The Girl of your Dreams

~~TW for death and mental health things~~

She reached for her drink and reseated herself – her thigh now just barely touching his. She handed him a Kleenex.

“Thank you.”

The young man wiped the blood from his nose, and attempted, in vain, to dab the red from his sheets. He had to squint and look real hard; the room was dark, and the soft orange glow of the space heater made the blood hard to spot.

“I think I had a dream about you.” He said, never lifting his gaze from the bedding.

She covered her mouth in mock surprise.

“Oh my god - really?”, he could hear her smiling,

“I thought that was just a shitty pick-up line earlier.”

He smiled a bit too. He binned the bloody tissue and grabbed another ring-bound book from the stack at his feet – the plastic covered pages crackled as he thumbed through.

“So tell me about it... What happened?”.

“You got hit by a bus.”

“Oh, fuck off.”, she pushed him, “What happened!?”

“I really don’t remember.”

She pretended to think a moment.

“If you tell me, then you can ask me something.”

“Like what?”

She almost bit her tongue – it sometimes shocked her how stupid a lot of men were.

“Whatever you want - I don’t know – just tell me about it.”

She continued, “… Am I different from how you imagined I’d be? Was it –“

“It was… weird, I think. Scary.” He said

Little else could be heard except for the rattle of the space heater. The snow seemed to swallow up all those little noises that populate everyday life. He felt exposed. He could tell he’d said something wrong.

“There was nothing wrong with you.” He blurted out, “…the dream was just funny.”

She remained silent - thinking. It’d just occurred to him that this house was built on a hill. Things stood a little crooked but he never noticed this because then again: he’d always stood crooked inside of it. She ought to be sloped away from him he thought, similarly pulled by gravity, instead: he could feel the warmth of her - just barely touching.

“I was walking home and it was raining, but when I got up the hill: I realized the door was open.”

“… I think I heard someone call for me inside. Eventually, I saw a girl I’d never seen before in our kitchen - that’s you - quartering chicken with a big butcher’s knife.” He halfheartedly mimed a chopping motion.

“Then you’re in the living room, drying Mizzy off…”

He heard her draw a breath so as to speak.

“Mizzy’s – Mizzy was my family dog.”

She drinks

“And… uhh, then I’m laying down.”

“Where? On the hardwood floor?” She asked.

“Yeah.”

“Like how? Just plopped down, sopping wet on your back?

“Yeah, kinda.”

“Show me.”

He demonstrated, laying face-up in the bed. The bed was his, the sheets still smelled like him, the posts still bore the notches and marks he’d made before but he felt the bed was no longer his. It felt too small.

“And where am I?” She asked.

“Uh – You’re still there.” His voice lowered.

“We’re on the floor… My head’s in your lap.”

“…Oh.”

He felt a hand cradle and lift the back of his head, and then: a softness.

“Like this?” She almost whispered.

There was half a moment of complete silence. He hoped she hadn’t noticed that he was, for lack of a better word: flustered. It turned out: the pretty young woman he’d been talking to, also had very pretty eyes – shocker. He looked away.

“So… how’d the dream end?”

“Uh – you dried my hair, and…”

He dared to look her in the face again: she smiled patiently.

“I remembered something had gotten into the house, and I woke up.”

---

He was yanked out of the darkness by a loud, far-off thud. In those waking seconds he managed to reassemble what he believed to be a coherent understanding of who, where and why he was. He recognized that he usually did this automatically and routinely – he also recognized that this time he was unsure if he did so correctly.

He rushed downstairs. The front door had flung open and banged against the adjacent wall – morning light and cold air flooded the foyer. He hurriedly shut the door and secured its latch.

His heart pounded. He wondered for how long the door stood open.

He moved deeper into the house.

On the dining room table, stacked haphazardly, were photo albums. He remembered that he’d been looking for pictures of his father – and then: a sound. Like clear hard ice under a boot. The synovial pop and glide of socket joints. Faint and deeper still into the house. He looked to arm himself and found among the albums a letter opener. He steeled himself and moved soundlessly toward the noise – drawing shallow breaths.

“Mizzy?”

As he rounded a corner an abnormally large grey dog quickly, guiltily, turned and met his gaze – Mizzy, the Deerhound, had caught a squirrel.

“You’re fucking disgusting.” He fell to his knees and embraced her, smiling ear to ear.

“Hello?” a voice came from out of view.

He hadn’t noticed the figure appear in the door frame leading to the kitchen. She looked painted there. Her face mostly illuminated and rendered in fine detail while the rest of her body, wrapped in a dark coat, was pulled into broad strokes of shadow - very “chiaroscuro”.

“Hi… Have we met?” the man said between Mizzy’s big happy licks. She looked familiar but he couldn’t place her.

She scoffed.

Was that rude to say? Did she think that that was some sort of pick-up line?

“Cammy?”, called a more familiar voice. Cameron’s mother entered frame – she looked older than he remembered.

She let out a sound halfway between a laugh and a gasp. “Oh, Jesus Christ!”

“Wash off your face and come sit with us. Allie, this is my son: Cameron.”

---

Cameron sat across from the women, tucked away in the kitchen nook, they were surrounded on all sides by tall windows; that seemed to give everything a fuzzy halogenic glow. The ladies looked to have had an eventful morning, dressed in what he surmised to be funeral attire they fished take-away containers out of a flimsy plastic bag: the pair had gotten brunch.

“I’m sorry to ask but: who died?” Cameron asked.

“My uncle.” Allie said as she cracked open her container, revealing a hearty breakfast sandwich. It smelled delicious.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t really know him too well – I just had to say some words for the service. Your mom’s an angel and knew him way better than I did, so she helped me write a lot of my eulogy.”

His mother was already digging into some sort of crepe that, by looks alone, Cameron could tell was excessively sugary – the whipped cream had whipped cream.

“Oh stop – what you wrote was beautiful. Oh, Cammy – I found something for you; I’ll be right back.”

Cameron’s mother set down her utensils and left – Cameron was suddenly aware of the sound of the clock and the faint buzz of the electric lights.

“We got you a sandwich too.” Allie nodded at the bag

“I’m fine. Thank you, though.”

He watched her eat in silence.

“How’re you holding up?” He asked.

“Honestly?” She wiped the corners of her mouth and looked to Cameron. He nodded.

“It feels awful to say but: pretty fine. It’s sad but he lived a full life, with the fence, and the kids, and the pretty wife and whatever… It’s like the cliché thing is kinda true I guess? He’s still alive in my thoughts and memories – and I remember him, fondly.”

Cameron held his tongue.

She watched him.

His mother eventually returned with another photo album and a bottle of wine. The women day-drank.

Cameron turned the album’s pages deliberately, making sure to take in each warped and under exposed polaroid. The halftones were practically nonexistent, so that what little did appear in the light would only ever look flat next to inky black shadows – almost drawn on.

“Is that him?” Allie pointed.

He stared for a moment.

“Is that your dad?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“What do you mean, ‘you don’t think so’? You’re like a clone of the guy.”.

“Be thankful you inherited his good looks!” his mother winked at the two of them, delighting in their discomfort. Allie blushed a little, or had the alcohol made her red?

Cameron strode off to the bathroom; he looked hard in the mirror. There was absolutely no shot.

He and the man from the photo looked similar in that way that all relatively fit young white men look similar - that was where the resemblance ended.

He turned on the overhead lights, then the mirror light, various combinations of the two, to no success.

There was a knock on the door that Cameron could barely hear as his breathing grew more frantic, mussing up his hair and adopting strange postures in an attempt to see what he thought he ought to be able to see.

A man’s voice softly bled through from the other side, “Hey, Cam; I’mma pop down to the store real quick – make sure your mom doesn’t drink herself to death.” And then nothing.

Cameron couldn’t register what he’d just heard as his mind was relentlessly forcing him through lines of thought: Why did they say he looked like that man? Because he did, obviously. Why couldn’t he see that he did? Because he’s begun to forget what his father looked like. How could he possibly forget his father?

Eventually he’d caught up to the moment: had his father just knocked on the door and spoken to him?

“Dad?” Cameron erupted out of the bathroom. He heard the front door close. He all but ran after him – he heard a car start. “Dad?!” He flung open the door and felt himself trip, like being lowered at great speed.

---

He remembered Allie once told him that there was a name for the feeling. That the body would sometimes jolt when being lulled or roused from sleep, and that it often felt like falling. He had experienced a “hypnic jerk” and woke, still laid in her lap. Allie was asleep.

He moved ever so carefully as to not wake her. He grabbed his coat and keys and left.

It struck Cameron that there was a good deal of falling in the English language: one “fell in love”, “fell ill”, “fell prey to”, “fell silent”. He wondered why anyone would ever choose to phrase things this way. Why would one ever want to imagine themselves in such a terrifyingly, helpless state and, by doing so, imply such a sudden and terrible -

“What’re you doing!?”

Allie asked, looking down on him in the rain.

He felt shame bubble up in his stomach, fill his chest and warm his face. She knew what he was doing – why’d she feel the need to have him say it?

“I just wanted to check on my dad.” He tried to say jokingly, barely choking out the words.

Cameron stood about waist deep in a partially dug grave.

The expression she wore was one of contempt. Cameron tried once again to avoid her eyes.

If he had the bravery to withstand it a little longer, he might have noticed her look eventually soften. That through conscious effort, a herculean act of sympathy was achieved and that understanding took the place of disgust. She pitied him.

“Okay.” She said.

He stood frozen.

“Go ahead. Dig.”

He kept digging.

---

Allie sat in the hole with him. Cameron had been a gentleman and offered his coat.

He finally reached the casket and wasted no time in prying it open. The wood groaned and the hinges creaked. There was nothing in it, of course.

Cameron stepped away. He sat in the mud, resting his elbows on his knees and thought for what seemed a very long time.

And after a long while he heard, softly “Get in.”.

Their eyes met.

Silence.

“Get in.” She repeated.

He wondered if he was dreaming and if so: when he might have fallen asleep; he wondered why he hadn’t woken up yet, and then he thought nothing – absolutely nothing cogent or sensible could enter his mind as he scrambled to escape the hole in pure animal panic.

A hand grabbed his belt and pulled; he fell back down.

“Ah!” She shrieked, tumbling with him – still coy, still girlish. She mounted him, sitting on his chest.

He flailed, trying still to avoid her eyes. Looking up he noticed dark figures gathering near the hole’s opening.

“Help!” he barked between gasps.

She laughed.

“Please! Help me!” He was on the onset of tears.

Their faces seemed familiar but indistinct. He felt they’d meant something to him. He felt he should remember them.

He felt a hand beneath his head. And then: white sparks across blackness, he saw stars as she struck his head against the casket.

He struggled to keep his eyes open as handfuls of wet dirt began to cover them. Their foreheads met, embracing in the casket, which, strangely enough, fit them both just fine. He again was strangely shocked by how pretty her eyes were.

“Can I still ask my question?”

She smiled, “Of course.”

“Have we met before?”

She laughed and they kissed.