 |  |
| |
I don't know how I ended up here. As I stood outside, I observed the strange surroundings around me. It looked like a weird dream. The sky was purple but there was sun coming through like in a sunset. I was standing in a field of what looked like wheat or something. Despite the sky being purple, the sun shone through and onto the wheat making it that gold color. I was facing west, and there was a deserted road in front of me that headed north, and there was more never-ending field on the other side of the road.
I was all right, I felt fine, and I was bewildered.
The road was totally deserted and when I looked north, the road seemed to go up on an incline toward the purple sky. There was a chill in the air, but it wasn't windy. Despite the weird scenery, it was beautiful. I decided to start walking up the road. I took out my portable CD player and headphones from my jacket. I listened to David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" as I trekked through the field until I finally reached the road.
I got to the road and started walking north. The road seemed to go on forever as I started up the incline. I continued walking. Halfway up the incline, I was tired, so I stopped to rest. I sat down on the side of the road and reached into my jacket again and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Ever since I started getting into Bowie, I smoked just because he did. I listened to my tunes as I tried to light the cigarette.
As soon as I flicked the lighter, the flame went out, as if a wind had blown it out. However, there was no wind coming from anywhere. I tried a few times but couldn't light the cigarette. I had no matches with me, so I cursed and threw the cigarette down and started my journey up the road again. The end of the road finally drew near, and I hiked up the incline until I finally got to the top. There was a little gazebo-type of thing at the top. There was a man sitting under the gazebo there, and when I realized who the man was, I nearly freaked out right there. The man was David Bowie.
David sat on the ground under the gazebo in the shade. I stood there in disbelief. I must say that he looked great...he wore a green button down shirt (check out the November 1995 cover of Musician) and a pair of white pants. He smiled at me and I smiled back as I took my headphones off.
"Hallo Danielle," David said to me, cheerfully. How did he know my name?
"You're David Bowie..." was all I could manage. I must have sounded like a total moron.
David laughed. "Yes," he said.
"Oh man...you're awesome...I love you and your music..." I rambled on.
"I thank you so much," he said, offering me a piece of the road under the gazebo to sit down on. I sat down and we started into a conversation about his music, music in general, and art.
"You are Danielle, right?" David finally asked me.
"Yes, I am Danielle," I said.
"That is a very pretty name," he said.
"Thank you," I said with a smile. I felt it was now time to ask what the hell was going on.
"What happened? Where am I? How did you know my name?" I asked David.
"I don't know where we are. But when I got here, there was a note on the ground that told me to wait for you, so that's what I did. It says to wait for Danielle," David explained, holding up a piece of paper with writing on it.
"Who wrote the note?" I asked, bewildered.
"I don't know," David said.
"Why are we here? How did I get here?" I asked. I had no recollection of how I got here.
"I have no idea. I started my hike up the road and had stopped here to rest when I found the note," David explained.
"Am I hallucinating?" I asked.
David laughed. "Of course not! You've never been high. And gimme those cigarettes - you don't smoke either," he said, holding his hand out.
It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't smoke. Where did the cigarettes come from? How did he know that I didn't smoke?
"Here, you smoke them. The lighter doesn't work though," I said, handing David both items.
David took out a cigarette and lit it with my lighter, and it lit without a problem.
I watched David as he exhaled a cloud of smoke.
For the next half hour, we changed the subject and continued to chat. We talked like we had known each other for years. We chatted, we flirted a little bit, and we were trying to figure out what was going on. This was too weird.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"Well, if you look over this hill, you won't see anything. This note tells me that there will either be bad weather on the other side or a mirror image of the side that you just made your journey through," David said.
I stood up and looked over the other side. I peeked over the hill and it was purple straight down.
"What does each thing mean?" I asked.
"If it's a mirror image, the both of us can leave this strange place via the image and go back to our normal lives. If it's bad weather, we must go through it and find out what's waiting for us," David explained.
I thought for a minute. This was getting too strange for my understanding.
"How do we find out what it's going to be?" I asked.
"Light a match and throw it over," David said, getting out a book of matches. He handed it to me. After a few false starts, I finally lit a match, looked at David, and then threw it over the side of the hill. We both stood back and then heard a faint boom sound and saw some smoke.
We both looked over the side of the hill again. It was neither bad weather nor a mirror image. It was a scene from a level in Doom II. The green walls were in front of us, the red floor down at the bottom of the hill, the appearance of green waterfalls on the walls. It scared the crap out of me.
"Danielle, are you all right?" David asked me, as he stood up. I must have looked distressed.
"What the hell is going on here!" I said out loud. I was about to snap. "David, what is going on!" I yelled, collapsing to the ground on my knees.
"I don't know," David said, getting on the ground with me. I looked around.
"It's Doom II, dammit!" I cursed.
"I don't know what has happened," David repeated, putting his arms around me.
We both stood up and looked over the side again when the ground started to shake, like an earthquake. Suddenly, all of the surroundings started to shake and crumble to the ground. I hit the ground for duck and cover with David and waited out the process. As the place dissolved around us, the scene disappeared...
I woke up with a start, sitting straight up in my bed. My god, that was a strange dream, almost a nightmare. I looked next to me and saw David sleeping soundly. He was asleep on his back, no shirt on. His reddish bangs laid limply in his face. I leaned over and pushed them out of the way ever so gently so I wouldn't wake him. I looked at the clock and it was 3am. I got up out of bed and walked to the kitchen to get a beer and came back. I then walked to the bedroom window to open it, as it was getting hot in the room. When I pulled the curtains open to get to the window, I looked out at the view. What I saw made me drop the beer bottle on the window sill, breaking the glass and spilling the beer all over the place.
"Danielle, what's wrong?" I heard David say, jumping out of bed.
"Look..." I said, pointing to the window.
"Oh my god..." David said. The sky was purple but there was sun coming through like in a sunset. There were fields of what looked like wheat or something on each side of a deserted highway. Despite the sky being purple, the sun shone through and onto the wheat making it that gold color. From the window, we were looking west, and the deserted road headed north, and went up like an incline toward the purple sky.
"What a beautiful sight...hey...is this what you see in that recurring dream?" David asked me.
"Yes," I answered. I looked at David standing behind me.
"Let's take a look at it," David said, walking out of the room. I quickly followed him out of the house.
When we arrived outside, the sky was black, the streetlights were on, and nothing was weird. It looked like 3am outside. There was no purple sky, deserted road, or wheat fields anywhere.
"What the heck..." I said. David looked at me, bewildered.
We walked back into the house and into the bedroom to the window again. When we looked out the window, the scene was gone. It looked normal.
"Hey...look over there," David said, pointing.
I looked in his direction out the window and saw the purple sky scene way off in the distance, like it was a storm that had been over us for a while, and then passed us, into the next city.
"I guess the meaning of the dream will baffle someone else now," I said.
"Yeah, I guess so," David agreed. We both went back to bed.
I was all right, I felt fine, and I was bewildered.
