“My dreams are assuming an increasingly complex architecture. They are no longer just everyday echoes or fragmented scenarios, but true journeys through landscapes built of pure symbolism.”
It all started in a banal way. I was walking through a random place, with no defined destination, when I came across a half-buried door; it was like a small, open bunker. An anomalous structure, something that didn’t belong in the environment. Driven by an investigative impulse, I decided to open it and cross the threshold.
On the other side, reality drastically changed. I found myself inside a vast chamber built of cold, rustic stone. The air was impregnated with a thick, colored fog that moved slowly around me. Along the walls, several other doors were aligned, all identical to the one I had just entered.
I was paralyzed by indecision. Should I go back? Should I open the other doors to see what they hid? While my mind debated, I realized there was a hidden, relentless mechanic in that place: an invisible deadline was ticking. There was an open passage, a wider space leading into the bowels of that structure, but, because I hesitated too long, when I finally tried to approach it, the passage slammed shut in front of me. Time had run out, and I was trapped in the fog hall.
With no other alternative, I advanced to one of the lined-up doors and opened it. Instead of a new corridor, I found the void.
The Fall and the Mercy
I was swallowed by a gigantic space, plunging into a dizzying free fall. During the descent through the abyss, I felt no panic. On the contrary, my lucid mind took control. I simulated the weight and grip of a sword in my hands.
It was then that it appeared floating in the air: an absurd and inexplicable geometric structure, yet my oneiric instinct immediately recognized and named it. It was the “Great Sufferer of the Depths”—an ancient victim of that abyss, trapped in perpetual pain. With a precise movement of my imagined sword, I slashed it. It was an act of pure mercy. I ended its suffering right there, tearing the geometric form apart as we continued to fall.
The violent impact never came. Instead, I reached the bottom of the abyss and landed in a grim landscape, where water dominated almost everything, leaving only small, isolated banks of earth.
The Guide and the Crystallization of Trauma
Emerging from those waters, I encountered a colossal, living entity. Despite its threatening size, it exuded a clear purpose and assumed the role of my guide, safely conducting me through the water to a small canoe.
As soon as I boarded, the environment underwent a new distortion. Suddenly, an infinity of toys began to materialize around me. And in the midst of this profusion of nostalgia, something terrible emerged: a frightening-looking creature. An unquestionable intuition warned me of what it was: it was the physical incarnation of my own fixation with toys, a feeling crystallized in the form of a monster.
The curious thing is that terror didn’t strike me. I was anesthetized by curiosity, immersed in the logic of the dream, merely following the flow of that fantastic journey. Our strange entourage—me, the fixation monster, the giant entity, and the toys—sailed until we reached a new and imposing door.
The Stone Hall and the Reflection
We crossed the entrance and arrived at another immense stone hall, similar to the first, but of even greater proportions. My companions walked in silence and aligned themselves perfectly in the center of the hall. I stood there, absorbing the grandeur of the place and their presence.
Then, instinctively, I looked over my shoulder, back at the door we had just passed through. But the exit was no longer there. In its place stood a colossal mirror, stretching from the floor to the dark ceiling of the room.
The moment my eyes met the surface of the mirror, I looked back at the center of the hall. Everyone had disappeared. The giant guide, the toys, the incarnated monster. I was completely alone in the silence of the stone.
Slowly, I turned my gaze back to the immense mirror. The reflected image, however, was no longer mine. The glass showed a small girl with curly hair. I wasn’t just looking at her image; the perspective had shifted. I had become her. The weight of the journey, the monstrous entities, and the abyss gave way to that child figure before the giant glass.
And then… the memory of the dream fragments and fades into the darkness.
“However great dreams may be, they all end when the dreamer wakes.”