dreams

Dreamy McDreamface

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

I’m going to recount two dreams, and ask you which person out of myself or Lady M had one, either, or both of them. This is partly to amuse and entertain you, and partly – well, we’ll see.

Dream One: I have come in to work as usual, and made my way to my desk only to find two colleagues next to it emptying the desk of my staff member and packing it’s contents into a cardboard box. I ask them what they are doing, and they say that the staff member has been fired because there is a policy that if someone fails a particular piece of training twice they are out the door. I am absolutely livid about this. How dare they do that without even involving me in the decision? Then I wake up, still cross.

Dream Two: I have come in to work to find a grand reorganization of the office space taking place. Desks are being rearranged, privacy screens shifted into a maze like configuration, and cables everywhere as IT and project managers try to keep everything going. I look round but my team is nowhere to be seen. Someone says they’ve all gone to the canteen until I tell them where to go. I look at the schedule and maps but can’t focus my eyes because I had a really late night and they feel like they’re burning trying to make sense of what’s there. I decide to close my eyes and nap for a minute, and then I wake up and my eyes still hurt.

So which is which? And what do you think it says about what our brains are trying to decode and process at the moment?

Have fun.

Short Story: Inspiration

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

The library of lives sighed around them as they walked between the shelves. They were following the tail flick of the cat that had brought them here. Whenever they felt lost or at the very least uncertain if where to go next, they would see the cat, pale in the shadows of the books down a particular passage, or sense the speed of his darting from place to place.

They had searched through dreams, first for their guide, and then for each other, determined to find the common inspiration for the visions that pulled them. In the waking world they had compared notes and constructed scenarios to ponder in those shifting grey moments before the veil of sleep claimed them.

The cat had been the first clue, pale as bone rather than the dark shiver of motion they had been expecting. It had regarded each of them as they slept in their beds, and the memory of it had been singular enough to stay with them on the other side of the dawn.

They made a pact to recall and follow where that cat led them. Past the deserts of Lost Nahend, and across the ruby-strewn obsidian plain below the Sundered Peak, their guide had dared them to continue.

Eager, their entwined dreams had brought them to the libraries that never were, and the various annexes that threatened to derail their search. They saw other dreamers from time to time in those crooked corridors, entranced by the volumes they had only ever planned, or contemplating the poetry they had never dared.

The white cat led them past those traps, and out into a sunlit room with bare floorboards and a sunny view obscured by the grime of autumns been and gone.

They cautiously explored the blank journals on which their guide had come to perch, but saw no titles on the spines. The cat yawned and began to groom itself as they looked around. They had been searching for the inspiration that drove them and sparked their work. Finding no answers in the waking world, they had turned to oneiromancy, sure that such an ephemeral goal could best be lifted from the skein of dreams.

They stood there in that plain room, surrounded by unmarked pages with no view visible through the windows and then realised the one thing that could inspire them to continue, to create, to grow and to explore their worlds.

They stood there and looked to each other, and laughed until they woke – separate and yet united at last.

Short Story: The Kiss

Tim MaidmentLeave a comment

I kissed you in my dreams again last night, caught in a quicksilver moment between a memory of the day and a phantasy of tomorrow. Even now I can remember the press of your mouth on mine and the gentle roughness of your lips. A never-ending promise of acceptance and joy, of presence and relief.

Dreams are meant to be fleeting, fluid and forever fading as they retreat from inspection, but in that moment all was still and I knew peace. Hands met and fingers laced, while smiles shared lit the air around us. Then a black cat twined like silk around my ankle and the moment was gone.

I looked again and I was standing in a field and you were elsewhere, leaving me with an echo of your taste and the trace of your heat in my limbs. My dream settled into something new and swept me away; but when I woke I knew I would search for you again. I’ll keep doing it, just as I know you will too, because love like dreams knows no logic.