I had posted the original dream sequence back in September but have since revised and edited it on Sunday. I had a chance to take a break from writing when I went to Camp Bullis with my unit this past weekend. I had time to reflect on my writing as apposed to just writing what my imagination tells me. I looked more than listened and want to bring that description to life. The revised version is twice as long and in my opinion, much better.
Dreams can be quite strange , they can be good, bad or both. They can be your most amazing fantasy or be your worst nightmare, reflect what happened during your day or bring out your worst fears from the past. The strangest things about dreams is that they can be deceptive by giving you a truthful glimpse of what is to come. Dreams are strange indeed.
As David walked down the street with his thick leather boots and olive drab jacket, he had no emotion of any kind on his face. He just moved with a purpose. All was dark and quiet except for the little bit of liquid sloshing around in the gas can he had with him. The moon was dim but gave off just enough light for him to see his surroundings. There were no people around that he could see, the streets were empty, lifeless and silence was cold. He wasn’t sure where he was or how he got there though the neighborhood felt eerily familiar. Still, he didn’t let it bother him, he just kept on walking with the wind seemingly following him. The houses around him were abandoned and falling apart but not enough to conceal their former charm and composition. He could still tell that this was once a beautiful neighborhood that was full of life. The once white picket fences were now in disrepair, charred and broken, plants that had been vibrant were shriveled and dried up and dead, lawns once neatly manicured were spotted with overgrown weeds with trash and debris blowing around them.
When he came to the middle of the block he stopped and thew the near empty gas can at a house. Reaching into his pockets he pulled out a lighter and some crudely fashioned sticks wrapped in and oil soaked rags. David spoke under his breath, “It’s time to start anew.” Then without thought and still emotionless, he lit the rags on fire then threw them at the nearest house. Almost instantly the house took to the flame and spread up and down the street jumping from house to house following the trail of gasoline he had laid out.
David kept walking down the empty street, houses now ablaze, like nothing was wrong. Just watching the houses burn as if the neighborhood was still in it’s prime and covered in Christmas lights. This brought David comfort and somehow made him feel safer. He gave himself false memories of children that once played there, laughing and chasing each other up and down the street. Of people pulling into their driveway and waving at their neighbors. He thought of an old woman that took pride and loved working in her flower garden. He just wanted to picture that neighborhood they way it might have been. Continuing on, the fire from the burning houses lit up the sky with it’s orange glow, lighting his way through the night. Then something in one of the houses caught his attention, pulling him out of his daydream. He noticed some kind of movement coming from behind the flames. When he got a better look, his eyes widened as he saw the burning silhouettes running around erratically inside the inferno. David began to panic. He started waving his arms and running toward the burning figures trying to get their attention. He began shouting, screaming, calling for anyone who could hear him but something was different, something wasn’t right. As he shouted his voice was not there, instead only silence was emitted. His mouth was open but the only sounds were that of wood crackling in the fires.
He began looking around for anything to put out the fires and rescue the people inside until the burning figures fell out of sight. He tried to shield his eyes as the wind picked up. The road became covered in ash, blowing around in the breeze then falling to the ground like gentle snow. He thought to himself, How could the ash pile up this quickly? The gray powder was almost 5” high and coated his entire body. Wiping the soot from his eyes he was frightened and confuse when he was able to focus on what now lay on top of the accumulated dust. They were everywhere, bodies just scattered all around him. They weren’t here before, I know they weren’t. Where did they all come from? They looked as if they had been dead and decomposing for quite some time but oddly, they were not covered in ash like everything else on the street. It seemed as though they were just plucked from where they had died, unknown and left to rot, and placed there so lightly as not to disturb the ash. But how was the question he couldn’t answer. Questions ran through his mind and he began to wonder what happened to those people and why was he burning the houses.
Puzzled, David thought, Was there some kind of accident? Did they cause all this or did I?
One of the bodies started to twitch then began crawling towards David with great difficulty. The mans legs were completely paralyzed, just dead weight dangling behind a burnt torso. His arms were missing some flesh but still the man used them to inch closer and closer to David, reaching out towards him as if he were asking for help. As he ran over to see if he could help the injured crawling man, the figure just stopped moving and plopped down on the gray powdery road. Avoiding the burning debris that spread to the trees, he reached the man and flipped his body over only to see it was as lifeless as the rest. Suddenly the man’s eyes popped opened and locked with David’s. Then the man grabbed hold of David’s arm and spoke, “Only time can kill us David!” he was startled and jumped back, struggling to free himself from the man’s unyielding grip that only seemed to get tighter. The burnt man started laughing at David’s attempts to break free. As the fear and adrenaline rose in his blood he felt something different come over him, something cold and heartless. The emotion was drained from his face. He twisted the mans arm arm, grabbed his wrist and shoved his boot onto the bone on his exposed elbow. Staring at his face, he leaned forward putting more and more pressure until he heard a loud snap that vibrated up his own leg. The man let off a resounding shriek that resonated in his head causing his ears to bleed. The neighborhood began to quake violently sending David to the floor and he man’s scream continued to echo up and down the street. Suddenly, his voice returned a he could hear his own frightened cries, waking him from his dream.
He awoke screaming, panicked and covered in sweat with his heart pounding. “What the hell kind of dream was that?” he asked himself.
j.r.fate 