Mumblings and Murmurings: The Dream Journal of the Sleeping Traveler — Part 2

The fog was dense—white, fuzzy—yet the path I walked on was clear, the green grass separated to the dirt. I had walked here before, hundreds, thousands, almost ten thousand times. But familiarity didn't make this road any easier. Each time it was different. Sometimes they were the same, but distinct somehow, some indescribable way. Sometimes there wasn't even a walk to remember, just closed eyes and opened again. Those were the ones I wanted most of all. It seemed almost asinine, but it felt good not to exist, to experience what it's like to just be dead.

A figure came through the density, a silhouette that became clearer and clearer with each step in the grass-cleared path. But when I stood right before it, it was still a dark silhouette, a blur. Even still, somehow, someway, if asked I could still describe what this figure looked like. If I closed one eye, either eye, the features became visible.

He had no hair, or rather, he did, but it was shaven. The line had receded back to the top, and, despite the clean shave, I could still see wisps on the sides and back. He had wrinkles, lines around his features like tree bark that came together to form swirling knots and knobs. I wondered then if he felt them, if he had somehow accumulated decades of knowledge in them. He had black irises, but they looked dull and tired. Had he been standing there a while? Most times I meet figures that had been waiting for me. Was he one of those? His lips were sealed—not frowning nor smiling—a neutral expression as if he had to stay still for a portrait that was to be taken.

I grew tired of winking with each eye just to see him, and just accepted the blurred vision of seeing him with both eyes open. I then asked a question. What words I uttered, I can't recall. I knew the direction of my question, the essence of it, but whenever I try to remember exactly what I said, it was always babbling, gibberish, nonsensical strings that barely formed a thought. Yet I still knew what I asked: "Where to?" I had asked this out of familiarity of the path, knowing that the figures I encountered along it were usually guides. To my question, the man held out his right hand, and as I glanced down at it, I could oddly see it clearly. Upon glancing back up at the figure, he'd grown taller, or rather, I'd shrunk down. And after taking the hand, we began our walk.