Christopher Fields

Two nights ago, Christopher Fields dreamed of the office, and woke to know his life was over.

Christopher was a dreamer from birth. His first tentative steps into the twilight world had been simple ones: strange dances of color, echoes of incomprehensible voices. Over time, these resolved themselves into simple worlds, gardens in chalk on a rainy street. There were creatures there, simple things. They moved in strange, slow ways, and their words made no sense to him.

Christopher grew, and his dreams with him. Worlds spread themselves out before him, strange and fantastic places. Creatures he'd never imagined and could not describe in the waking world would speak to him in languages of wordless sound, and greet him as a brother. As he grew older, he wandered the kingdoms of his imagination, always exploring, always searching for something new.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the daylight world began to assert itself. At first, it was subtle, the transition from sleep to wakefulness gradual, and easily controlled. He discovered early on that he could control it, could hold onto that last germ of the nightworld, and keep his mind in that place even as his body walked and talked and did the things expected of it in a world that seemed too bright, too shrill. He did his work dutifully and got quite good grades, but did not deign to socialize with the others. They were daylight people.

Time passed, and his two worlds moved further apart. The daylight world was a shadow, a pantomime to be tolerated and survived. He moved with quiet indifference through the waking hours, living for the time he could slip back into his Stygian kingdom. He was a dutiful pupil, and in time managed to get accepted to a respectable school. It was there that he met the night people, who wore silver and black and filled their word with smirking irony and angry noise. Nevertheless, he found their company tolerable; he would walk with them through the old college town, bathing in moonlight, saving the hated daylight hours for sleep and the tedium of studies. For a while he was...well, if not happy, at least content. All too soon, however, his time there ended, and the night people stepped into the daylight, clutching their degrees in Business Administration and melting into the real world. He had spent his time exploring the arts of philosophy and ancient literature and though he came away with a mind rich with thought, there was no demand for the likes of him.

Still, one has to eat. And so, he signed with an agency which sent him from one blue-lit office to another, a transient and extra pair of hands where needed. By now the daylight hours were a chore; he moved through them mindlessly, doing what he had to do to survive and spending as much time as he could in the fantastic world of his dreams.

After a while, however, things began to happen. The daylight world began to melt into his consciousness: among the strangers who moved through vast underground kingdoms, eyeless and corpse white, he would glimpse a familiar face from the day's events. Once, when exploring the crystalized waves frozen forever on the shores of the petrified ocean, he swore he could glimpse the city, modern and cold against the horizon. Another time, he was in the city of Carinth, built entirely on the sheer wall of a cliff, when through a window hewn into the stone he saw what appeared to be himself, working at his desk. That had sent him awake quickly, and he hadn't slept for the rest of the night.

It got worse. The invasion of the daylight world was slow but relentless, the fantastic worlds of his youth being pushed away by the pale and prosaic. He fought against it; moved from job to job, eschewing the familiar. He tried potions and powders; they held the world back, but never for very long. He tried training his mind, exploring the pages of ancient books of which he had certain knowledge. Nothing. It got so he could not sleep, seeking the comfort of the darkness as his only respite from the invader.

And then, one night, the conquest was complete. His dreams, once the realm of the unknown and unbelievable, were now no more than a smudged and disconnected pastiche of the day's events. Only this, and nothing more. As he lay in his bed, trapped in the dream that was not a dream, he realized that the worlds beloved of his youth were gone forever.

One night ago, Christopher Fields went to bed, an empty bottle by his hand. What the world had taken, he would have back. One way or another.

One night ago, a shadow shifted across a forgotten soul, and the world changed.

One night ago, Christopher Fields woke up.