The Fool 1

Things hadn't been the same for Al after he had woken up in the hospital. His thoughts were slower and he frequently felt weak and depressed. Due to the extensive recovery time, he was laid off. That was the only thing that actually granted some relief. He didn't like that he was living on unemployment while government assistance helped him pay the medical bills but he was freed, released from a job he hated almost as much as he had hated himself before.

For the first time in his life, a person of authority over him, his doctor, told him to play video games. Supposedly, it would help with his therapy. The only thing it helped was the sense of disconnect from his life. He felt like a stranger in it.

From the day he woke up in the hospital relatives and old friends poured out from the woodwork to check on him but things had settled back into their normal avoidance pattern soon after. He thought it was mostly for his mom's sake, who had loved and been loved by everybody. When there wasn't really anything to talk with them about but memories of her, it became abundantly clear.

The only one to hang around was his niece and her boyfriend. They had problems but underneath those problems, she really did care and he was a nice guy. Their lives were hectic and after a few more days of calls, there wasn't much catching up left to do. It seemed awkward to keep trying when there wasn't anything to really talk about and constant interruptions would pull their attention away.

He had a sister who visited too but her boyfriend was an annoying narcissist that managed to turn Al's incident into something HE was enduring to gain sympathy while every conversation was pulled back to him when he was around. His sister was a ghost in that man's life and refused to consider being anything else. Al couldn't make her be the sister he remembered and the person she was for the few brief moments her boyfriend wasn't around, wasn't the person Al knew either. It was too painful.

Reaching out to his one remaining good friend, Al took a trip to Arkansas to finally bury the hatchet with his dad but after driving around for hours, they couldn't even find the right cemetery. The hospital where Al's father passed away, had made a mistake on where they sent him due to a bungle at Veteran's Affairs. On the way back home his old friend Mathias made running negative political comments and they caught up on their lives. There wasn't much.

Al's friend had some girls come and go but it seemed as Mathias got older, he had become more detached much like Al himself. And like with his family, Al had ran out of relevant things to share and forcing it seemed awkward. They weren't in sync like they used to be, with very little in common anymore. Still, Mathias proved he was just as a good a friend as he had always been even if the bonds that once made them such good friends had faded and frayed.

For old time's sake, they got together the following weekend and did one on one table-top gaming. It was a fun break from all that had been going on but some odd things happened. The first was when his imagination cooked up a character named Lyra. As Mathias was prone to do, he tried to get his female character into a weird master-slave relationship with the woman and Al had never been comfortable running that kind of stuff with his friend. Despite that, Lyra had come alive in his mind.

There were other characters that equally came alive in his mind but the game was derailed the moment Mathias realized that Al was pretty much ripping off portions of 'Rim of the Sky' and Al couldn't argue. It did seem that was exactly what he'd done. He played off the eerily 'alive' characters in his mind as that as well, clear characters oddly remembered and fleshed out from the video game.

Whatever mental spark that had caused, he found himself starting to have dreams and nightmares. His doctor said it might be related to his mind's healing process from the brain aneurysm. Since Al was suffering from obvious signs of depression as well, the doctor set him up with a therapist.

"Tell me more about the first dream that started all this," Drew said as her pencil scribbled away on a notepad.

Al said, "Well, I think it was inspired by the table top role-playing game I was playing with my friend. I was some young kid going through some weird stuff in a world with magic, an ancient civilization and early dark ages kind of mix and match place. The thing is, they were so real. I could write you stories about them, long ones. It's almost like I knew them."

Drew read some notes she'd made from their previous session and said, "I'm not here to tell you how to think and feel but I CAN draw some pretty common themes I see in other situations similar to yours. Maybe you can see if any of it sticks or makes sense to you... Keep in mind that I'm only trying to give you some tools on perspective and not feeding you answers. Everyone is different and you need to find your own truth. Not that I'm above telling you what I think if you ask."

She smiled kindly before continuing, "This Droya person isn't even symbolically couched. She's your mother in your dreams. Does she have many of the same characteristics as your real mother?"

Al blanked for a moment and said, "That... there is. A lot of similarities, you know aside from the fact that my mom most definitely was not a humanoid cat lady."

Drew helped him rationalize and draw parallels between the more prominent figures in his dreams and his real life. It made a lot of sense. He didn't know exactly how to feel about the connection Drew made between Gan and Mathias. Somehow, that felt way off on more than one level. But then again, he hadn't felt comfortable sharing much about his friend with a stranger, he knew Mathias was a private and anxious person who wouldn't appreciate that.

Close to the end of the session, she asked him if he'd had any more 'terrifyingly real' seeming dreams which had him respond, "Not like those. Not ones that felt like reliving memories. There have been some others. They aren't as clear but it's still the same boy.

"In one, he was chasing after some girl named Wendy. In that one, it's like blurry world hopping. To be honest, I don't even need help seeing the tie ins with my personal life. I always felt guilty underneath all the anger and betrayal for my wife leaving. If I thought it would do any good, I would keep chasing after her, try to win her back but I burned that bridge to ash before she even left and the last thing I want to be is a stalker. I kind of made an a** of myself when she first left anyway.

"In another, he goes back to the world from the first dream. It's weird but it feels like it's happening at the same time as the girl chasing dream. In that one, he reconnects with his family and friends while helping them with some problems. Again, I see the parallels you were talking about but there's one thing in it I don't think I could do in my real life.

"He starts a weird relationship with the scout fellow, the scout's wife and even brings that Lyra woman into it. It's like a strange polyamory thing. They have some kids together and raise them like a two mother, two father situation. It's way off the scope of my interests and desires."

Drew interjected, "It's important to note that these are just dreams. An errant thought or two is to be expected. People are complex and the mind can take us in directions that we don't want to go... Dreams can be a useful tool in dealing with our problems but don't invest too much into them. That's unhealthy too.

After talking about some other issues and encouraging him to make new connections, do something fun and safe that he hadn't before, the session was coming to an end.

Hesitantly, he said, "There's one more of those 'feels like they're happening at the same time' dreams. This one's more like a nightmare. I don't... it's just hard to talk about because they may not be as clear as the first one but they FEEL even more real."

Drew subconsciously looked at the clock and said, "If you think it's important, then it becomes important. We might not have time to discuss them today but share it with me and then we can talk about it next session."

After receiving an encouraging smile, he said, "In this one, it's still the same person but they are physically much different. They're almost like a being made of light or something. The problem starts when this being goes into a cabin. In the cabin is a person, a monster of a man that the being recognizes as both a criminal and an important person, like a president's secretary or something.

"That Third Adjunct or something like that, touches the being of light and they turn into a woman. To be clear, it wasn't the being's choice. I think it's what they do, become the ideal counterpart to whatever they touch. It's like a survival thing I think.

"Anyway, the man isn't a nice person and finding himself faced with his 'ideal', he does terrible things to her. I don't want to think about that too much because, like we talked about before, I kind of project myself onto the focus of the dream. It feels like this goes on for a long time. She even has a child!

"I- I don't even want to imagine what that would be like. On some deep level, I think it might be the most terrifying dream I've ever had. Maybe because it's such a mundane horror rather than something outlandish that can easily be dismissed under the light of day."

After taking a steadying breath, Drew asked for details of that dream that delved into the heart of the parts Al desperately wanted to avoid talking about the most before she called the session. She gave the number of a 'friend' she wanted him to speak with and told her secretary to hold the next person on her schedule for a few minutes while she took a break. Her reactions left him feeling more anxious and confused than when he came in.

When he called the number later the next day, it was a woman that dealt with abuse survivors. Her focus was on ones that had repressed the memories of such an event and she called him in for a casual talk. From that woman's perspective, he did seem like he might fit the profile. But with no real chink in his life story to work with, she simply told him that if anything ever did 'shake loose' somewhere to call her back or reach out to someone like her immediately.

A few weeks went by along the same vein. He made some feeble but sincere attempts to become 'whole' again, make new connections and move on from his shadow of a life as it had been. The sessions with Drew were reaching a point where it felt like they were drawing up more bad stuff than helping him overcome the persistent sense of mental fugue and listlessness that plagued him. Eventually, he terminated them in lieu of another approach. He started looking for a new job.

As if in a rolling fast forward, the dreams continued. In Amoril, he was getting older and the strange family he had there was as well. Eventually, as a natural course of events, the children moved on to their own lives. For reasons that he couldn't understand as a dream observer, his strange but not unpleasant life took a turn when it became obvious that dark things were brewing in the background of all the interactions with others he had there. To make matters worse, it was becoming clear that his aging self there wasn't up to handling them, leaving the vast majority of the burden to be handled by Gan.

There were vampires, werewolves and political intrigue that made him feel more and more convinced as to the fanciful nature of the dream regardless of how real it felt. The same could be said for the one where his dream self was chasing after Wendy. There was a fey woman named Pelentis and an older man named Zeke, who could freeze time, helping him and the Wendy girl escape from some ancient, alien monster of some kind.

The only one that seemed to be taking a turn for the better was the one that had started out the worst. In the Cabin of Pain dream, the woman had taken her son and went on the run. Somehow, she figured out a way to steal the cabin and took off. The wilderness was unforgiving but she found a settlement of some kind and was making a life for herself and her kid there.

There were other more vague and fuzzy dreams, like the one where he felt like he was a piece of land drifting in a void, slowly growing and becoming more diverse in life and environments. He liked that one the most. It was peaceful and contemplative. It was just growing and understanding on some deeper and intuitive level, the laws of existence and how things, primarily nature, worked.

Despite their nightly consistency, his need for gainful employment over dealing with government assistance became pressing as the three month marker approached. Having the all-clear from the doctor, he hit the ground running only to find he had nowhere to run to. Among the many things affected by the aneurysm, his technical memory was first and foremost.

His smattering of medical, law and business college courses had set him in good standing for a job moving into compliance officer after a few years of experience. But with a lukewarm recommendation bordering on insulting from his previous employer and no other work experience, finding another place to take in a person with 'preexisting conditions' and dubious expertise, he was in some deep trouble.

Taking a significant pay cut, he managed to snag a job in medical records after having failed an interview for an assistant-to-paralegal transition position at a law firm that specialized in malpractice. Half the reason why he got the interview in the first place is so that the sleazy lawyer who was the senior partner, could see if Al's surgery had something he could manipulate into a case. It didn't take long for the man to lose interest in Al as a client or a potential employee. 'Thirty somethings' with an associates degree from a community college were a dime a dozen.

There was something comforting about falling back into a routine. The work wasn't quite full time and it might be a year or two before it could turn into something that could easily pay the bills with some to spare but it was something. With a little more free time but a lot less disposable income, Al took to walking in the park and speaking with people on a chat group that were looking to eat and live healthy on a tight budget.

Still, the depression gnawed and the dreams would leave him waking up in a panic from time to time. It was around then that his ex, Erica, came back into his life briefly. It was a mistake made out of loneliness and guilt on both their parts.

Due to how distant she had made herself to escape his harassment earlier in their separation and divorce, it had taken her quite some time to find out that he had almost died. Then it took more time before her worry and guilt overcame common sense and had her reaching out to see him in a 'public date'. It didn't dawn on Al that his behavior had become so erratic during their separation that she had actually come to fear him a little. That realization hurt.

After a few weekend meetings, they opened up and talked about things. It turned out that life after him hadn't been that great for her either. In her case, it was finding out that she couldn't have kids and a slew of bad boyfriends. After that, they had settled into a few weeks of mutual wound licking and adult comforting that left them both knowing but trying to pretend that the 'something missing' between them wasn't that important.

Being into some metaphysical stuff, she did give an entirely different approach to viewing his dreams. The 'what if' they might be real lives, shook Al up. He didn't want them to be real. They were either awful or the kind of lives he couldn't imagine wanting to actually live. Fantasy neatness aside, the three strongest ones he had were an abuse victim, on the run from a Lovecraftian horror and being one of three aging burdens an eternally youthful seeming archer guy was taking care of.

Two months of trying but failing to be what the other needed, he woke up to her having pulled a disappearing act again. This time, she had taken all the things she had left behind the first time, with her. There was an ache in his heart but it was a dull, deep kind. He didn't rant and rail. He just called one of their mutual acquaintances and ask them to pass on the message that he wished her well and hoped she could find the happiness she was looking for.

After that, the depression was bad. At least, that's what he blamed all of the deaths of his fuzzier other selves in his dreams on. After almost having a panic attack over a locked cabinet at work that miraculously popped open on its own, he took a sick day off.

The next day, frustrated at having so little after paying the bills, he was at an ATM machine pulling out the last little bit he had to fill the tank in his clunker car. Idly, he imagined he had the ability to magically unlock the door on it and take all the cash he needed, like one of the fuzzy versions of his dream self that was hung as a thief. A moment later, there was a dim flash of light and the impression of a shadowy key in his vision before the ATM door popped open and he lost consciousness.