Dreams: Part I

The dream started off like any other dream, I guess. You know, I was running really fast, like the Flash, kinda fast. I was flying, I could teleport, you name it, I could do it. Call me a nerd if you want, but this is how my dreams tend to be. There’s other things happening, but this is usually a standard, core, to the dream.

Anyway, so this was happening, and the next thing you know, I’m just regular me again, and I’m standing in some very unfamiliar apartment with sea foam colored walls with white trim. All the furniture was also white. It seemed like something out of a bad Martha Stewart magazine. Then I saw her. She was beautiful. She was definitely Latina, but even from across the room I could see that her eyes were shockingly green against her dark skin. I learned later that her name was Lilly, but that wasn’t until way later.

“Who are you?” she screamed, slightly in shock.

“Um, this is my dream, I think I should be asking you that,” I replied, with a cocky grin.

“Your dream?” she asked, stumbling backward a few steps. “What do you mean, your dream?” she put a hand against her forehead.

“You know,” I sighed, slowly walking closer to her, “I go to sleep, and then images come to mind.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I guess I was feeling a little lonely when I went to sleep.”

“Ew,” she pulled further away from me.

“Wow, my imagination is very f**ked up,” I laughed, turning away from her.

“I am not part of your imagination!” she shouted, taking a step forward.

“What do you mean?” I asked, losing interest, to be honest. What the heck was I doing wasting my time sleeping imagining this conversation.

“I’m real!” she patted herself up and down, as though that proved it. “I don’t know how I got here, but I’m not supposed to be.”

“Then why don’t you leave?” I motioned towards the door.

“I don’t know how to leave. And to be frank, if we’re talking about anyone leaving, then you should go,” she said, smugly. “This is my apartment after all.”

“So that’s where we are,” I grinned, putting my hands on my hips and taking another look around the room. “Great sense of style you’ve got here,” I stated, sarcastically.

“I don’t need to prove myself to some guy who apparently imagines himself company in his dreams.”

“Hey,” I started, “not cool.” I put a finger to my mouth, as to think apparently. “Are you dreaming right now?” I looked at her intently, “You know, maybe our dreams are colliding or something!”

“I can’t remember going to sleep,” she pondered the thought. “What was I doing before I got here?” she wondered, out loud. “What day is today?”

“Today?” I said in a British accent, mocking Dickins, “Today is Christmas Day!”

She wasn’t amused.

“Okay,” I frowned, “it’s Friday.”

“Friday!” she smiled, “Now I remember!” She started to pace around the room, quickly, as she remembered what she had done. “I had gone to the beach in the morning to improve my tan,” she began.

“Your tan looks gorgeous as it is,” I complimented her.

“Well then I apparently had a good tanning session,” she grinned at me, making my heart skip a beat. “Afterwards I went to the gym, had lunch and then…” she paused, “What on Earth did I… Oh yes! Today was Karey’s birthday! I went out to the club with the girls!”

“So you’re one of those girls then?” I asked, slightly put off, imagining her drunk, dancing on a bar, no self respect.

“Wow, judging already,” she stared me down. “No wonder you go to bed feeling lonely.” Ouch… “No, I don’t like clubbing usually, but tonight was different. Why was it different?” she asked herself before quickly exclaiming, “Oh yes!” She looked pleased with herself. “I was meeting up with a guy I had met at Starbucks the day before! Gavin! I figured we could hang out together with my friends around. Safer that way,” she pointed to me, as though she were trying to teach me a lesson. “But what happened next?”

“Oh I think I know what happened next,” I sighed. “Do we need to go to the bedroom so you can remember better?”

“Oh no!” she shrieked.

“What?!” I asked, suddenly panicked.

“You’re right, we did go in there, but it wasn’t how you think!” Tears were streaming from her face.

I ran to her side and held her up as her knees buckled beneath her.

“Are you okay?” I asked, at a loss for what I should say in this situation.

“He raped me!” she screamed at me, through her tears, “Do you think I’m okay?!”

“I...I...I ju…just meant,” I stuttered.

“No,” she sighed, and gave me a small hug, as though we were old friends. “I’m sorry. You were trying to be nice, but it’s not li...li…” 

The scream that she let loose was worse than anything I had ever heard. She pushed away from me, holding her hands over her mouth as the tears poured from her eyes like waterfalls. I quickly turned around to see what she was looking at.

I didn’t understand how it hand’t been there before, but then again, this was a dream, and it seemed to be following her rules. There, right behind me was the doorway to what must have been her bedroom, and upon the bed laid Lilly’s dead body and a man, calm as they come, naked, picked at his fingernails with a blood-soaked knife.

I turned back to Lilly on the floor. I knew even less of what to say to her now than I had a second ago. 

“He killed me?!” she screamed. “That bastard!”

“Do we even know if this is real?” I asked.

Suddenly the scene of Lilly’s death rewound before me and then played out. I had to sit and watch as the man she called Gavin, first treated her nicely, then as he beat he and raped her, and then, as though it hadn’t been hard enough to watch, then he pulled out the knife that I had seen him picking at his nails with, and then he butchered her like some sort of recent kill he had just shot while out hunting.

I knew though, that as hard as this had been for me to watch, it had to’ve been harder for Lilly. I turned back to her as she stood up off the floor. The scene had gone back to, what I guessed, was present time. Gavin had gotten off the bed and was strolling around Lilly’s apartment, as though it was his own, and he had done nothing wrong. He walked to the kitchen and pulled out the milk and started to drink from the carton. 

Lilly stood next to me. “You need to help me,” she said, with anger in her voice.

“With what?” I asked, feeling the color run from my face.

“You need to help me kill him for what he did to me.” She walked across the room and stood in front of him. Staring up at him as he drank her milk, like he had done no wrong. “Will you help me?” she asked, turning back to look at me.

I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I thought that this was all just a dream. A very, very messed up one, but a dream all the same. Maybe that was the case, because I heard myself say, “Yes, yes I will.”