Atlantis

[icy_crusader]

This story is about a fear I've always had of sleepwalking and not being able to control your dreams. This is a tale of love, death, and insanity. It's fairly short as far as short stories go, so give it a read and tell me what you think.


Atlantis
Charlie Kirby

There are dreams I wish I could forget. They pursue me like an incessant shadow who curses that he cannot follow me into the dark so he cast his form upon the light of dreams. Ever since I was a young boy, I had dreams. Actually, it is almost a lie to say they were dreams for in fact they were nightmares. I had never really dreamed before. Dreams of failure, rejection, and death. I remember once in high school falling into a deep depression and almost ending my life because of their influence on my waking mind.
This is all, of course, before I met Angela. The first time I saw her was in a college psychology class. I was sitting at my desk gripping my fingers around the woody specks left on my pencil by repeated nervous sharpening and I remember seeing her raven hair resting on one divine shoulder, her delicate finger tips gripping around her books, her ivory face carved by Greek artist who resided in Heaven turned towards me, and her deep, wet blue eyes were directly on me. That's when my friend shot a spitball right into the side of my face. He hadn't received his maturity in the mail like the most us had. Our friendship would be strained from that day on. It was only after an intensive investigation that involved never speaking to or having her see me did I find out her name and which dorm she was in. Eventually, I spoke to her and we ended up having coffee and studying. We had lots of coffee and studying in college. She was studying to become a pediatrician and I was simply studying literature. As we dated, my dreams became less and less frequent. Once we married and shared a bed, they went away all but completely. It was as if when she filled my thoughts, that stygian shadow had no space to wreak his havoc upon my dreams. He had been replaced and he knew it.
We lived in bliss. It was almost something of a real dream in itself. We lived in house in a small neighborhood surrounded by forest about an hour from the city. Our neighbors were pleasant and varied, there was only one mean spirited recluse in the area, but that made the neighborhood all the more perfect. We planned on having children, two. Whether one was a boy and one a girl or both boys or both girls, we wanted two. The first boy would be named Jack and the first girl would be Helen or Annabelle. Our paradise together was in place and it seemed we would never have to leave our Eden.
Till she died.
I had spent the night at John’s house, a neighbor and co-worker. We were working on some business project and were working late into the night and then planned on going fishing that morning, so we figured I might as well sleep on his couch an hour or two before we left. I returned from fishing with nothing and I came back to nothing. The ambulance was outside my house and after getting out of the truck it was mostly a blur of a strange sort of deja vue and information.

“Sir, you wife has overdosed on her anti-depressants and...”
“Anti-depressants? She never told me...”
“That’s not all she took, but that’s mainly what it was.”
“But she doesn’t take anti-depressants! What was she doing with anti-depressants?”
“Sir, I’m trying to tell you we need to try and pump her stomach before we lose her completely. Let the police worry over why she had them.”

Only I seemed to be bothered about why she had them. She had a prescription for them, they said, since a month after we married and was just beginning to take a new one. She was taking one once a day for five months. While I had been sleeping with the blissful thoughts of her, she was having the nightmares. Her own shadow.

“Sir, your wife suffered from feelings of inadequacy. She didn’t feel she measured up to the expectations of herself and others.”
“But I praised her all the time. I told her....everything...”
“That’s probably why. Too much praise and worship can put a person in a position where they think they must be a way because people tell them they are that way. It’s most common in abused children who are told by parents they are worthless and end up living worthless lives because that is who they think are.”

My bride, my child. What did I do to you?

“The report is already filed away. Suicide by overdose brought on by severe depression.”
“But it wasn’t suicide! She was happy and...”
“Who woulda killed her? No one. Everybody loved her except herself. There’s a million of them in those cabinets over there. I stopped cryin for them a long time ago. Now just go home and get some sleep, your eyes look like peppermints.”

I had forgotten sleep. I had gone through the funeral business almost robotically. Her body was already in the morgue being dressed.

John came over with a basket of fruit. His face of that when lightning strikes the man standing next to you. Glad to be alive, but saddened for your friend.
“I told Susan you had plenty of fruit, but she said the thought was what counted.”
“Thanks. You want to come in?”
“No thanks. I have to go to town in a minute. I just wanted to let you know, I’ll be quiet.”
“Quiet? Quiet about what?”
“The sleep walking thing. You sleep walk right? That’s what I guessed from when you stayed at my house. I heard you walking all around that night. I didn’t tell anyone cause I figured they would suspect something from it, not just sleepwalking. You know?”
“No...I mean, yeah, I know. Thanks. Umm, have a....have a good trip.”
“Thanks.”

I never remembered sleep walking. Not even when the nightmares were at their worst. It was one of the things that shocked my mother the most about my sleeping habits. I was as still as my floor, the only thing moving on me was my sweat which dripped out my pores. That’s when I decided to sleep. Too long had I gone without it.

It was the worst nightmare that a man could ever have. The shadow had returned to my dreams, but now he was not simply a character ruining the stage, he was the master. His nimble thin fingers guiding the actions of the limp, wooden puppets all set in the miniature wooden version of what was my neighborhood. The false moon shone down on the house as I rose the from couch and skipped about the neighborhood till I came to one house. After following the shrunken path I determined that the house belonged to me. My dwarfed figurine then made its way through the window and...

I awoke not in dry warm bed, but what was now a baptismal of my own sweat and all that was sacred was now cursed. I rushed to my front door not bothering with any light but that which was provided by God in the creation of night. After bringing much turmoil to the meticulous order of the house, the front door was swung open and I ran to the side of the house and to where the bathroom window lead outside among the bushes along the bricked wall of the saddened home.
There are moments in some lives in which occurs an epiphany. The receiver becomes aware of everything. Every accursed and blessed thing and understands all that has happened in the past, present, and can see sometimes see the path to come. Mine came in flashes, bright blue and white flashes and motions. A bright white door surrounded by blue being pushed open and the trek through the navy blue grass and great white moon shining above. Then, the stepping into that blue window and the replacing of those white pills.
And there before me lay my raven, my torturous object which would not allow my mind freedom from my pain. And now I knew what had happened, I knew. He was watching. All this time, the shadow not been cast away by Angela’s presence, but repressed. He had been watching when I was not. He had noticed everything. He had seen the pills, he had seen the signs. He had whispered the plans which seemed so careless for me to stay at John's house. When I fell asleep, he took that time to control not only my dreams, but body and led me to replace those pills with whatever God punishing poison I had obtained. Angela had woken up, he white nightgown flowing about her as she felt free from my constant bombardment of praise. She took the pills into her mouth and as she swallowed, she must have realized the difference. She grabbed the bottle and checked it before she fell spilling the pills everywhere, making it unsure of how many she actually took. She died not knowing her killer, but only her murder.
Demon he was! Not a shadow! A dark and fiery demon! “Curse these hands!” I cried and rushed to the kitchen grabbing a butcher knife that Angela had used so many to times to make the most perfect meals. “You will not subdue me as you did before! Let us see what you can do with a body with no hands!” I came down hard and quick but my nervous unsteadiness misguided the knife and I ended by chopping of my finger. I screamed, I’m sure, for all of Heaven and Hell to hear. I quickly turned on the water and wrapped my hand in a towel letting the cold, calm water mix with the fiber and blood sinking into the swirling bottom of the sink.
As I watched the water falling past my hand and into a collecting puddle at the bottom of the sink, my mind raced. My mind went through every image of demon I had ever seen, every story or ghost tale I had ever heard and realized how I could defeat this demon and restore our Eden.

I drove like madman with speed and carelessness, but god watched for no one to stop me. It seemed relatively no time no time had passed before I was at the morgue and bursting the window with my good hand to get inside. It seems morgues here do not much worry if bodies are stolen with the lack of their lack of a decent security system. Angela was waiting for me in the immediate parlor asleep. Ready for our leave.
My bloody hands gripped the steering tighter than Alexander could grip his empire with his last breathe and I drove a long ways to a cliff overlooking the lonely ocean. Taking my bride into my arms, I looked over the ocean and to the palette of paints surrounding the orange rising sun.
“See my darling? As the sun begins a new day, we shall begin our new life! Won’t it be grand?”
Reader, you may remember this as the memoirs of a madman, but I am not mad. I am cursed. Cursed with demon, dream, and love. So now, when you stand upon the kelley green grass of a cliff or sandy shores with their crashing white waves and see the ocean swaying back and forth to the motion of a symphony conducted by the Creator, you will know there is peace out there among the waves. Peace where I and my Angela rest among the feeding fishes. And as Atlantis hides among the ocean, so do I and my bride.

 

[icy_crusader]

I was just wondering, I am considering changing the dream from the whole running throught he neighborhood thing to an Atlantis reference. Does anyone have an opinion?