Examination at the River Lethe

One night I woke up from a dream that had been my entire life. There was a long pitch was droning in my ears, and reflexively, I looked for an alarm clock, but almost as soon as I looked the tone faded. A feeling of utter loss washed over me at that moment, and I didn't know why, but then all the events of my dream-life faded into a murky, unsettling memory. I tried to remember who I was, where I'd come from, but whenever I reached out to grasp these details, they fled even deeper into the recesses of my mind. I sat in the darkness alone.

For a while it felt like time passed, and then it felt like time didn't pass, and I don't know if any time actually elapsed at all. I heard a door open, and a beam of light poured through the crack like water, forming a puddle on the floor. A woman slipped in through the crack and closed the door, but the light didn't leave; it clung to her, sticking to her feet as though it were mud. I knew that in my dream-life, I would have called this woman beautiful, but praising her for being beautiful would have been like praising a fish for swimming--a redundancy. I wondered if she was what I once would have called a goddess.

The woman opened her mouth, and I expected to hear her say "I am Athena," or "I am Demeter." Rather, she said, "You are Perdix." At her word, I was--I knew she had this authority.

So named, I found that I, too, had a voice, though it was no more than a whisper. I could feel my voice sitting in my throat. After inhaling deeply (again, the feeling of a great time passing. The air was thick there), I rasped out, “Is this death?”

“No,” she said. I waited for her to say something more. “Come,” she said, grasping my arm (her hands were like marble). “You cannot stay here.” My dream-life washed over my mind like a tide, then. I felt pressure in my head as though it might explode in pain, but the pain never came. The woman raised me from my bed and took me through the door. On the other side was a hallway with white walls and a linoleum floor. The woman turned to me, and I suddenly realized how very tall she was. She asked, "Why did Icarus fall?"

"He flew too close to the sun," I replied.

She turned back around and walked down the hall. There were no doors in the hallway, but at some point, the floor and walls gave way to sod and open space. We stood in a field with tall, swaying grass. It was hot, and I scratched at my skin like a lizard shedding. This world was too real for me, or I was too illusory for it, and it made me uncomfortable. The woman did not notice my discomfort, though, and set off across the field. I followed her as best I could, tripping over cracks in the ground and stumbling through dust. The sun never moved, or at least, the shadows never changed. The entire sky was too bright for me to see at more than a glance. But when the woman turned to me again, it seemed as though time had passed. She asked me, "Why did Icarus fall?"

"He defied Apollo, and the gods struck him down for his hubris."

The woman sat down and drew in the dust. I couldn't follow the symbols she made, but sometimes she drew pictures. They were pictures of hills and trees and somehow, there was no where I wanted to be more. I opened my mouth to ask her if those hills were a real place. She spoke first.

"Why did Icarus fall?"

"Because mortals are not given what they want.” Hills rose in my mind.

“Why did Icarus fall?”

"It was a lesson in stoicism," I said. "He should have stayed the middle course--between sky and sea. The myth symbolized what happened to someone running from extreme to extreme."

She smiled and erased the picture with her hand. I looked away because her smile burned me. I tried to remember my question, but she stood and began walking across the field at such a pace that I could hardly keep up. Fighting through the meadow's grass was like walking through waist-deep honey. Eventually I lost sight of the woman, but shortly after that, the grass ended, and a huge canyon opened up before me. The woman stood at the edge. I came and stood beside her.

On the other side of the canyon, beyond another field, I could see rolling hills. A river ran through the canyon, white and shining, but strangely, I could stand to look at it directly. Somehow I knew I had come through this river, that beneath it was my dream-life. I turned away. Very gently, the woman turned me back.

"Why did Icarus fall?" she asked.

"I don't know."

"Why did Perdix live?"

I looked up at her. "The gods loved him."

Then suddenly she tipped me over the edge and I was plunging. I screamed and jerked in the air, falling faster and faster. Someone shouted, and I felt metal against my skin once, twice. I hit the water, and all was still. I opened my eyes slowly to a blinding light and saw a man in a white coat bending over me, listening to my newfound pulse.

In case you are not familiar with mythology:

Athena - Greek goddess of wisdom, war, and justice
Demeter - Greek goddess of grain and the earth. Also the mother of Persephone, the goddess of the underworld.
Perdix - the nephew of the famed Greek inventor Daedalus. Daedalus took Perdix as his apprentice, but when he saw that Perdix had natural ability that far surpassed his own, he decided to kill Perdix by pushing him off of a tower. Athena intervened as the boy was falling.
Icarus - the son of Daedalus. Before Perdix ever came into the picture, Icarus and his father were held captive by King Minos because Minos didn't want to lose Daedalus's skill. Daedalus created two pairs of wings so that he and Icarus could escape, but before they left, Daedalus warned Icarus that he must not fly too close to the sun, lest the wax that held his wings together melt. Icarus didn't heed his father's warning and flew too high. The sun melted the wax and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned.
Apollo - the Greek god of the sun, the arts, archery, and medicine.
Lethe - one of the rivers that runs through the classical underworld. When souls drink from it, they forgot their past lives completely. In Dante's Divine Comedy, it is located at the top of the mountain of Purgatory, and souls must drink from it before entering Heaven.

So what do you think? All of the allusions in this come very naturally to me--I think in terms of mythology, and Icarus, Daedalus, and Perdix are my three favorite characters. I don't know if they seem that natural to readers, though. One reviewer on another site accused me of bourgois angst, which is the last thing in the world I want this to call up. So what do you think? Is this interesting, or does it fall flat on its pseudo avante-garde face?