Awake/ Asleep: Interlude

Read Part 4 Act I here.

Skip to Part 1 here.

Interlude

“Very rarely can the author of a story insert himself in one, for they can neither be participants nor observers; their roles are predefined and predestined as with all works of fiction.” –A non-quote by the author.

It struck me at that moment that I was participating in a stage play…or a circus of sorts. I hated the circus, mostly out of some inexplicable, or rather strongly explicable, great dislike and disdain for clowns. It was not a mere coincidence, I thought, that those dreams had led them here, to me. For I, Amr Abbas, the very author of this story, fancied myself an expert on writing about dreams. And here they were, tormented, stretched thin, just like the ideas that take years to progress, eventually eventuating to nothingness. But a play, as all plays go, has to have three main elements: First, the introduction, where you meet the characters, this is the step of recognition, knowledge, and world-building. Then comes the second part, the conflict, or the body of the text, the main attraction. And finally comes the conclusion, or the inconclusive ending. Certainly, the author of the text can play with those three elements however they please, expanding them, stretching them, but hardly ever eliminating them, for what is a story without a character, be it a man, a woman, a child, or a tree that stands as an observer? Whomever you might think the main character to be, and whatever their allegiance is, is eventually what you follow; you root for the hero, or the anti-hero, for a villain cannot truly be the protagonist of the story.

But there, as I lay in bed, with the door between waking and sleep widely and hardly ajar, in that moment of complex and inexplicable contradiction, I heard a voice, a noise. When I turned to look at the source of the noise, I saw nothing but the shadow that stood there day and night, silent, observing, judging, or simply existing free of assumptions and accusations. It was a shadow, a mere shadow of my own, a perfect silhouette of what I am, changing only by my own changes and movement, and by the light and whereabouts it would come and go, how dim or bright it would be, and the distance. It turns out that shadow is an equation of its own, and while it, like the assumed reader of a certain text, is easy to manipulate, no matter how you manipulate it, it will grow and stretch, and assume and judge, and altogether observe in kindness or disdain.

At that moment, between being awake and asleep, I remembered the cleverest and stupidest thing my father ever told me; he said, “My son, I want you to remember this shadow,” as he pointed to his own shadow, “this is my shadow, remember the shape of it, for no other shadow could ever be the same.” And until this day, I remember those words of nonsensical wisdom and I think to myself, ‘What did he mean?’

And that, precisely, was the thing! What he meant was not something that I can decipher, much like a shadow cannot be a print or an imitation, a reflection of stillness or of nothing. It was a deep rabbit hole like this very one that I dug myself, or more brilliantly, have been dug into.

I drifted into sleep, or drifted afar from it, and there I saw them, the horses on the moon, the tigers in the sea, the fish in the trees, creatures in the song that never came to be, much like you, much like me. And across the window, in the bark of the tree, I saw a face, babbling and bumbling and murmuring and mumbling, singing and sinking and vanishing in the stream. At me he pointed and snapped his fingers, and his face and mine were one and the same, for a shadow he was, and I was he.

“The Un, the Un!” Scrambled, scattered, scathed, and scorned, the man with the blue and the red hair shouted and yelped, his nose red, it glowed, his eyes parted and skewed. “The Un-un-un-un!” his voice distorted, his face contorted.

“Come back here, for you and me are one and three,” it spat and clapped.

I watched it in silence, and back at him I looked. Richard Blake stood there with a cigarette between his lips.

“You must wake up, old chap.”

Amassed, I nodded.

He walked to me, or rather, a shadow of him walked to me with a small glass of what I have come to know as fermented mushrooms.

“Did it turn you again? False memories? Who were you this time?”

Written by Amr Abbas. 

Cover picture by Amr Abbas.