Lacking Fragments: A Novel (Completed)

An Uncanny Dream II

Why, I'm certain I was dreaming.

     Although, the accuracy of the aforementioned dream, no matter how lifelike it feels, is pure mixed up in between half-exact and half-fabricated. Well, I know what you're thinking. Weird. Think of it as a confusing labyrinth with only one right path toward the exit. Just one right path; as if finding the last missing pieces of one big puzzle. But, unfortunately, in addition to this, the said path gets real-altered by its creator every fifteen minutes.

     First, it felt real enough to believe it; enough to put your consciousness, your full attention, upon the unearthly moment. That if you were the one experiencing it—and not me—you wouldn't even know you were dreaming. Not at all. Because in truth it did feel real, which also happened to feel like the dream is a part of your soul. As if this dream is a long, lost memory repressed in the unconscious, trench-hidden inside your personal vault. The only difference, perhaps, of your perception with my own, is that, in the back of my mind, I'm aware it's only a dream. I am aware I had been dreaming the whole time; way from the first second to last, I know all these is half-fabricated. Something seemed strange; something truly out of context. Like her words and mine had been compromised.

     But by whom? By doings of a god?

     Nevertheless, the dream I had is the sequel to my story. My carnival story, to be precise. The only time when Maya glowed—out of thin air, and off from hues of blue—without a single scientific explanation presented on the table.

     Could the bombarding fireworks be the reason for the occurrence? Could its exploding lights be the cause of Maya's luminescence? It could be, right? But no, if I set aside that one percent possibility, I highly doubted it was merely the pyrotechnics's doing. And I have to be frank: in this dream, I believe it was the deed of herself, and of herself alone.

     Inside the dream the two of us remained at the highest top of the Midnight Carnival. Locked. Inside the peaked of the big wheel's passenger car, crowning the rest of the other passenger cars, food stalls, people, people with costumes, game booths; you know, everything below the main ground. All with time frozen still, Maya and I were trapped in here.

     "What are you talking about now?"

     "You," I blurted out. "I'm talking about you."

     Strangely not enough, things got even stranger when what I said turned out as an automatic response. During the live dream, I recall a certain time in college, in Theories on Reality unit or some other course (I kind of forgot now; I'm unsure), when our professor told us he believes everything we experience in this world is predetermined. That God—like fate—exists and had already decided how everything is going to be in the future. Meaning, everything had been planned out to the very end. Designed. Orchestrated; ever since day one, ever since the creation.

     It was how I felt in the dream: fabricated.

     Controlled.

     "What's happening to you?" I continued. Each and every word from my mouth panned out like an advanced voicemail set in a cellphone— come hell or high water, in here, I couldn't pick nor stop the words from following and following out. "Maya, look at you!" True, I was not in-control. "Your skin. Why does your skin—"

     "Glow?" Maya finished my sentence. She lowered her head down and searched. Maya gazed at the phenomenon of her skin, of her body figure; then, she gently stroke the softness of her right arm. "What about it?"

     "You're glowing," I said, however obvious it already made an appearance. But wait, just a minute, am I insane or can't she just get what I mean? Especially, the thing I'm trying to pinpoint?