Clown Car

The baby couldn't have been mine. I didn't have the necessary equipment to produce another life, so I'd taken a kitchen knife and cut the child out of me. I told myself  some malcontent had put it inside of me as a cruel joke. Maybe they had done it as I slept. It seemed to be the only explanation. Even if I'd had a uterus, there was still the small issue of not having a sperm donor handy.

Ha ha. Time to push out another kid, Nessa. You'll never escape this fate. Sooo funny.

The baby went into the arms of another; I'm not quite sure who, but definitely somebody who would want such a thing. Since it wasn't mine, I should have felt relieved. The child would thrive elsewhere, under the care of a soul who could provide for her. I couldn't even muster up the smallest sliver of want.  Guilt, yes, but not desire, not want.

The haphazard stitching had begun to unravel, and my wound had begun to fester. I pressed my hand against the tender, reddened skin where I had tried to hide the signs of pregnancy from the world. The scar split open, and the baby's fist pushed through the gap from the inside. I took her tiny hand in mine, pulled her out of the wound with slick, red blood flowing freely down my body.

Where did she come from?

As soon as I swaddled her and set her to the side, the next one came shoving herself out of me. And then the next, and the next, and the next...

Disappointment

We'd been searching through the piles of corn for a while, the older lady and I. The children who'd gathered in the warehouse with us were complaining of hunger. The corn, of course, had begun to rot long ago, but we held out hope for a few good cobs to make some kind of meal for the little ones. Their cries were nearly unbearable. They were drowned out only by the whistling missiles that flew overhead. Our eyes were drawn upward to the windows with every bright explosion.

To keep the children busy, we tasked them with husking the cobs. They worked diligently, but I shooed them away when the older lady began to smack them for eating the rotted pieces. I know she was only trying to keep them healthy, but she was so damned cruel about it. She didn't have to call them names. They were just hungry. They didn't know any better.

I turned back to her just in time to see the tiny black spiders explode from just beneath her corn's husk. She crumpled her face and dropped it back into the pile. I reached for it, thinking I could seal it up somehow to prevent the spiders from biting us. Who knew of they were poisonous or not? When my fingers touched the silky strands just under the yellowed husks, the entire cob disintegrated. Thousands of tiny black spiders jumped toward me, opening their hungry mouths before landing on my face and my chest.

I jumped backward, into wakefulness and began to wipe the frightening things away. A few seconds went by before I understood that it had only been a dream, but that didn't keep me from turning toward my lover to smack the spiders away from him.

A few moments went by before I realized that he had only been a dream too.

You hate me

The right arm was mangled again. Mine, that is. Some kind of tendon or muscle or arm gut tethered the forearm to the elbow. Most of the fingers had been ripped away, and the remainder was a bloody, stumpy mess that was barely recognizable as my arm. Still, I wanted to keep it, so I held onto it with the left hand while I tried to run to safety. I heard the whoosh of bricks and wood as they flew past my head. I might have been breathing  in fire, or perhaps it was the heavy plumes of smoke that burned my lungs.

Dark clouds rolled into my periphery. It took a moment for me to realize I was suffering some sort of weird tunnel vision. I could only see a small circle of asphalt under my feet. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other without tripping over gremlins. When I finally did fall, it was you who caught me.

I rolled away from you, cradling the damaged arm against my stomach. It had been you who had broken it in the other dream. Had you returned to wrench it away completely?

You dragged me across the lot, ignoring the rocks and twigs and other detritus that were pressing into my tender skin. I didn't want to see you. I couldn't stand to think of the rage you were feeling. I didn't want to see the anguish in your eyes.

You lifted me up. For a moment, just a small moment, I thought you would embrace me, and I was happy, relieved, even. But that was just a brief moment. The bestial cry that came from somewhere deep inside you (or maybe it was from me. Thinking back, I can't be sure) frightened me back to reality. I couldn't look you in the eyes.

I went blind just before you tossed me over the edge.

Bitch

My fingers were sticky with sweet redness from the strawberry shortcake I'd been putting together. I mixed the cake from scratch and arranged the sliced strawberries into a fan shape. I drizzled the glaze so prettily on the plate and blobbed the sweet whipped cream right on top. I held the plate up and admired my work. My mom was going to love it.

Except...

She can't eat strawberries, you daft bitch! You know she has diverticulitis. The seeds will mess up her intestines. And for that matter, she already told you that sugar irritates the back of her throat!

And also, she's already DEAD! There's nothing you can do to make her feel better now. There's no demand for strawberry shortcake in the AFTERLIFE!

So I shattered it against the wall. The shards of ceramic tinkled against one another as they fell, but the roar of flames soon overpowered the delicate sounds. The house burned so quickly, I wasn't sure I'd be able to escape.

The boiling  strawberry glaze blistered my arms. I struggled forward, searching for an escape route that just wasn't there. Doorknobs were like grenades, so I kicked the doors in with my powerful legs until something grabbed my ankles. It knocked me off my feet and pulled me backward, into the fire.

I was dragged over the ashy foundation. The scrapes of various objects against my skin left me bleeding and sobbing.

Whatever unseen thing that had me whipped my body around until I was propped against the kitchen wall. Odd. The walls seemed to be frozen. The roaring fire gone. Walls of clear, solid, cooling ice had replaced the hot, mad flames. A few pleasant moments of relief passed before the hideous monster, charred beyond recognition began to stuff shards of the broken ceramic plate along with bits of sweet cream and cake into my mouth.

Eat this you stupid whore.

I gagged and protested the assault. Who would do this? And why?

I tried to speak, but the creature never ceased. She went on filling me up, slicing my face and crushing my teeth with no remorse.

Only when I could finally look in to the bright blue eyes of this sick, crusty, ashen face did I realize that she was me.
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Study Hour

I'd been studying all night. My big test is less than a week away, and I still can't remember how to find the inverse of a function. My eyes had become strained to the point that the computer screen was beginning to swirl into an unrecognizable eddy of misshapen coefficients and variables.

I stretch and yawn, but I don't rub my eyelids, because that can cause wrinkles, and if I suddenly develop wrinkles, people might start to suspect that I'm somebody's grandmother.

Reaching for the eye drops seems like a chore. The nightstand is a little too far away. I have to adjust my position, but still, I can't reach it.

The lizard that hops onto my hand is a bit of a shock. It is light and quick. I slap it away, but it is more determined than I. It hits the floor mid-leap and comes right back to me, attaching itself to the front of my shirt. Holy Crap! I smack and slap and push, but with every contact, the lizard becomes heavier and blacker and meaner. It grins at me with an evil intent in its eyes.

I'll trap it, I think to myself. Looking around, I see that I'm in a noisy cafeteria somewhere. There are people around me, but they don't seem to notice my dilemma. I grab somebody's tupperware bowl, slap the lizard to the floor. With a fierce leap, I slam the bowl over it.

A short-lived sense of smug victory runs though me, until the vile creature begins to outgrow its prison, pushing me upward until it seems that I am riding it like a horse. There was a moment I thought it might grow wings and carry me away. Another dragon dream?

Instead, it disintegrates into a pool of black ooze under a cloud of  thick, sticky smoke. I fall away from the mess, horrified that I've been poisoned by the noxious fumes.

I land safely in a landfill atop the world's largest pile of dirty laundry. My hand scrapes against a mess of caked-on food and grime. Gross.

I stand and view my circumstances. There is nothing on the horizon but more laundry.Endless hills and valleys full of stinky socks and boxer shorts.

Not a bathroom in sight.

Not a dream.

One of my friends called me up and asked why I blocked this blog from public view.

I had no idea.

Glitch, I guess.

I fixed it.

Read on, Marisol!

Two Seconds

"This doesn't seem safe," I murmured to the girl with the blue streak in her hair. She shrugged one shoulder and ignored me and the Laws of Gravity with one giant leap into the abyss.

I cringed and closed my eyes, expecting to hear the crunch/splat of flesh and bone as it collided with bottom of the pit. No such sound resonated there. Only the faraway giggle of that rebellious child echoed back to me.

"Crap on a cracker," I muttered when I spotted her blue streak shining in the darkness like a firefly. She flitted from here to there and back again.

The dragons paid her no attention. They swarmed upward and then forward, intent on my destruction. I turned and ran from the hoard.The flapping wings and fiery breath drowned all other noises. I couldn't hear my sobbing.

Into the field of corn seemed to be the best bet for my safety.

But, as it turns out, corn burns.

Power Outage

I was supposed to be working or studying, or something else equally mundane and demanding, but I had been distracted by the power outage. My computer was still glowing on battery back-up, but the room had settled into an uncomfortable, dark silence. I realized then that I had no idea how long it had been that way. I had been so immersed in my studies, I hadn't bothered to acknowledge the world around me. I grabbed my giant, silver flashlight and headed toward the front of the building.

The regular noises were gone. The fans overhead had stopped their roars; bones did not screech against the power of the saw blade; knives did not thunk against the chopping block with each slice of meaty flesh. The silence had grown so loud, the only noise I could hear was the trickle of blood pooling from the cutting board onto the slippery floor.

My co-workers had disappeared. They weren't prowling around, using their cellphones as flashlights as they had done before. Nobody cheered for the break in labor. It seemed that I'd been abandoned, but that extra sense I sometimes get told me the others were simply hiding. From what, I had no idea.
I was determined to find them. Why wouldn't they have warned me of the impending doom? Did nobody think I was important enough to save?

I flicked my light into corners and crevices, searching for familiar faces, but none were found. I moved through the building alone. It had changed since I had sat down at the desk. The sales floor was gone, replaced by more work tables, more machines, more storage shelves. The customers had disappeared as well, I suppose because there was nothing set up on display for them to buy.

I was in the bakery when I heard the first murmurs from the women. I followed the sounds past the big mixers, around the walk-in ovens, beyond the freezer. All things here were covered with a thin coat of flour. My fingers reached out to the baker's block and etched the algebra problem I'd been working on before. Find f(g(-3)) if f(x)=4x-9 and g(x)=3x^2. It looked simple enough, but it might as well have been written in Chinese, because the numbers and letters were just swirling together in one big doughy mess. I grunted and smeared the problem away with a swipe of my hand. It was silly to be standing there working out math problems when I should have been looking for the others.

I found them in a bigger storage room I had never known was there. All the women from all the departments had gathered here. I saw Deadra from Bakery holding hands with Angie the POS clerk. Linda from Fuel was halfway hidden by Dominique from Deli. Janet from the Hot Bar sat in a chair in the center of the room, glaring at me. Each of them cringed away from my beam of light like scared children, except for Janet.

Sweet Janet with the long blond braid and the big smile was hissing at me. She reached forward and knocked the torch from my grasp. My light bounced and rolled into a corner, where it flickered and died. I felt the hot sting of a flesh wound on the back of my hand. I pressed it into my shirt and blinked into the darkness.

We were now shrouded, not just by the darkness, but by a heavy, frightening presence that we could not see. I felt it move past me, an invisible, slippery creature that preys on fear. And it had us. We were frightened. I must have screamed or made some kind of demand for explanation because Janet swung her claw at me again, this time across the face. She told me to shut up, and I was getting pissed at her. When the lights came back on, I was going to kick her ass!

I dropped to the cold concrete floor and began to feel around for the flashlight. The creature, which I couldn't have seen even in the light, ripped me away from myself. It had my body pressed up against the wall, about to tear me to bits, but my spirit remained on the floor looking up. Now that I was no longer confine to the physical laws, I could see the hollow, ugly thing shredding me to pieces, and I knew that the same fate awaited the other women there. I was powerless to stop it. I wondered briefly what had happened to all the men?

I searched the faces of the women, and all I could see was fear and hopelessness. I felt the pain of heartache, although I had no heart. It was then I decided I didn't like being dead. I pulled my body back around me, pushed my fear away and told myself to ...

wake up...

Lunch Date

Those bubbly white tree blossoms that stink "like ass" (as Desiree once remarked) have all blown away with the Amarillo wind. Once in a while as we sit on the patio for lunch, a gust will kick up some remaining petals and swirl them around until they land in our food or our hair. We'll swat them away, unconcerned until we realize we've bitten into one. They taste like ass, too. It is a quick way to lose your appetite.

The crossword is first business at this time of day. I have my copy, and Green Eyes has his. I start from the bottom of the list. He diligently works from the top. We meet somewhere in the middle and that's where we always start to peek at the other's answers. 

I nibble on my fries, and he hides a cigarette under the table. It's a non-smoking patio, but I don't mind. Somehow, I feel like his partner in crime just knowing about it. Rebels, we.

Usually we are accompanied by a couple of meat-heads and a milkman, but not today. This day it is only he and I and the breeze. 

I wonder what has he got for 24 across? He always knows the sports clues. I'm better with literature. Glancing across the table, I realize he's not really doing the crossword at all. He's concentrating on dividing polynomials with binomials. What's really shocking is he's getting the answers right.

It doesn't escape my notice that he's chosen variables that happen to be our first initials. I don't know why I reach for his hand, but as soon as I feel the warmth of his skin against mine, he turns my hand over and scribbles in my palm, "s+n=♥". It's  such a silly gesture, something that high school kids do, but it makes me smile. His eyes twinkle and the lines around his eyes crease in that way that makes him look so distinguished and handsome. I like his smile as much as his beautiful olive green eyes.

The wind kicks up. Flower petals and smoke eddy around us, and I wake with the undeniable feeling that this was the sexiest dream I've ever had.

Come See Me

My mother's call left me worried. "Come see me," she'd pleaded. "I miss you." I scribbled down the new address and checked the map. She was fourteen hours away.

Funny, how we do that- measure trips in hours instead of distance, as if we plan to drive straight through, dismissing the sights. 

That's how my father always did it. The shortest distance between two points, and all that nonsense. He was pissed with me when I was twelve years old. I'd pointed out to him that, factoring in the curvature of the earth and the fact that road builders rarely construct straight paths between cities, the shortest distance between two points might actually be an arc. 

He told me to shutthehellup and let him do the driving. 

Maybe that's why my mother divorced him. 

Or maybe not. She told me once that she was tired of playing Caroline to his Charles. I was astonished that she could ever say such a thing, but it rang true. My father had always pictured himself building a cabin, praising God and living off the land. 

My mom, on the other hand, was more of a Hot Lips Houlihand. I never saw her any other way.

She's been calling out to  me for several nights in a row. Sometimes she's still with my father. Sometimes it's my Poppy or James. Sometimes it's a new man altogether. Never mind that she passed away four and a half years ago. That issue never seems to come up when I see her in my dreams. 

I wonder what she's up to that she should need to call out to me so often. It doesn't matter. I can never reach her. There's always a flood or a fire or maybe the roads wear away into impassable rivers of mud and sludge. I get bogged down in the muck. No matter what vehicle I take, car, boat, bicycle, Radio Flyer, I can't seem to remember until I wake up that I know how to fly...

Severed

I'd been past that street so many times, aware of the house where I'd lived as a teenager, that last house  I'd lived in with my parents before we all went our separate ways. I'd looked for the shape of it, suspecting after all this time somebody might have painted it a different color. Pink, maybe.

That doesn't make sense. Pink would clash with the red brick pillars on either side of the front porch. But maybe they had painted those too, or torn them down altogether. I'm sure they weren't holding anything together anyway. That is the place where everything seemed to finally fall apart. Maybe the house had fallen apart as well.

Nonetheless, I was still searching for it. I'm not sure why. Something in my subconscious thinks there is something left there, so every time I passed that street, I would turn my head ever so slightly to see if I could spot it.

Nothing doing.

Just a row of boring white houses with manicured lawns and children playing football in the street. Smile. Wave. Move on.

But it's there! It had been trying to hide from me, but I finally saw it! From the periphery, I witnessed it folding into itself. The dilapidated front porch flipped over into the door, pillars and all. Out flipped the newly poured cement porch with the pink ballasts. The dull, dirty facing of the house brightened into the whitest, most cheerful wooden planks. I swear it smiled. It was so much better than it had ever been when I was there.

But not really. You can change the way a house looks from the outside. You can make people believe everything is wonderful, but it's what's going on inside that makes a house what it really is.

I skirted the perimeter with my cat-like ninja skills. The front lawn was a beautiful, lush, welcoming green, but the back yard was a treacherous pit that seemed to want to suck me down, burn me up. I avoided the edge of the pit completely. My fear of falling overpowered my fear of burning alive. You fall, you wake up. I had searched for this place far too long to wake up now.

On the far side of the house, I found the rusty, old baker's rack with all of my mother's plastic containers. Each one had been clearly labelled. Each one had been placed neatly in its designated spot for all eternity. The overgrowth had all but consumed the entire presentation. Nobody had ever bothered to open these containers to see what was so all-fired important about them. My mother's worst fear; to be neglected and unremembered. Poor Mom.

I could hear Banks through the window. He was talking in that annoyingly loud voice of his, and not saying anything of consequence, as he often does. He is young, and he still thinks that just because he is louder than everybody else, everybody else must be listening. Usually, if he starts talking we try to find the nearest exit. Every man for himself.

He also has anger issues. He likes to slam things around and make unreasonable demands. He is better than I am in every aspect of life. He is a harder worker. He is smarter. He is better looking, and surely, once he has children, he will be a much better parent than I.

I know this about him because he told me. It's a good thing he did. If he hadn't told me, I might have never known. He's the next Big Thing.

He is nonchalantly chucking several, bloody severed heads into the open top of the meat grinder. I can see the faces of the heads, and I am horrified. It's like a a bomb going off in my heart when I recognize the faces of our co-workers, my friends. He is smiling and going about his work as if this is no big deal. It's cool guys. Just trying out new ideas.

He starts the rotator before it's time, but it's okay, because Banks, as we all know, is indestructible and immortal.

But not really.

He can boast all he wants, but we all know he's just a punk kid with a loud mouth and no concern for anybody but himself.

His arm is caught in the spokes. The grinder pulls him in. He struggles and emerges with a bloody stump. Blood is pouring and he is staring disbelievingly at the thin air where his arm once was.

I am on the inside now. I am the only person here with my body completely intact. I can help him, and now I only have to decide whether or not I will.

Note: Names have been changed simply because people from work often read my blog. But realistically, they'll most likely know exactly who I'm talking about anyway.

Sticks, not Stones

I missed you since you had the baby. We hadn't spent much one on one time since your world began to revolve around feeding schedules and diaper changes. I also wanted to come over and spent some time admiring the little stinker, so I did. We sat in the back yard, just like always. I cherished the heavy weight of his warm, sleeping body in the crook of my arm. I could have stared at him all evening. His tiny mouth drew into a circle and he yawned with a little squeak. What talent.

We spent our time gossiping about the drama going on at my job. The weather was perfect. The moonlight bounced off the giant oak, creating a purplish grey hue on the bark. Lightning bugs flitted around like angry pixies. Leaves scampered across the lawn, chasing grasshoppers through the fence cracks.
Your husband kept swatting at those pixies with a stick he'd found on the ground. He was going on and on about some mountain he'd climbed one year. It seems to me there's always something fascinating that he needs to tell us about. His redneck drawl resonates in my mind. I don't know why he threw that stick into the next yard, but he had great aim. A shout from the other side let us know he had landed it right on some poor guy's head.

Why was that funny?

And why did he do it again?

"Watch this," he whispered to us. He scooped up another good sized stick and lobbed it over the fence. Another angry shout got the two of you laughing.

"Stop that," I told him, but he did it again, with an even bigger stick. One right after the other, he kept tossing, and the shouts kept coming.

You raised your face to the moon and howled your laughter skyward. The blues and purples of the moonlight cascaded against your forehead and cheeks. Somehow, it didn't seem real at all. I'd fallen into some surreal dimension where you were okay with this, and I was the only one horrified.

You'd become strange. and I'd become a stranger.

I looked down at the baby to whisper to him a secret. I wasn't going to leave him there with you freaks. But he'd disappeared and I was only holding your long-haired black and white cat.
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Treasure

We ran into the trees, eyes forward, as fast as we could carry ourselves. We couldn't hold on to one another for fear it would slow our progress, but I listened for his heavy breathing and his footfalls to be sure he didn't fall too far behind. I listened also for those who chased us to be sure we were getting some distance between us.

Eventually, the angry shouts gave way to the eerie silence of the forest. We slowed ourselves until we were almost tiptoe-ing across the forest floor. The full, bright moon hovered low in the sky, playing sentry to our little scene. Perhaps it was recording facts and memorizing names. Who knows to what higher authority it reports. The Sun, maybe? They meet twice a day at dawn and dusk to compare notes. I wonder what they have to say about us.

We hid from the moon under the thick canopy of trees. Random moonbeams shot down between branches and formed puddles of light against the detritus. Those were the spots we avoided, just in case. We kept to the shadows, slinking between tree trunks until the clouds rolled overhead. A flash of bright lightning was overpowered by the grumbling thunder. The rapid tattoo of raindrops  on the treetops filled our minds like buzzing bees. I covered one ear and pressed the other against his warm chest until all I could hear was his heartbeat.

"What's that?"  he asked, nodding toward the thick dead leaves covering the ground. Something was there, out of place, winking up at us. I brushed the leaves away, dug into the soil and came back with a handful of coins and dollar bills.

"Nothing," I whispered as I let it fall back to the ground. "Only money."

He wiped the residual dirt from my hand, kissed my palm, and held me close. We began to move once again, this time holding onto one another.

Hypoxia

It's hard to breathe.

The smothering stench of bleach and sweat and urine creep into me, depriving me of the sweet, fresh air I need. My fingers blister against the green scrubber I'm using to scour away the stains left here. 

I'm bent over at odd angles so I can reach the crevices. My body aches. My eyes blink against the stinging, suffocating odor.

I must remove every trace of filth, every lingering scent.  Soak, scrub, rinse, repeat. 

After so many cycles, even the rinse water is polluted with foulness.

It has tainted my skin. It's fruitless to continue, scrubbing grime with sludge, but I persevere.

Soak, scrub, rinse, repeat.

Before long, even I have become defiled by this vulgar impurity.

I cannot separate myself from the sewage.

Exposed

I'm naked again.
Maybe he won't notice. He's standing right there looking at me, talking to me, smiling at me.
He's definitely not running away, screaming and trying to poke his own eyes out. So he must not be able to see that I'm naked.
I try to slide to the side and make an escape before he clues in, but then I realize...oh hell, he's naked too.
Crap.
This would be a lot better dream if I could pick the guy to be naked with.

Jacob

My wayward son.

I could protect him from the world most of the time, but I've never been able to protect him from himself. He had better things to do by the time he was two, and he ran off to do them on every available occasion. One fine morning, while I was in the shower, he crawled out the bedroom window wearing nothing but yellow potty-training pants. I spent a half hour screaming for him and peering into parked cars and trash dumpsters, bracing myself for the worst possible sight. The neighbors later told me they'd never heard a more desperate woman calling out to her child. The police found him at the YMCA two blocks away standing on a stool playing an arcade game.

When Mom and Poppy came over to build bunk beds for the boys, Jacob managed to break his arm jumping off the tiny toddler bed. Three adults stood two feet away when he got the idea that he could fly. "Grotesque Deformation" they called it. The radius was broken. The ulna was broken, and my heart was broken. I cried for hours. He didn't cry once.

I think he was three when he tried to ride my cousin's rottweiler like a horse and got his face torn open. While we were in the emergency waiting room, some people brought their little Pomeranian in, and Jacob, of course, had to play with it. "What happened to his face?" the lady asked as she allowed my son to pet her pooch. Jacob's bandage was flapping away from his cheek. You could see clear through the torn flesh to his teeth and gums. He was amusing himself by poking his tongue through the hole.

"He got bit by a dog," I told her, and she pulled her pooch away.

There are so many things I could tell you about Jacob, you'd wonder how the child is still alive. He is alive, I assure you, though only by the grace of some higher power, because I have more than once had an overwhelming desire to ring his neck.

For now, at seventeen, he lives.

I dream about him all the time. In my dreams; I usually hear a rumor that Jacob has been killed doing some terrible thing. That's how it was in this last dream. I heard the news, and ran out to see if it was true. That old familiar feeling crept back in as I was sorting through dead bodies, looking at the faces, bracing myself for the sight of my son lying dead on the burning tarmac. Surely he was the one who had caused this devastation. These other people lying here dead were somebody's children, but I was only interested in the one that was mine. I couldn't find him. I had started to lose my grip on the very thin thread of sanity I had left, when I saw from the corner of my eye, a teenager running past in a black duster. Jacob's black duster.
"HEY!" I called, and the runner turned toward me with her middle finger raised in defiance as she kept running.

A girl.

Not Jacob.

I started after her. I was going to find out where she found that duster. Nobody around here wears anything like that but my son. Surely, she had ripped it from his dying body. She knew where he was, and she was damn well going to tell me!

But strong hands held me back.

"It's not real, you know." It was Old Green Eyes, back for more hero work. This time, I guess he was saving me from myself. What a pal. I turned and looked at him. It seemed so natural to be standing there, looking at his face more clearly than I had ever dreamed it before. I was becoming more comfortable with his presence here in my subconscious. His soft, deep voice resonated in me. Of course it wasn't real.


That's right. I'm only dreaming.


"Seems real," I told him, but even as I said it, the bodies began disappearing, and the sky and helplessness started to roll away. My child hadn't actually caused this kind of damage to the world. Only to me...

"You know you're crazy, right?" he said with a laugh. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and we walked into the next dream together. I laughed too, but not all the way down. I get the disturbing feeling he's probably right. I'm probably crazy.

Normal people just don't have dreams like this.
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Failure

Why do I always go back to that house? It's not there now, you know. They condemned it. It was torn down and hauled away years ago, but it still stands tall in the shadows of my worst nightmares.

Inside that house fear and cold and anger swirl in the air like body-less demons seeping through the cracks. On really bad nights, you can hear them moan against the boarded windows as they force their way in.

One moment, I'm laughing, watching the kids bicker over who gets to stir the kool-aid. I turn my head to look down the hallway. Everything's gone dark, just like that. Sometimes the house has been emptied, free of obstacles. Most times, it seems to be a living entity, complete with internal organs, digesting me.

I'm compelled to venture down the hall. A sound or a light or a feeling beckons me into that room, and even though I know there's nothing good waiting for me there, I push on. My fear is conflicted, shoving me forward, wrenching me backward. I shouldn't be going in there. I know what's there. The whisper in the back of my mind keeps telling me, This has happened before. This is real. There's no escape. Don't be stupid. Don't be stupid. Don't be stupid.


My body disobeys. I see myself opening the door. I see the things that have been done.

Why? Why, why why would he do that? 


My anger turns to rage, but no matter how much I try, I can never do any damage. I swing the bat, but I never connect, and I wake up to a overwhelming feeling of failure.

He takes.

What is that?

Hmm? oh...that? That's the dead babies.

They're not dead. They're still moving.

Don't worry, dear. They won't live long. They never do.