Electric Dreams [[Graphic]]

This is not an easy post for me to write, but I think it may help me. This is a dream entry, documenting my most recent night terror in a effort to shed light on how these nighttime torments can take a drastic toll. No matter how much work I do in the daylight, no matter what I repair, in the dark there’s always some wound I never fully healed ready to rip open and bleed again at the slightest provocation.

Proceed with caution.

***

I’m standing in a field, the dirt under my bare feet is recently tilled. It smells like wet mud and soggy wheat. The skies are blistered black and blue in storm clouds and as I watch, a thin rope of cloud descends, whirling in it’s stretch to the ground. I turn and splash through maddened puddles, feeling the trickles up my calves, but I can hardly move. My legs don’t respond and my hair whips into my face. This is the herald. This is the omen. Tonight I will find no rest.

I wake up from the tornadic dream, blinking my eyes open to peer around me in the darkness. I’m in the farmhouse, my old home, and as my eyes adjust I can see it’s in a state of terrible disrepair. The blanket I’m under is covered in holes, moth eaten and thread bare. I pull it to the side and feel the cold air of my bedroom in winter. I can see my breath as I stand on freezing carpet that crunches with each step. Dirt, debris, the dead bodies of bugs all ground into a disgusting layer of grime rubbing my heels.

I touch the walls here, and the old horsehair plaster crumbles revealing thousands of writhing worm bodies that tumble out. It’s all rotten from the inside out. It’s all destroyed and crumbling. I dart out of the room and down the stairs, stairs my feet still recall how to hit to remain noiseless. I reach the bottom as the roof creaks and begins to cave in. Too late, as I reach the door outside it collapses on top of me and I am crushed into the dirty linoleum. 

My eyes pop open and I sit up, breathing hard. It takes me a moment to realize the man next to me is not my husband. It’s T. I can see in the dim light that he’s sleeping on his side away from me, and I can start to see the freckles on his shoulders. But as they become clearer, they morph and he changes. He rolls over and he’s grinning at me, but it’s not T anymore. The face is the one that torments me in these dreams.

He sits up and I stutter to ask why he’s there. How did he get here? When he pulls back the covers to answer me I see the blood. It’s soaked the sheets around us, and I leap up, covered in it. I bolt for the door but he has my hair in his fist before I can reach it, yanking my head back until I land on my knees, begging him to stop. Begging him to tell me why there’s so much blood. 

I can feel his hot breath on my forehead, see his teeth clenched near my eyes. “Because you thought you could be free, and now you’ll lose them all.” He releases my hair and demands I stand up, my hands touching the seams in the floor of their bedroom. I’m crying and begging for their lives. He just laughs at me. 

I fumble opening the door, feel the bannister under my hand when I stumble out and see the carnage. Bodies, blank faces, death. But they aren’t the right faces, these aren’t my family. He found the wrong people and mine are safe. This is the wrong house, this is the wrong place, but I can’t let him know that, so I wail and beg for him to take it back. 

I am sad for these people who live in this exact copy. My hand touches the identical couch, the carpet beneath it. He’s coming at me now, sensing something is amiss. He’s livid and his eyes are filled with rage. He’s on top of me, choking me, slamming my head back into the floor vowing to kill me this time.

I gasp and sit up hard, clutching my own throat. I’m upside down on the ceiling above my bed. I can see my husband, my cats, the empty space where I belong and should have been resting. I can hear my own breath in my ears, my heartbeat hammering like a wild animal trapped in a cage. The door is opening and through it comes a figure, cloaked in black. It looks up at me and I can sense it grinning. I can sense it taking pleasure in my fear.

“They’ll leave you.”

I shake my head but the words find their way deep into my skull. “Matt will replace you when he’s had enough of dealing with this. ‘This isn’t what I signed up for.’ ” I cry no and slam my hands over my ears, but it doesn’t stop the voice. “T will leave you. He can’t be with you when you hurt his body.” I throw my hand out, desperate to stop the words. “He tells you. He jokes. ‘I wish you tasted better’.” 

The tears don’t stop. The pain doesn’t stop. The words don’t stop. “You are nothing. You are worthless, and in the end, you will die alone.”

I lay back on the ceiling and  stare at my bed below me, the tears falling out of my eyes where they stain my pillow dark where they collect. Every joke mixes with every cruel insult, so when I reach up and touch my shoulder, the skin peels away. There is no pain, just blood and tears as I rip my own skin from my body over the sound of his laughter. 

The world goes black for a moment and I wake up in my own bed, my face wet with tears, my hands in a vice grip around my body pillow. Every muscle in my body is rigid, my arms and legs locked in position. Gradually I loosen them and relax, sitting up. Tux lifts his head from the other side of Matt and chirps. I’m awake, actually awake. 

The words fade, the thoughts and dreams fade until I’m only left with the sense of hopelessness and crushing weight of feeling like I’m losing everything. I am no better than I was when I was trapped with him. I have no progressed or healed, and in the dark I let it bleed metaphorically out of me the way it was bleeding out in my dream only moments before. 

It takes warm water on my face, an ibuprofen and gazing out my back patio door for a few minutes to lull back back into sleep. When I wake up for the day, it’s to the restlessness of feeling like I must do something to save my world but not knowing how, or what, or even why it needs saving. 

Tomorrow, if I’m lucky to be dreamless tonight, the day will be brighter and these feelings will be drained of power. Tomorrow could hold any number of things that will help to soothe this raw ache. If I can only get through the night...