Butterfly Dreams

Chapter 1

The dreams started when I was 5. Rather, the nightmares started. Each was the same. A room. Walls as gray and cold as the eyes of killer. Not a crack in sight, much less a window or door. Walls on all sides save a closed slot in the upper left-hand corner at the foot of the bed. A realm darker than all imagination, that suffocated all hope, extinguished all optimism.
         My only saving thought during the nightmares was that morning would come, however far away that may be. And when morning came, so did life. Color. Hope. Freedom. The joy of life battled the desolation of the nightmarish world I saw in my sleep. Luckily, the dreams only came occasionally; whole months would pass by before it visited me again.
         
         “Goodnight, mommy!” I said.
With a kiss on the forehead, she told me, “Sweet dreams honey. I love you, don’t you ever forget that!” She departed the room, leaving a smile on my face.
“Mommy! Close the closet!”
“Babe, there’s nothing in there but clothes, some raggedy shoes, and a little present left by Maxxy that you haven’t picked up yet,” she explained as she returned to close the door and pick up our dog’s poop from a week ago.
“Well, you don’t have to sleep in here!” I argued.
“True, you leave me all alone to face my own monsters in my room.”
“Sorry, mommy. But if you close your closet, they won’t bother you!”
“Goodnight, precious. I love you,” she chuckled.

As she left, closing the hall door behind her, I rolled over and gazed at the statues of the archangels. Michael was so tough and bold, Gabriel so gracious and loving, but Raphael was by far the most fascinating to me. I’m sure he knew this too, because as I prayed to him I felt the hands of God descend and heal my soul. I continued in prayer to the other two, and commenced to pray to all my patrons and guardians.
My mother had always been a big one on religion, and this carried on to me somehow. I guess when you don’t have a lot of money, a lot of stuff, or a lot of family, its all that’s left to turn to. I was glad about this, because God gave you more than any of those other things could. As I concluded my prayers with a loud “Amen,” I drifted into sleep.

“Breakfast,” the voice boomed through the wall. I turned towards the direction it had come from, and soon a tray came to rest on my side of the slot. As I noticed that I didn’t taste a thing, I realized that this was a dream. I tried to exert my power of imagination to alter this otherworldly realm, but nothing happened. As I finished the food, I glanced around the room. I had changed my mind, this was no dream. It was a nightmare. Tears began to stream down my face, and I cried for either minutes or hours. Time was distorted here, and there was no clock, watch, or sun to give me an idea as to its passage.
As my tear ducts ran dry, I lay on the only piece of furniture besides the old wooden chair I had eaten lunch on: a small, hard bed that was only slightly more comfortable than the floor it rested on. I lay here, eyes fixed on the low ceiling, until the nightmare ended. I awoke in warmth, and the flood of color, happiness, and light swept away the memory of the night’s torture.
“Breakfast,” a much more familiar voice cooed through my door. Smelling the syrup as its scent permeated through the house, I jumped up and headed to the kitchen.

                                       Chapter 2

“Don’t miss the bus! Oh, remember to bring your lunch, I don’t want to have to bring it to school again honey! Have a good day!”
“I know, I know, Mom. Bye!”
“You’re not leaving without a kiss!”
Her voice echoed as she ran up to the hallway. The contact of her big red lips on my forehead came at the same time that my bus pulled to a stop in front of my house. Embarrassed, I ran through the light rain to my bus and sat beside my best friend, Ryan.
“Aww, does somebody love their mommy,” he joked.
With a playful punch in his arm, I said “Whatever Ryan, don’t act like your mom doesn’t kiss you!”
We talked about normal young boy things, like the capturing of bugs over the weekend and which girls had the most cooties. School went by quickly that week and the following ones, days that are hidden in the recesses of my mind by the effects of age. I was a bright kid, perhaps too much so, for my grades suffered from my lack of attention. Daydreams of ninjas, angels, and fame distracted me from the dullness of letters, arithmetic, and science.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Ducan, to bother you, but your son just seems to have trouble learning the material we’re covering in class. I just don’t get it. He’s so smart and when he tries, he’ll understand things in minutes that I’ve taken weeks to teach. But usually he doesn’t focus on me at all, and makes horrible grades on our assignments because he won’t listen. Will you help me get to David, please mam?” I heard as I listened through the home phone to my teacher’s and mom’s conversation.
“I’ll talk to him about it right away miss, but maybe you could make things more interesting for him? If I had the money to send him to private school, I would, but I just can’t afford it. He’s a smart boy, takes after his dad. He’ll come around,” my mom vied for me.
“Okay, Ms. Ducan. I’ll see David on Monday!”

“David, sweety, you can stop listening now. Come to the kitchen please,” mommy said before hanging up.
Dang it, how did she always know?
I trudged into the kitchen to see my mom seated on the counter, a common practice as her toenails dried.
“I’m sure you heard Mrs. McEnway, but you need to work on paying attention in class. You do want to have more money than we do right now, right? Want to take care of mommy when she gets old?”
“Of course! But that stuff’s so boring, I already know most of it.”
“Well, honey, I guess you’ll just have to go in for tutoring,” mom threatened as I stomped away angrily.

And I did. Not at my own discretion, but through the absolute power and law of my mom’s word. Within two weeks I was caught up, and in four more I had mastered the basic concepts of kindergarten. I was a genius, my teacher said. Certainly in the sciences of humans, philosophy, psychology, physiology, anything that could describe the mind and soul. This was a subject of great interest to me, and after exhausting the teacher’s supply of books, she suggested the library.

                                       Chapter 3

The number of books was astounding. So many titles, so many subjects. I decided to check out the first book on the list my teacher had suggested, Wonderful Philosophers – A Children’s Guide to the Thoughts of Great Dreamers. My mom had told me to stay there and read until she could pick me up, so I grabbed a bean bag and started.
According to the book, there was this man named Socrates. He had a lot of influence in Greece and young men would come to converse with him. He would challenge ideas that people deemed as self-proving, and made a major change in the way people thought.
One of his finest pupils was Plato, an even more renowned philosopher who actually made his very own school of academics. ‘So that’s who started that stupid thing,’ I thought. Though this made me dislike the man at first, I became more open to him as I continued my reading.
His allegory of the cave fascinated me, and led me to the path of wishing to follow suit and take up philosophy. How are we to say that we have any true knowledge when we may be seeing mere shadows of it, and who are we to deem people crazy who may actually see the truth? Are we fully aware of all that is real, or have we been duped in to believing a lie? These thought captured my thought as I drifted into a light sleep.
I was back in the cell again, as I can best describe the confined space that I inhabited in my dream. Though months had passed in life, I could tell only hours had passed here. I was still on that bed of rock, and the pain in my back was all too real. I squeezed my eyelids together a few times, as if waking up, and this caused me to see some color.
Oh, how beautiful the purples and reds were that appeared by this. I did it more, but soon my eyes grew tired. ‘Sleep’ would not come though; I was stuck here until the dwellers of the real world chose to wake me up. As I paced around the room, I discovered a book, The Republic, it was called.
Something told me that I had willed it to be here. I instantly knew it was Plato, and was somehow expecting of its contents. Here, I was full of knowledge even beyond the genius of my years. The only possession I had in this realm that I lacked in life was the wisdom of experience, a thought that would have made no sense had I pondered it rather than taken it for granted.
So I read. All that I could do here was read, and think. Two things that I luckily enjoyed and was very proficient at. However, I could think only thoughts of melancholy, and each word stung me in some way. What a horrid nightmare, I thought as I looked from the faded pages of the book to my wrinkled, darkened skin.
I had not taken notice of this before. In life, I was a golden brown model. Here, I had been somehow aged. The nightmare took away not only all external possessions, but also something of my actual being: my body. This was its success, having destroyed all that I held dear. There was no mirror in the cell in which to examine my face, for I am sure that the science of dreams does not allow such a thing to exist.
However, I was very sure that in this abhorred dimension, I would have been a sight of pure gruesomeness and monstrosity. I was thankful not to see my face, and buried its ghastliness in my pillow.

Finally, I awoke. My mom was standing beside, with the expectant look on her face that I hurry up. I sprang to my feet and we checked the book out. The old woman who rang me up smiled and told me that if I was to borrow four more books and read them all, I would receive a prize. Little did she know that in the years to come I would be able to claim dozens of these prizes had I wanted to. She gave me a bookmark and turned to the next person in line.

“How was work, mommy?”
“Tiring, honey, very tiring. Thanks for asking, babe. How was school.”
“Boooooooooring.”
“How did I know you would say that,” she snickered.
I smiled, “Dunno,” shrugging.
“Do you know what today is, honey?”
“Um, Wednesday!”
“Yes, yes, but what’s special about this Wednesday?”
“Oh I know, it’s got something to do with ashes, right!”
“Very good, and it’s called Ash Wednesday. It’s very important, it’s the start of Lent.”
“Aww, mommy, does that mean we have to go to mass?”
“You figured it out! Good job,” she winked.
I frowned. She cupped my hand and dragged me into the church.