Dreams Of Mars

Ray Wells’ wife shook him gently by the shoulder to wake him. Ray sat up in bed. Ellen was beside him, a look of concern on her face.

‘Are you okay, love? You were calling out in your sleep again.’ She said. 

Ray nodded, he was okay. He checked the time on the bedside clock. Just gone three o’clock in the morning. 

‘Was it the dream about space again?’ Ellen asked.

Ray nodded again, before turning away. He lay back down and tried to get back to sleep. He hoped that this time he wouldn’t have the same dream.

For weeks now, or maybe even months, he had been dreaming the same thing every night. He would dream that he was living on a distant planet. 

‘Try and get some sleep, Ray. At least it’s the weekend tomorrow. We’ll take the kids to the park. The fresh air will do you the world of good.’ She said.

Ray hoped she was right. 

The next afternoon, as Ray and Ellen walked across the park, their two children kicking the ball around, he detailed the latest dream he’d had. He had been working on a construction site. He was standing on the metal platform wearing a space suit to protect from the harsh elements of the alien planet. His colleagues communicated with him through the headset in the helmet. In front of him, the alien landscape had stretched away in front of him. There were diggers and machinery working the red dirt. He knew instinctively that the machinery was being operated by remote control, by workers like him.

‘Things like this are more common than you think.’ Ellen said. ‘My mother used to have nightmares. She would wake up screaming in the night.’

‘But to keep on having the same dream. That’s weird, isn’t it?’ Ray said.

‘I bet it’s more common than you’d think.’ She said.

Their conversation was interrupted when their eldest child, called out dad, and hoofed the football in his direction. Ray stopped the ball with his foot. 

‘Here we go, the great Raymondo!’ Ray called and rushed towards his giggling children, dribbling the ball as he went. 

That evening  as he headed to bed, having had a lovely day out on the park with his family, Ray couldn’t help feeling that the nice day was about be ruined by strange dreams of far-off worlds. He wasn’t wrong.

Ray was in a bar at the top of a skyscraper. The large windows showed the alien, other-world, backdrop. Tall towers that were hundreds and hundreds of storeys, stretched high into the sky like thin fingers. The towers were connected by tunnels or covered walkways. In the distance were the large domes of sprawling cities, all undercover, where it was habitable for human life to live. You wouldn’t last seconds if you stepped outside without your suit on, but here they were forging out an existence on the distant planet. 

The bar was packed with revellers, electronic music blaring out of the speakers. In the glare of the coloured lights that flashed in time with the music, he recognised some of the faces. They were friends and colleagues. 

When he woke in the dark bedroom, Ellen asleep beside him, he could almost hear the pulsing music of the bar, almost still see the flashing of the strobe lights.

The following morning as Ray and Ellen breakfasted on tea and toast, and the kids slurped bowls of sugary cereal, he explained about his latest dream, of a nightclub on a far-off planet. 

‘Did you have a nightmare, dad?’ His son asked.

‘Not really a nightmare, just a strange dream.’ 

‘Was it scary?’ His daughter asked.

‘Not really scary, no. Just strange.’ 

‘If it wasn’t scary, then what’s the big deal, Bob?’ His son asked.

His son had picked up the what’s the big deal, Bob? catchphrase from a television advert and would use it all the time. Ray laughed. Ellen gave him a serious look that said, their son had a point. Ray sighed and took a sip of tea. Maybe his son was right, what did it matter? As long as he wasn’t waking screaming and crying, then what was the problem? Did it really matter than he dreamed of the same world, the same life when he went to sleep? Yeah, it was strange, but maybe by stressing and worrying, he was in fact making the situation worse.  

Maybe if he changed his attitude, his mind-set, to the whole situation, he would eventually stop having the dreams. 

‘Do you fancy going to the beach today? We could make sandwiches and have a picnic. How does that sound?’ Ray asked.

Ellen turned to the kids, and asked what they thought. They shrieked in delight. Ray tried to put the weird dream to the back of his mind and concentrate on the lovely day they would have.

Ray and Ellen positioned themselves on a blanket on the sand, as the kids splashed and messed around in the sea. The squealed as the waves crashed and drenched them.

Ellen asked if he was okay. She shielded the sun from her eyes with a hand, and studied his expression. 

‘I’m just worried about these dreams. What does it all mean?’ Ray said.

‘It might actually have a deeper meaning, in the way that sometimes dreaming about death may mean that you need a change, a fresh start, rather than what the dream suggests on the surface.’

‘So it might mean something different?’ Ray asked.

‘It could mean that deep down, you are frustrated at work and need a change of career. Your subconscious could be taking you off to other worlds, in an attempt to shake things up a little. It could be something like that. It could be that your subconscious is telling you to have a change of surroundings.’

Ray watched the kids in the sea, the crashing of the waves and the horizon. 

Ellen called the kids to come out of the sea and sit for a while before the sandwiches were dished out.

That evening, he kissed with wife goodnight and turned to go to sleep.
Ray was back in the bar at the top of a tower block. Outside the towers stretch away into the distance under the dark red sky. He wandered through the swaying, dancing crowd. He leaned on the counter, looking at the strange coloured drinks on the illuminated bar. 

Ray recognised the guy next to him. He was a friend. The guy gave him a smile. He leaned in to be heard over the music.  

‘You’re quiet tonight, Ray. Everything okay?’ 

Ray nodded 

‘Have you been dreaming about planet Earth again?’

‘Sorry, what did you say?’ Ray asked, surprised. 

‘You told me you have this dream. In the dream you’re on Earth and you have a nice little house, a family, and air that you can breathe. You told me how you dream of walking in the park, swimming in the sea.’ The guy said.

Wait, this was all wrong. The red planet was the dream surely. This was the dream. It had to be.

‘How do you know Earth isn’t the real life and this is the dream?’ Ray asked.

‘Everyone knows the home planet was destroyed by an asteroid centuries ago.’

Ray went over to the window. He stood looking out at the red-tinted landscape, the towers and domes, the diggers and construction machinery erecting new buildings and towers under the glare of floodlight.

Was his friend correct? Was this the real-life and the life on earth was the imagined dream-world? 

As the tears stung Ray’s eyes, he knew deep down that his friend was right.

By Chris Platt

From: United Kingdom