Land of forgotten memories

               As Edgar Allen Poe might have said…”Life is but a dream within a dream.” Where to start a story like this? Where most stories do I suppose. Once upon a time, in a time known to us as yesterday, the Dia de los Muertos occurred. Day of the dead. A time when the connection between dimensions is made. As I walked around my town I witnessed the wonderful decorations which adorn our Mexican town plaza every November.
The altars with mementos from the dead, the vibrant yellow orange flower petals that lead the way to where the food, alfeñiques (candy skulls), photographs, candies, toys, and amongst other objects, lay the dedication of the work we all put into this holiday. The streets are filled with makeshift stores filled with alfeñiques. As I wander with no destination, I take out a bite of this sugar candy skull. The white colour and yellows, blues, pinks, and greens adorn it. My name lies on its forehead. Dolores.
My tanned skin and hazel eyes contrast with my white dress that I made just for today…and just as I turn around by the abandoned house, the wind violently blows, the houses creak, the people guard their children, the sellers their merchandise, I my dress, and through all the commotion my skull lands and smashes on the floor. All is black. I open my eyes yet it all remains the same.
I closed them and I could see…yet this was not my plaza or my people. I opened them again, I fell, wept, hoping to find something to hold on in my confusion. I closed my open eyes again.
The grass greener couldn’t be, twinkly lights surrounded me as I wandered through this dream, and funny creatures I would have seen in books appeared. Fairies, Elves, Night creatures, and wizards. Yet I couldn’t see myself, nor my feet, dress, arms, or hands. In despair I ran to look at my reflection in the crystal clear pond close to the cascade of diamonds. I was there, yet at the same time I was not. My reflection moved just as I did, yet when I looked at myself it was all gone.  

“All that you see of yourself is what we see of them,” a voice behind me said.
“Both worlds connect today, many do actually, especially the spirit world,” the voice continued, “yet not many make it here…to the land of forgotten childhood memories.”

I stood there dumbly as the green puff of light danced around me, her emotion filled eyes that seemed to belong to talk to a dog followed mine, she looked like an ecological fairy to me…but what was I to know? All this I had forgotten.

“What do I do?!” I yelped.
“What the others have done,” the fairy replied.
Don’t be vile and smile the mushrooms seemed to whisper.

I tried to figure out how I had ended up in this Alice in Wonderland situation. I was left alone once more. I walked…and walked…and ran, jumped, fell, walked, sprinted, ran, ran, ran, and I ended up just where I had started.

“Land of forgotten childhood memories,” I told to the grass.
I looked up and-
“Where did this yellow brick road come from!?” I yelled to a nearby tree as I felt my sanity was drained slowly.
“None of us do, never, ever, whenever, however, we never know,” the tree faithfully replied back as I left it talking to itself and made my way on the yellow brick road.

Things I saw on the road, things only a child would see, everything more confusing than before, Willy Wonka, talking rabbits, the oompa loompas, and it continued on and on…Moving on! As I said, I couldn’t see me, yet they all could. I felt like if I looking into a dark car window which I couldn’t see through, but everyone else was on the other side, was watching me.

“Look behind!” the green fairy said and I looked backwards to see my progress.

The progress was none at all; I was in the same spot as I was many hours ago.

“Help!” I yelled out.
“Only your memories are of help now” were her final words and disappeared.


Memories. Memories, that which I had lost and now had to remember. Thus, I sat and did all I needed and could do. I was to remember. I looked up after a while, nothing new, nothing special…only that forest with the tree that looked my aunt’s tree.
The tree! I had found within me the way out, as I took a deep breath in and wandered into the woods, all of younger self unfolded. My fears and joys, and all around me grew large and unpleasant. I had reached my fears. I ran as fast as I could and screamed “REMEMBER!”
I screamed as I tumbled down that hill close to my school. The fall, the pain, the laughs I received all over again. I stood up with hot tears running down my face as I felt the pain within me grow; I looked up and….all had changed around me. I was in a new place. A castle, a pretty pink Barbie castle this place was. I entered and slept.
Dreams now were not just dreams. Every time I entered in one, I came out in another, I was all a chain of events that lead to this. A cardboard box, empty yet soon to be filled. The pale pink walls lay bare in the room, the carpet was gone, and this was the kingdom of echo. A single light bulb lit the place, yet the more times I tried to make the room more filled with light, the darker it got.
My last childhood memory. The box started wailing as it sucked me in, me, full of all my memories. My childhood filled it, just as it had been filled with toys. I was taken away in the darkness until I couldn’t see. Some haphazard images, lights, sounds appeared as I found myself running past what seemed to be other worlds. I heard others like me, trying to find their way home. I saw not light, but my happiness and fears running after me, coming together, clashing and becoming me. I looked down at myself, yet my eyes were closed, like they had always been and I say myself. Yet it all had disappeared.
I opened my eyes. Light. Horrible bright light, my eyes screamed in pain as they got accustomed to it…and I saw. The world I eventually had made my home was gone and this one replaced it instead, my town. Yet I did not feel warm inside, but hollow, and filled with my younger self, and it all felt like a dream. This…a dream, the land of forgotten childhood memories…a dream, and my life also a dream.
Now I had no doubts or questions about that saying I learned in the Day of the Dead. I agree as you have seen…that life is nothing more, but a dream within a dream.

The End.