Dinner

It’s dinner time and we are eating Chef Boyardee Ravioli and coleslaw from a large plastic deli cup. The coleslaw sits between us, and the smell of the sickly sweet slop is much too heavy.

I’m suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of dread. My father has stopped eating. Stopped moving. He looks like a mannequin, hunched over his plate with his thick glasses magnifying his eyes. I’m terrified to move or speak.

My father, in one lightning quick movement, sits upright and slams his hand into the coleslaw. It flies everywhere, huge clumps sliding over his forearm and fist. His eyes shift from the coleslaw to my face like magnets.

“I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, BITCH.” He bellows and is suddenly wearing all black and I think no, no, it was just plain workday clothes…

Under the table, I press the fingers of my right hand into my left palm. The fingers slide through it like water. The reality test has failed and I am definitely dreaming. While part of me is relieved, my terror is making the air thick. I can’t move normally, I’m in slow motion and my father is just sitting there, spitting with rage, coleslaw running in between the fingers of his clenched fist and gathering in beads on his arm hair.

“Come here bitch,” he says, “so I can smell your hair.”

“S…stop!” I try to command, I should be in control, I should be able to make him go away go away go away.

He doesn’t go away. I can’t control the dream. I’m just aware, like a prisoner in someone else’s mind. His mind.

He grabs the meat cleaver that has appeared on the table and hacks off his own hand, the blood bleeding into the coleslaw, the smell of copper and mayonnaise. “I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE!”

I wake up mid scream and throw my hands over my mouth. How long was I screaming? Did he hear me? I scramble to sit up and grab for the alarm clock that is resting on the edge of the bathroom sink. It’s 3:23 AM, I see right before the clock falls and smashes into the tile floor, the sound loud and echoing. The green glow from the clock flickers. I know it's over.

My bedroom door was open and I think I can hear movement on the carpet in my room. Then the bathroom door cracks open and I jump a foot. My father pokes his head in.

“Is everything okay, Pumpkin? I thought I heard a crash.” This is the first time he has seen me sleeping in the bathtub but he is showing no signs of any sort of realization. He gazes down at me, concerned.

“I’m okay, Dad. I just had a bad dream.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Soft voice. He starts to leave, closing the door behind him. “Just remember that I’m always right across the hall if things get too creepy.”

But they have, I want to say. And now Mom is dead.

I wait until I hear his bedroom door click shut and swing my legs over the side of the tub. I fly for the straight bleach that I've poured into a plastic spray bottle that is stashed beneath the sink. I saturate the tiles near the door where his toes overstepped the carpet, the wall where his hand rested, the door knob of the door even though it's on the outside. My nose and eyes and throat burn with a scary intensity, but I welcome it and don't attempt to move my face away from the fumes.

Within twenty minutes, I’ve written every detail of the dream into the journal and crawled back into the bathtub. Sleep comes after three pills.

*

Gemmaland teaser, not for lovers of coleslaw. ;)

Currently listening to: Young Men Dead by The Black Angels (Alan Wake soundtrack ftw)

Currently reading: The Silence Of The Lambs, Thomas Harris

Currently feeling: Pumped as hell to finish this book.