The void dream

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Elena woke in the middle of the night, her heart pounding. The room was dark except for the faint glow of the streetlamp outside. She stared at the ceiling, struggling to remember the dream that had startled her awake. It wasn’t a nightmare – not exactly – but it had left her shaken.

She closed her eyes, and fragments of the dream drifted back to her. She had been floating in an infinite black space, weightless and untethered. There was no sound, no color, no up or down. Just an endless void stretching in every direction. At first, she had been afraid, her body straining to find something solid, something familiar. But then, as she floated deeper into the nothingness, the fear began to fade.

In the dream, the void had whispered to her. Not in words, but in feelings – calm, warmth, and a strange kind of welcome. It had been so vivid that she could still feel its pull now, even as she lay in her bed.

Elena turned to her side, facing the man sleeping next to her. Martin’s face was relaxed, his mouth slightly open as he breathed deeply. She reached out to touch his arm but stopped midway, her hand hovering over his skin. Something about the act felt wrong, unnecessary. Instead, she pulled her hand back and lay there in silence.

The minutes stretched into hours. Sleep wouldn’t return.

In the morning, the dream was still with her, like a song she couldn’t get out of her head. At breakfast, she sat across from Martin, watching him butter his toast with deliberate movements. The scraping of the knife against the bread grated on her nerves.

“You’re quiet,” Martin said, glancing up. “Did you sleep okay?”

“I had a strange dream,” Elena replied.

“What about?” he asked, but his attention was already drifting back to his coffee.

“Nothing,” she said.

He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

“I mean it was about… nothing. A black space, empty. I was floating in it.”

Martin shrugged, as if this was of no importance. “Well, no wonder you didn’t sleep. Sounds creepy.”

“It wasn’t,” she said quietly, staring down at her untouched plate. “It felt… peaceful.”

Martin didn’t respond. He had already moved on, flipping through the news on his phone.

Elena walked to work that day, choosing to avoid the crowded bus. The streets were noisy, the air thick with the smell of exhaust and fried food from street vendors. She moved through the chaos like a ghost, her mind elsewhere.

The office was a blur of emails, meetings, and phone calls. Elena performed her tasks mechanically, her hands typing, her mouth speaking the right words at the right times. But all the while, she thought about the dream.

By the time she got home, she was exhausted – not from the work, but from the effort of pretending to care about any of it.

At dinner, Martin talked about his day, a story about a disagreement with his boss that ended with him making a clever joke and everyone laughing. Elena nodded in the right places, even smiled when it seemed appropriate, but she wasn’t really listening.

“What about you?” he asked eventually. “How was work?”

“Fine,” she said.

“Anything interesting happen?”

“No.”

He gave her a puzzled look but didn’t press.

That night, as she lay in bed, Elena stared at the ceiling again. The room felt small and heavy, the air thick against her skin. She thought about the void, how vast and open it had been. For the first time in years, she felt a pang of longing – not for a person or a place, but for something she couldn’t quite name.

She closed her eyes and willed herself to return to the dream.

But the void didn’t come.

Instead, she fell into an uneasy sleep filled with half-formed images of her cluttered desk at work, Martin’s face frowning in confusion, and the endless noise of the city. When she woke, her chest ached with a deep, inexplicable emptiness.

It was as if the dream had shown her something she didn’t know she needed. And now that she was awake, the absence of it was unbearable.

Elena sat up in bed, her hands trembling. She didn’t understand it yet, but something inside her had shifted. Something she couldn’t ignore.

The void had left its mark.

Elena’s days began to blur together, each one a muted repetition of the last. She woke, dressed, went to work, came home, and went to bed, but everything felt heavier, like she was moving through water. The memory of the void lingered, creeping into her thoughts at odd moments.

At first, she tried to dismiss it. It was just a dream, she told herself. People had strange dreams all the time. But this wasn’t like other dreams – those scattered, nonsensical fragments that faded as soon as she opened her eyes. This felt real. It felt significant.

One morning, as Martin left for work, Elena stood by the window, watching him walk down the street. She felt a strange sense of detachment, as if she were watching a stranger instead of her husband. He had been kind to her in his way, steady and dependable. But now, even his presence felt distant, like a voice muffled through a thick wall.

When he disappeared around the corner, she turned away from the window and let out a long, shuddering breath.

At work, Elena sat at her desk, staring at the screen. A spreadsheet of numbers filled the monitor, but she couldn’t focus on it. Her coworkers bustled around her, chatting about their weekends, their children, their plans for lunch. The noise was a low hum in the background, meaningless and far away.

Her supervisor, a sharp-eyed woman named Clara, stopped by her desk. “Elena, did you finish the quarterly report?”

Elena blinked, dragging her mind back to the present. “What?”

“The quarterly report,” Clara repeated, tapping her fingers impatiently against the edge of the desk. “It’s due today.”

“Oh,” Elena said. “I’ll finish it.”

Clara frowned, clearly unimpressed. “I need it by noon.”

Elena nodded, but as soon as Clara walked away, she turned back to the screen and stared at the blinking cursor. The void had been silent these past few nights. No dreams, no whispers. Yet it hovered at the edges of her consciousness, an ever-present absence that made everything else feel unbearable.

Her hands hovered over the keyboard, but the words wouldn’t come. She felt trapped in the smallness of the task, the narrow confines of her responsibilities. Why did it matter? What was the point of any of this?

When Elena got home that evening, Martin was already there, standing in the kitchen with a beer in his hand. The smell of reheated leftovers filled the air.

“Hey,” he said, glancing at her. “Long day?”

She shrugged.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” he said, his voice carefully neutral.

“I’m fine,” she replied.

He set the beer down and crossed his arms. “Are you? Because it doesn’t seem like it.”

Elena looked at him, searching for the right words. She wanted to explain the dream, the pull of the void, the way it made everything else feel insignificant. But she knew he wouldn’t understand. He would laugh, or worse, try to fix her.

“I’m just tired,” she said finally.

Martin studied her for a moment, then sighed. “Okay. Well, let me know if you need to talk.”

She nodded, grateful that he didn’t push further, but as he turned back to the stove, she felt a pang of guilt. He was trying, wasn’t he? And yet, even that felt like too much.

That night, Elena sat on the edge of the bed, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Her face looked the same as it always had, but she felt like a stranger in her own skin.

The void had shown her something she couldn’t unsee, a truth so vast that it made her life feel small and hollow in comparison. She wanted to return to it, to sink into its silence and leave everything behind.

But how?

Elena crawled into bed beside Martin, who was already asleep. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, and tried to summon the dream again. She closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, and imagined herself floating in the dark, weightless and free.

The minutes ticked by, and nothing happened.

When she finally fell asleep, her dreams were fragmented and restless. She dreamed of the office, of Clara tapping her fingers, of Martin standing in the kitchen with a beer. The void didn’t come.

She woke before dawn, her chest tight with frustration and longing. The void had called to her once, but now it was silent. She wondered if she had done something wrong, if she had somehow lost the connection.

Elena sat up in bed, her body heavy with exhaustion, and stared out the window at the faint light on the horizon. She couldn’t explain it, but she knew the void wasn’t just a dream. It was something more.

And she wasn’t going to let it slip away.

The days passed, but the void remained out of reach. Elena’s frustration grew, a quiet storm building inside her. She began to feel like a clock winding down, the gears inside her seizing up. Everything around her – the people, the sounds, the spaces – pressed in on her, as if the world itself were trying to trap her in its suffocating embrace.

At work, Clara’s patience wore thin. “Elena,” she said sharply one afternoon, “we need to talk.”

They sat in Clara’s office, the blinds half-drawn against the sunlight. Clara’s desk was pristine, every paper in its place, a stark contrast to the cluttered mess of Elena’s thoughts.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been… distracted lately,” Clara began, folding her hands in front of her. “Your performance has slipped. This isn’t like you.”

Elena nodded, but she didn’t speak.

“Is something going on? Personal issues, maybe? If you need time off, we can arrange that.”

For a moment, Elena considered telling Clara everything. About the dream, the void, the pull she couldn’t ignore. But even as the words formed in her mind, she knew how ridiculous they would sound. Instead, she said, “I’m fine. I’ll do better.”

Clara studied her, skeptical but unwilling to press further. “I hope so. Let me know if you need anything.”

When Elena left the office, she felt an overwhelming urge to quit. She wanted to walk out the door and never come back, to leave this life behind and go somewhere far away, somewhere quiet. But she didn’t.

At home, the tension between her and Martin continued to grow. He tried to connect with her – he asked her about her day, suggested they go out to dinner, even planned a weekend trip to the countryside – but Elena’s responses were distant and mechanical.

One evening, as they sat on the couch watching a movie, Martin paused it and turned to her.

“Elena,” he said, his voice careful, “what’s going on?”

She didn’t look at him. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not yourself. You barely talk to me anymore. You barely eat. You’re… fading.”

The word struck her. Fading. It felt true, but not in the way Martin meant it. She wasn’t fading – she was being drawn away, like a thread unraveling from a tightly woven fabric.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You’re not fine,” he snapped, his voice rising. “You can’t just keep saying that. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Elena turned to him, meeting his gaze for the first time in days. “I had a dream,” she said slowly.

Martin blinked, caught off guard. “A dream?”

“About a void,” she continued. “An endless, black space. It felt… peaceful. Free. And ever since, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

He frowned, clearly struggling to make sense of her words. “It was just a dream, Elena. Everyone has weird dreams.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It wasn’t just a dream. It felt real. More real than this.”

“This?” he repeated, gesturing around the room.

“This,” she said firmly. “Everything. You. Me. This life. It all feels… wrong. Heavy.”

Martin stared at her, his mouth opening as if to argue, but no words came. Finally, he sighed and rubbed his temples. “I don’t know what to say to that. I really don’t.”

“Maybe you don’t have to say anything,” Elena said, her voice soft.

That night, Elena lay awake again, staring at the ceiling. She felt lighter after telling Martin, as if speaking the words had loosened some of the weight pressing down on her. But it also scared her. The more she voiced her thoughts, the more real they became.

She got out of bed and walked to the window. The city was quiet, the streets empty under the glow of the streetlights. Somewhere out there, she thought, was the silence she craved.

Her reflection in the glass caught her eye. She looked at her face, pale and drawn, and felt an unexpected flicker of anger. Not at herself, but at the body she was trapped in. It felt too solid, too rooted in this world she wanted to escape.

She pressed her hand against the glass and closed her eyes. For a moment, she imagined the void was on the other side, waiting for her.

The next day, Elena left work early. She didn’t tell anyone; she simply packed her bag and walked out. The city was alive with noise and movement, but Elena moved through it unnoticed, her mind elsewhere.

She found herself at a park on the edge of town, a place she hadn’t visited in years. The trees were tall and thick, their branches reaching high into the sky. She walked deeper into the woods, away from the paths and the people.

Finally, she stopped in a small clearing. The air was still, the only sound the rustling of leaves. She sat on the ground and closed her eyes, letting the quiet wash over her.

In the silence, she felt the faintest echo of the void. It was distant, barely there, but it was enough to make her heart ache.

She stayed there for hours, long after the sun had set.

When she finally returned home, Martin was waiting for her, his face tight with worry. “Where were you?” he asked.

“I needed some air,” she said simply.

He didn’t press further, but the look in his eyes told her he was reaching the end of his patience.

Elena knew things couldn’t go on like this. Something had to change.

And deep down, she knew what it was.

… to continue

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