jennfrank.

deadalive

photo by Arifin Salleh for Unsplash

My dreams are getting really weird.

dream

I was waiting on the table for the clinician to return. I had been sitting there a long time. I squinted out the window; the rest of the building had gone dark. Either I'd been forgotten in this room, or I'd died waiting. Regardless, it was after-hours.

A car picked me up and dropped me off at home. I'd completely unpacked both my blue suitcases before I realized where I was, and that I couldn't be there. Sighing, I started to re-pack my suitcases. I couldn't see much of anything, and I needed to find my glasses before I could really buckle down to look for my phone and my keys.

I saw you shift in bed. Then you sat up and looked straight at me. I hadn't realized anyone was home. I ran out of the room.

I looked and looked for my glasses. Finally I sat down on the stairs and put my face in my hands and cried. I didn't know how to leave this house. Then I thought I heard the TV playing, and I wondered if you were up late. I called out for help. You didn't answer, but I heard you gasp. I heard you come to the top of the stairs and stop.

I woke up. I was relieved to find that my glasses were on my face where I'd left them. My blue suitcases were half-packed. My phone was on the floor.

ghost

A few years ago I started having problems with my eyesight. I kept thinking I could see someone out of the corner of my eye, standing on the stairs, just for a split second.

"I think there's a ghost on the stairs," I told my husband.

dream

There is a big blurry spot in my left eye that prevents me from seeing the problem. To get around it, I have to take a photo with my phone, zoom in close, and pan around.

Joe

Last week I was thinking about the man who called himself my big brother. We had fallen out of touch, but now there were a lot of things I wanted to tell him.

"I'm going to stay up late and write him a letter," I told my best friend. She nodded and went to bed.

I sat there wringing my hands. I felt panic. I decided I would work on my letter the next night instead.

The next night, I opened Facebook to add Joe as a friend. We were already friends. I clicked to visit his page. The last post on his Wall was a link to his obituary.

I started shouting my best friend's name. Bleary-eyed, she rushed into the kitchen.

"Joe died last month," I said, shaking.

"Oh no," my best friend said. Then she frowned. She pointed at the screen, at the date. He'd died last month a year ago.

dream

We were standing clustered all together. There was a whistling sound overhead as something enormous approached.

From our perspective, we were going to live through this, but we'd all be trapped together afterward. I looked at the girl standing next to me. She was extremely freaked out, and she'd been rude before, and she also had kind of a stinkface. Red flags. I didn't want to be stuck deadalive with her, so I walked away from the group to look for you, to try to find you before the enormous object struck.