Chapter Four: Waking Dream

Silence descends on me. I take a deep breath, and exhale sharply trying to push the planet off my ribcage. Raising Cillian alone is like carrying the world on my back. On William’s custody weekends, I remember who I am outside of caregiving, and lately, the other dimension has been calling—I can’t hit “decline” forever.

Tonight, I’m finally going to answer. So I light candles and draw a bath.

The bathroom glows with warm candlelight, shadows dance on the tiles. I sink into the temperate bath and invoke all the elements: the water cradling my body, the flickering fire of the candle, the incense smoke spiraling through the air. I glide a dark green moss ball over my skin, grounding me to the earth. This ritual is my bridge.

My body relaxes, but my mind floats—to the place between thoughts, where the world bends and the veil thins.

“Come,” it whispers.

I allow myself to go.

“The time is now.” I hear. The male voice is calm but urgent. It jolts through me.

My old friend Silas’s face emerges unexpectedly in the air, in a cloud of radiant energy. 

I’m still in the tub, bubbles clinging to my skin, but there is a second reality that now shimmers over the physical world, intangible, but undeniable. His presence is like the wind—you can’t see it, but you know it’s there, and it changes everything.

“Remember that mushroom trip we had when we were teenagers?” his voice says. “I told you we were warriors, that there was a spiritual battle coming. You need to find me in the real world, and say, ‘The time is now.’ Those words are the key. I’m not awake right now, but they will wake me up.”

“I’ll find you.” I promise.

The vision fades. 

As I’m drying off, the warmth of the bath is replaced by a cold spike of fear. What am I supposed to do? I can’t just show up after all these years and tell Silas that his higher self crossed dimensions to give me a message? He used to believe in this stuff—psychic links, indigo children, cosmic fights—but people change… What will he think of me?

Just a dream, I tell myself. A waking dream. I try to dismiss it as a trick of my mind, but the loudspeaker blares: “Alert: Worldwide heat waves spark a water shortage crisis.” Is this the spiritual war beginning?

I press a palm to my forehead, searching for a fever that might explain this phenomenon. My skin is cool, but a cold sweat rains across it. 

Since my split with William, I’ve been trying to glue myself back together, but I think I’ve lost the glue… and maybe my sanity too.

A memory haunts me. I once saw a group of people claim enlightenment, only to be shut down by the prevailing scientific discourse: “We can map religious experiences in the brain. Anyone can feel like they are enlightened with the right stimulation. Transcendence is just misfiring neurons.” That group was silenced—by pills, and padded walls.

Are we so blinded by a grind that equates existence with suffering that we’ve forgotten the stories of prophets who walked in higher realms? 

I have a theory of my own. If something as small as excess dopamine can trigger these journeys, and if those who travel there share the same visions… Doesn’t that suggest those realms are real?

Maybe I have lost my mind.

But the message echoes—The time is now.