Drowning

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Not in real life, just in my dream. The cabin was made of soggy wood, rotting from rain and neglect. Termites gnawed at the remaining supports that held up a crooked roof. All around, trees rustled, singing a song of dread and impending doom. A low fog hung between them like a deserted hammock.

Every night was the same. Every night I dreamt of the cabin in the woods. Every night I dreamt of drowning.

There was a large pond behind the cabin. I saw it in my dreams more vividly than I saw it in my past. In my dreams it had jade coloured vines wrapping around the rocks, slimy and smelling of sap. In my memories it was clean and neatly surrounded by a pebble wall. Stunning and serene except for the dark red stain near the gargoyle ornament. Nobody had bothered to wash the blood off for weeks.

Every night I dreamt of bodies held beneath the surface of that pond. When unconsciousness took hold of me, so did images of reaching hands and gasping mouths. I saw bubbles of air reaching the surface and desperate faces failing to. I dreamt of death and feared for my life.

Last night my mind conjured up images of a young blond woman with a green scarf and matching emerald eyes. The fringes of the scarf caught on the vines, blending in with them. She fought for air. She never got it. The scarf sunk to the bottom of the pond, settling beside twigs and leaves suffocated by clay-like mud.

I woke up gasping for oxygen myself. One day it would be me, trapped under the surface of the water - dying. What other reason would I continue to dream about drowning? It was because that was how I'd die. I was sure of it.

🕯

The next day was the same as the others too - answering the phone in a busy hotel, faking a smile and trying to convince myself that time wasn't slipping away from me as surely as dandelions in a strong breeze.

My bed had become a grave. I put off spending time there - put off sleeping, roaming around my house pointlessly, afraid to close my eyes. It didn't help. Dusk was only setting in when I was seeing the cabin again, tall trees framing it like an old oil painting.

The woman from this dream was young - early twenties. She looked eerily like a younger me - brown hair, brown eyes and a face filled with fear. Despite the dread building in me, I could spot the differences that told us apart. Her hair was slightly thicker with a slight wave to it. Her eyes were closer to hazel while mine were more cinnamon coloured. Still - I felt like I was watching my own death. I felt like I was watching a moment from my past that had been altered slightly. She went under the surface - like my past self had - but she didn't make it back before her panicked eyes stilled and her muscles turned to liquid.

Wet hands pulled the limp body from the pond. I could hear a sickening thud as the body hit the ground and knew the noise would haunt me when I opened my eyes. All that was left in the pond was nature's debris and an emerald coloured scarf.

🕯

I couldn't shake the image of the girl's face when I woke up. I tried to push her from my mind as I weaved my way through stacks of laundry and unopened packages from the post office, making my way to the front door. The attempt was futile. All through the day she haunted me. I remembered them all - all the victims that fought through my dreams. All the clueless prey who were lured to the cabin in the woods like sailors to the sirens' rocks.

They're just dreams, I reassured myself. But they weren't all just dreams, were they? The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years now, but it hadn't always been. Once, the woods hadn't been as decayed and rotted as it appeared in my dreams. Once, a light had shone in the window every night, yelling and sobbing and the sounds of shattering glass drifting through the back door, out into the trees and evaporating into a starless sky.

The faces from my dreams may have been non-existent ghosts conjured up from my imagination but a girl had struggled in that pond once - held under by her step-father's drunken hands. I could still hear my mother's strangled sobs as she begged and pleaded with him to let me go, but still stood by and did nothing - still woke up beside him the next morning, justifying it with tales of a worthless apology tossed carelessly to her.

I could still see his face - distorted by water and anger - as he yelled at her to shut up, as he yelled at me to stop struggling. A flood of flickering images washed over me. A bottle slipping from his hand into the water beside me. My fingertips grazed and scratched as they clawed at his bulgy arms and then the pebble wall and anything that might help me reach the air again. The strange darkness that tinted the corners of my vision and then the stars that appeared - not in the sky but all around me. I remember the sharp blinding pain that shot through my head a moment later.

I was pulled back to reality as I cut the tape on a cardboard box, pulling out candles and fake plants and china plates that matched my loungeroom more than they fit with the aesthetic of my kitchen. I'd been so lost in my thoughts again that I barely remembered the walk home. I did however - know what I needed to do.

As I searched for my phone, I realised the dishes had been done and the floors cleaned. My cleaner wasn't supposed to come til tomorrow, she must've gotten her days mixed up again. I shrugged, finding my phone on the kitchen counter and dialling a number. It was time I told someone about my past, time I told someone about the moment that caused my nightmares and made me stare out every window, terrified someone would drag me away to that unforgiving pond and force my head beneath the surface.

"Hello," I said. "Yes, I'd like to make an appointment."

🕯

When I awoke the next morning, I couldn't remember my nightmares. From my pounding headache, bleary eyes and just generally obvious sleep deprivation, I decided it probably didn't mean I hadn't had any.

The psychologist was quiet but nice, listening to me talk and nodding encouragingly as if it was perfectly normal to be sure you knew how you'd die.

"Were there any distinctive features about the people in your dreams?" she asked me.

I thought of the birthmark covering half the boy's face from my first dream, the red and green Christmas sweater the woman from my second dream wore - even though it was the middle of March. I thought of an expensive pearl necklace on the neck of a woman from last week's dream and then of the green scarf sinking to the bottom of the pond.

Instead I told her, "Their fear. They all have the same panicked look in their eyes."

She nodded, scribbling something down on a piece of paper. "Is there anything you can think of that could have caused these dreams? Anything from your past maybe?"

She gave me an expectant look. I opened my mouth. The truth balanced on my lips. I was going to tell her, I swear I wanted to, but eventually I swallowed the story and lied around the lump it formed in my throat. "Not that I can think of."

🕯

Dark circles plagued the skin under my eyes like shadows growing amidst the woods. It had been a week of nights spent dreaming of drowning and days spent losing track of time while I tried to push the memories from my mind.

I could recall a woman with greying hair, a teenage boy with a torn school shirt, and a girl who closed her eyes before the bubbles finished rushing to meet the night air. That was only a few of the victims I remembered.

I heard once that we don't dream in colour, but I remember the cobalt colour of the pond, the pine colour of the vines and the similar shade of moss that mixed with the mud. Maybe those were formed from my memories but I remembered the colour of their eyes - all the people who suffocated in my dreams. It didn't matter if they were turquoise or jade or hazel or chocolate coloured. Fear looked the same in every colour. Panic looked similar enough on every face.

"There's something I didn't tell you," I informed my psychologist at last. "The cabin is the place I used to live, the pond the place I nearly died."

Her eyes widened but she was trained and taught to expect those kind of confessions so she merely nodded and smiled reassuringly - an invitation to go on.

"I'll never forget how it felt," I murmured. "Water filling my mouth, my nose. Water everywhere, suffocating any hope I had that I'd survive. Powerless to stop it. And I'm sure..." my voice broke in a way I'd never heard it before, "I'm sure I'll feel that way again one day. I'm sure I'll die next time."

🕯

Splash.

The woman's arms flailed violently, her wrist hitting the pebbled wall and drawing blood. The crimson colour looked familiar in the water.

Splash.

Her survival instincts had kicked in making her desperate and wild. It didn't matter. Oxygen was already leaving her, the water warding it away. She was no match against whoever was holding them mercilessly beneath the red-stained water.

Splash.

That was the last sound before the arms turned floppy, floating while her head sunk deeper.

I woke on my couch, wet with sweat. I must've fallen asleep there. Checking the time, I realised I'd somehow missed my alarm. Cursing, I hurriedly left my house.

"I think you need to go back there," my psychologist shocked me by saying. "To the cabin. Face your fears. It might help put them to rest."

"No," I said instinctively but quickly realised she was right.

"I can go with you, if you'd like," she offered.

I nodded. I couldn't bring myself to go back there alone.

Thankfully, it was only early afternoon when we went. Fortunately, that made it seem less like a moment from my chilling dreams. Not so fortunately, that meant it seemed more like the nightmarish event from my past, burned into my memories.

There was no candle lit in the window. Strange though, I could've sworn the rotting wood had fallen in the same places it had in my dreams. The cabin was nearly identical to the one my mind had conjured up, except for the sun hanging low in the clear cloudless sky. An awful smell I hadn't expected filled the air. My psychologist was subtly blocking her nose with a manicured hand. I couldn't place what the smell was. Probably rotting wood.

"Would you like to show me where it happened?" she prodded in a gentle voice, but I was already weaving my way around fallen trees, nearing the back of the old abandoned cabin.

The wall of the pond was snaked with green vines that looked more like nooses than anything else. What I saw when I peered into the murky water made me freeze, my heart beating against my ribs like a caged animal.

A green scarf.

"How are you feeling?" the psychologist asked. She could see the green scarf but I'd never mentioned it to her. Unlike me, she didn't know what it meant. The dreams were real.

I didn't answer her because I was too busy noticing something around the other corner of the cabin. Bodies.

My skin flushed from horror. Not just at what the discovery implied but also at the sight of the corpses. Some of the people were clearly newly dead, other's bodies had begun to liquefy into a dark sludge. The smell was stronger now - not rotting wood but rotting bodies. The smell of death.

Some of them I could barely make out as people but amongst the carelessly formed pile of bodies, I spotted a red and green Christmas sweater and a necklace of white pearls.

I hadn't dreamt of death, I'd lived it. I thought I was going to throw up.

Before I could block her view of them, my psychologist gasped. She'd seen them too. I turned in time to see horror and then confusion wash over her face like a tsunami. Before she could process just what it meant, I opened my mouth, intending to tell her to get out of here, to run. Instead, I stepped forward and grabbed her.

She jolted back, eyes wide and skin pale. My grip was like pincers. She didn't break free.

I wanted to let go of her. I tried to let go of her. But my body was refusing to listen to me. Instead of letting go, it dragged her closer to the water.

I felt like I was dreaming. But there was no couch to wake up on, no denial to cloak myself in. Not anymore.

The woman's body was thrashing beneath the surface.

Splash. Her arms battled the water in a familiar way, her blue eyes a familiar shade of fear. But she must've been more prepared than the others somehow because she managed to push me aside, breaking free.

Splash. She stumbled from the pond, slipping and half falling out of it. I reached for her but she was not like the others - she was not doomed to die here. Her trembling hands fumbled with a rock on the ground, lifting it and hefting it towards my head. A burning pain I hadn't felt in years shot through my skull.

Splash. My body crumpled, falling backwards and hitting the water. My head thumped against the pebble wall, sending more agony through my head. Blood leaked into the water, and I had the fleeting nonsensical thought that it looked like the reflection of a sunset.

Pounding footsteps told me my last victim had escaped. I knew this feeling - water filling my mouth, my nose. Water everywhere, suffocating any hope I had that I'd survive. I didn't know if it was me controlling my flailing limbs or not but it didn't matter. I tried to pull myself from the water but the injury to my head made my muscles weak. Too weak. I couldn't pull my head from beneath the surface. I was powerless to stop it.

I could see bubbles of air arriving at the freedom I couldn't grasp. I saw distorted arms that weren't strong enough to save me. I was going to drown. I was going to die.

The world was the colour of fear yet despite that, I felt strangely relieved. Deliriously, I realised I could no longer dream of death if I experienced it. That was the last thought I had.