Midnight to early morning.
I dare call it the most magical time of the day.
Time slows down. There's no sense of time anymore, and I'm no longer chased by the ticking of the clock.
Everyone is paused, yet I'm still on play. It's quite a feeling to be the only one wide awake in a world where everyone is "gone."
Everything quiets down and fades away. And it's just you. You, alone, nothing else.
Those are the moments I live for.
I woke up in a bed of orange and red. The leaves crackled and rustled, tickling my ears as I shifted and squirmed. The first thing I saw as I woke from my slumber was the stars, embedded in the sky, now dyed in dark blue.
Brushing my hand through my short dark hair, I picked out pieces of dry leaves stuck in my hair as I sat myself up. Rewinding my memory to the last bit of consciousness I had before sleep took over, I looked towards the horizon from the top of the hill, where my bed of leaves was located, to find the sun's final breath, tints of orange and pink, bleeding on the edge of the dark blue sky.
Sighing, I took a deep breath of the chilly night air, breathing in as much as I could-- the air, the atmosphere, the moment.
With that, I stood up, brushing off the dust on my clothes as I began my descent down the hill, towards the light and the smoke.
It was autumn.
I walked through the amusement park, an ice cream cone in one hand, a friend’s hand in the other. Different colored lights blinked all over, balloons and strings hung above, and an overly-cheery melody repeated itself over and over. We roamed around the park, hand in hand. I felt happy. In fact, too happy.
I halted, causing my friend to look at me. All of a sudden, I felt a stream of consciousness flow into my puzzled mind, and I realized, ‘This is a dream.’
I turned excitedly to my friend and exclaimed, “This is a dream.”
Suddenly, the colored lights faded away, the music slowed down and eventually stopped. The world around me slowly began to warp, and my friend, too, became disfigured. Her features were twisted and turned, yet her eyes, which turned into two black holes on her warped face, remained fixed on my own.
“This may be a dream for you, but this is my reality,” the figure screeched.
And I woke up.