last night's nightmare
It's a little hazy right now, but I'm going to try and get this down before it slips entirely:
I am at my mother's home - someone is at the door, and I get up to answer it, just poking my head out of the crack. It's a series of couples dancing - stepping out of frame and back into. Appear. Disappear. Appear. Disappear.
A blonde woman is there - she wants a donation of $12.12. I try to explain to her that my roommate has just been laid off - she frowns as if this isn't enough. I tell her something else - something true that I cannot recall just now. She seems to accept this but asks to come inside to use the bathroom.
I feel bad about this - I want to slam the door in her face, but I turn to my mother (who is behind me and not visible to anyone as she's hidden by the door) and make a face - mouth the words to ask her if I should let this woman in. I don't want to, but I ask anyway. She shrugs and nods. I tell the woman yes and suddenly there are two men in suits crossing the threshhold.
My throat closes up and I go numb as they walk toward my mother. I don't think they can touch me. They might be behind me as I stiffly walk to the phone and dial 911 before turning to walk out of the front door. I am in shock, and I know that my mother's light is on in her bedroom. I can see it out of the back of my head as I walk out the door. That slit of light and the muffled sounds of the men raping her.
I should do something.
I don't.
I am outside and there is a man following me - also in a suit (grey I think) and I start to run. I leap - fly high up and vault over the tree in the front yard - suspend and turn round and hang there to stare at him. Fluttering in my stomach as I wonder if I will stay out of reach. In the back of my mind I know I will.
(I am always safe from harm in my dreams. At least by the hands of others.)
I am across the street now, running toward the home of a junior high school friend. The man has faded into the background, but that house. That house, oh god I know she is in there but I can't.
I see people sleeping on the couches - dull violet blankets covering them. A woman walking and those men I know are still in my mother's room. Why won't 911 send someone? They should have sent someone. I wait and wait and I realize I am still suspended.
I am running again down the street - past a house with a lit doorway and children in the yard, past another and another and then I know I should turn back. The light was on for a reason, I think. I am meant to go here and if I pass one more darkling house I am dead - so I turn around.
A suited man is also running toward that house. I know I will make it there first.
It is now an auto mechanic shoppe - olde timey, lots of men in coveralls.I shout at them and tell them things to make them turn on the man in the suit. I run past them and through the wall and am now at the end of the street in the opposite direction.
A woman holds my hand as I near the cross street. Then she is gone, and a coated man stalks a few feet away. He looks at me and I read his mind. In his pocket is a syringe - and I know he means to stab me with it. I can't let him. I near the edge of the street and he closes in. He tells me I cannot get away and I say that I can.
I walk into the oncoming traffic and it does not come - he follows. I step on the median and out into the traffic on the other side. It fails to exist for me, and I don't know what it does to him.
I don't care, because all I can think about is that room and the light from under her door and the sounds and there is that blonde bitch from the beginning. In a closet, smiling at me with her curls and her flushed, pudgy cheeks. She is responsible for everything, but then again so am I, right? I could have caused the walls to fall in on them, or wished them out of existence. Instead I dialed a number and left.
She taunts me with this until I start to laugh. I laugh until I keen, and then I start to hiss. I speak in demonic voices - all false - all a joke, but I know that I can scare this woman, and I let things come to mind.
I speak as it comes, nonsense, jibberish, but I will it to mean something - what happened to Christina I growl out, and all the blood leaves her face.
She's a child in a dress in a painting from the forties, and then not and then back and I know I am causing terrible flashbacks with my words, but I hope she dies.