Towards the end of his life, Makeson was increasingly disturbed. He took to extensive medication to hold off conventional sleep as long as possible and resorting to only the smallest possible periods of sleep to tide him over between days of chemically induced awareness. Even in his final days, he could not escape his dreams. One month ago, two nights before his death, he recounted to me the story of his final dream.
“I dreamed of waking once again, but my forest was gone. The tree stump, do you remember that? It was still there, but it was completely bare. The entire history of my life scrubbed clean. I can’t even remember the names that should have been carved there, now. Then it all moved, you know how dreams go, you accept it at the time. But it was wrong, so wrong. The world was angry, and red. I knew it would be, it always is when I go back there. That’s why I never sleep, shouldn’t, can’t…”
He stopped talking, and drifted off. Then, he caught himself and sat up, terrified, and talked faster.
“It wasn’t my place. I didn’t belong in my own mind anymore, it was just…red. Everything was so red, so bitter and wrong, that I actually screamed to wake up. But I couldn’t, it wasn’t my choice. I was in that red for less than a second before it collapsed into nothing and I fell.
I fell through that angry dark for days. I hit the ground seconds later, and lay there for a moment. When I stood up a week later the world was cold, and blue, and worse than angry. The coldness cut me… Cut into me like a knife. I can still feel the cut Martha…
Martha was his wife, who died four years ago. I was afraid for my friend: He had completely lost touch with reality.
“The wind blew through me as I struggled to hold on. There was no snow or ice, just cliffs of stone surrounding me as I clung to life. The wind was whispering to me, “Lie down, sleep here, rest…” and I so wanted to, Martha, I was so tired. Even now that I’m awake I want to dream of sleeping. I want to-no, I have to keep… I didn’t sleep, I walked on and the wind was angry with me, so angry. It wanted me to fall, to die and be buried in stone and forgotten in my own mind. I couldn’t lose myself, I couldn’t lose… I walked and walked until the voice was just wind and pain, and I couldn’t stand any more. I fell to my knees and cried, and the sky laughed with the wind at my struggle to survive. And the ground was gone again, and I fell into the waking world.
“I was awake, but the world was wrong, Martha. I’m cold, and I hurt, and I can still hear the voice on the wind. I remember things, strange things. I remember watching you die, and I remember dancing with you in my forest. I remember us growing old together, and I remember me driving through the night to the home of my only friend.
“I remember falling asleep, but I can’t remember waking up.”
My only friend cried quietly to himself, muttering the name of his dead wife to me through his sobs. I did the only thing I know to do: I collected his final dream with paper and ink. When I was finished, Makeson stopped crying, and smiled at me.
“Make it a good story, won’t you? I don’t think I have many more in me.”
Makeson drove home that night, and I did not hear from him again. I received a call from the hospital two days later. Makeson had been admitted to hospital for severe cut wounds sustained from a broken bottle of his own medication. The woman on the phone indicated they were self administered. I was told that he started screaming in his room several hours after being picked up, and was sedated to reduce his pain. An hour later, Makeson was dead.
I cannot pretend to be a doctor, and the trained professionals told me my friend had died had passed on peacefully in his sleep, a result of his old age. All I can offer is the whisper of doubt; the record of half remembered dreams from a man’s life, carried on the wind and weighed down with the cold fury of decades.
I know my friend died in his sleep. Regardless of how he died, I very much doubt it was peaceful. I can only remember him through a painting of words, which does him little justice. I will speak of my friend no longer.
Those that sleep do rest at last, and cease to mourn the bitter past. I do not loiter, I show respect. I do not linger, I collect.
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