Dream Catcher

Prolouge

The sound of an ink pen scratches repeatedly on the surface of a blank page. A girl sits on the floor of a messy apartment where books are stacked everywhere and papers lie on every available surface. A fire crackles in the small hearth, it's flames waltz and dance in a unique feathery grace.

The girl is crouched over the drawing and her brow is wrinkled in concentration. She carefully shades and retraces the dark lines of her creation as a dream is formed. The drawing depicts a man standing on a cliff, his eyes as cloudy with grief and rage as the sky surrounding him. The wind is frozen in mid-breath, it tugs at his clothes but does not stir his form. The ocean below him spits sprays of seawater at him yet the liquid does not touch the still man.

Chantel Mayes writes the date in one final stroke and quietly pins her latest dream to the wall. She steps back to study it amongst the other drawings. The man in her dream has appeared in most of her recent drawings. The look in his eyes bothers her. Chantel runs her fingers down the paper, her eyes flicking back and forth questioningly.

"Don't look at me like that." The girl says bitterly. You aren't the only sad one in the world." She frowns and looks away. She looks back curtly to the drawing and leaves the wall of paper to look at the snowy world outside.

Her fingers curl around the window sill and she stands on her tiptoes to peer at the white blankets of snowflakes that cover the shingled rooftops of the neighboring cottages. Each feather of snow shatters on impact with the frozen world covered in swollen grey clouds.

The sound of the front door opening alerts the girl of her mother's return. Rather early on her mother's part tonight. Usually the woman gets home at about half-past three in the morning with liquor on her breath and insults on her tongue.

The woman named Sarah stumbles into the living room and sits heavily into a red velvet armchair, staring but unseeing, at nothing in particular. The little girl looks up at her with grey green eyes the color of cut jade. After pausing and waiting for her mother to speak or do something she gives up and turns away. Without a word, she leaves the room only to come back with a little bottle of pills. She extends her small hand toward the woman but Sarah only looks at her with a kind of mild disgust and an amused smile spreads across her face. The child clenches her job and places the bottle of pills next to her mother, then disappears into a room without a backward glance. Sarah Mayes does not realize that the drawings on the wall have gone until much later. The bottle of pills remain untouched throughout the rest of the early morning.
* * *
Chantel sits in a dark room alone, a single candle flickering, and shuffles through the ink stained pages. Occasionally she stops to brush her fingertips down the drawings. The images spark to life, little moments and dreams replay on the paper. A storybook print bows to a little princess and kisses her hand. A black cat crouches, her muscles bunched and her angry eyes narrowed as she readies herself to spring. A woman watches helplessly as a man struggles up a cliff of black rock to join her, his hands are cut and bleeding and his face is turned upward towards the woman.