The man who forgot he was dreaming

 

Experimental Short Story Series #37
Title: The Man Who Forgot He Was Dreaming
By Faraz Parvez (pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)

“How many times must a man wake up before he is truly awake?” — An inscription, found scratched onto a mirror inside a dream.

Welcome, beloved readers, to Blog #37 in our celebrated 60-part Experimental Short Story Series—a journey through fiction where boundaries are optional, and imagination leads the way. This installment comes wrapped in mist, illusion, and uncertainty, as we explore the fragile architecture of dreams and the terrifying elegance of recursion. As always, we thank you for walking with us through the shifting corridors of narrative possibility.

The Man Who Forgot He Was Dreaming

The first time Anwar woke up, the world was right.

Rain hummed gently outside. The coffee brewed with obedient warmth. The cat circled his ankles like a living loop. Everything, precisely as it had been yesterday. And the day before.

Until the phone rang.

A voice—his own—whispered: “Don’t believe the rain.”

Click.

Then, nothing.

The second time he woke up, Anwar was sitting at the same breakfast table, but the wallpaper was blue instead of beige. He couldn’t remember repainting it. Nor could he explain why the cat—previously calico—now had tabby stripes. And why, when he opened the refrigerator, it contained a single object: a compass spinning violently in circles.

The phone rang again. This time the voice said, “Don’t trust the compass. You’re not out yet.”

Click.

By the seventh awakening, Anwar had stopped keeping count. Reality, once a linear thread, had coiled into a Möbius strip. Days began in kitchens, in subway cars, in deserts, in theatres mid-play. At times, he would find himself standing on a shoreline, holding his childhood bicycle while waves whispered algebra into his ears. At others, he would fall in love with a woman made of origami paper—only to watch her fold herself into oblivion the next morning.

He began marking his arm with a pen each time he awoke. “I must be on the 23rd now,” he muttered one day—until he realized the numbers on his arm were vanishing, replaced by phrases in languages he didn’t speak.

“The dreamer is the dreamed.”

That line appeared on a billboard one morning, just as Anwar woke up inside a cinema hall screening his own life on loop. He watched himself as a child, as a rebel, as a bored office worker, as an old man staring into space.

As he turned to the empty seat beside him, the usher—dressed in the same clothes as him—handed him a note: “Stop trying to wake up. Accept the spiral.”

But Anwar couldn’t.

He searched for patterns. Repetitions. Symbols. The rain. The cat. The whispering phone. Eventually, he found himself in a white room, with walls of paper and a mirror that didn’t reflect anything.

He stared.

And stared.

And then…

He woke up.

The room was real. So was the cat. So was the coffee.

The phone didn’t ring.

He smiled.

Until he looked in the mirror.

And saw… nothing.

No reflection. Just fog.

And a faint scratching sound from behind the glass.

Why This Story?

Because The Man Who Forgot He Was Dreaming isn't just about dreams—it's about the deep human desire for certainty in a world built on uncertainty. It’s about what happens when the narrative thread snaps, and reality—like sleep—refuses to stay still.

This is the type of experimental fiction we live for: stories that dare to disobey, that dismantle the rules and rewrite them mid-sentence. Stories that make you ask, What if I'm still dreaming?

And You, Our Fellow Dreamers…

We thank you for continuing with us on this extraordinary literary voyage. From the surreal to the cerebral, from mythic experiments to philosophical labyrinths—your presence fuels our passion. We are inching closer to the grand 60-story milestone, and yes, as promised, these experimental gems will soon become a collected volume in eBook and print form.

Keep reading. Keep sharing. Keep folding the edges of your reality just enough to let wonder slip in.

Faraz Parvez
Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah
Blog: farazparvez1.blogspot.com


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