Well since I can remember I have had a very colorful history of dreams, but one in particular comes back almost in the beginning of every night. It starts out on a cobblestone road in black and white set in front of some extremely old castle that was probably forgotten long before I got there. I look to the sky to try and get my bearing and notice 7 crows flying easterly away from dusk... into the darkness.

I approach the castle and enter through into the courtyard where I’m sure once stood mighty wooden doors like sentinels warding out unwanted guests, but now just seem to be inviting me in. I take a glance around and see where once stood a stable and black smiths hut with a rusted anvil laying on its side... I look up and to the north and notice in this melancholy setting a child 's cries echoing from somewhere inside the moss covered stone walls. To my right I notice a staircase leading up the perimeter wall to a guards hallway, with which has no railing, no safe guard to catch a fall...

I rush up anyway to meet the increasing whimpering coming from behind the rotting hallway door. I burst through expecting to find the child but instead I find darkness... almost like when sunlight hasn't touched your eyes in weeks and your pupils focus to pinholes to make up for the abundance of light, then apologize for the pain by tearing up, this darkness was like the opposite. At first I can't see anything and my eyes dilate so huge that I feel as though they're being dissected by this empty hall. I rub them for their discomfort and look ahead and notice the crying has stopped...”where's the child?” I think. I start to notice a light coming from further down the hall but not a silver light like one would expect from a dream in black and white but colorful, brilliant. Almost as though fog lights were projecting through a kaleidoscope!

My curiosity sets aside my hunt for the child and I approach the light to my left cautiously... the closer I come to it I realize that its a stain glass window with a brilliant display of color portraying the birth of a baby boy and at the bottom of the window the words “inceptum”. Once I read that word questionably out loud in great succession the hallway lights up with more windows in the same colorful brilliance. And as I pass them I notice each window is a depiction of pivotal moments in my life starting with my birth! I become very anxious and start to run past them noticing that they’re showing not only good moments in my life but also the most difficult ... I run and run hoping to reach the end feeling a heaviness coming over me... a faint cry... I stop between windows because the scenery is becoming harder to look at and I just listen... another whimper... the child!

I start running towards it picking up speed as I go... faster... faster! In the distance I make out an obstruction of some kind in my way but the cries now are becoming more frequent and louder by the step... I approach the obstruction to find a baby in rags playing with its reflection in a very tall and grandiose mirror... I lean over to pick the child up and it disappears before my fingers touch it! I turn as if startled by an unknown presence and see a final stained glass window with a picture of the mirror that now stands aggressively behind me I turn again and am now peering into the mirror that depicts no color but the silhouette of myself standing as true as I...

I peer into the dark image of myself and feel a rush of fear so great I can feel my consciousness stir as if my mind is trying to force me to wake but my curiosity plants me firmly in my fear... his eyes open. Like two opals dangling in the darkness they stare and feed off of my insecurity and strip me of my strength, my honor, my will to escape and the silhouette reaches through the boundaries of the reflection and steps toward me almost curiously... my heart is racing... then a moment of calm, a moment of silence, like the moment before one accepts death. The figure whispers gently to me, “Sumo iam. Vicis est cado”... he waits for a response but none utters from my lips… his eyes frown and turn angry and in a millisecond slowed down by fear he lunges at me throwing me through the stain glass window down into the abandoned courtyard.

Now they say if you die in your dreams you die in real life, but I die everytime I have this dream... I see the breathe shorten and dissipate in the cold, I see the graphic display of blood cascading around my lifeless body and I see the mirror in the corridor standing there like it is watching me die. Every time I have this dream the hallway gets longer to facilitate any new pivotal “windows” to display... but every time I have it I know from the start what's going to happen, the scary part is why I let the dream keep progressing the same when I could easily avoid it.