“That was wild.” Connor had told Josh as they sat across the room from each other after dinner.

It was Josh’s childhood bedroom. And while it had been updated throughout his life, it still had all the marks of a space that had seen varying levels of habitation by a growing boy. Scratch marks and dings in the paint, holes in the walls and ceiling where thumbtacks had held various things in place, a desk etched with the carvings of an idle mind. Most of the things left in the room were things Josh had anticipated taking to his own home one day, whenever he had a space that was truly his own. But now—seeing Connor, a living symbol of how his life was changing in perhaps the most dramatic way possible, sitting at the desk in the room—everything felt wrong. And those words. That was wild. They seemed to carry all new implications as they bounced off the walls.

Sitting down comfortably in his own room, Josh felt like he was sheltering in the wilderness.

“That was pretty par for the course, actually.” Josh had replied. “It gets worse on holidays.”

That was what he’d said, but it felt dishonest. Somehow, it felt wrong to accuse his family for their malicious behavior. For the sneering and passive aggressive comments they’d made about him and Connor and anyone else that came up in conversation and made for a fun target. For the not quite so playful physical jabs at shoulders and flicking of the nose. For the sharing of embarrassing stories purely for the purpose of embarrassing the subject. It didn’t feel like this had been the norm his whole life. But, what else had there been? Had it always been that bad?

Josh couldn’t conjure up a time when at least something like an amalgamation of the chaotic behavior he had just been immersed in was present in the house.Even on good days, there had always been something. Maybe it was just the natural product of being part of a big family, maybe it really was abnormal. It felt like it had gotten worse since Josh had left for college. And even if it hadn’t…

It was too painful to think about. The longer Josh lingered on the memories of growing up around his family, trying to conjure up positive memories, the more uncomfortable he felt.

Connor had seen the shift in behavior just as he had seen the shift in behavior as soon as Josh began interacting with his family. “It’s okay.” He’d said. “It’s okay to not like where you came from, and it’s just as okay to want to. But I think you turned out fine.”

It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to Josh within the confines of those four walls. And it was the only thing that calmed his mind down enough for him to fall asleep.

There hadn’t been any more conversation, no back and forth, no tragic life stories, just the simple exchange of sorrow and comfort. And then there was sleep.

Initially, when Josh had felt his eyes sagging and his consciousness fading, it had been a relief. Rest was the thing he needed most in his life, and he couldn’t have asked for anything more. With Connor there in close proximity, he was safe from the horrible and invasive nightmares that would have otherwise plagued his sleep. But there was something he had not expected at all when he let himself close his eyes. After all, this was one of the first real nights of restful sleep he had gotten since his last false mark had appeared. He had been exhausted enough nearly every night since he’d been able to see marks, that had had only either had a dreamless and hollow night of pure recovery or a nightmare.

The last thing Josh expected to experience was an honest to goodness peaceful vision of the beyond.

It hadn’t started out as any kind of vision or spiritually guided dream or whatever it was that marked individuals had. No dream ever really and truly is just one thing, after all. Even if it does contain a portion of true understanding of the cosmos, as dream is just as likely to include a horrifying scene of teeth falling out or being bitten by snakes or of running and only being able to move forward in slow motion. And all of those bits and pieces around the significant portions of a dream, they often don’t mean anything at all. For all the desire that dreaming creatures have to ascribe meaning to their dreams, there is little evidence—even in the infinite realities of the beyond—to suggest what dreams actually are or even how they work. There are theories, sure, but there isn’t any reason or explanation as to why, for example, Josh began this particular dream with a sensation of a runny nose and an aimless mission to progress through what appeared to be a nondescript suburban neighborhood.

And that was the beginning of his dream.

It wasn’t clear exactly when the dream began or when Josh felt aware enough to perceive it. But it was around the moment where Josh reached a level of awareness that neared waking consciousness that the world around him manifested. It was a suburban neighborhood. Simple, discrete, pleasant. The sort of place that that would show up on television as a background shot. As idyllic as it was, it was also strange. There were no other people to be seen. There was no hint of wind or sound of any kind. It was just Josh, standing in the middle of the street with snot building up in his nose.

The strangeness, rather than instill fear or discomfort, was a sirens call of adventure. That is the way dreams are, sometimes. Sometimes dreamers become passengers for a film made by their own eyes and sensations as though they were possessed. Even with lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is unnaturally aware, the world can still have a script of its own that the dreamer cannot alter. And such was the case with Josh. He could not run, he could not leave, he could not escape the movement of the world to pull him towards the front door of a pleasant two story colonial house with white panel siding and a stone brick stoop. There was nothing to stop him from knocking on the dark blue wooden door or look through the frosted glass window right next to it.

And there was nothing to stop him from turning the doorknob, pulling open the unlocked door, and entering the strangely empty living space. Nor was there anything stopping Josh was stepping inside.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

That was the beginning of the real dream. Through the doorway of the house was the entrance into an ascended state of the mind the likes of which most dreamers never reach. As soon as his feet were inside the door, the door was gone and Josh was awake. Awake in a place both familiar and tainted with unpleasant memories.

“Oh no…” Josh muttered to himself.

As soon as he said it he regretted it. He remembered how alone he really was there. Or rather, how not alone he was.

Josh stood in the pale violet bubble he had descended through the beyond in during his first dream. The bubble he had reached out of and then been pulled out of by the being that resided in the bubble next to his. And it was still there. But something was different.

While the bubble itself was much the same as it had been the first time, Josh was more aware of what it was. It wasn’t clear if it was a true slice of reality outside the bounds of everything Josh had ever known or been told about before, or if it was just a vessel constructed by his mind to make sense of the alien concepts he was being exposed to. But it was clearly a place. A place drifting through an expanse. Josh could see that much through the translucent sheen of the bubble very clearly. There were other bubbles out in the space beyond his, like the one mere feet from the edge that Josh could distinctly feel the presence of the other being in. The only real limits to the other bubbles that Josh could see were the range of his vision and his understanding of the expanse beyond the safety of his own space.

Josh’s bubble and the other beings bubble were suspended on an invisible surface, like a net of gravity that stretched out forever on a two dimensional plane. But other bubbles seemed to be suspended at other points not in line with the plane that held his and the being’s in place. It was as if there were countless other planes of invisible force covering all other points of space within the expanse that each bubble could rest on; like any simple particle of perceivable space could be an infinitely spanning net and also merely single atom. And the force holding them to that point or that net, could have originated from any direction. Just as Josh felt he had fallen into place alongside the other bubble, every other sphere stuck in place might have fallen there as well, just from a different angle.

The more Josh looked outside of his bubble, the more he realized that everything he was observing in relation to position and space and distance and direction was all relative. He thought he had fallen down to where he was, because his feet had decided that that direction was where the ground was so he could stand, but he could have just as easily dropped up and his feet were lying to him.

Somewhere along the train of thought that the idea of “down” was limitation brought on by Josh’s experience living in a world with gravity, Josh realized that he wasn’t standing anymore. At least, his feet weren’t planted on any surface of the bubble. He was drifting, rotating slightly, around the interior of his bubble. And while the act should have caused him nausea, he felt fine. Whether that was because this was a dream and nothing he experienced in it could truly connect to his bodily sense—except for severe psychological trauma caused by the presence of an alien being and their mark—or because the bubble he was in and the expanse beyond it was so simple to perceive was unclear. Spinning wildly on a carnival ride was one thing, as you were able to see so many different colors and space and you felt the pull of gravity and the powerful forces moving you around it. But it was something else entirely to be free from all gravitational restrains gazing into an empty expanse populated only by the most simple shape in the universe.

It was peaceful. Even with the threat of the alien being that’s very existence corroded his mind merely a few feet of abstract space away, Josh felt like he was satisfied. Both psychologically, emotionally, and physically. There was no real way of explaining it—and, really, the bound of language have been stretched by the expanse enough already—but it felt… correct.

After who knows how long of doing nothing but floating and watching the empty white abyss, Josh noticed a hint of movement in the bubble next to him. A silhouette that had not been entirely discernible before became more clear behind the two layers of translucent violet film. It was like seeing a shape illuminated from behind through two reversed layers of one way glass. Something about it’s shape made Josh feel as though it was significant. That it appearing was intentional. And something compelled him, be it madness of an overabundance of peace (though they aren’t that different in my opinion), to try and make himself known as well.

As with many things that happen in the simplified world of dreams and abstract cosmic reality, there is no explaining how one can make themselves known to another creature that is entirely different from oneself. There must, on some level, be an innate spark of universally present energy that connects all things animate and inanimate—because as soon as Josh desired to make his existence known to the other being, he felt that it had been done. And moments later, as both he and the other thing, that being which resided beyond the reaches of the space Josh felt confident and safe within, expressed their desires, there was some realization of acknowledgement. Josh felt it. Felt it in some part of his brain he wasn’t entirely sure he had in real life, as though there was some extra lobe dangling off his cerebrum somewhere that bestowed upon him a level of abstract understanding heretofore impossible for humans to experience. It wasn’t powerful, nor was it profound. It was simple, gentle, and intimate in a way that felt foreign to Josh’s mind. In his attempts to explain the experience to himself in that moment, all Josh could compare it to was a handshake shared across a distance which could not be bridged by hands and arms alone.

Josh didn’t dare press the communication to any further point. The other being seemed more cautious now, if there was any understanding of the concept of caution within it to begin with that is. It was, perhaps, the first step in realizing what Gul had tried to talk to Josh about. The other being, the one he was making just the faintest degree of contact with, was perhaps so incompatible with anything that he could understand that anything more complex than just the simplest and most foundational concepts of being could be shared on anything close to common ground. And that was all the psychic handshake Josh had shared with the being was. It said “I am” and the being’s response said “I am as well.” And even that felt like a more complicated summation of what it had really been. In actuality, it had not even been a handshake; Josh realized this as he drifted around the bubble and faced his neighbor’s habitation. What he had shared was the psychic equivalent of locking eyes across a vast room from a distance at which the other participant was unintelligible apart from their eyes and the intelligence behind them.

That communication, whatever it really was, lasted for the remainder of the dream. It never changed. It never became anything more or less than what it started as. And when Josh woke up, he couldn’t seem to articulate the feelings he had experienced in his dream; even in his own mind, what he had just gone through was beyond his ability to comprehend. But he felt at peace. He felt… whole.