1 - A Different Kind of Blindness

rise...
the word whispered through my mind and wrenched me violently deep into Sleep’s sanctuary. There I was relegated to scattered memories of my past.
rise...
and they were on me all at once. I couldn't get away. Their pallid clammy hands were covering every inch of my skin. I couldn't breath, I couldn't feel anything except for the warm sweat which permeated the air with such thickness I held my breath. Suffocation was better than inhaling the stench. The last thing to go was my vision. Black. It was all they wore. Their heads appeared to float among the massive blackness carved with grimaces, rotting teeth, and beady pupilless eyes. One among them seemed to be impervious to the chaotic war that was waging on around us. Impassibly he stood there and whispered…

Rise.

If Freud were still alive he’d have a field day with this dream. But seeing as how he isn’t I would have to settle for shrugging it off and maybe using it for dinner conversation later in the day.
Rise.
Or maybe I won’t. Lately, it seemed like I’d been getting daily installments of these sequential dreams. Mine are usually random with oompa loompas and such, giant worms out to attack me or living in a tar house at the bottom of the ocean. But it almost felt like I was sharing these dreams with someone else, or that maybe I was sharing their memories.
Or maybe not…
I walked to the bathroom, you know, to pee, brush my teeth, that sort of thing. Checking myself in the mirror I froze, the blood draining from my face. No, it wasn’t a pimple, something worse, or just weird. I was looking at myself, only myself seemed to be talking and I wasn’t talking. She was screaming but only for a second. She had her hands on the mirror, her hair falling around her shoulders. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that she wasn’t looking into a mirror but perhaps, crouched over a puddle? I couldn’t tell and the harder I tried to discern what was happening the quicker she started to disappear until I was staring at myself in my pink t-shirt and ponytail. I stared at the mirror a little longer, then moved my hand toward the mirror, the reflection followed; I touched the mirror, my hand reflected back. Everything was fine. I must have gotten what, two hours of sleep? Must have.

2 hours and 15 minutes later. Break time during school. Girl’s bathroom. This time my reflection was crying. It looked like, when you take a picture of yourself, you can see your arm holding out the camera and your face is huge and takes up most of the picture. It was kind of hard, pretending I was fixing my hair while figuring out what the hell was going on. I heard static in my ear and then, as if I had little earphones on I heard, “Don’t go. Switch with me. Repeat…”
I was bumped into from behind and lost sight of the mirror for two seconds. When I looked back I saw the bathroom stalls behind me and someone was trying to get to my faucet. Needless to say, I avoided any reflection of myself for the rest of the day, this included bathrooms, windows and puddles. That night before I went to sleep I prepared myself to tell whoever the hell it was that was trying to contact me, to FUCK OFF.

[end of A Different Kind of Blindess: Madison]
~Byol