After the discovery of THE LONG DREAM, by a hobbyist with questionable motives, it was hard to find a quiet or even a peaceful moment at your local cemetery or graveyard. Packed like post-pandemic concerts, patrons held tightly to those silly rubber tubes and mason jars, digging into the dirt, as if the smoke itself held any further answers, instead of just raising more questions. 

Resting in Peace? No. It doesn’t feel like quite the right phrase to use anymore, does it? Passing the time? Maybe? Being dead isn’t as final as the old books and songs believed it once thought to be. It’s the modern times now, things have changed. Although, it still feels weird to acknowledge that the dead dream now, or perhaps the dead have always dreamed, and it’s not until now that we’ve had the insight to understand that they did and how to see them. But when do the dreams start? 

Here’s the current theory: 

The dreams start at the moment of death, like the start of a film or video. But! Unlike a film or video, these death-dreams keep going, they keep playing, perhaps forever. These dreams don’t loop or repeat, it’s all new, all the time, new experiences endlessly experienced by the dreamer. It’s too early to know, but the dreams are believed to be the first real evidence that something happens after death. After the eyes close, and the chest exhales for the final time. 

The dreams, we’ve observed, emanate from the skull, like a clear smoke, unseen by the naked eye, but sensed in other ways. A leakage from what was once our imagination perhaps? Breaking out? Escaping? Begging for the light? Right now, we cannot say for certain why or how. 

Since this discovery, many poor and desperate souls, unable to move-on from or simply wait for death, console themselves through the stealing of that smoke. The smoke of the recently deceased. Their recently deceased. They collect the smoke in jars or in tupperware boxes, as it passes from the overflow of the coffin through those rubber tubes, that are dug deep into the dirt of the graves. If treated properly, as has been recorded, if the dream-smoke is captured in the right conditions and with the use of the right chemicals, those dreams can be absorbed, to be dreamt again by the living. Some have seen this as a way to relink their relationship with their no-longer-living friends and family. 

To get a glimpse at the eternal, to share in the Aftersleep. Some believe that the dreamers may not be able to consent to having their dreams shared with the living, that they are unable to object, or filter-out their dreams content, since they are unaware of their outside observers. Additionally, for now, these dreams do not experience the full dream, only parts of it. For some this is enough. For some it has eroded the fear of the dark, of the end. It shows, to some, that there may not be an ending. That there might be more, that one day, we will all be dreaming, maybe even the same dream. 

Either way, whatever is believed, no longer can anything be said to be a silent as a cemetery.