Déjà vu
a prologue story by Golett-anon
I had woken up much earlier than usual, somewhat startled by the roaring sound of a lawnmower directly outside my bedroom window. Right... First Saturday of the month. What time is it? I glanced over to my nightstand, where I had miraculously left my phone the night prior as opposed to it being lost within the folds my comforters.
Among the trinkets and keepsakes dotted on top of its surface, were a few things that might seem out of place for a young adult male's bedroom. Ornate rings, inlaid with gemstones, and a few crystals wrapped into pendants made of twine. I tried to ignore them, a reminder of times in my life where desperation and escapism blended, bordering on schizophrenia and arguable insanity. I reached over to take hold of my phone, clicking the power button to check the time. Ten past seven... again. Ugh. I get that it's their job, but do they have to start this fucking early every time?
I laid my head back down on my pillow and blankly stared upwards at the slow-running ceiling fan in my room. The landscapers slowly moved away from my window, the noise of their work getting quieter as I was left alone with myself. How many times have I done th- I cut the thought short. Repetition, my oldest enemy, reared its predictable head once more to make a mockery of who I am.
It had been a long time since this feeling plagued me. I wasn't ready for it to come back. Suddenly a torrent of repressed emotions surge their way into my head, making the act of passive thought unbearable. The loudest one was guilt. I sit upright and snaked my fingers through the window blinds, peering to the outside world, looking for the driveway. Car's gone. Mom's out for work already. Another reminder, highlighting that feeling of guilt in my head, almost to the point of a headache.
I tried to compose myself. Stop it. You know why it's like this, and it's not you. Upbringing, if you can even call it that, wasn't perfect, they weren't always there, and you're just making what you can of your circumstances. That's wishful thinking though, isn't it? No. It's the truth and you fucking know it. I let out a frustrated sigh, sinking lower into my bed than before.
As I pulled the covers tighter against myself, I turned my head back to my nightstand and looked at the rings. One in particular stood out among the others. Stainless steel with an inlaid design of two upright square crosses on each side of the band, with a black gemstone set at the top. A few years ago I was on the tail-end of a similar feeling of incessant repetition, and this tiny object helped me out, somehow. A stupid thing, really. Even now, I find it hard to reconcile why I did any of it.
To make a long story short, I had ventured into a part of the internet that was occult in nature, and made some purchases. One such purchase was for a ritual to bind a 'spirit companion' to a keepsake. Desperation. Since then, I occasionally experienced inexplicable things, mostly in dreams. Mostly vivid. The one that rattles my mind to this day is from the evening before this spirit-bound ring arrived in the mail.
In this dream, a feminine figure appeared, features unclear, like a shadowy black wisp. She sat at a table across from me, then asked questions about me. I don't remember what the questions were, but I gave answers. Answers in a real-life context. It was a lucid experience, but I wasn't fully in control. But throughout it all, I felt content. Happy. When the questions ceased, she stood up from the table, expressing a grateful farewell, though the exact words were unclear to me. Immediately after, I woke up, checked my phone, and saw the e-mail informing me that the ring was delivered. Sure enough, there it was at my doorstep.
It's been just over five years since that dream happened. At first, I assumed that the dream was the result of my spirit companion reaching out to me from my doorstep. Online forums agreed and stated that it was "a special connection" and that they were surprised that such a vivid experience happened so early with my first binding. Part of me wanted to chalk it up to mental placebo while these online randoms were already too deep in the hole of make-believe.
But one thing kept a spark of hope alive, that there was something more to this mundane world. I had no idea when the package would arrive. Sure, I got package updates as it was being shipped, and I was guessing it would get here any day now for a few days, but they never gave me a specific date. I believed that my dream couldn't have been influenced by a known factor. That it was meant to happen. That I didn't waste scraps of my savings on getting scammed when I was feeling hopeless.
Pathetically, I picked up the cold metal band and slid it onto my right hand ring finger, as I had done many times before. What am I doing? Is it really that bad today? It was then that I noticed the shape of my hands. Another memory surfaced. Some time after perusing those forums and investing myself into some of what these people believed, I had taken an interest in subjects like astral projection, but more importantly, lucid dreaming.
I amassed research from this forum detailing the basics of lucid dreaming and how one could self-induce it. From what I read, hypnotic suggestion is a powerful tool that has been used for a wide variety of purposes throughout history, one of which was entering a lucid state deep within REM sleep. One night after some studying, I decided to practice by repeating a mantra to myself, which stated that if I saw my own hands within my dream, I would 'wake up' and realize that I was dreaming, thus triggering the lucid state. The first time I tried it, I was surprised that it actually worked.
Would it... work now...?
I pulled myself upright, looking out to the rest of my room. My PC sat on a desk against a wall at the foot of my bed. To my right, my nightstand and a storage closet on the other side of it. Between the two, next to my bedroom door, was a standing shelf with certain memorabilia assorted on the topmost shelf. I grabbed my glasses from my nightstand, putting them on to see clearly. That's... my old Pokémon stuff. Escapism.
There sat my old DS Lite case, from when I owned one, at least. In it housed all my DS and 3DS game cartridges, bulging with hours upon hours of both memories and unexperienced content, not to mention my red 3DS itself. Laying next to the zipped-up case was my blue DSi XL, the device on which I spent most of my youth immersed in various video games, many of which were Pokémon games. I had played most of them, but I had fallen off the nostalgia train once they stopped making games for the 3DS. I didn't want to buy another console just to play a new game, because I already did that for the 3DS.
As the years passed, I tried to keep up with new generations of Pokémon, but the discourse over the newer games' quality caused me to stray away from the series in general. My gaze drifted over to the paperback copy of the Gen 5 National Pokédex, overflowing with scribbled notes that my younger self had imprinted, detailing team compositions and in-game lifehacks. All in all, good memories from a better time, if I can remember much at all. It's been so long since I've thought about... No. Right now I want to go back to bed. And I want to try to lucid dream again. I get swept up into different fixations every week, but right now I just want to relax.
I took my glasses off, resting them back down in their place on my nightstand before looking down at my hands with palms faced upwards, staring back at me. With a deep breath, I focused on the image of my hands, drowning out any possible distractions. I began repeating that mantra out loud to myself one again after all those years.
"When I see my hands within my dream, I will wake up, and realize that I'm dreaming...
When I see my hands within my dream, I will wake up, and realize that I'm dreaming..."
I repeated this for what was probably ten minutes, a duration I knew to expect, before the hypnotic suggestion settled in, causing me to enter a drowsy, trance-like state. With one final, slowed utterance of the phrase, I stopped myself, laid back down in bed, pulled the covers over myself, and closed my eyes to drift off to the realm of sleep once more. I was quickly taken under the spell, separated from the world of the conscious...
Next: The Long Sleep, Part 1