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But I would. The memories of another life, my birth, were buried far too deep to pull to the surface; the universe was not yet ready to rip the bandage off, to expose the cruelty of fate to the light.
I would touch myself at night, furious and fading images of her behind my eyes, starkly contrasted to what was there when my lids closed.
To pull yourself from a whispering grave is to exhume the long buried.
I didn’t know it yet. The cave in the grave hadn’t spoken to me yet.
It was long before those dreams. Before the shivering and the fainting in class.
I would have liked to have been a mythical creature, especially after I read or wrote in my notebook.
Maybe a werewolf, shape-shifting my way through the centuries, through the world around me.
I imagined it manly, to be a beast. To rip the flesh from those who harmed me. It was a lofty dream many boys fantasized about, aiming their rage at bullies or abusive parents.
Instead, I aimed it at dead women, at the hands that touched me.
Mary was the worst because she seemed to be the kindest. She was closer to my age, mute, blind in one eye. Half of whathewas.
I didn’t know what rules and punishments Markus doled out to the women on the ranch. But I knew something happened in the dark.
In my dream that night I was on Sorina’s roof, watching the stars.
“Do you think the stars talk to us?”I asked. I could feel her eyes on my face as I memorized the constellations. She propped up on one elbow, no shame in her attention.
“Everything talks to us. You just have to listen.”
“I imagine, up there, there is no good and evil. Not like there is here. There is no hate, no disease, no suffering.”My voice was deeper in my dream, but my words brought forth the image of a child. A child I could never be.
“I won’t let you suffer.”She reached over and ran her hand through my hair.
I said,“I used to suffer every day.”
And dream Sorina said,“I can take her away, you know that, right?”
“Yes.”I barely got the word out, vowing not to ask. I couldn’t sentence someone to death, could I?
“Do you want me to?”
“Some days, yes. Most days, no. I shouldn’t love her, but I do.”Dream me pictured Mary, but the image was distorted, flickering. Valerie’s face was in the static.
“Sometimes we have to hurt the ones we love.”
I said,“I think religion is killing her.”I didn’t know who dream me meant anymore.
“Revenge is a religion, too, you know. It’s mine.”
“I don’t want to be that way.”I closed my eyes, throat hot.
“You don’t have to be that way. I can carry that for you.”
And then I woke, drenched in sweat, though there was a chill the night I met Diana. I was grateful the reoccurring nightmare of hot, needy, greedy hands that left me with a film all over my skin had left me alone for one brief night, but the dream I’d been given made me feel unsteady.
I looked at my bedroom window, the cause of my chill. It was open, and though it was an unanswered plea, I desired the tapping of fingernails on windows. Hers, red and sharp. But she never came, except in dreams.
The moon was full that night. And my disappointment at the surrounding silence faded after a moment.
I was going to walk that night.
