Dream Diary: Home on Mars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41zz3xAQz4w

Dear Diary: Mars Residence

I took the blue door. Towards the bottom in the left hand corner. If any of them could be the loneliest one, it would be that one.

I was there again. I'm not saying I was getting used to it. You cannot get used to a dream. Even someone who does it as much as I do. But all dreams have a little....smell? of something familiar in them. Something personal that can be different and scary but the dreamer can't mistake or ignore where it came from.

It was cold. The trees almost looked blue. Snow fell. I was in a forest. I had been here before. There were huge gaps you could walk through and igloos. One time, I went inside and found a lady. She was all blue and white wearing a robe. She seemed very comfortable in this hard weather. She acted nice but seemed scary. She laughed at me and told me I can't keep coming back here. She told me I'm running out of distractions. That someday, I'll come crashing down onto reality.

I saw the bed again. Just in the middle of the snow. It was on a frame and looked clean. Not a fleckle of snow on it. How? I like beds. When I'm sad, or tired, afraid, or just bored I can always climb aboard and escape. I sleep a lot. I think I sleep a little more than I am awake. Its better that way. I hate school. My parents don't understand me. Poniko won't be me friend anymore and there is nothing on TV! I sleep to dream and I dream to live. I go to wonderful places when I sleep. I can go anytime I want to. When I write them down in this diary, I never record the time. Who cares what day it was, they are all the same. I write down where I went to and what I did. That's the real way to do it.

I was not what you would call comfortable but I fell asleep. It was a little different from sleeping normally. I was in the middle of a long set of stairs. It seemed to go on forever. There were hands reaching for the sky all around me. I do not know where they came from or what they were for. I could not see anything beneath the stairs either. Everybody seemed to float still in the air.

I reached the bottom and walked through a dark hall. I found myself in the parking lot of a big mall. It was not one I could think of at the moment but I know I have been there before. I walked past the elevator and moved on. There was a large opening to another hallway in front of me. It was on fire, a huge tongue of flame spilling from it. I wanted to go through.

I thought of what the woman in the igloo told me. That my dream world had limits. How someday I'd get tired of it and have to escape from here too. No! That will never happen! I'll always find something new to explore, something different to effect me. This place is so much better than being awake! I hate being out in the hard mean day with all the hard mean people who don't understand me.

I became the woman in the igloo. My shirt, my skirt became a white robe and my skin turned pure white. I felt so very hot. I was very uncomfortable outside of the snowy forest. I decided to bring the winter with me. The wind and the snow came in a blast of cold. We blew out the fire and I was myself again.

My clothes turned back to normal but inside the snow continued. The flakes fell inside the garage even though there were no openings to the sky. I noticed and just accepted this, dreams being dreams.

I walked through the once burning door, warping myself in steam and smoke. The garage was cluttered, covered in boxes falling off shelves. All their stuff was spilling out. Toys, books, DVDs, CDs; things no one wanted. They failed to sell, they could not fulfill their only reason to be. Now they had to be contained, taken care of and boxed up. I'm like that. I can't take care of myself very well. I don't like being around people but I need them. Life is so hard for me.

It was there again. Blind, roaming, probably deaf, aimlessly wandering. A trail of blood dragged behind it in a line. It was a mouth; big rocky teeth and scabby lips. I do not know what it ate. I mean it had to eat. It was a mouth and nothing else, how could it not?

There were no food in the boxes. Just junk. So it couldn't eat that. I did not see any people or bugs into the garage so it couldn't be eating those. Maybe it ate its mother. Maybe it was a mother and it ate its kids. I never felt threatened by it. It was the way it made me feel that scared me.

I walked past it. It never notices me. There as a gray door in the top right corner. I had seen it before but I had never gone inside. I thought about what she said again and decided to go for it. I walked through the door. The room was small and shaped like a...pear maybe an egg? It was all white. The door I went through smoothed out at an angle. There were these two lumps in the room on the floor. I'm not sure why. The was a round window in the center towards the top. It looked like an eye. I went through the next door, curved like the one I first went through.

He was the there, he was the first thing I saw. Tall, thin, and pale, wearing black. It looked like he was wearing a single piece of shirt and pants. Maybe they were the only clothes he owned. He sat in front of a gigantic piano with two seats. He played, softly and slowly, giving each note a chance to be heard. A chance to be alone, to disappear into silence. There was a huge window on the wall. I saw the star filled sky unfold in front of me.

Most of the "people" I meet in my dreams are not really people at all. They are birdwomen, or little clay dolls with blank faces. They have nothing to say but numbers. I see mushroom people who jingle like bells, snow women in igloos, and blobby walking shadows. This man, the piano man in the spaceship, was one of the rare "people", people. I walked up to him. I usually don't do that. His crossed, broken...? eyes danced around his face trying to look at me. To focus. His hair was long and like stringy. He looked familiar. Everything does but him even more.

"Hi"

He curled his lips and nodded.

My heart began to beat. Its like this every time I try to reach out to someone. Lately its even worse with men. Ever since I turned 13 its been hard to be comfortable around them. I can't tell if they want something I'm not ready to give or its the other away around.

"Are you by yourself?"

He nodded again.

"Yes, its better to be alone"

I usually felt this way too but I wanted to do something different. I thought about what the lady in the igloo told me and I was afraid. I almost never talk to people, I had no idea what to do. I looked around the room as he resumed playing softly. He stopped once a sound left my mouth.

"But then why do you have two seats and such a large piano?"

He starred at me. He was confused too. Time passed.

"Will.... will you play the piano with me?"

I could tell it was hard for him to reach out too. I smiled. It was not something I'm used to. It felt funny on my face.

"Okay"

We played together. I had no idea how long. We were in perfect sync. Its like we knew what each other were thinking. I was better here than I ever was back when I could take lessons. After a while, I told him I was tired and that I wanted to take a nap. He nodded and continued without me. There was a bed in the next room. I climbed in and slowly fell asleep to the sound of his music. I had never dreamed inside of a dream's dream before. That was new.

The horns and sirens woke me up. Lights were flashing. It was like a fire drill. I ran out of bed, still inside the egg shaped pear spaceship. We had taken off from the garage, somehow. I felt the movement in my feet. I ran to the control room with the piano and my new friend. He was panicking. He ran all across the room screaming and mumbling. I tried to talk to him but he was too scared. The Earth and the stars on the screen were shooting faster and faster. Like we were leaving them all behind. Good.

I felt a thump and we were there. My friend was leaning on the piano crying. He did not want to be here, wherever we were. I stepped out of the spaceship and walked down the stairs. We were on a red, rocky planet. I thought people needed space suits and helmets for places like this. I didn't. I could breathe just fine. The air was cold and stuffy. We were outside and there was nothing for kilometers but it still felt like I was in a small dirty room. It was snowing. Come to think of it, it was snowing inside of the spaceship too? Was it? I'm not sure but maybe...?

I curled my hands and pumped my legs. I imagined very hard until I felt it beneath me. I was on my bike. It rode fine of the hard rocks of Mars. I bet none of the other kids have taken a bike ride on another planet! I wish I could tell them but stuff you do in dreams do not count. I found that out the hard way. They laughed at me really mean too.

I rode and rode and rode and rode and rode and rode and rode. The hill started going up at an angle but it did not slow me down. Soon I was on the top of the Mars mountain. I looked around. There was nothing, no one, for as far as I could see. I felt the same way I do when I climb to the top of my apartment when I'm awake. In the real world. Only when I do that, I see lights, buildings, and people lots of people. I felt the same way on that roof as I did here. There might as well be no one when I'm up there. Its all the same and I feel the same. Sometimes I think about jumping. Just like that.

There was a little hole with steam coming out of it. I was too big and fat to fit inside. Somehow, I knew I wanted to go inside. I thought about how little of a person I was and how small big, empty Mars made me feel. I shrank until I was no bigger than a bug. I climbed into the hole and fell.

I woke up in a dark room. Or maybe it was a cave. I had grown back to my normal size again. I was afraid I would have no room but I could move around okay. This will be my home on Mars. It was hot inside that dark hole. I climbed down and crawled a little forward. There it was.

It was a blue, fleshy, tall, open, thing. It stood there...breathing? crying, something. It had green and red bumps on it that looked like tumors. It had a round, exposed,...mouth? like the gills on a fish. Green liquid dripped from a slit in its front.

It was disgusting. I did not know what it was but I hated it! I held out my hand and curled around the knife that I carry with me always. You can only see it when I needed it. I wish I could bring it to school but I don't think they are going to let me back anyways. I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed it. It wasn't, but it sure bled like a normal thing. I could hear it scream and it shake but it wasn't enough. It would not die. I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed but all I did was for nothing. Nothing.

I saw the snow mix in with its blood. It was snowing! Why was it snowing? I wondered how it could snow inside here and why things were so hot? Then I woke up.

I'm probably going to play NASU for a few hours. I think I can beat my high score. I'll go eat whatever my parents left for me and wait until I get tired enough to go back to bed. When I'm asleep and alive again, I'm probably not going back to Mars anytime soon. I can't live there. I don't care what that lady in the igloo was trying to tell me. I'm never going to run out of things to do while I dream. I'll keep going back, forever and ever. There will always be something new to see if I keep going deeper. Deeper and deeper inside of me, in my head. Where I'm safe.