He glanced at the laptop. It said 1:57am. Zac had been editing the “Elephant vs Durian” video all night because his manager asked. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already done it, but the manager kept adding and changing her expectations on the video. It was the 3rd version that Zac was working on, trying to insert some meme-worthy videos in between the plain shots because the manager wanted it to look funny. Zac was visibly displeased, but he wasn’t even sure what he was mad at.
“I still need to wake up at 6am for my real work,” Zac complained silently to himself.
Zac wasn’t really upset with sleeping late, but this was a very convenient excuse for him to stop digging deeper into his nicotine-drugged mind.
Zac hit the “export” button, an estimated 3 hours 14 minutes for rendering.
“I’ll call it a night then.”
But the night didn’t end there.
He tried to fall asleep. He knew he was sleep-deprived. But, somehow sleep was not coming. While trying to switch his breathing pattern into sleep mode, he accidentally used his brain to think. The vibe of Nujabes’ songs playing on his phone had become different. His first random sleepy thought came to visit, and then a thousand more, making him more awake than before.
He first thought about his camping plan for the coming weekend and the preparation thereof, and then it dawned on him that an elephant that used to be really close to him had just recently died. From that point, his old nihilistic self kicked in and took charge of the brain for the rest of the night.
Sleep time is Zac’s most vulnerable time. He is used to controlling his emotions through song choices, forced crying, voice changing and other bodily tactics, and they work just fine. But when it comes to the time to sleep, the muscles of his body need to be as relaxed as possible. That means he won’t be able to do anything physically to change his mood and thoughts.
He was so drowned in his depressing thoughts — no — he was bewitched. Depression is dangerous and even life-threatening at times, but Zac always found it beautiful. Instead of pain, he was suffocating comfortably from depression as it squeezed his lung cavity tight like a strangling python. At this point he could barely move his physical body, though he felt as if he was being hugged by one of his oldest friends, so full of love and warmth.
It felt like hours had passed. He picked up the phone and it said 3:02am. He finally accepted the fact that he would never get enough sleep for his shift in the morning. Interestingly, he almost fell asleep instantaneously after this.
—
This dream started with him riding his motorcycle — same model as the one he had in real life — to the mall. Needless to say, he had absolutely zero idea why he was going to the mall. He parked his motorcycle at the parking lot, which looked almost identical to the actual one in his real-life workplace, and then entered the mall.
Once inside, he saw a big group of roughly 20 people standing in the middle of the brick red tiled floor and welcoming him like an old friend. Some of those faces were foreign and some were familiar, but he could not name anyone of them. They told him excitedly that today was the admission day of the university. He took a closer look at the mall, and realized that it had indeed fused with a university. The mall was the one that was next to his childhood neighbourhood. He didn’t go to that mall often, but frequently enough to remember that mall layout. It was like a donut, with walkways forming a complete circle on each floor while the middle is taken out except the lowest floor, so that in the case of mall events they can put giant displays or shows in the middle of the mall and everyone would be able to look at it. The only difference between this mall and the one in real life, though, was that the floors were extending into the underground instead of rising up like a normal building, although the entire mall was still well-lit because of the sky window. That, and the fact that the floor had brick red tiles, which were a signature of a university in his hometown which he visited several times but never applied.
Although they told him that it was admission day, nothing looked like admission day. The group started playing baseball and running after each other in the mall, which all the mall-goers were clearly shopping like regular mall-goers.
Zac was dumbfounded. He didn’t even knew that the group of people and he had just been told that it was the admission day. But when they invited him to join the baseball game, he didn’t think too much about it and started playing with them, jumping from floor to floor catching the ball and the people. Things, however, started getting awkward near sunset.
One of the familiar faces took out a zip bag from his pants, in which there were some transparent candies with a hint of rose colour and in the shape of a Hershey’s. A beam of yellowish orange sunlight shined through one of the candies and refracted into Zac’s eyes. They were truly beautiful candies.
“Does anyone want to take one before going home,” asked the nameless face.
Before Zac had the time to blink, another person had already magically stolen a candy and put it in their mouth. They got high instantly.
It IS crystal meth, Zac thought to himself. It looked like a Hershey’s and shined like a rosy diamond, but it was, disappointingly, just crystal meth!
Things started getting chaotic because all those 20 people were pushing against Zac at once, as he was standing directly in front of the meth dude. The weight of people ramming into him made him nervous and hard to breath. He was too weak to push back, so he just closed his eyes and hoped it would stop soon. In the chaos a female voice asked him if he wanted one also, to which he said no.
Shortly, people stopped pushing against him. When he opened his eyes, all those people were already walking away in all directions, and they all looked high.
Seems like I am the only one who said no, Zac said to himself with a disappointed face. All those people seemed so active and athletic in the baseball game just not long ago.
Zac slowly walked back to the mall parking lot and looked for his motorcycle. There was a huge cardboard box resting on top of the seat. He couldn’t remember buying anything back at the mall, but he was still in too much shock to give a care. He simply put the big box, which was surprisingly light, on his laps and turned the key. The box was big enough to block his vision to the rear mirrors completely, but again, he wasn’t in the mood to give a care at this point.
He was about halfway back to his childhood home, when suddenly another motorcycle appeared next to him. It was Boy, his elephant camp colleague! It was the first known person appearing in this dream, so seeing him cheered Zac up instantly. They drove side by side for a little longer until Boy turned to the parking lot of a building. It wasn’t Zac’s home, but he felt like chitchatting with his colleague so he stopped the car too.
“I’m coming to chill with my friends,” Boy told Zac in Thai, smiling.
Zac smiled back at Boy.
Suddenly, Boy took out a plastic produce bag from his shorts. It was all wrinkled up but Zac could still see through the bag. There was some whiteish powder, probably ground up meth, and a bamboo straw.
“Do you want some before you go home,” asked Boy.
The smile on Zac’s face disappeared.
At this moment, Zac’s vision started zooming out and the phone alarm clock started getting louder.
Zac had already turned off the alarm clock subconsciously before even opening his eyes. He first gazed at the ceiling, then the laptop which had long finished rendering and was now showing nothing more than a black screen. And then he gazed at the ceiling again.
Being forced out of a dream – especially a non-Lucid one – does that sometimes. Instead of coming back to the real world from the trance, leaving the dream puts him into a trance. Everything in the real world would become so foreign and derealized, as if the real world is just one big lucid dream.
“I’m going to be so tired today,” Zac finally put together his first thought after staring into the blank for a solid five minutes.