Tales from the Dark Parallel
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How do we measure time in a dream? Is it a real time exchange? For every second of sleep in the real world, one second passes in the dreamscape? That is likely a subjective thing and depends largely on the events in the dream. You must compare the passage of time during the dream to the passage of time during sleep. I’m sure it’s not standard for everyone.
I don’t know how much time passes, but it dawned on me after the first experience that I must be dreaming. I hoped that I was dreaming and not that I had slipped through to a dark parallel that would trap me forever.
As I fled the crazed, rightful king, I stumbled and fell flat on my face. I felt the concrete slam against my skull and slide along the skin of my face like a grate. I was sure that I must be a bloody mess, but when I sat up and put my hands to my fresh wounds, my hands moved through my face. I looked like a ghost, a billow of smoke in the form of my body. I wondered if I was dead. Maybe I had smacked my head hard enough to lose my life. I looked around myself and I knew instantly where I was.
It was dark, but not pitch black and errant light danced along what appeared to be cave walls and I knew that there was a fire somewhere, but I could not find it. I was in a rocky walkway and I could hear the moans, the muted screams of far away tortures.
I didn’t have to walk. I willed myself to move in one direction. It was a strange and liberating experience, to move with no physical effort. I headed toward what appeared to be the brighter end of the walkway and as I proceeded along, the light became brighter. I moved faster. Though I could not feel the heat and discomfort of this hell, it was unsettling to be there. I felt, or maybe it was just hope, that if reached the light, things would be good.
When I came to the end of the walkway, I was in a room, rocky all around, and an overwhelming brightness emanated from the center of the room like sunlight. It was blinding, or it would have been if I had physical eyes. Without the pain of staring into it, the light was awesome. I got lost in it.
Until she stood from her throne and came to me, dimming her light as she approached. I could see her big, woeful eyes, and her entire body was sculpted of light. When she stood in front of me, she smiled and it was resplendent.
“You made it, finally.”
Her voice seemed to fall into existence, as though she did not produce it inside of her light form, but summoned it from somewhere.
“It gets lonely sitting and damning humanity for eternity.”
I asked her, “Who am I to you?”
“You know what you are. And you will eventually leave me. But I won’t be mad. I expect as much. You leave and return because to stay here permanently is to accept hell as your existence when it does not have to be. If you are only here, who would tell the others about us?”
“Do I have a different face?” I asked her, thinking of my conversation with the man in yellow.
“Not to me. You are always the same to me.”
I nodded.
I wanted to be whoever she thought I was. I had never seen her as she existed before me. She was just the thing in my head who I moved through various scenarios that I cooked up. She had presented herself for me many times, but I couldn’t fathom that she would ever be aware of me. The Alia, in all of her glory.
But why was she in this place with these other things? These ruined constructs with these ruined people who only existed to badger someone else, to kill and torture.
“There are versions of me that are not so good. That’s what you are wondering? It’s payback. Man proved long ago that they are truly terrible. Even the good ones fail to create sustainable communities to keep their children safe and their species strong and thriving. You know that, but you accept something that I refuse to acknowledge. That not all people are created equal. Some give their lives in service to others. I think that is naive, but maybe that is why I will spend my eternity in this hell.”
“I can move you…”
“Only when the story has run its course. And this is a long one. I am not complaining, just giving you answers. You are not stuck here forever. You were born here because this is a creative space and you are here for as long as you inhabit the mental space necessary to produce the stories. You are not a monster like us. We depend on you, get excited see to you, and those like you.”
I was relieved to hear this but there was one last, very important question and she answered before I could ask.
“You can return home now. Don’t worry about the others, I will tell them you wanted to see them but had to go. Your real world is scarier than anything in these fictions, there is no need to dwell here for too long.”
When she finished, she touched my cheek and I felt her warmth. And then the intensity of her light increased, whiting the room we were in. And when the light subsided, I was at my computer screen, watching the cursor appear and disappear.
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Tonight:
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What is worse than going to hell for eternity? If you ask Silas, he might answer that going to church is much worse.
Silas in Hell: “Silas nods. He doesn’t want to talk to this demon anymore but there are questions that require answers and despite the uncertainty that the demon will give him any answers, Silas is desperate to know something definitive. He hopes that Dr. Parsons’s explanation is correct; he did not think he could become a religious man even if it would free him from his torment.”
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The mystery continues. In the dark parallel, the truth you know is eclipsed by a darker reality. Ivan and Clay are back, but they seem to be at odds with one another.
The Lightning God: “Clay encountered a Nomoli statue and the woman at the market selling them, grabbed his hand tightly and told him that he would be a man like the ones the statues had been fashioned after. She told Clay that he was the descendant of a fallen angel, but a special one who had retained heavenly gifts to help the world. Clay always kept his Nomoli close to him after that.”
– – –
Lastly, we present a human retelling of the horrible entrapment of the cosmic entity known as AEther.
Faithful Allegory: “A man whose name does not matter, had many children with different women. He only spent time with the children he had with his wife. They had two daughters and a son together. The youngest daughter, Patty, required constant attention in her youth and as she got older.”
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