On The Threshold of a Dream

So it had come to this. All his life, it seemed, had just been nothing more than a protracted preamble to this. He tried to search his memory for a clue, but the oxygen was low. So very low. He peered through the little window with glass so thick that it distorted the view outside. Just visible was a range of curiously-sculpted mountains in a colour that made him think of the sweets he bought when a child - four for a penny. And that was an old penny. Two hundred and forty to a pound. A thought idled its way through his mind; what would those mountains taste like? Would they be sweet? Four-for-a-penny sweet? A spacecraft. That was it! He was in a spacecraft. He was in a spacecraft on a distant planet. Something had gone wrong, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. His memory was bombarding him with sights, sounds and tastes of his childhood. But his recent recollections were hidden from him. How long had he been here like this? He listened to his breathing as it struggled inside the confines of his space helmet. Then he recalled one of his father's Moody Blues albums that he used to listen to in his teens. He recalled the feeling he got whenever he heard the opening track of this album - this old vinyl record album. He remembered that he fancied that the long, even electronic drone that began the first track would sound like being in a spacecraft on a distant planet. Was it In Search Of The Lost Chord? His father had that one as well, but it didn't seem to fit somehow. Blinking away a trickle of sweat from his eye he looked wearily around at the interior of the spacecraft. What he was hearing didn't tally with what he was able to recall of that music from so long ago. All he could hear was his own laboured breathing as he slowly suffocated in the tiny little room on this nameless world so far removed from his own. He realised, somewhat abstractedly, that he was hungry. Very hungry. And thirsty too. He thought of a glass of sparkling limeade he'd enjoyed so much as a child. He tried to lick his lips, but his tongue was a piece of old, cracked leather; his mouth an equatorial tomb. Glancing again through the window at the candy mountains and the drear, alien skies - devoid of any meaningful sunlight - he sighed, the sound reaching his ears like some early Pink Floyd sound effect. From the Atom Heart Mother album, perhaps. The window suddenly rose upwards, being replaced by the dull, featureless expanse of grey that covered the walls as his legs gave way beneath him. His breathing was drowned out by the roar of his helmet scraping down the wall. Huge, purple flowers blossomed in front of his eyes. Just before he died he remembered the name of the Moody Blues album. It was On The Threshold Of A Dream. The first track was called In The Beginning. How appropriate, he thought to himself.