I woke up with the idea in my head; it was almost fully formed with plot details, the rising tension, and a great climactic scene mapped out. From that point it just felt like transcribing. It was going to be a breeze of a day. Then I actually got out of bed, and the dream, and the story, all those plot points and characters and that great climactic scene; they all began to dissipate in my mind, floating away and evaporating like the early morning fog.

Dammit.

I ran to my office and began writing as much down as I could, but it was barely a half-formed thing, a string of ideas and adverbs, loose feelings and moods. It had all seemed so perfect though only moments ago, where could it have gone? And I saw in the corner of my eye a little purple spark flittering around. I turned and there it was, my idea, shimmering in the early morning sunlight streaming through the window. All I had to do was…reach out…and…grab…it…

But it was gone. It floated just out of my grasp and out the door into the living room. I followed, hoping to catch it off guard, grasp it between my hands, and run back to the office to get everything down as fast as I could before it escaped again. I stumbled around the room, hitting my knee on the coffee table, and almost falling over the couch. Try as I might though, it always managed to stay just out of reach. I kept it up all over the house until I finally had it backed up against the door. Really, I should have seen this coming, it had been far too easy to corner it like that, but I had been optimistic that it was my time. There it was within reach, I lunged forward to grab it – and it phased through the door. I threw the door open to continue my pursuit, and watched it float away down the street in the rain.

I refused to be deterred, the idea would be mine. I wasn’t about to let it get away and get picked up by someone else. I also wasn’t prepared to head out full force into the rain for it though; I needed to prepare. I went back to the kitchen and began assembling some supplies; I’d need a lunch, PB&J sandwich of course, and some cookies. I stopped short of the juice box and packed a couple bottles of water instead, along with a couple of granola bars. I didn’t know what I’d be facing that day and wanted to be prepared.

I opened the door a short time later, the rain having stopped, and my bag packed. The air had a crisp and cool smell to it, a freshness that only comes after the rain has washed all the dirt and grime from the city, hiding it away in the sewers. I stepped out into the sunlight to hunt out my idea and began trekking along the walkway. At the edge by the gate there was a large puddle blocking my path. I couldn’t see a way around it, so I figured what better way to start a day of possibilities than by embracing the chaos. I couldn’t get around, so I’d go through the puddle.

I brought my foot down into the puddle, and immediately sunk down below the water.

Cold hit me in the chest, and I had to stop myself from instinctively inhaling and filling my lungs with water. My eyes stung with salt as I swam up. I broke the surface gasping for air and rubbed my eyes. It was an impossibility, I was somewhere out in the ocean, or the sea, a large body of water with a stretch of land off in the distance, when moments ago I had been heading down the walkway in front of my house. I didn’t have time to contemplate what had happened while I was floating there, there was no telling what manner of beast could be circling me just below the surface, so I began swimming towards land.

I laid down on the sandy beach for a while to rest my limbs from the swim. It always astounded me how far I could push myself when I really needed to, and I needed to keep pushing because I may have made it out of the sea, but I still had no idea where I was, how I got there, or where my idea went. I pushed myself up and looked around.

There was a forest lining the beach with a small cut path laid with…asphalt? That didn’t make sense. It wasn’t an impossibility I suppose, it just seemed highly unlikely. Or perhaps it was just my assumption based off literature and movies that a dense forest such as this would have, at most, a beaten dirt path. Certainly not asphalt. Still, I followed, and the path proved to be just as confusing. Though lined with trees, through them I could see giant structures off in the distance. Some seemed typical of what you would expect, stone buildings and statues suggesting an ancient civilization had once occupied this land, but the overgrowth saying that they had since moved on. Then beside one of the statues depicting a lion dressed in the armour of a man there was a…bungalow? It felt dangerous to venture out, but my curiosity got the better of me as I stepped through the trees towards the house inexplicably built beside an ancient statue.

Even more inexplicable, there were lights on inside. As I got closer, I noticed there were no other houses nearby, I hadn’t wandered into a suburb, no streets to speak of. Just a house in the middle of the forest. I came up and gently knocked on the door, half worried someone might answer. I could hear shuffling inside, a chair scraping against the floor, and someone’s heavy footsteps walking to the door. It creaked open and a woman was standing there looking at me confused.

“Can I help you?”

“I…ummm…” I didn’t know what to say. Why had I knocked on the door in the first place? Blind curiosity and an attempt to find out where I was. “Yes, I seem to have gotten myself a bit lost and I was wondering if you could tell me where I am. “

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that. What you should do is follow the path to the end, there you will meet a man that has all the answers.”

“Also, curios as to why you’re living in a house in the middle of the woods – I thought this type of landscape was reserved for witches and ghosts?”

She stepped out and looked around, “Huh, I had never really noticed.” A loud crash of breaking glass echoed through her house. “You’ll have to excuse me; I’m looking after my sick mother.” She closed the door on me.

I took her advice and went back to the trail, that clean paved asphalt in the middle of a forest, and followed it hoping to reach the end. As I walked more sights boggled my mind. I could see towering skyscrapers made of steel and concrete, elaborate treehouses with bridges connecting them, small neighbourhoods of houses with the sound of kids laughing excitedly echoing back, and big top carnivals shrouded in fog – all of it just beyond, masked by the thick trees of the forest.

I came to the end of the trial, a small shack standing in the centre blocking the path. Curtains covered the windows preventing me from seeing inside, and a Do Not Disturb sign hung from the doorknob. This must be the place the woman had told me about. I ignored the sign and knocked anyway. As if he had been standing just on the other side waiting for me, the door flew open and there stood a man; suspenders hanging down off his shoulders, a black undershirt on, face unshaven, and wild hair held back by a bandana, he stared at me suspiciously.

“What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t know.” His tone was accusatory, like I had purposefully come with some nefarious end in mind. “I had an idea this morning, but it got away from me. In my quest to find it I ended up here, well actually out there in the water,” I pointed down the path I had taken. “I spoke to a woman in a house who told me I should follow the path to the end and that the man there, you I assume, could help me.”

“Come in, come in,” he stepped aside and pulled me into the shack. The inside seemed much bigger than the outside would have suggested. What looked like a single room shack with two windows turned out to be a fully furnished apartment: entryway, bright kitchen, a living room with a large bay window streaming sunlight in. No sign of the forest that surrounded us.

“You say you were chasing an idea?” He took two glasses from the sink, sniffed them to confirm they were clean, and set them on the kitchen island. An ice cube in each glass, he uncorked a bottle of bourbon and poured two fingers in each and handed one to me. “Tell me more about that.”

“Well it was just like that. I had an idea when I woke up this morning but as I got ready for the day it started disappearing. Then I saw it, a bright purple sparkling spot of light flittering around my house like Tinkerbell. Naturally, I tried to catch it, but it got away from me. So, I set out to find it.” I took a sip of the drink, grimaced, and set it back down.

“Well there’s your first mistake,” he drained his glass and took mine. “You can’t attack the idea, can’t wrestle with it. Trying to bend it to your will and desire, forcing it in a direction it doesn’t want to go, will only scare it away – as you can attest. Like a chipmunk in the forest, you have to let it come to you.” He drained my glass as well.

“Okay, great, that will be helpful later. The question now is, where am I?”

“That is also not important. What is important is that you shouldn’t be here, and we need to get you back. Follow me.” He opened a door and lead me down into a basement with a terrifying amount of machinery in it, straight out of Frankenstein’s laboratory.

“What does all this do?” I asked as he began flipping switches, turning dials, and pushing buttons.

“Honestly, I’m not too sure. But it will work. I just need you to stand there on that platform.” There was a small raised platform in the middle of the room.

“Wait, what do you mean you’re not sure what it does? Then how do you know it’ll work? It looks like if I stand there, I’ll get fried.”

“It will work because I believe it will, and that’s enough. Now get on the platform.”

I wanted to resist. He looked like a madman running around adjusting the machines. And he had never explained where exactly I had ended up. “I can’t, I don’t know what it’s going to do. And you never answered me about-” Suddenly there was a gun pointing at me.

“Look, I don’t want to do this, you seem like you could be a good one. But you can’t be here, not right now and not like this. So, it’s either get onto the platform near the scary looking but completely safe machine or get shot. There are no other options.”

I didn’t trust him, but I had no other choice. The machine was scary, but I knew exactly where getting shot would land me. I stood up onto the platform and he threw one final switch. There was a rising hum as arcs of blue electricity curved around the room.

“For the record,” he yelled at me over the noise. He nodded towards his gun and pulled the trigger. I braced myself and watched as little jets of water spurted out. He laughed. “And don’t forget, don’t chase the idea, let it come to you!”

A bright flash. And I was waking up on my couch.

I stood up, stretched, and shook myself awake. What had just happened? Where had I been? And there it was again, that little purple flicker of light floating around the room. I wanted to reach out and grab it, hold it in my hands, bring it down to the page. Instead I sat down on the couch, a pad of paper and a pen in front of me, and quietly waited. Slowly the purple light came down and landed on the end of my pen. And I began to write.