Dream On

Swish Swish

Nobody is afraid of the unknown, what you really fear is the loss of the known.

— Anthony de Mello

Have you ever thought about what messages dreams are bringing to us? Let me tell you a secret. Waking up out of a nightmare... you're not really waking up. The nightmare continues. That's because a dream is not an independent entity floating somewhere in a vacuum of dreamland. No, no, no. It's in your head. And as long as your head stays attached to your neck, it goes with you everywhere. Your dreams are mirrors of your reality. And sometimes, all you can do is run.

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Swish!

Tommy jumps away from the swing, startled. It has almost hit him. Phew, that was close. The wind is howling around him, lifting the brown, decaying leaves in dizzy chaos, making him feel confused.

Swish!

The swing shoots through the air again, just a few centimeters from Tommy's nose. He takes another step back but slips on the oozy, wet leaves and falls backward. His head hits the ground hard, and for a moment, everything goes black. He blinks and shakes his head. Sobs start to form in his chest, but they die off on his lips. Right in front of him, way too close for his comfort, stands a little girl.

He's never seen a girl like this. Her hair is raven black, weaved into two braids that look like ropes going down her neck. Tommy doesn't like braids. They remind him of the hanged man's picture he saw in the local museum. Despite that, it's not the braids that scare him the most. Neither does her chalk-white skin, as unnatural as he's ever seen outside of the vampire movies his mommy enjoys when cooking Sunday lunches.

The dark circles around the girl's eyes are even bigger than uncle Jim's. He doesn't come for a visit very often, and mommy always cries when he's leaving. Last time, Tommy noticed she gave him an envelope — secretly so that daddy didn't see. The girl's lips are dark purple, like the sour cherries in the back of the garden. Tommy liked the cherries until he found a large worm in it once, and his daddy warned him that if he eats it, he will have worms in his belly. Daddy laughed at Tommy's horrified expression and popped one cherry into his own mouth. Tommy never touched them again.

The girl's dress might have been white once, perhaps similar to what auntie Nandy wore when she was marrying uncle Dan, except that the little girl's dress has smudges of dirt all over. She carries a ginger-haired doll with big pink shoes. Tommy wonders what the doll needs such big shoes for. Is she prepared to step on something? Or someone?

All of this makes Tommy very uncomfortable. But it's her eyes and her gaze that genuinely scare him. His mommy once said that you can tell whether someone is nice or ugly on the inside by looking into their eyes. And if they're ugly, you should run as fast as you can. This girl's eyes are as black as her hair. It looks like the black center has expanded so much that it didn't leave space for any other color. Only the white corners are shining out of the pool of darkness.

The girl tilts her head in curiosity and reaches towards him. He's drowning in her gaze. He's drowning. Drowning. And so Tommy clambers to his feet, turns around and runs and runs and runs. He wakes up back in his bed, his body completely terrorized. He can still see the scene in front of him.

Crying, he runs to his parents' bedroom.

"Mommy, mommy," he tries to wake her up. She murmurs something and turns to the other side. He tries again, but she reaches back and pushes him away.

"It's fucking early, Tommy. Go to bed and let us sleep."

Tommy knows better than to push her. He runs around the bed, almost tripping on six empty beer bottles. There he hesitates and whispers: "Daddy?" The only response he gets is loud snoring.

He wipes his tears and snot with a sleeve of his pajamas with a tractor print and hesitantly looks at the door. He knows it was just a dream and that dreams don't come when you're awake. So he should be safe now. He looks at his sleeping parents one more time and tiptoes back to his room.

After a while, he finds the courage to crawl to the window. He's staying low so that no one who'd be in the garden would see him. He reaches up and clutches the windowsill. He pulls himself up very, very slowly. If someone was right behind the window, they would see a thatch of blond hair rising up, followed by a frowned forehead. Then thin eyebrows. And blue eyes wide-open with fear. If someone was right behind the window, Tommy would be on the eye-level with them right now.

No one is behind the window. No one's in the garden, either. It's still early morning, everything is covered in fog, and the only thing moving that Tommy sees is a tree swing in the garden. He must have heard it screech, and that's why he dreamt of it.

"It was just a dream," he whispers to himself unconvincingly. He never stops watching the autumn leaves just lying lifelessly on the ground right next to the moving swing.

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