I let out a sigh of relief as I finally step into my apartment. The place isn't large or cozy, but it's comfortable enough for me. My apartment has only three rooms: my bedroom, a bathroom, and a combined kitchen and living room.
The floor is covered in worn gray tiles, the ceiling is a bit higher than I prefer, and the walls are smooth and the same color as the floor. I have few pieces of furniture and of low quality; I've been trying to save up to move out of this place soon.
My apartment complex isn't very simple, but the rent is cheap. It has three floors, each with at least twenty mini-apartments. We don't have a building manager; the owner of the complex is from a larger company that only shows up if there's a serious problem, and even then, it's just to check if it's genuinely important. Otherwise, we pay an employee of his who was unlucky enough to have to collect rent from over sixty apartments.
Now you might wonder why I live here. It's quite simple: the people at the orphanage were a bunch of greedy individuals who didn't want to spend money on so many children, so as soon as I turned eighteen, they kicked me out and rented me this apartment with even fewer pieces of furniture than the few I had. Of course, they only rented it; I'm the one who has to pay, so I had to find a job quickly. It's been three years now.
After reflecting on this, I can't help but let my thoughts drift back to that time. I was a somewhat sad child; for some reason, no family wanted to adopt me. I blame that large burn scar on the left side of my face, which extends from just above my eyebrow to my chin. When I was very young, one of the other children tried to mess with a pan to "try" to cook. I was nearby, trying to stop her, and clearly, she didn't know what she was doing. She ended up spilling oil on the stove, and well, I don't know what happened next. The next thing I remember is a very intense pain on the left side of my face and then darkness. After that, I woke up in a hospital with one side of my face completely bandaged. I was lucky not to lose my sight, as by some luck and reflex, I managed to close my eye in time.
Nowadays, that scar is a large patch of darker skin, but at least it's not as bad as it used to be. Well, that's basically why I think most families and children avoided me; it was really ugly when I was younger, but I always felt there was another reason. Maybe my parents were terrible people and the orphanage caretakers told families that I could be a problem. It could be something else, but it doesn't matter now. The point is, I was sad, and at some point, I became more apathetic, as if my joy was being drained away.
This feeling has intensified over the past few weeks. At least I still have hope of changing jobs soon. I've been sending out resumes to other companies, and one of them responded, wanting to interview me in a few days. I'll try to get a health certificate for that day; one of my neighbors owes me a favor.
As I prepare to take a shower, I hear someone knocking on my door. I mutter a "coming" after the second knock, rub my eyes a bit, and open the door.
One of my neighbors, Daniel, is at the door. He's a 34-year-old guy, around 6 feet tall. He's pretty athletic but not very defined; he started working out only two months ago. He has a somewhat square face with a well-groomed beard, short dark brown hair with a mini pompadour, and slightly droopy dark blue eyes. Humm, he seems a bit embarrassed.
"Hey Oliver, good evening. Could you lend me two eggs, please?" He gives a small smile at my annoyed expression. Looks like someone forgot to go shopping. "Sure," I shrug lazily. "I haven't been using them much lately." I continue with a slightly hoarse voice; I don't usually talk much during work, and since it's where I spend most of my time, my voice ends up sounding a bit strange.
I leave him at the door while I head to the fridge. It's a smaller, cheaper model, but I still have a half-dozen eggs left at least, so I grab three. I think that should be enough for him for now.
He says with a somewhat tired voice, "Thanks, man. My week's been a bit busier than usual, and I ended up forgetting to go shopping." I give him an understanding nod; I hate it when my work demands suddenly increase, and I get more tasks out of nowhere. "I'll go shopping this Saturday and return the eggs to you," he says as he turns to his apartment while putting the eggs in a sports bag. Given his attire, I guess he just got back from the gym. Daniel likes to do his workouts without a fixed schedule. I envy those who have the luxury of doing their own things whenever they want. "See you Saturday, buddy," he says with a smile as he starts walking away after giving me a friendly pat on the back, which, given how sedentary I am, stings a bit. I rub my poor, fragile shoulder compared to a gym rat, even if just for two months, and finally close and lock my door, ready to take an extremely deserved shower.
Something about me: I hate cold showers and cold water in general, which makes my wallet cry, but I actually prefer winter to summer. I despise almost melting in my uncomfortable cubicle with no air conditioning at work. I have a small fan in my apartment, but it's not very strong. At least in winter, I can add more layers of clothing to stay warm, even if I don't have many clothes. But today is surprisingly warm for mid-July.
After getting out of the shower, I put on some old clothes and head straight to my bedroom, feeling less and less inclined to continue my monologue. It must be the sleep, I think, as I lie down on my simple bed and let sleep overtake me.
I feel my eyes slowly opening but close them again due to the light, reaching for my phone on an old nightstand next to my bed. "Strange," I murmur as I check the time: 4:23 AM. I see the sunlight coming through the curtains in my room and know for sure it's not 4:23. "No signal too," I mutter, this time with a hint of annoyance in my voice. It seems that in addition to my phone's clock being broken, I don't have any signal either. Great, what a way to start a Tuesday.
Well, no matter how much I want my problems to resolve themselves while I'm in bed, I know this is just a meaningless dream, so I get up and stretch with a long sigh. Recalling the previous day, I decide to make some eggs for breakfast. Some people might argue that since I don't know the time, it would be better to head straight to work and grab something to eat on the way, but one of my life philosophies is that since I'm already late, there's no point in rushing. Being somewhat late makes no difference.
As I leave my room, I have to blink a few times to make sure what I'm seeing is real, and I even rub my eyes to be more certain.
This... is not my apartment.
The place that used to be very small and simple is now much larger, about four or five times more, and looks like a mix of a shabby apartment and something resembling a medieval castle.
Part of the floor is still from my apartment, but the tiles that were once perfectly aligned now seem to have been pushed in different directions, while the rest of the floor is made of some kind of polished stone, a bit like granite but more rustic. Its color is mostly dark gray with touches of lighter gray and almost black. There is no pattern to the colors of this floor; it looks like different types of stone were put together to create something new with a lot of care but without any aesthetic sense or design. I'm not a perfectionist, but this bothers me a bit, putting aside all this weirdness for now.
The walls, which were once just plaster, now mix with light gray stones in a pattern that reminds me of water in a lake. These stones, I assume, were arranged similarly to bricks. The walls also gained about six new windows; some look unfinished, others seem destroyed, and one looks like it's been covered with the same wall material. They're also divided into normal positions and some higher up, like those small bathroom windows almost at the ceiling.
The ceiling, unlike the walls and floor, doesn't seem to be a mix of two different styles but is made of darker marble. The ceiling, like the one in my apartment, is flat, but now it has some arches connecting it to the walls. They're a bit cracked, and it doesn't look very safe, more aesthetic. I can see my few light fixtures; they seem to work but shine irregularly. Sometimes their light is very bright, and sometimes very dim; they also flicker occasionally, and their lights have different colors, making the ceiling look like it has constantly changing colorful stains. Besides my lights, I see two chandeliers hanging from silver chains. The chandeliers appear to be made of a mix of silver and gold, with dozens of candles scattered on supports like branches of a tree. Not all the candles are out, and those that are lit shine like the lights, but unlike them, each candle has a defined color, making the chandeliers look like a catalog of different paint colors.
It seems I've also received more furniture, some made of wood and others of stone, resembling various incomplete sets. In a moment of realization and morbid curiosity, I turn to my bedroom. It looks like the same changes have occurred with my sacred resting place—how annoying. It didn't get bigger or anything, but the floor, walls, and ceiling have had the same changes, which I didn't notice in my sleep. Perfect.
No, wait, I know now, ahaha, why didn't I think of this before? It's just a new strange dream, like the one with the tree. Given how detailed this dream seems, both are a sort of lucid dream, but this one seems more so since I can interact with the environment. Also, this entire dream carries a bit of the feeling of the tree dream now that I've calmed down a bit.
Well, I've decided then. I'll just follow my routine as if it were any other day. I should wake up at any moment anyway, so it doesn't matter.
I walk toward what would be my kitchen, which remains almost unchanged—surprisingly—only with a few additional wooden or metal utensils, which might be silver, and open my refrigerator.
What the hell is this dream?
It looks like a gemstone, extremely beautiful if I can say that. Just like everything in this dream, it's not like the standard; it's even stranger than the rest. Its shape constantly changes. One moment it looks like a topaz, the next like a citrine, then a ruby, and so on. Inside this gem, various colors bubble up, like the lights and candles, but with many more colors. If the lights and candles were a catalog of paint colors, this gem seems to have thousands of stars blinking, each with a different color, expanding and contracting inconsistently. Unlike the lights and candles, this gem shines, and shines brightly, with a mix of all the colors inside it. Moreover, it's as if there's an "aura" or a layer of colored lights around it.
But what catches my attention the most is the feeling it conveys, or should I say feelings.
As soon as I opened the refrigerator, I was bombarded with hundreds, maybe thousands of feelings all at once. Some I managed to identify fleetingly, but many others are completely beyond my mind's comprehension. My analysis of the gem itself was a dazed reflection for a few minutes, trying to stabilize myself, even though my efforts were in vain.
I find myself suffocating and almost drowning in the enormity of feelings this gem transmits, and while I know I will be okay, I also know I won't be the same after this experience. But I don't feel desperate. Despair is just one of many feelings I'm having right now.
As I continue to feel overwhelmed, I do the only logical thing and try to grab the gem. I can see in slow motion my hand reaching toward my new lucid nightmare, I suppose.
With this monologue, it might seem strange that I am still rational while feeling all this, but you're wrong. I can easily say that I've spent or at least feel like I've spent hours here, each word of my monologue taking minutes to think through, while other hundreds of completely incoherent thoughts emerge. Another proof is that this seems to have stopped being a monologue and turned into almost a conversation, even though I'm alone, I hope, so maybe I'll leave here with some issues.
Anyway, returning to the attempt to grasp the profane object, the closer my hand gets to the gem and sinks into the "aura" around it, the more it seems to distort. From it, I feel warmth, cold, pain... relief... tickles... discomfort...
And hundreds of others, barely identifiable, and then when I grab it
PAINheatPAINcoldPAINReliefPAINticklesPAINdiscomfortPAINshockPAINburningPAINfreezingPAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINunidentifiablePAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN
I wake up with a jolt, extremely sweaty and trembling. I pull my knees to my chest and hug myself for comfort. After a few minutes in this position, I glance to the side at my phone and check the time—9:14 PM, just a few minutes after I went to sleep. It's as if time hadn't passed since I started... dreaming.
With one last shiver, I turn off the phone, attributing the small puff I heard to the remnants of the dream.