Author's Note: This was actually a dream I had (I know, original title, right?) that was just so vivid (perhaps too vivid) that I had to write it down. I truly love my subconscious sometimes, even though it clearly doesn't love me..
Just A Dream
Everything is a haze, a blur of flame-hot colours in amongst a blanket of black and grey, and your skin burns with the humidity of the late August evening. You writhe against the sheets mindlessly as you flutter through various stages of your restless state, and for the longest moment, you're certain that the distant sound you hear is in your dream, is make believe.. Until it pulls you like a fishing line, drawing you out, and as you awake fully to a flirtatious giggle and seductive words, you realise that you've been taken completely; hook, line and sinker.
"Hm, yeeah.. But that's your fault. You make me feel that way, baby."
There's now a face accompanying those painfully clear words; a perfectly innocent face that once filled you with such hope but causes a whole other feeling to begin somewhere in your chest as she turns to face you, adorning a, "Hold on one moment," expression. You can't quite stomach the audacity; that she truly expects you to 'hold on one moment' whilst she flirts shamelessly with whoever is on the other end of the line.
You're so shocked that you just blink and stare; your brow furrowing when you realise that whilst you're clad in just your black panties and tank top, she is fully dressed as though it's the middle of the day and not 1am. Something that, through your constantly over-analysing eyes, you can't help but recognise as a perfectly tragic metaphor: she was never really here to stay in the first place.
Your heart sinks at your idiocy; the idiocy that you promised you would not, under any circumstance, fall victim to again and yet you're here, watching her end the call and push herself up out of bed with an eager and excited twinkle in her eye.
"Where are you going?" You ask, your voice quiet and timid like you're afraid of the answer. And you are; you're terrified. There's a determination in her step as she grabs her purse and turns to you with a patronizing smile that you just want to slap right off of her face. But you never would.. You'd hurt yourself before you ever hurt her.
"I'm going out."
She says it like it's the most casual thing in the world to be doing at 1am and for a moment you're genuinely unsure if you're actually awake; the transition is just that abrupt and illogical. You were certain that when you went to sleep three hours ago, you were happy, carefree, content; and now.. Now you have no clue who this woman in your bedroom is. But she speaks again as the rattle of her car keys rips you from your confusion.
"I'm meeting a friend." She shrugs, continuing like she can't even be bothered to create a plausible lie. "It's her birthday."
"I'll come with you." The look on her face is what provokes you to recognise that you've spoken, because you don't even remember thinking such a thing, let alone verbalising it. But there's this panic in your chest that, though you're still in the grips of exhaustion, overshadows literally everything else; even your logic. There's just this sudden urge to cling on for dear life that masks even the eye roll that she gives you for such a statement. So you climb out of bed and dress as quickly as you can, following her out the door like a pathetic, lost puppy.
The club is loud when you get there and the semi-sleepy state that you're still in renders you unable to make much out through the ocean of faceless bodies; shuffling against each other like cattle in time with the overbearing music, spotlights flashing and bouncing in all colours of the rainbow and it only takes a second for you to lose her in the pounding atmosphere.
You're panicking again, your whole torso throbbing like it's twisting inside; twisting and pulling and pushing and contorting, and you can't breathe. You can't breathe because you're certain that you've lost her for good and the hand that suddenly grabs yours almost makes you sob. It's relief; relief bathing that panic like a flash flood meeting a raging forest fire, but as you turn and meet eyes that are not hers, you're overcome with a different emotion entirely.
It's almost like nothing.. like defeat or acceptance, but with a soft tinge of frustration. You want to be grateful for the hand on yours, and you should be, given how long it's been since you've seen her; but you're not. It isn't the hand you want, it isn't the hand you need to bring normality back into this wholly untypical moment and she sees it; practically rips away her grip as her eyes turn somewhat bitter in a roll much like the one directed at you just twenty minutes ago.
"When are you gona learn?" She sighs and walks away, but you follow her, once again like the pathetic fool that you're beginning to realise you are.
"Learn what? Do you know something? Do you know why she's here? Why she just had to come here at 1am?" Your dignity abandons you with each desperate question but you don't care; you don't care as long as it means that you'll finally get some answers. Oh, who are you kidding? You're not looking for answers in this moment; you're looking for excuses. You know exactly why she just had to come here; you know what this moment represents: the end. You know it but you don't want to, and unfortunately the clearly frustrated woman before you isn't willing to accommodate such denial.
"Take a look for yourself."
She pushes aside a light blue, almost-but-not-quite sheer curtain that separates the dance floor from a more private venue; and bile rushes up the back of your throat, every emotion you have ever felt in your life spins around you like a tornado, suffocating you in a blanket of unwanted reality. The intense feeling only lasts a minute, but the one following it isn't much better either. It doesn't just hurt.. it makes instant excuses and acts as a traitor towards your rapidly beating heart.
Maybe there's another reason for what you're seeing.. Maybe there's another reason that her lips, that stomach-churning, selfish smirk, is mingling with another's.. Maybe there's another reason that her short skirt is bunched up slightly around the foreign fingers dipping beneath it..
Maybe there's even another reason that she laughs as she recognises your presence; without even enough concern to pretend that what just happened didn't happen as she presses her hand to her friend's chest and leans into her with a drunken stumble. "Poor Emily.. What did you expect?"
And then they walk away.. Just walk away like you have absolutely no investment in this moment; like your heart isn't shattering in your chest, the shards of which are currently cutting through your ribcage, your lungs, causing an unbelievable amount of pain that you can't actually feel because you're so fucking dumbfounded that you're utterly numb. And yet you follow.. follow blindly like you've been following all night, and step out into a room much, much larger than the one that you've just left your soul in. There is nothing at all significant or alluring about your surroundings but it's a feeling that's fuelling you.. the feeling of emptiness. She's gone again, nowhere to be seen and yet you're still following something; mindlessly, helplessly, blindly until you're on a ledge hundreds of feet up looking down at yourself.
From this balcony you can see everything. What seems like thousands upon thousands of people go on about their business like the whole world didn't just implode, whilst at the same time staring at you, laughing at you for your utter stupidity. And then there's her.. almost the size of an ant in the far corner of the club; her drink still clutched in her hand as the nameless person responsible for the crushing ache in your chest causes a look of pure, uncaring ecstasy on her face. A look that you were once responsible for but now, you realise, you haven't been witness to in months.
It's clarity; the notion that you really should have learned a long time ago. And it's that clarity, combined with the whimpers falling from her lips that seem so painfully loud that they feel as though they're forming right next to your ear, that carries your feet forward. The barrier surrounding you really may as well not exist as you push yourself up onto it, your mind controlled much like you've seen so many times in those Freddy Krueger movies that you love so much; and like it's an ocean of cotton wool that's going to catch you, you let yourself drop….
You wake to her lips, soft and warm against your mouth and your whole body relaxes in overwhelming relief - it was a dream. It was a cruel, vivid, nasty, heart-shattering dream. But it's okay now.. It's okay, because she's right there, and she's holding you, and she's kissing you, and she's reassuring you without words that it's all fine..
"How does it feel to know that I'm in love with someone else?"
The words are faint. So faint that you barely hear them as your body responds to her ministrations; your legs parting eagerly as you explore her mouth with your tongue. But it's only when that tongue meets nothing but air that you realise that there were words; real, actual words.
"How does it feel to know that I'm in love with someone else?"
Your eyes snap open and the room is black, save for a subtle glare of red coming from the TV standby button and a thin strip of light filtering in from the moon. There's no lips inches from your own, no body between your parted thighs; just the quilt woven through your limbs like driftwood twisted in algae.
But what there is, you realise as your panicking eyes adjust to the endless black, is a lightly rising and falling cocoon of quilt that holds the one thing that will erase this feeling in your gut. And it does; instantly. As soon as your eyes fall upon her sleeping beside you, the pressure of your putrid nausea rushes away into a sea of such contentment and relief that you can't hardly breathe; but it's the good kind of breathlessness. The fucking amazing kind of breathlessness that comes only from knowing that everything really is just perfect without any condition; that that nightmare was just that.. that this is your reality now, lying right beside you, her mindless hand reaching out to you in a comforting gesture as she sleeps like she just knows, and you smile.
You smile because you're lucky. You smile because what was once your every day reality, is now only real in your nightmares, and you're okay with that.
You're okay with that because the nightmares may always be there, but so will she.