Warning: Some may find this nightmare offensive or
disturbing.
It involves rape and suicide.
This thing has been fucking with my head for days now.
Ya know, it's kinda funny how things change. Fragmentation often helps me
perceive facets of the soul, and I can perceive such horror. Perhaps
it's not so much the fact that I can perceive the horror; perhaps it's just
that now, now I know I can perpetuate it, too. We are the progenitors of
horror. Evil is inherent to our existence.
But it didn't start out that way. Things were going so well, or so I thought.
(She thought so, too (dream knowledge).) I was really happy, maybe for the
first time in my life. And she seemed to be too; finally out in the
world, finally creating. Between us, the closeness, the intimacy, was.
We had been together for so long, since high school. We had made it through so
much, especially since she was so much younger than me.
Every once in a while, I sense hesitancy, a gap opening between us. I sense...
something... distant. I can't identify it. I can't... And then the gap closes,
and I forget.
Doing laundry, you get very familiar with someone. Underwear tells
you alot about someone's physical well-being.
These gaps... they start coming on more frequently. I start to notice them after
they've gone. I start to notice that they only show up at certain times. No,
they only show up at one time: sex.
Maybe she was trying to tell me something, maybe she couldn't face me and tell
me. It had happened before? Maybe she was doing it subconsciously, or in a
daze. But gradually, I began to have an overwhelming sense that something was
very, very wrong. Our minds work in mysterious ways, subtle ways, working
towards some sense of equilibrium.
I start noticing new, strange things doing my usual around-the-house cleaning.
She had never been a spotter; she starting spotting. Blood. Sometimes she
would come home during the day, she would change clothes, and never mention it.
Those clothes stank. They stank of beer and cigarettes and body odor. And
neither of us smoke anymore.
Trying to be casual, I ask her if she's smoking on the sly, that it's OK if
she is, I won't be mad or anything. That I understand, that sometimes I
really want one too, and sometimes I slip. But her reaction is surprising. She
is kind of shocked, truly, and why would I ask something like that? She's not
mad, so I don't think she's lying. She's not defensive. (Innocent.)
Then it occurs to me what has been nagging at me. Missing things. Clothes,
specifically. Just gone. No explanation, no mention of it. She's becoming
increasingly depressed, like she used to be. She goes to a shrink, starts
taking medication. It helps, for awhile. I try to be supportive, tell her (show
her) that I'm there for her. Does she want/need to talk? Can I do something to
help? Is it me? Am I doing something? No, no. No. She says that alot too. No.
I was gone for some reason when she first tried. Dreams work that way, you
know. I came home, it was late, it was dark. I could smell the blood when I
walked in the door. Running towards that sticky smell of death, I found her in
the bathroom, hemorrhaging blood, unconscious. There was so much of it, by the
time I got to her, I was covered. She lived. Dreams work that way, you
know.
It takes a few weeks for her to come home from the hospital. I don't know why
they didn't keep her longer. She was catatonic with depression. But then I
began to wish that she stayed that way, which just made me feel worse. I was a
horrible, worthless creature, subhuman, inhuman. Why didn't I just let her
die? I couldn't. I loved her too much. Or did I just like the status quo? Was
I selfish not to let her end the suffering?
The spotting stopped.
More weeks passed as she gently rose from the depths of her despair. The
antidepressants started to work. She apologized. She cried, she laughed. I
began to understand the truth of my inhumanity. And then, one morning, she
announced she was ready to go back to work. And she did.
The spotting returned.
She stopped talking to me at some point, although I don't recall when. That was
OK, I didn't deserve conversation with a real, live human. Something vital had
died in her. When I saw her eyes, I saw hatred. I knew that she loathed having
to be with me (not dream knowledge). I continued living - existing.
I came up to get some lunch and found her. She was sobbing on the couch, her
skirt in tatters, her nose bleeding, her eye already blackening. When she saw
me, she reached out for me; I went to her, held her close. What happened? I
asked. Did you get mugged? No. What then? Nothing. Nothing?
Silence.
Quietly, I was raped.
It came out in a deluge then. The story unraveled from her shattered
confidence and wrapped itself around my soul. This was not just rape, it was
something bigger, more evil. The bastard had been doing this for
years. He had raped her hundreds of times.
Her tiny frame prevented any possible physical defense. The blood was not
spotting, it was from the torn lining of her vagina. Somehow, he had gotten
into the very fabric of her mind, and that made it her fault. Her
fault? I took her to the bathroom and I bathed her broken body, a body I hadn't
seen in months. Bruises and cuts covered her torso, back, her breasts.
I made her comfortable. I put her to sleep. I climbed into my car, drove to
where he worked. I found him out back, in the pallet yard. I grabbed a 3"
pipe length and smacked him in the back of the head. He didn't go out
immediately. He was a big, ugly motherfucker. Above him I methodically began
to break his bones. Hands. Arms. Feet. Legs. And then, the bastard
still awake, I began to beat his head in until it disintegrated. A mess of
brains and bone were spread around me in the yard. I dropped the pipe next to
his corpse. I spit on him. I walked back to the building and went into their
bathroom. I washed as much of the blood and gore from my hands and face as I
could. I walked out to my car, his coworkers staring at me with a mix of shock
and anger. Good for them.
This is a work of fiction. It is based on my dream.
In it I died her death, I died his death, and I was raped.
I do not condone murder, but this dream made me understand it a little better.
Dreams work that way, you know.