Darkheart

The Present: Daydreams & Nightmares

There was so much fluid--so much! Heather wasn't sure where it'd come from, the viscous cream-colored substance across her fingers, sticky along her bare stomach and legs. She stood in the midst of it, couldn't find a way out of it--where was she, anyhow? Her yard, where she'd spent so much time tending her garden, and there were her favorite flowers growing in it! Poppies, scarlet red with their black cores, and yet those cores weren't black at all--they winked at her like little dolls' eyes with the lashes curling back and back and back until the glass clouded. In her arms, something screamed. A baby! Heather had always wanted a baby! But glancing down, she saw it had at the top of its torso only a stump of a neck from which flowed the milky substance that coated her, and she sobbed while she pulled away the black ribbon around her own throat, sending her head plummeting to the ground . . .

"Hey!"

Heather registered whimpering but hardly realized the pathetic sounds were her own until arms surrounded her, Kevin's arms, and he brought her toward himself.

"I think you were having a nightmare," he commented, a gentle hand cupping the back of her head.

A nightmare . . . but had it been?

She had to tell him. She didn't know how to, but she knew she needed to. What would it mean? She sniffled, pulled back to wipe gracelessly at her pointed nose. Why did he treat her so kindly? It was such terrible timing, all of it, and yet perhaps . . . perhaps it hadn't been unforeseeable, considering her whole life had been a grotesque mess of ill timing and demoralizing circumstances. She really had no reason to expect any less.

"What was it about?"

Unlike most dreams, this one wasn't fading. It felt real, more real than her current situation in Kevin's bed. She could hardly believe this was where everything had taken her. For the first time in her life, just as it was all about to end, she felt, almost . . . content. Happy was too strong a word; there was no hope for happy. But content . . . Kevin was acting as if he actually cared for her--something she'd never seen coming--and even though she knew it wouldn't last, that everything at this point was a set-up, she was enjoying the affection. Telling him would prematurely end whatever remaining moments of serenity they had.

Heather looked askance, pulled out of his embrace, swung her legs off the side of the bed and pressed her bare feet on the cool floorboards. They'd spent a lot of time tangled in his blankets, sleeping and not sleeping, and she'd begun to lose track of time, but at present, it was night. The room was nearly pitch black with its sole curtained window, only the glow of an old aquarium light to show them one another's contours.

She couldn't do it. Not right now. Tears were imminent, and the last thing she wanted to do was cry in front of him. "I'm hungry. I need to eat something."

Sitting up behind her, Kevin wrapped an arm around her stomach, pulled her closer again, sighed in satisfaction. "I think we still have some pizza leftover. You want some? I can bring it up."

"No," she stated firmly, wriggling away and getting to her feet. "I can get it myself." She felt around in the dark for one of his T-shirts, not really sure why she was bothering. They'd spent most of the last few weeks together naked; what did it matter, now? That dream, probably. It'd been something about that dream. It'd disturbed her more than she wanted to admit. That headless thing--and it'd been crying!

Leaving Kevin's half-awake pleas, Heather padded down the stairs and through the lower level into the kitchen. What was this, anyway? What were they doing? Just pretending, that's what. Pretending it wasn't all over, it wasn't all pointless. And why? Just to torment themselves a little more before it came to an end? She shouldn't have done any of it, not come onto him at the motel, not helped him with his brother, not stayed on afterward . . . it'd only complicated what she was hoping to simplify. But she'd never had self-control. All she'd ever needed was to feel as if someone, anyone, wanted her, and she'd only ever humiliated herself in trying to meet that need. To be loved, even! She'd dreamed having a child would somehow . . . but not like this. Not like this.