A Dreamer`s Guide To Reality Read online

r`s Guide To Reality

  By Codrin Paveliuc Olariu

  Copyright 2014 Codrin Paveliuc-Olariu

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  Table of Contents

  The beginning

  The conflict

  The resolution

  Message to readers

  About the author

  Connect with Codrin

  To be published

  The beginning

  It all started about 20 years ago on a sunny spring break afternoon when all you could hear were the sounds of passing cars, kicking up dirt on the street, and voices of parents yelling at their children not to go too far. It was awkwardly quiet on the playground near the old, grey apartment building whose outer layer of soft beige was quickly decaying, leaving nothing but the old cement plates to look at. Although the swings were usually disputed amongst all children nearby, that was not the case today. All the children were crammed around him trying to get as close as possible to hear better the stories that he used to invent, stories that described both the past and the future. He used to imagine wars in which the kids would fight and win, magical lands filled with creatures that you would have said only genetics could ever create or perfect futures where wealth of all people was no longer a concept and where all people were truly happy. He used to invent chivalry stories with friends conquering kingdoms just to save the people; he used to tell beautiful, romanticized love stories in which the children around him would play the leading roles.

  But it all changed that afternoon. Interrupting him and annoying the children around, his grandfather called out for him. His voice was different as predicting the bad news that he was about to receive, news that would change the way he looked at the world from that point forward. Gregory sat up and slowly walked home.

  He entered the old looking apartment that his grandparents bought dozens of years ago, a growing old place with raggedy-old carpets that were there for years and have begun losing their colors, making the apartment look like a black and white photo of times long past. His grandfather asked him to sit in the old armchair in the living room that had a greenish model of a joust placed on it as though the knights were ready to come out and fight it to the end, but were hampered in doing it. Both his grandparents were standing alongside him when his mother and sister walked in.

  They both had tears in their eyes and could barely walk the short two meters distance from the door to the living room. It was a dark hallway; the lights were turned off giving the situation an even darker, horror movie feel, pumping his body full of adrenaline.

  His mother approached him, but something like an invisible force field seemed to prevent the two from getting closer to each other. She stood a meter in front of him when she gave him the terrible news of his father`s death. He flinched, but it wasn`t what you’d expect from a 10-year old boy who`s bad day is when he doesn`t win at hide and seek. He stood there like an ancient Greek statue depicting the punishment of Sisyphus. No movement, no cringing. No tears coming out of his eyes, no sense of sorrow. Only the sense of hardness appeared on his face.

  His eyes started moving rapidly. It was the kind of motion people see in you when your mind starts calculating probabilities and estimating risks. It was the twitch that makes your skin crawl, looking like goose bumps. It was the feeling that you get when you watch a movie or a TV show in which you could imagine yourself playing the lead character over and over again, trying each time to change the way things turn out, but never being able to do so because of that damn script.

  It was a sense of déjà vu. He felt this time and time again for years now. He always thought these were mere coincidences that a child`s mind manufactures. He often listened to his friends telling him things that he heard them say before, but he believed it to be a fantasy, a well written explanation of what they did all day long. But this time was different. He wasn`t on the playground anymore and he wasn`t hearing the same old stories from his friends about who won a game or who saw what movie. This was the first time he realized that the accidents, the flukes of luck he had in the past winning games or getting his homework done faster were not accidents.

  He remembered that he always knew the answers to questions he`s been asked at school; he always knew where to hide and where to seek. He saw these in his mind and followed his instinct. Or what he thought it was his instinct.

  20 years later and he is long past the day he found out that his father died. They weren`t even that close; they were simply two people living in the same dusty, old apartment, sharing food and discussing about how their day went. If it wasn`t for the blood connection and a sudden, alcohol and tobacco induced death, they would have been total strangers today.

  No common interests, no common dreams; he was proud of his report cards and his grades, dreaming of the day when he would go to college and live the fabulous life which every kid his age saw in the movies. His father, on the other hand, didn`t care too much about grades or school. When his father finished high school, he got a comfy job driving a truck, moving from day to night shifts, giving him the possibility to provide for his family while not wasting too much energy on something he didn`t like doing. He never dreamed outside the box he was trapped in, that small border town where everything moved at a slower pace than everywhere else; that town where, if you miss that one chance you get to change your life, you get stuck forever.

  Gregory was now a healthy 30-year old man with a good job, a family that was the envy of the suburbs in which their white pickets fence, three bedrooms, two bathrooms house stood. The memories of that day long passed now and only the glimpses in black and white, yellow cornered photos were a harsh reminder of what he had gone through. He had sometimes flashbacks of the past, but he always put it on the fact that he had a hard day at work, stressed out of having to support an entire team on his shoulders.

  The conflict

  That one night changed everything in his cozy, quiet suburban life. He woke up all sweaty at 3 am, scared of what he dreamt. He had dreams like this before, but they were never so vivid.

  He got up, went to the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face. He saw in the mirror a scared, wrinkled face man, with his eyes red from the lack of sleep. This wasn`t the first night he woken up like this, but it was the first night in a long time.

  He started pacing around through the house, opening up his computer and going through the colored 5 square meters kitchen, trying to think of whether he needed to eat or not. He sat down at his shiny new computer that his wife bought for him a week before, preparing to get some work done now that he couldn`t sleep. A steaming cup of coffee stood right beside him as though it was ready to jump on him if he tried to sleep again.

  The dream was not a puzzle of his subconscious mind. It didn`t take pieces from his memories of movies he had seen, songs he has heard and stories that his friends told him. This was something new, something unexpected. It was a glimpse in the future. The night before, he dreamt about his father, but it wasn`t a usual, memory like dream. It was a dream of something that didn`t happen. He saw how his father died as he was there, as he was watching the movie of his death. He saw it over and over, going through multiple, ever changing sequences. It was a black and white, paranoia fueled dream, where he moved from a quiet, care free death to homicide, and suicide.

  He n
ow sat looking at the blank, white screen of his computer, trying to make sense of what has happened that sleepless night. Gregory was a rational man, with a firm grasp on reality, who put science over religion and knowledge above all else. And now he was afraid he was losing his minds.

  He went through the details of the dream, focusing his attention on what he saw and not on what he did inside it. He saw himself at work, trying to finish that month`s last project before the deadline that he himself pushed on him, knowing that a well-deserved, peaceful vacation with his family was soon following.

  The next morning, at 6 am, he started his 5 kilometers jog along the narrow brick looking sidewalk which guarded his paces from his house to the nearby park. The quiet, cool spring morning was the perfect setting for him to put his thoughts back to order before heading out to work. This was his morning ritual, running in the silent neighborhood before everyone else got up and before that morning`s, every day shuttle back and forward to work and home started, crowding the small streets with cars that seemed identical.

  He hated that 7 am ceremony in which wives kissed their husbands goodbye from the door and wished them a nice day at work. He didn`t put