67It started some time in early October. The leaves were ripe with demise, changing into their beautiful colors and assuming the yearly position. Excitement about Halloween ravaged through my small town like ripples in a pond. I lived in Connecticut, and housed a lot of children in my town. Every Halloween is like the coming of the Candy God. I doubt Halloween had anything to do with the dreams, and I can't pinpoint exactly when they started, but it was somewhere around mid-October.
I would fall into these deep slumbers in which I would picture the most indescribably horrible things that I could ever imagine. This is how I know that this had to be all a figment of my imagination: it was too horrible for me to think up. Dead things everywhere and so vivid. Just thinking about the smell in those dreams makes me want to vomit even now. I would see things, dead things, strung out on barbed wire fences. I didn't bother to even see what they were, for fear of being sick. Some things were still alive but just as putrid. They were small bloody things wriggling around, and they emitted a smell close to ammonia. I didn't get too close to those either, but yet continued to wander through this 'world'. It was like our small town, except barren and empty. The seasons were in correlation, because the hollow wind blew empty leaves across desolate streets and the crooked trees pointed the way to dark things, waving their barren branches. The sky bore a dark omen with charcoal clouds billowing and rolling. They furled and unfurled, as if I was watching a montage happening in slow motion.
I would wander around, feeling the wind sweep around me, and I would stare in awe and wonder. Unlike most of my dreams, in this one I possessed my own will. In most I have no control over my mind or body but these were so realistic that I could look and think and act like in real life. I was never sure exactly when He appeared. He would come out of nowhere and take me. I don't mean take me, as in sexual intercourse, no, I mean he would devour me. I can't explain it, but I almost felt like my soul was being eaten when he came. It was an orgasm of glory and bliss with an underlying aphotic quality. It was an unprecedented feeling for me, and it was also an addiction. I didn't even care about the barren city each night, or even the dead things. I just wanted him to come, and longed for the nights. Then things started to get ugly.
I would slip off in the middle of church, football games, grocery shopping, amusement parks, and excursions with my friends. And this time the darkness of the clouds was a churning of haste and evil. He would not show his face to me anymore and the dark things strung up everywhere would start to writhe and come after me. Fear would leap into my heart and I would scream and run until I woke up in my house in a deep sweat. I would pant and try to calm down but my heart would still be frantically racing. I don't think there could be anything to stop that. I just don't think it's possible. The dreams would stay with me always; no matter where I was it would run a deep scar through my mind. The deepest thing that stayed with me was the fact that the dreams were about my town. Where I lived.
My mother would rush upstairs, as if she knew I was awake. "You need to go to a doctor," she said with a furrowed brow.
"Mom, I'm fine. Don't worry about it."
"Darla, you're eighteen. Slipping off and having narcoleptic tendencies isn't normal for a girl of your age. And waking up in hot sweats and screaming in your sleep isn't either. We should take you to a therapist or a physician, or both."
I knew what was happening to me, I just didn't want to tell her. Me, tell my mother? You've got to be kidding. She's the mother of all worriers and constantly on my back. All I ever craved was independence, and I thanked God that graduation was approaching soon so I could get the hell out of the house. No more unneeded trips to the doctor and whatnot. I knew it wasn't narcolepsy; something was taking over my body. Perhaps it could have been Him, perhaps a different darkness.
"Fuck being eighteen," I said aloud after my mother left. I wiped the sweat off of my forehead.
I went to the bathroom to take a shower and peered into the mirror. My face was different. Definitely different. Something was wrong with it; it looked more vibrant than usual. Usually I had plain shoulder-length dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Now I had bright, flashy olive eyes and bright chestnut hair. I muttered an obscenity and shut the bathroom door. I wondered if my mother had noticed that.
I could have choked, while taking a shower. I'm just glad I didn't take a bath. Yes, you guessed it: I fell into my slumber-land in the shower. The spray barely misted me as I lay there in the shower, but a bath would have been different. I probably could have drowned. Anyway, this time my dreams were different. This time it was more of an out-of-body experience than wandering through a dark town and seeing Him. Though I did see someone who very much resembled Him.
I opened my eyes and felt myself move around. Apparently I had no control over my body but knew who I was; I was Cora Angston and it was 1939 in Hartford, Connecticut. I was seven years old, and I had to get up and go to school. At first I was scared as hell, until Cora started moving around a bit. I had no idea where I was, nor WHO I was until everything sort of slipped into place. I don't know how I knew it, I just knew that I had traveled to the past and was now inside of this little girl. I had no control over her; I was simply a spectator in all of this.
She sighed and got up, tying a blue ribbon around her neck and slipping into her dress. As she stared into the mirror, I felt her large velvety green eyes stare into me. Where had I seen those green eyes before? They looked so familiar, and yet I couldn't quite put my finger on it. She smiled cheerfully into the mirror, but the smile was false. I knew everything that she knew. Though she looked happy and bright, an inner sadness radiated within the depths of her mind. A sadness so strong that it made me reel inside of her head. She turned quickly from the mirror and pinned up her hair, going out of the room. Everything in the house that she was in I had seen before, because our memories intertwined and wrapped around each other like two lovers in an embrace. We were so tightly embedded in each other's brains I could barely remember my own identity. "This isn't a dream," I thought, "this is something different. Something different than my other dreams."
She went out into the kitchen area and sat down, apparently waiting for someone or something. She brightened when her brother entered the room. "Tybalt!" She exclaimed before running and hugging him. He looked around sixteen or seventeen years old and possessed the same jade eyes that his sister did. My memory of real life was slipping away from me as I became enraptured by this story. He looked extremely familiar too, but it wasn't just Cora's memory that was prompting me. No matter how hard I struggled, I still couldn't remember. Where had I seen him?
As he wrapped his arms around the small girl's waist he reached up and yanked back the blue ribbon around her neck. Our throat tightened and Cora tried to let out a strangled guttural cry. She flailed her little body to get away from him, but her seven-year-old strength was nothing in comparison to his young teen body. She pushed against him, heaving and choking until finally he let go in a daze. It appeared that this happened often. Young Cora would be burned, strangled, hit, and abused otherwise by an oblivious brother. He would step back in a daze. It was almost as if he were possessed.
"Possessed," she whispered as she quickly took off the ribbon and rubbed her red throat. Rings of contusions were already forming there. She ran to her room while her brother was still rubbing his head and wondering what had happened. I tried to get out of her head but I was trapped. This was worse than a nightmare; this was reality. This was the reality of a smart little girl getting the shit beat out of her. I didn't want to see that. . .I didn't deserve to. On top of that, I felt everything that she felt. I felt the choking asphyxiation that the tight ribbon caused, and felt the tears and pain that she was going through. I don't know what I had done but I wanted out. I wonder if she would die like this. Would Tybalt kill her? Would I eventually wake up? And, if she died, would I die too?
This fear was even worse than my other dreams. This girl knew what was happening to her, but she chose not to escape. Hell, she even knew that it wasn't his fault. Something else came over him.
"Cora!" I heard him yell cheerfully. Maybe Cora didn't want to think about it, maybe she just pushed it back. But how can you try to forget physical abuse? Well, Tybalt certainly did; he was very cheerful as he entered her room.
"Dad's off to work, so I'll be taking you to church."
I could feel Cora quiver. At least with her father there with her, it was a little better. At least her father would know something. But with just her and Tybalt. . .
A/N: My last story kinda sucked and I hope that someone likes this better because no one reviewed my last story (was deleted)! Please tell me what you think ok? I'm not going to be one of those people that 'doesn't continue' because I don't get reviews, it's just nice to know what the general public is thinking =D