“Carrie! Wake up! Carrie, honey wake up! Its just a night mare.” Jenn patted the sobbing girl. The glow of the alarm clock on Carrie’s desk illuminated the room. Jenn switched Carrie’s purple lamp on, hoping the light might wake her.
“Michael? Where are you?” Carrie cried in her sleep.
“Carrie, you are having a bad dream, wake up.” Jenn said firmly but gently. She slid her arm behind the girl’s shoulders to sit her up. Carrie flailed for a moment. Then she opened her eyes with confusion as she was still partly in dream world.
“Where is Michael? I’ve been looking for him?” Carrie said but as soon as the words left her mouth she realized that she had been asleep. Jenn watched Carrie as she tried to make sense of where she was and calm down. “That was a real dream,” Carrie said to her mother.
“Would it help to tell me your dream? Whenever my dreams seem too real. It helps me to talk about it.” Jenn said in a motherly way. Carrie looked at her mother in doubt.
“No it was a real dream.” Carrie paused, “Mom, who is Michael?” She asked with an air of confusion as though still being in a dream.
“Dreams aren’t real, Carrie.” Jenn reminded her as though she was her four-year-old little brother, Charley.
“No, it was real.” Carrie responded adamantly. “Like a memory. Mom, who is Michael?” This time her question came with an urgency.
“I don’t know,” Jenn said quickly as though she wanted to avoid searching her memory. A cloud of sadness seemed to pass into Carrie’s face. A despondency overtook her. Grief took her voice away. Before she had been crying from a fear, now it was grief–an inexplicable grief. Maybe if it hadn’t hurt so much she could have explained it. Maybe if it she could have explained it, it would not have hurt so much. Grief is sneaky like that. Instead Carrie, just shook her had and turned over to go back to sleep. She managed to mumble that she was sleepy, to get her mom to leave. She managed to hold back silent tears till after Jenn had tucked her back in like she was small child and turned the light off.
The next morning, Carrie woke up with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She went through the motions of eating breakfast. She growled grumpily at Matt and ignored her father’s rebuke, though outwardly she apologized. On the bus she pulled her book out to read so she wouldn’t need to talk to anyone, but she only stared at the page. At school she managed to put her feelings and dreams out of her mind by distracting herself with classes and friends. But in the quiet moments the sick feeling came back. By the time she was back home the feeling was back in full force. It felt like a she had forgotten something very important but couldn’t remember what it was.
She changed out of her uniform and abandoned her school things in a pile. Carrie, desperate to jog her memory, headed for the bookshelves in den. On the bottom shelf were family photo albums. Jenn loved photos. On the shelves above the photo books, the shelves were lined with picture frames. Many were old black and white photos from an era belonging to grandparents. She started with the most recent books. They were not very orderly and had few notes or dates. Carrie set them back on the shelf. Carrie remembered most of the things from those books anyway. She kept looking and found the older books from when she was toddler. These books were much more orderly. Each page was decorated and most photos labeled. Clearly Jenn had more time before Matt, Chad, and Charley were born. However, there was something really odd about the book. There were blank spots on the pages as though pictures were missing, even some blank pages as if they were skipped.
These were from before Carrie was born.
Carrie put this book back as well. Then she pulled an older white book with curly silver writing and bells on the front. This book was of Jeff and Jenn’s wedding. They looked very young. The hair styles looked funny. Carrie liked this book. She set it next to her and pulled another book off the shelf. The beginning had some pictures of Jenn and Jeff doing things with friends and Carrie’s Aunts, Uncles, and Grandparents. These were from before Carrie was born. But then pictures seemed to dwindle in the book. Blank sections followed. Just when Carrie would assume the rest of the book was blank there would be a random page of a niece’s graduation or a wedding of a friend on a page carefully labeled and even sometimes with decorative paper and cut outs much like the first pages in the book. Towards the end was her new born pictures. There were a lot more pictures in these pages with careful labels and cute headings and stickers to decorate the pages but still there were a few blanks space that didn’t seem to make sense. Carrie put the book back on the shelf had sat quietly thinking. It felt like the memory books had forgotten something too.
Matt walked into the room. Seeing the Wedding Album next to Carrie he decided he needed to look at it too. Was it some kind of sibling rivalry or did he want to remember something? Either way he snatched up the album and began to look at it. Instantly angry at him for barging in on her thoughts Carrie yelled viciously. “Give that back, I was looking at it!”
Matt grinned a taunting grin and ran out of the room. Hot on his heels she sprinted after him up the stairs to the right and into his bedroom.
“Get out of my room!” yelled Matt. Not that Matt really cared if she was there, he just loved feeling that for once he could yell those words at her, considering all the times she insisted that he leave her room. Up until they moved, all the boys had shared the largest room in the tiny house. Jeff and Jenn had actually traded with them and took the smaller room. Carrie had always had her own room, being that she was the only girl. Matt never thought that seemed very fair. Chad and Charley now had a smaller room on the bottom floor. Carrie came up short in the room. Not because she cared that Matt told her to leave. She hadn’t been in Matt’s room since they first moved in.
“Matt, w-why is your room like this? “Carrie stuttered. Something in her face pulled him up short too but he certainly wasn’t going to admit it.
“Why do you care, it’s picked up! So you can’t complain to MOM!” he yelled.
“Why is half your room blank?” She countered, ignoring his defensiveness for probably the first time in her life. She was struck by how large it was for just him. This was exaggerated by the fact that all of Matt’s things were on only one side of the room. His dresser, night stand and bed were clustered in one corner. His posters and wall hangings all decorated one side. It was almost like an imaginary line was draw in the room. One side of the room was normal and the other side was blank.
“I don’t know, it just is. Now get out, or I’m telling Mom!” Matt yelled again. but this time the anger seemed to be covering up something else, something like pain. Carrie heard her mother coming to check on the commotion, and so that she wouldn’t get in trouble she left the room quickly forgetting about the Wedding Album.
Giving up, she pulled a journal from between her mattress and box springs.
Sitting at her desk in her room she sighed at her math homework. She had been staring at it for at least ten minutes. She couldn’t get her dream out of her head. Giving up, she pulled a journal from between her mattress and box springs. You can never be too careful with sneaky little brothers.
My Dream
I have had the same dream every night since we moved to this new house. I am walking down the hallway of my old house. Everything looks big, so I guess I am young. It is early morning and I am looking for someone. First I run into the kitchen and no one is there. I look in the living room and no one is there. I come back down the hall and no one is in the bathroom or spare office room. That is what it was back then, not Mom and Dad’s room. I remember that. I come back to my room and there are two toddler beds in there. They didn’t seem little like they do now. I look over at the bed across from mine and it is empty. I began crying. Mom comes in, her room was the only room I hadn’t checked. I ask her where Michael is and she looked at me like she knew before she walked in why I was sad. Like she felt sorry for not telling me earlier. “He is with Dad this morning, they went fishing really early. You get to go next time, but its his turn this time.” I remember feeling better because she knew why I was sad before I even told her. This dream bothers me because I am certain I remember it happening.
Then last night the dreamed changed. It started with me crying in my room and asking for Michael but this time Mom looked at me like she had no idea who Michael was and she told me that I had just had a bad dream and dreams aren’t real. Then over and over again I kept waking up in my toddler bed, looking over to see if Michael was there. I then would search the whole house to look for him. Only, there were more hallways and more rooms that all looked like rooms that could be in our house but weren’t. Dreams are so weird like that. Sometimes I would walk into a room and would see Mom working, and I would ask her, and she would look confused and say she didn’t know but that I must have just had a bad dream and dreams aren’t real. This kept going on ’til I woke up with Mom sitting next to me telling me I had a bad dream. I asked her about Michael and she said she didn’t know.
But I think it’s worst than that. I think she doesn’t remember. I remember. Or I remember something but I can’t remember what exactly.
But really, I’m scared. I’m scared I have lost someone. I am scared that I have forgotten an entire person, except on this one morning. I am scared that mom and dad have forgotten him.
Jeff sat at the breakfast table trying to focus through bleary eyes. His coffee grew cold as he read his newspaper. Jenn buttered more toast and called, “Hurry kids your eggs are getting cold.”
“I can’t find my shoes,” called a voice.
Another cried, “I can’t find my uniform!”
“You have my shoes! You brat!” accused the first voice.
“I do not, you jerk!” exclaimed an 3rd voice.
Jeff snapped out of his stupor. “They haven’t even been awake 15 minutes!” He said as he strode out of the room to deal with the “brat caller” and “jerk accuser.”
Jenn peeked at the newspaper. Jeff had been looking over the classifieds. Circled with a question mark was a set of free-standing light house stairs. A piece that looked like it was a novelty for show more than a useful set of stairs. A pencil drawing, accompanied the ad. It displayed a tightly spiraled stair case with incredibly shallow steps even at the outer edge of the spiral. It was not much more than a fancy twisted ladder. The ad was asking an exorbitant price of $7093.00.How odd?” Jenn thought. Yes it was odd, why would Jeff be interested in something like that? However, this is not what Jenn thought was odd. She was familiar with the staircase.
Jeff walked back into the kitchen, four kids in toe. “Sit down and eat your breakfast,” he grunted. He was not going to put up with any more nonsense. Carrie, their 12-year-old daughter, leaned over the circled advertisement. She was always interested in drawings and a twisted staircase is tricky to draw. Matt ripped it out from under her nose. Carrie yelled at him.
The next few minutes were not the pleasant breakfast either parent was hoping for. Eventually, Carrie and her little brother Matt flanked their dad to look at the picture. It really was best if Dad was separating them. Charley, the four-year-old, couldn’t be left out and insisted on sitting in Jeff’s lap. Chad was quietly eating his eggs and toast. Just younger than Matt, Chad was a very energetic child and his quietness now was only an indication that he was recharging before running, jumping, and climbing the walls.
Jeff spoke, “I had the oddest moment of daja vu when I saw that picture.” This of course, lead to an explanation about what daja vu was before he actually got around to the picture. “I had the strangest dream last night.” He described his realistic dream of walking into their old house and how the staircase was inexplicably in the middle of the room leading to a hole in the ceiling. “…and everyone was missing.” He concluded. “I don’t normally have dreams, but that one was really weird.”
Jenn looked very surprised, “I had a dream with those stairs in it too, but it was many years ago when we lived in our little house on 7093 Loop Avenue. The house was so small I often had dreams that the house had extra rooms that I had never noticed somehow. Once I dreamed about a spiral staircase just like the one in the picture. For weeks after I the daydreamed about putting one leading to the attic space and making it a playroom for the kids!”
Matt had a wild imagination and was often thinking everything was suspicious or some kind of conspiracy. He looked for patterns and clues all the time. He even dressed like a detective for Halloween the year before. “Hey! Look, the number next to the stairs, it’s our old house number! Maybe there are aliens reading our thoughts and sending us coded messages. Carrie rolled her eyes. Chad giggled and smirked, everything was a joke to Chad.
Jeff, remarked to Jenn, “You know that the attic in that house is barely tall enough for a short person to stand at the peak of the roof and that’s before putting in a subfloor.”
“Yes, I know, that is why I was picturing a playroom from for the kids. Plus, I dropped the idea when Matt was born. It would have been ridiculous to do such a renovation with kids and a newborn,” replied Jenn, “Still it is odd that we had such similar dreams though.”
Carrie looked at her Mom she looked troubled. “Kids?”
“What’s that, girly-girl?” asked Jenn cheerfully sensing Carrie was conflicted about something.
“You said, ‘A play room for the kids, before Matt was born, but it was just me?”Carrie looked a little alarmed.
“Oh, no. I’m sure I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you did,” Jeff looked at her surprised peering over his glasses that set low on his nose for looking at the paper, “Twice actually.”
Jenn was sometimes stubborn but the odd looks at her family’s faces made her not want to argue, “Well, I’m so used to saying ‘The Kids’, that I guess it’s just habit now.” But she really didn’t remember saying it. Nor did she notice the inconsistency of such an intense desire for an extra playroom when they only had one child in a three bedroom house.
The kitchen clock chimed and reminded them they all need to finish breakfast. There was the normal chaos and fuss about who should clean up breakfast and who needed to find shoes and who needed their hair combed comb still. Finally, all the kids were safely on their buss with backpacks and lunches. Jenn found her keys under a pile of coloring books and left in a flurry.
Jeff, last to leave, spent ten minutes turning off lights and locking doors. How did the kids have time to open so many doors and turn on so many lights! Pulling out of the driveway and down the street he sipped a 3rd cup of coffee. Recalling the strange conversation at the breakfast table, he suddenly had the same sense of loss and terror he had in his dream the night before. He had not relayed the feelings he had in the dream to the kids or Jenn that morning. He did not usually have nightmares; when he did he usually laughed them off the next day. He was not normally given to worry for no reason and certainly not from just some crazy dream. Yet hours after the dream his heart began to race at the memory. You have got to get a grip! He told himself yet again trying to snap himself out of…
Out of what exactly? He didn’t know. However, no matter how reasoned with himself he still had an uneasy feeling.
The silence was disturbed by the continuous rustling of paper. The persistence of the noise rattled those at the table working out their sums. Undaunted by their sighs and groans the baby brother worked over his paper relentlessly. His little hands folded and refolded and unfolded and folded again. His eyes determined; his fingers never stopping. Each fold contained the imprecision of his small years. Yet with each measured crease there was a consistency that balanced his lack of accuracy.
Finally the relentless paper rattling ended. The pace of the sums quickened, with sighs of relief. Without stopping to even survey his model, he took hold of the bottom edge of the lined paper. His tongue poked out the side of his mouth–a line connecting directly to his focus. He raised his arm back and threw the paper creation. Watching it loop wildly in the air, bounce off his brother, and end its flight, he finally paused.
His paper airplane was complete.
Paperwork – Photo by J.A. Goggans Copyright 2019 J. A. Goggans
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It was late and Jenn had finally drifted off to sleep. She had not been sleeping well since she had moved to their new house. Every night she dreamed so many dreams that by the time she was supposed to get up in the morning it felt as if she had actually been awake all night. Many of the dreams were weird and inconsistent, but every night at least one, if not more, were about their old house. In fact, as time went on the dreams about their old house increased.
Photo by EVG photos on Pexels.com
This night was no different. She saw herself in her old house not too long after they had moved into it. She saw herself take a breath and sit down in the wing-back chair. It was placed in a slightly different place that day for some reason—probably the kids had moved it when they were trying to build a fort. It was their time machine fort, the remains of which were scattered on the floor. She put both feet up on the chair, with her knees near her chin. Her feet were cold and she tried to warm them with her hands. Then she thought she smelled something funny. Turning slightly, she sniffed the wing of the chair. She didn’t smell anything and leaned awkwardly into the wing of the chair. She rested there for a moment. Jeff would be home from work soon, the kids were in bed asleep finally, and she had a sense of relief.
Then it was gone. For no reason a sudden, sharp, stab of emotional grief struck her soul. It hurt so badly it took her breath from her and then all of her strength as though the pain made it impossible for her to hold her head up. She began to sob into her hands, forgetting her cold feet. Laying into in the fetal position in her chair she tried to think. What was she sad about? Why was she crying? She had absolutely no idea. She cried more. It felt like someone had died, like nothing would be the same.
Jeff bounded through the door home from work. He stopped short when he saw Jenn sobbing. Something terrible happened? The kids? He felt something in the pit of his stomach sink and drag him down and he said, “Jenn what’s wrong?”
“I have no idea! I promise, I don’t understand it.” She kept weeping. “Everything was great and then suddenly this feeling.” He gave her a hug and the moment faded into other images of the house, sometimes real sometimes not. There were piles of laundry, and dishes, and kids building time-machine forts complete with a control panel of dates and times. But it was located it deep down in the attic. Except their old house didn’t have an attic.
Then she saw another moment years later. She was stepping through the front door. It felt like it had been a week since she left the house. She had rushed out barely getting dressed correctly after getting a phone call from her mother. The living room was arranged completely differently. The wing-back chair had been reupholstered to match the decorations. Its new normal placement in the room happened to be what had been the odd placement from the time kids had pushed it around to make their fort. So, now it was in the exact placement as it had been years before. Jenn sat down in the chair, pulled her knees to her chest and kicked off her mismatched flip flops. She turned her head to lean into the wing of the chair.
Her big brother was gone. She hadn’t really stopped the whole day, and now it seemed something real about it all hit her at once. She felt her heart in the middle of her chest aching as though it was actually physically injured. Then she felt this little crack or pop, not unlike pouring hot water into a cold glass. It shattered into a thousand little pieces like the shattered safety glass on her brother’s truck. It felt like the shards of her heart slowly expanded outward like an explosion in slow motion. “My heart is actually breaking,” she thought. The ache was unbearable. And then suddenly, the pain subsided for a moment, as though someone else took the pain and held it for her keeping her from breaking completely. Who could take that grief? Her grief? Who could possibly understand? Who could ever KNOW what she was feeling?
As dream continued, Jenn saw both of the scenes together—like on a split screen—then slowly they merged as though one was superimposed on the other. She saw the younger Jenn fold herself into the same position and place as the older grieving Jenn. She had taken her own pain? Who else would understand that pain but herself? How though?
The images began to fade into more strange moments of kids playing and grieving for Uncle Chris. Then the control panel and the laundry and the dishes and the attic swirled around again. She felt joy and pain and then she heard the house call her, “Come-back. Come-back.” The call came faster: come-back- come-back-come-back. Then it began to change from a voice to a sound: come-back- come-back-come-back.
Ugh! It was the sound of the alarm going off. It was 5:30 am and time to get up. She fumbled with the clock, its loud buzzing was now sounding less like “come-back- come-back-come-back” but it still seemed to mock the tears that were streaming down her face. It wouldn’t turn off! In uncharacteristic anger and impulsiveness, she hurled it across the room and smashed into several pieces as it slid down the wall. Jeff waked in from the bathroom, looking rather confused.
“You might want to pick up that radio alarm clock you wanted on the way home today” she said calmly.
He jumped up excitedly when he heard the sound of a large vehicle approaching. “They’re home,” he cried and was passing through the door before I could say anything.
“They aren’t riding the bus today. They have after school activities today,” my words caught up to him.
He ran back to the table as tears over took him. His kinesthetic personality and general good nature sometimes mask his kindness and caring soul. He buried his head in my shoulder till either he regained control or his grief lost hold.
“It’s ok to cry.” I patted him. “Why are you crying?”
“I miss them,” he said said, his words small, as emotion seemed to finish washing passed him. It was as if he road it like a surfer on a wave, neither fighting the wave nor gaining control of of the wave.
“I miss them too,” I said. Because I have. And I feel tears sting my nose as my eyes imperceptibly water.
He moves away to talk over Legos with his little brother. And the wave recedes back into the sea.
Copyright 2019 J. A. Goggans
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Bone and muscle and tendons and eye sockets tired.
Not a surface sleepy.
A deep tired.
Toes, heals tired.
And It creeps up the Achilles’ tendon and settles in the place in the calf where a charlie horse grows. It finds that place just above the middle top corner of the scapula bone and It spreads like melted butter, sticks like honey, and grows like kudzu. It reaches your jaw, and scalp, and shoulders and finds your clavicle and drips to your elbows.
The still elbow begins to rust.
It takes over.
Resistance is necessary.
Resistance feeds It.
That.
Is there a word like that?
Written 8/14/2013 Edited 2019
Copyright 2019 J. A. Goggans
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Jeff Jones opened his front door and stepped into his living room. Jenn had seemed OK, when he left for work. They had talked about their schedule for the day—he had meetings, she had errands, the kids had choir. But when he came home there was a hole in the living room ceiling, a set of lighthouse steps haphazardly leaning into it and a Led Zeppelin song playing quietly on repeat. The house was eerily still and empty.
He became acutely aware of all of his senses. His heart beat wildly. His feet felt rooted to the floor. He could feel his keys still in his hand. They were digging into his palm as he gripped them. He even noticed the warm sweet smell of the spring air coming from the open windows. The Led Zeppelin song was getting louder and louder and not only because of the musical dynamic crescendo. The sound seemed to be turning up. It overwhelmed all his senses as his heart beat faster.
He gasped, opened his eyes, his new clock radio blared the classical guitar solo. He was in his bedroom, in their new house, and Jenn was next to him asleep. His heart still racing, he felt a surge of adrenaline in his already alert body. He had detected some movement in the darkened room. Stepping close to the bed was his four-year-old son. He began climbing up next Jeff and Jenn as he often did when he woke up in the mornings since they moved to their new house. Jeff sighed in great relief.
As the little boy scrambled all over the covers and kicking Jeff with cold tiny feet he said, “I had a dream about our old house again, Daddy.”
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