Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Why Do I Only Remember The Bad Dreams?

To be honest I stopped remembering the majority of my dreams a long time ago, some nights I’m not even entirely sure if I dreamt at all, but tonight I definitely did.

A tallish, chubby, bearded man (not me, it doesn’t look like me and there’s no sense that he represents me in the dream) puts his kids to bed, he kisses both of them on the forehead, shuts their bedroom door and heads downstairs into the kitchen and makes two mugs of cocoa with marshmallows.

His partner/girlfriend/wife calls to him quietly from the darkened living room “the films starting hurry up”. He takes a partially melted mallow from a mug and eats it before heading into the darkened room.

The film ends and they’re both sat on a sofa under a blanket. She says “OK, I’m going to bed, you coming?” And he replies “Go get yourself cozy, I’ll be up in a minute, I just want to tidy this up first.” He gestures to a coffee table in front of the sofa.

She heads up to bed, the focus switches to her (she doesn’t look like anyone I know and there’s no sense of recognition), she lays down on the bed and instantly flashes into a flashing dreamscape of horror film scenarios. She wakes up in the corner of the room, clothes torn, covered in blood and something organic looking stabbed in to her thigh.

She screams, pulls the thing out of her thigh and covers the wound with her hand. There’s panic on her face as she looks around the room, it’s covered in blood, gore and what looks like chunks of torn up meat.

She leaves the room and slams the door behind her, the landing is empty and looks entirely undisturbed. She tells herself that she was still partially asleep, the bedroom was just part of her nightmare and it calms her down. She can hear loud TV static from downstairs and thinks it’s her partner, he’s put on another film and fallen asleep on the sofa, it was the noise from his film that caused the horrible dreams.

She goes downstairs into the kitchen, it’s dark, she can hear quiet sobbing and sniffling mixed in amongst the now extremely loud static.

She turns on the light, the room has been wrecked, the table is overturned, cupboards are hanging off walls, the contents strewn across the floor and again there’s blood, gore and unrecognisable chunks of meat all over.

She’s panicking again, she’s trying to tell herself she’s still dreaming, she’ll wake up soon and everything will be OK. The sobbing is louder now, it sounds more desperate and it sounds like a child. It’s coming from behind the table, she rushes over, shoves the table aside and she’s her son. His legs have been broken, almost crushed, he’s cradling the remains of his sister, her belly has been torn open and it’s contents are spilling all over the floor.

The son screams at the site of her and tries to back further away. He’s crying harder now, “Please, we’ll be good, please, it hurts, please, no more mommy”. She steps back, looks desperately around the room and the unrecognisable chunks of meat come into sharp focus, they used to be her husband. She looks down at her hands and remembers, in violent flashes, what she’s done.

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