awful dreams

I'm asleep on a bench, a bench that knows my thoughts and erases my worries. Bliss is all I feel--joy greater than any birthday cake or Christmas gift could possibly bring. Cotton flits around my eyes and my nose seems to remember the itch it felt yesterday, but can't seem to remember the taste. I close my eyes, and it only seems like minutes until my eyelids are pried open by some unknown force. I can't will my body to stop, and my mind wants so much to keep them closed. But now I'm sitting up, and I'm leaving my bench. I'm leaving my bench of security, my bench to find happiness. My bare feet sink into the soil and the sticky topcoat spills out from inbetween my toes. For a moment I don't move. I don't want to move. I want to sink. Where will the mud take me? To what unknown worlds will I travel? But again my legs are seized by a ghost, and I'm forced to carry on...trudging, tripping, moving at a painfully slow pace. My teeth clench as thorns pierce my feet and I look around me at the barren landscape. It seems to go on forever, and I can't find the familiarity of the mountains, or of my precious bench. I feel torn between my thoughts and my aching legs, and as I think, I carry on. Where am I going? Why do I have this burning feeling to carry on? Are my human instincts finally taking over? I stretch my neck to see higher than the edge of the earth, hoping for an end. Hoping that the earth really is flat. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know the earth is a sphere, but my knowledge seems to conflict with my imagination, combining into something different and foreign, a growth that presents neither fact nor fiction. I finally collapse, and my elastic body piles on top of itself. It's all I can do not to cry. So I close my eyes as my face sinks into the grainy pink sand. 

This time, I awaken again on the bench, and my nose is nearly touching his. Two benches, two people. One field. I'm forcing myself not to move, not to blink, to understand. But I can't. And as he stares, my lips form the words I cannot speak and my feet begin to take my trek once again.