a dream [2019]

Strange it was. Last Sunday was a lazy day. I spent all day watching television. Finally tired I must have dozed off lays in the evening and dreamt it was already deep night. I was engrossed in my homework as the minutes ticked by.

My bedroom door creaked open, and my mother whispered, “it is already 10 pm, I’m going to sleep”. She closed the door and walked away. I returned to my essay that I had to complete. My hands pained from all the writing. Finally, I finished and walked into the living room for a chocolate. Everything was still, it was eerily quiet and heavy with that silence. Suddenly, a loud tick-tock noise thundered in my ears, and I spun around to look at the grandfather clock. The minute hand had reached 12 and the hour hand was paused at 10:00. Did my mother not tell me she will be going to sleep at 10:00? I wondered to myself. Then assuming I have misunderstood I went back to my own room the noise in my ear ringing. As I tried to turn the fan on it would not start neither would the light. I want to sleep feeling uneasy within my dream and the musty smell of the room engulfed me. I woke entered my mother’s room and asked feeling confused and dreading the answer “what time did you fall asleep”? “10:05, I was absolutely exhausted” she replied.

 A nagging confusion stayed in my head and made me uneasy. The ride to school was gloomy and the sky was grey. I felt no better than I had last night. Had it been 10 o’clock for 2 hours? I was terrified of the answer. On reaching school I went straight to class. My friends were laughing and talking. I wanted to join in, but I was distracted. Everything I touched seemed cold and I shivered. My mind kept zooming to the previous night. The teacher walked in, and routine school began. I shoved my heart into my work and pushed the thoughts of loops in linear time from my mind. My day progressed and before I knew it was time for the last class of the day, physics. My teacher walked in happily. We wished her and began our work on thermal expansion. I seemed to struggle with the simplest of sums and felt helpless. When my teacher began to dictate a definition, she started going fast and did not pause for even a moment. All of us were looking here and there to try to see what we had missed. None of us could keep up least of all me feeling dazed and even more frightened. All at once a chorus play could be heard “miss, we need some more time!” As the words escaped my lips all the white noise in the room was gone and my teacher stood still. The cool breeze brushing against my face dissipated. I could not believe it! It could not be true. Not again. My mind was once again reeling in the idea of the time warp. As if to confirm my suspicions my ears were filled with a booming tick-tock noise and when I turned my head to face my friends, I expected to see them as shocked but instead I saw 38 children raise their hands and clap them to their years just as I had done moments earlier. They did not know what the ringing meant, but I recognised the 10 o’clock gongs of the clock. Almost immediately everything was pitch black except for the ratio between alpha beta and gamma that was part of the definition we were writing. When I rubbed my eyes and sat up in bed I could no longer tell whether it was a dream in a dream or simply the day I had lived, an odd 13^th of June.

[Teacher’s note: interesting!]