It's Only A Dream

My eyes try to open, but the dreams remain. They cling like thoughts of the dying, desperate to be remembered but fated to be forgotten as they fade.

Not yet. Although my body wants to awaken, and I feel the tingle from sleep paralysis slowly fading as my limbs become mobile, my eyes are too heavy. The medication ensures they do not easily awaken, except for when the visions and memories come in the middle of the night; when occasional visitors seep from the shadows to watch over me as I sleep with their large, intrusive eyes.

But the medication has worn off, and I blink several times before everything comes to light — the dim light that barely shines through the blizzard outside. My bed is warm and I’m perspiring despite the cold that rarely leaves these hard wooden floors and soulless white walls.

I roll over and check the time, and I grab my glasses. It’s nearly noon, and I’ve realized I’ve slept much longer than usual. The heaviness of it weighs on me like a weighted blanket trying to suffocate me rather than hug me. I never did like those things anyway, they made my body sore just like the excess bipolar energy rushing through my veins, fraying my nerves as my tired body begs for it to cease.

I slowly sit up as reality comes further into existence, and I feel like I am still in a dream. I look around and decide to get started. There isn’t much to start, but it’s a necessity of living. To simply survive is all there is.

I gather my tarot cards that I take to bed with me every night. The ritual of stacking them just right and acknowledging them again brings me a moment of fleeting peace. I hope every night for their power to reach me, for them to influence my dreams or bring me healing. They are a part of me now, and I can’t bear to leave them in my cold living room all night in the dark, far from me where they can’t protect me. Protect me from… something.

I throw on a pair of baggy pants and a large vintage sweater as I cater to my inner child once again; these clothes are reminiscent of a time I continuously try to replicate, to return to, so I can be at peace. It’s an attempt in vain to chase the past as I sink back into dissociation, as my mind regresses and I am again a young teenager in a body that has been betrayed in ways I cannot seem to forget. And I am comforted by those years, despite their cruelty.

They are quiet in my mind, in the sunset shining through an empty home my childhood shoes once graced. There are no cars on the road outside, and everything is as I remember it, pristine and just as it always had been. A white sectional sofa in the front room resting on a white carpet with thick, cotton weave. A brick separator to part the side door from the rest of the room, and a closet behind it that opens to various craft supplies. There is a fish tank beneath the air conditioner resting high on the wall, and a computer desk with a Packard Bell PC running Windows 98 sits quietly, awaiting me near the entry to the kitchen.

Saturday afternoon cartoons play on the small tube TV on the entertainment stand. My Sega Genesis is no longer covered in dust. The ceramic bear coffee table rests on its back in the center of the room with paws raised, and on top of them, an oval piece of glass.

I blink. Everything is fuzzy.

I look out of the window and observe the snowstorm. My heart mourns. I miss the pain. I miss the sadness and the comfort of late nights when the dark protected me from the world outside. From the people within my own home.

I crave the pain. I crave the warm blanket of depression that surrounds me like a droning melody to carry me away from reality. I am cocooned.

I begin my daily ritual of opening the blinds, placing my tarot cards back in their specific places on the bookshelf, light a stick of incense, feed the cats, and search for food as I fill a cup of cappuccino.

But… there are no clean mugs. My favorite, a pale pink cup that says ‘Love’ in 80s vintage colors sits at the bottom of the heap in the sink. A Valentine’s Day gift to myself since there is never anyone to celebrate with.

Tunnel vision. Heart pounding. Immense fatigue washes over me as I stare at the mound of dishes. I blink away the fog.

How long has it been?

A week?

Two weeks?

A month?

Two months?

I stare at the drain cover littered with cat fur and remnants of old food. Rice? Something has turned gray. The silver sheen is beautiful in the dark winter’s light, and I stare at the decay as it mirrors my mind.

I reach for the faucet.

No!

Frozen.

No!

Teeth clenched tight. I must.

No!

No one else will do it.

NO!

I scream silently. My soul cries like a child as it whimpers and rages with the building storm. I must.

No! No! No! No!

My hands tremble as I grab the sponge. I saturate it with soap and look out the window at the dead trees in the distance. Through the wintry haze, I search for something lurking within the woods, waiting for me to break so it can finish the job. I tremble violently as I force my hands to do what they do. not. want. to. do.

The mug clatters loudly into the stainless-steel basin, and I flinch, my arms trembling violently as if spasming before shakily reaching for the mug once more. I can’t. I CAN’T.

I quickly wring the sponge out and turn off the faucet. I dry the mug with paper towels because I cannot trust the towel hanging over the bar on the stove. Has it fallen on the floor and I can’t remember? Have the cat’s paws touched it? Has it been contaminated? Does it smell strange? It would make me ill if it touched the inside of the cup, spreading its bacteria to meld with the liquid and then flowing into my body.

I carefully inspect the mug for any remaining paper towel fibers, blowing into it only to realize my breath has made it damp. Now I will ingest fibers. I can't let that happen. I wipe the mug once more.

Cappuccino made, peanut butter granola biscuit in hand, I approach my computer desk, and I pause again.

I don’t want to be here. This isn’t where I belong.

Yes, I am merely thirteen, after all. All of those years behind me, they’re false. It’s a dream. It’s all been a dream, and time has melded together. How silly for a child to live on their own.

The familiar sound of my favorite childhood show, easily accessible, brings me back to the right time. Sitting on the floor in the living room, hand digging into the green carpet. The large tube TV plays behind its staticky surface a pleasant memory.

However, this time mom and dad wouldn’t be coming home. No one would be coming home. No strange older man would be calling me to make strange noises, and then ask me to make strange noises too. There was no bus coming the next morning to whisk me away to school so I could be beat up by and mocked by other children. Get another concussion, perhaps, and see stars.

No, it is a safe alternate universe now. It is a pocket in my dreams made up of channel surfing, static, stuffed animals, the smell of chlorine from the backyard pool, and most importantly, the four walls that kept me safe. The stuffed animals and crayons and clacking of an old keyboard as I clicked a new floppy disk into the PC so I could have something to tell my stories to. Something that wouldn’t scold me for talking too long about them.

I jump. My alarm goes off for my medication, a sound that is unwelcome and breaks through the little pocket of safety. I enter the bathroom and stare into the medicine cabinet mirror in the dim lighting of the winter storm.

No, it isn’t what I’m supposed to be. I should be younger. What is that crease on my forehead? Why do I look so old? Why…

I pour the appropriate number of pills into my hand and take them. Two for a damaged mind, one for a stomach that never calms down. I stare at the extra bottle, the one that holds the key to an ignorant bliss.

Ativan.

Take ½ to 1 tablet as needed.

For nerves on fire; for breathless afternoons; for paranoia that grips my heart in ways that reveal Death’s mocking face as he watches me; for days when my synapses fire in all directions so intensely I…

…wake up on the ground. Everyone is standing over me, whispering and staring and brushing hair out of my face. They look concerned. They needn’t be. It’s just that everything became too loud.

It’s just that a room full of people felt like a thousand buzzing hornets waiting to strike me.

It’s just that the ceiling would cave in at any second.

It’s just that the world became too small.

It’s just that I couldn’t breathe.

It’s just that…

…just that I couldn’t and shouldn’t ever leave home.

I blink. I am still staring at the bottle. I’ve lost time again, explored a dozen arguments pulled from terrible memories that I tried to fix. That I suddenly gained clarity for, and I knew the right things to say—

Another memory, they’re just being rude, you know, and now I can see that—

His face is there again. Why do I always see his fa—

No, no I can’t. Everyone always leaves, they always—

No. Stop it. I shake my head. Okay, so today we’ll—

She hasn’t called. Your mother doesn’t love—

No, I know what I’ll say. I won’t take it this time. I’ll just cut it off—

They were right. I am a terrible person and I deserve—

No. No. Present. Be in the present.

No, that isn’t right.

I take in the quiet of my home. No cars on the road. The snow is still falling. Nothing is alive outside.

Ah, yes. This isn’t the right time. No, it is. It… it’s 1995, right?

No.

Yes.

I know it isn’t!

But it is, you’re just lost.

Okay. Okay.

I prepare a second breakfast.

⸸ ⸸ ⸸

I look around, and night has fallen. Odd, for night to fall only a few minutes after noon. I look at the clock. I’ve lost time again.

The realization brings them to me, as it always does. The eyes that watch me. And there he is, out of the corner of my vision, I can see him. Standing there just out of sight in the door frame to the kitchen.

I see you.

He stares, his body only a shadow and his eyes large and white, the only discernible feature. Is he flickering?

Well, hello old friend. You do whatever it is that you do. I’ll get on with my night.

I finally focus on him, and he’s gone.

I wander into the kitchen, through the bathroom, and into my dark bedroom. Streetlights pour in, and the night is quiet. The snow has stopped falling, and shards of ice hang from the windows like crystalline daggers. I peer through the blinds to see a dead world. There is no life, as if time has stopped and everyone has left. I am all that’s left. And I feel the comfort of that weight in my bones.

No, not alone.

Although the room is black, I know they are crawling up from beside my bed, from doorways, and seeping from behind my mirror against the wall. My body tenses and I fight the urge to turn around. I can’t look because they will leave, and I don’t want them to leave, despite how intrusive they are. They only want to watch. They only want to remind me that they come with painful dreams of a past I can’t seem to forget.

There are so many of them because there are so many scars, and they combine to form a weeping wound that festers every night, one that poisons my dreams and my heart every time I jolt upright in bed with an aching chest as my body breaks out in a sweat.

A dream. It’s all just a dream. It’s why it never feels real; it’s why time doesn’t make sense. It’s why everyone seems to exist on a plane that I do not.

I am between one world and the next. And I will wake up and repeat the cycle all over again.

©2024 Shane Blackheart