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I woke on the end of a scream, my hands reflexively covering my eyes. I was drenched in a cold sweat that plastered my nightgown to my body like wet spandex. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest and my labored breathing wasn’t helping my situation any. I took deep breaths and tried to calm myself down. I knew it was a dream because my mother had been dead for fourteen years; murdered in a home robbery gone bad. Plus, she would never have hurt me like that. But, everything had been so real. I could still smell the potent, heady scent of her favorite perfume, Opium. I still felt the warmth of her body so close to mines. And above all else I felt an overwhelming sorrow; my chest was heavy with it.
My brother Louis burst through my bedroom door breathing hard and flicked on the light switch, his Ruger gleamed darkly in his hand. “C, are you okay, what the hell is going on?” He asked, cautiously looking around the room.
“I’m okay Louis you can put Lucille down,” I said, referring to his gun. He had an arsenal of them and a nickname for them all. He’d even bought me one, a deadly looking 380 he called Betsy. It was under my bed in a special holster he’d created so that I could pull it out with ease. I lowered my head in shame. “Just another nightmare.”
“Damn, C you scared the shit out of me. You were screaming like someone was in here killing you.” He walked further into the room and sat down next to me on the bed. “So you had that dream about mom again?”
“Yeah, that one. I’m sorry, but I don’t know why I keep having the same dream.”
“Maybe you should talk with somebody about this like a psychologist or something. All of these nightmares can’t be good for you.”
His concern was evident on his face so I couldn’t be too mad at him for suggesting something so absurd. There was no way I was going to talk to a psychologist, in my mind that was strictly for crazy people.
The nightmares had started two weeks earlier and had progressively grown scarier and more realistic. I had recently moved from Chicago to Atlanta. I’d pretty much acclimated to my new city in the two months that I’d been living there and everything else in my life was pretty tame if not a little boring. So I wasn’t sure what had triggered the dreams. The answer had to be something obvious that I could figure out for myself. So I put a smile on my face and rubbed my brothers back in an attempt to put him at ease.
“Relax; I’m fine it’s probably just transitional jitters. You know, making a big change in my life and everything. A little nightmare never hurt anybody.”
Louis didn’t look convinced. “All right but if you need anything….”
“Just holla, yeah I know. Get out of here so I can get some sleep big brother,” I said. I flung myself back onto the bed and made a show of pulling the covers up to my chest and settling onto my side. He walked out and stood in the doorway looking over me. After a while he turned the light off and went back to his bedroom.
I looked at my alarm clock sitting on the nightstand and sighed. It was four in the morning. I could lie to my brother, but I knew there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep. Not when my knife wielding mother might be waiting to greet me in my dreams.
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Two hours later I was sitting at the kitchen table skimming through the newspaper’s help wanted ads. I tried to pass the time by concentrating on available jobs but my mind kept wandering back to my returning nightmare. I replayed the dream over in my head trying to figure out what it meant. What was my subconscious trying to tell me? I had so many questions, the most important being why my mother was so intent on gouging my eyes out. Just thinking about it gave me the chills and I wrapped my arms around myself in a futile attempt to warm up.
