Flying for Beginners

Lucid Dream 15

Image created in Dream app

This is a piece in a growing series of mine about dreams and lucid dreaming. In these stories, I give first-person accountings of some of the dreams that I have each night. Identities and locations can shift around with little to no warning and the narratives don’t follow typical plot structures. For more of these stories, click here.

I’m leaving school and I notice suddenly that something is amiss. As I make my way down the hall, its colors appear to grow more and more vibrant. The posters lining the hallway are in motion. It feels as though I’m no longer even tethered to the floor beneath me. With each footstep, I grow airier and airier.

I begin to hover weightlessly along the loose checker pattern that covers the floor and in between metallic walls of lockers. I’m fully aware but everything feels dreamy and impermanent. I wonder what could be causing this. I think back on my fragmented day and begin to try to piece things together.

After a minute of reasoning, it dawns on me. My friends and I had taken some substance during lunch this afternoon and it’s finally begun to take effect. I’m gliding through the hallway like an elated phantom. In the chaos of everyone going to separate buses and after school activities, though, hardly anyone seems to notice this gravity-defying feat I’ve achieved. I drift down…