This I'm afraid is a fairly longish one so quite understand if you click away now. If you do persevere, I hope you feel that it was worth it, Hopefully, the story is good enough to stand up on its own, even if you removed some of the sex and incest.
Very few people realise that there is another dimension to our world, a place that exists between life and death, a place where you could perhaps say, dreams can come true. Even though we have all visited it on occasions, especially as children, it is not somewhere that we would knowingly accept as existing in its own right. I'm not just talking about the time that we spend there when we sleep, but also the time we sometimes spend there when we daydream, sat in a trance-like state while our minds are elsewhere doing other things.
Just like you, that's all I thought it was, dreaming, we sleep, we dream, we wake, the episode being mostly forgotten the moment our eyes are open. Something changed for me about the age of eight. I had been seriously ill, bad enough that the doctor's had been unsure as to whether I would pull through and had advised my parents to be prepared for the worst.
I spent most of that period sleeping, although my mother would always insist that I was in a coma, my mind full of vivid dreams, as real as anything I had experienced in life, and it was in one of those dreams that the strangest thing happened, and which first aroused my curiosity.
Have you ever noticed that in dreams, we never see ourselves, no more than we see ourselves in our everyday lives? It is only when we look in a mirror or perhaps in a large glass window that we actually see the person we are. What made this dream seem so strange was that for the first time ever, I saw myself, as I would another person. Stood in my hospital room looking at the child in the bed who was deathly white, I suddenly realised that the person I was watching was myself.
It didn't last long before my mind was off doing other things, but when I eventually began to get better, it did puzzle me as to how I had managed to see myself and not as a reflection. I hadn't been floating or anything like that, I was simply there in the same room, staring at me!
Over the next few years, I tried to replicate that experience, but it never happened, I just went back to having the type of dreams, and sometimes nightmares, that we all have.
The next time it happened I must have been twelve, maybe thirteen and out with friends. It was autumn and of course, the best conkers were still attached to the branches of the tree. I remembered climbing, but very little after that, I certainly did not remember falling and hitting the ground with a loud thud. What I remembered next was standing in the field by the tree, watching my friends rush around in a panic and myself lying at the foot of it with my eyes closed.
My mates were calling my name and shaking my shoulder and then suddenly, I felt what I can only describe as a slight pull, as though someone was tugging me from behind. The pull became more forceful and then it was like someone had attached a long length of strong elastic to my back as I was whisked off my feet, shooting backwards as the scene receded into darkness. Opening my eyes, I stared up at the sky through the branches of the tree above me, a cheesy grin spreading across my face as my mates all looked relieved and asked if I was ok.
I was fine, winded, bruised and stunned but no bones had been broken. Again, later that night, I tried to replicate the experience, but to no avail, it just would not happen and the only explanation I had when I later thought about it, was that on those two previous occasions, perhaps I had been close to death.
Now I wasn't going to intentionally nearly kill myself just to see if I could make it happen, but there were things I learnt to do over the next few years. The first was that if before I went to sleep, I cleared my mind completely, and then focused on one person, place, or scenario, then more often than not, that is what I would dream about. Slowly at first and then with greater consistency, I could each night, dream about whoever or wherever I wanted, enjoying as much fun sleeping as I did during my waking hours.
I was eighteen when the next episode happened, we'd had new neighbours move in, a young couple called Terry and Joanne, both of them probably no more than five or six years older than I was. Joanne was a real looker and so it was only natural that I tended to be drawn to her, daydreaming of the things I would like to do.
That night, I hadn't intentionally gone to sleep with Joanne in mind, she had just popped into my head as I drifted off, wondering what she looked like in bed.
The room was dark, but for whatever reason, I was still able to see well enough, it wasn't a room in my house or one that I had ever visited before, I thought, as I stood at the foot of a bed and watched two people sleeping. I must admit I nearly shit myself, one part of my brain telling me it was a dream, but the other part convincing me that this was actually happening. What the fuck did I do if they suddenly woke up, how did I explain to them how I came to be in their bedroom without them suspecting I was a burglar.
Hardly daring to breathe I started to edge towards the bedroom door, wishing I were at home and back in my bed when suddenly I was.
Sitting up as I came awake, feeling uneasy in the darkness of my bedroom, I could feel the cold sweat coving my body and was unable at first to stop shaking.
I'd been there I was convinced; I'd been in Terry and Joanne's bedroom watching them sleep, that was who I suddenly realised it was. Surely my mind had made it up, I had never been in their house and had no idea what their bedroom looked like. I presumed it was a similar layout to our house, but beforehand, I couldn't have told you what was in it, but at that moment, I could have described to you each piece of furniture, was it all simply make-believe?
When my breathing slowed and I felt relaxed and secure once more, I lay back, cleared my mind and then at the last second, concentrated on Joanne lying in bed. I was back in their bedroom, this time stood on her side of the bed as I watched her sleep and ready to think of home if either of them moved slightly. It was a surreal situation, one that I had no idea how to explain as I continued to stare at her. She moved slightly in her sleep, her blond hair falling across her face and impulsively I reached out to brush it away.
It was then that I learnt something, it was like she was solid, and I wasn't, I couldn't touch or move her hair. Concentrating hard I tried again, my hand hovering over her forehead as it felt like the room suddenly moved, my hand shooting back as though I'd just received an electric shock. Slowly, I reached out again, hovering my hand over her forehead as though to touch it and this time the room did move.
I wasn't moving, it was as though the world around me was moving, slowly at first and then with gathering speed until everything became a blur as it rushed past me. Feeling giddy and sick to my stomach, I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them, I was stood on a beach and wearing a pair of trunks. My legs felt unsteady, and my stomach queasy as I looked around me, the world still appearing to spin slightly.
