* * *
It was a beautiful yet strange sight altogether. There still remained some specks of light dancing around in the air from the sudden outburst of glow that had formed into images. It looked like a 3-D animation, as if all the things in the images were sticking out somehow.
It was these things in the images that Isabelle found most astonishing. They were exactly the things she saw in her dreams, except that they were black-and white. She wondered if they were black-and-white in her dreams too, though she always remembered them as colorful images.
She had read that most people do dream in colors, but some may not notice or remember colors in their dreams. Because color is such a natural part of our visual experience, we sometimes overlook it in our dreams. Another reason is poor memory recall and how our dreams fade so quickly from our minds that we may only be able to recall the dream in shades of gray. Dreams that are in black and white are an indication of a depressed or saddened mood.
She always remembered her dreams in colors, but the dreams in front of her were all black-and-white. Maybe it was time to find out what her dreams were really like.
Whatever the images showed, Isabelle couldn’t make out what they were exactly. The visual content of dreams is highly phantasmagoric; that is, different locations and objects continuously blend into each other. The visuals, including locations, characters or people, objects or artifacts, are generally reflective of a person's memories and experiences, but often take on highly exaggerated and bizarre forms. It is the reason why the content of dreams is not clear when we try to remember it. It is all just a mixed up world of fantasy and color.
There were no sounds, no sensations, just the eerie glow emanating from the shapes trying to blend themselves into order. Isabelle stepped closer to the 3-D like structures, and as she did, everything became clearer, more visible. She could clearly see what the content the dream she was standing before was showing. It was a dream she didn’t have often. But whenever she did, it made her so scared that she often woke up with clammy hands and forehead.
It was a dream that looked like a beautiful portrait from far, but standing right in front of it didn’t make it look all that lovely. It was a broken bridge, made of loosely tied wood planks from both sides to edges of a cliff, and a furious sea thousands of feet below it.
Isabelle usually dreamt it the same way: that she is standing on the bridge and just when she starts walking in front to reach the other end, the bridge starts to crumble and shake, and the wood planks break under her feet, slowing falling off from both sides. All of a sudden, the whole bridges collapses into pieces. She never really made it to the sea beneath. She always woke up before that, feeling as if all of it was so real, and that she really had drowned.
Isabelle had gephyrophobia: fear of bridges. Although phobias are mostly caused due to some real-life events that may or may not be consciously remembered, Isabelle had never experienced some event that may have been the reason for her to form gephyrophobia. She just found the whole idea of crossing some thin path on a considerable height dangerous – especially if there was tons of water beneath ready to gulp you up in a moment, taking the life right out of your lungs.
Now, as she stared into her fear, she felt the same sensation of being washed over in the water all over again, just like she did after she woke up from the dream. She stood close enough to the image now that she almost felt like she was inside it. She slowly raised her hand to touch it but hesitated, afraid something might happen. But she was past taking risks. She put her hand on the scene. Nothing happened at first. The same cold and silence continued around her, but then she smelled something like . . . seawater. Before she could contemplate it, she was pulled right through the dream. It all happened in a millisecond, and she felt the whole air escape from her lungs – exactly what she felt when she stood on the bridge in her dream.