Coloured Dreams

Chapter 5 - Nightmares

The voices carried down the hallway, slithering through the crack underneath the closed door. One was high pitched, filled with a sense of urgency. The other was low, so soft that I thought it might disappear into nothing. Footsteps quickly proceeded towards the room, stopping outside. The door was flung open to reveal both Ryan and the visitor.

Laurel. She was taller than I remembered, her pretty heart shaped face framed by a blanket of wheat coloured bangs. Her left hand tugged gently on the silver sleeper that hung from one of her ears. It was a nervous gesture, one I'd seen her make over and over again. The sound of a tiny bell tinkled with each movement.

Ryan hugged the wooden frame, eyes lowered and shoulders hunched. He didn't invite her in, just shuffled past her to sit on the bed. Laurel invited herself in instead. She turned to face him. lifting her eyes towards the curtains and mumbling about the lack of natural light.

The conversation was brief. It was one that had been repeated often since that night last Spring. Many times, Laurel and Ryan had sat in the same spots, rehashing the same words. She would glance at him with compassion, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. He would look anywhere but at her, his mind on other things.

She never stayed long and the trips were getting shorter, as well as further apart. I think, she was tired of talking to herself. Ryan was too wrapped up in his own grief and guilt to listen to anyone else. It didn't matter that they were all going through the same thing, to him it was different. To Ryan, his whole world had collapsed.

Laurel had tried each time she spoke to him to let him see things her way. It wasn't his fault, it was an accident. My parents didn't blame him for what happened. She wanted him to let it all go, to breath again. Deal with the pain and move on. I'd want him to do that she stressed. I would want him to live again.

If I dream travel into a nightmare, I remove myself quickly. At first, Ryan’s nightmares are just like dreams. They seem harmless, full of colours, clouds and passages of light. Then they change.

A dark shadow appears on the horizon like a coming storm. It’s all the thoughts Ryan suppresses by day, wishing he could magically erase them but that’s not what happens. They fester inside his soul until they take over. They escape from the darkness and ooze over into his dreams, over taking them and destroying all the calm, the peace and love.

His nightmares create another world. They are colours all jumbled up weaving viciously in and out of each other. His shadow is so persistent that it’s turned from grey to black over time. It hangs overhead, pushing the colours into each other until they become one entity and his entire world is black.

I don’t like being in them. I avoid them at all costs. The first time I entered one, I thought I would never get out again. It may even have been possible to lose my way and be trapped inside forever. The emotions stirred up my soul like the descent of a rollercoaster. There was no air to breath. There was no room to move. Nowhere to run. It felt as if I was dying all over again. For me, it was the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced. It paralysed me with fear.

I know what he's thinking because I often have the same thoughts myself. He dreams about the night I passed over. Actually, it's all I ever think about. How can I not when every time I look down, I see the distressed and ragged look on Ryan's face?