It all began on the blurred and dangerous border between wakefulness and sleep. The bedroom was plunged into the thick shadows of the early morning when my eyes caught an anomaly: there was a bizarre, unnamable figure crouching in the dark corner of the room.
Primal instinct dictated that I should scream for escape or enter a state of absolute alert. But what happens when the exhaustion of the mind is heavier than the instinct for survival? The fatigue in my body was so profound that it anesthetized even fear. I merely stared at that thing lurking in the darkness, closed my eyes in an act of pure surrender, and let myself sink, dragging that silent weight with me into the abysses of the subconscious.
When the dream’s scenario finally materialized, the memory of the creature in the room had already grown opaque. However, a feeling emerged—sharp, cutting, and painful: the distancing of my partner.
The Sacrifice of Communication
The air between us felt thick, blocked by an invisible barrier. Her cell phone had a critical defect and I, in a desperate attempt to protect our connection and restore normalcy, offered to fix it. But she vehemently refused. She preferred her own solutions, no matter how illogical and destructive they were.
Using five tree logs, she built a rudimentary bonfire in the shape of a cabin and placed the device right in the middle of the flames. Thick, toxic black smoke rose, staining and warping the phone’s chassis. She “roasted” it with the conviction that this would somehow improve things, while I watched, paralyzed and helpless, as our only means of communication was deformed and melted.
Why, even in the face of imminent destruction, do we sometimes prefer to burn the bridges of contact rather than allow someone to help us mend them?
The Sand Apple and the Asymmetry of Affection
We left the logical ashes behind and started walking. Along the way, we found an open bag of apples tossed on the ground. A little further ahead, we passed right in front of my own house. The moment seemed opportune; I told her I would run upstairs real quick to grab a few more fruits for us.
When I came back down to the street, I was chewing on one of the apples, but the physics of the dream had corrupted it. The texture was completely wrong—the fruit fragmented in my mouth like dry sand: flavorless, void of nutrition, bringing no satisfaction whatsoever. And, in a painful echo, I realized the emptiness wasn’t just in my palate.
She hadn’t waited for me.
I raised my eyes just in time to see her silhouette disappearing as she turned the corner, swallowed by the distant street. She left me behind without a second of hesitation. I started running desperately to catch up to her, but the path was suddenly deserted. An overwhelming, dense, and suffocating sadness hit me full force, while a bitter thought echoed through the walls of my mind:
“Damn, am I the only one who waits for her? Am I the only one who cares enough to look back and check if she’s keeping up with me? She just goes, without even caring if I’m by her side…”
The Blind Fight in the Midst of Chaos
Even with my chest crushed by abandonment, I didn’t give up the search. I kept pushing through the path until I came across a collapse of reality: a scene of pure chaos and terror. A woman and a child were screaming in absolute despair, cornered by two massive beasts—a lion and a dog of colossal size, a bizarre hybrid that reeked of death.
In the midst of that imminent carnage, I saw a girl walking nearby. Her features were identical to my partner’s. I screamed at the top of my lungs, tearing my throat to warn her and protect her from the massacre, but the girl simply ignored me and kept walking, impassive.
The sound of my voice, however, did not go unnoticed by death. The lion locked its eyes on me and lunged. Propelled by terror, I managed to jump onto the hood of an abandoned car. Around me, small domestic cats cowered and meowed, terrified under the shadow of the relentless predator.
The beast charged against the metal. I found myself fighting with all my might, pushing the lion’s head away, feeling the sheer weight of the animal, and resisting fiercely so as not to be pulled down by those lethal claws.
But the true tragedy of that scene wasn’t the threat of sharp fangs tearing my skin. The deepest, cruelest, and most humiliating pain of the nightmare was realizing that, even in the epicenter of chaos, while I fought desperately for my own life and fended off a monster so as not to be devoured… my eyes kept frantically sweeping the streets.
I was still looking for her.