Fiction: Dream.

Dream

Oh my sweet God. Those words whispered to the dark walls. Sweat wet ice sheets are vast and endless and clinging to my skin like damp smoke. I'm awake again into the warm womb of the dark room. It's at once familiar and completely alien. A pale window shaped puddle of moonlight spreads across the floor towards the bed. Awake again. Freshly surfaced from the deep of dream. Breathing hard and fast and with my heart going thump, thump, thump in my chest. My breathing rasping in and out as I try to control myself from careening into total panic. I cannot remember what so terrified me. I cannot recall what my mind soul in the dark of my soul as I slept.

Eyes alert open to stare wildly into the absolute darkness of my room. Sick. Waiting. Laying. Waiting for the sense of dislocation of time and of space to pass. Waiting for the strange tide to wash away and leave me in my bed again. Waiting for my heart to slow down to normal. Waiting for my hands not to grasp the bed so tightly.

Pigeon wings are a grey blur and a whispered comment as the bird launches itself from beside the cafe table where the two men sit. Momentarily it's just a black bird shadow shape pinned against the dazzling white yellow sun before it glides away. He watches the pigeon awhile before clinking down a white cup containing creamy brown coffee swirling around inside as it lands on the table that sits in the shadow of the moon cafe. A ladybird lands on glass table and begins to crawl. Reflected clouds drift along smoothly in the smooth glass of the table top. The metallic rims and legs that hold the table together bend the sky and cloud reflections around and around. The cafe conversation about the two men ebbs and flows like the restless ocean. Whispering. Whispering. Whispering...

"You're not listening!" He says, punctuating his words with a dramatic sigh. Always with the dramatic sighs. Thomas turns his attention to his friends ocean eyes, nods, smiles apologetically.
"I am listening! I was just distracted by that pigeon," he says eyes gazing momentarily blue skyward as if to illustrate the point of the pigeon. Smile breaks out beaming on his craggy face. "So, it's the dream is the same all the time?" His friend nods his head.
"Yes, it's the same dream every time."
"Tell me again."

It's dark. You know when the night is like a panther? The night is dark and it's sleek and so whisper quiet but you can sense it out there? You know the dark is prowling in the corners. Everything is in shadow. Everything is purple and deep black. Everything is just waiting. You know? It's like that. I wake into that night. The alarm clock is not working. There are no red figures to tell me what time it is. This only increases my sense of unease. This only increases my pulse rate and the very subtle sense of fear that pickles along my back as if somebody is right behind me and drawing a sharp blade edge down my spine.

I get dressed in the dark. Out the doorway into the empty silent empty streets and a starless drifting night. I head down past row after row of watching buildings and across the intersection where the traffic lights click and change up and down with nobody to pay them any attention. I cross the road and turn left heading right down to the cafe of the moon.

A light brittle bell note ripples though the cafe as I open the door and enter the coffee scented rich darkness of the cafe. White chairs roost on top of tables for the night. She sits at a far table. I can just about make her out. I walk slowly to her. I can't see her eyes but I know she is watching me. Her eyes drink in my every soft footfall. My every breath. She must the watching the rise and fall of my chest. The inhalation and exhalation of my breath. I walk to her. I walk to her as if there is some inviable rope that connects me and her together. Closer and closer. I sit down opposite her at the table in the chair that was waiting for me. Now I can see her face and now I can see her eyes. She takes a languid drag of the cigarette she holds in those beautiful pianist fingers.

"You're late." She says with a slight smile of a cat. Her eyes glitter and dance.
"I'm always late. You know what.
"Well," she says as she takes inhales more smoke between wet cherry lips, "you are here now and that's the most important thing. Isn't it?"
"Of course it is. It's always the most important thing."
"Indeed it is," she says with quiet laugh. "Indeed it is."
"Did you dream again?"
"Oh yes."
"Same dream?"
"Same."
"tell me."

Grey pigeon wings blur against the light of the sun. He is watching the pigeon fly and not listening to me. I was telling him about some dream I had. He clinks down his coffee cup and turns to me as he tries to tell me that he is listening. I know he was not. He was not listening to me again. It's the same dream. Same damn dream every time. Me and him sitting at the cafe in the sunlight and talking. Same dream. Every night. Same dream.