The Archivist of Forgotten Dreams

The Archivist of Forgotten Dreams

By Hasnain Shah

In Somnus City, dreams were currency.

They shimmered like mist inside thin glass vials—blue for joy, silver for memory, crimson for desire. People lined up at dawn to sell what they no longer wanted to feel, trading nightmares for sleep and heartbreak for rent money. The city was built on the quiet hum of forgetfulness.

Arian worked in the Dream Archives, a library the size of a cathedral where every wall was lined with endless drawers, each labeled in looping handwriting: “First Love, Forgotten.” “Fear of Heights, Neutralized.” “Joy, Age Twelve.” His job was simple: catalog the dreams, seal them, and store them in the right place.

Simple, but not easy.

Each vial whispered when touched—soft voices, pleading, laughing, crying. Arian wore gloves to muffle the sound, but sometimes, on long nights, he slipped one off. Just to hear.

Sometimes, he thought he heard his own name.

He told himself that wasn’t possible. Dreams didn’t call for their keepers. Yet he could swear, in the hush between hours, that some part of him lived inside those shelves, whispering back.

Every morning, he reported to work before sunrise. The dream traders would bring their vials wrapped in silk, still glowing faintly from the night’s exchange. He logged each one in the great ledger:

“Dream #14291—Content: River, running backwards. Seller: N. Sable. Value: 9 credits.”

He liked the precision of it. Dreams could be chaotic, but data—data was order. Until one evening, while shelving “Childhood Longing, Type A,” Arian found a drawer that shouldn’t exist.

It was wedged between “Regret” and “Remorse”, its label handwritten in a style that looked like his own.

It read: “Arian M., Personal Archive.”

He froze. He wasn’t supposed to have a personal drawer. Archivists were forbidden from keeping their own dreams; it prevented “emotional contamination.” Yet there it was, gleaming faintly gold.

He pulled it open. Inside were dozens of vials—each one glowing a different color. Some pulsed gently like heartbeats.

The first was labeled “The Blue Garden.”

When he uncorked it, the air filled with the scent of jasmine and rain. The walls of the Archive melted away. Suddenly, he was standing in a garden under a silver sky, barefoot, holding someone’s hand. A voice whispered, “You promised to remember.”

He gasped—and the vision vanished. The vial dimmed.

His gloves trembled. The scent lingered. He looked around, heart racing, but no one else was there. The other archivists had gone home. The great hall of dreams was silent except for the echo of his own breath.

Over the next few nights, Arian couldn’t stop himself. He opened more vials.

“The Lantern Lake.” A dream of floating lights that sang.

“The Girl with the Star Tattoo.” A dream of laughter that felt like home.

“The Door That Wouldn’t Open.” A nightmare of pounding fists and unspoken words.

Each one left him more disoriented, like pieces of a puzzle scattered through fog. He began to forget which memories were his. Was he the man who once loved the girl with the tattoo—or just the archivist who held her dream?

He stopped sleeping. When he did, his dreams came in fragments of other people’s lives: a soldier crying in a snowstorm, a child chasing a paper kite, a mother waiting by a window that never opened. He woke up tasting saltwater and tears.

The line between dream and waking thinned, like a cracked pane of glass.

On the seventh night, he found a vial with no label. Only a faint engraving at the base: “Return.”

He hesitated, then opened it.

Light poured out—not soft, but blinding. He fell backward as the room dissolved into golden fog. In the fog stood countless silhouettes—men, women, children—each holding their own empty vials. They were all looking at him.

“Archivist,” one said. “You kept what wasn’t yours.”

Arian tried to speak, but his voice was swallowed by the mist. The figures stepped closer, their eyes glowing with remembered dreams.

“We gave up our pasts,” they whispered. “But you… you hoarded them.”

He looked down at his hands. They were glowing—the same gold as the drawer’s light. His chest ached. Inside him, hundreds of dreams stirred, fluttering like trapped birds.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I just… wanted to remember.”

The fog trembled. A single voice, softer than the rest, answered, “Then remember.”

The light burst, filling everything.

When the other archivists arrived in the morning, they found Arian’s station empty. Only his gloves remained on the desk. His drawer had vanished.

But if you walk through the Archives late at night, you can hear a faint humming—like wind in glass, like someone whispering a name you almost recognize.

And if you listen closely, some of the vials glow with a golden light, pulsing like a heartbeat, as if one dreamer never quite left.