Dreams

An Unkindness in Canada

I step off a subway platform, and I’m somewhere in Canada. It looks like downtown Edmonton, though I’m never sure. Everything everywhere is a breathless grey, the air feels dull, suppressed. The teetering of this reality gives way to the gradual realization that I am not awake.

This dream begins the same, every time.

I step off the platform, and pass by a few people, who at first remain silhouettes and shadows, blurs in the background while I navigate my place. There are posters on the walls, their writings and pictures meshed and fuzzy, though I recall see red. I am walking towards a long set of wide stairs, of which there are no railings, just steps sandwiched between concrete walls. I pass by more people, all of whom are wearing black. I don’t ever see their feet.

Emerging from the underground, the world feels bright, but not. It feels real, but not. My skin warmed but only by a flash, and then it is neither cold nor hot.

Whenever I manage to extract myself from this particular dream, I’m always left with a sick residue that I knew all along, that I knew what was about to happen to me.

In this dream, I am walking, it’s quiet out, there’s no wind, yet the trees slightly sway, their false leaves a dim green. It’s not long before I pass more people. I don’t yet notice their faces, their expressions, or the way their body turns to follow mine, as I am ignorantly traipsing through the city.

These people don’t move from their spots. They simply pivot to face me.

It takes about what feels like seven or so dream minutes, for me to notice that these people are different. That something is horribly off, in this someplace that I am.

This somewhere bites me numb and hard. My mind seems to have placed everyone I have ever met into this bleak reality. Tita Anna, the Filipinos from Canada, my family, people I have met in America, and about one hundred bodies crowd this place in my mind.

It is when I see Erica, and I approach her, that horror and dread begins to seep into this world. My smile from seeing my old friend fades, and I am frozen, like her face. Her face is her, but instead, she is contorted, her mouth inhumanely wide open, stretched as if in a scream, stretched as if her jaw is about to rip. Her eyes are screaming too, like she is in wretched pain.

She’s screaming so loud.

It’s the screeching that hooks its way into my heart. And with this first scream, all the other people here, all the strangers in this dream begin to scream at me as well. Their tormented and twisted faces hold the same outstretched expression, their eyes painted with pain, as if they are being burned alive or dismembered within.

Slowly I become aware that I am dreaming, and that I’m in this particular nightmare. This dawning does nothing however, as I am still subjected to experiencing the same events, over and over, every single time.

I feel the urge to run, and at first it feels like I am, that I am leaving. Only to see that I have not moved.

This world begins to close, collapsing into itself. The people, once spread about, are now in a tighter embrace around me. I hold my hands tight to my ears, as I try to escape their sounds. I remember that in precisely eight dream minutes, which feels like both a century and a second, the screams go away, until I reluctantly investigate, only to see a horde, staring at me, silently screaming, their eyes still pleading.

This dream is awful. I hate it. I hate it. I fucking hate it. It’s a dream that haunts me throughout the day. Until it finally drifts far and away. It’s a dream that happens at least once a year, and if I’m unfortunate, once a week, but that was only one October back in Canada.

I feel like once my feet touch the platform, my body knows what it will be put through, yet the dream takes over and lulls me into obedience, fated to experience the exact events, from start to finish, again, and again.

Perhaps this is my hell.

I back away and into another silent screaming stranger, yet this person is the only one I don’t recognize, I never can remember what this person looks like when I wake. But I do remember that this person is the last to stop screaming. Theirs fading in and out.

Their face remaining stone still, their mouth stretched wide as if to catch moths.

Then suddenly, silence. Everywhere. All at once. I can hear my own blood rushing, my veins threatening to burst, my heart so fucking loud, it hurts.

I want to cry but I cannot. I want to scream, but I do not. I want so very much out of this place, but I am stuck facing this last person. I beg to wake.

Yet I do not know when I will wake and it feels like I never will. And that frightens me further.

The dream ends the same, just as it starts the same. It’s abrupt. Like an unfinished sentence, an unanswered question. An interruption.

I spin around, as the people, who were once standing on one spot, who once inhabited the same position, slowly close in on me. They’re floating. And each time I shut my eyes, I open to find these people closer. Ever nearer. Like a horrifying game of stop and go.

I hold my hands tight around my ears. I shrink into the ground.

The world becomes pitch, a rustling hum showers over me.

And then I am all alone, with myself, the quiet, and the dark.

I finally wake.