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bastardbutch · 6 years

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Dad's two other daughters, brother, and late sister-in-law are visiting for Mom's death. We're living in a large trailer and the inside is a lot like my uncle's old house in Kentucky - it’s a small, compact house on a raised foundation sitting on blocks. It’s dimly lit by old incandescent ceiling lights, all brown and black hues, and at the start of the dream, Mikhail and I are very young. We're sitting on the floor by the stairs to the basement of our childhood home with the door open playing with our toys. Mom is small, withered, always crying with her eyes closed; we're taking care of her, but I seem to already accept that she's dead. Mikhail and I are grown suddenly and the only ones paying attention to her. We have to pick her up off the floor where she's sitting in the corner in the fetal position, change her diaper, and get her into her recliner. We cover her up and kiss her head and she sleeps restlessly, tears still streaming down her cheeks. She feels cold. The whole time Dad is radiating orange and yellow, menacing, energetic and laughing; he's soaking up all the attention his family is giving him and ignoring Mom completely, except when talking about her garners him sympathy. The TV is always on too loud and Wayne and Dad are drinking, smoking, and playing cards. Olivia and Michelle are misshapen, deformed and disfigured; necks crooked the wrong way, limbs at unnatural angles, skin drooping from their faces. Michelle is angry and mean, and Olivia has this unnerving fake smile put on, eyes sad. At one point, I sit down at my at my dad's computer and see a bunch of nude/sexual photos she put up publicly on Facebook open on his internet browser. Mom passes in the night. The funeral takes place in the morning as a kind of non-event, a small gathering in our front lawn with just family standing and staring at a closed coffin, an urn with her ashes sitting on top of it. It's sunny and warm out, and the sky is bright blue. Afterwards Mikhail and I go out, talking and shopping just to be away from the house - the store is a brief walk away and consists only of aisles set up in an open area, without a building to surround it. I stop at display where there is a skin suit dressed in a pink and purple tutu hanging up surrounded by candy necklaces, children's costume jewelry, and off brand barbies that I stand and look at for a long time. I find it strange, but Mikhail doesn't seem to think much of it, and we go home.

Next thing I remember, I'm being guided through our childhood home by my five year old cousin Mara. It's Christmas afternoon. The house is a mess and set up differently than we ever did it, with the tree in the dining room and gifts piled in the living room. It looks a lot like it did when I was growing up before we did any renovations. Mom, Dad, my uncle Kevin, and my grandma are sitting around the table talking. Mikhail and some cousins his age, toddlers, are playing with their gifts in the living room. I'm an infant dressed in a blue onesie and the family is cooing at me and playing with me. Uncle Kevin picks me up and airplane flies me over his head, only to promptly drop me onto the table; I land flat on my stomach and, still watching all this grown as I am now with Mara, she shrugs and says, "Yup, same thing as always" in her sarcastic little kid voice. She takes me by the hand and ushers me along to keep walking with the her, but I am distracted and looking over my shoulder at my family, worried; my infant self is struggling to breathe from having the wind knocked out of her, but nobody makes an effort to pick her up or soothe her. They carry on talking, laughing, and drinking. Mikhail comes over and seems to be trying to get their attention, but he can't say what is wrong; he's very young and can't do anything to help, and none of of the adults notice him either.

Then everyone's gone and I'm back in the trailer park. I'm in dad's camper with him and I don't remember the conversation we were having, just that he told me he wants to kill me. He waves an unloaded pistol as he speaks, matter-of-fact and almost good humored. He's going to, and he'll get away with it because nobody will believe me if I tell them; nobody will care if I die and he'd be doing everyone a favor, he tells me. I rush off to find my aunt Jenny and frantically confide in her, hoping for safety.

"Are you sure?" she asks with a raised brow. "That doesn't sound like him. Maybe he was joking, or he didn't mean it that way..."

I'm angry and desperate. "He literally told me he was going to do it today! He said he was going to shoot me. I need your help, please - I have to get out of here!"

"Your dad loves you. I can't see him ever hurting you on purpose."

I realize it's pointless and go to find Mikhail to tell him instead. He thinks for a second. "That sounds scary, but I don't have the full story. I'm not saying I don't believe you, but there's not a lot of hard evidence for me to go off of."

"I'll show you." I take him to dad's camper and show him the pistol Dad was brandishing at me, unloaded. "He went out to get some bullets for it. He's going to fucking kill me with this gun. I'm going to die today if we don't do something."

Finally he seems to understand and he says he believes me. He takes me with him on his trip to the airport so I'm safe at least for the moment, and we shoot the shit and listen to music on the way there. Everything is orange and yellow and sunny, with that same bright, cloudless sky. We drive with the windows down. When he has to board his plane I'm scared, but he promises he'll be back soon. I take a cab back home and the next thing I can recall is that everybody has gone and I'm alone with Dad in his camper; this one is a few lots away from the mobile home we were staying in before. He's picked up a sniper rifle along with ammo. We have a confrontation and then I'm running through the barren farm land by the park - a wide, rectangular plot of dry orange clay, overlooked by a large steel government surveillance building, with old wooden sheds here and there on the perimeter of a barbed wire fence which is keeping me from getting out. Beyond the wire are endless sand dunes that I know I'd have to travel for a long time, but I'd be free if I could get to them; however, they're too open to safely run through without risking a bullet, and I have to bide my time. In this place, I get the sense that parents kill their kids a lot. I can almost feel the other children hiding in the out buildings, and the unmarked graves of those who have been lost; I know that we have no protection here. My dad is hunting me and taunting me, occasionally shooting at me. I hide in the sheds. The old shacks remind me of other barns I see in my dreams often, made entirely of wood and filled with cobwebs, dust, and miscellaneous furniture and house wares, bathed in yellow tones. My dad always finds me and cuts me off from slipping through the fence, and I am getting tired and running slower and slower with him closing in on me. The whole time he has this awful smile and he's telling me what he's going to do to me. He's going to torture me, kill me slowly, put a bullet through my brain so I can't babble on anymore. He tells me how worthless I am, what a hateful, selfish piece of shit I am, how glad he's going to be to finally be rid of me. I was only good for my c*nt and my pretty looks, but I had to go and spoil it by opening my mouth, by cutting my hair. He calls me a whore, a slut, says I deserve to be r*ped.

Somehow none of his bullets ever catch; I've run circular, back home to grab my bag with my wallet and a hunting knife in it, and he corners me in his camper. I manage to escape somehow and bolt through a small patch of tall pines separating the trailer park from the farm land, and put some distance between us as I dash through a field to the government security building in the right corner. At some point he switches to a BB gun even though he still has his pistol and sniper rifle, and I want to laugh, but I realize that I have to keep up the show so I don't revitalize his anger - and then I solemnly recognize that I can’t be sure a BB pellet still won’t do some damage, or that he’s not using some different kind of projectile for it, and if he catches me he can still hurt me. But I feel safe enough to slow my pace and wade through some bushes as he follows me. I catch my brother and aunt once I make it inside the surveillance facility, and my aunt finally tells me she believes me after talking to my brother. It doesn't matter - I don't trust her anymore. I don't remember if they do anything to stop him, or if maybe he kills himself instead, I just know that the threat has diminished.

I've got a job working for the government there, but while Mikhail is in higher ranks working for national security, I'm in hospitality like I was at Yellowstone. I think we serve the military workers. I'm hanging out with all of the other low-end hires at some big party. The commons area is a small enclosed space inside the steel building with artificial sunlight, some grass, young trees, and a waterfall from the wall which runs off into a small creek and ends at a pool of water. I'm sitting on the ground with my knees drawn to my chest in my pajamas. I'm tired and I don't feel like being there, let alone drinking, but Ben (who looks like Jesse Lacey) is urging me to. I think I said something to piss him off, because after the party we get into a blow up fight and his friends are ganging up on me; when I leave, he's furious and he says I've ruined his life and he won't let me off so easily. I find myself running again, but instead dashing through the field, I'm trying to find my way through a maze of empty, steel-walled rooms throughout the military compound. They're long enough to lie down in but the ceilings are so low I have to crouch, connected by narrow vent-like tunnels I have to squeeze through. He's chasing me and taunting me like my dad did; eventually he starts singing. It sounds like Brand New, but slowed down and orchestral with his voice over it. I keep finding lyric pages I feel compelled to collect as clues - like I can't get out until I have evidence, whether for myself or other people, of how dangerous he really is. I can understand what they say, but they’re confusing to read; the font looks like the script from a fantasy book. But while his lyrics talk overtly about wanting to hurt girls and drain the life from them, reducing them to sex objects, using them, I know nobody else will take what he says seriously; I feel like I have to crack the code so they’ll understand. I figure out some of the rooms have false bottoms, with a layer of ice and snow or a steel door and then beneath that, deep, black water in which I'm hiding. It doesn't feel cold and breathing isn't an issue; I swim through the water from room to room. He always finds me. He's always talking or singing, waxing poetic about what a monster he is, and sometimes I furiously jot down what he says. But I'm losing the pages and eventually, he’s in the water with me and I have to find my way out - I know if I don't he will drown me by dragging me into the deep.

The rooms start getting more detailed, mostly filled with his things. Then they're the dorm rooms of other seasonal workers. A Halloween party is going on around us and everybody is dressed up, even me; I've chosen to be a vampire, but my costume is fake and chintzy and everybody else's seems to be real, all werewolves and witches in the flesh. I feel exposed, confused, and isolated, but I have to go along. They see him chasing me, but nobody says or does anything. He's started to shape shift from someone who looks like Jesse Lacey to various ghouls and monsters; at one point he's the tall, bald, white-skinned man from Gerald's Game, and at another, he’s a skinny, red devil with long horns and limbs. He no longer has a gun but instead claws and sharp teeth he will tear me apart with. His final form is that of a huge, grotesque, vampiric demon, with spines on its hunched back and many piercing red eyes. His jaw unhinges to expose row after row of long, gnarled fangs, and I watch in horror as he devours another person whole to show me what he's going to do to me. I'm cornered.

Next thing I know, he looks like Jesse Lacey again and we're acting normal so we can go on a boating trip with his friends, but he still has a pistol hidden in his waistband. I am calculating when I can take it and run. We take a pontoon out onto the lake and everybody jumps in and they're swimming under water. The water is clear and blue, deep, and the bottom is all flat sand. I notice Ben is ogling a pre-teen girl, swimming behind her to stare at her ass and trying to get close to her - I am disgusted but not surprised, and mostly terrified for her safety. When everybody else swims away from us, I drag him to the bottom of the lake and start choking him; he quickly goes from anger to fear and tears, sniveling up at me, wrapping a flannel blanket around himself. Suddenly he looks like the Ben I knew in real life, kind of chubby and short with his patchy beard, and I don't feel intimidated by him anymore. My palm had barely grazed his Adam's apple and my fingers only wrapped around his throat briefly, but I stop right away when I see his reaction. I feel shame and guilt and pity, but more than anything else, contempt - no remorse. I just stare callously, eyes narrowed, and mutter to him, "How do you think it feels when you do it to me?" Still, we swim up to the dock and I help him out of the water. The uncomfortable realization that I've become an abuser dawns on me while he sobs theatrically and he goes to his friends, who group around him in protection. I don't remember what happened between this and us leaving, but I'm back in my childhood home with him and a few of his hometown friends; it's renovated as it is now, empty of my family but with signs they'd been living there before, with the lights on and unwashed dishes in the sink. It's dark out and I keep thinking Mom and Dad are going to walk in. We're having a house warming party sitting at the dining room table. His friends give us washcloths and a pack of replacement heads to an electric shaver. The latter is for me, but they're the wrong kind; I'd asked for double edges safety razor blades so I could slit my wrists and kill myself. I say thank you anyway and don't reveal my disappointment, thinking I'll just go to the store later to grab what I need, and I look across the table at Ben. He and I are engaged to be married. He looks angry and bitter, defeated; I feel like I've won the game with him, but lost my life.

#personal.txt #dream #dream log #journaling #dream journal

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