To my future self,
February 22nd 2003,
I am writing this letter to my future self, explaining to him why he is how he is. The reason for writing this letter is the Annual Nightmare that came last night. If you don’t know what that is, that means it has proven to be true like all other seven nightmares before this one. I was five years old when it first happened, the first dream I ever had and it was a bad one. At that time, I didn’t know about such things-dreams, so I asked ammi about it. She said it was just a frugal nightmare, it’s not true, doesn't herald any real thing and there are good dreams as well. When asked about how to get those good dreams, she asked me to eat the green stuff regularly and it was not like I was an epicure of a kid. From that day onwards, I was eating all the green stuff provided to me. And it worked. No nightmares ever came to me after that day, until one Friday of next year. It was not as scary as the previous one but it made me cry in my sleep. There were no divs or djinns in those nightmares but incidents and casualties were prominent.
Sometime in the following year, one of the nightmares came true. The second one. I was in our farm facing the ambient sunset, eating mashed potatoes out of my lunch keeper, and then I heard the voice. I saw the woman of the dream, wearing a wedding dress, face covered with a veil, a piece of cloth tied around the neck like a leash. She was eating the fresh fallen leaves of the pine tree just outside the fence. I tried to avoid contact but couldn’t help leaving without a sound, and she noticed me. Our eyes met for only a few moments, but it felt like hours. She looked young but drowsy, like she hadn’t slept in weeks. Nothing but abrasive. She was not that scary, so I tossed some of my mashed potatoes to her. They fell short and she was too afraid to reach for them, let alone eat them. I looked at my remaining potatoes and decided to give them up too. This time I tossed harder, only to increase my reach to her, and they did reach her but the potatoes fell on her dress on impact. She noticed it in an instant, touched the stain, and started crying, crying hard. I didn’t know what to do so I tried to move a little closer. She noticed my movement, and looked up. That’s when I saw the anger, the rage, the love for her precious wedding dress. Now it was scary, way way scarier than before. I picked my bag, adjusted my hat and in that very moment, launched myself in full speed away from her. I reckoned that I was being followed, so I ran in zigzag fashion for a minute or two before I came to a slow halt, panting and noticed I left her behind. The wails of her angst rang in my head that entire night.
Over the years I calculated the frequency of the nightmares to be annual. Not particularly in a definite time interval but sometime in the calendar year. The murder of aunt Belle by a fake zodiac killer who mixed poison in her herbal tea was the one that confirmed my suspicion that these nightmares were coming to life. They were toiling me in a way that I didn’t imagine. It was not even brusque; poor aunt belle was slurring my name in her last words, asking God to prolong my life, and I feel responsible for her death because I foresaw it and didn’t warn her.
I know how you must be feeling right now, vicariously picturing or trying to get sense out of this yellow message written on a rotten parchment. I’ve been in that zone. You might be marching your way to the cops with the letter, or trying to figure out some inventive way to help people and become Mr.Fantastic. You must be highlighting the salient features of this letter, trying to find the loose ends, sorting out the ubiquitous ones but trust me, it’s not worth it. The reason being, the last nightmare showed me that we, you, are going to be Amnesic.
~Your younger self.
Z.
