Tortured by Hope and Dreams

1

"Okay, close your eyes. Breathe deeply into your core. I will send you into the realm of the soul and it is there you will find that which you want to kill. You will know it when you find it."

I breathed deeply through my nose, filling my body with the incense-filled air, feeling slightly ridiculous. I should have known better than to follow some sketchy gypsy voodoo-practicing woman, but I was desperate. Well, I've been desperate for things to get better for the past few years, but I guess this night I was feeling especially desperate. Plus, gypsies don't even look like gypsies anymore in this day and age. The woman I met seemed perfectly prim and proper.

Here I am, in her apartment, lying on her couch and breathing in some wood or spice that's burning in the air. Normally, I would never follow a stranger back to their home, but given that we're both women, and she seemed pretty normal, I concluded that I probably wouldn't get murdered tonight. Damn, I would hate it if I was wrong.

Honestly, I thought this whole thing might be more like talk therapy. The more she's talking though, the more it sounds very spiritual and mystical rather than anything grounded in science. I play in my head how I'm going to get up from the couch, apologize about how it's not working for me, and go back to my regularly scheduled life. Just as I'm preparing myself to get up, my body suddenly jerks, and from inside my ear I hear her say, "You will not be able to come back until you have found what you need to find."

Then, something drops heavily in the center of my chest, and the next thing I know my mind is sinking into darkness. All sound leaves me and I'm plummeting into nothingness. I feel myself screaming, but I'm unable to hear or see anything. I lose every sense of my surroundings and am left only with the piercing sensation of my cries.

My breath is the first thing that comes back to me. I recognize the feeling of air rushing in and out of my body. My awareness spreads from there. My eyes start going into focus and I start to become conscious of my face, that I have a face. As I continue to breathe in and out, I remember my body. It was like I was gaining back all the parts of my psyche which gave me weight and form. Eventually, after an amount of time I wasn't able to distinguish, I felt solid enough for my feet to feel like they were attached to the ground. I felt like I had anchored myself and was no longer at risk of floating off or disintegrating into nothingness.

I recognized that I had been hunched over and breathing heavily, much like a marathon runner after completing their course. Then I recognized that the floor was made of wood paneling. I failed to realize the familiarity of what I was looking at until I was able to bring my head up. I was looking at the dining area of a small apartment, my apartment. Not just my apartment, but my apartment in the order that I had left it in this morning. I remember because I was yelling at Elle to clean up after herself when she finishes her breakfast. She had blueberry pancakes that she tried to make for the first time, and I knew I was looking at today because the pancakes were burnt and half-eaten just as they were this morning. Was I in my memories?

I look around the space and at my body, wondering how real this all was. How real I am in this plane of existence. Then Elle runs by, with her hair carefully curled and her outfit thoughtfully styled. She goes to the small dining table and takes her plate of blueberry pancakes to the sink. Before she puts the plate in, she stops from a quick thought. She picks up a piece of her leftover pancakes and goes for a bite. Her face squeezes into that of disgust and then changes to an expression of resignation to the fact that she still sucks at cooking. She places the plate in the sink and rushes out the door. She doesn't acknowledge me at all during this entire event, but then again she's a teenager so that behavior isn't all that strange.

I hear myself before I see myself.

"Elle! It wouldn't hurt to help with getting your sisters ready for school as well!"

Then I see myself walk through the hallway and into the dining area. Rushing, actually. I'm always rushing.

"Hope. Faith. Come on, let's go, you guys are gonna be late for school."

I see myself standing in the dining room area, waiting for the girls to come out. I have this urge to break the fourth wall. This crazy urge to address myself, of all people. The girls come bumbling out of the hallway at that moment though, and the performance resumes.

"Marin! Marin! I definitely didn't clog the toilet. It was Faith, not me."

"What? Marin! Marin! It wasn't me! It was Hope!"

"Wow! Just betray me like that? So quick to sell me out! What kind of twin are you?"

"You sold me out first! What kind of twin are you?"

I watched myself trying to handle the rowdy twins, feeling a bit of pity, but I was also grateful I didn't have to go through that ordeal again. Hope and Faith are incredibly rambunctious young girls. Whip-smart, but chaotic and mischievous little devils for the most part.

"Marin! Marin! C'mon have a little faith in your Faith."

"Bwahahaha! I can't believe you just used that! Aren't we above that now?"

"You left me no choice! Hey. You left me with no hope."

"Hahahahaha! Ohhh, that's a good one!"

The me that was standing as the audience and the me playing the part in the performance, we both had our eyes rolled far back into our heads.

"Girls! Girls! I don't have time for this! I'll unclog the toilet when I get home from work. C'mon now, get into the car."

Then they bounded past me, cackling away.

I watched the end of the performance calmly. As someone who knew exactly how the scene was going to end. I see myself sigh and lean against the wall that meets the end of the hallway. I lean my head back and tap the wall. As I'm taking a deep breath, my expression lifts to show a small smile, because I know that they are all worth it. I watch as I pull myself away from the wall and steel myself for another day.

There's an unfamiliar silence after I see myself leave through the door. Standing there in my apartment without the noises from my sisters and the craziness of my life. It felt somewhat nice to exist so calmly in that space, but then I remembered I don't really exist here and that this is a memory and that I'm here for something. Once I became aware of my alien existence, things began to unravel. Not unravel exactly, but dissipate. My surroundings started to turn into smoke until everything around me had disappeared. The smoke then filled my senses, my consciousness, until I felt like I was untethered from the spot that I had anchored myself to. Then I disappeared.