Futile Valour
Content Warning: The following text references sensitive themes such as paranoia and self harm. Please proceed at your own discretion.
I have a recurring nightmare.
I never remember how it starts. I just happen to be there again- back in the same building, the same corridors, the same rooms. Maybe it's a side effect of tracing my fingers along the same doorways everyday for fourteen years. The grounds are an insatiable hungry mouth, swallowing me whole, savouring my terror on its tongue.
Icarus sits quietly in the labyrinth. He knows he cannot escape its twisting halls.
It is not hard to pick out discrepancies when I am awake. No, that door wasn't green. No, the stairs didn't go that way. No, that wasn't the view from that window. My fickle memory isn't immune to being warped, but it distorts me with it. When I enter the wrong room in the wrong clothes, I fail at the spot the difference game because the feeling of incompatibility has remained the same. When people look at me in my nightmare, they can pick me out immediately; it has never been hard for them.
I open my eyes and my ghost feet walk upon the path created by the living, unable to stray. I take the long way around, climbing stairs with ease this time, the railing shaped under my palm. I look for doors, walking into rooms that are full, empty, and somewhere in between. I speak names that I haven't said out loud in years, but those who bear them are right behind me when I call. I wake up the dead and watch as they replay their lives, following the script I never learned the lines for.
Icarus knows to not make a sound when his father spills hot wax on his shoulders. Icarus knows it's not the Minotaur that will kill him, but Minos himself if the ruler catches word of his attempted escape.
Payment is always due. I am never invited to sit down. I weigh the cost of breaking myself up to hold some semblance of control. They ask me why I don't have an answer, and I beg them to understand I didn't know there was a question in the first place. I cry and promise to never be bad again, to repent for my sins, to do it right the next time, to please be given one more chance. New and old blend, and I see someone who asks me why I perpetuate the cycle. I apologise and plead for forgiveness, knowing it will never come. Maybe I never want it to. When I wake, the memories of dream and reality entwine, and I carry the burden like it's always been real.
Always look forward, never turn around. Nurse a crippled fear back to health that I will never look in the eye. Feel the tumour press on my occipital lobe and learn to recognise the pulsing canary-in-a-coal-mine headache in my peripheral vision. Know how far away I am at all times, hold the numbers in my head lest I slip. Try to look it in the eye. Fail and console myself that it's not worth it. Run away from it a thousand times. Laugh it off when I wake and ground myself in the distance between us. Carry the paranoia in every step that it's only a matter of time before I am in stark focus.
I look at every windowsill and my handwriting from ten years ago tells me to run. The invisible barrier with eyes that stare at me lock me in place. I try to run away a thousand times and betray myself by staying. A lifetime of being told to grin and bear it eats me alive and I would bore a thousand holes into my skull to wake up if I could.
The corridors open up to the sky above and the sea below. On exceptionally lucky days, I realise I can leave. On exceptionally lucky days, I climb the bannister and jump. I brace myself and ride the winds upward, reaching for the white clouds. A blue sky means hope and I let it cradle me. My prison disappears, my mind clinging onto escape. Those days feel like a victory, a fulfilment of a promise, the breaking of chains.
When Icarus tasted the warmth of the sun and the salt of the spray, he was free. When Icarus plummeted, he was free. When Icarus died, he was free.
I didn't trust the winds today. I dive downwards into the water, clear as the sky above, an escape nonetheless. As above, so below- the walls, the corridors, and the building vanish. When I look up, I see refracted light retracting; I sink and let the waves wash away the world, diluting my fear until I taste of nothing.
Thank you for reading! Here's some thoughts I have as the author of this piece. If you're someone who despises authorial intent, I expressly permit you to leave. However, I can't help but talk about it a little.
This is a piece based on a recurring nightmare I have had for the better part of the last decade. I wanted to capture a variety of scenes from these dreams and recreate the feelings of helplessness I felt in those moments of experiencing those dreams.
I am intentionally vague on the details of the nightmare because frankly, they're not important. The ending of the piece reads as suicidal (in my opinion). That does not reflect my reality, but it fits really well with the rest of it, and can I not have a little fun as a writer when I see the opportunity to tie everything up in a pretty little bow? Truthfully, water is quite comforting to me, and diving into it represents the discovery of another escape route.
A big reason why I've even been able to write this down in the first place is because the nightmares have gotten easier to deal with. I write this piece in earnest- writing has always been a way for me to help me insert meaning into my life. I do not write it to be inspiration, to be a guide, to be a companion. I write it to explore and push the boundaries of my own feelings. I say this not to sound pretentious (okay, maybe a little) but to ask you, dear reader, to sit with me in my vulnerability and hopefully feel a little uncomfortable too.
Ta ta for now!