A Thousand Screams

Staying Silent

The girl has trouble sleeping. It's agony to watch her, every night, tossing and turning, if I reached out... one second.... one night of peace. 

Mommy startles me. She's humming softly. So softly. I can barely hear her. I notice that she's holding daddy's gun in her hand. She comes over to the bed and moves a lock of hair from my forehead, tucking it behind my ear. I start to cry, but without making a sound. I don't like guns. Daddy always told me never to touch them. Mommy wipes away the tears from my face. I start to move, but she stops me with a hand on my shoulder.

"Shh, it's okay, go back to sleep sweetie..."

Mommy brings the barrel of the gun to rest on my forehead. I start to whimper, trying to inch back under the covers so she can't see or reach me, but I'm frozen with fear and I can't move.

"It's okay, nothing can hurt you now sweetheart..." 

The girl opened her mouth suddenly, perhaps to let out a scream, but the she was cut off by the loud bang of the gun. It was done.

I scream.

I sit up straight in my bed, earning a whack on the head from my brother, who I share a room with.

"Jeez, Stella, it's not like somebody died or anything." he teases, jokingly.

If he only knew.

I grimace and push myself onto my feet wearily. I wish I could say that I've gotten used to the dreams, but if I said that I would be lying. They are every bit as vivid as the first time.

Last year, when the dreams started, I tried to ignore them, but after they continued night after night, each time an even more horrible picture, I couldn't take it anymore. I ran down stairs, crying and screaming in panic.

My parents heard me and ran into the living room, sleepy-eyed, still in their pajamas. They tried to comfort me, but I was inconsolable, screaming and crying that I was dead, I was dead and none of this was real. I would shout out names of people I had never met, saying that I had been stabbed to death, or shot, or worse until I eventually fell back to sleep from exhaustion. My parents did their best, but the best they could do wasn't good enough. They couldn't make the dreams go away, and as much as I shouted and screamed for them to help me, they couldn't. They just couldn't.

At first my parents insisted, like all parents do when their child wakes up screaming and crying, that it was just a dream. But it seemed so real that I needed to find out if, somehow, these dreams really were what I thought they were: real. One day, early in the morning I ran downstairs. That night I had a dream about a little boy who was murdered. I thought I recognized him, so I dodged my parents' tired faces, and went to the TV, turning on the news, trying to see if maybe, just maybe, he would be there, and then my parents would understand and believe me. My parents, tired and worried about my constant insistence that all of this was real, watched the news, expecting, like all parents do, that I would be proven wrong, and them proven right. But that wasn't what happened.

He was on the news. That boy that I had seen in my dream had been found dead, just miles away from where we lived. It was his stepdad that did it. He was only five years old. I told my parents that it was him, the boy that was in my dreams, but they absolutely refused to believe me, and instead left the living room, talking in frightened whispers. I strained to listen, but they were saying words that I didn't understand, words like psychiatrist, medication, schizophrenia. Knowing now what those things meant, I'm glad about what happened.

They sent me to a therapist the next day. If I were them, I would have sent me to an insane asylum to live out the rest of my days. Even I thought I was going crazy. But all they did was sent me to a therapist. They really did try their best.

"How was your day, sweetheart?" Dr. Gardoy asked, his voice warm and friendly.  I sat in his office on a plush couch surrounded by stuffed animals.

"Good."

"I hear you've been having some bad dreams? Huh, Stella?" he continued.

"Yeah, I have."

"Can you tell me about them?" he prompted.

"No."

"Why?" he said, looking puzzled.

"You don't want to hear them." I whispered, shy and scared. My hands were shaking as I thought of the dream I had the previous night.

"You can tell me anything," he said in a friendly and sympathetic tone. "I'm here to help you."

I explained the dream.  Throughout the entire detailed description, and after that, story after story, dream after dream, his face darkened more and more. After the scheduled time had passed, he pulled me aside, separating me from my parents.

"Sweetheart," he called me again, but this time it didn't sound friendly; it was a sad word, a dark word. "Are you afraid of your parents?"

"No." I responded

"Have they ever done anything to hurt you?"

"No!" I said more forcefully this time, catching on to his meaning.

"Are you sure?" he asked again. "Like I said, you can tell me anything. Tell me, and I can help you. They won't hear this, it's between you and me. Patient confidentiality."

I yelled "no" once again and ran out the door of his office.  I ran without thinking, without a destination.  Suddenly, I stopped, and looking up, I realized that I was at my friend Freya's house.

I don't blame Dr. Gardoy for sending Child Protective Services to our house that week, and I don't blame him for drawing that conclusion. I would probably think the same thing if a child had just sat and described several murders and other horrible acts of violence to me.

After Child Protective Services decided that, indeed, I was telling the truth to Dr. Gardoy, and my house was more than safe for a child to live in, my parents scolded me, assuming that I was the one making up stories. Even though they saw on the news the same thing that I had that morning. Even though I had told Dr. Gardoy that I wasn't being abused.

They didn't force me to go talk to Dr. Gardoy anymore after that. They also didn't give me the time of day after that either. Well, that's what I get, I guess. That's what I get for seeing murder in my sleep. 

In fact, nobody gave me the time of day at all. Nobody except for my best friend Freya, a big-time murder mystery buff. She sat and listened, wide-eyed, and defended my stories, even asking questions when the other children ran away to tell a teacher, or just ran away. I even talked to the teachers (the ones who would still listen to me at least), who assumed I was just a troubled child with a large imagination. But after I explained, in detail, a sexual assault and murder of a five year-old girl, they too ignored me, and reported me to the principal for my behavior.

After a month of these nightmares, with only Freya to listen to my stories, I even called Dr. Gardoy. I explained my latest dream to him and insisted that the teenage girl that was stabbed to death outside her front door had been on the news that morning. He sat there, listening, then insisted that I not call him again. He hung up the phone before I could protest.

My parents didn't know how to put up with these terribly accurate predictions, so they sent me over to Freya's house to be home-schooled.  Her parents weren't thrilled about it, but they accepted without too much protest.  While I was over there, I was barely looked at, and nobody talked to me except for Freya. I learned eventually to stop telling these details to anyone. Anyone but Freya.  Eventually, as murder mystery gradually fell off her radar of interests -- other, more 'normal' things popping up in the forefront -- I even stopped telling Freya about them.

Staying silent about these horrors takes all of my energy, but if I didn't who knows what would happen?