Before the infiltration, Amy’s dreams were a wonderfully chaotic array of the everyday merged with the unexplainably absurd. She had wooly recollections of the most memorable ones like the one where she was on holiday with her Mum on an unidentifiable hilly island, all quite standard, until a crocodile, a goose and a stray dog followed her up the hill on the way back to their caravan, a foreboding sense of attack. For a while crocodiles had become a regular occurrence which, apparently, was interpreted as signifying exhaustion and a warning of a destructive force. The crocodiles had disappeared since leaving the city and moving to the seaside, and although she had escaped her version of 21st century danger, this wasn’t the reason for their absence.
The controlling of dreams had come a couple of months after Amy had moved. It was announced as a government initiative, the idea being that if dreams were altered to generate self improvement, resolution and an encouragement to consume then not only would the economy improve but there would be significant savings to the crumbling NHS system due to the preventative impact of these measures that led to people making healthier choices.
No one knew how they had managed it, Some conspiracy theorists concluded that a chemical had been added to toothpaste to soak the dreams with the image of being the best version of yourself, confronting the people who had hurt you with an articulate manner that would make them listen intently and apologise. Sex dreams only existed now either with the person you were with, or if you were single, like Amy, if the figure in your dream was single too. At least she still had that.
But the change was unbearable to Amy, and in this town where she barely knew anyone, she felt isolated from the world and from her own brain. The only person she’d talked to about it was Tabitha, who she worked with at the train station cafe.
“The amount of nightmares and sleep paralysis I experienced before was absolute hell for me. Yes the dreams are more boring but I can’t tell you what a relief it is.” Tabitha said, passing her a flask. “Flat white, oat milk, own cup.”
”But at what cost? Does it not scare you even more now that our dreams aren’t safe from consumerism?”
”Not your capitalism chat again. Come on, it scared me more waking up and not being able to move my body whilst a man with an axe approached. Waking up actually wanting to go for a run whilst wearing a cute little matching outfit is way better,” Tabitha said.
”Very funny. Do you not miss it at all?” Amy passed back the flat white filled flask.
”Miss people going on about their dreams constantly and having to pretend to care? No thank you, what was the point in dreaming anyway?”
The point, Amy thought, was that it was like an unexplained magic. Even with the occasional nightmare or anxiety dream, she welcomed the chaos which acted as a break from her job working in corporate social responsibility at a bank in the city. When she joined the company she thought she would be like Robin Hood, using the wealth that shined from all angles to do good. And it did do good, but it exposed the injustice of the disparity which would never go away. The fancy events, bonuses, the cafe that looked like it had been airlifted in next to the reception, showcasing lifeless art that you’d stare at whilst waiting for one of your three free coffees a day, four if you brought in your branded reusable cup. It was all an abundant ocean compared to the raindrops they donated to the most popular causes at the time.
Then, last New Years Eve whilst drinking the £100 bottle of wine she was given, she vowed that the following year would be different.
The dullness of the office decor she tried so hard to forget was drastically different to the setting of her first collection which was based on the recurring dreams of a supermarket that her awake brain had long since forgotten. Rows upon rows of synthetic tins and jars seamlessly lined up on fully stocked shelves, offer stickers luminous and inviting. The floor was tiled with multi coloured scattered dots reflected by the harsh lighting that made the rise and fall of the sun feel like a myth. She followed the scent of her Grandma’s Elnett hairspray as she would cross off the items written in blue biro on the perfectly torn out paper rectangle.
In the dreams it was as if the whole night was spent in the supermarket, wandering up and down the endless deserted aisles, moments of panic where she would look for rice pudding desperately but unsuccessfully, or when she did find it she just couldn’t grab hold of it. But there were reminders of those happier times where her Grandma would put her arm around her, giving her a squeeze and it was like Amy could feel the quilted jacket pressing into her face and hair.
“Thanks for helping me with my shopping, love. Pick any sweet you’d like.” She’d say to her in every dream and in every memory that Amy had. The shopping trip was their ritual every Saturday whilst Amy’s Mum worked at the local salon washing the perms of OAP’s. The lollipop that doubled up as a whistle would always be Amy’s choice for the laughter it would bring to her Grandma, even though the tunes she tried to play were painfully out of tune. Amy felt regret for replacing the whistle with a Nokia 3310 when she was a teenager which she would flick through the ringtones of, playing them over and over again to the annoyance of her Grandma.
One art magazine called her exhibition a nostalgic maze, and although it was only held in a small community gallery, Amy saw it as the sign she needed to leave the corporate world behind. She believed that dreaming had saved her, almost as if her brain knew that during the day she had KPI’s to hit and deadlines to meet, but nighttime was where her imagination had no bounds and was so perfectly curated to her past and present in an entirely individual way to her.
There were those peaceful months in her new life by the sea where, on her days off she would luxuriate in the time spent delving in and out of naps, allowing for snippets of reality of her surroundings to nestle in between dreams. Now, she would wake up early and feel an urge from somewhere inside of her to do something productive which brought her crashing back to the corporate working days with the 5am spin classes followed by a breakfast of overnight oats, mornings that brought an adrenaline fuelled exhaustion before the day had even begun.
Her dreams had become orderly like an episode of a children’s show with a clear moral message. In many of the dreams, she was back in her old office, sitting around a board table covered with fruit platters, triangle sandwiches and coffee urns, with celebrations of meeting sustainability goals and Amy overcoming her fear of public speaking. In one recurring dream, there’s an event, an exhibition of work created by children in the surrounding deprived areas, an opportunity to invite clients to impress with their philanthropic activity. One of the children was supposed to say a few words about how much the process meant to him, but he couldn’t. He went pale and said he felt sick. When this actually happened, Amy said that it was fine, there was no need for him to, much to her boss’s anger. However, in the dream, she was able to encourage him to and the event was a success.
But what if she just didn’t sleep? If she stayed awake, she thought, she could bring back control of her brain. So one evening and for the next week she drank whilst dancing to heavy metal records from her teenage years. Her was flat lit up whilst the rest of the town darkened in sleep from their early nights dreaming of self-improvement. After midnight she listened through her headphones, turning the music louder so she wouldn’t wake her neighbours; an elderly couple who would sometimes bring round a lasagne or shepherds pie for her, or the couple next door with the toddler and baby.
She swayed and spun as the dark rum trickled down her throat, her bed in the next room was a place of fearful invitation, the tempting lure of the duvet providing a comfort and safety she didn’t want. She fought sleep each night, until, until, until the level of alcohol tipped from inhibition to the inability to control her actions and all she could do was lay down beside a blank canvas in the hope that it would become a portal to the past she wanted.
Instead, she dreamt soberly of waking up early, clearing away the glass bottles and applying for office-based jobs that wouldn’t leave her in fear of paying her rent like the poor cafe wage did.
“Sorry to say mate, but you look absolutely awful,” Tabitha said after wishing a couple of regulars a good day as they set off on their commute.
“What’s your point?”
“Well, we could be the first people that our customers see and speak to. It’s important that we help to start off their morning well.”
“Excuse me,” Amy took a greedy gulp of water in her velcro mouth. “I’m sure you were the one who used to come here straight from a night out and basically throw up in someone’s coffee if they ordered a mocha with two sugars.”
“I know, but things are different now. I feel better for coming in fresher and having a smile on my face. You just look plain miserable, and your breath stinks.”
Amy knew all of this of course, her head felt thick and her concept of time had begun to feel painful, the chime of the bell which signaled a new customer taunted every one of her nerve endings each time.
Her plan wasn’t working and she felt dreadful, unable to access that state of flow where she would be so absorbed in what she was creating, the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night with an idea that demanded to be sketched on the first blank page she found in the battered notebook by her bed. She found a glorious alchemy in that time-limited bridge between sleep and wakefullness in which she would sketch images attempting to convey her dream world. A world that was so random that no dream altering technology could replicate.
But the alcohol wasn’t helping either, it created an odd sea sickness that stopped abruptly when she began dreaming, only to wake up and feel hungover like cotton wool dried out in the sun. No, she thought, she must do this without the aid of alcohol which was only making her feel worse.
She didn’t sleep the first night without alcohol, well, mostly. She managed to keep herself busy tidying her living room studio. Paint brushes were wiped, dried out and ordered by size and texture, her canvas’ stacked neatly by the mould speckled wall in two piles and she varnished her easel. When there was nothing else to tidy, she stared at her canvas, the clean paint brushes mocked her in their threat to stay clean. Her eyes dropped, she waited and hoped for the moment of drowsiness before sleep that might provide her with inspiration she needed. Instead, she fell asleep at 4:30am her alarm waking her at 6am for her shift at the cafe where she felt as though she was living in a different world to everyone else, petering in and out of concentration whilst customers ordered with a military precision.
Amy stayed longer at the cafe to serve the crowds visiting the city for the beginning of the Christmas celebrations, she had offered in a bid to keep herself occupied from thinking of the long night ahead. A little bit of extra money would help too. To keep her here in the stubbornness that she would make it work. Her Mum couldn’t understand why she’d leave her fancy city life for scraping by, she had told Amy she wasted her degree in public relations. Amy had never wanted to do a degree in that anyway.
At home as the night wore on, she began scrolling through the social media apps she rarely used these days, finding herself in a hole of what the people from her old life were doing now. Facebook showed the school friends who stayed in her home town up north and who were posting photos of their child’s first day at school, Instagram was filled with her old work colleagues who were living the anticipated upward trajectories of their lives. There was Claire who had been her best friend at work, their lack of contact since she left the city showed that all they had in common was a love of the sparkling water taps on each floor and an annoyance at the IT system. Claire was now pregnant and cradling her bump alongside the fiancé that she told Amy many times before that she wasn’t happy with.
Then there was Liam who was her work crush, slightly older and more senior and who she’d make an effort to dress well for when she knew he was in, the flirty smiles across the office providing a thrill amongst the grey. But she went off him as soon as she stalked his Instagram with Claire one drunken night and saw that his page was filled with images of him leaning on the bonnets of fancy cars. She thought it was funny how in a unified environment someone could appear irresistible but in the real world they brought on a sense of dread. He’d replaced the ferrari’s since then with photos with his girlfriend by a pool in Dubai. It was no wonder he hadn’t appeared in her sex dreams and she was glad of that, at least.
No. She couldn’t get caught into this past. This was the past that infected her dreams without her consent. Being awake meant that she had a choice and she had to take action rather than wait around. So at 4am she wheeled out her bike, heaving it down the concrete steps, birds scattering into the distance with the disturbance. The cold pulled her skin taut as she began riding through her foggy breath with an overstimulated alertness. Headlight. Rumble. Car. Light. Fox. Scatter. Van. Beep. Peddle. Peddle. Bark. Bird. Road. Road. Roundabout. Headlight. Car. Signal. Car park. Railings. Lock.
The 24 hour supermarket glowed in the final night hours like a beacon of hope as the wind stilled as she walked inside.
She headed straight to the tin aisle, the multi coloured rows attempting to imitate what used to be in her dreams. Her dreams or her paintings? Or was it her memories that too were fading with time? A list. She should have written a list. What she would give to have kept one of those lists that her Grandma carried. Bread. Milk. Butter. Jam. Baked potatoes. Spaghetti hoops. Corned beef. Rice pudding.
She walked with purpose up and down the aisle and passed the assistant stocking the shelves at least three times but Amy didn’t know what she was hoping to find. Her Grandma had died a long time ago and she wasn’t going to get her back. The woman who had been the one to buy Amy her first easels and paint set and encouraged her to paint every Saturday as she listened with a genuine passion for what she had to say and create.
The more she grasped the image of her Grandma, the faster it disappeared from her consciousness. In a last-ditch attempt, she picked up a tin of spaghetti hoops and took it to the self-service tills which reflected back the same round eyes and thick eyebrows her Grandma had. She paid then left, putting the tin in the pocket of a hoodie branded with the spinning studio logo she used to go to.
Back at her flat, she heated the spaghetti hoops up in a bowl with a plate resting on the top. Bread. She’d forgotten bread. Sat on the floor, she ate the hoops with a fork, tasting the lack of salt and watered down sauce. It was no use. She couldn’t go back. Amy threw the bowl at the canvas, went to her bedroom to curl up in bed and fell into a deep sleep.
3 months later...
Amy got on the train to see her latest exhibition’s home. There had been an opening event filled with faces confirming that she’d found her way back as she made a speech about how grateful she was for the opportunity for which thousands of people would see her work. She felt hopeful for what was to come next, the potential of not working in the cafe anymore, maybe even renting a studio or moving to a flat without mould. The grant she was given was her chance and she felt a measured excitement at the meeting to talk about her next collection which they'd ask to be themed on potential.
A smartly dressed man opened the flawless glass door open for her and immediately she saw her art hanging up in the reception cafe she knew so well and she smiled with the knowledge that what was inside of her would always be there. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her branded reusable coffee cup and asked for her free cappuccino.