Wednesday, July 1, 2020
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| Short Stories : Dreams - Nightmares |
I rarely remember a dream. Most of the time, however, it is dreams that I wake from sweating. Nightmares, horror scenes that I could never imagine during the day, since I don't watch or read horror films, psychological thrillers, or even crime novels.
Such a dream scared me last night:
After I hadn't been able to fall asleep for a long time, I dived into a horror scene. I cannot explain where this picture came from.
I was somewhere in a big, old, not very inhabited house. An old woman was hiding somewhere in a room. Gray in the face, with gray hair attached to a bun, gray also her robe, only slightly refreshed in color by an already washed-out, colorfully flowered apron, as I sometimes wear when cooking or baking. I was visiting this woman. If I had to bring her something, I just wanted to visit her in her loneliness, I don't know. Apparently I had stayed with her several times. The restless, searching, almost scary expression on her haggard face struck me this time, and I spoke to her about it.
She glanced at the door, which was only ajar, then stood up and pressed the handle. That made her feel safer. But during the telling a lurking look flickered again and again to the entrance, she also seemed to listen to every sound.
In a low, subdued voice she now reported on her son, who had recently moved in with her after a long absence. He had to come back because he was sick, she said nothing more. Her eyes widened, a terrible picture must have been created in front of her inner gaze! What did the son have? I knew him from before, he was tall, athletic, looked good, but already made a rushed impression on me. Maybe he was just overworked?
Close to crying, the woman, who had come very close to me, said that he had spent some time in psychiatry and now had to take a lot of medication. She didn't know the details. He often rumbled around in the adjacent empty rooms at night and spoke in different voices, his face looked pale, tense and distorted. Sometimes she was afraid of him. -
It was now night outside, clouds chasing in the sky could be seen through the curtain-free window, bare treetops bent in the wind, which occasionally threw heavy rain showers at the window. It started to get scary for me too.
There were dull footsteps in the hallway, heavy shoes flew against the wall. The woman trembled and clutched my hand, which I squeezed soothingly.
"Why are you sitting in the dark?" He asked in a calm voice as he entered and switched on the light. Now he greeted me with obvious joy. I shooed away my anxious thoughts, he looked normal and spoke as before. The mother gave herself a jerk, got up and went into the kitchen to make tea. I talked to him about trivial things, we didn't know each other very well. Besides, he leafed through the newspaper. Suddenly he seemed to change. His face turned red, his eyes were wide open and his pupils turned red when he stared at the paper. He suddenly spoke unclear, choppy, words without context.
I could no longer look at him, horror seized me. I thought of escape! As if he had noticed that, he says: "Please go now. Please go, it's getting dangerous. ”My“ why ”got stuck in my throat when I saw him crumple up the newspaper. His fingernails had turned dark, almost black, thick veins appeared on his arms and fingers, and they too were dark or blood red. The face was now contorted into a grimace, the skin was bloody, with teeth protruding, red colored pupils, hair standing on end, the arms seemed to have grown longer. The horror gripped me, I was paralyzed.
It was only when he reached for me that I thought of his mother in the fright of my life, and this released my stiffness. I jumped up, knocking over the chair that lay between us, and ran into the kitchen, which I knew had a second exit.
What was that dream
Why this horrible picture?
Who is chasing me and scaring me?
Questions that preoccupied me before I could go back to sleep.
Author : Christa Astl
