A Twisted Childhood Nightmare

Amber is thirty-six years old and just survived a divorce with a narcissistic man. She is raising a child on her own, paying the mortgage, utilities, and all the bills without any help from her ex-husband because he is a complete hassle and waste of her energy. He pays no child support, not for lack of money but because he is the biggest loser of all time!

Her son is turning two years old soon, and she wants him to enjoy his birthday even if that no-good excuse of a man does not support him or contribute to his birthday party. She is a well-educated, independent woman and an analytical person. She can produce a plan to throw her son a fun party to celebrate his birthday without any help.

She works for a little while that evening on birthday party ideas and then decides that it is time to get her son and herself ready for bed. She must be at work early in the morning. She goes through all their ritual routines and finally can get in bed and relax. She can at least watch a little television until she falls asleep. The sandman’s dust finds her, she closes her eyes, and her thoughts start rewinding back in time.

Amber is back at the house she lived in after her mother got remarried and then several months later gave birth to her brother. She is on her swing set in the backyard playing and looking in the kitchen window. She sees the next-door neighbor hugging her mother while she is cooking. He has his arms wrapped around her and she is facing the food not acknowledging his advances but not discouraging his behavior either. She can feel this sickness in her stomach and this hatred and anger in her heart for what her eyes are being forced to watch. The two of them stand there in this position for several minutes with little regard to the fact that she is watching this whole event from her swing set or that her baby brother is back in his bedroom in his crib.

The next morning, she woke up and did not remember much from the night before regarding her dream. Her day is normal and when she comes home from work, she devotes more to planning her son’s birthday party. She finally ordered the invitations, his cake, and made a reservation for the venue for his party. Everything is coming together as planned for this special event!

She makes dinner and goes through their same night routine again. She is feeling exhausted for some reason, so she makes plans to go to bed earlier. She falls asleep easily and her mind goes back to this same period in her life as the night before and she is on her swing set again. Her mother is moving around her kitchen getting all her supplies out to cook dinner. Her daddy just left to go to work. Her mother had just put her brother back in his crib because he was asleep. The next thing she heard was the doorbell. She does not hear or see anything for several minutes. She does not think much about anything more because she is enjoying playing on her swing set. Then she is swinging high, then higher, and then a view comes before her. She can see her mother’s face in the kitchen window again. Right behind her mother is the next-door neighbor again. She is cooking and he has his arms wrapped around her. Those same sick and angry feelings for him come back in her soul! This time those feelings are even stronger than they were before, and she finds herself wanting to scream at him not to put his dirty hands on her mother. Her mother is not paying him any attention, but she is not discouraging him or forcing him to leave her home or to leave her alone. She did not pick up the phone and call her dad or call the police. Why? Why is he still there and why is he still touching her?

These dreams persist nightly. Then one night there is a new addition to her dream. She is swinging on a swing set, but this time she is not on hers. She is swinging with a little girl named Tracy, who she played with at times. While they are playing on her swing set, this guy comes up to the two of them and starts talking to them. They know him and his voice. He is the brother of the man that is always holding on to her mother in her dreams at night. He has visited her house on a few occasions and tickled her at times in front of her parents. He knows her and her friend and starts talking to them and being very friendly with both of them. He keeps telling them jokes and trying to make them laugh. He is handsome, but in a gross way to little girls. The next thing that he does is walk up to them and place his hands on Amber's butt and rubs it and then kisses her by putting his tongue inside her mouth. Then he does the same thing to her friend and warns them not to tell anyone. Both girls are embarassed and feel ashamed.

The next morning, Amber woke up with a sick feeling in her stomach and extreme anger. She remembered everything from her nightmare. Could these terrible nightmares be true? She decided to make an appointment with a therapist and discuss these awful nightmares with him/her. She most definitely wanted a female therapist because of the details of her nightmares. Luckily, Amber was able to find one and made an appointment within the week to meet with her.

Following a few sessions with her therapist, she discovered that these nightmares stem from repressed childhood memories. She suppressed these memories because she was too young to understand or cope with what happened at the time. All the years of guilt and shame are gone and so are the statue of limitations for prosecuting the person who assaulted two little girls. The therapist suggested that Amber see a psychiatrist and get a prescription for sleeping pills. She made a recommendation to a particular therapist and even called the doctor on her behalf and scheduled her an appointment.

She went to her appointment and was impressed with this psychiatrist. The prescription she recommended had very few side effects. She was thrilled about taking something that would eliminate these terrible nightmares and help her move forward in a positive direction in her life. The psychiatrist called in the prescription, and she drove to her pharmacy and picked it up. She would finally get some much-needed rest and eliminate these horrible memories from her psyche.

She received her prescription as well as medical advice from the pharmacy. That night she took the prescription. She slept like a baby for the first time in weeks and then her dreams turned into something out of an Agatha Christie novel. She was running in the woods in a neighborhood that she did not recognize. Then she entered someone’s yard she had never seen before. She used a rock from their flower bed and broke the glass on their glass door and stuck her hand carefully through the glass so she could turn the knob on the door. She carefully turned the knob on the door and walked into the house. She noticed that she was in her nightgown and had no shoes on her feet. She slowly walked into the house and up the stairs. She walked past each room. She turned the doorknobs on each door and looked in the rooms to see who was in each room. She did not see anyone in these rooms. She finally turned one doorknob and saw a man lying in the bed. She knew this man from years before, but she did not know his name. She walked out of the room very quietly and slowly crept back to the kitchen and opened each drawer until she found a huge, serrated knife. Then she walked back to his room and slowly approached his bed, she carefully touched his body with her hands and moved his body over and stabbed him in the chest with the knife. He woke up and she turned the knife until he quit moving.

The next morning, she woke up in her bed and thought everything was a dream until she looked under her covers and saw dirt on her feet and noticed that her hands had blood stains on them and then there were blood stains on her nightgown as well. At first, Amber was in a state of shock and then there was a small smile on her face. She knew who she had murdered in her sleep. It was the man who had touched her and her young friend in a sexual way when they were little girls. Now there was one more man that needed to be taken care of besides what jury would convict a woman who murdered two people when she was unconscious?