bookofmirrors | Sharing a Memory

BlckwngdOrcl bought a necklace recently. I could go look up the stones in it, and also write what the properties of them are, but suffice to say that they're meant to bring dreams/visions, among other things. He's been sleeping with it next to his side of the bed, and has been having what he's said are very strange dreams ever since.

What I haven't bothered to mention to him is that I've been having dreams, too. Nothing major... it's just that I'm remembering them in the vaguest of senses as I wake up in the morning, and that's something that hasn't happened in a long time.

Last night was different, though.

I was in someone else's head. I was both omniscient observer and participant, but it was not in the usual way of dreams. It's like there was a part of me that was one step ahead of the game, knew what was going to happen before it did, and it had the feel of having suddenly been placed inside a newspaper story; one that I don't recall having read/seen in waking life, and remembered just enough of for the next scene to trigger a thought of what happened next.

At the same time, I was the main character; a young girl, maybe college age... perhaps even home from college. There was a funeral, I think. At any rate, there was some reason why her family was all back home. I got the impression that this was the first time in a while that they'd all been together, and that there were 2-3 other siblings, and I believe all were sisters. It was hard to tell if the funeral was for our family, or for our neighbor's family, but we did go back and forth between the houses a bit. One of "my" sisters was making a list of all the things that we needed to get for the usual post-funeral potluck, and I remember it included a rather long list of wines. I know that the person who had died was male, and was either my father, or a father figure for the neighbors. I got the impression that "our" family and the neighbor's family were so close as to be indistinguishable; had a sense of running around together as children, in and out of each other's houses, all things done together as a matter of course, and our parents the same. The man who had died had money, and there was some speculation on what would happen with the will, as it was generally regarded that he'd been a stingy bastard in his lifetime, and not horribly well-liked. So, "my" sisters and I (and some other people that floated about) were over, planning, in our house, while the neighbor family was in theirs. The funeral was later that afternoon.

The houses both seemed to be estates, in the sense that each appeared to have a lot of land; woods, grassy areas, water, and "I" had memories of running through them as a child, playing with my siblings and the neighbors, having fun. I didn't see the other house very well, but the house "I" lived in was something like a cross between a brownstone and that kind of house that's typically stone on the bottom and white wood on the top, with brown vertical boards... there's a word for it, and I can't think of it right now. At any rate, there was stone, and ivy, and the house was old. Not unkempt, just worn.

One of the neighbors was a man, slightly older than me. He was more the age of my older sisters, and had brown hair and a round face, a little heavy-set, but in a way that seemed to deceptively hide some muscle. I got the impression he had just gotten out of jail not too long ago, or somesuch. I recalled that the reason he was in jail had something to do with something that had happened maybe 5-10 years ago, and that it had happened on our property, and that all of us had been involved to some degree or another, as was always the case with our two families. What it was, though, I was never clear on. I had been too young to really comprehend, and it was one of those things just never spoken of. At some point in the dream, though, he must have talked about it, because it came up later.

I remember that we had all gone over to the neighbor's house to help with preparations for the funeral, but that I left, alone, to go back to "my" house, presumably to get cleaned up. When I got done, the guy was there, and said that he had come over to get me, that we were supposed to be going to get the wine. I didn't think anything of this, and we left together. He was driving something like an SUV, or an old tan Suburban thing. We drove for a bit, and at one point, he pulled over, like something was troubling him, and started to talk a bit about the whole jail thing, referring to the conversation that had been had earlier. I told him that I thought he'd done very well with it; that he'd had a lot of really good insights on what went wrong, and had been very good at being able to say where each person in the scenario, himself and myself included, had gone wrong, and how those actions had contributed to his being in jail, and that he'd done a great job of keeping his cool, not getting angry, etc..

As an aside here, there were a few parts of the dream where I felt like I was intruding on the memory. One of "my" sisters looked like my real-life oldest sister, for instance, but it felt like a construct. During this conversation in the van, I knew the words were mine, rather than the person whose memory I was sharing. As omniscient observer, I knew something bad was about to happen, and I superimposed words that came from years of training, rather than the more awkward attempt that actually happened, even though she was trying to do the same thing I was; keep him calm. There had been something prickling at her awareness, too, but I got that sensation tenfold, and knew to act on it, whereas she was fumbling.

He had pulled over somewhere that kinda looked like a driveway, of a duplex or something, but it must have been something different, because a bunch of runners suddenly emerged, with numbers on their chests, like we'd inadvertently parked at the beginning point of a 10K or something. He had moved from his seat by this point, and was very close to "me"; he was leaning over me, and "I" was leaning back. I had a vague notion of how absurd it was that, amongst all these people, just feet from the vehicle, and certainly able to see in, that no one really saw us; propriety kept anyone from staring too long. His motions at this point had an edge of lust on them... and if I/"I" was just barely beginning to be aware of the tinge of madness, all they could see was two people, apparently lovers, about to get it on. Tasteless, perhaps, but not worth a second glance.

He kissed "me" then. It was more possessive than passionate, but I think it was one and the same for him. As her, I was inexperienced with this. I do recall she had memories of him flirting with her as a child, even though he was older than she was; something she'd only been beginning to recognize as a sexual attraction before he went away. So, while part of her/"me" was screaming "danger!" softly into her mind, there was a part, after all, that had thought about this for years, and been curious.

Somewhere during the kiss, "I" knew he was going to pull back and slap "me", call "me" a whore, blame "me" for the years spent incarcerated. I was starting to wake up, though, and I think I prevented myself from experiencing that, or else the conjecture was wrong. I was in and out of wakefulness at this point. For instance, I have no recollection that she was restrained in any way, but also no thought that it was possible to leave the vehicle. Perhaps it was more a mental thing. My cat came up and somehow made his way into the dream, and I had another moment where I could easily intervene to keep him from hurting my cat; it wasn't part of the actual memory, after all, and could be altered.

I was too awake at this point to really go back to the dream. And I honestly think I didn't want to. I have a reasonable amount of certainty that he killed her. I have enough distance from it that I hope that wasn't the case. I have enough objectivity to know that it *could* just be a dream. But there are dreams, and there are dreams, and there's a difference.