I looked around and sighed. Great One of these dreams. Just what I need.
I'd always had incredibly realistic, Technicolor, all-senses-on dreams my whole life. I'd tried telling Dad about them, but though he was sympathetic, he didn't really get what I was talking about. It wasn't every single night, of course. But maybe 65 percent of the time. In my dreams I felt cold and hot, could smell things, taste things, feel the texture of something in my mouth.
Once, after a shop downtown had been held up, I'd dreamed I'd been in that shop and had gotten shot. I'd felt the burning heat of the bullet as it bored through my chest, felt the impact from the blow knock me off my feet. Tasted the warm blood that rose up in my mouth. Felt myself staring at the shop ceiling, old-fashioned tin, while I slowly lost consciousness, bleeding to death. But it had been just a dream.
The really annoying thing was, even though I almost always knew I was dreaming, I was powerless to stop them. Only a few times I had called, "Cut!" and managed to get myself out of some situation. Mostly I just had to suck it up.
Which explained why I was standing in the middle of this swamp-jungle place, thinking, Damn it.
This would teach me to buy touristy postcards to send to my friends back home. At the time I'd thought they were funny-pictures of a Louisiana swamp, or a huge plantation house, or the front of a strip joint on Bourbon Street — all with a tiny picture of myself pasted on them. But apparently the images had sunk into my subconscious too well.
Hence the swamp. Okay, I need to release any feelings about this place, I thought, and just see what happens, what the dream needs to show me. I looked around. My bare feet were ankle-deep in reddish-green-brownish water, surprisingly warm. Beneath my feet the bottom was super-slick clay, fine silt that squished up between my toes. The air was thick and heavy and wet, and my skin was covered with sweat that couldn't evaporate. Hardly any sunlight penetrated to the ground, and I tried to convince myself it was a fascinating example of a rain-forestlike habitat.
Then I saw the ghosts. Translucent, gray, Disney World ghosts, floating from one tree to the next, as if playing ghost hide-and-seek. I saw a woman in old-fashioned clothes, a gray-haired man in his Sunday best. There was a hollow-eyed child, wearing rags, eating rice from a bowl with her fingers. And a slave, wrists wrapped in chains, the skin scraped raw and bleeding, I began to feel cold, and all the tiny little hairs all over my body stood on end. There was no sound-no splash of water, no call of bird, no rustle of leaves. Dead silence.
"Okay, I've seen enough," I told myself firmly. "Time to wake up "
The mists around me got thicker, more opaque, swirling in a smoky paisley pattern around the trees, the cypress knees, the Spanish moss. Maybe ten yards away, a log rolled-no, it was an alligator, covered with thick, dark green skin. I saw its small yellow eyes for a moment, right before it silently slid into the water, headed my way.
Crap.
Something touched my bare ankle, and I yelped, jumping a foot in the air. Heart pounding, I looked down. An enormous snake was twining around my bare leg. It was huge, as thick around as my waist, impossibly strong, dark, and wet. Its triangular head framed two cold, reptilian eyes. The constant flick of its tongue across my skin made me feel like I was covered with crawling insects. Adrenaline raced coldly through my veins, tightening my throat, speeding up my heart. I tried to run, but it held me fast. Uselessly I pushed at it with all my strength, trying to uncoil it from around me. I punched its head and barely made it bob. It coiled around me till I was weighted down by snake, surrounded by snake, my breath being squeezed from my lungs. I gasped for breath, trying to scream, digging my fingernails into the heavy, coiled muscles around my neck, and suddenly I knew that I was going to die, here in this swamp, without understanding why.
"Daddy!"
With my very last shred of strength, a scream burst from my throat. Then it was choked off- the snake was around my neck. I couldn't feel my arms anymore. I was light-headed and couldn't see…
Then all around me the world grew bright, like a floodlight had been turned on. I gasped and blinked wildly, unable to see, the snake still around my neck-
"Hold still, damn it," said a voice, and strong hands worked at my neck. I sucked in a deep breath as the snakes grip loosened and I could breathe again, I gulped in cool, air-conditioned air, feeling the cold sweat run down my temple, down my back.
" Wha, wha-"
"I heard you yell," Axelle said, and with difficulty I brought her into focus.
Slowly I struggled upright, my hand to my throat. I was still gasping, still choked by panic. I looked around, I was in my little room at Axelle's in New Orleans, She looked uncharacteristically disheveled-hair rumpled from sleep, grumpy, her body barely contained inside a red lace slip.
"What happened?" I croaked, my voice as hoarse as if Td been coughing all night. Looking down, I saw that my top sheet had gotten twisted into a thick rope, and this had been wound around my neck,
"I was having a nightmare," I said, still trying to orient myself. "A snake…" I pushed the sheet away, kicking it away from me, wiping my hand across my damp forehead, "God."
"I heard you yell," Axelle said again,
"How did you get in? My door was locked."
She shrugged. "It's my apartment. Nothing is locked to me."
Great. "Well, thank you" I said awkwardly, "I thought I was dying-it was… really realistic," I swallowed again, my hand brushing my throat, which ached,
Axelle frowned and nudged my fingers away, tilting my chin. She looked at my neck, at the sheet, and back at my neck. At the expression on her face, I got up and shakily made my way to the little mirror over the white bamboo dresser. My neck was bruised, scraped, as if I truly had been strangled.
My eyes widened, Axelle went to my window and ran her hands around the edge of it. The shutters were pulled and bolted from inside, and the window had been locked.
"It was just a dream," I said faintly. Unless of course Axelle had been trying to kill me. But I didn't sense danger from her-she'd just woken me up. It sounded stupid-it was hard to explain. But sometimes I had a sense about people-like in seventh grade, when I had instantly hated Coach Deakin, even though everyone else had loved him and thought he was so great. I'd hated him immediately, for no reason. And then six months later he had been arrested for sexually harassing four students.
I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, then drank some, feeling the ache in my throat as it went down.
"I don’t see how you could do that to yourself? " Axelle murmured as I shook out the covers, untwisting the sheet and spreading everything flat, "You dreamed it was a snake?"
I nodded, folding my covers way down out of the way at the bottom of the bed. I didn't want them anywhere near my head, "In a swamp."
Axelle looked at me thoughtfully, and, for the first time since I'd known her, I saw shrewd intelligence in her black eyes, "Well, leave your door open tonight," she said, pushing it wide. "In case you… need anything." Okay.
Murmuring to herself, Axelle traced her fingers lightly around my door frame, almost like she was writing a secret message with her fingers.
"What are you doing?"
She shrugged, "Just making sure the door is all right."
O-kaaay.
"Call me if you… get scared or anything," Axelle said before she turned to go.
I nodded. And the weird part was: I actually found that comforting.
Then she was gone, her red slip swishing lightly through the kitchen.
I sat up in bed, propped against the headboard, and didn't go back to sleep until the sun came through my shutters.