A Dream

A very short story. No moral lesson intended.

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Graeme grabbed his handphone on the bedside and randomly pressed a button. The screen lighted up. It was 3:21 am. The exact same time he had been waking up from the very same dream every night since few weeks ago.

“This is insane.” He thought. He remembered the stories of those B-class horror movies he had seen in the past. Recurring dream was one of the favourite plots those directors liked. Never had he thought it would happen to him in real life. “Is there a message for me? Or m I just going nuts?”

Every night, an old lady dressed in dark brown and a green hat would appear in his dream and repeated 3 simple words over and over again to him. 

“DO RI MI.” 

Although he didn’t usually remember his dreams, this one appeared very clear to him, down to the details. If the other dreams were low resolution VHS, this one was of HD Blueray DVD quality. The old lady was rather plumb and had an friendly elderly smile on her wrinkled face, far from a scrawny toothless witch with crooked nose in black type that Graeme would associate with nightmares. He could remember the details down to the dirt she had on her bare feet, the chirps of bird he heard and the nice smell of fresh fruits when she appeared. There was no hostility besides the 3 words that she kept repeating. “DO RI MI”.

“Who is she and what does she want from me?” Graeme wondered.

He told his friends about this recurring dream in the evening at a pub and everyone had their share of opinion and theory.

“She might be warning you of an imminent danger or risk in your life. Just be careful when you go back to work.” Warned Shannon, who had great interest in shamanism and the mystical world.

Graeme took a mental note on that comment. He was a consultant civil engineer whose work was building highways and bridges which required him to do a lot of travelling around the world.  Although it was not a high risk job, he had been injured by machineries and fallen objects in the past.

“She could be fragment of past memories from your past life.” Said Andrew, who was a believer in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism.

After a few rounds of beers, their conversion drifted to some other topics and the dream was not brought up again.

Before they left the pub, Mable said casually to Graeme. “Maybe she was asking for your help, Graeme.” She had been quiet on the subject when the rest were talking about it. Mable was a quiet person and seldom spoke out in the group. She socialised but didn’t usually give her share of opinions.

Graeme looked at her sparkling green eyes, gave a nod but said nothing. The beers had made him a bit light headed and he needed a good sleep, after so many early morning waking ups from that dream.

The old lady in her usual outfit walked slowly towards Graeme. He could see an apparent limping on her this time. Her smile was replaced by a worried face, but she still carried with her an unmistakeable aura of friendliness and peace.

“Stop. Do Ri Mi.” She repeated the words over and over again to Graeme.

“What do you want from me, Madam?” Graeme found that he could talk to her.

“Stop. Do Ri Mi.” She said in a very soft and coarse voice and then turned and limped away from Graeme.

Graeme ran after her and asked, “Where do you come from, Madam?”

She turned and said, “Four two one”.

Graeme was jerked awake by the message alert tone of his handphone. He checked and cursed. It was a promotional SMS sent by a big shopping mall back home in Adelaide, Australia.

He checked the time. It was 4:30 am. He felt puzzled by the break of routine. The old lady had come to him at different hours and she spoke more this time. Her change and the apparent limping had made Graeme felt uneasy. He could sense something was unusual and he thought of Shannon’s warning.

“What is Do Ri Mi? And where is four two one?”

Graeme’s mind was occupied by this and he could focus on his work at the construction site. He was supervising the construction of a bridge across a river at a small city in Papua New Guiney. It was a historical city, built by the English long time ago. The fort was now all but a ruin of some old pillars and scattered bricks.

The workers were digging up rocks with big earth moving machines to build the foundation for the bridge. The trees around the planned site were also being cleared to make way for the big machines and cranes.

At the moment, the workers were trying to fell a huge tree which was rooted deeply and firmly in the ground. Even 2 big excavators couldn’t push it down. So a few days ago, Graeme had ordered them to start digging at the root to loosen the grip.

The afternoon sun was scorching on Graeme and he found shelter under a tree not too far from the digging excavators. They had dug a big hole around the huge tree and exposed its massive solid root system that had probably taken hundreds of years to grow to the present size. The machines went in and started to push on the massive tree trunk. It was starting to give way.

Graeme heard a crack above him and looked up just in time to see a fallen limb from the tree he was standing under, heading straight toward him. Before he could react, he felt a knock on his head and fell on the ground.

He saw the old lady walking away from him and he ran after her.

“Wait up, please.” He yelled but she didn’t turn and got further and further from him.

“Mr. Graeme, are you OK?”

He heard voices around him and opened his eyes slowly. In his blurred vision, he saw the old lady right in front of him in her dark brown dress and green hat.

He jumped to his feet and stared at the huge tree. She WAS the old lady in his dream!

“Do Ri Mi…. Don’t Rip Me! That’s what she had been trying to tell me. Oh my God! And that’s the reason why she was limping. We had hurt her roots.”

“But where is Four Two One? Why did she say Four Two One?” Graeme was mumbling softly to himself.

The massive tree in front of him finally fell after a final push from the powerful modern machines, slowly at first then gathering momentum and hit the ground with a loud “Thump”.

Regretfully, Graeme walked over to the fallen tree and put his palms on the massive trunk.

“I m sorry, Madam. I didn’t get your message in time to save you.”

Buried among the exposed roots was a stone block with 4 words carved on it.

“FORT TOWONG. 1720”