Thief Pt1

Pt-1-BLOOD

I opened my eyes.
Another futile attempt at finding the dreams I had lost almost a month prior had ended. An attempt that took hours in a corner just to start , and ended in a matter of seconds….like a crystalline masterpiece, dropped by careless hands, only leaving shards of memories behind.
I unclasped my hands from the top of my head. The tips of my fingers were cut up and bloody. I wiped them on the end of my nightgown, and they left long tracks that warmly seeped into the cloth and dyed it a vivid shade of crimson.
I stumbled up—my knees were like rubber and could only bend. I hung onto the wall, making more bright tracks as my fingers slipped. When I finally had enough sense of balance to stay up with one hand on the wall, I reached for the small white bottle on the night stand. The letters of all the warnings flew up at me, clouding my vision. My legs fumbled again, and as I fell, the nails on the hand holding on to the wall tore at a desperate attempt to keep me up.
I leaned my head on the crevice of the corner and sighed. It was so impossible for me to sleep. I had lost all dreams and traces of them. Whenever I closed my eyes and tried to drowse, only the echoes of my rotten heart remained—ripped apart screams, broken souls and tattered hearts—all which opened my eyes back up, as wide as ever.
In a lunge, I forgot all care and warning and stood straight up. The large window assured me of my lucidity with its pale moonlight and reminded me of my predicament. In a city full of sleeping people, I was the sole awake one. The only one standing amongst the dozing crowd with her eyes opened like a frightened deer’s….even more so.
The wind outside rattled the panes, and its cold whisper begged me to try and dream again.
I wouldn’t dare. Not without a plan.
If I had lost my mind… if I had lost my dreams, and couldn’t retrieve them, surely there was a way to get some without me suffering over and over to have them on my own.

I mean, thieves do it with material things all the time…

I put on the first pair of shoes I could find—white, knee high boots. I opened the large window.  The cool wind flowed in, rustling my hair back and making my nightgown dance. I walked onto the ledge of the window, minding my footwork. The heavy feeling of sleepiness felt like a mask over my eyes, but I pressed forward until I was close enough to jump onto the roof of the next house.
I climbed down and looked through on e window. Husband and wife asleep on their bed, holding hands as their chests slowly rose and fell in sync.  A sharp sting of pain filled my forehead, and I moved on to the next window.
A girl slept soundly in her bed. The pain throbbed inside my head, begging me to rest and dream for once. I knelt, and the inner stitching of the boots rubbed against my skin, probably leaving pink marks of irritation.
With my reddened fingers, I fumbled trying to get the window open. And so it did, quite easily.
I stepped in silently. Her face was so calm and serene. She must’ve been effortlessly dreaming all that I had lost and fruitlessly fought to get back.  The pain filled me up, and, trembling, I rose over her and whispered sweetly in her ear: “release it, your dream. Give it to me.”
The girl took a short breath of air. For a second, I thought she might wake up, but instead, in front of her, a flat, yellow crystal materialized.
It was her dream! HER DREAM!
….No…it was mine now…my own dream.
Whatever a thief stole, belonged to him when it was in his hands. That was the rule.
I held the dream up in front of my eyes. All the impossible images and situations started flashing before me and I pulled it away. I couldn’t dream it here. The girl would wake up and see a stranger at the foot of her bed…and then what? I was in enough trouble as it was….
Holding it close to my heart, I nimbly returned to my own home, as silently as I had come.