perchance, to dream

I am waking from a dream in which I am laying on a warm beach, in a warm breeze, and all around are serene-looking people who glance my way with warm smiles. The breeze is good. The sun is hot and the air moves over my skin like a giant fluffy comforter. The azure waves drape themselves on the white sand and expire with a soothing hussshhhhh-sound, willing victims of their passion for the shore. The air itself seems to glimmer and sparkle brightly like the shining surface of the sea, and I return the smile of a kind-looking man who strides across the sand, lithe and graceful, nearby.  Everyone moves with grace in this dream, and there are no couples on this beach, no exclusive groups, just gentle individuals moving about in peace and contentment. 

The breeze picks up, and some sand blows onto my skin.  I consider moving to brush the sand off, but I am too lazy in the warmth.  The breeze becomes a wind, and looking around I notice all the peaceful souls have gone somewhere.  The sky is getting dark, and I decide I must force myself to move, to try and follow my charming beach companions to wherever they have gone.  At the instant I try to sit up my entire body is jolted throughout with a terriffic pain, and the sand now is black, the sky, night.  Wind howls and I writhe as the pain engulfs me, my brain throbs, my eyeballs feel as though they are about to explode.  My limbs are worthless, flopping about as I squirm like dead things that have been attached maliciously to weigh me down.  Though I am already wailing in my mind, I begin to feel the vibrations in my throat as I start to scream. 

My eyes burst open as my voice echoes back to me from the cold black wind.  I am naked, in a snowfield, in a blizzard on a black, cold night.  I despair my loss of the peace, the warmth, the love and the comfort of the sunny beach as the last remnants of it recede and are extinguished in icy blackness.  My scream of pain becomes a cry of rage; how can reality be so completely different than what I thought it was?  How could I have been so thoroughly misled?  Who did this cruel thing to me? 

When I wake I am crying, and my pillow is damp with tears.