I slept rough last night. Or should I say this morning? It might have had something to do with my roommate not crashing 'til around 6 a.m. But probably it had more to do with the nightmare I had and deja vu.
It was one of those nightmares where I wasn't sure if I had dreamed it before or if I had seen it in some movie. After considering it, I decided it was a previously dreamed nightmare, as I wouldn't watch something like this. It ran like a movie in my head until suddenly I became one of the characters.
Here's an abridged version of the awful thing:
It starts out with a happy family. A mother, father, two daughters (one in her late teens, the other around 7 or 8 or so), aunts, uncles, and cousins living on one big farm. The dream starts with the sun rising and all the adults are out in the fields working. The older sister (whose name I can't remember) was cooking breakfast for her younger sister (whose name is Kayleigh). I'm thinking it was a Saturday, as there was no mention of school. The dream proceeds as if I were watching someone live out a normal life.
Until the gunshots start.
The girls are inside eating breakfast when the shots start and they can hear screaming. The oldest runs outside to see her parents lying bleeding to death in the mud. The father is choking on the blood in his throat and lungs. By this point the mother is dead. More shots echo out from around the farm and the bodies of their aunts, uncles, and cousins are seen strewn about the fields, like broken dolls. A few hundred feet away is a man holding a shot gun.
This man scares the shit out of me. His name is John or Jack or something like that, I don't know why I know that.
Before he sees her, the oldest sister runs back inside and picks up Kayleigh. Holding her, she runs to the family truck. By now, the man has seen her and is pursuing at a leisurely pace, his shot gun over his shoulder in a menacing fashion.
It's his face that scares me. It wasn't menacing, or vicious, or cruel, or full of sick twisted amusement. I can't really describe it, I can only say that his face was extremely serious, dead-set, and the only thing that fueled this man was the desire to kill. I don't even know why. His eyes weren't empty, but were full of something like determination. Not revenge or justice, just the absolute desire to see someone dead.
So the girl gets the truck started and drives off with the sister (obviously they are the only survivors), but she can see the man in her rear-view mirror. A rather ominous image. Flash forward to where the sisters are now living in a large open house, where the main color scheme seems to be white. I remember Kayleigh's room particularly well. All the furniture is white. The bed, with a solid white frame, is in the middle of the room. There is a window across from it, with a long bench built into the wall. The dresser takes up the entire length of the right wall with cabinets overhead (these too are white. Maybe white has significane?) The door is on the right side of the bed. There is one potted plant in the room, which, alongside the bedspread, adds the only color to the room. There is a vanity on the backwall to the left. These details probably aren't important, but I want to remember them.
The two sisters are living in this large house all by themselves (how they acquired it and how they paid for it I have no idea). Then this guy shows up (not the kiler) and offers to protect them. He's a sweet guy with floppy gold-blonde hair and an infectious smile. He befriends the sisters and ends up living in with them. He takes care of all the maintainence around the house and is a handy man.
But this is a nightmare and not a dream, so all good things must come to an end.
The three of them are in a field close to the house, the older sister leaning against a tractor, Kayleigh sitting down, and the man sitting in the tractor's seat. Out of nowhere, there is a bang and a large bloody hole appears in the man's chest. He gasps for air for a few seconds, then falls over and dies.
At this point, my point of view shifts from outsider to the older sister's. Suddenly I am the older sister and my only instinct is to protect Kayleigh.
I pick her up and throw her into my arms and start running as fast as I can. Somehow I know that it's not me the man wants dead. He doesn't care about me. He wants her. Kayleigh. He wants this sweet innocent girl, who's never done harm to anybody, dead. I don't know why, I don't stop to think about it. It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is keeping her alive. I can hear my harsh, labored breathing, the thudding sounds my running feet make as they hit the ground. And I'm more afraid than I've ever been in my life. Not for myself, but for this child. My sister. I keep running and I know he's following me at his t s, leisurely pace. I have to keep running, there's no where to hide. He'll find me anywhere I go.
I end up at some grand hotel building, which is very palatial on the inside.The rooms are all gilded with gold and expensive, tasteful furniture. Elegant, but not quite gaudy. It's really more like some kind of jacked up city hall or a scaled down version of Buckingham palace than a hotel. It's hard to describe. We meet two wealthy people, a man and a woman (not a couple) who take us into their protection. So we're hiding out in this grand building, living in it like princesses. We think we're finally safe. There are dozens of people around us who want to help us and there has been no sign of the killer. There have been warnings put out on television and a reward set in place for his capture. But he's never found.
Then one day Kayleigh and I are walking outside. I'm holding her in my arms, just like when we were running. The place we're walking in looks a lot like the original farm where we were living. The ground is hard packed dirt, no grass, with wheat growing everywhere. I feel safe, but with a slight sense of dread or foreboding. And then I hear it. The crack of a gun. I turn around and there he is, his finger on the trigger and his shot gun (rifle?) cocked in position. The same look that is always on his face. His expression never, ever changes.
And then I feel Kayleigh drop like lead from my arms. I see her lying spread-eagle in the dirt, a small hole in her forehead and blood pooling under her head. Her eyes are already glassy.
This is the last thing I see before I wake up (a terrible thing to wake up to), but I can feel his satisfaction. There is no smugness, only a satisfaction that the job is done. I can still feel it as I come back to reality and realize it wasn't real. I can still see her glassy eyes, feel my own failure to protect her. I feel the sister's grief. And all day as I've gone around doing normal things, I can still see Kayleigh whenever I close my eyes, whenever I blink. Dead.
So this is for her, even if she isn't as real as I felt she was.
I've had this nightmare twice now, and I hope I never ever have it again.
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