The Cave and the Garden - SCP Foundation

The dream begins in a cave, where my surroundings are more clear than any dream that I have ever seen or heard of. Around me, I see dark stone, shaped over millennia by water. Below me are stairs, carved into a gentle slope by human hand, that guide me upwards as a gentle stream flows through small channels flanking my path. Webs of white light dance across the roof above as the light from the distant surface sun reflects the water’s rippling onto the stone. I look back and the cave grows steeper; there the stairs twist down into the black abyss. I hear faint pattering at first, and it registers with horror that something is running up the stairs.

I sprint, hoping to beat the breakneck pace of the unseen creature, and as I leap up the path, I pass altars. Extinguished, melted candles and aged paintings of the dead blur past, and soon I step into the sun.

The cave leads into the enormous garden courtyard of a ruined building, where forking paths overgrown by unchecked greenery traipse into sunlit tunnels made by flowering trees and gleaming marble archways. The sky above is the bluest blue describable, and I see it for a moment, framed through a three-story balcony that lines the courtyard walls, before I have to run again. I sidestep past and jump over broken, toppled statues of a once-coherent human form, racing into the labyrinth.

Sometimes I reach the shade of the indoor forest, sometimes I get a little further and see rooms- a decaying piano and some scattered books-, clearings with ponds or wildflowers, gold leaf here and there, but I am always outpaced and caught by my animalistic pursuer.

When it happens, I wake, and I return to my reality. I am in no hanging garden, but an apartment, and I remember responsibility. There’s work that needs to be done, for the ordinary profession that I call my own, and I’m perpetually behind. It’s a Herculean task to meet my quotas, for even as I work late into the night, new tasks pile up faster than I can complete them. As I work later, I grow more exhausted and work less, and yet I cannot sleep, for when I try I am met with the anxiety that I could still be working. When I do finally fall asleep, face-down on my desk with my laptop and paper, I can only dream of the garden before the cycle repeats. I pull up my blind, and look down onto the small-city streets from my second floor window, where I see light rain and fall leaves, trees a quarter of the way to becoming barren, a procession of people and umbrellas, wrapped in coats and scarves while walking or driving over bridges to get here or back, and while the light from the cloudy sky is more than enough to see by, the streetlights have not turned off yet. Pre-recorded jazz is emanating from the coffee shop across the street, and my ceiling fan spins lazily above me. Down the hill, that awful intersection continues being terrible, and white fog dots the tips of distant buildings. Forty degrees, and I have to bike to work.

…

I fall asleep in my bed this time at a reasonable 12:28 AM, and run once more through the garden. This time, I pass through a small maze of short, fragrant hedges, before stumbling upon a cracked stone staircase with a three-quarter turn. As I hit the ground, I see the path ahead; there is an archway bridge partially demolished by a mighty ash, and I wake up.

In the real world, it is windy, dark, and cold outside of the blanket. It’s before dawn, and I seem to have left a window open overnight. My laptop lies overturned on the floor, and the air inside my apartment is crisp in a way that makes me dread the upcoming bike to work, with the cold atmosphere being painfully sucked into my lungs as I breathe.

…

I’m entranced by this structure, and what it represents for me. I now have a sense of mystery and adventure that I have not felt since I was a child, in times when I was lost in libraries and parks, but only within these short, tantalizing visions. I want the time to experience this strange and ancient land, rather than run through it at a breakneck pace. I want to taste the exotic fruit upon the trees, I want to read the crumbling pages of the decaying books, I want to lay down in the garden stream and feel the water run through my hair as I listen to the insects sing.

But I can’t have that, and soon enough, I wake into my life of work and more of it. Rustling paper, swirling fall leaves, burnt, cheap coffee, misty rains and rolling fogs, they make me sick in a way that nothing else does now. I’m a prisoner counting the minute details in their tomb, aching to see the outside in all its glory, if even just for a day. I can’t even have a day; the longest dream within the garden has never been much more than a minute or two. I need to see that blue again.

…

I scramble up the steep slope of a toppled tower, thick vines and roots giving traction to the featureless marble brick, and leap onto a high battlement. This is the highest that I have been before within this dream, and I can see now the full extent of the garden; I am on the far border, below me and off the battlement is a field of rolling grass, with trees and the light of the sun on glass in the distance. On the other side, the marble maze stretches on for at least a mile, and forms a sort of great “U” shape, which rests by the side of a lake. Rolling hills and great forests block the horizon. I pause reflexively for just a moment to gaze at the gleaming glass, and I am caught.

…

In the real world, I have a friend who is an EMT. Her morals are complicated, which is exactly what I need for my plan tonight. Apparently she supplies opioids to those who ask, and it makes her the money that she needs for her sister to eat. Business has clearly been good, for as I talk to her and ask her for her chemical boon, I hear that her young counterpart even goes to a private school now.

She gives me enough pills to meet my needs, and I ask her if she can watch me while I take them, giving me the opioid-reversing naloxone if things go south. She agrees.

…

Tonight’s dream is different. I can hear the wind, feel the stones beneath my feet, and feel my heartbeat slowing in the real world as the sedatives take effect. For the first time, I don’t hear my pursuer bolting up the stairs, but rather, a walking pace. In one world, my breath grows stronger while it grows weaker in another, and I decide to turn around, to finally see my enemy.

It’s a human shape, trudging up the stairs with a visible exhaustion, and to keep ahead, I step out of the cave, and prepare for my final escape.

It steps into the light, and I see my pursuer.

It is my friend, and in her hands is a bottle of naloxone.

Her eyes are red and puffy, and she takes a knee, no longer having the energy to chase me at that breakneck pace, and to save me by bringing me back to the waking world.

My pulse stops.

I run into the labyrinth once more, smelling the boxwood and the lilac.

I don’t let her catch me.