets. The sun was rising, but there was only us to witness it, those pink and yellow skies.
I helped her up the steps — we were children again. We didn't hate each other, and we certainly didn't love each other either, but we were back in eighth grade, the last time we would see each other in school before going our separate ways.
In high school, we both took subways to go to class. She knew where I went, I knew where she went. We probably didn't take the same train, but for the moment, it didn't matter. We just waited by the tracks.
The world remained still, as even the wind stopped to watch us. Neither of us still spoke a word, but I could hear the loneliness in her heartbeat, and she could hear the apology in mine. An apology for all the years I acted immature, all the times I could have listened to her advice instead of lashing out.
A train came with no conductor nor passengers. Its doors hissed open, but no voice greeted us. Neither of us questioned it, and we boarded just the same. Despite all the empty cars, we chose to sit next to each other.
As the train began to move, I felt her head rest on my shoulder. Our heartbeats didn't speed up, but slowed down — as if to savor every second we had left with one another. One final gesture of the friendship we had.
I watched the world gradually disappear beneath us as the train rode into the sky. The pink and yellow sky gave way to the beautiful blue of morning, and against my wishes, I closed my eyes.
"""Happy birthday, zai2/go4go1."""
"do1ze6, do1ze6."
For the first time in years, I wish I didn't wake up.