Casting Shadows

The Premonition

 I know what people think about dreams. They are an illusion, fragments of memory that come crawling to the surface of the mind. They linger in some mysterious cosmos which we go to when our hearts are broken or when we miss someone. They have the power to lie.

Dreams used to make me flutter, like butterflies rubbing their wings on my skin. Nightmares used to make me cringe, causing me to wake up with a black hole below my bellybutton. Never in a million years did I think a dream would come true; or worse, a nightmare.

Since I was sixteen, I have had a recurring dream. Years have passed, and I still somehow suffer its endless invasion. I lie awake at night, staring at the illuminated ceiling made of cheap plastic stars, and fight what seems like an eternal battle with sleep. None of my struggles matter as, sooner or later, my body gives in— maybe because I simply cannot withstand the exhaustion, or maybe because my subconscious wishes the dream to find its conclusion. Nevertheless, the fear haunts me even when the plastic stars above my bed begin to swiftly fade.

In my dream, I drive along a curvy road into a dark forest, the majority of which is cloaked in foggy pines. The bickering of animals, hooting of owls, and squeaks of mice are all intensified in my mind, as if the creatures of the night all wander around my bedroom. The forest looks like the Garden of Evanescence from one of the books my parents used to scare me when they couldn't find a more suitable punishment. The scariest part about that forest were the translucent shadow-people peering from under the trees' trunks, their eyes glowing the brightest yellow imaginable. Surprisingly, this time it isn't the shadow-people, but the sinister forbidden landscape that unfolds in front of my slowly accelerating vehicle.

From the glow of the harvest moon, I realize that my car drives straight into autumn. I open the window and an overwhelming dampness envelops my entire being. The Garden of Evanescence has luminous purple flowers of algae-like cressets shedding their light onto everything around them. Strangely, in my dream, the giant streetlamps stand by the side of the road just like those flowers. What they shed their light on is something one can see only in a nightmare.

At the foot of a mountain, I spot an ambulance lying on its side in a pool of glass. Emergency lights are still circling among the pines as if lost. There has been an accident. An oak tree came down during a storm, and the ambulance ran into it. The piercing resonance of a honk fills the air, surrounding the accident site with despair. I notice an overturned motorcycle on the yellow center line just a couple of feet from the ambulance, its rear fender creaking under force. Its headlight is vigorously blinking. Occasionally, the light reflects off a broken mirror, casting a lonely shadow onto the road. Each time I have this dream, my first thought is that no one is alive on this God-forsaken road.

As soon as I step out of the car, rain drizzles in my face, not like warm tears but a white curtain of hostility. The fear starts to overcome me, but my legs continue to move. The glass breaks under my feet and releases a good crack as I pull the medical equipment aside to access the vehicle's rear. It is empty. Something lies crushed on the road— some sort of ritualistic bauble. I find pieces thrown to the grass, but it appears to be too damaged to even begin guessing as to what it was before. Studying wooden beads by the curb, I suddenly hear a groan, almost unnoticeable at first, but it exists. I quickly figure out the direction the noise is coming from. In the light of purple algae, I see a dark-colored jacket, and I run towards it.

A person is lying face down on the grass, dirty and forgotten. I am afraid to look at him, but I have no choice. With my heart pounding heavily against my ribcage, I hold on to his muddy jacket and turn him over. Before I can relive the horror of looking him in the face, I awaken, with rain still pelting on the roof of my bedroom.