What happens when we dream? Where do we go?
I scream. And I scream again. “Let me out! Please! I won’t do it again!” I bang at the door and slam the walls in the darkness to make some noise. “Please!” I know full well that it’ll just piss my nanny off. She’ll lock me in here for another hour if I make noise. I can’t see anything but I can feel the toilet and the sink and the shower with my hands as I fumble around in the darkness.
Is this where we go when we dream?
I lay my head on my pillow and close my eyes. Bloody Mary. My friends talk about a creature that lives in the mirrors of the dark bathrooms. Chant “Bloody Mary” 3 times in a candle-lit bathroom and you’ll see a woman’s crooked and bloody face staring at you through the mirror. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. I open my eyes in panic and see a dark figure staring at me through my window. Just a pigeon. I get out of my bedroom and find my way through the darkness as I pass by a mirror in the hallway. Don’t look at it, don’t look at it, that’ll draw her to you. I finally reach my parent’s bedroom.
Are dreams supposed to be scary?
I’m in class and feel something in my stomach. I have to shit. “May I go to the bathroom, Ms Padilla?” I walk to the bathroom and sit in one of the stalls closest to the door so I can escape quicker when Bloody Mary comes. Suddenly the lights close and I hear the door close loudly. Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary. I’m going to die. “How’s your shit going?!” I hear laughter outside as I run out the stall with my pants and my underwear on my feet tainted with shit and piss. The other kids can see me through the window on the bathroom door and I hear them laugh as I open the lights and go back to my stall.
There has to be good dreams somewhere in here? In this mind? Surely?
I finish studying for my highschool chemistry test and decide to finally go to bed. I close the lights behind me. Bloody Mary. The White Lady. Demons from other worlds swim in my mind. Faceless, formless, spindly and spiny and gruesome figures form in my mind’s eye, all coming for me. I sprint the long, dark hallway leading the bedroom and wake up my parents. Why can’t I still sleep alone? What is wrong with me?
Death is a good dream.
I try to limit my phone usage but it’s no use; the thing is too addictive. I can’t sleep. I scroll through my favorite website: a place where people post pictures and videos of people dying. I see a person’s head crushed under a truck. Hostages in the Middle East run over by a tank. A person stuck in a lathe spinning wildly, blood and guts and organs splattering the walls and the construction tools. I’m too afraid of death so this is my way of getting used to it.
Love is also a good dream, right?
I’m curled up in a ball in a corner of a bathroom. I can hear the muffled music of a college Halloween party outside the door. I’m ten shots in and gripped by an insurmountable and seemingly ineradicable sadness. Man, why am I so lonely? I close the lights in the bathroom to match the mood. Now my tears turn to panic. I’m not a college kid crying about a girl anymore – I’m a kid trapped in a dark bathroom by people who were supposed to take care of me. My panic turns to hope. I don’t have to kill myself if Bloody Mary can do it for me. My hope turns to disappointment as I chant Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary and nobody shows up. No creepy girl with a bloody face. No demon with long hair and crooked limbs. After all, it’s all in my head. I open the bathroom lights and wash my tears.