dream

I slouched into the keyboard in some thoughtless pose and let my eyes bleed into the neon screen. the same overplayed mix of brokenhearted clichés and mangled screams wailed passionately at their apathetic audience. At one time the arrangement of these coarse melodies had moved me to the point of creating a favorites CD for myself and a group of equally obsessed friends. My own copy now spun mindlessly in the stereo, as another cheap accessory to emphasize the cliché I lived in and match the ripped and signed posters that suffocated my walls.

I am cold. Too cold to move and in doing so, expose my white limbs to the tinniest flow of air. So I sit still in my worn t-shirt and flannel shorts, lazy and too afraid of discomfort to even drag a blanket over my knees and thighs. And so I numbly hum the notes behind a nameless growl that apparently climaxes the nameless song and shiver violently in the seventy-degree bedroom. For hours, allowing the convolutions of my brain to warp and break with the involuntary clicks of minesweeper and obsessive check and rechecking of myspace comments.

The room is black except for an electric blue film that radiates from the computer screen. It must be after midnight. How many times have I lost this game? How many times have I actually tried to win? How do you play this stupid game anyway? I really didn’t care, but tonight I was desperate for something, anything to suck my attention from the twenty-foot stretch of charcoal air that engulfed the bed, living room, windows and everything else unfortunate enough to be behind me. A new number appears on the grid each time I press the left mouse button. I stopped recognizing the numbers as shapes hours ago, and continue the rapid clicks as if my pulse depended on it. as if the second I failed to continue this perfect rhythm would somehow be the very second this cerulean buzz died and I was lost in dead lightlessness forever.

The unpleasant daydream passed without my comprehension and, without missing a beat, I exited the first game and set to occupy my mind with something more stable. Solitaire.
Hours, minutes, seconds even drifted by as virtual cards danced over and over against the edges of the computer screen. I was good at this game. Too good. I was bored sometime after the forth win.

Careful to follow the off-white shag into the bathroom, I shuffled through the mirror cabinet for something to help me sleep. I don’t think I paid much attention to whatever it was that I swallowed. Just anything to keep me unconscious until morning. Until there was some faint hint of friendly light peaking through the blinds on my windows. Something to get me through this night without any chance of seeing it again. Oh God forbid I see it again.

Because I had already tried the bed unsuccessfully, I stretched my white body limply across the fold-out couch. I didn’t fold it out, because dragging a pillow and fleece blanket down the hallway after myself was all the effort I could muster, and even that was lucky for a night like tonight. I thought back to my childhood and imagine momentarily that I was making the long journey to my mom’s bedside after another nightmare. Sleeping bag in hand, willing to sleep at her feet, the floor, anywhere really, as long as the terrible monster wouldn’t visit me again. As long as I could hear her breathing and know with my perfect faith that she could keep me safe from everything. Even the things she couldn’t see.

Mom was never there when it came though. The house was always dark and unrealistically empty on those horrible nights. I never screamed, but somehow I knew that screaming would have been pointless. Tonight I had that feeling. But tonight was different; I was alone. It was dark. The wind would be howling soon, I was sure of it. so before I could psyche myself out of another ten minutes of conscious sanity, I leapt gently but clumsily between two couch cushions and curled between the folds of the warm football blanket.

I think I had closed my eyes, but in such a deep black it’s impossible to be sure. Either way, I was still awake when I heard the crash outside. “Stupid raccoons,” I mumbled between mild profanities as I stood up to bang on the window. Yanking the heavy blinds open, I squinted into the sandy field my trailer was perched on. There was nothing there. “Of coarse they would only come long enough to wake me up.” I hissed, knowing full well that I had never even slept to begin with. My slippers groped their way back to the couch and, wide-awake, I folded into the sweat-damp fabric. My throat was cracked in that early morning dryness that makes your eyes water with each swallow; so, sighing heavily, I stumbled again to the kitchen sink, half-hoping to convince my body of it’s own need of sleep. Something didn’t feel right as I held the foggy glass under the faucet. I never was one to pay attention to the largest of details late at night, but there was this current in the air that seemed to be subtly and constantly shocking my ears in a distant, but repeated pattern.

In some sightless way I saw the room spin, and clutched the cracked porcelain sink until the floor stopped falling out from under me. Swallowing deeply, I started to decipher the pattern. It was music…the stereo…no, I turned that off I…thin…k…over and over…repeat-ed…ringing…phone.
The…phone…? The phone? I hated the phone. And who on earth would call this late?

The phone was buried under a heap of t-shirts and was on its second cycle of ringing by the time I discovered it. I was wide-awake now. Faking a scratchy “you just woke me up” tone, I answered “hello?” as if the greeting was a question. In the way of horror films, there was no immediate answer. Though I dreaded the heavy breathing that was sure to seep through the wire, I pressed my greeting again. “Hello?”
The question was stronger and I heard a click. Or was it a crash? No the crash was outside. Outside at the same time…”stupid”, more words, “filthy raccoons.” If I had a shotgun, I would have grabbed it as a means of security, but all I had in the tiny trailer was an unused Wal-Mart broom. The broom and I threw open the flimsy door and scanned the outside vacancy with a frustrated shout. There was a scurrying in the trees across the dirt road and I pointed a bony finger to the mass of even darker black and yelled some indistinguishable tired wail, then crashed back inside and slammed the door.

Any hope I ever had of falling asleep was purged from my system by now. Defeated, sour and utterly exhausted, I collapsed onto the wrinkled couch, this time sitting upright, and turned on the TV. Light flash-flooded the narrow room and singed my retinas mercilessly. I was still blinking away lavender circles when the phone rang a second time. Someone stopped me before I reacted.

“Don’t answer it.”

The voice was inaudible, soundless even, but perfectly clear at the same time. It wasn’t mine and terror-filled electricity screamed up my spinal column. I stood erect in the darkness, hands strangling the body of the phone, jumping and wheezing with each ring. I was going crazy.

“Why not?” the sound of my own voice terrified me almost more than the stranger’s.
It rang again. “Don’t answer it.” I almost did. “Stop!” I stopped and cringed as the final rings reverberated through the blinding air. I looked around myself in a cautious panic, half-expecting something heavy to fall against the back of my head, half expecting the dark around me to melt into more dark and stay that way forever. I saw nothing and felt nothing. “Who…where are you?”

“In here.” The soundless voice carried from my bedroom, and I followed it as a naïve character in a horror film slowly walks into the killer’s lair. Sidestepping every so often, jumping for no reason as the floor creaks; just to keep the audience on edge. I wished with everything I was that there would be an audience watching, proving that whatever it was was real and tangible, someone to cringe as I cringed and gasp when I was afraid. There was no audience.

The walls, bed, dresser and carpet all glowed in the same computer blue that had lit up the room before, but now, sitting on my comforter, silhouetted against a shaded window was the voice. It was a man…with claws.
His face was blue from random patches of scales that matched his reptilian hands, unless the cast of color was caused by the computer screen. But I’m almost sure he was blue.

“Who…”

“Who do you think” he finished before I’d started. His voice was deep and passionless, almost apathetic, defeated. It was my uncle, John. Shivers danced along my vertebrae and I began to with I had answered the phone.
“John, get out of my house. You know you’ve never been welcome here. I’ve told you before. I don’t have anything for you. Get out…”

“What’dya say? ‘couldn’t here ya mumblin’ over there.”
Filthy cold blooded old man, I thought to myself. I didn’t mean it as a pun. “Nevermind.”

“Come over here” for my entire life I had known that nothing good could ever come from following Uncle John’s commands. But I walked over to him. We stood, less than a foot away from each other, nose to nose, eyes to eyes when a seizure of pain attacked me. There was a suction sort of sound as my body tried to fall. Someone was holding it from the inside. As my eyes began to roll back in one final body lurch, I saw John’s scaly hand in from of my eye. It was holding a clump of strings, veins. They were moving and glistening in body fluids and florescent light. Blood dripped onto my slippers, and probably everywhere else. I wanted to faint. But he was smiling.

        A long, forked tongue flickered out of John’s blue mouth and wrapped around the clump of nerves. Before I watched them disappear behind his lips, I felt his hand inside me again. My shirt was now a muddy shade of brown, spilling stains from the center of my chest. He was looking for my heart.
        I started to tell him it was a waste of time, that I didn’t have one of those anymore, but again, I must’ve mumbled it. His fingers touched my ribs like a xylophone, they brushed my skin from the inside, doing who knows what kind of damage. I felt my lungs close and open, but didn’t know if it was my uncle’s scavenging hands, or my own rapid breath. A second, a year later his sharp talons were raised to the lightbulb, holding a small rotten apple. “I already have your heart” he said with a sneer, “this is what I came for.” Without wasting another breath, he bit violently into his treasure. Blood and infection eviscerated everywhere and I began to cry. “I’m full.” He said when he was finished.

          “But I’m empty” I was sobbing now. “I…can’t breathe,” I whispered. John didn’t respond. I must have been mumbling. He was licking the blood off the floor excitedly. From behind my tears, he began to look less and less like a man. His head appeared to have changed to fully match his lizard arms. A thick, aqua-colored tail wrapped loosely around my withering body and I reached blindly to grab the edge of my bed. Instead of soft folds of quilted floral, my hands were met rudely by a rough, solid board.

        My fingernails clawed against the wood several times before I opened my eyes again. The cerulean air had been replaced with the soft morning glow that poured rebelliously through blinded windows. I was no longer at the foot of my bed, but curled fetal in front of the kitchen sink. There was a fogged glass lying in a patch of damp carpet, a few inches away from my hand. I must have been there all night. Instinctively, I glared into my bedroom, but John was not there. The whole idea of being visited by a walking lizard now seemed ridiculous and I was embarrassed by the nervousness I still felt about the ordeal. It was over now and I was okay. Each time I saw him, I had been terrified of dying. But this time he finally tried to kill me and I was still here, perfectly fine. It would be okay. I stumbled into the bathroom and was trying to remember exactly how much sleeping medicine I had taken when my eyes caught a glimpse of my shuffling feet.

        Auburn stains were splattered all over my slippers.