Inktober 2022

Amanda opened her eyes to a beautiful beach side scenery. The typical palm trees and white sand, the blue sky and sea, as well as the folding beach chairs and a brightly coloured parasol. She sat down onto the chair leisurely, a coconut with a thick straw and a bright pink little umbrella appearing in her hand. Just as she had wanted.

Amanda was a lucid dreamer. Every once in a while, she’d try to make the most of her abilities by making up an entire world for her to enjoy to her heart’s content. Sometimes it was real places that she had been to, while other times she made up the sceneries with her imagination. Whenever she told people that she could lucid dream, they’d all call her lucky, which she agreed with. Lucid dreaming was fun, and she found it to be quite a pity that only less than a quarter of the population could do so regularly. Speaking of other lucid dreamers, Amanda had never thought that she was any different from others like her. Sure, she had vivid dreams, but didn’t we all? There’s also how she’s a very vivid visualizer when she’s awake, which probably explains it.

In the meantime, Amanda stood up and made her way into the ocean. She walked into the waist-high water, which felt comfortably cool, and began to swim. She quickly covered a few meters to test herself, then flipped onto her back and floated with leisurely backstrokes. She stared up at the bright sky, the white clouds, the seagulls that flew by as she thought of them. How wonderful.

Just as she tried to stand up again, Amanda suddenly realized that her feet couldn’t touch the floor of the ocean and she felt a small wave of panic. She usually made sure that the waters in her dreams were shallow enough for her to touch the bottom ever since she learned of Thalassophobia, which she might have. She writhed in the water, trying to feel for sand or anything. After several long moments spent splashing around, she realized that she must have made a mistake in what she called ‘setting up the dream’.

Out of instinct, she looked down. Beneath her feet was dark water, seemingly endless as it stretched downwards and into an endless abyss. She started to panic, trying to swim towards the shore which was suddenly so far away. The faster she tried to swim, the further she seemed to float, which only made her more frantic. She kept throwing glances down at the bottomless seawater, trying to bend the dream to her will once more, but her surroundings refused to change.

Suddenly, Amanda subconsciously thought; ‘There could be something down there.’ The moment that stray thought entered her mind, the dream acted on it instantly. The sky darkened and she quickly stared down at the water. It had become so much darker, even her toes becoming hard to see. She looked up at the shore again, but it was gone, leaving her stranded in the middle of an ocean as far as she could see.

All of a sudden, Amanda felt something grip at her ankle and she was dragged down into the water immediately after. She tried to scream, to break free, drinking in large amounts of seawater in the meantime. She started to gasp and choke, panicking as she tried to will herself awake.

Luckily, it worked. Amanda’s eyes opened abruptly, her lips parted as her lungs kept fighting for air. She closed her mouth slowly and took longer breaths to calm down, letting her tensed muscles loosen. Suddenly, a taste and a small piece of something hard appeared on her tongue. Something far too familiar. Amanda smacked her lips and recognized the distinctiveness of the same salty seawater she had nearly drowned in in her dream.

Immediately, she jolted up and spat out what she had in her mouth, a small bit of sand and sea salt lying innocently at the center of her palm.