Slumberland
He entered his dream each time by appearing to awaken in his own bedroom (a false virtual renouncement of sleep that paradoxically betokened a deeper immersion into those very waters of the unconscious). He would bolt up in bed at some disturbance, whether noise or motion or visitor. Sitting up curiously in that dream analogue of his familiar bulky bed, he would confront the miraculous: clowns, sprites, animals, fairies, once the smiling visage of the moon, all come to summon him to the realm of dreams, where furthers wonders–and the companionship of a certain Princess–were promised to await him as his natural reward, his secret birthright as it were.
He would leave his bedroom behind then with whatever guide had manifested that week, ready and eager to cross the changeable fantastical terrain separating him from the veritable kingdom of dreams. But disaster of one sort or another always intervened. Landscapes collapsed or fragmented around him, due either to his clumsiness or incapacity, or to some uncontrollable natural calamity. Often his own dream death aborted his quest. Then he would be plunged out of the bizarre geography of his pilgrimage, back into his cold sheets, usually to tumble awkwardly upon the hard floor, his flesh-and-blood postures mimicking the contortions of his astral form.
His parents would rush in then to see what all the commotion was about. His mother, robustly beautiful as a Gibson Girl; his father, all mustachioed Ben-Turpin bluffness. Or perhaps some relative spending the night would be delegated to check on the restless boy, doting aunt or dotty uncle.
His mother. Dead these fifty years now, all her golden piled tresses first turned gray, then white, then boxed away below the ground. His father, dead even longer, from frantic overwork during the Depression, when their family had lost the big Edwardian house where the dreams had visited him. But by then the dreams themselves had been absent for decades.
That was how my personal Golden Age ended, though. Remember rather how it began.
Week after week this truncated sleep charade continued. He accepted all the humiliations and frustrations, however, after some initial puzzlement. The characters who cajoled him were so convincing! Invitation, strange travel, impassable barricade or physical failure, then a sharp jolting exit. And how some of those exits had hurt! Falling onto the spiky thorns, pierced by arrows, gripped in the claws of a monster crab—
It hurt! It hurt! Now, nearly a century later, those assaults still hurt!
“Mistuh, what’s wrong? Where’s it hurtin’? You want me to call the nurse? Use your call-button, that’s why you got one.”
The old man opened his eyes and muzzily discerned close by his pillows the familiar black face of the janitor assigned to the nineteenth floor. Half-hopeful, half-fearful, the janitor’s broad face even in its undefined state seemed to the old man a dark sun radiating some kind of supernatural warmth. In one hand the janitor held a broom; in the other, he offered the patient the call-button dangling from its wire. A feather duster stuck in the janitor’s rear pants-pocket and rags tucked into his waistband made him appear to be wearing a plumed loincloth.
The old man suddenly realized that his pain was actual, not illusory, not a memory. Something was wrong in his chest. He scrabbled for the call mechanism, and the janitor helped him wrap his fingers around it.
“Yes, thank you, young man. I’ll call the nurse.”
The Princess
While he awaited some response to his emergency from the overworked and generally uncaring staff, the old man tried to forget the battering ram beneath his ribs by concentrating on his memories.
How had he finally surmounted those harsh barriers separating him from that mystical, sidereal domain that beckoned him so strongly? How had he gotten past the gates and locks and labyrinths? Only with the advent of the Candy Kid. That gaily gentle psychopomp had done the trick, bringing the mortal boy for the first time into the actual proud avenues and grand chambers of his appointed dream country.
Suddenly the steady assault from the invaders besieging the castle of his heart faltered, then redoubled, forcing a gasp from the half-upright man. He tried to calm himself with a massive injection of nostalgia.
All the glories he had seen with his eyes closed.
The people.
The places.
The incidents.
And the way they had made him feel.
