Dreams and Waking

I do not know the moment I passed from consciousness to blackness but it must have happened at some point during the night.

I had stopped fighting the winds in my mind, the twisting repetitive furious gales that swirled inerrantly in the same direction. Realizing I could not stop them with the meager force of my hands, I let them pull me up, bombarding me with images and feelings one after the other as they swept me helplessly through the darkened sky of my consciousness. Unwilling to fight, I let them flood over me till I no longer knew if I was awake or dreaming.

There was a face I knew.
a name;
laughter;
dread;
horror;
dead eyes;
dead souls;
my own crippled heart;
someone’s failure;
glorious light, holy and inviting;
a door shut;
something lost;
memories slipping...

I don’t know when I understood I was dreaming or if I ever did. I passed from dreams to consciousness and back many times during the dark. The place I lay felt unfamiliar, yet familiar. Idly the thought crossed my mind that the darkness might never end. I might spend the rest of my existence in this alien place with these visions haunting me.

From some other plane there came an insistent noise, quiet yet infuriatingly loud, comforting in its familiarity. Habit moved my hand, and the noise quieted leaving me staring at the lightening dark. The images fading slowly behind my eyes left me gazing at nothing, knowing the dreaming was gone. Emptiness flitted through my thoughts as I composed my mind into the orderly lines that regimented my days and forced myself up and out of bed.