It all started with the dream, I guess, so I’ll just tell you about that first. Try not to be too cynical about it, because the dream itself isn’t the weird part. It’s what happened the next morning. The dream is sort of the first important bit.
I couldn’t move. That was the first thing. It kind of woke me, ‘cause I guess your body really wants to move when you’re asleep. Probably so your arteries and stuff don’t clog up with blood. At least, that’s always why I assumed people roll around in their sleep. Some people are crazy about it, though. Like my buddy, Frank, we used to share a bed when we were little and he stayed the night, nothing weird or anything, we were little and innocent, like I said. But that stopped because he used to kick and punch all crazy when he slept in my bed. He probably did in his bed, too, but who would really know that? Anyway, this one morning I woke up with bruises on my legs and my side, so my mom bought an air mattress for the next time Frank came over.
That’s why I woke up, though: I couldn’t move. I was looking up at my ceiling, which looked dark and far away. But it also had this bluish glow to it. And then my whole room lit up. It was basically a massive flood light from outside, pointing right at my bed. It was pure white, I can hardly even describe it. White as clouds. You know how sometimes if the sunlight comes through a window at the right angle, you can see those little particles floating around in the air? And they dance around and twirl and all that? When I was a kid, I thought they were actually living things, tiny bugs or something. Which I didn’t mind, because I wasn’t scared of bugs until I got older. That’s kind of backward of normal, I guess, but it’s true about me.
By the way, sorry if I talk a lot about when I was a kid. Susan, my therapist, made me do it a lot and I kind of got in the habit.
Anyway, those particles were dancing around my room, that’s how bright the light was. And like I said, I couldn’t move. And I started sliding toward the foot of my bed, only I knew it was a dream because my sheets and everything stayed perfectly still. It would almost look funny if it wasn’t such a freaky circumstance. My bare feet popped out from the sheets and then I just slid out like a baby or something. It was like I was separate from my sheets, there was something between me and them that made them stay where they were. An air pocket or something weird. And then I was floating on my back toward the window. It felt really strange. My instincts kept telling me I was going to fall backward and hit the ground, so I got a little bit of vertigo. But I didn’t fall, my back was totally rigid. My girlfriend Deborah told me that she used to play this game at parties, if there were only girls there. It’s called “Light As a Feather, Stiff As a Board.” It’s supposed to be some witchy, Satanic thing, which is weird because Deborah isn’t really into that kind of stuff. She mostly watches romantic comedies and anything to do with Valentine’s Day. Not that she’s a stupid, sappy girl or anything. She’s not. I couldn’t ever date a girl like that. But sometimes she just acts surprisingly girly. She’s also into sports, so that’s something.
And the way she described that game to me, it’s like these girls just get in a circle around whichever other girl is supposed to be light as a feather and they put their hands up in the air over her and kind of wiggle their fingers around and say the name of the game over and over again. Which is pretty funny, really. Imagine back when I used to play football, if every time I was about to throw the ball I had to yell, “Football!” and then whoever caught the ball had to yell it, too. That would be funny. I don’t know why I keep thinking of all these funny things, this whole story is really pretty serious. But that’s maybe just the person I am.
I knew pretty quick that I was floating toward the window. Like, it wasn’t that hard to tell. And when my feet were about to touch it, I realized that it was open. That kind of proved it was a dream, too, because I would never leave my bedroom window open at night. Too many bugs might fly in, especially in August like that. So I went right through the window. I’ve never really seen the window at that angle before, being right under it, but it made me think of all those people who were guillotined during the French Revolution and how it was probably good that they got to face the ground, because if they had to look up at the blade, that would be really scary.
I don’t know if I thought that during all of this or after it. But it’s a thought.
And then I was outside. My vertigo got worse, because my room is on the second floor. You’ve seen the house, but I don’t know if you’ve been to my room. It’s the one in the back corner of the second floor, like I said, and it kind of juts out from the rest of the house. And being up that high was pretty freaky. The other weird thing was that the light was above me now. I don’t even know when it happened. First it was at my feet, then it was above me. As if it teleported or something. I froze there for a minute, just hanging up in the air outside my window. Which is pretty cliché, I think.
But the thing is, I kind of stopped being scared once I really focused on the view. The light sort of started pulling away from me, toward the blackness of the sky. And when it did, I realized that it was probably the clearest night I’d ever seen. Before all this, I wasn’t really the kind of guy who would sit outside on the grass and just stare up at the stars. But this view kind of changed all that. It was like somebody took a paintbrush and flicked it across a black canvas. There were white dots all over and it was all so random, which made it kind of beautiful in a way. It was so calm. There was no wind, just the warm air on my bare skin, and the normal night sounds: crickets and stuff. And then just me and the stars. Nothing in between us. That’s the cool thing about space, if you really think about it: there is all this cool stuff out there, but there’s literally nothing between all of us and all of that.
Then I started to lift up toward the light and the view got even better. I mean, I’ve never imagined seeing stars up close like that. Not up close, really, but closer than usual. Bigger and brighter. They don’t really twinkle as much up there, they’re just bold.
I guess you’re probably sick of me talking about how I was being lifted up and up and up, so I’ll move on to when I first saw it. It was a big, black shadow against the already dark sky. It didn’t really have a discernable shape, either. It was just an amorphous blob. It was up there and I could see that the light was coming from underneath it. And just when the vertigo got so bad that I stopped caring about the stars and started worrying about whether or not I might puke all over myself, I was absorbed by it. The shape, I mean. And then I was inside this humid, dim space. The light went out and there was some whirring behind me, the sound of a giant, mechanical door rolling shut. And then a loud clank. And I was alone. Just for a few seconds. There was no sound, just me floating in this dark room. I could see silver rods and gears around me, but mostly it was all black. Then the silence was replaced by the sound of steam. And the room filled up with smoke. And then I blacked out. Which is kind of funny for a dream.
Then when I woke up (in my dream still, I didn’t actually wake up yet), I was staring up into another light. That’s sort of a motif of this whole thing, isn’t it? Bright lights in my eyes? The light was all I could see this time. But I could feel something different. It was more than just a feeling of being watched; it was a certainty. I knew there was somebody else in the room with me, right outside the light.
When they leaned in over me, I started to kind of freak out. There were two of them at first. They were shaped like humans, but they were something else. Their features, especially their eyes and mouths, kind of came in and out of view. I guess I’d describe them as shadows. They were solid enough to block out the light so that it wasn’t in my eyes anymore, but they almost looked like a heavy swarm of gnats. You know in the summer, when a million little flies seem to congregate together in the air and they make those weird packs that swarm around in different shapes? It was like that, only the gnats were packed together so tight, there weren’t any gaps between them. And sometimes they made faces. And sometimes they made hair. And sometimes they frowned or look perplexed, living statues made of ash.
I freaked out, man. It wasn’t like that’s how they really looked; it’s more like that’s how my mind interpreted them. As if I wasn’t used to seeing things like that, so my brain didn’t know exactly how to comprehend them. I tried to sit up. One of them put its hand on my chest to push me back down. Then I freaked out even more. See, I didn’t have my shirt on, ‘cause I sleep in my underwear. And the way the hand felt on my chest was like sandpaper. It scratched my skin, but didn’t really leave any marks. It was just roughness. So I started moving around a lot, trying to get off whatever bed or platform I was on at the time. Then a couple more of them showed up. They grabbed my arms and my legs. I had that sandpaper feeling all over my body; every time I moved, it scratched against me. The more I moved, the scratchier it seemed to get. I know that sounds weird, but if I kicked my leg more, the hands on my leg got rougher. It was their way of making me stop, I think.
And the crazy thing? I did. I just stopped moving and looked up at the light. And no matter what else they did to me, I knew it wouldn’t be worse than that feeling. Not because it hurt, which it didn’t. Just because of how weird it felt.
I don’t really want to go into details about what they did once I stopped moving. Some of it isn’t too bad, stuff like pulling back my lips and looking at my teeth. When they touched my lips with their hands, it was similar to when you go to the dentist and they numb your mouth. Tingly, almost. My heart really started racing when one of them pulled back my eyelids and got really close. The gnats formed an eye, which was looking right into mine. Making eye contact with it was so surreal, but it almost calmed me down. Like when I was looking up at the stars, you know? And my heart was racing but my body wasn’t moving. And my breathing was slow. And so I knew I was going to be okay.
I couldn’t even begin to describe the eye, though. And I don’t want to say what else they did to me, because it gets a little personal. I’m seventeen years old, so I’ve experienced things, you know? But not with tubes and wires and little shocks. And there were some even more personal places I wish they would’ve left alone.
It seemed to go on forever. Not like a dream that comes and goes. It played out in real time. Speaking of real time, did you know they made a movie like that? In Russia, I think. Where they just go through this party for about two full hours in one long take. All in real time. Well, it was like that. No cut scenes or anything. I’ve had dreams where I walk through a door and all of a sudden I’m in another dream. Or I just forget what I’m dreaming about and a new one starts up automatically without any transition. But this was going on forever. There wasn’t any pain, though. Just that sandpaper.
I woke up when my alarm went off. I caught my breath pretty loud. I was sleeping on my back, I think, which I never do because then I breathe funny and it wakes me up. My eyes opened up really wide and I just looked up at the ceiling again. This time it was a tainted yellow, bright from the rising sun. My heart was racing and the hair on my arms was standing straight up. When I put my feet on the floor, they were really wobbly; I didn’t even think I’d be able to stand up. But I made myself.
The first thing I do in the morning is shower. Well, technically the first thing I do is take a leak. But after that, I shower. And on my way into the shower, I caught a look at myself in the mirror. Which is a weird thing to say, because what else would you be doing in a mirror? I stopped myself and realized that my right eye was all bloodshot and watery. I’ve had pink eye before, but it wasn’t like that. It was blood red, like it was filled with the stuff. I think I stood there looking at it for about five full minutes before I remembered the shower was running.
Our house is really old, so I overhear things all the time that I’m probably not supposed to. I guess that works both ways, which is why I got paranoid and the whole fight started with my family that day. My buddy Frank lives like two blocks away from me, which in the country is basically two miles, but everything is more spread out when you live out there, so we just say two blocks. We take turns driving each other to school to save gas. Since neither of us has a job, it makes fiscal sense. At least, that’s what my mom says. So that was a Friday, which I know because we had a game that night. And I can talk more about the game later, too, if you want, because it has kind of a significance to it. Anyway, I called Frank on my phone because he isn’t always the most reliable person when it comes to picking me up. He has a lot of other stuff going on before and after school. I basically just had football, whereas he was in student council and weightlifting and even ping-pong club and stuff. So I called him to make sure he was actually going to pick me up and of course, the first thing we say on the phone is, “How ya been?” which is sort of dumb since we saw each other the last four days in a row at school. But that’s what we always say. So he says, “How ya been?” and for some reason I just kind of unload on him about the dream. Only I said it in a way, like, trying to be funny, because I didn’t want him to think it was too serious. My eye was better by the time I got out of the shower, but I was still a little shaken up. So I tell him about it and he has to make a joke, of course, and he asks me if they did that thing that’s so funny that they do to people in books and movies all the time, and when I tell him they did, he starts laughing pretty hysterically and making all these implications about it. Again, I don’t want to get vulgar since I don’t know you very well, but I think you can probably guess what I’m talking about.
It turned out he couldn’t take me to school that day because of the class board. He’s also our class president, but not in a nerdy way or anything. In fact, Frank is pretty quiet. Everybody likes him, but they like him genuinely, it’s not like he’s fake-nice to everybody and they’re fake-nice back. He actually likes people and is nice to them. I’m sure you know I was the quarterback, so that came with some popularity, too. I don’t like everybody, though. I’m also not fake-nice. I just don’t talk to people I don’t like. Makes things pretty simple, I guess. But I talk to Frank a lot. He’s been my best friend since we were in kindergarten. We are almost even built like twins. Or we were before I lost all this weight. Both sort of muscular but not in a bulky way, you know? Except I have this really light hair and his is dark brown. I think we both have blue eyes, though, but I think most people have blue eyes so that’s more of a coincidence. Is that true? That most people have blue eyes? Anyway, it doesn’t really matter.
When Frank can’t drive me to school, I have to go with my dad. Or rather, my dad has to take me. He doesn’t really have any reason to go into town other than to drop off my sister at her school and then get his morning coffee at the gas station. He farms the area around our house, which Susan always said was provincial, but she said it in a kind of snotty way. I don’t see anything wrong with provincial. But that’s his morning routine. Sister at Catholic school. Coffee. Fields. Then some odd jobs in the winter if we can’t really make ends meet. I didn’t even know we were so bad about making ends meet until a couple years ago when Christmas was scarce, but that’s not really important to all of this.
My house is really old. Did I say that already? It’s just an old farmhouse with white siding and our address in black, cursive lettering above the front porch. My room is on the second floor, way at the back of the hallway. The bathroom is next to that, which is cool because I have my own door to my own bathroom. None of my friends have anything like that, I don’t think. And then at the other end of the hallway opposite my bedroom is a skinny staircase, which comes down into the living room. If you turn left, you can go into the kitchen. If you haven’t seen it yet, which you probably have, you know that’s a pretty crappy description. Don’t worry about it too much, because it’s a long story and by the end of it, you’ll probably have an idea in your head of what it looks like anyway. Just remember that it’s old and it has really ugly brown carpet.
I went downstairs and walked through the living room, which is mostly open and empty right now, except the furniture and TV, and into the kitchen. Our kitchen is small; everybody says so. There’s basically room for all the usual stuff and then a little table where we all sit on a different side. Sort of like a card table, but nicer.
One thing I’ll say about my mom, she knows how to do breakfast. Pretty much every morning, we have what she calls a “full Irish.” I know she makes it for my dad, because he’s pretty connected to his roots. That’s why Tabitha goes to Catholic school, too. We don’t go to church, though. My mom doesn’t really know what her background is, she says it’s a big mixture of stuff and she’s not too interested. I think that’s sad, because I wish I knew where I came from, you know? Not that it’s important for my everyday life, but it could help me form an identity.
When they first got married, my mom made the full Irish every day because she loved my dad. But by the time I had the dream, she only made it because she wanted to tease him about the fact that they used to be in love. That’s my theory, anyway. They’ve been sleeping in separate bedrooms for about a year now, which I’d say pretty much corroborates my theory. Either way, waking up to the smell of a full Irish breakfast every day is pretty cool; there are worse houses, you know? I can’t imagine a house where you have to eat cereal from a box every day. I mean, I love Cinnamon Toast Crunch like nobody’s business, but it’s nothing worth getting out of bed for.
My plate was already made, so I sat down. And my dad said good morning so I said it back. And my sister said good morning so I said it back to her, too. My mom didn’t say anything and just did dishes. So I started to eat and I asked my dad if he could give me a ride to school. He said sure and then asked me how I slept. I said not good because I had a bad dream. And then my mom sat down and said my sister also had a bad dream. And that’s when the fight started.
I asked my sister what she dreamed about, just to be nice. Normally, I can be a little bit bratty toward my family. But she’s only eight years old and I’m seventeen, so there’s no reason I can’t indulge her just a little sometimes. But then she told me about her dream and it set me off.
She said she dreamed about God. “He came in through the window and picked me up. And I went flying up over the fields and went into this cloud. He kept poking me with stuff. I don’t know, it was weird.”
I looked around really angry at my mom and dad. They both looked back at me. And I knew exactly what they were doing. They were screwing with me, basically. Like I said, I can hear their conversations sometimes when they don’t know it; well, it was happening to me now. They heard what I said to Frank and told my little sister and now she was teasing me. My parents could be a little cold sometimes, but mostly they were just distant. This was ridiculous and it pushed me over the edge.
I cursed at them, which I try not to do anymore, but I had a bad habit of doing it back then. Back then, as if it was a long time ago. I did it just to antagonize them. To startle them, kind of.
“That’s really sick, you know,” is what I think I said. “It’s sad enough that you have to listen in on my private conversations, but it takes really messed up people to bring their little girl into it. “
I’m pretty sure I cursed a lot more when I said it then, though, because I remember my mom saying, “Watch your language around your sister.” And my dad tried to calm me down.
He asked me if I had the same dream as Tabitha.
“It was my dream,” I said. “Only it wasn’t God, that’s stupid.” I spit that last word across the table, and Tabitha sort of physically recoiled. I felt a little bad, but I was so mad at my parents for spying on me that it didn’t really matter that much. Tabitha got a little crabby right back and swore that she had that dream. My mom and dad gave each other a look again, as if they were asking each other for permission to say something. Which ticked me off, because I hate it when everybody in a room knows a thing except one person. Well, I hate it when I’m that person. If it’s somebody else, it can be somewhat amusing. But this time it was me, so I was annoyed.
“If you want to say something, just say it,” I said. So my mom took this huge, deep breath (which annoyed me even more, because that usually means she wants to talk) and then she said something that made me angry.
She told me she had the same dream. And so did my dad.