In Dreams We See

I was gasping for air, running down what seemed like a tunnel.  I could feel the pursuit like hot breath on my neck but I had no idea from what I ran.  I had reached the end of my strength and stumbled, then felt strong hands clutching at me as I fell.  I awoke in a slick sweat, surrounded by darkness.

I thought that I was awake but I became less sure as I looked around.  There was a faint, gray light in front of me but total darkness enveloped me otherwise.  I felt the softness of my bed beneath me and reached to my left, groping for the lamp.  It shouldn’t be so dark in my room.  It was never so dark in my room with the streetlight outside the window.  My hands crawled over the alarm clock, found the base of the lamp, followed it up to the switch and clicked it on.

Maybe the power was out.  The lamp cast no illumination after I’d turned the switch and no power would explain the lack of light in the window.  Where did I have a flashlight?  I thought about it for a minute and decided that it was probably in the drawer in the kitchen that seemed to catch all rarely used or unknown items.  I got up and slowly began to feel my way toward the pale light at the door.  I wonder where it could be coming from with no power?

What the!?  My toe kicked the baseboard as I made my way toward the dim light.  I could plainly feel the solid presence of the wall in the darkness yet the light was directly in front of me.  I felt with my hands and stepped slowly sideways until I found an opening.  I groped around and slowly through it until I felt clothing hanging and knew that I’d discovered my closet.  The light remained in front of me, leaving me thoroughly disoriented.  The closet wasn’t large and didn’t even have a light inside of it, how could even this dim light come from there?

I stood still, moving only my head, turning it slowly from side to side.  The light never changed, never moved to my periphery, as I did so.  It remained directly in front of me and its quality never altered.  For some time I stood still, head leaned against the closet door frame, and closed my eyes.  I felt the lids draw over the orbs, felt the lashes brush the tops of my cheeks, yet the light never changed with eyes open or closed.  Slowly and cautiously, I made my way through my blindness back to the bed and collapsed in confusion.

As I lay there the light quality slowly changed, becoming a bit brighter, and I could see that it was reflected on a wall in front of me from some source around a corner to my left.  I continued to turn my head and blink regularly, trying to make some difference in my vision, but all I could do was watch the light slowly increase in intensity as though I was watching a poorly reflected sunrise.  With no warning, my head spun as the light seemed to move.

It seemed that my head turned to the left, rotated across the top, went down on my right and turned back to center.  My vision seemed to be stretching its neck.  I felt like the bed was falling from beneath me when the light descended as though I’d stood up.  I clutched at my sheets in terror as I seemed to turn to the right and walk into the darkness away from the light source, perceiving only a dim essence of the reflection which showed me no detail in what I saw.  A soft swaying began and a wall surrounding a steel door slowly grew in my sight.  This motion was more than I could take and I rolled swiftly on my bed to disgorge the remnants of my last meal which was rising swiftly in my throat.

I fell off of the bed, spewing and falling into the mess of my own vomit.  As I lay there gasping and choking, a single hand appeared in my sight and laid itself palm down against the metal of the door.  I felt nothing but the slimy floor with my own hand and could only watch as the hand, a right hand, in front of me wrapped its fingers around a bar, one of several set in an opening directly in front of me in the impossible door.  The darkness on the other side of those bars was impenetrable and the sight of them taught me only that I was likely seeing the inside of some kind of cell.  

My awareness spun suddenly from the door and the sensation of motion caused me to vomit again.  The feel of the soggy carpet under my hands and the stench of my own spew anchored me in a place which I could not see, while my vision showed me the impossible.  Closing my eyes made no change in the sight before me.  My eyes moved purposefully toward the light, looking left as they reached the wall, which I could see was clearly made of cement blocks now.  There was an open shaft down which the light came and two hands appeared on the wall in front of me briefly before my view leaned and looked upward.  Several feet of narrow, square passage terminated in what appeared to be a window of some sort.  My view pulled back past the pair of hands before turning down, looking at a concrete floor and blurred.  Whatever I was seeing seemed to be obscured by tears.

I pushed myself to my knees and grabbed for the sheet to clean myself up some.  While I wiped myself off and mopped at the floor in front of me, the tears became more obvious and I watched them dripping on the surface of the floor in my eyes.  There was a shaking in my vision as though the tears were accompanied by almost violent sobbing and I was suddenly convinced of the impossible idea that I was seeing through someone else’s eyes.  As this struck me, the hands became visible, together in front of the vision, and my sight went almost blank, leaving only the faintest pink glow around the periphery.

The shaking gradually ceased and the hands wiped across first one eye then the other, clearing away the tears.  My own discomfort settled some with the realization that my sight was that of someone else and as the view took in the growing light of the shaft once more I made my way slowly to the bathroom to wash.  Unable to see, I felt my way to the tub and carefully got in to sit on the bottom and wash under the spray.  The clean water washing away the vile covering on my body felt like a baptism and I was able to concentrate more on what I was seeing.

My view, which had been in relatively steady concentration on the light’s source, suddenly spun to the left, around to look at the door.  It was moving, opening to admit someone dressed in dark clothing with his head and face covered by a mask.  He had in his hands a tray which held a bottle of what appeared to be water and a bowl, presumably containing food of some sort.  These things he sat on the floor and backed out of the cell, closing the barred door behind him. 

I realized that this person was a prisoner of some sort as she consumed the delivered food.  The hands, plainly visible as they spooned, were clearly effeminate with long, delicate fingers and carefully manicured nails.  The condition of the nails, with only a few chips in the polish and one broken end, told me that she had not been imprisoned long.  Together with the long, sobbing cry, I felt that she had been abducted, breaking the nail fighting her attacker before being thrown in the cell.  I turned off the water flowing on me and wondered what I could possibly do and why I was being given such vision. 

She seemed to sit still, gazing at the empty bowl, which made it much easier for me to feel my way to a towel and dry myself.  The stench of my bedroom almost caused me to lose it yet again, but I knew that I had to find some way to help, to make a difference in this situation I was shown.  I found my way to my clothes and was pulling on a shirt when my view spun again, causing me to lose my balance completely.  I was saved from falling only by good fortune as my flailing arm and hand struck the top of my chest of drawers.  I clutched at the top in terror and leaned over the cabinet as I watched the masked man enter again, holding a bag of some sort.

The vision spun sickeningly again and quickly reached and looked up the shaft once more.  I could hear the scream in my imagination as my sight went dark and I was certain that the bag had been pulled over her head.  No other senses registered her distress and I was at a loss, completely blind both to her situation and my own.  Standing in the cloying darkness and stench, leaning against my furniture, I cried at my own inability to help either myself or the woman who had been in my sight.

I sat down on the floor to avoid the disorientation of my blindness.  I remembered the tears splashing on the concrete before my sight as I felt my own coursing down my cheeks.  I waited, I don’t know how long, for the otherworldly vision to return but instead my own room gradually coalesced before me.  Whatever psychic phenomenon had gripped me had now passed, and I could only hope that it wouldn’t return.

When I realized that my vision was once again my own, I jumped to my feet and made my way swiftly to my phone.  I picked it up and had nearly dialed 911 when I thought of what they might say to my tale.  What information could I actually give them?  At best I could hope for them to dismiss me entirely as a lunatic and it wasn’t hard to envision a policeman at my own door to arrest me for a crank call to the emergency line.  I felt in my heart the immediacy of this woman’s need and once again I sat down and sobbed with frustration.

I eventually got up and forced myself into the cleanup of my bedroom.  The smell was almost overpowering and I opened a window for air despite the heat outside.  I sprayed cleaner on the carpet and strippd the bed, using the sheets to mop up as much of the mess as possible, then stuffed the bedclothes into the washer immediately.  I returned to the room and sprayed more cleaner but it was clear that the rubbed in mess, mopped and spread in my other vision blindness, would require professional cleaning and there was little I could do other than attempt to mitigate the horrid stench.  I cleaned the drips and splashes in the bathroom, mopped and wiped the mattress cover, and retired to the living room to collapse in exhaustion on the couch. 

I don’t remember falling asleep but I opened my eyes to the pale, dimming light of evening.  For a moment I was certain that I had returned to the morning’s sight but my own walls slowly focused around me and I realized that I had slept most of the day on the couch.  I felt both hungry and sick so I went to the kitchen to see if I could find something to eat that I felt might stay on my stomach. 

I returned to the couch with a plate of cheese and crackers, turned on the television, and sat down to eat, hoping to erase the memories of using someone else’s eyes from my mind.  I finished the crackers and sat staring blankly at the screen until the news came on.  The anchor’s first sentence brought me to my feet in shock.

“A woman was reported missing from her Winston County home today.  The woman’s husband returned from an overnight shift to find the door broken open and the house empty.  Police are investigating and considering the signs of struggle are treating the case as an abduction.  Anyone with any information should contact the county sheriff’s department immediately.”

I stood there until my vision began to close in around the edges and I realized that I wasn’t breathing.  Taking a deep, gasping breath I fell back onto the couch and sat there staring straight at the screen, seeing nothing but two well manicured hands with one broken nail.