Every so often I find myself in a phase of having extremely vivid dreams. When this happens, they are usually rather disturbing or seem to have some sort of deep meaning to them.
This weeks dreams have all been about children.
Yesterday night’s was particularly vivid (for lack of a better word).
There is a sort of antiqued tone to everything I can see. The dream begins with me waking, to the sound of loud construction. I tell myself to go back to sleep and wake again, hours later, to the sound of trains. Train after train after train. It’s raining and I can smell that rain on hot asphalt smell.
I wake and dress warm, and go out the front door of the quaint little house I had been asleep in. I look down and the ground is muddy, and it’s all over my shoes.
I continue walking.
I reach a flight of stairs. The rail is twisted black iron and I can feel my shoes slipping on the stairs as I ascend. Flight after flight after flight. I reach a door, and open to the top (and only) floor. There are two chambers within this room. One is empty and bare and surrounds another, which is contained by mesh/metal wiring and a black curtain.
I hear the shuffling of feet, lots of them. I hear the whimpers of children. I smell gas, like when the stove is left on.
I see a gap in the mesh through a tear in the curtain. The smell of gas and sound of feet shuffling both grow stronger. I reach blindly into the gap in the mesh, and my hands are torn form the wire, and I can see them bleeding. I grasp on the inside of the chamber, and find my hands secured around one small little frame.
I hear screaming and feel the intense urge to escape. I pull the little human out of the inner chamber hastily and go out the door. The rain is pouring onto the stairs, I am afraid to fall, yet I cannot open my eyes. My eyes are shut tight, involuntarily. I succeed at opening them slightly once or twice but see only the iron handrail on which I am clinging, and once see the frightened blue eyes of a little boy. They won’t open again. I sense that I am done with the stairs and feel the mud beneath my feet again, and continue. Then I sense that I am in the door of my house.
Again, I am in the rain and ascending the stairs, empty handed. I reach the top again, open the door, smell the gas, hear the screaming, reach blindly, and pull out a little girl, seemingly about two years old. She has wild, long, wavy dark hair. She has no shoes on, I have never seen her before in my life but somehow she looks familiar. I go to the door and look back, hating myself for not being able to get the rest of the children. I hate myself for leaving them there, screaming. The gas is choking me, and I try to open the door and hold it open. I hear coughing. The door slams shut and suddenly weighs a ton. I cannot pull it open, I cannot save them from this suffocation. I slip down the first step, and the little girl clings tighter around me. I cannot open my eyes completely, but can see a little. I can see the locks of her hair blowing in the wild wind and the rain dripping from the flights of stairs above me.
I reach home.
There is a fireplace, lit and warm, and a table with two children at it. They are the children I took from the room. They are eating, and my mom is standing to the side of them.
I look at her, crying, and then look to the little boy, (now realizing consciously that the boy is Elijah) and tell her “Now you have your baby and your grand baby.”
I have quite a few more dreams from this week, but I think this post would be three miles long if I wrote all of them.
