Scrap - Dream Girl

Another little quirky idea built around someone appearing in their dreams, only to show up later in real life.

Once again, Edward saw his ten-year-old self out in the forest behind his old childhood home. Once again, he had made his way to the long creek that wound its way between the trees. Once again, he saw his older brother, Victor, come up from behind and say those lines.

“Take a swim,” he said maliciously.

“Mom said we shouldn’t play near the creek,” Edward heard himself reply, the practiced lines echoing through the wood.

“C’mon, it’s not that deep,” Victor said. His smile was wide and clearly not nice.

Again, Edward looked around the forest. The setting summer sun was giving the green leaves in the trees the same haunting shade of orange.

“Mom’s gonna call us in for dinner soon,” Edward said, trying to stall the inevitable.

“What, are you scared?” Victor teased, and Edward watched as his older brother pushed him towards the creek.

“Stop it!” Edward cried. But he knew it wouldn’t stop. He knew that he would get pushed again, feeling his right shoe slip off the edge of the short rock cliff.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have tattled on me about the broken car window yesterday!” Victor yelled, pushing a third time.

Once again, Edward felt his balance shift over the edge, causing him to fall off the cliff. Once again, he felt his head hit the rock bottom of the stream. Once again, he was carried away by the rushing stream, down into the darkness, his breath being choked out of him, his consciousness slipping into oblivion.

Once again, Edward awoke in the middle of the night, sweating heavily. He felt his lungs sting, straining for all the air it could as his chest heaved in and out. He put a hand over his eyes and tried to calm himself down. Just a dream, he fruitlessly told himself. Just that same dream you’ve had thousands of times.

It had been fifteen years since that horrible memory, but somehow every time he dreamed it, it remained just as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. Growing up, he had seen doctors and psychologists, but they only offered pat answers and suggestions. “Perhaps you haven’t truly forgiven your brother yet,” they would always say. But no matter how hard he tried, the dream continued to plague him.

It never came in a regular pattern, either. There was a time in college where it only came once a month at the most, and he thought he was finally getting over it. However, now that he had gotten a job in his field as a programmer, the dreams had come back. Now they were nearly every other night. He had called his parents to tell them he was having them again, but they did little more than sympathize, saying that they had already tried everything.

Edward had thought about getting in touch with Victor, to see if that might help, but Victor had seemingly disappeared. He dropped out of high school, leaving his distraught parents to find his fortune elsewhere. He would send postcards from time to time, always from a different part of the country. They would talk about him doing various odd-jobs, often a car mechanic, but he clearly never stayed anywhere for very long.

Victor was actually the one who pulled Edward out of the creek, he would later find out. Apparently, when he saw all the blood come from his brother’s head, he dove in and pulled him to shore. He carried him a good mile back to the house, calling for their parents for help. When they found out what had happened, they rushed Edward to the hospital, where he would later wake up. While it was simply a deep cut with no permanent head trauma, it was a serious shock for the whole family. Edward vaguely remembered Victor crying and apologizing as his parents scolded him, promising to punish him later. Victor always had a wild-streak and struggled with authority, but Edward never felt that Victor really wanted to hurt him, just push him around a little. As far as he was concerned, he had forgiven his older brother, despite what those doctors and psychologists thought. However, it didn’t explain why the dreams persisted, and why they had gotten worse.

Once again, Edward let all of these memories wash over him in his bed, trying to pick out a clue or a solution from it all. Once again, he came up empty and turned to pick up his cell phone to see what time it was. 4:19, the screen told him. He debated if he should dare try to sleep two more hours before work. The dream had come to him more than once a night in the past. However, he knew that work that day would be long and that he should try to get as much sleep as he could, regardless of that nightmare.

As he lay there, he could feel sleep taking him over and decided he would risk it. He turned over on his side, flipped the pillow to the non-sweaty side, and hoped the next two hours would be more peaceful.

[At this point, the story will follow Edward to work; he's a programmer.  I'll probably introduce another character, someone who knows Edward pretty well, but not well enough to know about his recurring dream problem.  The workshift will end, and while he'll dread going back to sleep, he feels like has to anyway.]

The birds in the trees chirped softly as Edward walked. He made his way around a large and gnarled trunk and began to make his way down a familiar path. It wasn’t until he had reached a clearing in the forest and saw the creek again that he realized he had been here before. The view was nice, but it never foreshadowed what would happen next; what always happens next.

Edward tried to go against the script, tried to prevent himself from seeing it repeat itself again, tried to simply run away. However, his efforts were in vain, and he watched himself turn around and see his older brother come up from behind.

“Take a swim,” he said maliciously, for what must have been the millionth time.

Edward made another effort to break away, to change something, to even just say something different.

“Mom said we shouldn’t play near the creek.” It was no use. Once again, Edward fell into the same nightmare, being forced to watch it play out like a rerun seen too many times.

“C’mon, it’s not that deep,” Victor said. The same smile: wide and menacing.

Edward hated the forest. He hated the setting summer sun and the green leaves in the trees. He hated the same haunting shade of orange most of all.

“Mom’s gonna call us in for dinner soon,” Edward said. There’s no point, he said to himself.

“What, are you scared?” Victor teased, and Edward watched as his older brother pushed him towards the creek the same way he had done for the last fifteen years.

“Stop it!” Edward cried in futility. He wished he could do something about it. He wished he wouldn’t get pushed again. He wished he wouldn’t feel his right shoe slip off the edge of the short rock cliff. His wishes were in vain.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have tattled on me about the broken car window yesterday!” Victor yelled, pushing that third, final time.

Once again, Edward felt his balance shift over the edge, causing him to fall off the cliff, exactly like before. Once again, he felt his head hit the rock bottom of the stream, exactly like before. Once again, he was carried away by the rushing stream, down into the darkness, his breath being choked out of him, his consciousness slipping into oblivion, exactly like before.

Suddenly, a hand reached down into the water. Edward had never seen this hand before. It looked feminine and adult, with lavender nail polish. He wondered why it was there as the darkness continued to envelope him. He saw his hand slowly reach up toward the surface, reaching for this new hand. Somehow they touched, and then they clasped.

Edward then felt an incredible surge upward, being pulled up out of the water. It felt somewhat like what Edward would imagine being a puppet feels like, with his joints and limbs being moved by someone above him. It was surprising and exhilarating, but also a little terrifying, because now the dream was off-script, and he didn’t know where things were going to go.

The next thing Edward knew, he was coughing up water on the grassy shore just a little ways from the cliff where he fell. Edward rubbed his eyes with his ten-year-old fingers and looked up to see an astonished Victor come down from the rocky ledge where he always stood. However, he wasn’t looking at Edward.

“Who are you?” Victor asked when he was about ten feet away. He seemed nervous.

Edward finally looked up and saw that there was someone kneeling next to him. It was a woman, with lavender nail polish on her fingernails. Looking at the rest of her, Edward saw that she had short black hair that framed her face, and was wearing a grey sweatshirt with purple writing and a pair of jeans. Her face seemed kind and gentle.

She noticed that Edward was staring at her, and turned to smile at him. Edward looked down in embarrassment, but the woman put a hand on his shoulder. Edward looked up again into her eyes.

“Don’t worry, Edward,” she said, “It will be okay now.”

Edward awoke in his bed.