Dark Horse Arts and Sciences

Agatha cannot come to terms with what has been happening in her life lately. She hasn’t been able to sleep. This insomnia that left her around four years ago is back to trouble her. It’s not that she doesn’t try, she tries a lot; but in vain. She’s been awake for fourteen days straight now. Anyone who has gone through this terrible situation knows how painful and devastating it is both physically and emotionally. The fact that she can’t sleep anymore has deprived her of the chance to delve into the state of nothingness; the state in which there is nothing but empty shallow void spread all over space and time; the state in which our own consciousness gets tricked into a state of our subconscious mind. But the sleep deprivation isn’t what bothers Agatha; it’s the fact that she can’t have dreams without any sleep that kills her from inside. She’s missing that surreal yet magical world of absurd lucid dreams that will fill her with ecstasy and exhilaration even if they aren’t real. She’s feeling every ounce of pain of not being able to close her eyes off and pass out to utter nothingness and void. It is the blank state or unconsciousness that she seeks.
She wants to delve into the abstract world of dreams and visions, which is, in fact, better than this harsh reality. She wants to explore the absurd and its absurdity where she would be flying in the blue infinite sky and swim across the boundless ocean seeking that never ending horizon. But she can’t.
She wants to traverse through the world of fantasy where she can do anything she wants; where she can have her daughter back. But she can’t. She can’t, because she can’t sleep. She can’t sleep, because she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know why she is having trouble sleeping in those dead long nights. She hasn’t consulted any doctor yet, but she won’t. She won’t, because she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about anything anymore at all after the dismal of her beloved daughter. She’s frustrated with this harsh reality for its act of utter despair and misery towards her. This reality took her daughter away from her; into another world altogether where she can’t see her again; where she can’t feel her soft cheeks touching against her own; where she can’t feed her with her own hands. This misery and potential horribleness becomes unimaginably painful and depressing for her.
However, some days ago, dreams were the only way to communicate with her deceased daughter. While she was asleep, her soul would detach from her physical self and enter into that world where only few people have been able to traverse. She possessed that power to connect to the paranormal, but only when she was asleep. In that world, she could communicate with her, or at least see her. She had once penetrated her daughter’s abstract reality where she beheld the sight of really weird things; things that one cannot fathom to comprehend or even imagine.
But she was brave enough to see her daughter with a one-eyed creature having the face of an elephant and the body of a crow. Her daughter was conversing with her in that crow-cum-elephant’s language. Agatha couldn’t comprehend what to do; yet she approached her in the end. But her daughter didn’t recognize her. She kept on talking to that creature, but didn’t notice Agatha at all. This sent over Agatha a sense of hopelessness and pointlessness of it all. If she couldn’t talk with her daughter, what was the point of being here in the first place? She couldn’t bear it anymore, and finally she left.
Why didn’t her daughter recognize her? Has she forgotten her? Do the deceased no longer remember their earthlings?
These kinds of questions roamed around in Agatha’s mind. She wanted to get to that unconscious state and meet her all over again. But she couldn’t. She had been trying, but in vain.
Our dreams can be really absurd, filled with unimaginable things that our limited understanding of reality and the universe around us, cannot comprehend. They show us things that contradict our individual notions of reality. Sometimes, we enjoy them; and sometimes we don’t. Our mind can be a really messed up place. That subconscious mind sometimes makes us do things we never imagined we could. But we can never know what lay ahead of those dreams and visions; how deeply layered they can be.
Agatha had those kinds of dreams; deeply layered, disturbing and filled with extremely surreal and absurd imagery. Still those dreams were a breath of fresh air devoid of the cruel and miserable reality. Hence, she wanted to escape; escape from this bleak world of darkness that is around her, to some other land where there would be at least some hope and excitement for her. And eventually she did.
Two days later, her body was found in the sea, drowning. Why in the sea though? Nobody knows.
Maybe she wanted to see what lay beyond that infinite horizon; maybe she thought she could find her daughter there beyond that vast boundless ocean.

Author: Som Abhisek.