Toss and Turn

Call it lucid dreaming. Call it a deeper level of consciousness. I don’t know what it is. But I have trained myself to be aware of the fact that I am dreaming. To be more specific, I have trained myself to recognize when I am having a nightmare. It is a useful tool when that feeling of dread begins to take hold and slowly choke away my will. My method is simple: when I am caught in the nightmare, I shake. I shake my head. I thrash my body back and forth, and two bodies on both planes do this. In reality, the movement jolts me awake, and relief sets in. Home. Safe. Alive.

I lost my dog. I don’t know how it happened. A little mutt with a curly cinnamon coat and white spots and ears that stand up. An innocent face with big watery pleading black eyes. He is my best friend. I love him so much. I don’t remember his name but I would know it if I saw it.

I go to what I think is a shelter but it has more the appearance of a store. The store sells a variety of sad and unwanted creatures. These cages are all inhumane. Snakes stuffed together in containers with wary rodents. Timid cats crammed with anguishing dogs. A strange looking bird with beautiful iridescent wings, a featherless head and a long obsidian beak attaches itself to my foot refusing to let go. There is no pain in its grasp, it is weak, but determined. I force it off. I am here for my dog. I must find him. An assortment of animals with pained expressions tremble in their cages, desperate for a life that will not come.

I search for my dog. I am telling myself that the next cage I look at will have his adorable scruffy face.

The store owner, a portly unshaven grotesquery of a man sees me looking. He puts down a his lunch: a piece of bloody meat in his barehands, its pink and brown juices drip down his chin. He takes me to the back of the store. With a sneer he assures me he has what I am looking for. As I follow him I notice a long curved white blade that dangles from his belt, it is stained with a vile burgundy pigment. Through a grime covered plastic curtain I walk to a room with rusted wire trapping more doomed animals.

When suddenly...I saw him.

The cinnamon fur. The pointed ears.

I approach him and the store owner opens the wire door. But this small canine shows no relief nor excitement.

I look at his collar and read a name I do not recognize.

I give him one more head scratch as my eyes fill with tears.

I explain that this is not him. And I ask to see the other cages.

I exit the room and begin to shake my head back and forth with mild intensity.

I walk into an enormous black room that seems to have no beginning and no end.

Deafening music drowns out all sound.

Pounding yet ethereal. Melodic yet crushing. Strobing lights, blink images of my surroundings. There are other people in the enormous room. I begin to see them. Faces in flashes of whites, blues and reds. Some dancing, floating.Some stare and smirk. Some stare and scowl.

I see a woman across the room who takes my breath. Her face is so familiar yet I am unable to place it. Her sapphire eyes appear to have their own illumination that shines through the strobing lights.

My legs go numb. I fall hard.

I have no idea how, whether through help or sheer will I am able to get back to my feet. The crowd has surrounded me. Their faces are angry, their fists clenched. I am surrounded by this sea of malice-eyed people, none of whom seem to share any characteristics amongst one another except for the scarification I can see up and down their arms, contrasted by the flashing light they appear long, deep and dark. They inch closer to me.

Feeling in my hands and arms is gone. Feeling in my legs is gone and inexplicably I am still standing.

They begin to speak, shout, perhaps even curse but I cannot hear them their words over the music. Many of the clench fists now hold long serrated blades. I shut my eyes as hundreds of knives glint against strobing lights. Slowly they began to trace them over my body.

My waist. My stomach. My chest. My throat. My face.

My eyes still shut, I feel the blades pull away from my flesh. I open my eyes and the crowd is backing away from me.

A woman whispers in my ear, she is behind me while all others remain in my eyesight.

I understand her words though I do not posses the ability to repeat them.

She grips my shoulders and spins me around toward her. The woman with sapphire eyes. I stare into them lost, entranced as if understanding, wanting, needing. She pushes her hair, black as the shadows around us, away from her face.

She gently places her long fingers, tipped with moon-colored nails around my throat. She slowly leans her face close and presses her vermillion lips against mine.

I feel my knees collapse beneath me as my body cascades to the floor. I can feel that the crowd is trying to draw nearer and push past my raven-haired savior.

But my fear is no longer for myself. I am afraid of them harming her. I can feel their hatred and their thirst for violence. I try to pick my body up from the cold concrete but as much as my mind wills it, I cannot. I try to muster enough strength to raise only my head.

I can see her above me. She reaches down to try to pick me up off the floor as her eyes scan the crowd of sadists. In her sapphires grew the fear that I already possessed. Agonizingly, I bent my neck farther up to see the jackals that encircled us. The crowd had changed. Men, hideous and ghastly in visage, their features swirled in an unending loop of distortion. They bared blades that now seemed so familiar; long, curved, serrated and white. I feel the press of one blade’s edge at the base of my neck. Some feeling has returned to my hand. I use it to squeeze that of my companion’s. For a moment I swear I can hear a dog’s howl.

I begin to shake vigorously. First my head, then my body. I thrash my body harder. I know this will work. Faster. I know where I will be when I leave here. More and more, with increasing ferocity. I will awake. I will be safe. I will be home.

I feel the concrete under me soften. My face and body now cradled by soft linen. I pick my head up. I can move again. I sit up in my bed. An ache in my neck lightning bolts down my spine. I press my finger to the base of my neck. My fingers feel cold and sharp. I can see my breath, I must have left my window open. Yet I cannot stop myself from sweating.

A panic sets in. Of course! Let me hold them now! I look to my side to see her. Sapphire eyes, her hair shimmering midnight, long pearl nails. I look to the foot of my bed to see my pup’s innocent face, brown and white fur and pointed ears.

My bed is empty. My home is empty. I must have left them both in the dream. I think I went back to sleep after that. But I don’t remember.