“Lights,” he said. Nothing happened.
Reaching over, although his fingers found a bedside table, what lay on it was a mystery. It felt odd, as if from a time long ago. His mind raced tracing through memories he thought he would never now have a use for. Finally he had it. He was back in his old bed, in the meagre room of the run-down boarding house where the dreams of The Emporium had all begun.
Planting his feet firmly, arms outstretched he took the customary three paces to the wall. So-far-so-good but he wasn’t at all sure he actually wanted to flick the switch. It felt like he was putting an end to all the wonderful adventures and setting himself back into the mundane existence he'd despised.
The room was as he remembered it. Bleak.
The bedside alarm clock hummed rather than ticked the minutes down to another day of tedium. He stopped it before it sounded the dreaded hour of 7am. Opening the door slightly he could hear the hustle and bustle of tables being set and his nose was assaulted with what some would call breakfast. Burnt offerings and mud thick coffee had never been his forte. He dashed to the bathroom, thanking his luck it was unoccupied and readied himself for … for what?
Had it really all been a dream? The shop, the people, the places, the good he seemed to have been a party to. It seemed like it, but something niggled at him as if his brain was not ready to give in to whatever madness this was.
“Good morning,” He nodded in the general direction of the vision in a flowered pinny, curlers and wrinkled stockings as it passed clutching a fag between its blue lips. She could have been speaking to anyone.
“Sleep well.” It was a statement, a routine remark designed not to elicit a response.
Thrumps took his customary place at the table by the window. The coffee pot was bubbling away on a make-shift candle-lit warmer. He ignored it and contemplated the trek to the sideboard for cereal. To be honest he didn’t fancy anything, even though a rational had it that if indeed he was back to his old life, then he would need some kind of sustenance before embarking on the challenge first grade university students would pose. Not here though. He would call in to the deli at first break.
Thankfully no one ever talked at this time of the morning, all were far too interested in rushing through the necessities and escaping to whatever fate the day had in store for them. Thrumps was no different, except he really didn’t want to go back to anything from his past. He had thought The Emporium had become his life. It was the one he loved, the one he never wanted to end … and even though there was a little bit of his mind that simply didn’t believe it had all gone, he found he had no choice but to slot back into old ways.
It seemed a long time ago since he had dreamed the notion of being the proprietor, only to now learn that it was just a dream. Well more fool him, because he now knew that is exactly what it was.
The whole thing had been nothing but lies.
As he stumbled up the university steps with a colleague and through the automatic doors, they were greeted warmly by the doorman.
“Nice to see you up-and-about again,” a strangely familiar young lady with a dazzling smile said in their direction, but as he approached his classroom his path was intersected by a very stern gentleman in a formal academic gown.
“Professor Thrumpus.” It was a command not a greeting. “My office if you would be so kind.”
The vice chancellor settled himself behind his ornate wooden writing desk, that looked uncannily like the one Thrumps had back in his own shop. He wasn’t invited to sit.
“This will not take long,” he began. “We are all naturally shocked by the events but …” and he paused dramatically. “But …” he said in a tone a little kinder. “It had not escaped our knowledge that things, well must have gotten a little, how shall we say, too much for you.”
He looked straight through Thrumps as if he would rather be doing anything than having this confrontation.
Thrumps muttered a denial but he could not for the life of him figure out what had happened. He remembered going to, what he laughingly called his home at the end of term, well he thought he did. Yes, he did, he clearly remembered settling into bed after he was dropped off. Dropped-off by who?
“This is not the right place for you anymore my friend,” the vice chancellor continued.
Suddenly the room span and it was Thrumps who was sat behind the desk.
The Book of Un-Reality fluttered open.
You needed to remember why you are here, an invisible pen wrote.
“I don’t understand.” Thrumps shouted.
You can never go back to your old life. It continued.
“The life I hated?”
It killed you.
I died!
The dream was not a dream. It was a passing, an awakening to something new, something better.
Something much more fun.
Thrumps should have been shocked, but found he wasn’t.
Leaning back in his familiar chair, he tapped the coaster and was rewarded with a steaming mug of coffee made just as he liked it and smiled.
He was home.