My name is CHARLIE and I am 6 years old. My therapist told me to write down what happened that day so I am writing it down because you should always listen to adults unless they are the bad kind. She also said it might be good to share it with other people so I can accept what really happened even though I still think it was just a really really really bad dream. Mommy is here too and she is typing for me because my spelling is not very good but I hope everyone is nice to me and thinks it’s a dream too because if it isn’t I think I’ll be really really scared for a really really long time. Okay this is what happened in my dream:
I woke up in the morning in my room under my dinosaur blanket and the sun was shining through my window. I was really happy because it was my first day of first grade and I was so happy that I whispered to myself “today is the big day!” before going to the kitchen for breakfast. Being in first grade meant that I was a Big Boy now and I could get my own cereal. I went on my tippy toes to get the cereal from the fridge at the top and got the milk inside the fridge, it was heavy. I got a spoon but my bowl with the rexies (that’s what Mommy and me call dinos) doodles on the side was too high for me to reach. I dragged the stool thingy to the cabinet (that’s what Mommy says it’s called) and I reached and stretched but couldn’t get it.
When I turned around I got scared because I saw Mommy and I wasn’t supposed to be on the stool thingy even though I was a Big Boy and because I got scared I Did A Bad Thing and knocked down my bowl. It cracked all over the floor and I started crying because all I wanted was to be a Big Boy but I wasn’t. I wish I could have just woken up then but I didn’t so I had to help Mommy clean up the bowl even though my face was all wet and sticky from snot. I felt better when Mommy made me cereal and I remembered today had to be a good day because I wasn’t a baby anymore. I brushed my teeth really good and got dressed and put on my backpack and Mommy dropped me off at school.
I was scared because it was a new school and breakfast was a little scary too. It took forever for recess to come but when it did I was happy. I love baseball and tried playing with the big kids for a little bit but it wasn’t that fun because they were not playing nice, so I went to the sand pit to play by myself. There was another kid that was playing there too by themselves and I remembered they were in my class room too. I noticed they were playing with dinosaurs and thought that it was cool we both liked dinosaurs so I asked what their name was and they said their name was Flynn. I told them that was such a cool name and they acted a little shy but asked if I wanted to play dinosaurs with them. I even let Flynn play with my dinos too and we had a lot of fun at recess.
After recess, Flynn followed me to the bathroom but I didn’t know it until I saw their feet from under the swingy door. They were barefoot and I didn’t like that because that was kind of gross. Flynn all of the sudden started talking and they asked me if we could play dinosaurs again. I told Flynn that I couldn’t play dinosaurs because I was doing pee and we had to go back to class. Flynn went really quiet and when I looked at the floor after I flushed I didn’t see Flynn’s feet anymore. So I went to the faucet and washed my hands and wiped them on my pants because there weren’t any paper towels.
I went back to the classroom and saw Flynn acting normal again and since we were drawing I asked if Flynn had cool markers but Flynn started crying when I said that. I realized I had done Another Bad Thing because I didn’t know Flynn was poor and that was why their clothes were old and they didn’t have any markers. Flynn was really nice to me about it after they stopped crying and we drew dinosaurs on each other’s name tags. I thought Flynn would be mean or creepy but it turned out they were my best friend at the end of school. Mommy came to pick me up but all the Daddies that came to pick up their kids made me feel sad which is why I didn’t hear what Flynn told me as I was walking away. I thought they said something about “play safe” which meant Flynn liked being friends with me. That made me feel better about the Daddies.
As Mommy and me were going home, I found something in my backpack that was a piece of paper and I thought it was weird because we didn’t get any papers that day. I pulled it out and saw someone had drawn a rexie that was staring at me with bloody teeths. That was scary enough but on the paper someone wrote
REXIE LIKES YOU TOO
I thought that was really scary because no one but Mommy and me call the big dinos with short legs rexies and it sounds like a word babies use so I never ever ever use it unless I’m talking with Mommy. I put the paper back in my backpack because I was too scared to tell Mommy. That’s when I saw a Daddy on the street but the Daddy was walking on the lawns instead of the sidewalk and he didn’t have a Child with him. The Daddy was staring at me and there was something in their hand and it looked like a leash but I couldn’t tell because it is hard to turn in my stupid car seat but Mommy says it keeps me safe. By that time we were in the garage so I unbuckled and ran inside.
After I had my snack, I felt so much better. I didn’t have homework because it was the first day of school so I played dinosaurs and baseball in the backyard for a while and then got bored. I went upstairs to take my nap but I ended up sleeping a lot longer and it was almost my bedtime when I got up. I got really mad because I didn’t want to go to bed right away so I tried doing everything I wanted to do before Mommy made me go to bed. It was already getting black outside but I wanted to play archeologist (thats what Mommy says are the dinosaur bone finders) outside so I got my flashlight and shovel and tent and dinos. It was a lot of work making the tent myself but I could do it now since I was a Big Boy. I tried playing archeologist for a while but I was too tired to finish digging holes so I got my pillow from my room and went back to my tent so I could rest a little bit before I finished digging. I fell asleep again! But I woke up when I heard someone outside of my tent.
I thought it was Mommy telling me it was my bedtime, but these footsteps sounded sneaky, like someone was trying to not wake me up. No one else lives with Mommy and me so I got scared really fast. I pretended I was sleeping as hard as I could and I opened my eyes just a little very tiny bit to see someone’s shadow on the tent. My flashlight was still on! I opened my eyes a little tiny bit more and saw that the someone was big, like a Daddy. Right then, I thought about the Daddy on the street and I finally could see what was in his hand. It was a leash. And there was a pet-sized rexie on the other end. I had never been more scared in my entire life than that. In the shadow, I could see the rexie had sharp teeth and moved jerkily in the light and it was so scary I made a gasp and it was way too loud.
The Daddy and the rexie noticed my gasp and started moving to the tent door. By then, I had to cover my face with the pillow because I was crying and it was hard to breathe with the pillow smushed in my face. I whispered for Mommy and hoped she would come and save me and help me because I wasn’t really a Big Boy and I couldn’t be strong now and I was so so very scared of the Daddy and the rexie and the lights and then I saw the Daddy picked up the flashlight and they were coming in through the door.
That’s when I knew I had to be a Big Boy.
I grabbed my dino shovel and screamed at the Daddy as loud as I could but the Daddy started moving faster to me and I hit them over and over and over again with the pointy end of the shovel and I couldn’t see the rexie anymore so I just kept hitting and hitting and screaming and hitting until Mommy came running for me and by then I was so happy I cried. But Mommy started screaming and pointing at the Daddy and I just wanted a hug from Mommy so I didn’t understand why she wasn’t coming closer. That’s when Mommy turned on the porch lights.
I saw all the blood and threw up my snack earlier. It was a different type of scary being at the tent door and feeling my butt wet from where I was sitting and not because I did pee on myself. But that’s also when I saw the Daddy was wearing a backpack and the Daddy didn’t look like a Daddy at all. I couldn’t find the rexie until I followed the string tied to the someone’s arm and found a dino toy like the ones I had. I was really confused because I didn’t think adults liked dinos like kids and the shadows seemed really big but Mommy explained to me later that shadows look really big when they are closer to the light. So I forced myself to look at the face and saw that the face was dented in and the skull was open and leaking everywhere. I could see the brains and they looked more gross and not cool like I imagined. The nose was bashed in so much I couldn’t tell there was one for a while and one eye had popped out a bit but I could tell that I had done A Terrible Thing. It was the thing people went to jail for on the TV shows Mommy watched and I didn’t want to know that, just like I didn’t want to know that this wasn’t a scary Daddy or a rexie and I really didn’t want to know that the person I had hit with my dino shovel and screamed at was the person who played dinos with me and told me to play safe but really had said they were coming for a playdate and I had really really really hurt my best friend Flynn.
Mommy told me that police showed up and talked to me and I kept telling them a rexie had come killed Flynn but I don’t remember that part of my dream. Mommy doesn’t hug me a lot anymore because I spend a lot of time at this place that’s not home where there are adults in coats that like to talk to me about a lot of different things and I don’t have to go to school because they say I’m too depressed. I don’t like to talk about my dream at all and last time they tried to make me talk about it I took my clipboard and hit their faces. I don’t get clipboards to draw everywhere I go anymore, but they gave me a deal, like in the hostage movies. At least after telling Mommy about my dream, they’ll give me some toys to play with so I don’t have to draw all the time.
Maybe there will be rexies.