Dream Catcher

Chapter 2

Ruben Gage, who had learned to believe that wealth is simply a fluke of balance in the world, tributed to his inane guardians. He had always found his treasured escape, to slip away from his drunken brute mother and his cash cocotte of a father. His dreamgirl. Ruben had seen her grow up just as he did, ever since he was rolled out of uterine vomit, to now with his leaden shoulders weighted by his bloated belly. Your usual look of an average married man. Closing his teeth around the liquor-wet lime, he turned on the swivel chair watching his daughter cradled in his wife's chest snoozing away in their hushed fantasies. The crib's mobile casting a shadow undulating lazily on its axis over his wife's thawed, but alluring facade. Ruben gathered up the stem of his glass, his chardonnay tinted with the midnight hue lighting up the room enough for movement. He washed down the dinner with his thoughts and crawled up under the sheets.

Ruben splurged the less significant part of his life chasing to find the girl who he spends most of his life, more than anyone he could ever think of. All this he did for momentary pleasure or fulfillment, never expected to find his dreamgirl, but that was exactly what happened. . . although he called this woman his wife, Lilith, as a grown happily bonded man must do when he finds the woman who should have been his fantasy, relatively at the right time in his life.

A familiar scraping starts to settle in the air next to Ruben. Lilith gritting her teeth wildly, making Ruben thoughtlessly and softly pressing her jaw, shaking her out. His arm finding its way back to her waist when she stopped, knocked out in her scent.

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There is no reason for Ruben to speak. He finds freedom in silence. He listens to the tide, rising and ebbing like a powered wheel, caressing the coast. He observes the tiny gestures of life on the island. The sea mists brew up in romantic mid-July, heavy with salt crystals to hamper the murky shine glazing over the ivory trees against a full moon, which looked like a block of cheese. His stomach gassed to gobble it up. He patiently waited for her. She always came. He knew she would. He knew he felt her. He knew he heard her. Now and then, as if brought in on the breeze, the memory of her. She lazily drags her feet through the sand, letting each grain race her feet. Her milky sun-dress swishing gracefully around her hips, lacing through the wind.

Now she is resting next to him, legs neatly crossed over the other, mostly parallel. He wanted to touch the soft wholeness of her skin. Before he could reach out he felt a sharp sting in his scalp pulling him out of his alleviation. Marci. She grabbed a double handful of his hair and tugged with all her will enthusiastically repeating and slapping eagerly to own his attention.

The bedroom rayon curtains were unusually stretched open across the room to allow strong light penetrating Ruben's pupils sluggish with irking disappointment emphasized by the joyous whacking on his head delivered by his little gooseberry. Ruben turns to Marci and hoisted her with his large hands which wrapped around her embryonic body.

Ruben changes his tone to mickey mouse, " Who wants to play with daddy? ", still sounding raspy from the angelic dream, shaking her slightly with his hands on either side, making Marci giggle aggressively " Marci wants to play with daddy!", he raises her closer muffling his words into her nonexistent neck rubbing in cheeky tickles.

Quickly his nostrils were choked with an unbidden smell, a smell he couldn't immediately pick up. Lifting Marci to sniff her diaper like an airhead he knew until his eyes caught the dark clouds in the room, placing Marci aside, he shuffled around scraping his eye shnooters, scanning the room for the inlet, before elsewhere he flung himself off the bed, clasping Marci in his arm. Ruben was now in a fight or flight mode, "oh shit, oh no oh no oh no", swearing and talking to himself he paces around the infusing room, "where do you breathe baby, where do you breathe?", he swerves across the room, his hands unable to keep up with the involuntary repeated actions from the deep chills and the sickly lurching in his esophagus, his ears filled with Marci's bootless breaking out into screaming without any pauses for breathing. He dragged the sliding door of the cupboard and scattered whatever cloth he could find on the floor beneath Marci. He didn't shut the door completely, leaving room for light to fall in. " stay in here baby. Don't come out until I come to get you" he whizzed towards to door announcing to Marci as if she heard and understood him through her cry.  The smoke filling up from the bottom of the door like a steamed pot, swinging the door carefully but swiftly for none of the forbidden smoke to make it in through to Marci. He clubbed his nose by mounting the neck of his polo and trying his hardest to breathe in his mucky scent. Sprinting down the hallway, turning to skip the staircase, unable to clear his vision, all it was clouded with was Lilith???????. Oh please not again. Please spare her.