One
I
love allowing the bristles of new synthetic brushes to run through my fingers
like spring grass. There’s something simplistic and beautiful about new tools,
and I always take a moment to savor the sensations and emotions that they
trigger in me when I sit down to paint. Virgin canvas is limitless of
possibilities, and creativity restricted only by the parameters of my own
imagination. Painting is my focus, my stability, and the only thing that can
keep me off the pills.
I
have problems. Hell, everyone does I know, but mine go a bit deeper than the
typical post-high-school-coming-of-age-bullshit that lots of other people go
through. I’ve never been depressed or suicidal, but the dreams have always
disrupted my life. They plagued me as a child and only grew stronger as I grew
up and moved into my own place. It seems that everything took off after
graduation; tossed me into a whirlwind I couldn’t control, and dropped me flat
on my ass, leaving me to question reality. I doubt few would believe me if I
told them about what happened. I hardly believe it myself. Often I find my mind
going over events, my hands shaking, trying to avoid reaching for a bottle of
pills that might help calm me down. I attempt to reach for a paintbrush
instead, telling myself that the pills aren’t the answer because they never
have been.
I
was forced to start taking pills when I first came to be with my Great Aunt
Bernadette as a child. Sometimes the pills made the dreaming worse, but at
least I didn’t feel so damn much. With
or without medication, the dreams deprived me of solid sleep. Sometimes they
caused occasional hallucinations from severe sleep deprivation. It was scary. I
couldn’t get away from the dreams. At night I would scream bloody murder, and
during the day I would see fragments of what should have only been fantasy. Richard
told me to throw out the pills when they didn’t help me like the therapists
said they would, but I’ve never been a good listener. Expired or not, I hoarded
bottles secretly in a drawer and I took them when I wanted to drown out the
world. Growing up is never easy, and the pills acted as my go-to remedy. When
Bernadette finally kicked the bucket, I eagerly took the meds to mellow me out
and help me through the stress of settling her huge estate, putting her in the
ground, and dealing with other things in life. Unfortunately, the meds only
numbed me up enough to make me not care about much. Just like when I had first
taken them, they couldn’t touch the dreams. Only painting what I see behind my
eyes at night helps me to sort through the jumble of emotions and fragments of
imagery into something that, if it didn’t completely make sense, almost did.
I
find myself painting his face again. I love his face. I wonder what he’ll look
like next time I see him, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Surely I’ll
look different too. But before, he was tall and well built without being
excessively body-builder muscular, with short, soft, black hair, and green eyes
to die for. A dimple appeared near the left corner of his mouth when he smiled,
and clean-shaven or a few days of whiskers didn’t matter. He was beautiful. He
was just right. Even his voice had the power to melt my innards into a puddle
of mush, but I could never admit that to him. I only ever confessed that I
loved him. I have loved him, and only him, and will continue to love him, until
whatever it is that keeps the world spinning stops and the circle in finally
broken. I hope it doesn’t ever happen. I need to have the chance to see him
again. I have to keep looking for him and hope that I find him.
I
dream less frequently now than when I did when I was younger and before the
dreaming all made sense. This change frightens me because I’m afraid that maybe
I’ll somehow forget about him. I have to keep looking at my old paintings to
help myself remember important details of our former life, and even the
unbelievable aspects of the present one. If I’m lucky, there’ll be a week or
two at a time when the dreams come, repeat, move in sequence and eventually
spin to a halt at the inevitable ending. At some point they stop for long
periods of time, and I wait impatiently at night for them to come back. I hope
I never truly stop dreaming. I need to hold onto them. I cherish them. I’m not afraid
of them anymore. They hold no more power over me, but it wasn’t always so.
The
first dream I had when I was five years old. It was a short time after I came
to be with Bernadette. I didn’t even know I had a Great Aunt Bernadette. She
distanced herself from the family, living in a grand mausoleum of a house in
the rich section of town next to equally rich neighbors who all wished to
distance themselves from those unlike themselves. I didn’t like her from the
moment we met. A police officer had picked me up from kindergarten and driven
me to the hospital, explaining that something unfortunate had happened, but he
neglected to say what. It was only when he introduced me to Bernadette, and she
shuffled me into a room where both my parents were laid out on cold metal
tables with bleach white blankets tucked up to their chins, that I learned they
had been in a car crash. Bernadette stood in the doorway, smelling of far too
much perfume, done up like an old, retired super model in bold colors that made
her look like a peacock. I might have laughed if she had put a pink feather in
her short, curly brown perm and done a little dance, but her mouth remained a
thin line, never smiling.
I
turned my head from looking at her and focused on my parents, asking the doctor
in the room why my parents had scrapes on their faces and when they would wake
up, but he only shook his head and looked down, crossing his arms over his
chest and excusing himself from the room. I thought they were both sleeping
until I felt their cold skin. A wave of shock shot through me. I wasn’t able to
speak.
“Say
goodbye,” Bernadette said to me, only frigid emotion in her voice. If she were
sad over the loss of my mother—her niece—she hid it well. I remember her
tapping her tall, pointy, black pumps impatiently on the cold marble floor of
the hospital room as she waited for me, but I didn’t understand. I was only a
child. The word death had never been
explained, and even seeing it, it still didn’t sink in.
Bernadette
ushered me out of the room after a few minutes and guided me to her black sedan
with dark tinted windows. She was a stranger, but no one objected to me going
with her, so I didn’t argue. I was too paralyzed with fear over the state of my
parents. I was a shell inside my skin, hiding deep within my bones and clutching
to my heart, squeezing it with tiny child hands to keep it beating. Something
broke inside me when I got into Bernadette’s car and the driver closed the
door. I sat back and watched the scenery blur, feeling that something was
terrible wrong.
We
drove to her gated neighborhood in silence, and the driver took two small unfamiliar
suitcases out of the truck when we arrived. Later I would discover many of my
things had been packed up for me. I was given an elaborately decorated room
with powder blue wallpaper and delicate antiques inside Bernadette’s huge
house, and left alone where I cried myself to sleep, not understanding why my
parents didn’t come to get me or bring me to school in the following days. All
I really wanted a hug or for someone to acknowledge that something wasn’t
right, but all I got from Bernadette was “eat your cereal” at breakfast, and
“feet off the chair” when I sat with her at the oversized, polished oak table
at dinner, and a more frequent “go to your room” when, past my traditional
bedtime, I began to drift off sitting in my chair.
It
wasn’t until a week later that reality clicked at the funeral. The details have
always remained somewhat fuzzy—my mind having blocked out the pain from that
day—but Richard once told me about it. He was Bernadette’s butler, driver, and
go-to man. He was everywhere my Aunt was. As we stood collectively at the
graveside after the sermon with family friends and morbid gawkers, Richard said
I charged the gravedigger. I screamed wildly, kicking at his legs, trying to
take his shovel. Poor guy. My interruption nearly caused him to stumble into
the open grave of my father. Everyone was mortified and unsure what to do. Richard
mused it had never happened before, and no one expected such behavior from anyone,
let alone a child.
It
wasn’t the gravedigger’s fault. He was just doing his job, but Bernadette
wasn’t. Richard was disgusted because Bernadette had only walked away and gone
back to her car, not intervening or even shedding a tear. He told me he was
furious about how cold she was to me and he despised the way she treated
everyone. He made a decision on that day to do whatever he could to help me. Holding
me as the digger went back to his work, he explained that goodbyes were never
easy, but we had to keep moving with the world so we too wouldn’t be left
behind. That’s where my parents were, he explained to me—Behind. I remember the behind
bit because he often told me I had to keep going. He was always encouraging
me, telling me, behind wasn’t where I
wanted to be. Now that I think about it, it was an exceptional way to explain
things to a child. Behind meant you
got stuck and couldn’t move forward. Now that I understand how the grand circle
works, I wonder how people eventually become unstuck and begin to move again, what forces make it happen, and
how it’s decided who a person will be. These are all things bigger than me.
Perhaps I shouldn’t think on it so hard or question the great design. It might
cause me to reach for the pills. I can only paint what I see in dreams.
Questions of reality have no imagery.
It
didn’t take long for me to understand that Aunt Bernadette was a selfish, icy
soul. She didn’t respect anyone except the pretentious pricks she had over to
dinner parties every week, but even then, I wondered if she truly cared of is
she cared only for her place on the social totem pole. She laughed freely among
society, wearing the fervent smile of contentment, but inside I think she was a
hollow tube. I floated invisible to her and her guests, never allowed in the
same rooms when they were over, and never asked to partake in whatever activity
they were doing to amuse themselves, even if other children where present. It
never bothered me. I was lonely, but each time I looked at my Great Aunt, all I
wanted to do was cry. There wasn’t a sensitive, compassionate bone in her
entire body, and I hated that people like her could exist.
After
a few weeks of living in her house, the dreams took over me, and disrupted
Bernadette’s sleep after her long days of playing the rich socialite and late
nights of partying. A month of disruption made her rip at her hair and curse
me, muttering things under her breath that shattered me. I understood she
didn’t want me with her, but there wasn’t anything I could do about my night
terrors. There was no other family to take me in. She shoved me into therapy
and pushed the pills at me, but they only drugged me down at night to where I
couldn’t scream myself awake. During the day I was zombie with red eyes and a
poor appetite, dragging my feet and going through the motions of a living
being. At that time the pills made me feel emptier, as well as trapped, unable
to express my emotions and leaving me in that terrible place—Behind.
The
screaming only intensified. After six months of failure, she discussed an
institution with my doctors who all agreed it was an excellent idea. It was
argued that isolation and intense medication regiments with fortified routine
would be to my benefit. Richard didn’t think so, nor did five-year-old me. I
still remember how livid he was when Bernadette relayed the decision she had
made to her staff. I had been watching from the top of the grand staircase,
silently weeping in understanding I would be cast out, while Bernadette played
dictator to the dozen or so people who worked for her. Some of the staff
gasped, others grew pale, but Richard was scary angry. I was fascinated to see
all the lines in his face scrunch together toward his nose, deepening his
middle-aged creases of skin, turning a strong, beat red. When the discussion
was through I went back to my room and wept in a ball, smacking myself in the
face as evening came, trying to remain awake. I was afraid to go to sleep
knowing I would dream and my fate would be sealed, but I eventually fell asleep
anyway. I woke screaming the way I always did, with Richard next to me holding
a mug of warm milk. From that night until the night I moved out, he always had
one waiting for me at the right time. It was as if he knew when I would dream
and when I would wake, almost like magic, and I loved him for it. I panicked
and cried loudly, knowing waking my aunt again would only hasten my departure,
but Richard dried my tears and smiled. Directing my gaze to the inside of his
coat, I saw a plastic bottle peeking out of the inside pocket. I didn’t make
the connection until he said, “Shhh, it’ll be our little secret.” I didn’t go to an institution, and
Bernadette never heard me scream again. She still had her parties, but the
sleeping pills mixed with booze that Richard served her in her cocktails or
evening brandy sent her into a sound sleep that hell itself couldn’t wake her
from. Bernadette’s blessed staff all concurred that my night terrors had
stopped, and Bernadette never thought twice about it. Deaf to my nighttime
symphonies, I became invisible to her once again.
But
the dreams didn’t really stop. I was still suffering. The kind words of my
butler or the mug of warm milk he had waiting for me didn’t help on a level
that I needed. They were only comforts. It wasn’t until Richard realized I had
been scribbling my dreams down on paper that he had an epiphany. Thinking it
over now, he was smarter than all the doctors and more helpful than any pill.
He brought me crayons, pastels, glue, fancy scissors and glitter, colored
papers, and eventually the first paintbrush. It didn’t take the problem away,
but it did get easier. Physical expression allowed me to process my parents’
deaths and deal with my new situation, as well as tackle the images I was
dreaming at night.
The
first dream repeated every night for several years, never changing, and has
remained the most terrifying of any dream I’ve ever had, although, it’s hard to
measure terror. I was only five. Anything that happens in the dark is bound to
be terrifying to a five-year-old. I had had dreams before, but after the first other dream, I never had a regular dream
again.
I
remember the dark wasn’t completely black, but a dark navy dotted with
countless stars in the vast heaven overhead. My breath fogged in front of me,
leaving a fading mist behind me as I ran through trees, flat out, heart
pounding, blood pulsating, and fear driving my momentum forward. Inside my gut
I felt I needed to find help, but what way help was, I couldn’t determine.
Everywhere there were trees, and I was lost in them, desperately trying to get
away from what I knew was following. There was something back the way I had
come that I couldn’t remember seeing, but it was something that wanted to harm
me.
I
fell over debris on the forest floor, my long yellow hair falling about me and
picking up leaf litter as I scrambled back to find my feet. I noticed that my
best, pale lilac dress had fresh earth stains streaked over it. I felt a pang
of longing that it was ruined, but I couldn’t stop to examine it. I had to keep
moving and shove all my panic back down; anything to escape the laughter I was
hearing behind me. If the devil could experience joy or find some reason to
laugh, it could easily have been him I was hearing. Throaty, obnoxious, condescending;
it reached my ears and stopped my heart inside my chest.
Two
tall black boots moved in front of me as I straightened up to move again.
Startled, I shimmied away against the rough surface of a tree trunk and looked
up into a handsome face. His green eyes held a look of deep concern as he
looked me over, steadying me with a firm hand on my shoulder as I shook in
fear.
“There
are wicked on the road!” I cried at him. My voice hadn’t been that of a
five-year-old. It was years older, as were the length of my limbs and my
understanding of my situation. What I spoke wasn’t English either, but
something else I couldn’t identify at the time, yet I had understood. It was
always like that in the dreams. I never dreamed myself as the brown-haired,
brown-eyed girl I was when I was awake, but only as a slender, blond-haired,
blue-eyed young woman of average height.
The
man only raised his thick eyebrows and shook his head, looking back to where I
had come from. His eyes scanned the trees, and we both flinched as we heard the
distinctive crack of wood splintering underfoot. He took a weapon from over his
shoulder and pointed it in the direction of the sound, the long barrel of his
gun reflecting his handsome image and distorting it. I began to move behind him;
confident he would help me. A hunter was a good thing. Hunters knew the forest,
the creatures there, and how to move through it unseen.
“Run
and hide,” he said. His voice was deep and silky, resonating within my core.
“Find some space, be very quiet and stay there until sunrise.” He didn’t pause
to look at me before walking into the direction of the danger, and my heart
thudded to a stop realizing his intentions. He was brave, and try as I might, I
wasn’t. Unable to command my feet, I only managed to move again after watching
with horror as his tall silhouette and the outline of his thick, long coat,
disappeared into the dark.
I
ran. Loud words and laughter, crackling of broken leaves and the snapping of
twigs drew closer, around me, seemingly reaching out to snatch. Sighting a few
thick bushes, I jumped into their center and pulled what debris I could around
myself to hide the unnatural color of my gown. The branches were tight and
thick, scratching up against my face and bare arms, drawing small points of
blood. I hated the sight of it and had to stifle my fear inside my mouth, least
it give me away. Every breath I took felt too loud, and although I held as
still as possible, I shivered as the cold of the ground penetrated my gown
under my legs and coated me with a hard chill.
“Did
you see her?” An angry voice questioned. “She had yellow hair! A spring
blossom. I want her!”
I
couldn’t see his face, but his outline came into view between the branches of
the bushes. He had walked there, parallel to another man, the Hunter. The angry
man was jittery and wild with his movements, but everything about the Hunter
spoke of only cool disinterest. He turned his head to look over both his
shoulders, and then shrugged, slightly shaking his head. “I haven’t seen anyone,”
he lied.
I
shivered and swallowed hard. I didn’t understand why the Hunter wasn’t afraid.
The one who chased me wasn’t right. I felt it. He radiated pure, unadulterated
evil. Even several paces from where they stood, he seemed to cast a darker shadow,
a heavier weight, and more furry than any normal person should have had. It
wasn’t my imagination. The energy around his form and the force of his words
picked at something inside me, signaling to every nerve in my body that the one
I was looking at was true, unearthly, horror.
“She
doesn’t smell like the others. She doesn’t have a scent at all. It’s quite
strange.” The angry man turned in a circle as he scanned the area. He humphed loudly and shook his head, his
long hair following the motion over his tight, square shoulders. “Olivia said
she mustn’t be allowed to escape. There are things in that wagon the girl was
in that interest her. She thinks she might have found a new pet.” The man spat
the word pet with bitter venom. It
hung in the air a short while and then fell away as the Hunter moved off,
angering the other. “Where are you going?”
“Find
something better to do with immortality, Morgan,” the Hunter stated in a bored
fashion. “I don’t have the patience for Olivia’s games or your failed attempts
to amuse yourselves.” He walked past my hiding spot as if I was not there, but
his eyes briefly caught mine. I saw something flash within them, but whatever
emotion he shared disappeared too quickly to be determined. He adjusted his
weapon over his shoulder and moved out of view.
“I’m
going to find you, pretty!” the angry man yelled. He turned in a circle again
and then started kicking up leaves and anything else that was rotting over the
ground. He beat a tree with his fists, and then hissed into the sky. “I know
you’re close,” he whispered. He became very still, leaning his forehead into
the tree. It was an old tree, taller than most simple houses and as wide as an
arm’s length in the middle. It’s bare branches swayed gently in the light wind,
adding to the chorus of night song made by the scampering of small rodents and
chirping of hidden crickets. Tilting his head to the left and then to the
right, he suddenly grabbed the trunk from both sides with his wide hands, and
uprooted the entire thing from the earth. Huffing and snarling, he threw it
bodily into the air and several yards away. It whistled as it flew, slamming
forcefully and crashing loudly as the branches made contact with the ground.
Startled, I squealed and squirmed in my spot as the man roared with laughter.
He lunged toward the bushes and pulled me out by my hair. Kicking and shoving
wildly, I pushed against his hold with everything I possessed, only to be
pinned to the ground under his large, bare foot. “I’ve got you, pretty.”
I
screamed as he pushed his face into mine, his body straddled over me. He
smelled of blood and earth, and I only screamed louder when I realized he was
saturated with it from the top to the bottom of his coat. It hung open over my
middle, revealing a bare, hairy chest within. He rubbed himself down over my
midsection, smearing me crimson. I wanted to vomit, but he cupped a hand over
my mouth, hooting haughtily and laughing at the sky.
“Just
a taste,” he whispered into my terrified ear. He pressed his knees into my chest
as I swallowed my screams. Pinned to the earth and unable to move, he bent over
my face and uncapped my mouth, inching closer as if he would steal a kiss.
Before his lips brushed mine, a strange sensation drew out from my chest,
slowing my heartbeat and the hurried rhythm of my breath. Energy was flowing
from me to him, and I couldn’t stop it. Wide-eyed and aware, I lay paralyzed,
watching the golden light of my soul fade into the mouth of the man above me,
as all went dark.
I
woke screaming to find Richard next to me for the first time, tenderly stroking
my hair. He comforted me and told me he would look out for me. I threw my
frightened form into his arms and listened as he promised to be my friend. He
would help me find a way to sort out my nightmares and feel better; and he did.
I might have lost my parents, been thrown into the house of a distant, uncaring
relative, but I had my paintbrush, and I had him.
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