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| THE ONEIROI'S SUBJECT |
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| CHAPTER TWO |
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There was a quietness in the air, almost like the sound waves in the world had completely stopped. I realized it was dead silent in my sleep before my waking mind knew it. I felt exposed, and I was used to feeling a certain nightly calmness was absent. Something felt out of equilibrium, but I had not physically seen anything, except the vivid unreality of my dream that I was suddenly torn from.
This dream was out of the ordinary. Normally, I experience a recurring set of dreams with similar timelines, which involve me remembering the previous instance but trying to direct myself on a new course. This one was different.
In my dream, I found myself on all fours, on a cold hardwood floor, incredibly weak. So weak that I could not get up. My breathing was labored and I felt sick. I was in my bedroom, but all of the colors had changed. The sheets that were dark blue were now grey. The white wall color was now a deep blue. Instead of two closets, there was one. The door to this singular closet was open. In the doorway was a massive pile of clothing that seemed to be pouring out. In my dream, as in reality, we have a tall standing mirror on the back wall of the closet. I crawled to the pile of clothes. They were not mine, nor my wife's. The clothing seemed new. t-shirts, jeans, heavy jackets, snow pants, hoodies, and socks. I grabbed a single sock that looked small enough to be an infant's. It was dark grey with three white horizontal parallel lines at the top. This piece of cloth felt significant. A heaviness welled up inside me, and I quickly sifted through the pile of clothes to find the other one. I became frantic and my breathing rapidly increased which brought about a feeling of lightheadedness. My heart began to beat faster and faster. I could not find the matching sock. An overwhelming sense of dread filled my body as if something terrible might occur if I could not find the match. As I continued to scratch at the pile, I began to sob. In between each heaving inhale and exhale I was muttering "he needs it. He can't go if he doesn’t have them. How is he supposed to go if he doesn't have them!". I clawed through the pile as fast as I could. So fast, I was past the point of noticing the difference between any piece of clothing my hands touched. The room seemed to be getting darker the faster I dug. I clawed, dug, shoved, pushed, pulled, moving ever deeper into the closet but never felt any progress.
Eventually, fatigue set in, and there seemed to be no end. Then, with a final sweeping motion of my arm, my hand hit something cold and flat. I stopped, my breathing labored. Sweat poured down my face and I stared down into the blackness below me. Looking up, I noticed there was the tall mirror that I had seen every day for the past 3 years. The mirror reflected to me the circular hole that I had dug through the clothing. Somehow this pile maintained its structure of an unorganized pile around a perfectly circular hole, which created a cylindrical crawl space. Past this space I could see the end of our bed, the sheets hanging sideways off of the bed. I shifted my focus from the bed to the outline of my face in the mirror. My eyes adjusted to the contours of my face. It was unclear if the face I was seeing was mine, but I could see the outline of my cheeks, and jawline, and my eyes seemed sunken into my face. I did not recognize this person, but I knew it was me. I moved my face closer to the mirror hoping I could see more detail. I stared. At that moment, I noticed a slight movement near the bed and shifted my focus to see what it was. I heard the banging of feet against the hardwood floor and just as I recognized the sound, a figure of a girl shot past the doorway and ran out of the room. I could hear the pounding footsteps as they sped through the living room, and out of the front door.
Silence.
I was back in my bed. Something happened. I was half asleep and awake. It was too quiet. A feeling of emptiness overtook me, and I forced my eyes open. The large floor-to-ceiling windows in front of me revealed the grey light of the morning. I felt cold and warm at the same time. There was a chill from the other end of the bed, but I felt the escaping warmth where I was lying. I turned over and no one was there. Odd. I never knew her to be an early riser. In my hypnopompic state, I thought I saw what appeared to be snow on the ground and flurries in the air. I rubbed my eyes, shook my head, and stumbled out of bed with a sheet wrapped around my ankle. It was freezing. I shuffled further towards the glass-paned sliding door, folding my arms in an attempt to maintain the warmth from my bed.
“What the hell…” I mumbled.
I shut the door and exhaled long and deep. Now out of my state of sleepiness, I ran over to my closet, twisted the old knob, and swung the door open. Still holding the knob in my bent wrist, I leaned over into the cold dark space of the closet. Neat, clean, and mostly in order. I stepped in and looked around, not looking for anything in particular. Closing my eyes I tried to remember the details of my dream, the feeling of clawing the heap of clothing, the desperation and exasperation. The feeling had lost some of its potency, but there was a deep lingering sense of dread. It was the feeling of something unwanted coming true. A type of forecast. A sense of a long-term semi-conscious knowing that if I continued on this path, in this way, then things in my life would drastically change. It’s the type of knowing that brings an opportunity for action, but our mind is so out of tune with what needs to be done. Blindness. A lens drastically out of focus. The wave of unrealized selfishness suddenly reveals itself and engulfs me.
I closed my eyes. Silence.
Now I feel fully awake. There is still an odd feeling sitting in my stomach. The room feels much colder than normal and I can't hear any air from the vent above. I grab my thermal leggings and hoodie, put them on, and leave the room. The path from the bedroom to the main room that leads into the kitchen is only several strides away. I try to walk as fast as possible to make it to the area between the living room and the kitchen island, where I always stand to view the lake through the window every morning. As I make my way to this spot, I notice that the kitchen is dark. There is no sound of the coffee pot or light coming from the single overhead recessed light above the breakfast table. The light was even in each space around the main room. There is no one here.
Then I remember.
I pause, listening for movement. No sound.
Sluggishly I walk over to the front window to confirm that I was awake. As I was staring at both cars in the driveway, I pull my focus from them and begin to replay our morning routine in my mind. I remember the bright light from the lamps in my eyes, the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen, the feeling of not wanting to leave our house, and the overwhelming feeling of warmth on cold winter days. She is gone. Forever.
As I walk back towards the bedroom over the same path I kick something small but solid. It flies straight out in front of me, bounces off the solid wood door to the bedroom, and changes direction opposite the door's angle. I hear a plastic smacking sound against the wall. I have an idea what this might be, but it’s usually plugged into the wall on Aria’s side of the bed.
I begin to replay my dream in my mind and try to piece together the fragmented moments that I remember from it. The oddities of this dream seem to stack up and it reminds me that I am not ok. I stride through the last portion of the distance to my bedroom, push open the bedroom door, and peer into the room. There is a single USB charger lying on the floor equal distance from the bed and the wall. I can see a small sharp dent in the baseboard where it had been propelled into, then ricocheted to where it sat now.
Walking a few more paces, I pick the adapter up off the floor. I examine it in the light coming from the window. There was already a familiarity with this piece of plastic. I know its contours, blemishes, and colors. I am not staring at it to take in some new visual information about it but use this as an opportunity to stop and think. At this point, I notice a yellow slip of paper on the desk, under a book, beyond my view of the thing in my hand. There were rarely slips of paper lying around in any areas other than the study. Lying flat and angled, the left edge of the paper was parallel to me. The note is pressed by the last book she read. I shift the book off of the note. There was a short, handwritten line in the middle of the paper. How did I not notice this before?
It reads: For you
“What the…”, I whisper to myself. I've been in a fog for so long that I didn't see the last letter my wife wrote until now. I flip it open. In beautiful, small, cursive writing, the letter says:
I am not quite sure how to begin this or even end it. I know this past year has been really difficult for us. We definitely did not expect this. We have watched two of our family members and three friends go through the same thing. I never thought it would be me, but here I am.
I keep thinking of what life will be like without me and where I will go afterward, For most of my life I did not think about death or what comes after. It has been difficult not to contemplate death in light of what has transpired over the past year. When I try to see the future, I do not see myself in it. I am not giving up, but I want you to know what I'm thinking. We have been at this for so long and as it gets worse, I do not see a way out.
Since the beginning, we have pushed to seek a respite. We have not found that yet. We are both tired. It has been difficult, but have helped each other throughout.
When I go, don't lose yourself. Keep doing what you love. Don't let the wind fall out of your sails. Rely on your friends around you. Please take care of yourself.
The house is not important, your soul is.
I love you more than you know.
~
A.
I pick up the letter and read it again. Again. Three more times. I am frozen. I feel my face grow hot and my heart beat faster. I sit down on the cold hardwood floor, with my back against the edge of the bed, still staring at the yellow piece of paper. I let out an exhale that seems to draw out my anxiety. Like a strong river pulling debris along its current, the anguish of never knowing her last thoughts leaves my body with my breath. Numbness has taken over. Familiar, yet deeper. Then, a sliver of delight. A warmth. Optimism.
The silence of the house early in the morning was not out of the ordinary, but on this particular morning, the silence echoed. The stillness exposed loneliness. The presence that had filled this house was gone. At this moment, I become honest with myself. I am not blindsided by this letter but revived, and the contents of it confirm that the person I remember is the person who actually lived.
I get up and walk slowly over to study on the other side of the house. This room also has a window that faces out to the lake. This room was much larger than the adjacent bedrooms. Aria loved this room. When we bought the house, I found her standing in front of that window for half an hour, staring at the lake. Every morning, I would find her, curled up in a chair, looking at the lake.
The door to the study is shut and inside it is dark. I grab the handle and pause. I know she is not in the room, but a part of me, every morning, has to check for the possibility. I push the door open, letting the handle go as I stood in place. She is not here. She has not been here for almost a year. Her coffee mug is still on the corner of her desk. The green field jacket is still hanging on the closet hook. The photo of us standing by the lake in the backyard is still hung on the wall next to the window. The place she loved most.
Silence.
~
The digital beeping of my office jolted me back to the physical world. I quickly reached up and hit the silent button to cut off the loud noise. I am always surprised at how loud this thing is. Rarely do I use it. The only people who have been calling me on this have been Fei and Malik. The ringing tone is somewhere between a fire alarm and a representation of an analog ring in a digital tone. On days that I am particularly sleepy in this small cube of an office, this phone ends any potential pathway to sleep. It was probably engineered to do that.
I sat up in my chair and tapped the history button on the desk phone. It was a conference-type phone that had a visible microphone and a small speaker attached. This was a newer version so, of course, it had a touchscreen that did its best to mimic a smartphone menu. A very long list of calls showed up in a vertical list. One missed call from Malik at 3:12 pm, but no voicemail. Good. In the age of text messaging and constant emails, I had learned to not ever use voicemail again. The extremely thin blue scroll bar on the right of the window indicated that I had a large amount of missed calls. None were called back to, indicated by an asterisk next to the number. I tapped and pressed the scrollbar and slowly pulled my finger down across the touchscreen. Numbers flickered by. Many were the same number, with random spots of ones I did not recognize. Well, forgotten. I came to the end of the list. August 15, 2022, 9:25 am. It was Malik's first call to me in our new location. Seven years ago. I tried to remember the conversation. I know there was a lot of laughter and excitement, but also naivete.
There is a certain solace in naivete, which can blind you from the ill will of others. This place can be comfortable. I think we reminisce about childhood by remembering how much we didn't know at that particular point in time. I have many memories of my childhood, but none seem coherent or linear. They are snapshots. Three-second videos on a loop sequence. They are instances of feeling, pain, joy, loss, and elation. None of them feel quite real, but I remember experiencing them. There are small, unimportant details that are fastened to my memory stores, like the feeling of the kitchen floor of our first house, the rotting wood of the handmade benches in the woods behind that house, turning too sharp on my bike and falling into a ditch. Each of these, and more, are imprinted. Their contents do not indicate importance and I cannot know why they are always accessible. Why those specific memories? What are they attached to?
I know I should call Malik back. He might have something important to say about the project.
I sat there, staring at the last entry in the call list, smiling, and remembering the feeling of being in a new location. At that time, everything felt like the beginning of an endeavor that would eventually take us elsewhere. I remember smiling and being filled with deep optimism. That still exists inside me, but it has considerably been reshaped by a conglomerate of tiny events. In anticipation, I expect a culmination event to occur. Some endpoint to be reached. A flash of light. An explosion. Maybe sudden death, but it never comes. The ever-so-small happenings of life, as trivial as they might be in the moment, add up to a mass that may become larger than we are. To contain it alone is burdensome. Malik has been my support through many changes and my life.
I shake my head to clear my thoughts and come back to reality. Quickly, I pick up the phone, navigate to the top of the list, and press select. The dial tone rings in my ear.
"Hey...are you busy?", said Malik in a hurried tone.
"No, not at all", I said, in a semi-excited tone, waiting for some hopeful news about something.
"The board, in all of its wisdom, decided to pull back on the inquiry. I don't know who talked to them, or what they said, but the board was appeased for now. I think we are lucky." " ....wow, I can't believe it", I said, mouth agape.
"My opinion is that we continue like normal. Stay the course and continue the work like there was never any intervention", Malik said plainly.
"Yes, please can we do that?", I asked.
"I would love to", said Malik.
"...finally".
Finally. Back to work. The amount of emotional and mental capacity this has taken from me is hard to measure, but I feel its effects. I pull out my phone and text Fei the news. I'm sure she already knows.
Me: Apparently they pulled back the investigation. We'll see if it actually sticks...
Fei: Don't celebrate yet.