tree stories (b)

Or maybe the setting's too rustic. Something more modern, perhaps?

-So tell me about these dreams you have.
(pausing to light a cigarette)
-Trees, man. The dreams are all about trees.
-Like a nightmare? Massive redwoods and oaks and pines lumbering through valleys to dismember you sort of thing?
-No, man. Nothing like that. I'm not leaving out any crucial plot elements when I say the dreams are about trees. That's literally it, man. Just trees.
-Are you seeing multiple kinds of trees? Can you identify them at all?
(takes a long drag)
-what? No, of course not. Look, my dad wasn't like in the forestry business or any obvious shit like that. I'm rooted in this city, here. Have been my whole damn life.
-Maybe that's part of it. Maybe you long to get back to nature. It could be a, you know, sub-conscious desire or something.
-I have no idea. I figured the dreams would get more interesting, but it's pretty much been trees for the last maybe five years or so.
-How often do you have these dreams?
-More or less every night, man.
-....
-....
-Weird shit, huh? Look, thanks for the drags, man.
-... No problem.

John had been in

work in progress.

I am dreaming, taking steps like stone through jelly, glacial and stiff. The passerby are moving the same way, never seeing one another, held in place solely by my fascination. Or perhaps they too are trapped in strange dreams of their own. My pulse radiates outward, causing the sidewalks, the bricks and steel and mortar, to breathe with me. The clouds overhead breathe faster as they dissipate, the new blue of the skies above breaking the chains that bind me to the streets. I'm pulled away, everything blurring and streaking into a solid mass of wind and noise. The sun, once a far off reminder of time's march, now greets me anew. I tumble and roll through clouds tall as skyscrapers, wet and shivering with moisture, with rushing air. My clothes grow stiff with new ice, my left side is covered like it snowed last night. I turn full, straighten out to a man-sized torpedo, pointing at the distant ground. It's all spinning now, faster then I can track, dirt and stone reaching up to embrace me. The winds have cut lines of force into my face, pain like racing stripes tracks along my sides. Then there's that brief moment, one second before impact, that holds everything still. My mind doesn't know how to recreate this meeting. It feels like I might stay here forever, drifting in stasis above the last thing I see, when I wake up.

The underside of my bed sharpens into focus. Familiar scratches and grooves decorate the heavy wooden frame. The black and white shoebox remains at its station, gathering dust. A small pile of shirts and socks is pushed against the darkest corner. There is a fan shape around me where dust will not gather. I have not woken up in my bed for almost two years. My alarm clock is the only light in the room. It reads a flashing 4:57. The flash is another pulse, a presence in my room that breathes with me. I push aside one corner of the curtains, peeking out into the city. The sun will remain a figment of my dreams, it seems. The daily ritual completed, I turn back to the cold shelter of my apartment. Most of my friends stopped dreaming about the sun a long time ago, but some nights I wake up feeling it on my face, still. That one moment when I break the clouds and face the day star head on, it stays with me, I cling to it like a nun to her rosary of wood and scented oils. My friends and I, we stopped even talking about the skies almost a year ago. Like a son or daughter lost in battle, it's too disheartening to discuss openly.

The train ride to work is a crush, gray faces suspended above dusted overcoats and scarves, almost a hundred to a car. No one moves until the doors slide open, a soft rushing sound buried in the stomping of work boots and heels. A voice too polite to be real announces our arrival at station thirty two. The air that meets us at the door is stale and cold. Second in my dreams to the sun is wind. Only at these doors, dead air meeting dead air, do I remember the fleeting sensation of winds.

Fast forward to my cube, cold gray walls, gunmetal floor, a ceiling that brushes my scalp. Hands hook into my terminal, a lover's embrace between man and machine. Automatically, I am linked to miles of fiber optics, currents rushing to connect with points all over the building, all across the city, the globe. My seat shoves forward, sandwiching my prone body between it and the terminal. i can feel my eyes water already, light ebbing out from the porous gel that acts as the visual interface. A sedative finds its way inside, and the day is gone. The "work" day ends with the same rude shock, being dumped into a massive lobby with all of my coworkers. The floors are lined with a foam that feels too fleshy as you lie on it. We stumble out in droves, some of us unable to walk, still disoriented from the dream that is our work day. A lot of people become insomniacs after taking this job. Natural sleep impossible once the chemicals become a part of your work routine.