The Dream : An Unfinished Business

This is the second time I'm having this dream. Not the same exactly but both had to do with the end of the world. And both times, all I remember is me scurrying to her house. Last time it was to rescue her but this time it was for an unfinished business. I'm a superstitious person. I believe that on the day that we are to be judged, those with unfinished businesses will be left to wander the ruins on Earth. Either because of that or that I had just finished reading Veronika Decides to Die, this time something scarier was happening. The people of Earth were going to die slowly. Poisoning maybe? Some kind of cosmic radiation? They were talking about it in the news and I believed it. Anything, no matter how preposterous, is believable in a dream. It is solely for that reason we have so many dreamers among us. Dreams exist in a realm of desires, fears and confusions all entangled in a harmless mesh we can easily walk out of.
Have you ever killed? Have you ever stolen? Have you ever talked about your strangest fetishes? Have you ever confessed your love to someone far from your reach? Have you ever apologised despite your ego acting against it? Dreams give you the opportunity to do these and much more. And you go for things in a state of trance, things that you would immediately regret in real life.  Is this why I wake up depressed some days and wish to resume the dream I just had, wish to give up on real life and live like a schizophrenic, in a world of my own, seperated from the laws and rules people set up that restrict me from my desires? Dreams don't have walls. 
I went to bed, but the sun was still up, knowing I might not wake up. " The afflicted person will die within 24 hours from exposure. Loss of teeth will be one of the very first symptoms", said the news reporter. My teeth felt loose in their sockets. Like when you're about to loose your milk tooth, and they hang from your gum ready to shed any moment. No other symptoms showed. Maybe because there weren't any, or because I chose not to believe in them. I closed my eyes and my mind was blank. The ghost of the unfinished business suddenly came to haunt me. I ran to the street. I ran a long distance but my legs felt no fatigue. I'm not a runner in real life but I didn't know that and ran further without tiring. Was there anarchy around me? Afterall people tend to grow insane when they realise they have nothing to lose. I couldn't tell what was happening in the periphery of my vision. My eyes were set ahead, saw no walls, independent of rationality, all I had to do then was get to her.

I'm no thief but I stole a bicycle on the way because the way ahead seemed too long to tread. Time was running out and maybe reality was catching up to me. I felt fatigue for the first time but still cycled on through the gravel. The road I saw then seems different from the one I remember. The real one feels so narrow. Her house didn't have any gates, it was open to all. Throwing the cycle aside I marched in.
I knew she was suffering from what I was suffering. What the whole world was suffering from. And just like for the world, my time was limited and so was hers.
The steps to her house seemed familiar. Perhaps I had climbed them before, when I was wandering without a destination. Those footsteps were more welcoming then.
I fell. My legs couldn't bear my weight any longer. But my head looked up to see he, returning my gaze.
"I'm sorry", I said and my legs didn't feel as tiresome as before.
Her reponse, I can't remember. Did she smile? I don't know. Did she burst out in anger? I don't know. Did she reduce to tears? Did I? The anwers are meaningless. The purpose of my journey had been reached. I could die in peace.
Here I woke up and sat upright on my bed. The sunlight was too bright, my eyes ached. I wasn't relieved that I wasn't dying. All I could see were the four walls that made my room.