0247. Asleep
IN THE DREAM SHE calls out to me for help, but I am frozen, the blood starting to dry on my hands.
“I can’t,” I say. “You don’t understand.”
You say, “She deserved it. She asked for it.”
The ritual, the ritual, the ritual—
It echoes around the tomb like the chatter of bats, a flutter of teeth.
Asked for it—asked for it—wanted it—wanted it—
deserved—deserved—deserved—
She looks so frightened. There’s so much blood.
“This is a dream,” I tell myself. “I know it isn’t real because I would never do this.”
I know this isn’t real because I would never do this sounds again in my head, mocking this time, like one child tormenting another.
Drips of black claw the walls. Old visions play in my head like surveillance footage, stops and starts like B-roll clips.
Headlights flood the lens, then recede. The flick of a ponytail over one shoulder.
The glint of keys between white-knuckled fingers. Familiar patterns of the watched.
I back away. I can’t remember how I got here, but then again I never can, not in dreams. They just begin with me already inside them. “I don’t know how I—” Yes you do. You know how. “But I don’t even want this—”
“Jude.” She sits up suddenly, dabbing the wounds that fluoresce from the dark of her clothing, stains that bloom wetly over skin.
The blood on the pads of her fingers is a devilish, costumey red, a permanent shade of déjà vu, eternally half remembered.
She dabs it on her lips, missing by a lot.
It is suddenly unbearable to me, the thought that she could be seen this way, blood smeared all over her face.
Her hands are convulsing strangely, thrown off by full-bodied jerks.
She gets the lipstick everywhere, red paint waterfalling from her broken nose.
“You’re seizing—here, let me help you—”
She cries while I dab the lipstick on gently from the tube in my hand.
“Listen to me,” I say. “You’re so beautiful.
You will always be beautiful.” I want to calm her, because she won’t stop crying.
Above in the night sky is a dainty crescent moon, a bare sliver of one, like the crook of an elbow or an insincere smile.
“Somewhere, there is a version of you being loved so sweetly.” I take her in my arms and rock her, gently, forward and back.
Her eyelids droop heavily. In my arms she sinks like a weight.
“Somewhere other than here, you are having a cup of tea in the sun with someone who loves you. And that is the real story. This is just a dream.”
Her crying stops. I keep rocking.
“You know how I know this is a dream?” I tell her. “Because we don’t remember how we got here. So we’re probably somewhere else right now, really. And this is just a message or something.”
Christ, you are an idiot, you say.
She isn’t moving anymore. She must be asleep. You can fall asleep in dreams. It’s fine. It’s not weird. It’s very normal.
Get on with it, you say. This is getting pathetic. Finish the ritual or it will finish you.
There’s the mirror again. I look directly into your eyes. Something festers in them, a colony idly growing.
“I’m going to end this,” I say. “I’m going to find a way.”
“She deserved it,” you say.
“Stop saying that.”
“She wanted it.”
“Of course she didn’t want it—”
“She didn’t run.”
I can’t look at myself anymore. I’m making me sick. “Not everything is—”
“Jude!”
“No, just listen to me, actually listen to what I’m saying to you—”
“Jude! Jude, no!”
Look down, you whisper to me lazily, picking something out of your teeth.
From my arms, she finds my face. She takes it in both hands.
“Jude,” she says.
Say her name.
“Anya,” I whisper.
I let her lead me out of the tomb, back onto the roof of your precious house.
“There you are,” she says, and she’s trying to sound calm, but her face is streaked with messy tears.
Her white shirt is ashen with debris. Her hands are shaking.
She says it over and over, like a mantra.
Like someone struck her so hard this is all she can say.
“There you are. Thank god. There you are.”
I know it’s a dream because I don’t remember how we got here.
“Jude.” It’s hot, but she shivers. “There’s a devil on my back.”
The moon is so otherworldly and bright. The light dances across her face, making shadowy shapes. I can almost see traces of lipstick on her mouth.
“I see it,” I say, and wake up.