Do you remember when you were younger? Do you remember how dreams could terrify and test you? That you couldn't tell waking from sleeping? That you'd alternatively look forward to and be terrified by sleep, because it was clear to you then that dreams were another world - every bit as real as this world, but just a bit more real? Remember those dreams where you would run? Run so very fast, grass whispering under your feet and you'd run faster, faster and jump and you'd be floating, then you'd jump and push and you'd be flying, soaring through the air across the field near your house, then across the house, then the oceans and then... Do you remember how you managed to tell when a dream was going to turn into a nightmare? Go on, remember - things would slow down, and pulse, a threatening hum would fill the air and you'd know, just know that things were about to change, so you could push the dream just like that, and manage to avert the nightmare from taking over, move it out of the way... Do you remember those times when you weren't sure when you were dreaming, so you'd do that thing? You know what I mean, that thing, the thing that would prove to you that you were dreaming, and that you could take over and bend the dream your way. Maybe you threw a stone down at the ground and watch it bounce off up into the sky like a rubber ball, or threw something at a window and watched it bulge and distort in the way that glass never did. And then you knew, you knew that this was a dream, and then the real work could begin... Do you remember when it stopped? Do you remember that as you got older your tricks didn't work any more? You'd run and jump but you'd be pulled down. You'd think yourself silly, childish - of course you can't fly, it's only a dream. You can't really fly, so there's no point here, not really. The nightmares would cheat, would hide their colours before pouncing on you, twisting and turning and making you experience them. Why would they do this? Why would dreams turn into nightmares and make you experience them, why can't you avoid them like you did before? And that time when you throw the brick at the window in your dream, and the window didn't bulge, the brick didn't bounce, but smashed the window, and you stood there in shock, horror, ohmigodwhathaveidone... and then you woke up and looked round and saw the curtains flapping in the breeze, showing smashed glass and you felt cold, scared, and then you really woke up, and saw that you hadn't smashed the windows after all, it was just a dream with in a dream, poking you, making you feel the shame, telling you that you can't control dreams. Not any more. Do you remember?
