Dreams.

What are dreams? Are they visions of the future? Or are they your innermost desires trying to surface? Are they simply memories of the days that have passed? Or the days that have yet to come? Are we all engines driven by these dreams, by what we see and interpret, hopefully in the correct fashion?

I rarely have dreams. And even when I do, they are but fleeting synapses that vanish upon waking. Yet, I turn away the dreams that I do recall.

Why?

Is it because they are too wanton? Or that they involve other women? Or that everyone but me dies in my dreams?

Maybe if I relate my dream to you, you can tell me what it was about.

I was walking down an alley, alone, for my friends had left me there, too eager to rush to the venue we had decided on. Where this venue might be and its significance to this dream, I do not know, but I do not go there in the end.

I walk until I see a girl. A malay girl with a cigarette in her hand. Her hair is left to fall on her shoulders and she is dressed in a simple white tank top and black jeans. Her eyes captivate me. She looks at me as though I am nothing, in a lazy manner that suggests I am insignificant, worthless.

But I walk over to her. And ask, "What do I have to do to get with you?"

She lifts her hand with the cigarette. "This." It is almost as though she knows that I have never smoked before, and I wonder if it is because of the way I look. I take the cigarette in my mouth, trying not to embarrass myself the way people on the telly do when they have their first stick.

I breathe it all in, exhaling slowly through my nose. Then I remove the cigarette and release the poisonous smog in my mouth. She smiles, and then we make out. It is a liberating moment, but it does not last.

Suddenly, her insides explode out, as do mine. And the dream begins to take a turn into fantasy land. In her last minutes, she is no longer beautiful, only desperate. Her nails clawing my arms as though I am her last hope. But I have the same wounds. She falls to the ground, and I stand up. I ask myself why I am not yet dead and the answer dawns on me.

A magical blade that I had, sheathed and strung to my right side. The mere sight of which would grant the viewer a horrific death...

And then I am jolted from my dream, hoping to not recall anything.

Yesterday night as I lay in bed, I asked myself why I turned away from my dreams, when I feel the most liberated in them. All my life I have been hiding under illusions, imprisoned by expectations. My dreams are everything I long to be.

So why am I so afraid of them?