I looked at my hands. Usually I saw plain work-scarred hands, not remarkable at all. In this instance, however, I saw my hands overlaid and slightly out of register with the image of hands, different than my own. The hands I saw were bleeding from skin barks and some of the nails were broken and ragged. Then the images faded.
I would very likely have passed the vision off as an illusion or the result of an overactive imagination, had I not experienced the nightmare again that night. All the familiar elements were present, but this night the dream started in a different place. I tried to make her understand I had to leave, to draw them away from our small shelter, a small cave shielded by a stone wall. After leaving the shelter and drawing their attention all else proceeded as in previous dreams.
I did not experience the arrow or the cliff this time, however. My thrashing woke my wife, who very carefully touched my shoulder. I jerked awake in full “fight or flight” mode, drenched and tangled in the bed sheets. I searched and found her night-lighted face. Her eyes were round with misgiving and worry.
As I took in the quiet dark of our bedroom, my breathing returned to normal. My skin cooled to a clammy sheen. I went to the bathroom to rinse myself clean. By the time I returned, my wife had replaced the linens and was again at rest, though not asleep. She said, “This one was different. I’ve never heard you say, ‘I’ll draw them away’ before.”
I looked toward my wife, chagrined because the spirit haunting me had disturbed her rest, again. As had happened so many times before, here we were, me smarting with my inability to stave off the invasion of my dreams; and she, comforting me in a bed made fresh in the early morning darkness. She no longer feared the attacks, but gentled me through the aftermath.
I slid between clean sheets and shifted her towards me. Our natural sleep state is nude, as it has been for the nearly forty years we have shared a bed. She rolled to her side, her head resting on my shoulder and her hand played in the greying hair of my chest. Her touch was changing the cause of my racing heart from fear to passion. Her schooled manipulation made sure I was ready to release the tainted energy in the safest and most pleasurable manner possible.
Waves of motion, primitive and yet discovered anew with each meeting, cleansed my nervous spirit. Again she had brought balance and ease to my mind.
My wife, my friend, was entitled to an explanation of the “new” twist she’d witnessed that morning. I told her of seeing the photograph and the feeling that had welled up. I told her that the awful dream had come into my awareness from a new beginning point. I told her the photograph had been taken in Connecticut by Rosalie Strong, a Facebook friend.
My wife suggested we still had time to rest before the alarm and that we should shelve the rest of the discussion for the morning.
Surprisingly, I slept uneventfully, and woke with an idea.
