Dreams.

Is all we seem but a dream within a dream?

I wake, shivering with sweat. The sun has not risen yet and the night is still.
It’s raining outside and I look to my window. The rain is upside down in this world in the sky, in the clouds, in the trees.
They’re not trees, they’re shadows, memories of a time.
Where am I?
Who am I?

My hands are not mine, my eyes are not mibe, slightly blurred on the edges, I rub them hard thinking perhaps I am still half asleep. My vision doesn’t clear.
“Where am I?” I whimper and jump at my own voice, gruff, hoarse, like I’ve swallowed a cup of sand and need to cough it all up again.
I wheeze and a puff of smoke exits my lips, its warm, as if a fire is inside…
About to explode into flames.

I feel for a light switch but it is not there, I feel around the room in the dark but find nothing. Soft light dances through the shining dewy window as the sun begins to rise.

My new foreign eyes glare at markings on the wall, red and rough, scrapped over in a desperate hurry.

Follow your dreams. Follow your dreams. Follow your dreams. Follow your dreams.

They repeat over and over again. Endlessly falling into each other all over the wall.
I sit and watch the sun beams of the morning wash over the red writing.
In the middle of the wall written in huge, thick black dripping writing is the word CANCELLED.

Bold and harsh across the desperate mantra of red.
The bold black word is still dripping and it’s ink slides down the wall to the ground and it slides up the ceiling to the roof, following the traces of red marks overlapping them in the morning sun.
The bright red writing disappears, overwhelmed and sacrificed by the black thick writing oozing from it’s mother CANCELLED.
I need to stand, but I rise and fall down with a force, chains hold my wrists in place, chains attached to the floor.
The floor that is cold in the sun, the floor that commands me to obey. 
And i’m dressed in a suit, a business suit.
Do I work?

I peer behind me out the window into the morning light, I am up high, I can see a city but the sky is gone, blocked by black smog, the same colour that now pools on the floor and grows thicker and darker and stronger in colour and smell.

This isn’t real. This isn’t right.

The black colour oozes towards me like tar on the floor and the chains pull me down so I lay and cannot fight as I watch the black ingulf me.
I cannot scream, I don’t know how. I feel small, tired, depressed, anxious and worthless.
Light beams onto my new silky black skin and I blink rapidly as the sun comes in the window brighter and brighter in the black room.

Obey. Conform. Obey.

I walk with a black briefcase. My money is black. My credit is black. My money is black. My money is black.

And it’s real because I have it and you don’t.

I walk in sync with black shiny shoes with other black clad figures.
We work, we eat, we sleep, we work.
Get up.
Go home.
Go to sleep.
Repeat.

Follow your responsibilities.
Follow your duties.
Follow your rules.
Follow your money.
Follow your money.
Follow your money.
But don’t follow your dreams.

There is a child playing in rainbow rain, he is laughing with big blue eyes full of wonder.
Follow your dreams, follow your dreams.
He sings again and again.
And no one stops.
And no one believes him.