The World in Our Dreams

By Kevin Geoffroy

Beatrice is a first year college student arriving from a sheltered life. Home schooled, she never developed the ability to make friends or deal with social encounters. Fear and anxiety rule her life, but in her desperation she found an escape. Combining lucid dreaming with a memorization technique called a mind palace, Beatrice has created a world for herself to retreat to to escape the real world. Day after day , every chance she gets, she is in her dream world, creating and playing and exploring like the child she still is inside. It is an impossible creation, with rooms bigger than the entire palace yet still inside the grounds, with different moons, different skies, and different times of day all depending where you are. She has companions to play with, small variations of animals from her childhood, and they love each other dearly.
It is not until something appears in her palace that she did not create. A room, a door, a dark stairway leading down. And then something finds her, something that she can't see, something she can't comprehend. It is in her mind palace, but it knows things it shouldn't. It makes her doubt if where she really is, is her mind, or somewhere else.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 1, 1900
• ISBN: 9781682226049

Book preview

ISBN: 978-1-682-22604-9

Content

The World in Our Dreams

The World in Our Dreams

It was a quiet, wintery day on campus. Geese walked through the fields, picking randomly at things no one in the surrounding area bothered to find out about. The trees were leafless, covered in nothing but the pseudo-death of winter. Patches of snow still lingered, survivors of piles that were big enough to not completely melt from the rain of the past few days.

Students hurried to and fro in various directions that, when viewed from above, looked strikingly similar to that of an ant colony. There was a certain distinction that exposed the commuters from those that chose to dorm. While not always the case, you could tell a student dormed by how comfortable or how just-got-out-of-bed their clothing appeared.

The air was cold. It was early morning, and no one wanted to be outside, much less on campus. It was the first day of the second semester, and there was no shortage of confused students trying to find their classroom at the last minute. No one really spoke, even those walking in groups; it was much too early for them to attempt to socialize.

There was one girl, however, who seemed to stick out no matter how unimportant she tried to appear to be. She sat timidly on a bench, with her head pointed down. She avoided eye contact at all costs, afraid to accidentally offend someone if they caught her staring. Her position was withdrawn, as if she had no real reason to be there on that bench. She had dirty-blond hair with pale-white skin, but possessed the most vivid, luscious green eyes. It was a pity anyone rarely saw them.

Her clothes were a mixture of hipster-type fashion while still trying to be plain. She wore a beaten, brown leather jacket over a hoodie of a kid’s cartoon that gained in popularity among the twenty-something-year-olds. Skinny jeans and plain sneakers covered the rest of her slightly too skinny figure. She had large stone earrings that she covered with an oversized scarf as if to hide from the gaze of others. A gray and red beanie topped her outfit.

She sat on the bench, waiting for there to be less people before she would enter the building and make her way to her class. She would be late, admittedly, and only hoped her entrance did not draw accusing stares. After several minutes, she deemed it barren enough to continue the rest of her journey and headed towards the art building, which lay across the courtyard.

Grabbing her books and clutching them close to her chest, she walked as awkwardly fast as she could, steering clear of others in her path. She struggled slightly to open the door at the entrance, unable to properly grasp it without letting her books slip. It was adorable, in a way, as it was easy to see her as a child in the same position. The maturity of a child, perhaps, but by no means a mind.

She achieved near perfect grades in high school, and was awarded a full ride to many universities. Wanting to branch out, she chose a large, popular school and decided to dorm, in hopes of growing her social skills and earning some friends. One semester in, and she already regretted it.

It wasn’t long before she arrived at the class, slowing her shuffling quickly to look as if she had traveled at a normal pace. Not even pausing at the door, she made a beeline to the nearest empty seat of her color theory class. Fortunately, the professor was facing away from her and did not turn around until she was, somewhat compactly, seated in her chair.

The professor then introduced himself and began the usual banter that accompanies the first day of classes. He was a slow talker, partly due to his heavy breathing. But eventually, he began to take attendance. She internally panicked, unsure of how loud to say here or in what tone, or to just raise her hand; she never knew.

Her last name placed her in the middle of the roll call, usually. She was in the back of the class, so she got to glance at each student as they responded. Some strong, confident; others flat and uninterested. Everyone raised their hand to signify where they sat. Finally she heard her name.

Beatrice McCoy.

She hated her name. It was so awful and broken to say. Her parents, born in Ireland before separately moving to America, were both English majors. They loved The Divine Comedy, and the many beautiful meanings behind the name, so they unquestioningly named her Beatrice.

He-ere, she said in a squeak, with the misfortune of having a hiccup in the middle of her statement. She shrank in her chair in glowing embarrassment, fearing the judgment of her classmates in her failure of such a simple task. Beatrice knew they were snickering to themselves, or committing the silent lol in their heads that somehow meant laughter. In reality, no one cared.

After attendance finished, Beatrice heard the professor say something that made her heart sink.

I want to go around the room, inhale, exhale, from person to person, inhale, exhale, and describe to me what you think color is, or what it means to you.

Oh no, Beatrice thought. She was going to hate this class.

A grueling four hours later, she finally escaped that horrible class. For her, it might as well have been torture. If she wasn’t a by-the-book student, she would have dropped it that day. But the thought didn’t even cross her mind; all she could think about was getting back to her dorm. The seclusion, the safety, the silence. It quickened her pace to an awkward level.

The campus was much more crowded now, as noon brought out a bulk of the commuters and dormers alike. Beatrice often tried to walk in the shadows of groups, hoping to never have to cross through a grass path on her own for fear of sticking out or doing something that was weird and openly viewable to people. It took longer than she wanted, but she eventually escaped the crowded areas of the campus and walked alone on the paths. Not long after, she entered her dormitory.

Cracking the door slowly, she listened for signs of her roommate. She knew she was supposed to be in class, as she’d spied on her schedule the day before, but didn’t want to take any chances. Comfortable that the room was hers, she shed her jacket and shoes and leapt upon her bed.

Lifting up her mattress, she dug up a small notebook with attached pen and placed it on her lap. Giddy to the point of childishness, she opened the notebook without taking the pen and stared into its pages intensely. It wasn’t long before she was in another world.

***

Beatrice walked through a grand hall, just past marble white doors that opened automatically for her. A massive,