Lost to Hypnagogia (SHORT STORY)

Lost to Hypnagogia

Embrace painting by Peter Wever ^^^

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Nepenthe: something that can make you forget grief or suffering.

Lucius walked through the purest and darkest scenery. The technicolour drained from the world to make him feel as though he wandered the dusty footage of a silent black-and-white film. The air was pregnant with moisture. After every creak from the wooden floors and the breaths released by Lucius followed a vast quietness. He advanced down the narrow hallway of the crumbling condominium whose walls resembled broken pavement. He passed a bucket overfilled with the leaking water from the ceiling, a broken lightbulb, a poorly tinted window revealing the nothingness of whiteness in the early evening air. Apartment door number two-hundred-three, apartment door number two-hundred-two. He stopped.

By the jamb of that door was a rolled up journal. The grey sheets, though thin, seemed slightly rough and vandalized by the ink. Lucius picked it up, not bothering to look at the printed words, and held it by his side. He began to thump on the thin wooden door and the number plate trembled consequently by every bang.

He didn't know why the place brought him so much sorrow. The melancholic aura escaped from the gap between the door and the cold floorboards. A bark could be heard from the flat down the corridor. He wondered when he had seen his dear friend last. Was it the two months past? feasibly three? Enthusiasm and apprehension had taken over him. There was no reason as it was his comrade. Why would he be nervous?  Fear is the cousin of excitement, it's only normal.  He thought.

Lucius was impatient and ill at ease. He hunted for his friend's keys in his pockets putting aside the gum wrapper, crumpled dollar bills and coins. He plucked the metal and twisted and a satisfying click echoed. In the dusty chamber sat Dimitri at the escritoire reading a book in content silence. "War and peace. I wonder...I wonder aloud where your dedication for such confounding novels comes from." Lucius had seen Dimitri read books of that kind countless times before.

"Oh my! Luca how have you been?"

He stood and hugged his friend fiercely. With a quick intake of breath he captured his timbery essence. Lucius spoke as they patted their hands on each other's backs. "Get out of those books Mitri. There's a world waiting for you out there that you've left undiscovered to retreat into another."

Dimitri broke the hug and put his hands on his shoulders, smiling brightly. "If I look at this book long enough," He paused and raised the book to his face. "Perhaps the pages will turn back into trees."

Lucius smirked and stared at him. Recalling hearing it being said that the eyes were the gateways to the soul. He watched his crystal eyes. "Mitri you can be quite the little bumblebee with the sharpest stinger at times, you know. I see it ever so clearly. Can't say I don't enjoy it."  One of a kind he thought.

Dimitri grinned an incredulous grin. The boy had a fiery passion for ebullience and proneness for laughter. Always so exhilarated. "As sharp as a blade and stronger than the metal that sharpens the blade". He moved to the couch and dusted off the cushions. Once done, he went to the other side of the chamber and closed the windows. The melodious winds that quietly found a way into the chamber like a fresh ghostly sigh vanished.

"Please, do sit." He offered.

"Of course!" Lucius sat and placed the newspaper on the dwarfish glass table at the center of the dusty rug. It now gave company to the dry petals that fell from the flower vase.

"Though I have to say, Lucius—-I do read quite a lot. It is of great primacy. Learning so many things, pivotal or not, my soul enjoys the written." He went to his escritoire and organized the scattered books and pencils. "I could prattle forever on about the financial weakness of the crown leading to conflict in 1455 amongst the War of the Roses. The great ancient civilizations. How the Assyrians weakened the Egyptian empire. How the Persian empire took over for only a decade until Alexander the Great conquered. How the last of the line of Macedonian kings and queen, Cleopatra the seventh surrendered to the Romans and killed herself to steer clear of humiliation. Cultures and values. Lost cities and hidden kingdoms. ¡Oh! I see it ever so clearly."