A Glass Wall

Vertigo's Sandman

I once dreamt in black and white.

I was inside a clear all-glass walled building with a host of others; faces unrecognized, identities unknown, reasons for presences unclear.

I can hear their chatter. They say nothing and yet are talking about everything. Children perhaps bored with the hive of nothingness, run their hands along the glass wall leaving a trail of smudge disrupting the clear view of what was outside.

What is outside?

Clouds. It’s always clouds for me. This time they are in shades; whites of different intensity and grey that is never dark enough to be black.

Are we above ground? The question remains as I fear to look down to see the answer. The clouds outside are both comforting and discomforting at the same time so I leave this lingering question be.

The chatter never stops. People doing nothing and everything while I stood in a spot I call my own, content with just watching and listening.

And suddenly a deathly silence fell on the abode. It is beyond eerie how quiet it could get. A stillness of everything that my thoughts (and those around me? Are these their thoughts I’m hearing?) became loud and clear.

The clouds were moving outside. Their pace disconcerting as white and grey mixed in a pastiche by hidden hands (a pastry chef?) mixing and turning, pulling and pushing.

All of us moved towards the wall, transfixed by what was happening outside.

What was happening outside?

I didn’t know. No one seems to know. All of us were glued to the swirling of clouds until finally the motion stops.

What was white and grey was now pure black. Pure unadulterated darkness and the crowd was no more. There was only me, four walls a touch away keeping what was outside, out.

The walls pushed outwards into the blackness as I thrust out a hand. I walked forward, the darkness parting but revealing nothing, only more darkness.

Where are all the other cast in my dream? I was alone, and yet not feeling lonely.

In my dream I closed my eyes.

And felt the warmth of solitude.

A brief bursting of lights tells me that my time here (wherever here is...) was up.

I woke up, to a world bursting with a kaleidoscope of colours.