Secrets: 1 (Reborn)

Secrets
By: Gabriel Eidolus LeBlanc

               I opened the door to my apartment, walking in and dropping my things onto the footrest in the living room.  I then walked to my room and changed into some comfortable clothes and collapsed onto the bed, sighing. After a while of relaxing and thinking, I went to the kitchen and ate a quick sandwich so the sedatives and aspirin weren’t the only things of my stomach. I thought about work awhile, then wondered about the strange dream I had the night before.

               I was sitting on the edge of a large building in the middle of the moonless night; it was old, yet familiar. I’m just sitting there pondering on God knows what, when I suddenly fall off carelessly. I was falling and I tried to make myself do something but I apparently had no control over myself in the dream. When I thought I was going to hit the crowded street below I willed myself up and through the thin alleyway.  The streets and buildings looked familiar somehow, like an old city with Victorian architecture here and there.  I saw people, but only for a second or two, because I was going faster than I could believe. I watched as I went to an open window in an old building.  As I went into the window, the vision becomes blurry and I wake up.

               I had a different form of the same dream a few nights ago.  It started in the alleyway, only I was standing, not falling, not flying.  I was wearing an old suit.  I looked behind me as I walked down, the same direction in the same alley.  Behind me were two men; one was average height and build, and the other was walking in a shadow, a hulking figure.
               We were walking, and towards the end of the alley, someone ran around a corner to face us, and I realized the entire thing was happening in slow motion.  We were running, and the man coming around the corner had a torch; he was hunting us.
               At first I shrugged this vision off.  I thought it was some movie-induced dream or something.

               I stood up from the recliner and made me way to the ringing telephone.
               “Hello” I said, a little drawn out
               “I know who you are and I’m going to bring you back,” the voice said, low and almost inaudible.
               “Excuse me…” I said, a little worried. I repeated, but they had hung up.
               ‘What the hell was that about?’ I thought as I checked the Caller ID.  Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t help anyway.
               I thought about it as I lay down on the couch; the sedatives were kicking in, and as I fell asleep, I started to remember something about the dreams.
A face.
               It was so familiar yet I didn’t know whose.  Slightly pale, with .  This was someone I knew; His face was in the back of my mind the whole time.  The one thing that I was certain about was the fact he was in both dreams.  He also came forward in my mind when I heard the Voice on the telephone.

               I was standing in that alley again, only wearing different clothes.  I wasn’t in a suit, but just a cotton shirt and ragged pants.  I was alone this time, and running barefoot away from that building I was eager to get to the first two times.
               Looking behind me, there wasn’t anybody following me, but there was a fire raging about around me.  Every building surrounding this alley was on fire.  I kept running, and I decided that if I could fly in the other dream, I would try now.  I felt myself prepare to jump, and then I was going up.
               I was halfway up the buildings when they came crashing down.  I was pummeled with wooden support beams, all aflame.  I knew the pain was searing, and I struggled to free myself.  I grabbed both my hands around the one pinning me, and they sunk in slightly.  Pushing it off of me, the skin on my palms stuck to the tinder.
               I heard a few screams behind me, and someone was pulling me.  Through the flames and half-blindness, I saw a woman.  She had short hair and was burning in the middle of the flames, trying to save me.

               “No!  Help me!  Pull!”  She was yelling, and if we weren’t being burnt to death, I would have been able to see the tears that were evaporating from her eyes.
               I couldn’t say anything…it was just dream pain, paralyzing me.
               She pulled less and less, and just wrapped her arms around my head.  “…I loved you, and now this.  I still love you…I’ll always love you.”

               After this, it was like a montage of scenes depicting life and death.  I was watching myself burn in my lover’s arms, and she silently wept as she slowly died.  I saw her still crying after our bodies were no longer recognizable, just ash.  Her spirit was still crying.
               I saw the man with brownish hair from my other dreams.  He searched through the long since burnt tinder and scooped some ashes into a pouch.  I saw my Love’s spirit fade, and everything got bright.  I was a small boy, and then a man, then I died in a bed with family around me.  My granddaughter, an awaiting mother, was the last thing I touched; her hands squeezing mine.
               I was halfway across the world, growing up again, in a different, newer time.  There were so many possibilities played out.  Lives were ending, starting, ending again, moving on and separating from each other.  The same historic and world events, but different events in the world of Me.
I saw my Love only once, and it ended abruptly in a tragic scene, as it did before.  It was like this dream was nothing more than ideas being played out.  Someone was cycling through and making sure some important event happened.
               I saw similar events happening in different places.  There was a beach setting, almost like my home now.  Glimpses of people I didn’t know were playing out the roles again, but this time I could see myself among them.  I still couldn’t see what exactly was happening, but it seemed this was the final solution.
               After playing through, everything faded to black, and I could feel the burning again.  I saw blurs, but they slowly came into focus.  I was back under the burning tinder, with my Love.
               “Why…why didn’t you see this coming?” she asked.  Her eyes were closed.  She couldn’t bear to look at our singeing flesh.  “Why did you just let it go this way?  You had the power to change it…did you want to die like this?!”
               She screamed and I felt her hands tighten around me before we both let go.