Memories forgotten in time

Chapter 1

December 29, 2010
Time: 3.30

Dike

I remembered falling asleep a few hours back, after reading for the thousandth time one of my favorite novels. It was an urban fantasy in which the main characters, after countless hardships that keep them far apart, get finally together and swear eternal love. One of those books so far away from reality to allow me to escape from that oppression feeling that from time to time my everyday life aroused in me.

Yet the mystic dream, in which my unconscious self had thrown me, even if so dreamlike, held something so inexplicably real and concrete.

It wasn't the first time that I dreamt that dream and each time I woke, I got the feeling of an old recalled memory, instead of the light impressions given by a night fantasy. It was as if that dream called ghosts from the past back to life.

Everything is confused, unfocused I hear the sound of the running water of a small stream that reaches a clear immaculate lake.

I cannot see the lake well, but I know it is there. I feel its light refreshing breeze on my face. I cannot see it because everything seems so blurred.

The smell of the fresh wet grass, surrounding the clear waters that I cannot see, makes my senses contempt.

I cannot see myself and I have no perception to be in such a delicious place, yet I feel its perfumes and hear its small noises: the chatter of birds, the breeze that rustles the leaves on the trees, the lapping of water.

But more than anything I hear a lovely and seducing melody. I look around to see where it comes from, but still everything is blurred.

Suddenly in that strange haze of colors and contourless shapes, a narrow gap opens. Inside the gap there is a hazy figure, the only clear image in that confusion of colors and shapes.

It is a man... a young man that plays an instrument... a lyre I believe.

He is a man of peculiar beauty. He reminds me of those classic prints in my art book at school: he wears old time clothes and leather sandals.

He plays wonderfully. He is absorbed in his music and keeps his eyes on his instrument.

What a lovely music... everybody will be captured.

I cannot look away from that figure. Those melodious notes coming from the lyre chain my soul to that unknown face.

My heart leaps: he is looking at me with his almond amber eyes.

He has a serious focused look, while he keeps on playing his instrument.

I stop to watch him for a while, as he plays he looks at me with sad eyes, as if he is suffering.

Yes, that man is suffering. The music he plays is incredibly tormented.

Why his face has turned suddenly so sad.

I cannot bear the sight of that suffering.

His music is so sad, yet so wonderful.

I wish I could stay and listen to it forever, but something prevents it.

I'm turning in my bed. Among crumpled sheets. I feel that I'm waking up.

Images get even more blurry.

Even the man has disappeared. I still hear the music of his lyre, but I cannot see the man anymore.

I look for him everywhere, but I cannot find him.

Only blurred unfocused images surround me and become more and more unfocused... until they disappear.

My room was still buried in the black of the night. The winter sun was not up yet. The alarm clock on the desk in front of my bed informed me that it was about four o'clock in the morning.

I had dreamt that strange dream again. I dreamt that stranger again.

His music was so real that its notes stille kept on ringing in my head. I could even sing it.

I felt the sheets enveloping me. The bed was practically undone. Probably I had turned so much that my bed looked almost like a nest.

I turned on the lamp on my bedside table. I rearranged the sheets and went back under quilt, waiting for slumber to get hold of me again.

I replayed in my mind the melody I heard in my dream, until my eyelids dropped and I slowly fell back into sleep.