Dark Circle Dream
In a nightmare, I awake to find myself in Light World, a place where darkness does not exist and has never been seen. At first, I enjoy the light. Everywhere I look, things are visible. There are no dark corners for anything to hide in, no shadows masking what is there. Lightbulbs do not exist in Light World because they serve no purpose. Everything is perfectly lit all the time.
The novelty quickly fades into terror. I realize that, even when I shut my eyes tight, I am faced with the light. I can’t sleep or dream in this world. After what I think are probably three days, I stumble like a zombie into the street. I beg every passerby to help me find some darkness so that I can rest. “Please, sir, where can I find a dark place to sleep?”
“A what place?”
“Dark. A dark place.”
The man cocks his ear toward me and frowns. He glances up and down at me. “Son, I’m afraid I don’t know what you are saying.”
My heart pounds. “Uh, I can explain!” I desperately want to keep his attention but I can’t find the words. “I’m looking for a place where… One that um… Oh! A place where you can’t see everything! Is there a place somewhere where things are not visible, or at least not as visible as everything else?”
This only confuses the man further. “What is ‘can’t see’? Things are just where they are. Why would you not want them to be there? Are you speaking a different language? Do you need to see a doctor?”
I can’t stop the tears from welling up. “I just want to sleep.” The man sighs and, after a moment of hesitation, wraps me in his arms. I smoosh my face into his shoulder. When I can’t find any darkness in the embrace, I cry even harder.
Suddenly, a terrifying thought grips me. I pull away from the man. “Sir, what is light?”
He’s bewildered. “What is what?”
Nausea overtakes me. “Light. Do you see it? It’s all around us!”
Pity consumes the man’s eyes. He thinks I’m insane. He stares at me with sadness before responding gently. “Do you mean the air? Or maybe space, like the space between you and me?”
I fall to my knees in anguish. There is so much light in Light World that its people don’t even know what light is. I look deliriously up at the sun, which has not moved since I awoke in this hellscape. I vow to destroy it. Maybe then I will find some rest.
When I finally kill the sun, I wake up, but I am still not back in my world. I find myself in Square World, a place where circles do not exist. The sun and moon are connected squares that sit atop the sky together at all times in this realm. The line between the planets extends down into the world, dividing it in two. Half of the world is light, the other half is dark. There is no day and night here, just light and dark.
I center my body on the line. I look to my right at the sun-scorched land. There are no trees anywhere, only desert. I peer to my left. There are no trees in the darkness either, just more desert.
I walk down the line until I stumble across a village on the lit side. The people there have square eyes and are always smiling. “Where are the trees?” I ask them repeatedly. No one understands the question.
I travel more until I find a village on the dark side. The people there also have square eyes, but they are always frowning. They have never heard of trees either.
Dread gnaws at me as I realize that the weather does not change in Square World. Every body of water sits completely still and there are no birds flying in the sky.
I run back to the dark village. “Where are the birds?” I burst out in the busy plaza. The square people are disturbed by my questioning. A woman approaches me,“Where is the what?”
“The birds! And the trees! And the tides! Why is everything so still here?”
She tilts her head to the side. “There’s just us and the Light People. You know that.”
“Okay, but where are all the animals? Is this whole planet a desert?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you mean. And why are your eyes circles? Were you created that way?”
“You mean was I born with these eyes?”
“Bored with them?” She blinks.
“What?”
“I don’t know ‘born,’ but I’ve had square eyes since I was created. Were your eyes an experiment? I wonder whether I can see more things at once than you…” She trails off awkwardly.
I look around and notice that everyone seems to be around the same age. “Are there any children here?”
“Is that like tees?”
Her question hangs in a haunting silence. The bird-less sky, the tree-less landscape, the age-less population. The silence feels like death. “Does anything else live here other than the people?”
Death presses me harder when I see that she doesn’t even understand this question. She purses her lips. “I’m sorry, I don’t know these words you are using. We are the only ones here. We’ve always been here.”
A delirium overtakes me as a man walks in between me and the woman. I tackle the man to the ground and punch his face. “Agh!” My knuckles break against his skin. His face is like a brick. Blood streams down from my hand onto the man’s chest. Everyone around stops and stares, but not at me. My blood entrances them. It’s as though they have never seen blood before.
“What’s wrong with him?!” Someone screams. The woman I spoke with earlier yells back, “He needs tees —no, trees! He wants trees!”
I can’t take it anymore. The man under me attempts to push me off but I smack my face against his. He falls back as my vision blurs. I miss my dog. I miss day and night. I miss living. I wipe the blood away from my eyes and then smash my face against the man with all my strength.
I fall through his face into outer space. My body is being lifted up by the line separating light and dark. I plummet upward toward the sun and moon as though pulled by a tractor beam. As I approach the planets, they vibrate and shift around. The sun merges with the moon and the two transform into a single orb — earth. Up turns to down as I crater through the atmosphere toward home.
I wave to the birds and smile at the enlarging treetops. I fall back into myself in bed with my dog resting next to me.
Finally, I can sleep.