A New Kind of Dream

Upon waking with a start, she finally was ready to admit to herself that she had begun to dream differently.

She wondered anxiously whether this new version of dreaming had been experienced by anyone other than herself. She had friends -- acquaintances, rather, for friends would be too strong a word to characterize her relationships with others -- who claimed to never dream at all. On the other hand, she could recall an instance when a roommate lectured for a seemingly unending period of time on the meaning of a dream bug, swallowed up by a dream frog’s long, moist tongue. Premonitions, the wide-eyed girl had muttered as she fingered through her beloved dream dictionary, premonitions of things to come. Thinking of this girl and her non-dreaming counterparts, she experienced a paired sense of superiority and shame that she should be so intrinsically different from those surrounding her.

         Previously, her nighttime mind had wandered through sinuous and complex story lines. True, these dreams were not always happy, but they left her with a sense of creativity and curiosity. Now, a troubling development was occurring. Initially she had dismissed it as a fluke, but she could no longer deny that it was, undoubtedly, a pattern. For the past week, when sleep overtook her, she saw static, frightening images, with only the occasional flicker of movement. She felt strongly that these movements were not signs of life or self-determination. Quite the opposite, the jerky series of dream images reminded her of a corpse being dragged lazily across the floor by some unseen entity. It was as if her brain felt so weary that it could not be troubled to summon up a sensible transition between the fragments. The brain abandoned its bearer and left them disconnected, though the effect was something approaching torturous.

         This night had left three images engrained, etched into her psyche. First, a woman’s breast, flecked with drops of milk and blood. Next, a serpent twisting itself slowly (so… slowly…) into a symbol that was at once strikingly familiar and utterly unrecognizable. Finally, just before waking (or had that still image been in place for hours?), an old man’s wheezing emanating from a young man’s shapely mouth. The images of the nights before this one had been erased by time (buried deep inside), though she was aware of the lingering sense of horror and confusion that was now becoming her regular companion. 

She felt suddenly incredibly self-conscious, as if the world might at any moment materialize in her bedroom, jeering at the absurdity of her being. She pulled the blankets up, fingers clutching the fabric to her dry lips and closed her eyes against their echoing laughter.