***
It was early Saturday morning and the sunlight was filtering through my blinds. After a night of what was undoubtedly the best sex I had ever had, with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, I decided then, that there was nothing else to do in the world and crawled back into bed. It was that day that some very strange dreams began.
***
I started to see Lucy on a regular basis, twice a week at first. She would always stay over at my place, but leave by morning. After three weeks of being together, she asked me a question out of the blue.
“Can I move in with you?”
I had never lived with any of my partners, so Lucy would be a first time for me, but how could I have resisted? I thought it would be great to spend more time with her, rather than just a restaurant and sex two days a week, so of course I said yes.
When Lucy did finally move in, it transpired that she didn’t have many things. She considered herself to be, as she described it, a radical minimalist, whatever that meant. She moved in with just one box; no furniture, nothing else. Every morning she left to go to work, or wherever it was she went. Her work was mostly early evening meetings with clients, so why she left so early in the morning remained a mystery to me.
Despite her and my work commitments, we got two free evenings a week together when our schedules didn’t clash, and even though I would often come home late from work, or Lucy would come home later, we still shared my sheets each night.
During those free evenings together, I would sometimes cook, but more often we would go out for dinner, or to the movies. Things were actually, for once, going rather well for me.
***
After two months together, she started talking about the future, about children, one girl, about marriage. She even started planning a holiday for the two of us that was so far off in the future, I can’t even recall what year it was. I had never reached the stage in a relationship where marriage or children or future plans had been discussed to such a degree, but for some strange reason, it didn’t bother me.
I was always insouciant when it came to children, and whenever I was asked by colleagues or friends if I ever wanted to have them, I would usually answer no, though, I never really gave it any thought or assessed the real possibilities. When Lucy began asking about children, I really did take the time and gave it a lot of thought. I could actually see a life together with her, raising children, getting married, and living together until the very end of our existence. It felt natural to discuss such things with her, and for the first time in my life, I strongly explored the possibility that I might actually be in love.
“I have never been on an aeroplane,” I had told her once, during one of those planning our future conversations.
“Really?”
“Yeah, never left Japan. I am always scared of the idea of flying.”
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” she offered with calming reassurance, “if birds can do it, why can’t we?”
***
The relationship continued to move fast, but I kept up. Amazing sex most nights, and great company the rest of the time. During the day she would vanish, always after leaving behind one lingering kiss. I would work all day trying to sell money counterfeit prevention devices to overseas clients. On the nights that Lucy wasn’t working, we would spend every second together. I was happy, in love, and looking forward to what the future held.
But the strange dreams, they began to get worse. They began to intensify. Becoming more vivid as the nights went on. With each dream, more detail began seeping through the surface and into my subconscious. I had to get to the bottom of them, and there was only one person that could help, my best friend.
***
I was never one for keeping too many close friends, only the people that were truly important to me. It would be fair to say, I didn’t have many friends at all, and the only person that I could really talk about my dreams to, was Jun.
He was different compared to my work colleagues; they didn’t want to talk about serious issues, only baseball or the new girl that just started in the office. When it came to world issues or politics, those people tended to build up an invisible wall, become overly shy, and not want to discuss anything that really mattered. Jun was different.
A former schizophrenic cured by the power of energy, or so he had once claimed. I first met him back in high school. He was a little odd, intriguing. He had some sort of aura that drew me to him. It was fair to say that at school, he was my only real good friend, and I was undoubtedly his only friend. We had remained in touch ever since, and met once a month for heavy conversation. He didn’t drink alcohol anymore, so we usually met at a small coffee shop on the last Sunday of the month.
I always liked him though, even though he had some strange ideas, or over the top conspiracies, or a deep fascination with New Age healing. A common trend of conversation were things that can’t actually be proven by the laws that govern the universe. If I was going to open up to anyone about my dreams, it had to be Jun.
***
We met at 2 p.m. in a small café close to Shibuya Station. It was the middle of the summer, but the sky was a ghostly white, as if waiting to release snow upon an unsuspecting Tokyo.
Jun sat waiting for me when I arrived. He was wearing a grey polo neck sweater; the top of his bright orange tie displayed just below his throat. His outfit certainly didn’t match that of a Japanese businessman. He looked more like an outsider, lost to a time long forgotten. He was already seated, drinking a cup of tea that most likely contained no sugar, caffeine, or reason to drink it.
“Hey!” I exclaimed as I took my seat opposite him.
“Hey!” he shouted, as he matched my own enthusiasm.
I beckoned the waitress over and ordered a soy latte and a glass of water.
Jun looked good, his face was radiant and his eyes were ever alert. He had never looked better.
“You look great,” I told him, “what is it this time?”
“New diet. I’ve got rid of almost everything. No sugar, no caffeine, no animal products.”
“Well it looks like it’s working.”
“Yeah, thanks man. You said on the phone you’ve been having some weird dreams?” he said, jumping right in without wanting to waste any more time on formalities.
“Yeah,” I told him, “it all started about two months ago, the day I got with Lucy.” Jun nodded as if he was listening deeply, and perhaps he was. “They began as just small fragments of what seemed like memory, and over the last few weeks have grown to become something of a reality, like tiny drops of water coming together to form one giant droplet. Now, three of four times a week I have this same dream, each time more information adding to the scene. Like a picture being painted in my head, all coming together, slowly and eventually.”
“Interesting,” Jun said. “So tell me, what is the content of the dream now? What has the story manifested into?”
“I will describe it from the start. I am at the edge of an old town, the pavement is cobblestone, and the houses look like they’ve been here since the dawn of time. I know certainly that I am at the edge of town, this is always how my dream starts. Behind me there is nothing but near darkness, masked by a grey sheet of fog.
“I always start by walking into the town. On the way I see a passageway shaded by an overhanging stone archway. Flowers hang from the arch in small wooden baskets. The baskets are full of blossoming little yellow flowers. I take a careful look around, there is no one else on the street, only me. Water is dripping from the baskets forming small puddles on the path below. The scent of the flowers is not strong, overpowered by something else here. I want to smell the flowers though, I have an urge to inhale their scent, but to my dismay, when I inhale, the only smell I detect is the scent of freshly baked bread.”
“I could kill for some bread,” Jun interrupted, as if thinking out loud.
“I can order some if you like?”
“No thanks, the gluten will get
me.” Jun paused, sipped his tea, and then said, “Sorry, please continue.”
“Okay, well instead of investigating what is probably a bakery, I continue walking into town, before finally reaching what feels like the middle. The path opens up into a large courtyard. The sun is shining, but the air is cool, crisp. Birds fly above me and ants crawl below. I don’t know how I know, but in my dream, it is most definitely Tuesday. Always a Tuesday.
“I am standing in a giant stone courtyard surrounded by more old buildings. A river flows through the middle of the town, and there is a bridge. I spot my first sign of life outside the Bank Building. A man holding a sign made from the remains of a cardboard box. Scribbled across the sign in red ink is some indecipherable alien looking text. He sees me looking at him, before shouting something in a language I don’t understand.
“I head to the bridge. Here, three small ducks swim around in the river below, they look hungry for bread. ‘Hello ducks,’ I say to the ducks. They continue to dabble in the shallow waters, completely ignoring me.
“The bridge features a wooden plaque; carved simply into its rotting surface is a single word, Bridge. No identity at all. The bridge is old, some fifty years old by its appearance. Faded white stone, once decorated, but any trace now faded away over years of bad weather.
“I say goodbye to the ducks as I walk away. Then the dream ends.”
“Interesting,” Jun said. “That’s quite a weird dream. With each dream more information becomes clear?”
“That’s right,” I told him. “The first time I had the dream, I didn’t even enter the town, just stared in awe at the fog. After about a week I explored a little and became upset by the absent of scent from the flowers. Then a week later I was being shouted at by the man at the Bank Building.”
“Bank Building,” Jun interjected, “why not just call it the bank?”
“In my dream,” I thought for a moment. “In my dream, I just know that this building is the Bank Building, the same way that I know it is always Tuesday.”
“Hmm,” Jun pondered, as he finished his tea. “Look, I have to go now, but I do have some books at home about this kind of thing, interpreting dreams, things like that. I will look into it. Call me up straight away if anything else happens. I want to know how this dream story ends.” Jun seemed genuinely interested, just as I thought he would. “Oh, and I don’t have any money, do you mind taking care of the bill?” he asked. “Bill, like a duck,” he added, deadpan.
“Thanks, Jun,” I said, as he stood up to leave.
“Call me if anything else happens,” he said. And with that he was gone.
The next day, something did happen. A man appeared.
***
I woke up in a cold sweat. Sunlight was drifting in, and it looked as though Lucy had left already. My dream that night was more vivid than ever, as though it was real; but I knew that it couldn’t have been.
The usual events occurred as before, except that this time when I approached the bridge, I saw a man sitting, his legs dangling over the side. He carried a loaf of fresh bread in his left hand, tearing off little pieces with his right. He didn’t throw the pieces of bread, he just dropped them. They drifted down toward the river below, to where the three little ducks were quacking excitedly.
“Hello,” I said to the man feeding the ducks.
He turned to me. As I stared at him I realised that he didn’t have a face, just a hollow gap in its place.
“Welcome to the Bridge at the Centre of the Universe,” he said, calmly, all the while continuing to feed the ducks.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“It’s quite simple really. You are here. I am here. This is the Bridge at the Centre of the Universe, the exact point that time flows from.”
I didn’t really know what to say, but at that point I was completely aware that I was dreaming. Previously, I had felt that during those dreams, I had no control over my actions. Guided along by some false memory, as if tracing what had always become. That time, I knew I was dreaming, and felt as if the shackles of my subconscious had been severed.
“You understand why you are here, right?” the man asked.
“I have no idea.”
“I have no idea,” the man said, echoing my words.
Then everything faded to black, and dream became reality once again.
***
I put on some clothes and phoned up Jun, to provide him with a promised update. He picked up after just one ring, as if he was waiting by the phone.
“Hey, I was just about to call you,” he told me. “I did some research into your dream, and what it could mean.” I decided to let him finish before providing him with an update. Partly due to my own curiosity, and partly due to the effort that he had most likely put into gathering the facts.
“Great, what have you discovered?” I asked.
“Well, it’s simple really. Fresh bread symbolises your fulfilment of physical desires. Yellow flowers indicate pure joy, and a clear conscience. Bridges represent a new opportunity. Ducks, well they don’t really fit into my theory, but ducks symbolise a connection between the physical world, and the spiritual world.”
“Your theory?”
“Yeah, you said the dreams started the day you got with Lucy. I think the dreams mean you’ve made a new start with a person that makes you happy, that Lucy and your relationship with her is somehow represented by the dream.”
“Interesting,” I said. His words genuinely were and always have been.
“I still can’t explain the ducks though.”
“Don’t worry about it. Look, something else happened.”
I went on to tell Jun the details of my latest dream. Even though we were talking over the phone, I could sense that he was listening intently to every word.
“The Bridge at the End of the Universe, sounds cool.”
“The Bridge at the Centre of the Universe,” I said, correcting him.
“Whatever,” he said. I could sense him smile at being corrected. “Did the man say anything else?”
“Nope, just as I told you.”
“Hmm,” Jun said, as if lost in deep thought. “I will once again look into it. Call me when you learn anything else. Hey, you should take a swim in the river of time in your next dream.”
I couldn’t quite tell if Jun was gleefully mocking me or not.
“Thanks, Jun,” I said, as the phone clicked off.
***
One night Lucy didn’t come home. The next day I tried to ask her why, but I got some reply that offered nothing; somewhat lacking in sufficient reasoning.
“I have to work, don’t I?”
Those six words were all that she seemed willing to offer me.
Over the next few weeks she came home in the evening later and later, and on two more occasions, she didn’t come home at all. Sex became almost non-existent, and when we did make love, it felt like she was offering herself more to please me, to keep up the false pretence of a relationship.
After a couple of weeks of barely seeing her, I started to get suspicious of the fact that she could be seeing somebody else.
“Have you slept with anyone else since we’ve been together?” I asked her one night.
“Of course not, I love you.”
Her reply included a smile, one that I had never seen from her before; a new smile. Seeing this was confirmation enough.
“Okay, sorry to have asked, I just had to clear my mind, that’s all.”
“We can’t keep having conversations like this,” she said, before kissing me on the forehead and heading out of the house.
I wanted to ask her where she was going, but that would further fuel problems, so I let her go. Somehow I knew though, convinced by that fake smile and the look she gave me. I knew something was different.
***
Over the next week, my dreams remained pretty much the same, and the man without a face repeated my sentiments, I have no idea. The only changes were that det
ails grew slightly more solid. The ducks developed more detailed form. The gradient of the buildings improved drastically. The aroma of bread grew stronger, much to my delight. The fog thickened. The man without a face remained entirely anonymous, no more detail added to the darkness of his mask.
Lucy continued to stay at my place. She never asked me how my day was, as if not interested in me anymore. What started so well became nothing more than an empty shell of a relationship. Sex became as frequent as when I was single. Our relationship had grown cold, like the slow cracking of the surface of a frozen lake, ready to shatter into a thousand shards of ice. So much for Jun’s theory about joy.
Perhaps I was being overly paranoid. Was it me pushing her away with those thoughts of her sleeping with someone else? Could she read my mind? No, not possible. The feelings were very real.
Strangely, it felt to me like a thousand demons were pulling at my heart, as if trying to rip it from my body, stretch it to unreal extremes, until it no longer aligned with the place where it was once held. That place became lost, like an infinite void, devoid of any emotion yet so full of darkness, hate, loss, and sorrow. Remaining empty yet so full of something else at the same time. Like it was replaced by the dying screams of those same thousand demons. Lost to jealousy and love, and inescapably damaged. But those demons were only in my mind. Yet, unlike demons, the pain felt very real. Torturous pain. Pain that would never release its grip on my heart. As for the screams, they became to grow louder and longer than time itself. Like a black hole collecting all of the happiness and taking it away from that place, to somewhere even the Devil fears. Leaving behind only the solemn, the sorrow, the anguish; my anguish. Those emotions stayed trapped inside of me, silently collecting, gathering, conspiring, and bringing with them a certain torture. Forever in a vacuum formed neatly where once sat my heart. The darkness a prison for the love that left, the love now gone. Sucked out and replaced by an absence of joy. All that remained was the impending dark emotions of jealousy and pain.
***
The next day, I returned home late from work. Commitments had trapped me in a night of alcohol consumption with my boss and a few colleagues. I didn’t really feel like going, but couldn’t escape it.
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