Dream Eater

A tattered white dress pools around the shrunken woman, her wrinkled hands curled in its folds. Beneath a star-sprinkled sky, she waits in the space between breaths before picking up one slippered foot and stepping down from the curb. Her movements are silent as she enters a quaint blue house, the third on the left.

She remembers a time when these streets were harder, full of families too poor to live anywhere else. Now it’s a haven for the middle-class, its tentacles dug deep spawning cookie-cutter homes with neat lawns and tidy front porches. She misses the cracks in the road, the broken chain-link fences, even the trash that blew across the street to collect on browned and scraggly lawns. She belonged there, where the dreams were more urgent, more yearning, more filling. At least now there are more children, even if their dreams are softer and their worries simpler.

She’s tasted only nightmares lately: dark, twisted scenes of violence and death, heart-wrenching scenes of loss and grief, scenes of not having, not being, not doing enough. She has grown used to these dark reaches of the human mind, a mind she desperately wants to understand, but she yearns for childlike innocence. Tonight, she seeks out only children.

She creeps in through the blue house’s silent backyard, tucked behind a white fence. The edges of her reflection look too sharp in the glass of the sliding door, left unlocked in a false sense of safety. She opens it easily with a swift pass of her hand, dispelling her reflection without another thought for it. The hallway inside is bathed in the warm light of a large fish tank, which casts long, warped shadows around her on the walls – for every form but hers. She approaches the tank, and presses her face to the glass. She feels for these creatures that swim around in a world too small, with the infinite potential of the ocean within reach. She has faced an eternity that humans dream of, but only as an outsider. She turns off the tank’s light; even the fish need sleep. Her balleted feet are silent on the stairs, expertly avoiding the floorboard known to sigh, wrapped in darkness.

She pauses at the last step and listens. Light and shadows dance beneath the crack of a door at the end of the hall, and giggles float towards her. She hears splashing: bath time. She creeps closer, to listen to the conversation just behind the door, but thinks better of it. Now is her chance.

She ignores the bathroom for now and instead twists the brass knob closest to her slowly, its metal cold in her grasp, and glides into the room, hugging the shadows. She perches, a hidden nightmare in the closet, tucked in among the coats and sneakers, and waits for sleep to come. From here, she has a perfect view of the twin bed tucked against the wall.

A round little blond boy finally enters the room, smelling of soap and powder and plumper than most. He jumps into bed with an air of ritual, careful to check the train nightlight and stick-on stars on the ceiling before turning off the light. She stays perfectly still as the boy begins to breathe slower and slower, chest rising and falling languidly as the distance between each breath grows.

Finally, in a lull, she exposes long, bony fingers from the gap in the closet door. She bends down and blows dust resting on the tips of them across the room, sending the cloud to the corner of his eyes, where the particles will collect in his lashes. The bloom of it twists in the moonlight streaming in from the window at the other wall, cut to ribbons by the blinds. The boy’s breathing slows considerably once it reaches him, disappearing into his face. Only when she’s sure it’s settled does she slink from the closet across the carpeted floor, her light step leaving footprints in its plushness. She cocks her head down at him, and a muscle twitches in her jaw. Her stomach growls softly, masked by his even snores.

With delicate precision she raises the camera hanging around her neck to her wrinkled eyes, skin thin like paper at the edges; she looks longingly through the lens at the way the moon brushes his cheek. The dust in his eyes glitters in the flash. His eyes tighten against the sudden glow, and he brushes his hands across his face before tucking them beneath his pillow.

She whispers, promises and lies, replacements for what she takes, her breath curling around his ear and tickling his skin. She thinks of the moon’s reflection on a stretch of calm black water, infinite and empty, an image that means something to her. She doesn’t want to steal from him, only to trade. She hopes it’s a fair one.

With a shudder, the boy scrunches his face, violently turning over in recoil. His breath quickens and his lids pulse, his eyes moving rapidly beneath them. The woman smiles a wolf’s smile, sharp and dangerous, and backs slowly out of the room.

It is the same at the next house, and the next and the next. Always watching, always waiting on the brink of dreams, starving. She collects each picture like a piece of a never-ending puzzle, leaving only nightmares in her wake.

——–

When the boy wakes on his fifth birthday, his eyes are sunken and bloodshot. His foot skips the creaking step, and he descends silently into the kitchen. His mother stands at the counter, her apron white and clean, humming quietly to herself. He breathes in the smell of blueberry pancakes, and lets the air worm out of his lungs. A smile pulls at his face and a muscle in his cheek jumps.

His mother turns and startles. She masks her surprise with a smile, and reaches out to hug the boy. “Happy Birthday, Brann,” she sings into his hair. He hesitates for a moment, stiffening, before reluctantly hugging her back.

He does, however, stab his fork into the pancakes with zeal, and his mother’s brow furrows.

“Slow down, Sweetie. You don’t want to choke.” Her voice is sing-song, and Brann works hard to not roll his eyes. He deliberately stabs the next piece, raising it slowly to his mouth, and grins sardonically. His mother pretends not to notice the tainted grin, and widens her own smile in return.

——–

The woman in white returns to her own private darkness: a basement, dank and full of cobwebs. The wallpaper peels and clouds of dust rise in her wake. The windows are shuttered over, and the floor sags and smells of mildew. The house is one of the last remnants of a more familiar past, abandoned at the end of the street and rumored to be haunted. She has never seen a ghost. Caution tape blocks it from the street, but sometimes she hears the heavy panting and breathless laughter of kids who must prove they are brave – when the scariest thing they must face is a decrepit house, forgotten and out of place in the tidy neighborhood. The place is condemned, and if the neighborhood gets its way, will eventually be demolished. Her home is a relic of the past, and progress will plow her into oblivion.

She is greeted by the smell of vinegar and chemicals that no longer affects her the way it once did. She secures the lid on a large plastic tub, protecting the soaking film, and bathes the room in the glow of red light. She shakes the film and waits, then adds fixer to the mix. She hangs the photos to dry, and watches as the images appear like magic on the wet film.

The first picture finally bleeds to life, and a labyrinth appears before her: a network of rooms connected by hallways and mismatched doors. Her stomach drops and her throat closes as the walls press in, and she is nervous until she finds a key in a hidden corner. She opens a scarred wooden door with cracked hinges that leads up into the night sky.

The next scene is full of snow, with strange tracks leading off into the distance. The wind rustles in the trees, blowing her dress behind her, and footsteps fall not far from her own. Her hand brushes the rough bark of a tree, alone in a field blanketed with white. She stares at the footprints leading off into the distance. The flakes in her lashes feel so real that she expects her eyes to be wet when she wipes them.

Next is a locked door, with no discernible way to open it. She stares at the ancient lock; cracks spider across its metallic surface and rust gathers around the keyhole. There are hints of something behind the door, impressions of fear or excitement. She thinks of the child under the star-studded sky in the quaint blue house, and furrows her brow. The door rattles violently, and she steps away, hurrying to the next.

After that is a watch, but instead of hands ticking towards numbers there is a web woven across its face. Drops of rain collect in the thread, and a long hairy leg pokes its way to the center behind the glass.

She pauses in front of the last picture, and watches as flowers bloom with eyeballs instead of petals for a long time. When she inhales too deeply, a sharp pain alights in her chest. The sensation of falling. The wind howls, or a child screams, or whispers. She can no longer tell, and she smiles.

Somewhere in the distance a timer goes off, startling her from the collection of dreams. She pulls each from its place hanging along the line, and lays them all out on the table in front of her, to arrange them into a story.

———-

Brann, now a rawboned six, corners a cat beneath the planter in his yard. It cocks one orange ear in his direction but continues to lick its paw, otherwise ignoring him. The grass is soft beneath Brann’s bare feet, and the sun shines on him. He looks up, letting its warmth brush his face. He shakes the planter to startle the cat out of hiding. The cat hisses and he hisses right back, baring his teeth.

Brann’s hand darts out and he grabs the cat by its fur. Its claws sink into his skin as it struggles in his hold, and blood bubbles to the surface. Brann winces, and when the cat tries to embed its teeth in his arm he wraps his pudgy child fingers around its twitching neck. He squeezes and squeezes until his arms start to quiver with the effort.

“Brann! Lemonade!” His mom’s voice lilts from the kitchen window.

The lifeless corpse of the cat is tossed aside, already forgotten, and Brann even lets loose a laugh as he skips inside for some lemonade.

———–

The woman is back in the labyrinth, its hallways lined with torches that flicker as she passes. Her feet are bare on the marbled floor, and poke out beneath the tatters of her white dress. She takes the hidden key from its place in the shadows beneath one of the torches and opens the ancient lock on the door bursting at its seams.

Laughter rushes out at her with great force, blowing a few strands free from the loose bun at the nape of her neck to rest across her cheek. She steps over the threshold and immediately inhales the cold of snow, her breath puffing out in silver clouds. She follows the footsteps from the lone tree, fitting her bare feet perfectly in each, to a path lined in flowers with eyeballs instead of petals. She braces herself for the pain, but it doesn’t come. A giant spider web blocks her from moving forward down the path, its threads woven of dreams and nightmares, and she sees her camera at its center.

Panic clutches her chest and she reaches for it, her hunger overwhelming, but her fingers grasp only air as the path opens up and swallows her whole.

———

Sleep continues to evade Brann. He no longer sleeps in the twin bed, but has graduated to a full size that sits in the center of the room. He has a desk now, a mark of his new maturity, but the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling refuse to peel off. He stays up at night scribbling in his notebook beneath their light and the light of the moon. Nightmares swirl across the pages, torn in places where he’s pressed too hard. He draws up experiments, step by step instructions for a fanciful master plan. He pushes his glasses up his nose, careful not to slice himself where the bridge has cracked. He picks at scabs on his knees where he was pushed to the pavement, but he smiles when they bleed.

Brann imagines the look on his bully’s face when he comes for him. The other children’s laughter echoes in his ears, and the page in his book tears again. He tosses the pen across the desk in his frustration. He pulls at his hair, then abruptly stands, so fast that the wooden desk chair falls to the ground behind him. He paces the room, his steps no longer imprinted in the worn carpet. The memory of falling to the pavement bounces around like a bullet against his skull.

He creeps down the stairs in the night, his bare feet silent on the cold wooden steps. His feet recoil when they hit the kitchen tile, but he treads noiselessly to the drawer in the corner. It creaks on its tracks and he pauses, listening in the silence.

He hears nothing, but opens it more slowly the next time around. A knife glints in his grasp in the moonlight, and he stares at it, weighing it in his hand. He grips more tightly, determined, and hurries back up the stairs. He rests the knife beneath his pillow and falls peacefully into sleep.

———

She awakens in her dark home, still hungry. She needs more pictures to complete the story. Only with a full narrative — the one thing eluding her as a creature of darkness — can she feast like they do. Then maybe she’ll understand their world. If she feels all that they do, maybe she’ll fit into the world she’s trapped in.

She returns to the quaint blue house, to the innocent boy who once dreamt of monsters behind doors, anxious to know what lay beyond them; she can’t very well imagine it for herself. His dreams were full of hidden innocence, and she yearns for simplicity. It is rare for her to visit the same house twice so close together, for fear of taking too much, but he seemed to swell with a feeling she didn’t have a name for. Surely he’d be alright if she partook.

Dead fish float in the tank by the stairs. Her foot hits a stair that creaks and she holds her breath in the answering silence. The cold of the brass doorknob burns her wrinkled hand. The child waits for her upright in his bed, his face almost skeletal in the darkness. The light of the moon catches his open eyes and gleams off of too-white teeth.

The woman freezes at the threshold of the door and tilts her head – a monster grins back at her. She barely recognizes him as the same giggling boy from before. He is tainted with a new darkness, one she is intimately familiar with. She bares her teeth and flexes her long fingers, allowing the dust to collect at their tips. She blows it into the boy’s sunken eyes, and they begin to close. He tries to fight it, thrashing his head side to side, but his neck grows heavy and he eventually slumps, defeated, into sleep: the most restful he’s been for what feels like a lifetime.

She stares at the boy, and finds that his sunken eyes mirror her own, aged and dangerous. His fingers are curled into claws, and pain is etched in the wrinkles and veins spidered beneath his eyes. It’s emptiness, she realizes with a start. The change in him is that innocence has been replaced by emptiness. It’s consumed him the same way that it consumed her.

This is her fault, she realizes. Her breath catches in her throat, and she slowly approaches the bed. The boy is young, can still be saved. She could feed his hunger, replace the fear with hope, leave dreams instead of nightmares. She thinks back to all she has experienced, all she has seen and taken and made her own. She thinks of the feeling of the sun, something she’s only ever experienced through the eyes of others. She thinks of the feeling of being able to walk in a group, to laugh. She thinks of the beach. She thinks of what it means to have someplace to call home, someone to love you unconditionally: things she can really only guess at, but that have become more solid to her over time.

She pulls her camera from its place on her neck and takes another picture. This time, she whispers softer stories in his ears. She tells him of sunlight and happiness, of all the things that she yearns for, and one side of a smile starts to crawl up his cheek. His breathing slows and he shifts, finding a more comfortable position in sleep.

She leaves dreams in her wake this time, anxious to lock the monster she created behind a new door, one without a key.

———-

The next morning, Brann sneaks into his mother’s room, quiet in the early morning. The sun slants through the window, bathing her in its light. Blonde hair flows across the pillow like liquid gold, one hand tucked beneath her chin. As he climbs up to the bed, he can’t resist prodding at her peaceful face.

“Hi, Mommy.” He giggles and smiles down at her. His eyes are bright, and his hair is disheveled with sleep. Her lashes split slowly, still heavy, but she smiles back at her cherubic child.

“Good morning, my sweet prince.”

He giggles some more and brushes his chubby fingers across her smiling face. She grabs him and twists, trapping him beneath her and tickling him while he squirms and tries to escape. The sun smiles down on them both.

From her spot hidden within the closet, the woman takes a picture.

———–

The woman sits down in the darkness, her dress spread like a blanket around her, illuminated in the halo of the red bulb. The dreams are arranged around her in the perfect order, spread across the floor.

She picks up each photo and chews them daintily, starting at the corners. Fear coats her tongue with a metallic taste, and she sighs, the wrinkles on her face stretching into smooth, youthful skin. Joy, the taste of stolen kisses beneath the moonlight, memories of laughter and love, fill her shrunken bones with strength, and she stands tall. Loneliness, a familiar bitter flavor of being forgotten, settles like sawdust on her tongue, nourishes her hair, brightens her eyes and straightens her limbs. Each new emotion is a bursting flavor on her tongue. Love, the most important, the missing piece from the story of human life, tastes like sunshine, and finally satisfies her hunger. With each bite, she is fleetingly human – she understands what it means to belong in their world, if only for a little while.

---

Written for Improbable Press Emerging Cryptids Anthology. Was not chosen.