The Majestic Front
Dreams…and Time.
I toss and turn at night, sleeping in such a sound sleep. Dreaming, who knows where, a rainforest I believe. The beauty of the water falling from the trees, the frogs jumping across the ground and all the flowers this place had to offer. It was all dismantled when I heard that voice pierce through my dreams, “The end of all things that grow is near.” The screams and cries from my dream turned into a nightmare. I was no longer in this rainforest, but witnessing a sea of fire standing in the middle of a town trying to find my way back home. The cries of the people all around me as they burst into flames, melting at sight. Such a horrible smell... such a horrible death. I woke up shaken in sweat drenched sheets, panting... hoping this was just a dream. Scenes that will never escape my mind for they are seared into it, like a scar that never seems to heal. Our planet is infested with such disgust, such filth, the evil is so overbearing. Has it now infested my dreams? Do I worry too much? A knot forms in my stomach to the thought that humanity will tear itself apart. Am I much better? This dark that pulls at me, pulling me down as I struggle to wake up and face the day. Am I still dreaming?
These nightmares have now seemed to persist for months, starting out just a day at a time over the course of a few months to the better part of half a year, into nightly visions of the same prophetic end. Humanity will destroy itself due to the way it acts and there is nothing that any one person can do to stop it. I really should try to call out, form a foundation and get followers to just love the world and preach love to all who hate. “Hahaha...,” I laugh at how many would actually listen to this plea, human beings are so strung up on their beliefs, so power hungry to ever break outside of the box.
I wake up from the same nightmare and decide to get some fresh air, perhaps a new perspective on how this world is. Drawn clad my dark hood, I take to the streets. The first fool whom I encounter cannot walk straight. This man slurs his speech as he passes me but I stop him to ask him for a moment of his time. “There is not enough time on this day for my life son,” he proclaims ,”the pub down the road closes at 3am, it's now midnight. This gives me four... count them on my hand one, two, Ffffeeee hours of drinks and games!!!” He pats my shoulder and stumbles off into the distance to meet his midnight meeting. I let out a deep sigh.. and wondered exactly why I decided to get fresh air tonight. “Not enough time…” I repeated his words in my head.
I didn’t get too far down the road when my thoughts were interrupted by the cries of a few small children, probably at least 2 or 3 of them, all young, crying at this hour at night. What were they even doing up, why would they be in such horror. Perhaps it was nightmares that woke the youngest up and the rest who shared her room awoken also but my thought was a sadly mistaken judgment call after I heard the father yelling the cracks of his belt on one of the little ones' backs. The wife even antagonized... and I thought, how can one be so heartless to their own flesh. Just as I reached into my pocket to pull out my cell phone, police had arrived at the residence. This must have been going on for hours. You could see the man across the street in his window looking over at the mess with hopes that finally someone would save those children. “Some asshole should've shut his fucking windows tonight,” I thought to myself wondering how many other human beings get away with this shit on a day to day basis. Cops barraged into his homestead and arrested this piece of trash. The man, dressed in a wife beater with stains on his shirt, with the wife appearing as some strung out junkie, is cuffed and thrown into the back of the car. The children were taken away, hopefully to some better home. I decided to turn back around to my place to try to fall back asleep.
Upon opening my front door, I kick off my shoes to relax. My feed shows another grim moment, as one of our friends decided to take her life. Maybe the years of abuse from her partner drove her to leave the world, or the bullies that laughed at her growing up. The world is such a rotten place sometimes, it baffles me why people can’t just be nice to one another. Regardless of what happened, she is no longer on Earth with us. In one day, from what I have seen and have dreamt about, humanity truly is on a path for destruction. When it rains, it pours and tonight was a night full of emotion. I stopped scrolling my phone hoping that what I just saw was that of a dream and I would close my eyes to wake up the next morning into a world where people just got along. I went back upstairs, laid my head onto the pillow and closed my eyes. We had lost a friend, and time seemed to distort a bit as I fell fast asleep.
My dream turned to another nightmare thinking of our friend we lost. She was so distraught already. Her life seemed to be filled with drama and one thing after another continued to play out not in her favor. Life always does tend to get better, but inside her mind, she thought not. All the hate and her struggle put her over the edge. It did not take much thought as to what she wanted out of life. In some strange nightmarish perception, my mind placed her at the top of a cliff awaiting to fall to her death. No one knows how long she was up there, nor what she thought about as she jumped from the cliff. My mind tried to stitch together the pieces, and as night shifts to day, her body was found at the very bottom of the mountain.
I woke up again, breaking a sweat. “At least it was a different nightmare, and not the same revelation that has been haunting me for months,” I thought to myself. So much has happened in the last few days, could this mean that the dawn of fate is upon us? Is my mind just playing tricks on me and keeping me in this endless nightmare? Is time real? The world literally has seemed to engulf me with so many questions left unanswered. Here I am, by myself, taking in so much of this ugly world in just a few short days. Life is rather confusing and at the same time so very cumbersome. Do I have a sudden realization of the evil in the world?
I take a moment and leave my dwelling and begin to walk towards the forest where the river turns into a water basin. So many thoughts running through my head as I reach the spring, “Why is there so much hate in the world,” I cry out as I fall to my knees. This is one of those times where reality hits so hard the only person to talk to is the creator himself. Sometimes I wonder if he even listens to us, listens to me. We are all given the gift of free will however and someday, I will shake hands with him for this life. It is all about the challenges and how you make it through, even though this world is so very ugly. I don’t think anyone or anything can hear my plea. So very alone on Earth do I feel.
I stand up and decide to go back home, trying to drown my thoughts in some mindlessness for the evening. I turn on the television set and start to flick through the channels that are on. Reruns of our favorite sitcoms we have seen hundreds of times, not my forte’ tonight. Let me catch up on today’s happenings... another bombing, another death of a superstar. What ranks them a better human being, a better individual than myself, or that of the beggar from down the alleyway? Watching the masses ravage the streets, stealing televisions and electronics. Another missing person. Another murder. Media outlets fill our lives full of these disgusting views, is this what humanity enjoys? Spend your precious time becoming another hypnotized sheep.
Does anyone ever stop to think of the beggar? Everyone is going on living their lives as they see fit day to day, for themselves and no one else. The media speaks of something else and the masses flood once more and people herd like sheep from what is given to them by the media. I don’t think this will ever change... The world works too fast, works for too much hype for us to sit back and realize the sheer beauty of this world that has been given to us. We were put on this Earth with nothing but the nature that surrounds us and we as humans are destroying it. Rainforests cut down each day to make more room for another big market industry leader, once again, such power... Will we ever go back to living off the land, enjoying Earth in all its splendor, no, this is a world in which we will never see, one we will never know. I flip the channel to another media outlet…
10 more soldiers died in some foreign country defending our pride because the opposing faction's belief system is that of more religious bullshit. “Let's just continue to bury ourselves in debt and take the lives of 18-22 year olds for the next 10 years and make them heroes because they died doing so...”, I thought deeply to myself, “they will never even know what it is like to raise their own child.” My mind raced again as I played out my own death on the battlefield. These people, who frontline themselves for their country are more than courageous but is this all necessary. We need to start calling out the government and the rest of the world for peace...
I turned off the television and decided to take another breath of fresh air as I walked myself down to the riverbank. Why do the powers that be feel they can control the world? How can we stop fighting and shift our world from a power hungry world, to a world that is peaceful. World leaders control the masses and everyone succumbs to their rule. It is as if the sheep cannot break free, they must follow. Could they break down these walls? Do they even care at all? Will they catch you when you fall? A cry to balance these powers, shift them and evolve humanity to survive and not hate. It shouldn’t be this challenging to live, and to love.
Then it happened. Just as I began to walk back to my home, a crack came through the sky. The ground shook and fire rained down. Time warped, reality sort of began to peel back a fabric which I have been buried in. I began to run, I didn't even know where to go so I made my way straight into the wooded area and up the mountain to overlook the townscape. Absolutely no words running through my head. Our entirety was on fire and more and more shakes. “What exactly is happening?” I thought to myself as I was the only one that seemed to be bearing witness to this, “If I hadn’t been down in the river, I would have been back at home most likely dead right now.” It seemed as if fire was raining from the sky. Why in my small little town though, it didn’t make sense. I sat on the hill and watched every ounce of humanity become engulfed with flames. It was terrifyingly similar to my dream. I decided to take shelter in a small cave and hope whatever it was would soon pass. Is this a dream?
Morning eventually came. The last thing that I can recall was sitting on that hillside watching humanity tear itself apart and another loud crack that must have knocked me out. Was it humanity that did this? I was still unsure, but my eyes were wide open now, fire still raging, mostly smolders of smoke now. It didn’t take long for everything to burn, especially when there is nothing to put it out. After coming to terms with the reality of the situation, the possibility that there may be more alive than just me; but it was excruciatingly cold. I ran as fast as I could back to the town that I called home. Everything... everything was destroyed. I was alone, fire had inevitably taken everything, it looked as if the entire Earth was set on fire. Buildings destroyed, smoke rising from vehicles, brickwork smashed across the streets. My view from the hillside of the forest showed me that civilization could possibly be gone.
The smoke brought darkness and no cries for help, the sulfur smell in the air. Fire throughout the land, humanity has successfully succeeded in what appears to be a mass exodus. Has anyone made it? Am I Alone? Lost and alone in the cold forest, searching for life, wondering how I ever survived. “There has to be more than just me, what about the people I care about? What about the love of my life?” These questions drove me to begin searching, trying to find everyone that ever meant anything to me.
The drive to find the one person that means the most to me is the first I try to find. I have spent years searching for the one that shares my heart and my life, I need to know that she still exists and has made it through this ugly night. In this moment, something felt off though. Time. While wondering if the love of my life is ok, where she is, my perception of time seemed to not exist. What could have been a day, a week, three hundred years, seems to fade into this moment. The universe halts. There is one place that rings in my mind, home. It is time to make my way back home, where this all began, where this nightmare started.
Not only am I in search of her, but everyone that matters to me in my life. My family and my friends. Why does time seem non-existent and stale? I am walking through the woods and somehow the memories I am holding onto are fading away. I need guidance, and am beginning to feel lost inside of my mind. My map is the stars in the sky, leading me back to home. My will is my memories and the time that seems to be fading in front of me. I am reaching out for something, someone to guide me back home when in the forest, the stars in the sky begin to light up the body of water that is in front of me.
Alone, looking down into a pond on a night where the moon is full and high in the air, my reflection ripples across the brilliant water. A supernova of brilliance is in the sky, an aura of time glowing in the moonlight. How long was I walking, searching? Time, stagnant, and walking for what felt like years. I looked into the pond where my appearance reflected an aged elderly man. This cannot be. My life has been taken from me. I must make my way home. Looking up to the sky, using the stars as my guide, I turn and begin to run out of the forest, into the town that is still burning to the ground and eventually leading back home.
My house stands, intact, un-burnt and whole. The fire spared my house, but how? I run through the front door and up into the bathroom to find the only mirror hanging on my wall. My reflection stops time and begins to warp inwards and pulls at my soul. An explosion of color, a transcendence engulfs every bit about my existence. The loudest sound of frequency smashing in between my ears vibrates through my body. Am I dead? Is this reality?
The sun shines upon my face as I wake up, back in my home, in my bed, with my family. My mind is quiet and at peace as I hear a faint sound of birds chirping from a distance. A breath of fresh air comes in from an opened window where you can see a shimmering rainbow overshining the beauty of the world. My feet hit the ground as I wonder how much time really has passed. As I look in the mirror a reflection shows that everything is back to the way it once was and I haven’t aged at all. The darkness from my mind is gone and a smile crosses my face, and I cannot help to think that...
we are free.
