Dream

Tinkling laughter and conversation float up the stairs on feather-soft wings, curling around banisters, sliding underneath doors and daintily crossing the floorboards to a bed. The clanking of pans and the pop of a toaster follow the same trail into the ears of a young teenage boy, passed out underneath the yellow covers of his bed. Soft streaks of gold filter in through the gap in the curtains, illuminating the dust floating through the air and settling on a mess of pages containing half-finished sketches scattered over a desk. A smiling face with no eyes. The outline of a stack of books. The shadow of a candle.

Framed pictures on the walls depict happy family photos, children playing with a dog, and paintings of various objects and landscapes, warm colours dancing through the glass and filling the room. As the faint smell of burning begins to permeate the air, the boy stirs. Rolling onto his back, his arms stretch out from under the covers, reaching above his head, neck rolling to the side and back arching before collapsing back into the cloud of sheets with a sigh. Eyes still glued shut with the memory of sleep, he flexes his wrists and ankles before jolting awake at the screeching sound of the smoke alarm. Throwing open the covers and rushing down the stairs taking two at a time, he is greeted by the sight of a thin woman standing on the countertop, reaching up to click a button on the smoke alarm that stops the urgent screaming.

With a sheepish grin she climbs down from the counter, greeting him with a “Good morning, sleeping beauty.”

“Uh, morning?” he replies groggily.

The woman opens one of the cream-coloured, cottage-style wooden windows, wafting the smoke out with a checkered tea towel. “Hope I didn’t wake you. I was just cooking up breakfast!”

“Don’t eat it. It’s poisoned.” chimes in a third voice. It belongs to a young girl perched on a tall, rustic stool at the kitchen counter with a plate of what was possibly once a pancake, but had since been cremated.

“Oh, come on. You won’t even be able to taste the burnt bits once you put some cream and maple syrup on there.”

“The entire thing is a ‘burnt bit’. You can’t make me eat that. I don’t feel like having charcoal stuck in my teeth for the rest of the day.” says the girl, crossing her arms over her chest defiantly.

The woman rolls her eyes and looks to the boy for help.

He and the girl lock eyes, nodding in a temporary truce.

“Nope, I’m not with you on this one. Sorry.” says the boy to the woman, crossing the kitchen to the toaster, pulling out the crisp, warm bread and spreading a thick layer of butter on top.

“Hey, that’s mine!” says the girl.

“You snooze you lose” replies the boy as he bites into the toast, causing warm butter to drip down his chin and onto his pyjama top.

The girl butts her shoulder into the boy’s waist as she passes him, getting out two new pieces of bread and putting them in the toaster.

“I get up early to make you guys a home-cooked breakfast and this is what you choose? Toast?” says the woman, flipping her hair over her shoulder and miming wiping the sweat off her forehead.

“You’re welcome to eat it.” says the girl without taking her eyes off the toaster.

The woman makes a face and slides the cremated pancakes into the tub of food scraps. The boy laughs and turns his back to take out two more slices of bread for the woman.

When he turns back around, where there was once a cherrywood island bench with a sink and chopping board is now a stark white abyss, stretching as far as the eye can see, leaving him entirely alone. The bare emptiness crowds him, traps him, making him unable to breathe, think or move. The boy’s eyes begin to water, the intense bright white surrounding him blazing into his retinas, impossible to focus on.

“Hello?” his voices cracks. A primal terror grows within him, the kind that you can’t escape, that eats at your insides and empties your mind of rational thought, filling it with primitive instinct.

All of a sudden, the floor drops out beneath him. He falls down in a seemingly endless void of nothingness, numbness creeping into his fingers, spreading its inky tendrils through his veins and into his mind. It overcomes his entire body, and his eyes flutter shut as he goes limp, succumbing to the fall.

Blank ground materialises out of the whiteness, as the boy plummets like a heavy stone dropped in a dark pond. He knows what will happen, but with his mind and body foggy and faltering, he cannot move or think. Milliseconds before he makes impact – his eyes fly open and he jolts up from the ground, the sensation of falling still clinging onto his bones. His gasp fills the stale air, echoing back at him from the shadowy corners of the room. His eyes struggle to focus in the almost pitch darkness of his surroundings. He cannot see whatever sinister atrocities may be hiding nearby in the shadows, waiting for him to move closer to their murky domain so that they may snatch him up with long claws and drag him even deeper underground, their blind faces drawn to some dark evil deep within the earth.

Another dream, he thinks.

As the memory of the dream fades, he tries to picture them, but all the colours and lines swirl into a dim blankness in front of his eyes. With every blink, unable to form a clear picture, their faces, their names, once again withdraw into the deepest corners of his mind where even he cannot reach.

Doesn’t really matter anymore anyway.

The boy, alone, closes his eyes against the singular source of dull light casting grey, misshapen squares on his face and shoulders through the small, barred window at the top of the door in front of him. The only thing he can see through it is the timeworn, murky ceiling, black marks stained against the dark grey that matches the interior of his own cell. A darkened steel frame lines the door, and three rows of rusty bolts stick through where he knows there are heavy duty locks on the other side. Reddish-grey steel bars run across its shape, reinforcing the already solid door that traps him inside the room. The walls, floor and ceiling are all made of the same dull, grimy concrete, chipping away in places. The concrete feels rough and uneven, and faded red bricks hide in the cracks in the weathered surface, behind patches of mould and streaks of white like claw marks on the walls. Muddy water drips from the ceiling and out of cracks, mixing with the mould and bearing spores and diseases.

As the boy attempts to shift into a more comfortable position, the rusty chains leashing him to the wall clank and drag against the filthy concrete, restricting his movement and draining his strength. Blooms of dark purple, green and blue encircle his wrists like layered bracelets where the shackles rest. He sits alone against the back wall, hunched over, his arms drooping behind his back and his head hanging limp over his lap. His eyes stare blankly at the ground in front of him, all warmth of the dream already completely lost to the bleak halls outside the thick door locking him in.

He hears noises on the other side of the door, footsteps, and then stiff bolts sliding before the door is dragged open and a small amount of rare murky light spills into the room. His eyes widen, and he sits up straighter to get a better view of behind the door.

Could this be it?

A bodiless hand places a plate of stale bread and a bowl of gruel just out of reach. Then the door is lugged closed, the bolts slid back into place, and he is left alone once again in almost-complete darkness, his eyes straining to recognise any form or shape in the shadows.

No. I should stop hoping.

The boy is left again in solitude to strain every muscle in his body to try to touch the meagre plate. All previous fantasies of escape forgotten, his entire being focuses on one important deficit his body faces: hunger. Once the food is within reach, he quickly turns his back to use his manacled hands to tear the bread apart. As he hastily mangles the food into bite-sized pieces, he feels miniscule pinpricks stabbing into the flesh on his hands. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees small, silent black spiders begin to creep out of the bread. At first there are only a few, and they move slowly. Then, more and more spiders emerge, and they begin moving faster and faster, until they are crawling up his arms, swarming like an angry mass towards his head. All starving thoughts forgotten, he writhes in panic on the floor, breath coming in short, sharp bursts as he feels their legs creep up his neck, invading his ears, mouth, and nose. Their fangs sting his skin, and he feels them burrowing into his flesh, their pincers and legs digging through his exposed skin and devouring him from the inside. He screams in agony as they scuttle into his eyes, their tiny bodies squeezing themselves into the gaps between his eyelids no matter how tightly he shuts them. Their long front legs poke and prod as they shove their way into the crevices of his brain, crawling in masses down his throat, choking him so he cannot breathe or do anything other than contort his body in a desperate desire to just end it all and then he blinks, and they are gone.

The boy stays lying on the ground for a long time, cheek pressed against the cold floor, food knocked over in his panic. His hands still tied behind his back, he no longer has the will to move, or eat, instead just staring sightlessly at the locked door in front of him. He ignores the new scratches and reopened wounds from his latest episode, cannot feel the blood drip down the side of his head or coat his knees with slick red tracks. His bruises disappear, his senses retreat, and his mind withdraws to the only escape he has:

Dream.