Nightmares
© Alex Moisi 

I wake up scared, chased by dark dreams that I cannot remember. It's the third time this week, maybe the fourth, who can still count all the restless nights? In the bathroom I can see deep shadows under my eyes, sad proof of the nightmares lingering around me. Flashes of grotesque monsters and aberrant concoctions of my subconscious crawl through my mind but, as usual, I cannot focus on them.

Behind me, slowly shuffling her feet I hear my wife. Poor Martha, she has the same nightmares, maybe worse. Her eyes are bloodshot and she looks exhausted. Her skin is pale and her hair is lifeless and limp, like a cheap wig. We kiss out of inertia, her pregnant stomach swollen and hard between us.  

"Bad night?" she murmurs, her voice rough and sickly. I nod as I always do; bad night indeed.

On the train towards Portland, I raise my eyes to find almost all the commuters on the early train staring at me. They quickly look away, absorbed by their newspapers or an ad, but it's to late. I can almost hear their thoughts. They wonder if I'm some sort of drug addict or if I have cancer in a terminal phase. I can't blame them. My hair is thinning and I know it lays in greasy clumps no matter how much I wash it. My eyes hurt and dark circles run underneath them. I don't even want to think about the color of my skin; it reminds me of wax. I look like a wreck. But it's just the dreams, nothing else. I'm just a normal, middle class, accountant who had a few nights of bad sleep, that's all.

I know I'm lying. From the corner of my eye I see a couple point at me. I hear a man whisper to his friend that I look like a zombie. I'm not fooling anyone. But what can I do? Ignoring them, I close my eyes and try not to fall asleep. 

Portland was chosen as the number one place to raise children in America. This morning it looks like hell. Lead clouds hang low over the tall buildings, beggars crowd the streets, shaking their cups in our faces. They look tired, maybe as tired as I am. Maybe their dreams are just as rotten as mine. Probably not.

A dirty man about my age approaches me, chanting something about God. I give him a few coins, feeling a strange envy inside me. This man has no nightmares, no dark shadows crawling through his brain. He looks at me ready to repeat a long string of blessings, but instead his eyes grow wide. He disappears into the crowd before I can move. My mouth goes dry. I look around and notice the small empty space around me for the first time. In the rush hour I have my private three feet of sidewalk in each direction. I have never felt so abandoned, so alone. I hurry out of the train station, telling myself I'm seeing things. There is no reason why I should be singled out, no reason why people should be afraid of me. No reason at all.      

The thought that I'm becoming an aberration from within my dreams doesn't leave me until I arrive home. That afternoon, Martha is waiting for me in the driveway. She's pale and her eyes seem to glow with a burning fever. She rushes over to me, holding her enormous stomach.

"I think it's time," she says, barely moving her lips. She looks bloated and somehow diseased. Purple veins pulsating under her white skin like fat ringworms. I suppress a shudder, and blame it on the bad dreams.

Minutes later, I'm filing paperwork in the flickering light of a hospital's waiting room. Across the desk, I can hear two nurses whispering. They're talking about me. I can only catch distorted fragments, but I soon realize I scare them. For some unfathomable reason, I remind them of the strange nightmare they both had last night.

"Don't talk about me. I'm just a normal guy," I tell them in an angry tone. I leave the forms on the counter and walk past their surprised faces into my wife's room. Martha's sleeping, drawing air in wheezy lengths. Suddenly, as I enter, she starts screaming and doctors rush into the room. I'm kicked out and back to the now silent examination of the two nurses. In the long hours to follow I ignore them, focusing on my new habit of trying to remember my nightmares. I almost have them within reach when a doctor walks before me. He whispers condolences. Martha is dead, but the boy is alive. I notice hesitation in his voice and for a second I fear my child is a mutant, some sort of genetic error.

I rush to look at him through the glass of the nursery, and I feel the goose bumps rising on my arms. He looks so perfect, like a little doll. His yellow hair curls angelically, his pink fingers close and open full of strength, and his eyes fly around the room in curiosity. He is perfect, from his chubby toes to the two red horns on his forehead, he is exactly how I dreamed he would be. He is exactly like the demons in my nightmares.

Suddenly he notices me, and his eyes lock into mine. There is an endless depth to those blue pools, countless shades of color and meaning. I feel like I'm staring into the waters of a stormy ocean, slowly losing myself in its infinity. My son's face widens in an eerie smile, and I'm trapped by his grin. Out of the corner of my own eyes, I notice dark shadows crawl around him. Giant, black daddy-long legs scurrying away before I can focus on them. With a shudder I realize my son is not part of my dreams, he is the reason for them.

The doctors don't see the horns on his head, they don't see the dark shadows in his blue eyes. They can feel something is wrong, but they have no clue as to what. Deep inside their subconscious they remember having a nightmare about a blue eyed baby, but it's just a fleeting feeling so they don't say anything. The nurses that take care of him smile as they grow more tired every day. They comment on what a nice, quiet baby he is while he wraps dark tendrils of oily blackness around them and feeds on their fears and dread. He has everyone fooled, his innocent appearance a perfect mask to conceal his twisted nature; everyone except me.

I watch him from behind the nursery window and I wonder what I should do. He is my son, the only family I have left, but I know he is a demon feeding on nightmares. I know he is using me as he used Martha and all those around him, but still, he is my son. 

From behind the clear Plexiglas I can see him smiling at the baby next to his crib. He grins as the other child starts crying. Before a nurse can enter the room, the baby falls asleep and dark shadows with long legs crawl onto his face building a strange web of black tendrils. Soon the baby will dream of dead things and abandoned corners and children with blue eyes that shine with a strange fever and my son will feed on fear and confusion. I know all of this because he is my son and I am the only one who can see him for what he is.

Then again, there are times, when alone in the empty house I hear Martha laughing at me. She is just around the corner, in the bathroom or kitchen, telling me that having a child is stressful for anybody, but I'll make such a great dad. At times like this, I rush into the other room, hitting furniture and stubbing my toes. The room is always empty but I can smell my wife's perfume, and as I crash to my knees crying, I cannot stop wondering if I'm going insane or whether this is all just another nightmare.

How can I know for sure that what I see is real? There are so many times I can barely tell if I'm awake or still sleeping. The nightmares have increased in quantity as well as quality. Each one is painfully detailed and lingering in my mind hours after I feel certain I'm awake. Sometimes I see Martha, cradling a baby, except instead of a pink newborn she holds a black spider. The spider bites her breast and slowly poisons her, but Martha keeps smiling, staring in the distance. Other times, it is me who kills her, driving a knife into her body. She smiles and tells me everything will be fine, as blood chokes her. Yet the dreams I hate most are the ones where I forget the last months. Martha is still alive, people don't fear me, and my son is never born. Then I wake up, my cheeks wet with tears and I can almost hear my son giggling somewhere in the distance. I hate him so much, but I love what he is: my son, my last link to Martha.

Outside my nightmares, life continues as always, despite the fact that I feel more like a shadow every day. I still commute to work but just like everything else my daily train ride seem distant and pointless; routine I cling onto because I don't know what else to do. I find myself staring into nothingness with worrying regularity. Around me people laugh, gossip and hold hand as they cross the street to avoid me. I doubt they do it on purpose, they just have a bad feeling when they see me. By now, the three feet of empty space around me has become almost ten. I was never so alone, a marked man to be avoided lest his curse come onto you. It sounds dramatic, yet, somehow I don't think it really matters. My isolation is not the worst part of my curse. I'm dying; my son is slowly draining me, sucking my life away and there is only one way to stop him.  

By the time the hospital allows me to take my son home, I've decided to kill him. It's a decision pressed onto me by the long nights of horrific fear. If I want to maintain what little I have left of my sanity I must do it. Martha's voice begs me to reconsider. I'd make such a great dad, she says. Sometimes I believe her and almost renounce my plan, other times I reason she is just a creation of my son. He controls my dreams, why not my wakeful mind?

I stay awake as long as I can. The nightmares too detailed and horrific to deal with or even comprehend. I feel a burning dread every time I close my eyes. Martha's voice suggests seeing a psychologist. But I remember what I did to the beggar in black just by thinking about him; I remember the two nurses I cursed. I can't drag anyone else with me. This is my curse to deal with and I will stand by my decision.

The day comes and I place my son in his child safety seat. He looks at me with burning eyes, but I ignore his gaze just as I ignore the black wings spreading behind him and the dark tendrils trying to connect with me. I smile and try to hide my thoughts. He smiles back and I can see the sharp teeth hidden in that grin. Despite Martha's cries inside my mind, I know what needs to be done and I will do it.

Up until the last moment, I expect my son to burst into tears or to wiggle his hands at me. I almost pray for him to show any emotion, so I could have an excuse to stop. Instead he just watches me with those cold blue eyes. He stares, his small mouth tight in a narrow line, as I fasten a rock on the accelerator and switch the car into gear. I can see his calm face just before I am thrown aside and my old car jolts towards the railing. It rips the metal and collapses in the ravine on the other side. I look at the crash, worried my son could still be alive, but all that remains of my car is a pile of metal twisted beyond any recognition.

Hours later, I arrive home, tired and feeling sick. I wonder what I'll tell my insurance company or the cops, but somehow I don't really care. Somehow, nothing really matters. I just want to sleep. Maybe tonight I'll have no nightmares. The thought makes me smile and I almost giggle as I enter the bathroom, but looking at my reflection in the mirror makes me freeze. My son is looking back at me with a grin. I touch my face and the image in the mirror echoes my movements. I can hear him laugh as he pushes me away and takes control. Before I'm thrown into some dark corner of my own mind I realize I freed him, I offered him a proper body, my own.