A Haunting, Dream Phone Call

I was deep in a dream, and in my dream I was sitting on a lounge chair near my front porch. A cell phone rang. It had a tone similar to an old style phone, sort of a bell sound. I pulled the phone out of my pocket. It was not my present cell phone, but a different one. It looked very high tech.

In fact, the phone looked translucent, almost as if it had a see through case – it was very futuristic looking. After fumbling my way to folding it open, I answered it.

“Hello?” I said.

“Do you remember me? I just sent you a message,” said the voice, a female voice, a very real sounding voice. The voice was very haunting -- like something from my distant past. Or even a voice from the dead.

She mentioned something – but her words were very hard to decipher. Her voice, and her words, had this disattached, confusing, ghostly quality – it was like hearing a long distance, sputtering and stuttering radio signal, where you can’t quite make out the words because they are fading in and out.

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you remember me?” said the voice.

“I don’t remember you because your voice is different.”

“You don’t remember me then,” said the voice.

“I’m having trouble hearing you on this cell phone. They always sound crappy, and your voice is fading in and out.”

“You don’t remember? All the… When we... Read the message… I… Don’t you…?”

That’s the way it went. Bits and pieces of sentences, words cutting off... and her voice.... it struck me in the heart.

Read the message, the voice said. What message?

And my heart began to surge, because I sensed it was a woman I knew in my past. Someone who meant a lot to me. The voice was one I’d heard before, but I didn’t know who it was.

“Just read the text I sent you,” she said, “It will tell you everything.” And then, immediately, the connection switched off.

I fumbled my way at getting the text to play. It started out with a bunch of words in small type, which turned into a bunch of words in much larger type (all in a stylised, handwritten font) and then they scrolled too fast to read, along with music, as if it were a music video playing, a lyric music video, only much more creative, as the graphics were translucent looking and had a very artistic, almost scrawled quality to them. 

The words were something like:

“We could read a book, play together, love together, ride a bike, walk in the park…” It seemed to be a quickly scrolling, poetic list of things lovers would do. At the very end, it was signed, and although the signature was hard to read -- because it was not in clear focus -- it looked like it was the name of someone I used to know.

And the emotionally charged pop music kept playing, and images and translucent words and phrases kept scrolling with the music, all impossible to read because they were scrolling so fast, and then I woke up.

Immediately, I wondered what I had just experienced. Obviously, it was just a lucid dream. But it was the most disturbing dream I'd had in years.

Because it was so real.

Most dreams you normally forget soon after waking. This one I didn't forget for almost a week.

I read a book on dreams once. It says that many dreams are symbolic -- your subconscious mind throws out various images and sequences from your memory banks. A face you'll see, or a voice you may hear, could be the face and voice of someone you only saw or heard once in your life, even in passing. And your subconscious has pulled it from your deep, distant memory, and placed it into a dream.

I have no idea if my dream had any meaning. It probably didn't. But the voice seemed familiar. I still have no idea who it is. Thinking about it: it still haunts me to this day.

The subconscious can be a cruel mistress.