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The Importance of Dreams and Nightmares
By Lebki

At random moments in my life, the images come back to haunt me.

The nightmare repeated every night, exactly the same: I glimpse a shadow pacing around by the garage. I lock the door and don’t leave the house, convinced that it’ll get in and do something terrible to me. It’s the darkened soul of--something. I don’t know what. For three days I watch the lock, the brass talisman that protects me. Sometimes I hear the click-click of metal as he twists the doorknob, trying to get in. One day you walk up the driveway and I watch him move past the window, then lunge at you to attack. I run outside so quickly that I forget my key, and he vanishes.

When I walk back inside I hear a sound, and I’m obsessed that it’s him. But I find, under the couch, a mewing kitten. The door’s open but no light is coming in.

That’s when I woke up.

I think of the images as I tap my pencil on my desk, like a drum, in class. I see him in the curls of wispy smoke from cigarettes. I see him when I look up at the stars, the empty lights of a pretty sky. Every time I talk to you, I wonder about why he left when he saw me but wanted you. He never comes out in the open during the day, but I know he’s there. He is the part of me that vanishes when I’m distracted and comes back when I start being myself. My life feels like a pendulum, an endless back-and-forth between short snaps of joy and long swings of misery. I want to throw on my jacket and watch the sun glow red. I want to sit on my favorite swing in the park, and watch this gritty black-and-white photograph world. I want to jump off the edge of a skyscraper and fly.

***

In the spring, the daffodils poke up, first only green stems yawning out of the ground. Then pale yellow buds appear, and the calla lilies, elegantly curled and the color of bubble gum, arrive by their side. The grass turns a fresh shade of green, like mint, and the apple trees burst into blossom as if set with white fire. The days grow warmer until I throw my windows open at night to steal a cool breeze for my humid air.

One day I bring home a tiny kitten, tiger-striped orange and tan, which the kids fawn over and instantly name Reinette--little queen. The days pass like a dream, one after another, with a few slipping away into nothingness. Sometimes I find myself in the kitchen long after midnight and long before dawn, sitting with the light on, not knowing how I got there, not knowing what day or even what year it is. The kitten walks into the kitchen and mews, lapping its milk. “I don’t know either, and you don’t see me worrying,” she seems to say.

I pick a lily and put it in a glass jar by the window. It seems lonely.

“A lot of people are terrified of nightmares,” you say.

I wrap the phone cord around my finger. “But how do you know if a nightmare’s over?”

***

In psychology class one day I bring up the subject of dreams. “Can a dream represent a fear? Do their symbols have meaning, or are they just to entertain us while we sleep?”

No one has an answer.

I press on. “What are the importance of dreams and nightmares?”

They calm us, someone says. They let us sort out our feelings, says another. They remind us of what we’re afraid to lose.

At night I stay up late to be sure you make it home from work. The kitten curls up at my feet while I study. One night when I realize I haven’t locked the door, I drop my textbook, and everything slips away like water through my fingers. I get up and slide my key into the bolt, and then stop. I realize what the dream means, and what I’m afraid of losing.

The nightmares have been gone for a year, and sometimes I wonder where the shadow is now. Has he found someone else to terrify? Or is he still lurking around the corner by the garage, waiting for the moment when you come home, and I won’t see him through the window?