Anesthetic Dreams

Again, the first thing I see is her soft white arm draped across my chest. So crisp and real that it looks fake, like a display on one of those box store mega TVs. I run my hand down her forearm, remembering the soft blond hairs that I used to stare at in the morning light. I turn away as she looks up at me. I’m not ready to meet her eyes. Soon, Lara will come bursting through the door. A five-year-old Visigoth in violet pajamas screaming she has come for her promised pancakes. Blue, her eyes are still a joyful blue.

I stay locked on those eyes until I hear the griddle sizzle behind me. Lara sits on the cold quartz. My right hand is holding a spatula, but I keep hearing a question. Is that my hand? Angelic giggles bounce off metal pots as I make giraffes that look like horses and horses that look like elephants. Cora comes up behind me in her Nirvana tee and black cotton shorts, hugs me tight around the waist, and whispers not to quit my day job. Her voice is like the end of an echo. Tossing aside the spatula I grab her and set her on the counter. Kissing her to the sounds of bubbling batter and Lara’s squeals. I remember our first kiss outside her apartment, the softness of her lips, the wetness of her tongue. Pressing our bodies against the metal railing. I try to remember all this while in the kitchen her tongue scrapes mine, rough like a cat’s, and her lips feel like gravel.

Turning back to the griddle I find myself watching Lara dance with a pair of butterflies at the pond. Cora is laid out across the flannel picnic blanket, a much more delicious dessert than the runny cobbler we’d bought at the store. The grass framing her is that vibrant green after a spring rain and all the flowers are open and praying to the sun for their food. Gray clouds ride the breeze and shade us for the moment. She takes off her sunglasses and I forget to look away. I pray for blue, the perfect mirror of our daughter’s.

Black. Still black. A nothingness that pulls at your soul. It dulls the green and fades the flannel. I study the plasticity of her skin. It won’t be long now. Just like last time.

Cora is waiting downstairs. I walk down step by creaking step. I try to stop, freeze the dream, but my feet bring me closer and closer to her. She’s sitting on the couch, watching the TV. A haggard man hangs from the wall of a cave like a dirty Jesus, his right hand missing. Cora leans her head back. Her jaw cracks. Ten long, clawed fingers reach out to devour this dream from the inside.

The creature pulls her skin down like a nightie, this thing that looks like the child of Marilyn Manson and the Alien xenomorph. Everything is food to this monster. It nibbles the couch like an appetizer, and crunches the quartz between teeth that shine like a blood moon. Back up the stairs. I want to run back up the stairs, but my feet are stuck. Lara, Lara is up there, asleep. She doesn’t know what’s coming. She never knows what’s coming. I want to warn her but I lost my voice many dreams ago. It skitters upstairs and down the hallway. Lara’s scream is cut short. At least it started with her head this time.

Back down it comes, eating each wooden tread. The house around me crumbles as it eats the walls and my memory. We belong to the monster now. It crawls to me and envelops my body with disjointed arms and presses its face against mine. It thinks this is a kiss, but its teeth rip the flesh from my bones.

I wake with a strangled scream trying to escape the lips still attached to my face. I hang against the cavern wall, bound by thick cords. The darkness hides everything, the creature, the walls, my bindings. My body feels sore and tired, but no pain. Never any pain. I don't know how long ago it ate my right hand, but the stump still oozes. But the left foot, that’s new. I watch the blood fall. Drip, drip, drip is how I imagine it sounds. I lost my ears some time ago, but I don’t miss having to hear the creature move about its den. Another dream, another body part. What will I lose next? Useless to ask, useless to worry. I’ll find out as soon as I fall asleep.