Monday Morning: 4:30 AM
I woke up with a scream that lurched me forward.
It took me a few minutes to come back to reality.
I was sitting straight up, sweating and trembling in my bed.
I had been having another nightmare about that guy. The doppelganger me with sad brown eyes.
It was the same dream every time. He'd call out to me, looking a little shocked and confused and I would come to him slowly. Then there was always blood, lots of blood and I was never entirely sure who it was coming from… Then there was the sound of my mother screaming and crying from somewhere in the distance.
That's always when I woke up.
I decided that in order to make these dreams go away I would need to find out who this person in my dreams was.
But by the time I woke up I was usually too disoriented to remember exactly what he looked like…
Except for those brown eyes. They haunted me every time I closed my eyes.
I had seen him somewhere before, I just needed to figure out where and why.
Suddenly my door opened and light from the hallway flooded my room.
"Hey kid, you alright?"
It was Dallas; groggy, tired, and a bit irritated. My mom probably sent him to check on me.
"Yeah, I'm fine." I lied. I was still trembling a bit.
"You sure? You just woke the whole house up screaming bloody murder."
"I'm sure. It was just a nightmare. That's all. I'm sorry for waking you guys up." I explained.
Dallas sighed and walked into the room. He sat down on my bed.
"It's alright Dylan. Everyone has nightmares sometimes. In fact your mom used to get them really bad after…" He trailed off.
"After what?" I asked.
"After your dad passed." He answered after a long pause.
I was silent. "Oh." I finally choked out.
With a sad smile Dallas ruffled my hair. "I've always sucked at this whole comforting thing. I told your mom not to send me over here." He laughed and I did too.
Despite his words, Dallas's presence alone was comforting to me. The trembling had finally stopped.
"Thanks for checking up on me, but you can tell her I'm fine, really." I told him.
"You sure?"
"Positive."
"Need me to tuck you in or anything?" he asked with a chuckle as he started to get up.
"Nah, I'm good." I replied.
As I watched him walk to the door I went over our conversation in my mind. Suddenly an idea popped into my mind.
After your father passed…
I knew where I had seen that face.
"Dallas?" I asked quietly.
He turned around in the doorway. "Yeah?"
"My Dad… he had brown eyes, right?"
"Yeah… why?"
I shook my head. "No reason. Just wondering."
Dallas narrowed his eyes at me, but didn't ask any more questions. "Goodnight rookie." He whispered. Before shutting the door.
It was strange…
He'd never called me that before.
I kept still and listened to him shuffle back down the hall.
When I finally heard him shut his own bedroom door, I pushed the covers off of myself and slid out of bed.
I snuck over to my dresser. There in the top drawer buried underneath a bunch of clothes and stuck inside an envelope were the photographs.
My grandparents on my dad's side had given them to me a long time ago. They stuck them inside the envelope with their monthly letter. I only looked at one of them before stuffing them away.
You see, most of the time I tried to pretend that I hadn't lost my father.
It was simple enough, I had never known him. He had never known me. There was nothing to miss.
I had Dallas, my mom, Asha, Rocky, and my grandparents; their love was more than enough. Everything was easier if I just pretended he never existed in the first place.
But there were always reminders. Father's day, that look of pain in my mother's eyes, my grandparents, the stars, even hockey sometimes.
The pictures; however, would serve as the ultimate reminder.
At first I kept the envelope on my desk, intending open it again when I had the courage. But it didn't stay there for long.
It was like very presence of the pictures was taunting me.
He's gone. They whispered to me in the middle of the night when I was trying to sleep. He's gone and he's never coming back.
One night, it finally became too much. My lungs tightened to the point that I was gasping for breath and my eyes filled with tears.
I needed to get rid of the envelope.
So I jumped out of bed and grabbed it with both hands.
But when I started to rip it in half something stopped me.
It just didn't feel right for some reason.
So I sank to the floor that night, back in Cold Lake, and held that envelope close to my chest. I didn't dare look inside, I just cried silently.
It's pathetic, I know.
That's when I decided that it needed to go somewhere out of sight. Somewhere I'd hopefully forget about it. Hence the drawer.
It had stayed there since. Even during the move when my dresser was hauled up into a moving truck.
It had stayed there until today.
I now held the envelope tightly in my hands.
My breathing quickened.
"I need to do this" I told myself.
I was probably just being crazy. There was no way the bloody boy from my dreams was the father I had worked so hard to bury in the back of my mind.
But I needed to find out for sure.
With a deep breath, I opened the envelope and slid out the pictures.
"No." The word escaped my lips before I could stop it.
The smiling boy in the picture looked very different from the confused, sad one in my dream.
But it was clear they were the same person.
And Dallas was right, I looked almost exactly like him.
I flipped to the next picture. It was him and a younger version of my mom. She was on his back and he was laughing.
They looked so happy… so in love.
My heart raced in my chest as a realization hit me.
I had outlasted my father.
He had died at 15 in a tragic accident, although I don't know what kind. My parents never really specified.
I was 16.
I was now older than he had ever been.
I was older than my father.
Trying to keep my emotions at bay, I allowed my finger to trace his face once.
I remember Dallas telling me once when I was little that my dad was the greatest hockey player of them all and that if I looked up to the sky I could see him in the form of a shooting star.
I think that's part of why I started playing; to have a little piece of him with me. Maybe to try to live up to him somehow.
Like if I got good enough, somehow it would bring him back.
For years I would sit at my window late at night after everyone else had gone to bed and talk to the stars. Hoping that somewhere up there he could hear me; that he was proud of me.
I know how stupid that sounds, but it meant everything to me when I was younger.
I had forgotten how much he meant to me. How much he still means to me…
I sighed and flipped through the rest of the pictures before sealing them up and putting them back in their hiding spot.
I stumbled back to bed slowly and pulled the covers over my head. My mind returning to the matter at hand.
Why was my father haunting my dreams?
Why was my mother always screaming at the end?
Did dreams actually mean anything or was it just me being crazy?
I had no idea.
But maybe now that I knew who I had been dreaming about I could find some relief.
With that thought I slowly drifted back to sleep.
AN: Hey! It is a bit short but I thought that was the best place to leave off. I've got some really good stuff in store so stay tuned!