The Behavior Game

4. "Are You Okay Now?"

4. “Are You Okay Now?”

“Mac, wake up!” Melanie’s voice cut into his thoughts as he was shaken awake.

He gasped and sat up, feeling a dizziness wash over him. He was cold, but sweat was forming on his face, and tears were streaming down his neck. It was the dream again, the same one that he got every time he fell asleep.

“You were screaming this time.” Melanie said, crouching down so she could sit beside him in the corner he had claimed in her living room. “Are you okay now?”

“Yes.” He nodded, though he knew the dream would come again the next time he closed his eyes.

Every morning for the past week Mac woke up the same way, with screaming and bad dreams, and then Melanie, looking down at him with her fists clamped around his shoulders. Ever since he had tried to return to his corner on the streets, Melanie became more careful about letting him go outside. Though he was no longer sick, she didn’t trust him enough to let him go anywhere. It was terrible. The days went by exactly the same. He would wake up almost an hour before Melanie’s alarm, screaming, she would shake him awake and sit with him, force him to eat breakfast and then shower and leave for work. And he would stay in the apartment, with nothing to do but sleep and be abruptly awoken by the dream.

“I’ll call you on my lunch break.” Melanie reminded him before she left for work. He nodded and watched her go, wondering what he would do while she was gone.

He sat at the kitchen table, looking around aimlessly with his head in his hand. Melanie always left him with her phone number, in case he needed to call her. He was also told that he could have anything in the apartment, though he never ate anything unless she was forcing him to, and none of her things were really all that interesting to him. It was depressing, sitting there all day, waking up every morning with tears in his eyes. He wanted to leave, but somehow Melanie would inevitably find him. He had lived in three different towns before San Francisco, and every time he was forced to leave because someone got too involved. The last time it was a social worker who had tried to take him away, so he had no other choice but to leave. He didn’t want to leave San Francisco, but if Melanie started trying to invade his life too much, he would have to.

There wasn’t much to do in Melanie’s room but sleep, and he had enough of that for one week. So instead, he took to mulling around the room, trying to put things away or organize Melanie’s many piles of magazines. Though he couldn’t read the covers, he liked to spread out each issue over the space of the floor and set them up in order of color. Soon the floor was piled with different stacks of colored issues, each cover getting progressively darker as it went down. It gave him some comfort to know that even though he couldn’t read them, he could still manipulate them any way he wanted.

With each pile now set aside, Mac walked over to the corner where he slept and sat down. He wondered why Melanie never pestered him to sleep on the couch, while she had problem with almost everything else he did. 

Mac leaned his head back into the crevasse of the wall and shut his eyes, squeezing them so tight he could see colors. Soon enough, he let his muscles go lax and his head drop. He decided to dose, knowing he would probably be doing the same thing outside anyway. He forced himself to remember the dream, in the exact way that it went every night.

It would begin with the woman drowning in the pool. Her right arm was reaching out towards the surface, and her bra was soaked through her white shirt. She wore no pants; she had taken them off before he jumped in. The woman was floating just underneath the surface of the water, with her eyes open and tiny bubbles escaping from her nostrils. She had blond hair, thinning, but still maintaining its youth. She was beautiful, he remembered. Next, he looked down at her abdomen. In the crook of her arm she held a tiny infant. Mac took a step back from the edge of the pool, realizing who the woman was as she brought her hand around the infant’s body. Her mouth opened and she began to scream as a red cloud formed around her in the water. She thrashed her legs and clasped her hands around the baby’s waist, twisting her body with a grimace that could be heard from the surface. She let go of the baby with one hand and let the weight of it drag her down, her screams becoming muted under the layer of water above her. He turned to run when he felt a hand clamp around his ankle, pulling him back. Just before the dream ended, he would feel a shake. His entire body would shudder before he let out a gasp and opened his eyes. He felt harsh vibrations travel up and down his body as he forced his eyes open. He no longer wanted to think of the dream, he wanted to open his eyes, see that everything was okay, and curl up in his corner. But this time, when he opened his eyes, he realized he wasn’t the one shaking. The room was rocking quickly back and forth, with the piles of magazines spilling over, objects falling from shelves, and the walls of the apartment complex creaking as an earthquake rocked the building.