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chronic-doe · 6 years

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The Dying Dreams

So before I post the story, I’d just like to say that I’ve contemplated doing this for a while...I write a lot of stories and I’d quickly like to thank my lovely friend @moonstrucklester for encouraging me to post. I got the inspiration for this story, which has some violence in and i will put trigger warnings so read them if you’re worried, from a writing prompt on Reddit from Reddit u/axmszr. *deep breath* here it is.

I’m sitting on my sofa, shaking, because I had one of those dreams again last night. Now I know what I have to do, but in order for you to understand, I probably have to start from the beginning.

I grew up in London, in a noisy house. Mum always used to say that when I was born the student midwife took one look at me, screamed that I was cursed, and passed out. She liked telling that story to anyone that would listen, usually with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. To be honest, the poor midwife probably thought this because my oldest brother and dad had had a fist fight about a minute before my head popped out and I took my first breath. She probably meant I was cursed to grow up in a family that would fight when a new life was coming into the world. Mum usually left out the violence part to have a rant about the NHS.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to agree with this midwife, whether she was referring to my family or something more sinister. It all really revolves around dreams, and the first time it happened was when I was four and my neighbour died. I still remember the dream so clearly, the flashes, the colours, the noises. The rain.

The rain is falling hard, the music is playing loudly in my ears, and then tires screeching loud enough to distract me, a honk of a horn and a yell of “look out!” which makes me turn around in time to see a red blur as it hits me in the side with such force it knocks all the wind out of me. I’m flying through the air and land on top of my arm with my leg at an odd angle and I’m in so much pain I can barely see. The car drives straight off and people are yelling and someone is running towards me but I can’t see any more because there is so much blood all over my face and my eyes are closing and everything goes black.

I woke up screaming in my bed that night. My mum ran in and asked me what was wrong but I couldn’t tell her because I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t breathe because I thought there was still blood in my mouth. I was drenched in sweat but I thought that was because of the rain from the sky outside. My covers were tangled up and I screamed and thrashed so much that I ended up falling out of my bed and continued to scream. Mum just stood there, having no idea how to calm me down and she, and the entire household that I had woken up, tried everything but I had basically just been run over and couldn’t stop replaying it.

The next day, mum came in and told us about how our neighbour had been run over by a hit-and-run driver, driving a red car straight down the road without even stopping. It rained the entire day.

I was four then, so I didn’t really pay much attention to it. I think a child just dismisses things easily.

The next time it happened, it was my uncle. He drank too much, or that’s what mum said anyway. I was eight, and went to bed that night at a sleepover at a friend’s house, my tummy full of pizza and fizzy haribo sweets and my head full of ghost stories we had told each other. I drifted off to sleep easily, but the moment I closed my eyes it happened.

I tried to speak but my words wouldn’t form proper sentences. “Gi-me” I said, staring at my son who had a look of disgust on his face, “So you’re dying and you still want some more booze, eh dad?” He spat, his eyes narrowed. Oh that boy, if I had the energy, what I would do to him. But my brain wasn’t doing what I wanted it to. It felt like all my arms and legs were moving through toffee and my head felt so heavy it was like it was attached by a magnet to my bed. I was trapped in this coffin of a body I had destroyed all on my own. I know I had done that. My life wasted, for nothing.

And then he died swallowed by pity and guilt and self hatred that an eight year old had never felt nor could hope to even comprehend. And I lay there and I couldn’t move for what felt like hours, convinced I was still trapped in his body, silently crying. I was able to move when the tears escalated to hyperventilating as I tried to process what I had felt and I woke up all my friends at the sleepover. They all laughed and called me stupid, once they had gotten over the shock of being awoken by my screaming. Alice, my best friend, hugged me and wouldn’t let go until I had calmed down enough and was breathing normally again.

My mum got called but she couldn’t come and pick me up until the next day because she was out “drinking all night”; I heard my friend’s mother complaining about her. The next morning mum marched me out of the house, telling me that I shouldn’t be scaring my friends like that, and later that day we got a call from the hospital that my uncle had died. That Monday my friends stopped talking to me and in the playground I heard one telling another that I was a freak and made up stories for attention.

Years later, when I tried to think about the previous dreams, it dawned on me that the boy in the dream had been my older cousin, but I knew my uncle was dying so it didn’t necessarily mean anything. It was true that there was no way I could have predicted the dream I had had when I was four but I decided to forget about it, thinking I was being stupid.

After that, the dreams kept on happening and I probably should have paid more attention to them, but I was young and stupid and enough time passed between each one that I could dismiss it. At ten I dreamt about an elderly neighbour that mum had got me to sit with after school sometimes when I was small. He had a heart attack. He was found a few weeks later after his son went round to visit and didn’t find what he was expecting. Instead he found the rotting corpse of his emotionally distant father and a big inheritance cheque in the mail a few weeks after that.

At eleven, my mum gave birth to a baby that only lived for a few hours. That was the most bizarre dream and I only realised years later what it had been. It is confusing, being in the mind of a baby, and the thoughts are so primitive: can’t think, can’t see, can’t breathe. I couldn’t really describe to you that experience even if I tried.

I should have taken them all seriously, because at sixteen the worst dream I could have had, happened.

After the dreams, and the incident at the sleepover, I kept away from people, and people kept away from me. I had a few friends though, but my closest friend and the only person I ever really cared about was Alice. I would go round to her house after school and we would laugh about all the stupid girls in school and fantasise about life afterwards. Alice was like a sister to me, and her parents were like my family. Alice, with her brown eyes, and straight brown hair and pale skin.. she was all I had.

I will never forget the nights when I would stumble to her house, afraid to be at home because of some guy my mum had round. Alice was always there to comfort me.

I went to bed one night, afraid as always that I would have one of my dreams but also quietly confident I wouldn’t because I hadn’t had one in a few years. But I did.

I couldn’t stop shaking as I looked in the mirror at myself. I was so ugly. I screamed and pounded the mirror as I stared at myself. This was it, I thought, today was the day. I felt my heart racing and I felt so much hatred for it; hatred for it pumping blood around my body despite me not wanting it to. I turned away from the mirror and walked out of my room, sobs making my shoulders shake as I threw on a coat, and a scarf. My mum screamed at me, asking me where I was going but I didn’t reply.

There was a motorway at the end of our road with a walk way over it and that is where I went, my shoes pounding the ground and my head clear for the first time in forever. No more fake smiles plastered my face, just a look of determination as the street lamps lit the way to my death place. I thought about my best friend, but she would be better off without me. Everyone would be better off without me. Then I reached the bridge and I slowly began to climb the steps, and with each step up my tears dried more and more because this is what I needed to do. I reached the top and misery drove me forwards as, without hesitation, I hurled myself over the edge. As I fell, all I could think before the end was: what have I done? Mum?

When I woke up, I knew it was Alice. I ran out of bed and I called her straight away. Of course I did, I wanted to check that she was okay; I was spooked but I still didn’t believe it. Alice told me she was fine and I foolishly believed her because she was the happiest person I knew. She wouldn’t kill herself, would she? All those feelings I had felt as ‘her’ in the dream were not hers. Yes, I had felt them myself, but not Alice. I am a person that doesn’t believe in the supernatural and scoffs at ghost stories or fortune tellers. But I did try again later that afternoon to suggest I come round and we have a movie marathon and again, she declined. I should have tried everything. I should have marched over there and refused to leave but I didn’t.

In the evening, I got a phone call from her mum and I knew what she was going to say before she said it. I could barely hear her sobs of despair because there was a loud ringing in my ears and I knew – from then on I knew – that I could no longer deny what these dreams were. I vowed that if I ever had a dream like this again, I would do anything in my power to save them.

And that brings me to my dream last night. I’m 21 now and haven’t had a dream like that since Alice. Though I have many nightmares about people dying, I can tell the difference between them and the real dreams; they are always so much more vivid.

Last night, I went to bed and finally fell asleep at 3am- which is nothing new, I haven’t properly slept in years- when I had a dream:

“I’m sorry, please don’t do this” I begged, staring up at the girl who’s eyes were like fire from the hatred I knew she felt towards me. She had a knife in my face and even though her hands were shaking, her voice was steady and calm.

“Why did you do that to me? Why did you hurt me? Why did you make me afraid?” she asked quietly,

“You don’t want to know” the girl put the knife up to my abdomen and I felt the point of it poke my flesh,

“Tell me” she growled,

“Your mum” I gulped, “your mum said you should be taught a lesson” and a look of comprehension spread over the girl’s face and she knew that I was telling the truth; because I was. Maybe she’ll go after her mum now, I thought, as the knife got released.

I breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at her, but that must have been the wrong move. The girl was an animal. She gave me a look of pure loathing and I felt the cold metal being pushed into my stomach, and my breath left my body. It was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. I looked down at all the blood leaving my body and put my hand on the wound, as if it would make an ounce of difference. I looked back up at the girl, struck dumb and she looked just as shocked, all the anger leaving her.

She stood up, shaking, and started to run. The knife clattered to the floor. I tried to speak but blood was leaving me so quickly and all I could croak out was a weak “wait” before the world went black.

I’ve never seen a murder before, but that’s not what scared me. That girl, the one who stabbed the man, had my eyes and my hair and my face and my voice…

I looked across the kitchen at the knife that I had seen in the dream, it was the steak knife that I had bought the other day for a present, but maybe it had another job now. It was true, he had hurt me and had gotten away with it for all these years. Maybe he did deserve to die.

#mystory #tw: sucide mention #tw: violence #eek im so nervous about posting this #creative writing #writing #horror #flash fiction

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