Red Dream Circle

It was the Red Dream Circle, only not a dream. People shouting and screaming and fighting. Fists and feet flying. A disaster of a reunion. And as I watched, all I could think was how it was all my fault, how I saw the signs. All my fault…

~ ~

It started a week before, the dreams. I would close my eyes and I would see a red circle. It was like I was watching from a height, up a mountain. All I could see was the red, and that it was moving. Then I was falling, falling, falling.

Coincidentally, that was the day my Aunt Marie phoned and told me there was going to be a family reunion beneath Rocky Bluff. It was an old bluff that overlooked the Pacific Ocean, twenty miles from my small town in Massachusetts. I wasn’t especially happy. My father was a drunk, my mother was a druggee, and all my cousins were prostitutes. My Uncle Tim cheated on all of his seventeen wives and Uncle Tom shot and killed a man in Safeway for the last block of cheddar. Isabella Wane, my Aunt Marie’s daughter, was cruel to animals and humans alike. Aunt Marie and Aunt Susie liked to insult people like the end was near.

I was terrified when I started having the dream because I didn’t know what it meant. If I could remember a dream, it came true. I once had a dream of Uncle Tom in a mental hospital, and one month later it happened. This one I remembered clearly, and it terrified me. What did it mean? Why was I falling? What was the Red Dream Circle?

I rented a picnic table and a huge umbrella in case it rained and set out to meet my family. It was awful. It did rain, which made the water froth and writhe like it was in pain. Cousin Isabella Wane brought her three triplets, two year olds that screamed and ran into the water and cried and then ran into the water again. Uncle Tom brought his guitar, insisting he can play the blues even though it sounded more a dying cat. Aunt Marie and Aunt Susie were screaming their insults because of the wind, so everyone was twice as embarrassed, and my prostitute cousins kept making innuendos that made me feel embarrassed.

“Mom-meee!” one of the triplets screamed as the icy water hit her legs again. Isabella watched them but made no move to go help the girls. That was when I decided to get out of that place, away from that woman, from those horrid people. As I reached the edge of Rocky Bluff, someone hit the sand.

“Why you-“ Uncle Tom hissed, standing up. He punched my dad back and one of my male cousins-the only one with a relatively normal career path-knocked Uncle Tom down again. That could happen anywhere, right? Drunk family member get ruffed up a bit? Well, here’s how sick my family was; instead of running forward to help Uncle Tom up, instead of shouting for coffee, all the woman surged forward like a sea of piranhas and started chanting ‘fight’ in low voices.

So I turned and ran up the side of Rocky Bluff, away from those people. Those people were cold, they were nothing. They had no love of each other…and I was one of them. I didn’t want to be, but not one of us could say we’d go testify in court or bail one of the others out. Not even me.

I’d like to believe I was different, my life was going a different way. And it was. I had two published novels, and another one in the making. The Scarecrow, I was calling it. It was almost done; I thought it might be my big break. But for me, my big break meant giving me another life, one where I never saw my family. I wanted to believe I loved those awful people, I loved to believe that. I had done my hardest to fly Uncle Tom out here and pay for everything and make it as easy as possible. I got the food they wanted and the CD they requested. I gave it all to them, and they still can’t get along. I did everything I could, and I can’t fool myself. I don’t love them.

I reach the top and look down. My green eyes pop wide in surprise, my black hair whipping into my face. The Red Dream Circle. In the red rain coats, my family has formed a loose Red Dream Circle, and I’m so high up I can’t see anything specific, just red and the fact that they’re moving. Fighting, screaming, hurting. And I remember my dream. I was falling and falling and falling. Then, without even knowing how I got, if I was pushed or simply stepped off, I’m falling again.

A scream of fear rips its way out of my mouth and then I hit the rocks beneath the bluff. It doesn’t hurt, but I can see it all so clearly. All at once, the history and future of the earth hits me. I know the truth, I always have. I know how each of these people around me will die, when, and I know I’m going to die right now. I slip away and I have enough time to be afraid.

I have enough time to realize there is no heaven or hell, no afterlife. I have enough time to realize there’s nothing, and I don’t exist. Enough time to know how bad I don’t want this. Then my time’s up and I don’t exist. No thought, no feeling. I’m gone, left everything behind. Gone…