4

Andrew awoke the next morning breathless and in a cold sweat. He hardly ever dreamed, but when he did, they were usually nightmares. In one he had been sprinting down a darkened hallway while a constant sense of anxiety arose within him, never knowing if he was running away from some unknown horror, or running towards some far off salvation. In another, he would quietly move around a house that he did not know but felt familiar with, sneaking and evading some figure that he never saw.

The nightmare that had occured the previous night, however, was different, more surreal. In the dream, he was standing in the corner of a bedroom. The room was mostly visible in his peripheral vision, but his gaze was locked on the sleeping figure that occupied the bed. He stood there for what seemed like hours, monitoring the steady fall and rise of their chest as they breathed. Slowly, with long and careful strides, he walked to the side of the bed and peered down at the body laying before him. Surprisingly, he was not all that perturbed to see his own face staring back at him with wide and vacant eyes.

Suddenly the dream shifted, tearing Andrew away from the room and leaving him floating in an inky black void. He waved his arms in front of him and felt a water-like force of resistance as he did. He understood that he was underwater and began struggling for breath, but found that it came just as easily as if he were on land. With a renewed sense of calm, he twisted and turned his body, looking for any object or point of reference. As if the void had sensed his need, a small globe of yellow light manifested from the pitch blackness far below him. The light did not dispel the oppressive darkness surrounding them, but gave Andrew a sense of warmth and comfort. A second and soon third ball of light appeared alongside the first, and they began to playfully swirl around each other before remaining motionless, their points making the shape of an inverted triangle. Two more lights lazily drifted from the mass of darkness and positioned themselves higher above the two points, making an angular “U” Shape. The lights hung motionless for a few moments, staring at Andrew while he stared and was transfixed by them. Suddenly, he could feel the water displace as something moved towards him from the direction of the lights. Andrew tried to swim against the current towards the light, but remained stuck in place. The pressure grew as the form rushing towards him began to gain definition and mass amidst the blinding emptiness. Then he saw it, a hand; four long sinewy fingers protruding from a perfectly flat and unmarked palm. As it neared, a sound like a screeching maelstrom erupted in his eardrums and forced him awake.

Andrew shot up from his bed with a panicked breath and looked around his room, assuring himself that he was awake and safe. He noticed the rapid beating of his heart and the tug of his sweat stained clothes clinging to his body, so he tried to calm himself. He inhaled, waited, and slowly exhaled, feeling his anxiety and blood pressure lessen. As he climbed out of bed, pulling his shirt away from his sticky body, he tried to remember the details of the nightmare that had gotten him so shaken up. Despite the fact that he had just woken up from his nightmare, though, he couldn’t seem to recall exactly what had happened in the dream. Had he even had a dream last night? He was sure he did, how else would he have awoken with such a start, and covered in sweat no less? Rationalization began to trickle into his mind; it had been cold the previous night, so he had turned on the heater, forgot about it, and became too hot during the night. The heat and constriction of his blankets caused him to sweat, which further constricted his movement and resulted in the feelings of claustrophobia and terror upon awakening. But had that even happened? He truly couldn’t remember, so he decided to shower and forget it.

After his shower, Andrew walked down the hall towards his kitchen. Hung along the wall were pictures of some of his family: a sister, a mother and father, all four of them and a young cocker spaniel between them. These were memories of a happier time in Andrew’s life, when he wasn’t weighed down by constant dread and a past that never seemed to quite fade away.

He stopped at the picture of his sister, Bernice. It was of her at her 14th birthday party. She sat with a smile on her face and a cake in front of her that read, “Happy B-Day Bernie!” on it in purple icing. Seeing her smile made Andrew smile, and brought a tear to his eye.

His sister had been dead for eight years, but that type of grief never really left a man. She had been on an early morning run when she was hit by a drunk driver going 60 down a residential street. She was only 23, and her death hit the family hard. When it happened, they could hear shouts and sirens approaching down their street. Their father gathered the family together to go see what had occured. When they got to the scene, they saw a drunken man being shoved along into the backseat of a squad car, and the bashed and bloodied corpse of their daughter pinned between the front tire of the drunken man’s truck and the curb.

Their father began to drink more heavily after the incident and kept to himself in his study. Their mother spent most of her days sitting in the living room staring out the window, her crochet needles lazily and limply working to create something she would no doubt unravel and start over the next day. The toll it took on Andrew was a large one, but he didn’t want to be reminded of that now. He just wanted to mourn his baby sister. At times like these he thought he would give anything to see her again.

His father died four years after the accident during an argument with their mother. He had been coming home every night at 3 a.m. for months, with his clothes reeking of booze, and on occasion, stale piss. Their mother had gotten sick of it and confronted him one night, telling him that she wanted him out of the house immediately. He was drunk, so she was easily able to push him out into the hallway. Once he got his balance, he threw himself at her, and they struggled upstairs for a bit. Eventually his grip loosened, and she was able to push him away, right through the second story banister and onto the hardwood floor below, head first.

She was not given any charges as the incident was seen as an act of self-defense. She struggled with depression for many years after that night; she still loved her husband, she only wanted him to clean himself up. Andrew visited her a couple times a month to give her company and let her know how he was doing in life, and she greatly appreciated it. She had lost a daughter and now a husband, all the love she had left in life was for her son.

She thought about Andrew often, and how he must feel after losing his father at the hands of his mother, so soon after the death of his sister; she could do nothing but blame herself for the anguish she knew he must be feeling. “He forces himself to come see me,” she would think to herself, “even though he must hate me for what I’ve done to him.”

On the seventeenth of November, three days before he was going to visit her, he got a call from her neighbor saying she had killed herself the previous week. Newspapers had piled up on her overgrown and weed strewn lawn, she had stopped answering calls and attending her therapy sessions, nobody had seen her. When the police finally arrived and kicked down her door after they received no answer, they were hit with a miasmic stench of death and decay. She had swallowed half a bottle of sleeping pills as well as most of her prescribed medications.

In the kitchen Andrew brewed himself a pot of coffee and ate oatmeal in silence. This morning was not a good one, and he predicted the rest of the day would follow that same formula. The rich and bitter taste of coffee helped him finish the bland oatmeal. He hadn’t wanted to eat, he wasn’t even hungry, but he knew that his body needed something to help him last through the dar. He poured himself another cup and drank it down slowly as he watched the rising sun continue on its path.

After placing his cup in the sink and filling it with water to soak, he made his way to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Looking in the mirror, Andrew saw a tired man with a face covered in stubble, disheveled hair, and bags under his eyes so heavy that he’d have to check them on his next flight, whenever and wherever that was. He thought he’d been getting plenty of good sleep, but the nightmares seemed to take more of a toll than he imagined.

The powerful mint of the toothpaste mixed with the bitter taste left by the coffee was unpleasant, but Andrew didn’t seem to notice or care. He spat and leaned down to wash the excess toothpaste from his mouth. When he raised his head, he saw his sister standing behind him in the mirror. Her left eye was a crushed mass inside her dented and lacerated skull, which was partially visible under her torn and bleeding skin. Her right arm was twisted behind her at an impossible angle, and her legs were nothing but sacks of flesh filled with shattered bone, some poking through the skin.

His heart froze in his chest and he quickly swiveled around. There was nothing there. Only the picture of his sister hung on the wall outside the bathroom door. Another tear appeared in the corner of his eye and slowly rolled down his cheek. He wiped it away, sat on the toilet, and held his head in his hands, letting a few more tears drop onto the floor. He let out a long sigh and quietly said to himself, “Oh, fuck me.”