Waving at the last familiar smile.
That feeling wakes me up. Someone is there. The previous night I was practicing my peripheral vision. Trying to sense the things around me by their shadows and shape. I see it as an effort in understanding memory and cognitive functioning. Search in the dark. Nothing is there but I know something is there I know someone is there.
There has to be.
I stare at the television screen for a time, reflecting the shadows of the open doorway behind me. Dustin's house. Movement in the dark.
Light can't even pierce it, I swear, I swear.
What's happening to me?
Choking on my swollen tonsils. Eyes angry from the strain of trying to see in the pitch. And a shadow in the television screen
moves.
(but nothing is there. nothing.)
I sit in the living room until it is daylight.
Grainy, dirty sunlight filtered barely through stormclouds casts itself through the only window, above the sink behind the doorway reflected in the television. I smoke a lot and my hands are shaking.
I twist and turn at every noise. My back pops and eases up. Sting of sweat in my eyes as it rolls off my eyebrows. movement? or the sound of movement? Nothing has ever affected me this badly.
Nothing in a long time, at least.
Christina wakes up first.
"Are you okay?"
Yeah. I had a nightmare, I think.
"Oh, well, I'm sure Dustin will get up if you ask him to."
No, probably not. I wrote down the dream. And I hand her a dry erase board upon which I had written the events that just transpired.
She glances up at me, "Wow, well. Are you sure this was a dream?"
I fucking hope so.
"Because there were some weird things that happened in this place. And you might be more sensitive because..." she trails off and I don't ask why. "Dustin knows more about them than me, so if you can't get back to sleep, wake him up and maybe he could talk to you about them."
But I don't wake him up. I fall asleep in a darkened hallway between Dustin's room and Carl's room.
Because when Christina left for work and I went back into the den to lay down on the couch I felt a pressure around the back of my neck and a strange tickle up the center of my left palm, up my middle finger.
-Sleep.
-Forty-five minutes of sleep.
-Then a drive home. Call to the clinic. Throat hurts. Ask for appointment. Sleep. Dreams of a different caliber. Something about water. Wake up thinking I am drowning. And I am drowning -- my throat.
-Sleep. No dreams. And maybe that small mercy could prove that there is a god.
Nightmares for the last few nights. Culminating in last night.
Nightmares for most of my life. As much I try to get used to them and I say I am used to them
I never will be.
Mostly, when I mention my nightmares, people say they are a result of my self-destructive tendencies (cutting myself, my previous drug addiction, etc). That because I cannot accept myself I even go so far as to ruin myself in my subconscious. In my dreams, all my friends prefer me dead (well, and express it. All my friends do prefer me dead). I am tortured in curious ways. The worst of all torture is when it becomes emotional rather than physical.
My mind works against me, I think. It is sort of sad, actually. Bringing up painful memories and making something in them just wrong somehow but imperceptively. Ah, I don't know... I am fucking crazy, but ... I was actually afraid last night. And that's unusual.
There has to be.
I stare at the television screen for a time, reflecting the shadows of the open doorway behind me. Dustin's house. Movement in the dark.
Light can't even pierce it, I swear, I swear.
What's happening to me?
Choking on my swollen tonsils. Eyes angry from the strain of trying to see in the pitch. And a shadow in the television screen
moves.
(but nothing is there. nothing.)
I sit in the living room until it is daylight.
Grainy, dirty sunlight filtered barely through stormclouds casts itself through the only window, above the sink behind the doorway reflected in the television. I smoke a lot and my hands are shaking.
I twist and turn at every noise. My back pops and eases up. Sting of sweat in my eyes as it rolls off my eyebrows. movement? or the sound of movement? Nothing has ever affected me this badly.
Nothing in a long time, at least.
Christina wakes up first.
"Are you okay?"
Yeah. I had a nightmare, I think.
"Oh, well, I'm sure Dustin will get up if you ask him to."
No, probably not. I wrote down the dream. And I hand her a dry erase board upon which I had written the events that just transpired.
She glances up at me, "Wow, well. Are you sure this was a dream?"
I fucking hope so.
"Because there were some weird things that happened in this place. And you might be more sensitive because..." she trails off and I don't ask why. "Dustin knows more about them than me, so if you can't get back to sleep, wake him up and maybe he could talk to you about them."
But I don't wake him up. I fall asleep in a darkened hallway between Dustin's room and Carl's room.
Because when Christina left for work and I went back into the den to lay down on the couch I felt a pressure around the back of my neck and a strange tickle up the center of my left palm, up my middle finger.
-Sleep.
-Forty-five minutes of sleep.
-Then a drive home. Call to the clinic. Throat hurts. Ask for appointment. Sleep. Dreams of a different caliber. Something about water. Wake up thinking I am drowning. And I am drowning -- my throat.
-Sleep. No dreams. And maybe that small mercy could prove that there is a god.
Nightmares for the last few nights. Culminating in last night.
Nightmares for most of my life. As much I try to get used to them and I say I am used to them
I never will be.
Mostly, when I mention my nightmares, people say they are a result of my self-destructive tendencies (cutting myself, my previous drug addiction, etc). That because I cannot accept myself I even go so far as to ruin myself in my subconscious. In my dreams, all my friends prefer me dead (well, and express it. All my friends do prefer me dead). I am tortured in curious ways. The worst of all torture is when it becomes emotional rather than physical.
My mind works against me, I think. It is sort of sad, actually. Bringing up painful memories and making something in them just wrong somehow but imperceptively. Ah, I don't know... I am fucking crazy, but ... I was actually afraid last night. And that's unusual.