Ophelia

Part 1, Chapter 3

Juliet had three dreams—blending into one another like soupy liquid. In the first, she was in the passenger seat of a car. She turned to her left. Her best friend was driving, dark hair cropped to her chin and features too hard to make out in the darkness and the pouring rain. Music was playing, loud, and her friend was screaming the words. Juliet knew she recognized the song, she knew she knew it, but she couldn't quite find the words. She shouted along too, but she didn't know what words she was singing. The car gently rolled down a hill and the song ended. It occurred to her then that she didn't know her best friend's name. It would come to her.

Violet awoke, sharp and sweaty. Her room was dark so she felt around to light the candle by her bed. She missed electricity. She heard a creak from down the hall. She stretched and pulled herself out of bed and towards the noise. As she walked down the hall, past her mother's room and her daughter's candle in one hand, she felt like she was in a gothic novel.

In Juliet's second dream, she was at a funeral. She didn't know whose, she didn't know whose, if it was someone she had loved or someone she had never spoken to, but a weight sat in her stomach nonetheless. There was something so disgusting about being so close to death. There was something disgraceful in feeling that there was something in her power when everyone told her there wasn't. Juliet walked t0 stand over the grave. She was in a red dress that hugged her waist but left her back exposed. She wondered if anyone was angry with her for choosing the wrong dress. As she stared at her exposed knees, she suddenly realized that she was particularly cold. She bent to look over the grave.

She saw a movement, all the way down in the earth, and she knelt over the coffin to look closer. Suddenly something reached up, and she only had time to register a cold feeling against the skin on her back before she was tumbling down into the grave.

She ran downstairs, a faint noise drawing her down the creepy steps. Violet identified the pins as rushing water. She turned sharply. Inches from her feet, translucent swampy waters were bursting between the panels of wood where the floor met the wall.

Juliet's third dream was in a meadow, wild grasses extended far away from her in all directions. The ground was dotted with warm pinks and reds. She was kneeling, the hard ground against her knees. She stood and brushed away the dirt, her knees were scraped, but it was okay, because the trees all around were reaching towards her as if to take her into their warm arms and rock her to sleep. In the distance she sees smoke. She runs.

The further she gets, the muddier the ground grows and the more it sinks beneath her face. Soon she's so sunken that she can barely run, only trudge, and sooner still she can't move at all, and she is drowning. As she takes her last breath of thick mud, she wakes up, sweaty and panting.

She cranes her neck to see out her window, it's still dark. She shivers and grabs her shoulders, inhales the putrid stench of sweat. She tries not to choke on it as she catches her breath and slides out of bed, wrapping herself in a blanket.

The blanket is dotted with little yellow ducks, some faded over the years. What once was fuzzy and soft is not matted, but it's been so long that Juliet can no longer recall what it used to feel like. For a moment it occurred to her that the blanket would soon be underwater, the soft fabric growing coarser and coarser until it disintegrated altogether, but she pushed it out of her mind. It had been a gift.

Juliet looked down at the little yellow ducks, chasing each other across a placid pond. She missed treasuring a person, and treasuring a meaningless possession was cruel consolation. She goes downstairs.

The leak is strong. Violet doesn't know if it's a pipe or if the water's just finally pushed through her nice hardwood floors, meticulously chosen for the right balance of warmth and tone, because how would she? This is so far out of her wheelhouse that she's half considering leaving it be and going back to bed. But no, that's not an option. Mama could sleep through this, Juliet can sleep through this, but not her. She has to be awake, eyes held open so long that they burn because she can't risk closing them.