I recognized the things I saw in that dream. I knew that, somehow, the scene was always at the back of my thoughts. This knowledge just flashed behind my eyes like a sudden lightening. There was this baby, a girl I suppose, she was falling down into the canal. It was obvious that somebody threw her from their balcony. It was a dream without colours, voices and even my existence. I was in the middle of a place that I'm not allowed to be in by the ancient laws. A forbidden time and a forbidden reality on a canal in between small apartments and shady clouds ... And yet somehow I was there with a dream filter covering me.
I saw her fall. And for the first time, I've seen a baby with an expressionless look on her callow and pale face. Words like "terror", "fright" and "anxiety" were even more familiar than they were before. They made me feel like every time I closed my eyes I read and heard those since I was born. But it wasn't like that.
In the morning, I was feeling kinda hazy so I had to take a shower. I filled up the tub, undressed and examined my body in front of the mirror. "That bag of flesh will carry this baby for nine months?" I asked to myself. "Well, it's gonna happen anyway." replied what I'm looking at. And then, I got in the tub. Something unsettling was hidden behind the echoes of the water drops. So, I tried to sing my favourite lullaby, the one that no ordinary mother sings. As soon as I started humming, this warm, tiny hand grabbed my left forefinger. Like a baby trying to understand life, but this one was obviously trying to hold on to it. The smell of mosses inebriated me. The sound of the boats doused me. And then, in terror, I was at the moment when one begins to give birth to very detailed and hyperbolic theories. As soon as I started creating odd scenarios explaining what's happening to me, that very story showed up in my mind. It was Edgar Allen Poe's and it was about a baby falling down into the canal. So the theory gained a meaning.
The baby was trying to be born again. And for some reason, she had chosen me. So, she made me let her in. Because... I reached her in my dream by mistake. But... she was there for a month? That was when I started questioning how long I've been seeing this dream. So, I dragged up my memories. Wait... what memories? When did I read Poe's story? I couldn't remember that. How could I? I didn't even know that the story exists. When did I see this dream? I never did, not even for once. And... the scenario changed.
I was her, wasn't I? It was just like a remembrance but it wasn't remembrance exactly. It was like remembering a photograph that is actually a painting. She grabbed me on the canal trip, she possessed me by leaving my soul on the ground. And now, this body is hers. I can't mention myself as "me" anymore 'cause from now on, I know who I am. My fuzzy and fragile past within pain is now a grown life. I'm not a putrid baby drowning for years, not anymore. And this poor woman I sacrificed for my life was trying to be born... IN ME! I made her replace ME.
I kept repeating these mad thoughts for hours and just when the silence came in, I noticed the warm, tiny body on my back with her arms wrapped around my neck and released my first scream. My victim was in me, trying to hold on to life.
I had my time for a better work of thinking the other day. The time, the dimension, the places... All of them were so different between two realities. It was ALMOST impossible. So, maybe I've been reading Poe's stories and losing my vulnerable mind. But my body was standing against this theory. I was pregnant and one day I woke up to see that she was dead and gone. I was empty. Yet, after that she kept coming back again and again. She failed since then.
Still, there's a question I've been asking to myself everyday. Am I crazy because I'm still a virgin or am I cursed because I'm still a virgin?
